Originally posted by Wisely:

Originally posted by AwesomeGuyDj:

thats already on the default guns

I meant even more so, like the vaccinator attribute, I'm trying to not encourage pocketting, becasue people seem to have a big problem with it

That makes no sense, as that is a downside for overhealing targets.

You just don't understand medic very well if you're going around pocketing people

Originally posted by A Spy!:

Originally posted by Loreknight:

I have started to think that 200% is a bit over the top for normal overheal, so maybe reduce it to 175%. The uber needs visual effects to go along with it to better alert the heal target, it needs a faster overheal build rate, but remove the normal healing increase from the uber.

Whatever happened to the notification on the bottom of the HUD telling you what medigun your med was using if it was custom?

As for the Booster Shot's stats, why not remove the slower overheal decay buff and introduce a damage vulnerability for the Medic while he's healing? This will discourage pocketing and encourage what I thought the intended purpose of the Booster Shot was, preventative medicine over being a field medic.

No, that's just horrid. This item is about overheal. And if hte medic is vulnerable while he's healing, that doesn't discourage pocketing, it discourages healing. The intended purpose ofh te item was better overheal

Originally posted by sqwid:

Originally posted by Loreknight:

OK
Let me put it this way
Surviving a sniper headshot is a main point of this weapon and overheal in general
Do. You. Fucking. Understand. THIS!?
And I already fucking told you that scouts dont need to camp the engineer buildings to help protect them. He uses the dispenser to resupply constantly.
GOOD scouts can get an enemy's attention, then running to the sentry as a trap

I ink you don't understand what I've told you 3 FUCKING TIMES

As I've said before, the Booster Shot eliminates pretty much all of the counters that any class has. It allows classes to get an overheal that can't be dealt with by other classes unless there's a Med on the other team running it to compensate. The only class that can be used to counter it are Spies, but because Pyros are able to Spycheck so easily, it allows for the team running the Booster Shot to have a huge advantage over a team with a Medic running any other Medigun. That's why I believe it needs a change. It forces the enemy to counterplay with the same weapon, which is bad design.

Scouts using dispensers to resupply constantly is a big overstatement. Scouts usually hang around dispensers about the same amount of time as other classes, maybe even less. Scouts tend to be in the front lines collecting health packs as their main sources of health and picking up ammo packs as their main source of ammo. Dispensers are a last resort when the Scout is at very low health and a Medic isn't around or is busy.

I've never seen a good Scout lure an enemy into a sentry because they aren't really that big of a surprise (they make beeps and the whole team can hear a sentry firing). GOOD Scouts will get into a fight, pick off targets, and back off when they've taken some damage. They usually will deal enough damage to pick off an enemy instead of trying to "lure" enemies into a sentry. Usually if any Scout tries to do that, they are just fucking around and not taking things seriously.

And lastly to wrap this argument up, I am listening carefully to every point you are trying to make and understand your logic. I am simply counterarguing to try to prove my logic as well. There is a difference between not listening to your points and arguing against them. Remember that no one's opinion about how this game is objectively right. It is our job to make our own cases for how this mod goes and the developers will decide whether our ideas is made into the game. For now I feel like every single statement made about these two weapons have been made and any further discussion will just rehash points that have already been stated. We will let Crafting and the developers decide what to do at this point in order so this thread doesn't get clogged up.

I have started to think that 200% is a bit over the top for normal overheal, so maybe reduce it to 175%. The uber needs visual effects to go along with it to better alert the heal target, it needs a faster overheal build rate, but remove the normal healing increase from the uber.

Originally posted by CHAWLZ!:

Originally posted by Loreknight:

I say we thin the list of possible choices

Speed boost time decrease
Reload speed penalty
Ammo penalty
Accuracy penalty

The reason why I say no health nerf is because the problem is the weapon's upfront power, not the spy's survivability
It's like taking two things, one doing too much, and the other doing average, and decreasing the average one's efficiency to try to balance it.

I say that if I chose between fire rate and reload speed, I would nerf reload speed, as this makes it more penalizing for missing shots, and making the weapon not too effective against multiple enemies, as it's reload penalty requires longer times between firefights, leaving a spy that just finished someone off less effective, but is complemented by his buffs on kill, which would be a tradeoff of longer incapability of damage for longer times but being less vulnerable. If you managed to save some shots at the end of a fight, the minicrits and speed buff will be a lot more useful than if you hadn't

I don't agree with a damage penalty as dealing damage and causing death is the primary source of the duke's power, and it should not DIRECTLY be hindered in damage output, but by damage consistency or the time you are effective in combat

Not being able to pick up dropped packs from people you killed is
A.) Less rewarding for acquiring the kill
B.)not fun, as running out of ammo is not fun(which is why overwatch uses the route of infinite offhand ammunition)
And C.) Not a very big nerf
Yes, it's unfun and not rewarding, but it isn't a powerful penalty

I think this is a pretty reasonable thinning, you've provided fome good points. I hadn't really considered the balance of actual penalty vs frustration for user for the lack of ammo drops and that's a great point, too.

