I think we've got a bit of difference in terms here too
Like for me a mini-sentry is usually not that I'm risking dying from it. It's not some weapon that's just totally kicking my ass
It's that the damn things never go away. When I beat a lvl 3 it's an achievement, because it's hurting the opposing teams' engy, whether or not I actually killed the engy or not. Now they're vulnerable and have to invest time and metal rebuilding.
You kill a minisent and the opposing engineer just plain doesn't care. Actually he prolly appreciates it cuz you just gave him another crit on his shotgun.
If he's playing decently then he's playing with almost no risk at all. He's in the area but not in danger, and within a few seconds of it dropping he'll have a new one up.
If you're a lone heavy and have to get a little closer before you open up on the thing, you're gonna be down 80, 90, or even more health. Now you've gotta go recover, and the engineer does not, and in a game limited by a timer, that's a big deal! A pyro or scout who manage to kill one will probably be seriously hurting. And that's all assuming it's just you vs the sentry
That's why it's annoying, not because it's so powerful, but because the minisentry almost always wins in the exchange. Killing a minisentry hurts your time productivity more than it hurts the enemys, even though you're supposedly winning
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
edited March 2014
counterpoint to all the minisentry grousing:
quick fix
Shorty on
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Diving a mini with your flamethrower and killing it in seconds is not hard what is this. What kind of sick man sends babies to post here?
Minis undoubtebly need some kind of nerf, for sure, but really, once you zero in on the damn thing it is not hard to snipe it or burn it or shotgun it or minigun it down pretty fast.
I also consider the mini an excellent counter to the Phlog pyro because seriously, fuck phlog pyros.
My favorite part of this conversation is how reasonable and civil it is until the end of each post, where it spikes into "fuck <my least favorite class> though."
There are a number of things you could change that would balance [mini-sentries] I think a range reduction would be the best. Half the time I take a lot of damage from one is because they are out of range and I can barely locate it because they are tiny and still have great range.
This is my opinion as well. If their range was reduced to about 2/3 or 3/4 of what it is now, I doubt I would have any grievance. As well, I find that they begin shooting me when I get in range, the knockback pushes me "out of range", and they still keep firing for another second or two.
It all comes down to "something killed me in TF2, make them stop that."
Mini-sentries wouldn't matter at all if more PAers played heavy. But if they actually fixed heavy then we'd start bitching about demos again. Repeat until we go all the way back to October 2007 when the game went on sale and everyone hated pyros.
It all comes down to "something killed me in TF2, make them stop that."
Mini-sentries wouldn't matter at all if more PAers played heavy. But if they actually fixed heavy then we'd start bitching about demos again. Repeat until we go all the way back to October 2007 when the game went on sale and everyone hated pyros.
I don't know what has changed in the game or the people playing it since I was last on that mini-sentries of all things are now the most complained about item, but some people intentionally griefing players for using mini-sentries is reminding me why I don't bother much anymore.
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
Well see, the Dead Ringer finally got nerfed so...
The dead ringer is still probably the one single item I find most annoying in the entire game, it's just not actually overpowered anymore. The only reason I complain about mini-sentries is because a lot of the older KOTH maps weren't built with them in mind, and mini-sentries can be incredibly unbelievably annoying on a lot of them. (Particularly if lots of people are using them and particularly if you happen to be playing with lots of pubs.)
I don't know what has changed in the game or the people playing it since I was last on that mini-sentries of all things are now the most complained about item, but some people intentionally griefing players for using mini-sentries is reminding me why I don't bother much anymore.
I don't understand how you could read through the last 2 or 3 pages and not even understand what the complaint is?
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I'm absolutely saying they are imbalanced. Literally anything else I can handle in some way. I can flare a heavy to death in no time. Heavies also have the disadvantage of being controlled by another human. And if I kill a heavy he doesn't get rebuilt immediately. And he doesn't have perfect aim. And he might not be able to rotate fast enough for me to outstrafe him.
A normal sentry is a huge commitment but has huge payoffs if you can keep it up. A mini has almost no commitment for moderate area denial and great distraction potential. and you don't even have to worry about keeping it up because you can drop another right away.
There are a number of things you could change that would balance them I think a range reduction would be the best. Half the time I take a lot of damage from one is because they are out of range and I can barely locate it because they are tiny and still have great range.
A pyro punishes anybody that lets the player get too close. And while other players have the disadvantage of being controlled by a human, they have the advantage of prioritizing their targets. I don't know what your play strategy is, but you have to have something in your repertoire that lets you take advantage of that. No class is more dangerous to a building farm than a nearby pyro, as engies usually have a few precious seconds or an easy target to dispatch before real damage is done with any other blockbusting strategy.
And it really doesn't matter that snipers get backstabbed a lot as long as they can make crucial kills in the meantime. It's not like they have a long trek from spawn to being useful.
