Hey all. I know this video will be controversial to somebody *somewhere* because people have such wildly different ideas and perspectives on which TF2 items are good, bad, broken, underpowered, overpowered, braindead, big-brain, etc, so just remember that I'm ultimately only a guy with a microphone who likes video games and not an authority on anything. If you're *outraged* that I called any of the weapons in this video "Skill Dependent" because they're actually "braindead easy to any decent player" or whatever, please remember that. Regardless, I hope you enjoy!
Heh, no kidding. The amount of flack I see in the comments of videos trying to honestly discuss the balance of weapons that perform well in the hands of good players is shocking. Turning the discussion of class balance into a dung-flinging contest between factions of the same community is just embarrassing, and I really hope we can start to see some reconciliation in the fact that we're all playing the same game here. Drawing needless lines in the sand because of difference in playstyle helps no-one and achieves nothing.
My main gripe is that i wouldn't consider the kunai a good skill based weapon, sure it's health debuff makes it tougher to land kills as spy then it already is, but once you do get a kill, it rewards you for playing spy as a damage sponge, building a terrible mindset for beginner spies who might wanna switch kits, and while you might spot the enemy kunai spy, you can't do anything if your team is just feeding back after back, so many other knifes teach you how to play spy right without the crutch of extra hp
The big earner or eternal reward are better forms of risk vs reward, and the fundamentals of playing spy skillfully while his general weaknesses are still in tact where the kunai causes this inconsistent influx of hp and terrible feedback to a beginner player
I really think the only thing I disagree with is the Bargain, and you knew that's be the response going into it, you said so yourself. But I don't disagree because it doesn't deserve to be here, rather that it's *current version* doesn't deserve to be here. It used to be that missing a shot completely would remove a head, thus making it so you actually needed consistency and not just safety. "It's a downgrade until it isn't" also applies to the Eyelander, and Knight kills can be harder to get than headshots, only one brought a sword to a gun fight, but I don't think you'd argue that the Eyelander is skill based.
I get where you're coming from with the BB, but the idea of it being skill dependent falls apart when you factor in what exactly charge does for sniper. Unless you are fully charging for every shot, the bizarre bargain's downside doesn't matter. Slower charge means nothing when an uncharged quick scope is still enough to kill 5 of 9 classes. That's fundamentally the problem with sniper as a whole. Charge bonuses and penalties mean nothing when charge is really optional a vast majority of the time and yet it's the attribute most often changed by the rifles.
"Skill check" weapons are pretty hard to do right, because they tend to be either not be worth the effort, or an almost direct upgrade like the Kunai or Bazaar Bargain. I think the Direct Hit is maybe the best example though, because it's not a direct upgrade even if you do hit every shot thanks to the blast radius penalty
the main problem with the bazaar bargain is you still deal 150 damage on a quickscope, which most people choose over a hardscope anyways. so the downside doesnt mean that much unless you're one of those snipers who hardscopes for heavies.
The dragons fury definitely deserves to be on this list. I specifically chose to play with the widowmaker and dragons fury as aim training because I cant hit shit
I initially had the Dragon's Fury in the script but removed it because it was profoundly unfun to get footage with. Not that the weapon was bad, I was just significantly worse with it than the other weapons in the video and it wasn't making for great B roll. It's 100% an honorable mention.
The Widowmaker feels like it was made to melt tanks in MVM. You can't miss, you never need to reload. Just upgrade firing speed and buy crit canteens and you deal missive damage to them.
Kunai is hated as much as it is because the moment you see a Kunai spy, you need to assume he has 200 health based on your own team. The Dead Ringer is a good time waster, but you know what you're up against. Instead of fighting your own players, you can at the very least warn them.
It's a skill based weapon for the first kill alone. As soon as you have overheal the skill requirement doesn't matter anymore. The other skill based weapons require a constant level of skill but as long as you get the first kunai kill you need less skill than any other spy.
