[TF2] Crit-Collecting Weapons 

Can we talk about the Medic’s sick attempted drop-kick at 14:14

What annoys me about diamond back is that the ambassador crits were nerfed, but the diamond back didn't. Like bruh

The Manmelter also meshes really well with the Dragon's Fury as you can still extinguish your teammates at a decent rate and when you enter combat scenerios with it first once and have a few crits stored you can deal 90 damage and then immedietly be able to deal full Dragon's Fury damage on top of that.

The most important thing to remember with the Manmelter is that EVERY SINGLE unlockable flamethrower has a downside to airblasting. The three you mentioned are obvious, but Dragon's fury also consumes a noticeable amount of ammo and takes ages to fire again. For helping out the team, its very very nice. And yeah, it's made to deal with far away targets in a very effective way, unlike the other flares who are designed for combos. One flare can technically kill a light class if they don't get a health kit fast emough.

One thing they could do to nerf the Diamondback is only able to use when undisguised that way you see his gun and maybe cut it down to 3 like the frontier justice, also damage falloff like the amby. There nerfed heavily.

"You don't hear people complain about the kritzkrieg or pyro's puff n sting combos." Brother, what games have you been playing?

the diamondback nerf i personally advocate for is not letting it shoot without crits. force the spy into those more dangerous Sneaking situations without a gun to defend themself until they've already done the things. just adds to the risk to properly earn your reward, and those crits become a lot more precious, since every missed shot represents a risk you took and got no reward for

"they just have to backstab" some players can't even do that, there's a reason why spy is called the weakest class, and even with the diamondback as an option, i prefer the reliability of stock, because opportunities are not coming in droves. That being said, i believe the weapon is THAT close to being perfect, just remove sapping for crit-rewards and replace the damage penalty with -50% damage on non crits and there you go, a gun that has huge potential combat ability with those precious 120. But outside of that short window, you might as well be without a gun with your 20 damage pellets

I find the Manmelter to work best with the Dragon's Fury due to its very long Airblast delay. It's best used as a long range finisher or Fight starter, which is VERY good with the Dragon's Fury.

One smart thing with the FJ- always keep 1 loadout with it to switch to if you die or end up near spawn while your sentry is still up.

The Mannmelter combo disgustingly well with the Dragon's Fury. Since the airblast on the DF has such a long cooldown, DF pyros often have to choose between reflecting projectile and extinguishing teammate as both can't be done as the same time effectively with the DF... The MM throw that hesitation out the window : keep the DF airblast for the projectile and extinguish with the MM. On top of that, you can now "reverse combo" : instead of igniting with the flamethrower and then stinging with the flare gun, you know opens with the MM, and the 7.5s of afterburn makes it easy to take your time to aim your DF. Even without a crit stored, the base 30 of the MM + the 75 on burning target from the DF deals a total of 105 damage (without counting afterburn). Add another DF shot and it's 180 damage... That''s a lot of damage. With a crit stored, the initial combo deals a wapping 165 damage ! (90 + 75) And I didn't count afterburn yet. Sure you have to fight the muscle memory of "first flathrower then flare gun" and replace it with "first flare gun then flamethrower", but once you get the hang of it, it's DEADLY.

Diamondback has no risk associated with the gaining of the crits. Pyro needs to be near his teammates who are actively taking literal fire, putting himself on the line too. Engi needs to lose his largest area denial and safe-zone creating tool, mini sentry or otherwise. Spy just gets them for doing his job. I feel a parallel between that and random crits in general, tbh; if you're doing well, get more crits. If not, don't count on it.

