Another Update

[Dave]

Reducing the heavy's spread is awesome.  This is one of the main reasons I stopped playing as him as he became too much reliant on chance at any decent distance.

i guess itl be easier to dodge at point blank
tradeoff is that you cant survive more than 2 - 3 passes through his fire.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Hmmmm, sad to see those grenade damages.  It should still have a chance of getting 125 to one shot scouts and engis.

[copulatingduck]

Oh, and apparently stickies have been given a damage buff 

From reading that thread and the linked threads it looks like stickies weren't even touched when valve reduced random damage. Not really a "buff," at least in the conventional sense.

@Karrde: Why should demo get a chance to one shot scouts or engies? That's just silly.

[ScottyGrayskull]

Oh, and apparently stickies have been given a damage buff 

Yeah, because demo isn't gamebreaking enough as is in the hands of a player even just decently skilled with it.

Sure you can shoot the stickies, but given how tiny they are any demo paying attention will shoot more in faster than you shoot them out. As is I've been one shot killed by mid-air stickies all the way up to medic and pyro, and have been one shot killed by 'nades as a scout and sniper. Please tell me how this is even remotely balanced?

[shoopfox]

The main problem I have with stickies is you don't have a big incentive to use the GL in a lot of situations-- airdetting a sticky in someone's face will do more damage, and even if you miss, you can still clip with with splash damage.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

[quote author=Arnie's Right Bicep link=topic=2262.msg64774#msg64774 date=1233664447]
Oh, and apparently stickies have been given a damage buff 

From reading that thread and the linked threads it looks like stickies weren't even touched when valve reduced random damage. Not really a "buff," at least in the conventional sense.

@Karrde: Why should demo get a chance to one shot scouts or engies? That's just silly.
[/quote]

Keep in mind I'm talking for direct hits only.  IE no bounces or anything.  Because if you can hit captain speedy pants directly or actually aim your lob over a sentry and smack the engi (without hitting the wall or the SG), you deserve your kill.

[copulatingduck]

Karrde link=topic=2262.msg64828#msg64828 date=1233695317]
[quote author=CopulatingDuck link=topic=2262.msg64792#msg64792 date=1233683919]
[quote author=Arnie's Right Bicep link=topic=2262.msg64774#msg64774 date=1233664447]
Oh, and apparently stickies have been given a damage buff 

From reading that thread and the linked threads it looks like stickies weren't even touched when valve reduced random damage. Not really a "buff," at least in the conventional sense.

@Karrde: Why should demo get a chance to one shot scouts or engies? That's just silly.
[/quote]

Keep in mind I'm talking for direct hits only.  IE no bounces or anything.  Because if you can hit captain speedy pants directly or actually aim your lob over a sentry and smack the engi (without hitting the wall or the SG), you deserve your kill.
[/quote]

I don't really think so. Hell, with a clip of 4 and a reasonably fast firing rate, even I can hit most cevop scouts at least once before going down. Doesn't mean I deserve to come out on top.

[Vongore]

Valve updated the blog explaining some shit about this update

On Tuesday we shipped an update that added a bunch of features / bugfixes / balancing tweaks that came out of the community's feedback. In particular, it made some changes to the underlying TF damage system, and as part of that, it modified the way critical hits are determined. We thought it might be interesting to dig a little into the change, and hopefully give you some insight into our thinking.

First, a quick primer on how the critical hit system works. Each player's chance of successfully rolling for a critical hit depends on two factors:

    * A base chance, which is fixed per weapon (2% for all non-melee weapons, 15% for melee)
    * An additional bonus, which is based on the amount of damage you've done to enemies in the last 20 seconds. This bonus linearly scales with damage up to a maximum of 10%.


There are two paradigms used for when to roll, and what happens on success:

    * Rapid-fire weapons roll for critical hits once per second, instead of every shot. If they roll a crit, the next 2 seconds worth of their fire are marked as critical hits.
    * Non-rapid fire weapons roll for critical hits each time you fire, and if they roll a crit, only that shot is marked as a critical hit.
    * The sniper rifle and spy knife only score critical hits on headshots and backstabs respectively. They never roll for critical hits.


We had a few things we wanted to change with the old system:

    * Reduce the overall number of critical hits occurring in the game.
    * Make critical hits more skill / performance based.


Here are the actual changes we made, taken from the release notes:

    * Base critical hit chance is now 2% (was 5%)
    * Bonus range based on damage done changed from 0%-15% to 0%-10
    * Damage range required for bonus changed from 0-1600 to 0-800


Lets dig a little deeper into these. First, the base critical hit chance was reduced from 5% to 2%. This means that if you haven't done any damage to an enemy, your crit chance is now just under half what it was previously. Secondly, the size of the bonus range was reduced by a third, but the amount of damage needed to earn that bonus was halved. To understand the effect of that, it's useful to graph it:




As you can see, the new crit chance is slightly lower across the board, which we wanted. More importantly though, is that the rate at which the crit chance increases based on the amount of recent damage you've done. We like to think of that recent damage total as a rough measure of your performance.