@@mattparnall4148 lol, noobs are cute, they think the skill is in getting first stab and not in what you do as a spy when you have same hp as overhealed demoman... The hp hit literally doesn't affect spy at all.
The concept of a skill-based direct upgrade is really interesting and I think Valve did a pretty good job of handling it, also the direct hit is still only a sidegrade because you trade the ability to deal good damage to groups of enemies for the ability to deal massive damage to one enemy.
Also unless it's mini crit(airborne enemy) or crit(random crit) Direct Hit isn't actually that much dmg. I can guarantee you if Valve buffed it's dmg enough, some comp scenes would've banned it or run it on pocket soldier, but for now the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
tbh I think the hitman's heatmaker is a better contestant for a "skill based" sniper weapon, because you are punished for hitting a bodyshot instead of charging slower, and the meter for the heatmaker CAN be devastating, the tracer rounds it shoots forces you to find a good position.
@@cursedhfy3558focused Heatmaker has the highest DPS of all sniper rifles and focus can be gotten off of single assist (on a class that can give his entire team minicrits for free), fish is severely underestimating it's sheer firepower and disposability.
@@joanaguayoplanell4912 You're correct however the situations where you can use the DPS are impossibly rare. In most situations you would use it as a bizarre bargain sidegrade and literally burn the focus each shot.
God bless the Direct Hit has the same self-damage as a normal rocket launcher, otherwise rocket jumping would be impossible. Also, if a Pyro airblasts a Direct Hit rocket, the splash zone defaults back to that of a normal rocket launcher, though the damage stays the same, making it a nightmare if you predict the soldier's timing.
Note that the splash RADIUS nerf is much more significant than it seems: given that we shoot a rocket at a flat surface, it creates half a sphere, and half a sphere splash zone with a radius of 10 has *37* times the volume of splash zone with a radius of 3.
The issue with the Kunai is that it heavily punishes the good players on the enemy team for having bad allies, as "strong" as the Kunai is it is an extremely bad pick in competitive due to everyone's higher overall skill and regular use of VC... The Kunai REALLY is a safety net that encourages bad Spy behaviors by making something like running into a group of enemies something you can get away with, even moreso than the Dead Ringer which at the very least prevents you from attacking when activated
I disagree that playing aggressive as spy is a ”bad practise”, most of my best moments have been because of me playing exactly this way, just yesterday I singlehandedly stopped enemy pushed multiple times and killed everyone in the objective because I could utilize my movement and ability to improvise to the fullest without being punished. In this meta pyro and soldier are disgustingly overpowered especially against spy so having a reliable way for me to survive and not waste time respawning by actually utilizing my knife skills is really rewarding and is absolutely no crutch. Which brings me to my last point: dealing 200 hp to a spy, even when he has a dead ringer, provided he is on the objective and multiple enemies are trying to kill him is not something that’s at all hard to do.
@@skade245 the problem is that it isn't just 200 hp because every time the spy gets a backstab he gets it all back, you can easily tank more than 500 damage on a control; point where everyone is clumped together in your melee range
Except the deadringer doesn’t really prevent you from attacking, in fact makes you even more of a threat if you instantly decloak and take advantage of the persistent speed and damage resistance…
@@BucketMans Bingo... playing against a Kunai player is almost like the Old Zatoichi Demo with full heal and random crits Imagine pumping out 5, 6, or 7 rockets into a guy but you can't kill him because your unaware teammates keep getting OHKOd And it's not a flat 200 HP for the Spy either... it's 210 max HP that gets refilled by a large margin each kill... you can easily get stabs in the middle of getting shot just to negate any damage, and since they need to reload guns and you don't their damage falls off after their clip is empty
Its less of a crutch for bad spies and more of a jetpack for acceptable ones. If you can get one stab on literally anyone you are better off than stock and the other knifes too.