But the engineer isn't near his mini sentry. The pyro isn't a threat to the engi or his nest when mini sentries are in play. It's just guaranteed damage when I move into its range and a potential kill from either the sentry or the engi. Sure it can't prioritize targets but it's causing a huge split focus with zero effort and it comes right back.
I can outstrafe a level 3 sentry. But if I try that against a mini then I lose a significant portion of my health. I was gonna say that engaging a mini is less risky than engaging a level 3 but it's not actually a risk because the payoff is so low for what I put into it. It's not worth the energy put into getting rid if it but you have to get rid of it.
The payoff for either engaging or avoiding is being closer to the enemy than you were previously. If a mini-sentry is in such a wide open space that you cannot ever get past it, then it becomes a better target for you or your teammates, and will try to engage too many of your teammates at once, losing its effectiveness.
Sure, it may prevent a pyro from carrying a team. But that's one less level 3 sentry that is, in the end, a bigger resource drain on the attackers.
I'm not saying they make it impossible to do anything. Obviously a level 3 is way better in basically every aspect. But it's a negligible investment for the engi for a huge payoff of being a huge distraction. If it is going to cost so little and build so fast, it should not be as powerful as it is. Cut it's range back so it's still effective in sneaky hiding spots, or reduce it's damage so it isn't as deadly but still creates the split focus, or reduce it's pushback so you can rush through one a little better if you can risk taking the damage, or reduce it's track speed so you can successfully strafe it without taking so much damage just to get rid of something that is going to pop right back up.
What concretely do you want to be able to do to an engi that you can't do now with the current setup? If it's just manipulating the stats of the mini sentry, then there should be a goal in mind, plus it still has to be markedly better than just going for a level 1 sentry and abandoning the gunslinger, which is what putting the metal reqs over 100 did.
The mini sentry fixes a lot of bad habits of engineers that only serve to extend round times, like building back a point, farming, or turtling. But the engineer is really a one-note class: if you have a strategy that can reliably defeat mini-sentry spamming, then all the engi has been reduced to is X amount of sublethal damage on the first pyro that cares. If a nerf does nothing to increase the skill involved in playing an engineer, then people will go right back to last point level 3s.
It's easy for the engineer to be a distraction, but is it so easy for the engineer to be a vanguard uber? To clear stickies? To quad kill? For some classes this is like taking breaths.
I definitely don't think it should require more than 100 metal. I want it balanced, not nerfed to shit. I think what it boils down to is that I don't feel that there is a significant boon to my team for me to attempt to destroy a mini-sentry unless I am within flamethrower range of it. If it's too far, I'm just going to lose enough health to die at the next encounter or have to high tail it back to a dispenser or health pack and having another player alive is more important than a mini destroyed, especially if it is coming back up in 2 seconds which is almost guaranteed if I had to backtrack for health. If it's a level 3 or a heavy or something, I'm willing to risk killing it because either of those being gone gives my team a big boost. If I die then that sucks but I think it's worth the risk sometimes. Obviously I'm not throwing myself on level 3s every chance I get but if I can get close and have space to move then I could take it out and that's a big deal. I don't want it to suck I just want it to be worth the effort to get rid of. If it's only helping a tiny bit to get rid of it then I shouldn't have to radically alter my strategy to do so.
Confession: if I'm a medic or I'm not a fast moving class, I will usually only tag a dead ringer spy once and then move on. However, when I'm a spy, I can easily bait ubercharge ready heavy medic pairs all the way back to spawn for a minute or two. Sometimes I'm just not the right fit for the job.
However, this has opened my eyes as to what's wrong with gunslingers. People are attacking the sentry before they attack the engineer. This is yet another bad habit from the scourge of level 3 sentries even though the number one rule of TF2 still applies there: healers first.
Is it too hard to kill the engineer with a mini-sentry active? I'd be willing to accept a nerf if people, once adopting the "kill the engineer" strategy, find that it's way too hard to kill an engineer "just sitting there" while the mini-sentry goes to work on you. If the engineer truly doesn't need to do anything skillwise to stay alive if being directly hunted, then yes, the gunslinger should be toned down to develop the engineer's capability to co-op with his mini-sentry and not just periodically check his building status bar.
But I'd only be willing to accept this if making the engineer the priority target was the norm. Is it really so hard to kill the engineer? If you're having trouble finding the engineer, maybe environmental aptitude as an engineer skill has expressed itself. I know for sure that strategic positioning of yourself doesn't make nearly as much difference when you're wrenching a level 3. Find the engineer, kill him, and all his buildings may as well be dead. No investment = no payoff in terms of post-death kills or wrench synergy.
I don't know what mini-sentry engi would "just sit there" or why you have it in quotes but like sarukun said, I think I've exhausted my points on this.
Also, as per Crash's analysis: Fuck Medic.
Oh shit Medic is my least played class now. Oh jeeze.
I don't know what has changed in the game or the people playing it since I was last on that mini-sentries of all things are now the most complained about item, but some people intentionally griefing players for using mini-sentries is reminding me why I don't bother much anymore.