Spotted myself getting blasted off the tower at 11:26 😭 Even funnier that it happened right before the Diamondback segment, which is my main Spy weapon

The sly cooper music in the back really adds to the vibe… thank you for thinking outside of the box with this one 😂 great vid, the music just made it better

2 ways to fix the Diamondback: Crits only trigger when undisguised. Disguise's weapon will also glow when holding crits. Either one gives the opportunity for people to potentially react without completely wrecking the Spy's stealth. Also yeah, going back to crits only coming from saps would be good, then it would fit back into the "rewards a focus on a spcific aspect of the class/playstyle" weapons.

don't forget the dragon's fury slow airblast that only has 8 of them. points for using mollywhopped

I think a clip size reduction coupled with your disguise getting a crit glow on their weapon would make the diamondback mostly fine

Worth noting that the Manmelter makes a killer combo with the Dragons Fury, covers the airblast delay penatly and starting a combo with a crit Manmelter shot then a puff from the Dragons Fury does a stupid amount of damage in a small burst.

Crit-Collecting Weapons have always seemed like a strange case to- Oh wait wrong channel

Frontier justice: I give you crits for killing and destroying sentries. Community: aww, what a good and balanced weapon. Diamondback: I give you crits for killing and destroying sentries. Community: hello? Unbalanced weapons? I think both deserve a little nerf

I agree the diamond back is silly it wasn't nerfed like the ambassador, but its not fair to say that a spy shouldn't get rewarded for doing his job's basic functions and needs a small tweak, but not a rework. The frontier justice yes has risks but it still does reward the engineer for doing his job, especially with minis which cost next to nothing. Or a better example, the bazaar bargain. It's a sniper rifle that rewards sniper for doing his job and getting pick headshots by letting him get more, and they aren't even expendable. The soda popper is arguably better than stock and it rewards scout with extra mobility just for getting meat shots, or the banners rewarding soldier for shooting people. Lots of weapons reward classes for just doing their job

13:44 soda popper giving scout mini crits for m o v i n g

One thing to consider about the balance of the FJ is that it's a shotgun. It's pellets might give him more leeway, but he is unable to effectively snipe with it like the DB. And having 3 shots really hurts when you have to individually load each shot. Between that and generally being at his strongest when he's at his most vulnerable (no sentry), and it has quite a bit of counterplay

Manmelter is great but sadly bad balancing tend to make 1 other option over picked, Frontier Justice is Good with both Teams being able to have counter play options for the crits, Diamondback can earn crits off building which is problematic and with no second downside like a halved clip or fall off, store crit spies can become an invisible sniper to anyone not named Heavy.

I basically never play spy so take this with a grain of salt but heavily limiting the amount of the diamondback’s stored crits to somewhere between like 1 and 5 could force the spy to be a lot more careful with his crits

if you want to get rid of the speckles in your sfm renders you can turn the ambient occlusion on the camera up (might take a bit longer to render tho)

pyrite town right at the beginning, this is gonna be a good video

i'm not sure how applicable this is in animations, as i mostly work with posters, but in sfm if you right click the viewport, select render settings and set depth of field samples to 256 or higher, you can reduce that grain seen at 2:00

Keep playing the game! Subbed

Here is how you play Diamondback in a respectable way: use the Kunai knife. You are at 70 health, it will be very hard for you to do anything as a spy, so when you get that backstab kill then you earned the 1 crit and however health you have, and now it makes you want to kill not just afk players but kill anyone that you have the chance to backstab, not just heavy’s that don’t have game sense. Also now that can also eliminate just trying to go for sap’s Willy nilly and instead will force you to not just sap the building but kill the engineer as a double reward for your efforts. It essentially rewards you for approaching a method of execution and carrying it out perfectly to allow you to be gun spy in between your stabs every time you have a decent amount of stored crits and health that isn’t completely drained because that’s also another thing: you will now have to choose to try and keep the high health going or to switch to gun and go crazy which most spy players that are trigger happy will make the easy mistake of doing just that instead of being patient, because once you are patient enough and store enough crits and you get that last kill from the backstab that gives you a lot of health, that’s when you can go crazy with the gun. Now keep in mind that once you execute this plan you have to kill as fast as you can while also ensuring you land your shots, because now if you don’t, that’s a shot you missed, a backstab that you basically worked hard for if you aren’t snowball backstabbing (or are but in a really overcrowded area full of enemies) that you just wasted. Make. Every. Shot. Count.