1:32 actually, even if you hit every shot, direct hit still is a sidegrade, because you miss out on splash damage from rockets exploding when hitting your enemies, which could theoretically kill another enemy
Skill based weapons are a hard thing to balance, the line with skill based and just not being as good as other options can be a fine line. Weapons I feel could've debatably made it for the other classes are, babyface blaster, backburner, loch-n-load, natascha, vaccinator.
Beggar's is the quintessential skill check for soldier. Optimal play with the beggar's is the hardest thing a soldier can do, and it's by far the most rewarding playstyle that isn't stock (No launcher will ever be objectively better than stock/original). The mobility, the burst damage, the bombs, the gardens, true insanity locked behind what is almost a completely different class in terms of play, and far more mechanically and strategically advanced than any other launcher could dream to be.
The only difference between stock and beggar's is ability to time jumps, the rest is same thing. yeah yeah 30% deviation, about as relevant as random crits
These types of weapons are always so interesting to me because of how delicately they must be balanced. As powerful as they can be in the hands of a skilled player, they can still be countered and worked around by players that know how to fight them. Great video!
I'm surprised the Crusader's Crossbow wasn't in this considering it rewards timed shots with burst healing, with the further the patient is from you the better the healing amount.
As a medic main, i'd argue the syringe guns are more difficult to use as they are technically the hardest projectile to aim in the game They've got: Tiny hitboxes, "slower than rockets" projectile speed, shot spread and an arc The crusaders has: Flare gun projectile speed, Rewards for hitting both teams, passive reload, Huge biceps and a chizeled chin The only saving grace is that it's hard for the enemy to see the projectiles and it does the same damage as the smg thats why it's only technically more difficult
You can also use if unskillfully and get away with it. If you miss your crusader's crossbow, you aren't suddenly losing uber charge or anything like that where the lack of competence is actively punishing you. You are only ever actively being a detriment with the crossbow when you neglect medigun usage, but that's not exactly fair since you could use the "use a secondary instead" argument on every weapon here except the Kunai
@imwithmilk8162 the thing is, the other syringe guns can be spammed to at least get some damage off on close enemies The crossbow is completely useless to you if you have garbage aim
@@TheWhiskySix bearly, the crossbow is significantly easier to aim as it's projectile is nearly twice as fast as the one of the syringe guns, you can ONLY reliably hit people at close range, if you can aim the syringe gun, you can aim the crossbow better
Every time a team falls to a good trick stabbing kunai spy, all I can think is "it's a melee weapon, just keep your distance after he gets the 1st stab"
As someone who recently went through the new player phase, there was one more I’d like to point out; the Dragon’s Fury. Pyro is, from many people’s perspective, the easiest class to play. The flamethrower allows you to just W + M1 and win. The dragon’s fury makes it so that you work significantly harder to actually hit your shots, and in turn will reward you for hitting those shots by giving really good dps. However if you miss those benefits aren’t there and will even actively punish you for missing those shots. Even if you get lucky with a stray shot it won’t do much damage - practically negating the mindless strategy of W + M1. TL;DR the dragon’s fury can output insane damage if skilled enough to use whilst trading out the brainlessly easy to use attack of the regular flamethrower
How could you have not have talked about the Dragon's Fury? It changes up Pyro a lot by giving up w+m1 for a single fire weapon and makes you have to think about when you airblast with the slower cooldown. It's like a short range direct hit but with fire that doesn't reload and rewards consecutive accurate hits. It's all around a good weapon but is only as good as it's user. It's also a pretty good sentry buster if you're within range
I think weapons that say "if you hit your shots you do better" should always have some downsides that decrease your options even if your "main attack" kills faster. You cant splash damage with direct hit which is good for knockback and group damage, you cant W+M1 with dragons fury which makes group damage and spychecking harder, etcetera.
As a spy main... No, theirs good reason to hate the kunai, the big earner rewards you without being at the expense of the other teams fun (relying on dodging rather then tanking shots) and still has the same low hp negative. Its skill without expending fair and engaging play for both sides, where as the kunai is just the biggest fuck you to the enemy for just even existing.
