Abusing TF2's Strongest Character (Saxton Hale) 

Great breakdown of Hale's mechanics. Also, thanks for explaining to people that *Hale's skill* is the balance issue. No matter how much you nerf Hale, if an *average* player has a way to win as Hale, a *good* player will use that exact way, but better. Therefore I see no point in nerfing his more advanced mechanics.

You know Saxton allowing you to hurt him till he feels the fight is fair is a very Saxton Hale thing to do.

We often forget that Saxton sells us all of the weapons we use

"What is Saxton doing?" "He is just standing there... MENACINGLY!"

It's shocking how wildly Hale varies depending on the player. On one hand there's gods like you and on the other hand I've seen Hale trapped in a corner by 20 heavies and engineers, literally not dealing a single point of damage to any mercenary.

Handicapped Saxton Hale in the hands of an extremely skilled player is probably closer to lore accurate Saxton Hale.

17:52 Man had the guts to ask Saxton for a raise, truly the most bravest soul of our times

I kind of want to see an MvM gamemode where it's 1 Saxton vs. the entire wave set with other players acting as player-controlled robots/special giants so the AI bots become far less predictable.

Fun fact, Saxton Punch counts as a crit, so it does regular punch damage against people under the effect of the Battalion's Backup.

7:44 The reason this happens is the same as the tposing Hale glitch. If you swap classes at just the right time before becoming hale, you spawn with the health and size of that class. The hitbox appears unchanged however and is still larger than normal

It's like playing OG VS Saxton Hale. You either play against Admin abuse, or against some guy from India who doesn't speak English, and doesn't know what he is doing. Still, if I were to tackle the major issues with the mode, it would be adding a check box for opting into being Saxton Hale, plus a tutorial for those who want it. Outside of that, there is no major way to tackle the skill gap. I mean there are ways to fight Hale without too much trouble; I like playing gunslinger Engineer who runs around dropping sentries with a hidden heal base or placing sentries in hard to reach areas. However, that requires players to learn how to abuse wall climbing, which relies on air strafing, and being smarter about who to protect, and where to set up.

I love that they let Hale remove bleed and afterburn with a health pack. It's like, "Bollocks, this 80 hp drain will be the death of me! Good thing I have this health kit!"

10:45 is probably the best part of this video, the Darksouls music and sniper screaming in raw terror as a big man moves at maximum velocity is insanely funny.

Serious shout-out to you for the subtitles! A lot of creators just let RU-vid's unreliable auto-subtitles do the work, and it really sucks, so it's always really nice seeing creators *actually properly using them.* (And clearly having fun with it, too!) Also a very good breakdown of Hale's mechanics! Your power still terrifies me.

The video really makes one appreciate how much work they put into making Saxton fun and balanced to play (even if it hasn't fully worked out on the balance front).

9:53 CONCUSSION

The fact that Valve lets you play as lore accurate Saxton Hale is just the most TF2 thing imaginable

3:57 OH GOD I AM THAT DEMOKNIGHT

Let's appreciate the work put into the subtitles.

i got an ad right as the sniper screamed at 10:46 and it was genuenlly funny

I think the best and simplest solution would be to take the idea of giving Brave Jump a cooldown and tie it to Hale's health, just like his movement speed. When he's at full health he would have a substantial cooldown on his jump, meaning that he wouldn't be able to come out of the gate jumping like a mad man so RED has a chance to whittle his health down more easily, but as he takes more damage he also becomes much more mobile, which lets him make a comeback by essentially going back to the way he is now while at lower health. Essentially just make everyone play like you do lol

personally, i avoid spamming the brave jump in order to give an advantage towards red. it's also harder when you encourage teams to spread out more. since the tf2 devs intended you to be spread apart, teams who do the same overall do more damage to hale. it's more fun for me since i'm getting a challenge, and it's more fun for red cause they aren't dealing with a jump spamming hale murdering them all within 10 seconds.

Fun fact, if somehow there's a medic in Hale's team it will be able to heal it, learned from a bug that happened to me once

9:05 Spy has the exact same thing happen to him, but he usually just eats fall damage when he does it with a backstab

8:00 damn, that was sooo close to peter griffin death pose

Saxton appears to be a heavy reskin, you can see he's listed as heavy when he wins. In a community server someone tried to equip the zombie skin, which resulted in an oversized heavy. The punch ready and charge skin were visible as uber on him.

Even though this has nothing to do with this video, you inspired me to become a Demoknight, Solar. And i'm really glad you inspired me to become a better Demoknight.

There was this vsh server I always play in and all the projectile deals explosive damage, so medic and engineer can rocket jump away. Sad the server is gone.

This video better revive this gamemode

Saxton Hale being overpowered in a good player's hands is less of a problem than Saxton Hale being easy to beat 95% of the time, tbh. At least if SolarLight gets Hale, the round is over quickly.