The Manmelter is my go-to for when I'm using the Phlog

I do think that as far as reward-for-kill weapons go FJ manages to be the most inoffensive out of tf2's list. The core mechanics of shotguns prevent them from abusing the crit effect as much as the other two weapons featured here - flare guns are operational at any range, and as a single-shot burst of damage the revolver sees massive benefit from a critical shot, but as a shotgun the FJ still suffers spread and thus has an effective range, making it's upside far more reasonable. It's clip reduction also prevents even an engineer stacked with crits from being to careless - he has to aim and aim GOOD or he's going to waste 3 crits and then the other 7 thinking he could just walk into a soldier.

its probably my graphics settings but i dont have the puff of fire when i shoot this

8:40 I swear I didn't hear a single thing he said during that time because of the amazing performance

I wouldn’t be using the man melter with the back burner. As det jumps are so useful for those back crits. It’s great with dragons fury tho :)

i love the diamondback. it's so great.

I feel like the Mannmelter could be rework into a charge long range sniping weapon. Cause it base aborb afterburn doesn`t come to play almost every situation.

Hey it’s me! Ah you probably don’t remember me. Anyway, I feel like the Diamondback should grant a duration of Mini-crits when the Spy gets a backstab, not storing any damage that he can use later. Like if yo7 stab a Medic that’s being watched by a teammate, you can stab the Medic and have a better fighting chance vs whoever caught you doing it.

Nobody gave a flying fuck about the Diamondback for years until the Ambassador finally got nerfed.

3:16 PLUS UNLIMITED FREE EXTINGUISHES! this thing bloody counters the Scorch Shot. lmaoooo

Nothing worse than being kritted by a disguised spy. The diamondback is broken.

Heavy mains on their way to literally never play heavy:

11:27 rip Noah TG he messed with the wrong Texan

To add to the discussion around the Diamond Back, its current state is quite literally the result of an oversight by a single competitive TF2 player. The Ambassador was nerfed because of Sigafoo, the founder of the RGL competitive league, specifically pressuring Valve to nerf it. While the Diamond Back has always been banned in competitive leagues. As a result, the Ambassador got nerfed to reduce Spy’s role as a sniper while the Diamond Back remained untouched as the less skill-demanding but equally rewarding sibling of the Ambassador.

mans got me wanting to try out tf2 again lol

is it just me who only thought the manmelter was a worse flare gun but an extinguisher alternative with infinite ammo?

Here's my personal opinion: Make every crit shot from the DB takes half the clip size to shoot and have a time gap between every crit shot,can't reload unless the clip is empty (which is after 2 crits are shot).And cut the reserve ammo in half. And yes,I know.This opinion is kinda dumb.But it's worth to have some ideas

The Manmelter counters the Scorch Shot. You know, the weapon that turns afterburn free and has your team run out of options to remove it? Now with this little beauty, you can extinguish teammates without using ammo and gather tons of crits to kill the idiot spamming flares who has provided you the crits to begin with. It not being that good unless there's an actively offensive Pyro on the other team is not that big of a downside. The Pain Train is pretty darn useful even though it only works on offense, you can just unequip it elsewhere.

Is the phlog not a weapon that can store crits

Like how you used the pizza tower space song for the team fortress space weapon.

I wish they would make it so the manmelter would like be able to suck any debuff away and store it as a crit that way it was more applicable in multiple class diversities, that way it wasnt just a whole stat missing if 3 (but lets be real just pyro) isnt picked on the enemy team. bleed, mad milk, jarate would make it so it just has a few more use cases without being OP or changed in its base idea

What if you could use the Manmelter's crit grabbing towards enemies as well. You could burn the enemy, unburn them, crit them and burn them, unburn them, rinse and repeat in an incredibly slow manner with the flame particles getting in your way. Has the same skill ceiling as the other flare guns, but now it can be a self-sustaining, self healing pseudo Dragon's Fury. Heck, it could even combo well with the Dragon's Fury itself. And Engineer's not a Scout. He may be rocking crits, but he's not zipping around the map with them.