@@Sleepy_Cabbage the fact that you call the kunai a crutch really goes to show how little yk about the game, i think reddit might be a better place for you and i dont even use kunai…. i run spycicle 24/7 with ambassador LOL
@@GeosNotHere "shows how little you know the game" id like for you to back up that statement. Go on and explain how the kunai isn't a crutch, or are you gonna back pedel some more :7
My personal favorite has always been the Loose Cannon. Unlike stock, direct hits alone won't maximize your damage, you also need to space and/or time your shots. But it does have a reputation for just being spammed into choke points for lucky donks. Grain of salt, I suppose.
To be fair, literally anything can be spammed in the choke points - it's just the natural braindead playstyle so it has nothing to do with the loose canon personally.
that more fits under "every weapon benefits from skill" category. Loose Cannon isn't making demo unplayable garbage doing zero damage until you land a double donk, unlike the direct hit. Hell, it's even a good hybrid knight utility because you can trimp and blow up for high mobility.
It's maybe fun, i didnt play it myself and demo is second my least played class, but i believe that stock/iron bomber are still better than loose cannon simply because it has slower fire rate, slower reload and a lot harder to be effective with it and its not even worth it. 100 damage and like 130 isnt a big difference and something thats worth sacrificing consistency, fire rate and reload speed. So if you are skilled enough with it its fun, but still is objectively worse than stock :o
In my opinion the Big Earner requires more of a skill check then the Kunai since the weapon requires your attention your whole life since you can’t become tanker then a soldier for one backstab and the only thing you get is a speed boost that allows you to escape or continue the chain stab The weapon makes you walk on a tight rope for most of the game due to putting you at 100 hp which is a really important health threshold and the spy is basically having to think about what happens after he does his backstab
the problem with the kunai to me is that how brainless it feels once you got that first stab. as long as you know how to perform a few trickstabs you can clean out an entire enemy team without any type of counterplay involved in that. you need to focus a kunai spy hard to prevent them from cleaning your team. granted, if the kunai spy doesn't get a backstab in the meantime and the cycle repeats. especially when paired with the ringer and diamondback, seriously that weapon needs a nerf, 102 damage from basically across the map and disguised is pretty bullshit, at least the amby required knowing how to hs without a scope
“as long as you can preform a few trickstabs” dont act like thats such a simple task against enemies that have more than 20 hours on the game. not to mention due to the nature of the overheal decreasing over time means that once you get the first stab you need to constantly be active, which eventually the enemies will get paranoid enough to watch out for you. not the mention the -55 hp penalty effectively amplifies all of the weaknesses associated with spy, poor hitreg, unpredictable movement, and just turning around can fuck up youre entire game. i have 300+ hrs on spy and i mostly use the stock and spy cicle because the kunai just fucks you over so often.
Does the Frontier Justice count as a skill dependent weapon? Because I personally feel it could be in the conversation. Also, I feel the Beggars Bazooka should have been included. Regardless, great vid.
I can see why it can but also why it cant because if you really want to you can just turn off your brain and spam the beggers since it basically has a bottomless clip but
Also I wouldn't really count frontier to much as you can spam mins in a highly contested area and just hide to get free crits. It kinda suffers from the diamond back syndrome but with a real downside unless you count playing spy as a downside
@@CreeperthanPasta Honestly, I prefer to use the Frontier Justice with regular sentry’s. It’s more fun. Gunslinger is more fun with the shotgun or panic attack.