I like to imagine that getting punched by Saxton Hale while on Übercharge feels like you're getting punched by your friend, can still hurt but you know they don't mean it so it hurts less.

It's actually very similar in essence to the Yeti Hunt game mode in Overwatch. I've seen games where the Yeti will just completely dominate the entire lobby, barely losing any health and killing everyone very fast, but I've also seen games where the Yeti just gets completely destroyed, barely dealing any damage. It's not that the Yeti is unbalanced, but that player's skill is. Also the editing on this video was amazing. Keep up the amazing work, but don't burn yourself out doing it!

that sniper got violated

This is a really good vid. Although, I wouldn't suggest nerfing Hale. For newer Hales, or even skilled Hale, he is meant to be like a giant boss fight, with insurmountable odds stacked in their favour. What I would suggest is buffing the mercs in other ways. One idea is maybe to bring MvM's resurrection mechanic into the mode. So Saxton has to be more careful of his targets and what the enemy is doing. Although thats just spitballing.

I feel like Weigh Down and Brave Jump should have a small cooldown, not as big as his abilities, but so he can't spam it to kite everyone or make it incredibly hard to out maneuver him. As you said, with a good player he's hard to kill.

The captions on this video are amazing! It's incredible that you took the time to color and highlight important words. Thank you so much!

I think it comes down to Hale being strong, and the maps. I used to play the mod version, while it is true that Hale's skill level influences the round, Hale is stronger than he was in the mod. Brave Jump having no cool down is insane, it has a cooldown and a charge up time in the mod. He can't clear out an entire engi nest at once with a single press of a button. No shockwave effects, all you had was super jump, fast fall, and spook. Saxton didn't really need all those abilities. Its nice, in the mod a skilled scout or soldier can kill Hale on their own from half hp if they're the last one left. Engineers nests were a real obstacle too. The maps are also a big difference, in general the mod maps were significantly larger, and weirder. Things like air strafing and platforming were expected. I like the jankiness of the mod.

I can see why he took so long to make this.

10:43 i love this part

Your suggestion makes a lot of sense - given that the original saxton hale servers were kinda based on The Hidden. The balance of that game was predicated on the hidden having a low health pool and limited abilities, but being extremely difficult to hit. Although Saxton isn’t invisible, moving around that much definitely puts him in the same category, making your balance suggestion kinda perfect.

Saxton's weigh down seems to function pretty similarly to how the jump in Hollow Knight works, if you have ever played that game you understand how intrinsically important it is to master that skill.

11:02 -- the commands to practice it offline.

14:32 Trolldiers in a nutshell.

The votekick sounds synced with the music was a nice touch (15:51)

Fantastic vid as always SolarLight! Also love the Hale montage at the end to the Wishes in the Wind RMX, the 3000hp match was so close!

Very well made and thoughtful video on the mechanics of the game mode where people just make the same FNAF joke and then force you to Rock Paper Scissors or get kicked next round.

Amazing video and the subtitles are just 👌 A lot of love went into this video by the looks of things!

Thanks for another quality video Solar, and for the music list

7:38 Even Saxton Hale is tinier than Misha. We need a VS HEAVY mode instead.

Pause at 1:21 for Maxwell

These are some awesome captions! It actually adds a lot of the video.

10:45 I love the sniper scream when saxton flies towards him

5:50: 'You can even combo it with other attacks..." This might come up later in the vid, but you can actually do this combo the other way around as well! Hitting an enemy first with the charge punch hit/knockback, then a moment later connecting the melee hit. It's perfect for killing slippery scouts in particular. And the bit about nerfing him yourself definitely has came to mind for me as well. Aside from letting yourself lose most HP, picking even just one ability of his to avoid using can be very interesting to the balance. How well can you catch the scout with only jumps and not charge punch? Or break the engi nests with no slams at all. Etc Etc

Amazing work on the subtitles! I didn't even realise they weren't baked into the video until after watching the whole video. Really appreciate it as the subtitles made it much easier to follow along with the video for me. 👍 Also, how do you change the colours of text and backgrounds like that? Is there a good tutorial you've found for them somewhere?

Solar, I just wanted to say that I appreciate the caption work you've done for this video. It doesn't go ignored!

6:54 you can block saxton punch by using vaccinator explosion resistance bc it counts as an explosion

7:55 he just don’t accept gravity

17:15 poor medic

The subtitles are incredibly awesome and detailed it's heavily recommended to turn it on

The bug where hale has 195 health and is normal size happened to me in early versions of vsh while trying to play with bots

Scaling Saxton's health based on how many times a player has won as Saxton could be a creative solution.