The Mannmelter is honestly fine but it was so easily overlooked and heavily relies on the enemy team having a pyro. Giving it a buff that could suck up all kinds of debuff would be nice. The FJ is very balanced. It has its risks and its rewards cannot be overtly abused. The Diamondback to me is although unbalanced is honestly not that bad. It is arguably the best Revolver only competing with the L'Tranger because of its cloak consumption reduction. I like it when I chainstab and then when get caught out i could at least have a fighting chance. At least the crits need to be gained from getting close to people. Unlike a certain class that can alt delete all other 8 classes from another planet. If i were to rework it, i would make it so that it gives guaranteed crits for 2 seconds after a stab with a damage reduction where the crit deals 90 damage. This way it can keep being the weapon that could keep the action going without being too punishing to fight against.

My problem with the diamondback is that its easy to farm crits off of new engies/players and the fact that the cl_interp command exists still

i think the ambassador should instead atleast remove the -15% damage penalty or the 20% slower firing speed or even just remove damage fall off

The diamondback should not have gotten the "Crits on stabs" trait.

Me personally to Nerf the diamondback, I would just give it the ambassador Kritz have damage fall off effect

I think the Diamondback just needs a heftier downside. A lower clip size akin to the Frontier Justice's would certainly do the trick. Fundamentally, the weapons are kinda the exact same; the Diamondback just isn't much worse than stock compared to the huge downside the Frontier Justice has. Whether or not dying to an enemy because your teammates are braindead and keep feeding them crits is a fun, well-balanced mechanic is its own conundrum, but ultimately I don't think the gap between them is as large in terms of design and mechanics as it is in how well-liked they are. If the Frontier Justice weren't such an old weapon that everyone has fond memories with that plays on the emotional attachment many (newer) players get to their sentries, I think it would be just as thoroughly disliked.

There used to be a bug with the Frontier Justice where you could get unlimited crits on all three of your weapons, you had to get 35 revenge crits then shoot while swapping weapons which was easy enough to do with the mouse scroll wheel then you primary and whatever weapon you switched to had unlimited crits. I used to do this with my strange capper to rack up kills on it

the manmelter is good but that's the entire problem. It's good while the other flare guns are great. Scorch shot is a far better poke/spam tool, the flare gun is far more consistent and the detonator has movement. The manmelter also relies on the enemy to do things, which is a similar reason as to why spy is terrible. if the enemy isn't doing something, regardless of how common that thing is, the weapon is always going to lack the consistency of its competitiors. the other flares all rely almost entirely on the user to get the value from them, you have to be the one to hit shots or spam the chokes or use the movement, as long as you're doing well, then the weapons will assist you in that. But you could be playing the best pyro you've ever played with the manmelter but you're still getting less done than an average game with the flare gun just because the enemy didn't pick pyro. Yes the concept of guaranteed crits on command is very powerful, but when you essentially have no control over when you have access to them, the weapon loses a ton of potential power. If anything, the ability to extinguish allies on a secondary that doesn't consume ammo is more powerful than the crits, solely because it allows for teamplay while using primary weapons that usually sacrifice that for raw power. also, the phlog technically also has 'stored' crits, just in a different way to the other three. i guess following that logic, the steak, cola and other crit on demand weapons are also 'stored' crits in a way

you could call these the good the bad and the ugly good = frontier justice bad = mannmelter ugly = diamondback

10:33 1: you wouldve only 2 shot maybe even 3 shot that engie without the crit 2: a shotgun wouldnt have helped you when those "3 extra shots" only do 19 and the sentry and the sentry had 90 hp left over 3: the melee does more damage 4: cmon man you couldnt have just jumped on top of it?