I'm thinking the decrease in speed boost is a given by now, as it seems to be the main point of grief for many players as it makes the Spy highly mobile and very difficult to dispose of. This leaves us with the reload time penalty, ammo penalty, and accuracy penalty. All three are very different modifiers that will heavily change how the weapon functions, so we should consider which we add (if any) very carefully.

The reload time penalty right off the bat has incredibly obvious implications: Lowered DPS, gives opponents extra opportunity to fight back, and rewards accurate aim/closer-range combat. My only concern is that you can easily cloak while reloading, alowing you to relocate and gain a damage resistance in your downtime, potentially making the entire point moot.

Reduced maxammo more or less accomplishes similar goals of rewarding good aim and closer-ranged combat (Less ammo used, easier to pick up dropped ammo box), but instead of punishing the user with lowered dps, forces the user to retreat and restock more often. Chaining kills will allow you to overcome this penalty with dropped ammo boxes which could turn into a neat dynamic. My only concern is that the weapon already has a deceptivly low ammo count and I find myself running out of ammo enough as is. Plus, requiring the Spy to hog ammo packs more could be frustrating for his team.

The accuracy reduction is a really intersting option to me because, again, it rewards Spies for face-to-face man fighting while reducing the weapon's crazy-good effectiveness at range. The revolver's spread can already be wonky at times so I feel like at most effective ranges it won't really alleviate the weapon's real issues (Aside from preventing Duke spies from pew-pewing from across the map, which admitedly can be irritating), and it introduces more elements of luck that I'm not terribly fond of (Higher spread = more chances for otherwise perfectly-placed shots to simply not register).

All three options have their ups and downs, and I'm fairly neutral towards all of them myself.

About the cloaking to reduce the penalty of reload times. Even though you most likely will escape, you are not dealing damage and have fled the fight, allowing the enemy player to restock, push up, retreat, etc.
Now that i think of it, accuracy nerf might be difficult, as it would be very hard to find the correct value to use for this to ensure fair close range combat and mid range combat that is a bit less effective than normal, but a large decrease in long range effectiveness. Also, accuracy isn't a nerf that players can really use skill to compensate for, and mostly will generate the thought that this weapon is more luck than skill.

Also, i don't believe lowered maxammo is a good choice, for reasons such as spies taking ammo packs that other players may need, him needing to go back to resupply more, and running out of ammo during a fight and having very little to do about it

Originally posted by CHAWLZ!:

The Duke has been a pretty hot topic lately so I think it'd be a great thing to bring up. At the moment, though it takes away a lot through the loss of knife and disguise kit, it provides a deceptively powerful list of bonuses that make Duke-equipped Spies fairly hard to deal with and a force to be reckoned with in any chaotic firefight, especially with the considerable buffs the base Spy class has seen in the past ~year. I've seen a number of great suggestions brought up in-game to fix the weapon so I thought I'd compile them here (Alongside some of my own) and stir up some discussion.

-Reduce speed boost on hit to 1 second
-Remove speed boost altogether
-Reduced critical damage
-Health penalty
-Reload rate penalty
-Fire rate penalty
-Reduced max ammo
-Cannot pick up ammo kits dropped by players
-Reduced acuracy

Obviously all of these things at once would cripple the weapon, so I'd like to see what the community thinks we could do with the it, because I'm a pretty big fan of the Duke personally and would like to see it in a good spot where it's considered a lot more reasonable and less rage-inducing.

I say we thin the list of possible choices

Speed boost time decrease
Reload speed penalty
Ammo penalty
Accuracy penalty

The reason why I say no health nerf is because the problem is the weapon's upfront power, not the spy's survivability
It's like taking two things, one doing too much, and the other doing average, and decreasing the average one's efficiency to try to balance it.