In thinking about the change we wanted to make to critical hits, we decided that there was a point on the graph of particular interest to us, and that was the point at which your critical hit chance was as much a result of your performance as it was the base chance. If you look at at (A) on the old line, you'll see that point isn't reached until you've done 550 recent damage, a feat that occurs about as often as our backstab code works correctly. That point is reached at (B) on the new line, around the point where you've done 175 recent damage. This means that if you've just singlehandedly killed an enemy Demoman/Soldier/Pyro/Heavy, your next 20 seconds worth of crit chances are already more a result of that kill than the base chance. As a result, if you're a highly skilled player, you're going to fire significantly more critical hits than those around you. And remember, if you've just killed 2 or 3 enemies, now's the time to push!

[backfire]

Valves TF2 Blog Update

Didn't seem to effect melee though. We were doing melee only and we were all getting a ton of crits. Out of spawn, I swung 4 crits in a row before any kills.

[Tricoden]

If you look at at (A) on the old line, you'll see that point isn't reached until you've done 550 recent damage, a feat that occurs about as often as our backstab code works correctly.

[Versus]

[quote author=Vongore link=topic=2262.msg65064#msg65064 date=1233816854]
If you look at at (A) on the old line, you'll see that point isn't reached until you've done 550 recent damage, a feat that occurs about as often as facestabs not hitting.

[/quote]

[CaffeinePowered]

[quote author=Tricoden link=topic=2262.msg65078#msg65078 date=1233833975]
[quote author=Vongore link=topic=2262.msg65064#msg65064 date=1233816854]
If you look at at (A) on the old line, you'll see that point isn't reached until you've done 550 recent damage, a feat that occurs about as often as facestabs not hitting.

[/quote]
[/quote]

550 is pretty easy to him IMO, especially on defense with AD maps like goldrush or dustbowl, considering every class has over 100 health, add in over heals and the fact that that is a damage value, not actual kills, its only 2 - 3 kills.

[Darklink]

This has some pretty sweet stuff . Majorly the tournament mode stuff. Custom crosshair support is meh. Sniper crosshair for nocscope definitely makes him easier to play. SMG sucks against full health guys and lol melee make him difficult to play up close.

[quote author=Arnie's Right Bicep link=topic=2262.msg64774#msg64774 date=1233664447]
Oh, and apparently stickies have been given a damage buff 

From reading that thread and the linked threads it looks like stickies weren't even touched when valve reduced random damage. Not really a "buff," at least in the conventional sense.

@Karrde: Why should demo get a chance to one shot scouts or engies? That's just silly.
[/quote]
They weren't. I think after the engineer level 3 update Fragga put out a video of himself getting hit for 169 from a sticky.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Yeah, we were getting an insane number of crits last night.  Even non damage related.  Wonder if they made some math errors.

[copulatingduck]

Karrde link=topic=2262.msg65101#msg65101 date=1233845485]
Yeah, we were getting an insane number of crits last night.  Even non damage related.  Wonder if they made some math errors.

I think it's more that people just don't understand probability

[Darklink]

[quote author=[fr31ns]Karrde link=topic=2262.msg65101#msg65101 date=1233845485]
Yeah, we were getting an insane number of crits last night.  Even non damage related.  Wonder if they made some math errors.

I think it's more that people just don't understand probability
[/quote]Pretty much good players get more crits, bad ones get less. Due to the fact that the bonus starts at 800 damage now.

[Spore]

[quote author=Arnie's Right Bicep link=topic=2262.msg64774#msg64774 date=1233664447]
Oh, and apparently stickies have been given a damage buff 

Yeah, because demo isn't gamebreaking enough as is in the hands of a player even just decently skilled with it.

Sure you can shoot the stickies, but given how tiny they are any demo paying attention will shoot more in faster than you shoot them out. As is I've been one shot killed by mid-air stickies all the way up to medic and pyro, and have been one shot killed by 'nades as a scout and sniper. Please tell me how this is even remotely balanced?
[/quote]

Stickies definately need a mega-nerf so that players have to actually learn to use the pipes. Stickies are supposed to be strictly defensive, but Valve just can't figure that out. Honestly, if you took the pipes out of the game, 95 percent of demomen wouldn't even notice, but I really don't think pipes should have gotten a damage nerf. They are the hardest weapon in the game to aim with for a reason. If you hit a 12,000 MPH scout hopping around, you deserve that kill. Demoman, unlike every other class, doesn't have a "finish him off" weapon to polish off that extra 25 or 30 HP that they may have. Also, you're acting like a Sniper being able to 1 hit kill with a body shot from 6,000 feet away anything with 175 health or below is "fair" too.

[CaffeinePowered]

Stickies definately need a mega-nerf so that players have to actually learn to use the pipes. Stickies are supposed to be strictly defensive, but Valve just can't figure that out.

Remote pipes aka stickies, have *always* been the demo's main weapon of choice in every iteration of Team Fortress, why should that change?

If you use pipes often, they are the 'finish em off' weapon, because you can detonate them and do partial damage. Just fight the demo from a little farther back next time where he's practically useless and you'll do just fine. Stickies are by no means win bombs now, especially since they can be destroyed and pyros can puff them out of the way.

Engineer + Pyro = near invincible sentry

[Eschatos]

I still think stickies should be indestructible.

[Isao Kronos]

That's a stupid idea, I was doing a 1v1 yesterday and being able to destroy stickies saved me. For about 10 seconds.