I dunno if "killing many times in a row" in a game where "killing the other team's mans" is the objective really qualifies as "griefing", but we'll try to soldier on without ya.
If I was trying to spawncamp a single player I probably wouldn't use the heavy
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
as far as i'm concerned, specifically targeting someone who's using a bullshit loadout is really only griefing if you're spawncamping, or somehow screwing over your own team in the process, or just being a dick in the general non-gameplay sense
I'm not really sure how else to deal with Engineers, leaving them alone for any amount of time just means they're gonna get set up, your best bet is to kill them before they drop their shit.
Also one of the better things about mini-sentry engineer is that you can switch out of the class temporarily without screwing over your team
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Also one of the better things about mini-sentry engineer is that you can switch out of the class temporarily without screwing over your team
sure, if your sentry was the only building you had up when you switched. losing your teleporter as soon as you switch into another class can screw your team over pretty badly on certain stages of cp/pl maps, unless you're not the only engineer on your team with an active teleporter.
One time not long ago I found myself lighting a whole group of guys on fire including a medic and heavy and soldier.
Do you know who I killed?
The sniper right behind them all that was dominating me. Fuck medics I need revenge.
Heavy is usually my preferred Revenge-taking class.
Except against Snipers, wherein the choice is Scout.
Mine used to be caber jumper, but now it's probably try hard medic
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Also should we do a couple hours of map testing sometime this week? I don't know what Crash has going on but he's constantly in the SDK so I know he's doing something, and I'd like to get more runs on cp_crater before I start work on it again.
Working on my paid gig that will provide no fun for you guys, but I'll have a new glassworks this week.
And yeah my office is the only room without proper curtains/ blinds left in the house. It's okay most of the time, just not mid afternoon when I was recording today.
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Like for me a mini-sentry is usually not that I'm risking dying from it. It's not some weapon that's just totally kicking my ass
It's that the damn things never go away. When I beat a lvl 3 it's an achievement, because it's hurting the opposing teams' engy, whether or not I actually killed the engy or not. Now they're vulnerable and have to invest time and metal rebuilding.
You kill a minisent and the opposing engineer just plain doesn't care. Actually he prolly appreciates it cuz you just gave him another crit on his shotgun.
If he's playing decently then he's playing with almost no risk at all. He's in the area but not in danger, and within a few seconds of it dropping he'll have a new one up.
If you're a lone heavy and have to get a little closer before you open up on the thing, you're gonna be down 80, 90, or even more health. Now you've gotta go recover, and the engineer does not, and in a game limited by a timer, that's a big deal! A pyro or scout who manage to kill one will probably be seriously hurting. And that's all assuming it's just you vs the sentry
That's why it's annoying, not because it's so powerful, but because the minisentry almost always wins in the exchange. Killing a minisentry hurts your time productivity more than it hurts the enemys, even though you're supposedly winning
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
quick fix
Minis undoubtebly need some kind of nerf, for sure, but really, once you zero in on the damn thing it is not hard to snipe it or burn it or shotgun it or minigun it down pretty fast.
I also consider the mini an excellent counter to the Phlog pyro because seriously, fuck phlog pyros.
Mini-sentries wouldn't matter at all if more PAers played heavy. But if they actually fixed heavy then we'd start bitching about demos again. Repeat until we go all the way back to October 2007 when the game went on sale and everyone hated pyros.
bring back the 225 health backburner pyro
Steam | Twitter
Players are smarter and a billion items that generate minicrits means extra hp doesn't go as far as it used to.
So there's that.
I don't understand how you could read through the last 2 or 3 pages and not even understand what the complaint is?
I don't know what mini-sentry engi would "just sit there" or why you have it in quotes but like sarukun said, I think I've exhausted my points on this.
Also, as per Crash's analysis: Fuck Medic.
Oh shit Medic is my least played class now. Oh jeeze.
I dunno if "killing many times in a row" in a game where "killing the other team's mans" is the objective really qualifies as "griefing", but we'll try to soldier on without ya.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It works pretty good on Special Delivery, which is basically the only map I play with regularity.
I just hang out in front of the Health+Ammo kit right there. Really helps with delivering the australium, incidentally.
I'm not really sure how else to deal with Engineers, leaving them alone for any amount of time just means they're gonna get set up, your best bet is to kill them before they drop their shit.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Do you know who I killed?
The sniper right behind them all that was dominating me. Fuck medics I need revenge.
sure, if your sentry was the only building you had up when you switched. losing your teleporter as soon as you switch into another class can screw your team over pretty badly on certain stages of cp/pl maps, unless you're not the only engineer on your team with an active teleporter.
Heavy is usually my preferred Revenge-taking class.
Except against Snipers, wherein the choice is Scout.
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Mine used to be caber jumper, but now it's probably try hard medic
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Rookie mistake.
And yeah my office is the only room without proper curtains/ blinds left in the house. It's okay most of the time, just not mid afternoon when I was recording today.
That's how I read that name.
Also fuck you.