I say that if I chose between fire rate and reload speed, I would nerf reload speed, as this makes it more penalizing for missing shots, and making the weapon not too effective against multiple enemies, as it's reload penalty requires longer times between firefights, leaving a spy that just finished someone off less effective, but is complemented by his buffs on kill, which would be a tradeoff of longer incapability of damage for longer times but being less vulnerable. If you managed to save some shots at the end of a fight, the minicrits and speed buff will be a lot more useful than if you hadn't

I don't agree with a damage penalty as dealing damage and causing death is the primary source of the duke's power, and it should not DIRECTLY be hindered in damage output, but by damage consistency or the time you are effective in combat

Not being able to pick up dropped packs from people you killed is
A.) Less rewarding for acquiring the kill
B.)not fun, as running out of ammo is not fun(which is why overwatch uses the route of infinite offhand ammunition)
And C.) Not a very big nerf
Yes, it's unfun and not rewarding, but it isn't a powerful penalty

Originally posted by sqwid:

Originally posted by AwesomeGuyDj:

^ you do realise the sun on a stick got a buff so it doesnt just crit on burning targets. It has fire resistance now. So its not total garbage.
Also, i believe pyro was gunna get sun on a stick and scout the volcano fragment. But then they wanted to make more money so they swapped it and made axtinguisher.

The fire resistance is pretty worthless still because Mad Milk exists. The point I really wanted to make is that giving the Scout the ability to remove sappers is as random as giving the Scout an Axtinguisher-like weapon.

Use sun on a stick=
Access to pistol, Bonk, cleaver, etc

Originally posted by sqwid:

Originally posted by Loreknight:

Did you know that focusing the medic first and/or coordinating with one or more teammates is very effective?

Did you also know that overheal is supposed to counter sniper?

Did you know that scouts already make use of their engineers for restocking between fights and luring enemies into sentries?

Did you know that altering the scout's selfish role isn't actually a bad thing

The overheal however is low enough that the Sniper can still one hit kill someone. The Booster Shot however doesn't allow for that because the overheal is too great. Not to mention even if the Medic is killed, the patient still has enough overheal to finish off the Medic's killer. If maybe on Medic's death somehow all overheal is gone it could possibly become more balanced, but capping the overheal seems like a better alternative.

Also I've never heard of a Scout "luring" an enemy into a sentry. The closest thing I've seen to that is a Pyro airblasting someone in a sentry's range, but other than that, nothing.

Plus giving the Scout the ability to remove sappers is just out of place. The only anti-Spy measure he has is the Mad Milk and even then he doesn't camp around buildings that much anyway.

Pyros being able to remove Sappers makes more sense because the Pyro is Spy's hardest counter so it'd make sense for Pyro to have an anti-Spy sapping device. Giving the Scout the ability to remove Sappers make about as much sense as Scout getting a weapon that crits on burning targets.

And yeah you can see how that worked out.

OK
Let me put it this way
Surviving a sniper headshot is a main point of this weapon and overheal in general
Do. You. Fucking. Understand. THIS!?
And I already fucking told you that scouts dont need to camp the engineer buildings to help protect them. He uses the dispenser to resupply constantly.
GOOD scouts can get an enemy's attention, then running to the sentry as a trap

I ink you don't understand what I've told you 3 FUCKING TIMES

Originally posted by sqwid:

Originally posted by Loreknight:

No.it does not. The weapon is fine, I've tried it a good amount, and it's okay.

I've been on a few matches where Medics use the Booster Shot to pocket Heavies for the entire duration of the game. It was a steamroll no matter what the opposing team did because there was no way to take care of the Heavy + Medic combos. Demomen, Soldiers, even Snipers were all ineffective and it was just unfun to play against and unfun to be on the side steamrolling the other team too. Not to mention combined with some other custom weapons that buff the Heavy's resistances.

Originally posted by AwesomeGuyDj:

So you say that its good because it changes the flow, but werent you the one saying how lores handyman would be bad because it changes the pace and role of scout?

The difference mainly is because it nerfs the Spy and makes his sappers even less effective and really it's just a random attribute that frankly makes no sense. Why would a Scout be hovering around the Engi's buildings? He's supposed to be out flanking the enemy team, not camping around a dispenser all the time.

Did you know that focusing the medic first and/or coordinating with one or more teammates is very effective?

Did you also know that overheal is supposed to counter sniper?

Did you know that scouts already make use of their engineers for restocking between fights and luring enemies into sentries?

Did you know that altering the scout's selfish role isn't actually a bad thing

List all of the chat phrases that trigger a sound file to be played here
no!
nope
nah
okay
hi
hey!
oh no!
oops
hoot!
quack
bonus ducks
oh shit
thanks
thank you
thx
ty
lol
hue
hah
heh
dont struggle
don't struggle
pootis
pootis pow
ow
calm down
holy crap
nice
stop that
sorry
gottem
Beep beep
Beep hoop
Blarp bop barp

Originally posted by sqwid:

Originally posted by Loreknight:

Decrease in normal heal rate and slower heal rate on non overhealed targets, but you will not touch my overheal cap.

But that's the one thing wrong with the weapon. The overheal cap still presents a problem. Unless healed targets get a crit vulnerability so that a Sniper can still headshot a Heavy, it needs rebalancing.

No.it does not. The weapon is fine, I've tried it a good amount, and it's okay.