Where is the phlogistinator it did fall in to this category

i feel like the diamondback isnt much different from the frontier justice at all. they both reward you for playing the class at the most basic level, doing the bare minimum to function on your team. i think spy's mobility is the only reason people hate the diamondback so much, its comparable to the frontier justice but spy isnt comparable to engineer. also i think if the dead ringer didnt exist no one would care about the diamondback at all.

I think the way minicrits are handled right now severely limits weapon design potential. Imagine the Diamondback slightly sped up cloak and uncloak, had 3 or 4 rounds, and stored minicrits. It still massively improves Spy's range, and gives him a "finish off" niche, but makes his revolver even more unreliable in confrontations without the minicrits, and unable to spew more minicrits than the clip size in succession, which is exactly why it works on the Frontier's. A lot of other weapons may benefit from minicrit downgrading, like the Phlog. It would do less damage on contact than the crits, while still being a fearsome sight, and since there is no such thing as crit afterburn, it would actually buff the afterburn. In fact, I think minicrit could be considered a true middleground between crits and regular shots, so things like Vacc bubbles and the Battalion's could turn minicrits into regular damage, but turn crit damage into minicrit damage.

The frontier justice adds more to engineers gameplay, the crits change how you play the class and demands different play, unique to engineer because if medic had something like you don't want to tell players to battle medic that hard. Blut more is a pyro ward not really battle medic. The weapon designs went from interesting alternate takes to 'you get thing' because other class has a 'get thing' thing. Shotgun = damage falloff too, glowing shotgun = fairness, shotguns are middling but decent weapons so the extra power isn't scaled into hell either, it just fits the class and the diamondback does not. The manmelter just has it to be different from the others, it's ok, non-offensive but still rewards teamplay aspects pyro already has so it fits still. I think the diamondback instead of crits should get 2x more reward but have the reward be attack speed, it's intended to be a way to assassinate targets or mostly to be where your knife fails, so it helps you shoot your way out instead of being a pocket awp, same design but way better.

Personally I think the phlog counts

5:30 Scorch shot isn’t specialized, it’s generalized to the point where it’s specialized in everything. Remove stickies like the detonator? it can do that. It can also kind of jump like the detonator. Stun players on direct hit? Yup Bonus damage to burning targets like the flare gun? Yeah sure why not, I think this gun clearly needs it Instant f u l l afterburn regardless of direct hit or max falloff explosion? Mhm. One shots scouts at full HP on a direct hit if they don’t grab health immediately? Yup. outclassing every other secondary at their jobs for the cost of being very easy to use and also a spam tool that can make snipers uninstall as well as make all chokepoints permanently set the enemy on fire Nobody in the world would complain about the phlog if the scorch shot didn’t exist… how do people exist who defend it Anyways manmelter kind of counters the scorch because you can leech off of his free damage to get your own free triple damage flares so YEAH manmelter is the goat, it’s still an underdog but i don’t want it to change as long as scorch exists in its current state

I SEE TRAVIS TOUCHDOWN, I COMMENT

11:48 Game Theory?

What if the man melter could extinguish ENEMIES for crits?

SLY 3 OST MENTION RAHHHHH 🗣📢🗣📢🗣📢🦝🐢🦛 WTF IS AN OPERA 🗣💃🕺

i hate using the diamondback not because i can't get any milage out of it but because it looks like ass (and i can't play spy very well) it literally looks like a toy

why not turn the Diamondback into its original game's concept (Deus Ex Human Revolution)? Rework is as follow: +clip size increased on kill [up to 8 bullets loaded] +25% increased damage -33% clip size [you start at 4 bullets only] -crits are reverted to mini-crits this gun works similarly like the airstrike, for it'll get a bigger clip for each kills with the gun, punching harder every time...but don't think about getting crit-boosted for..it won't work on this gun.

A bit late, but one of the things i thought of at 3 in the morning was that you could make the diamondback like the old cleaner's carbine where you get 3 seconds of crits on a backstab, retain the damage penalty, and a reload speed penalty to make the choice to shoot more committal.

Manmelter lets you crit against pyros and crocodile snipers which I think is the argument for it being the best? but obv the other flareguns all have their own strengths

The good, the bad and the ugly.