5:22 how did I just realize you were loarlight when you said that

This is great, always pleasure to see new video from you

Another great video, detailed yet concise

Awesome video! Do you think it would be reasonable to have Hale's health depend on the player's winrate with Hale from the last 5 or 10 matches? Maybe that would make it so over time, each player will find a health pool that moves around their limit, and matches end up stabilizing at around 50% winrate for each team

14:06 made me die laughing

Loved this video, great one.

The subtitles in this video are absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much!

boys, mr. Solarlight has uploaded, we are truly blessed

OG VSH Hale is incredibly more balanced even if rage is a somewhat frustrating mechanic as a red, especially if you like playing pyro. Hale being much less mobile in OG makes it far more enjoyable as hale and a red, it really makes it feel like a game of cat and mouse instead of b-29 bomber and mouse that official VSH feels like. He feels more in line with a freak fortress x10 boss than actual vsh and its quite a strange choice to use this version.

I love seeing you play Saxton - it's the perfect evolution for you, in my opinion. But most of all I love, that this looks and feels just like every other Solar video, in the sense that you seemingly effortlessly and gracefully tear through hordes of enemies. You have always been doing this. Saxton Hale has always been your spirit-animal. ♥

A couple oddball ideas i have for balancing him to be less exploitable by highly skilled players would be something along the lines of-infinite super jump but excessive usage will make it weaker until it stops doing anything and you have to stop using it for a while,saxton losing a large chunk if his health if he takes out say 30-40% of red team before a certain time limit(canonically it signifies a loss in motivation maybe he plays a voice line about being bummed by how pathetic the enemy team is)The exact numbers would need to be played around with but whatever,and an instant deletion of your entire backpack if you bully the mercs too hard.

I’m going to see flying saxtons at Mach 48 coming for me while I’m at Mach 36 😢

I discovered while playing saxton (while playing on a server with the roll the dice mod) that while he can't get healed by healthpacks, he can in fact be healed by dispensers. I went back to the server a few days later, and found out there was a new mod that disabled roll the dice on all vsh maps on the server.

Makes engineers sad that’s a good way of explaining engineers in this mode and the pain of an engineer main like me

0:54 ERM ACTUALLY HE JUST PULLED OUT HIS FLAMETHROWER IT HAS TO BE DRAWN FIRST... im so smart. I kinda thought it was a phlog at first...

this video is *Saxton Hale approved*

Awesome video This gamemode has always been one of my favorites to play on community servers for 10 years and seeing you appreciate it and play it like this was extremely satisfying

10:42 i love the sniper xddd

0:55 No he can't, he had the phlog.

doomfist tf2

i love the subtitles, shows how much effort you put into something most people wont even see

I appreciate you placing a pastebin of music in your description

6:28 someone tell me what is the mod to play as S.H on other maps i cant find any

I got to play as Saxton, and it occurred to me how easy it feels to play him. There is definitely something that's been overtuned, but picking and choosing whichever way to nerf him is kind of difficult.

I do so love the inclusion of White Acropolis' theme for the rampage at the beginning. What a fucking great song to have during that clip roll.

13:37 I love the reference to Blaze's infamous pogo med kill.

He's not broken he's just lore accurate.

Hey, I died on 10:24 !

Thanks for the video. Hale needs a cooldown on his brave jump and the stomp should only apply when a brave jump is active. That would balance him out a bit.

7:38 you could probably chalk this up to the whole australium shortage in the comics

10:03, why is the Brave Jump slower on gyro controllers? Back when i played as Hale, it didn't feel any different than playing with Keyboard and mouse.

just too much damage, he deals too much damage, and since his special attacks are percentage based, heavy can't do his job of tanking against him, if the stomp/punch was reduced to 175, so any fully overhealed class can survive a hit, and the % damage of the earthquake, charge and saxton punch were removed for a fix value, it would be perfect

I love the custom subtitles for the video

shoutout to the excellent caption work on this video

If there was a knockback multiplier that increases with time spent airborne, and it didn't immediately reset on landing (decreases linearly back to zero), it would encourage moving on the ground when trying to make a push, wouldn't punish unskilled players + it could be used deliberately by skilled players to make a quick bullet-surf escape Though I'm not sure how easy it'd be to code a constantly changing stat value like that

2:09 Saxton hale: ¿Did you just laugh at me?, ¿do i amuse you? Medic: I NO NO, I hate my job.... *Saxton hale beats medic so fuckin hard*

Isn't the bit about not being able to chase rocket jumper soldiers not that important since the control point automatically becomes available? Also I really agree with a brave jump cool down. I've played years of community VSH and having a no cooldown super jump would make any hale broken. The mobility of the hale is usually the biggest thing determining how good a hale can be ex: gentlespy vs easter bunny

Those are some sick subtitles, cool!

He's overpowered, but that's lore accurate!