The frontier justice is really annoying to me. Getting punished for the gibus scout is just

The hate against the diamondback has more to do with people hating spy in general than the weapon itself. Ambassador got nerfed because getting slapped for 102 damage from a non-critboosted weapon was irritating enough for Valve to do something about it. Getting slapped by a crit boosted weapon at range is more acceptable because crits in general deal more damage; think getting sniped for 90 damage by a shotgun. Getting rewarded for crits by playing spy is fine; plenty of spies can often fail to achieve anything, much less destroy an engie nest. Not to mention most of the time a spy won't have more than maybe 6 crit shots once the enemy team is aware of there being spies. Good luck keeping more than that against someone competent in spy checking. And the weapon still pales compared to stock in usefulness; diamondback is useful against idiots, but stock is better all around.

Every time you mention how old TF2 is, I feel myself die a lil. Stop it 😂😅

In my opinion, the Mann melter is balanced

critz are an mechanick, id say they are balanced on evry wepon but the boom booms if im honest tho the direct hit shouldnt crit in my opinion

People don't like spy because no one can spy check well :/

As a spy main, i can tell you that Dimondback is not really good and i dont get why people say its op..i guess its that people get mad when they get hit by a crit cuz you can hear it and just doesnt notice it when the spy doesnt have crits I guess if people are that mad about it just do the -%50clip size so even less spies use it There is a reason why you dont find the Dimondback spies a lot i rather use stock or L'Etranger with -%50damage than use it not because its powerful because its not

Diamond back is just hilarious to play with, 102 damage from anywhere with crits just amazing, love the weapon

Had an interesting thought for the diamond back. Remove the crit storing altogether and, instead, the gun does mini crits while a building is being sapped, but, new downside: sapping a building now breaks your disguise. Throwing in a health penalty or damage vulnerability probably wouldn't be amiss. Would force the spy into a more aggressive and risky play style to take out sentry nests. Could also make it so the spy can only sap one building at a time, giving him a pretty big tell for when he's trying to make a play with it. As an aside, this would also provide a viable use case for the red tape recorder.

Man at this point we should just accept critical hits (except the diamond back) like cmon isn't it funny when you blow half of the enemy team with a crit rocket? But in all seriousness in casual play its perfectly acceptable to have random crits! And dont have random crits in competitive (if there's still people playing it) or play on a community server! After all we are here playing this 15 year old game just to have fun

Honestly I'd just give the Diamondback the Ambassadors critical downsides while cutting the clip size in half.

I will say what I have always said. If you don't like a CASUAL game feature. Then don't play in the CASUAL servers. Crit banning in comp is perfectly fine. Stop forcing you no fun outlook onto everyone else. Life ain't about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit, laugh it off, and move forward.

don't appologise for the daimond back, that thing has needed a nurf long time ago

0:40 except they always do , 3X damage often removed interactive gameplay with how often it 1 shot

12th

Cringe, it’s a shotgun tube, not mag or a clip.

I am third

First

Genuinely believe crit-storing weapons in general should just be reworked. No one likes to be punished for the mistakes of others and despite the Frontier Justice's favorable view in the community would be best to eliminate double standards. An easy alternative would be to change them to grant Crit/Mini Crit status for X amount of time after fulfilling whatever the condition is. That puts them all slightly more in-line with stuff like banners, Hitman's Heatmaker, etc. Seems a bit healthier to require IMMEDIATE capitalization rather than just having it for whenever.

I LOVE RANDOM CRITS! They make TF2 truly unique and distinct as oppose to other games. Anyone that doesn’t should play any of the thousand FPS’s that don’t have them.

Make the Diamondback a 4 shot revolver, or change the crits to minicrits and its fine. Its not like the Engi doesnt get benefit for playing his class normally with the frontier justice. The Diamondback's issue has more to do with Spy's core design (you dont know hes there so everything he does feels unfair) than any issue with what it gives you crits for.