Kunai is a weapon that allows a good player to play better, but if there's only enemies around that are aware of their surroundings and have 3 brain cells instead of 2, they will keep out of facestab/trickstab range. Against good players, I'd say the Big Earner is the better option because it does what the Kunai does but better, only difference being that you can move more predictable with the Kunai after a backstab, which can lead to easy backstabs, while the Big Earner allows you to avoid enemy fire and maybe kill another person, before everyone turns around and kills you. That's how I see it, I don't main any class. And I guess Kunai allows you to do surf stabs too more easily.
how to be good at "skill-weapons": Ambassador, get big screen Direct hit: only go for short range fights or against snipers knives, dont play overaggressive sniper, play on 80-120 Ping for "reversed headhitboxes" scout primaries, dont dodge and shoot at same time, focus on them sperately market garden/trolldier, play on higher ping for easier melee shovel timing loose cannon, control your distance to enemy and keep the distance so you dont have to overly adapt the charging edit: beggars bazooka, idk i dont use it i always blow myself up for anyone interested i have 1400 hrs in tf2 and like to give shit opinions noone should care about
Can we talk about that direct hit rocket skimming by that sentry? 10:25 leading up to it. If that doesn't show how painful the DH's radius penalty is idk what does 😂
Kunai and Bazaar Bargain are just straight upgrades and not too reliant on skill. Sniper's quickscope is too powerful and makes the longer charge time an minimal downgrade, while the Kunai makes you almost unkillable for a downside that's pretty much expected from Spy.
As a beginner I would just like to say that the direct hit is way easier than the other launchers. The real hardest launcher is the one with random spread!
bazar bargain is not a skill dependent weapon becose it relies on headshot, cuz all snipers relies on headshot, so its just a straight upgrade to stock
The Direct Hit is *not* an objective upgrade to stock even if played perfectly. The explosion Radius is still smaller. So it's harder to say; hit multiple targets at once with splash damage, like an Engi and his Sentry. Or a Medic and his pocket [especially if said pocket is body blocking shots aimed at the med]
I'm sorry to see how the algorithm still has you fucked, but I just wanted to say the editing and pacing of the script are still phenomenal for what it's worth, and that it provides an interesting introspection to a lot of weapons typically going unused for the most part.
I had a very strange experience with the direct hit. I got it pretty fast and beause more damage, it was my go to, resulting in me completely neglecting rocketjumping. I became pretty good at leading my shots and bouncing enemies with the launcher. Then my cousin showed me jump maps and it changed my world. I did still return to the dopamine machine that is the Direct Hit
My favorite nickname of the direct hit is “Scout B Gone”. One of the funniest things in this game is when some try hard lime scout explodes with one rocket
I would argue that the Hitman’s heatmaker is a better option for sniper as a skill weapon, because the other doesn’t hurt you for missing. As for the direct hit… We have come to accept that Demoman is about hitting pipes, a gravity-affected slow moving projectile that sucks if you don’t hit a player with it. This is the norm. Demoman is inherently very skillful yet rewarding to use with the grenade launcher, a weapon which was, I’m pretty sure, regarded as meta, right? This is exactly what the DH is, and yet, most soldiers will go for stock, and we just somehow accept that they have to always miss their straightforward splash damage spammer. And it’s probably these guys who’ll complain about sticky spamming… from the stock sticky launcher lol
The Bizarre Bargain got a buff a long time ago that I think should be reverted. It used to be that if you missed the headshot, you lost a stored head. It made the weapon REQUIRE you to be consistent with it.
To be honest, it looked like you were struggling to hit shots with projectile weapons; do you have the improved lerp settings? Put this into your autoexec: cl_cmdrate 66; cl_updaterate 66; cl_interp_ratio 1; cl_interp 0.0151515; rate 66000 Also maybe try lowering your sens, I have mine at 0.63 with 1000 dpi. Which means that I can just barely do one and a quarter rotations when I use my entire mousepad. And make sure you have mouse acceleration off both in-game and on your desktop Great vid though!
All skill dependent weapons in tf2 (that i know of ) scout: soda popper soldier: direct hit Pyro: dragons fury Demoman: iron bomber Engineer: widowmaker sniper: bazar bargain Spy : kunai, and your eternal reward
All of these still have downsides, Even if you never miss with direct hit, splash damage is still great against crowds and to pop people up in the air, Even when playing perfectly, you may not have 100 kunai heal uptime. With the widowmaker you can hit all your shots, but still fail by random bulletspread or damage falloff. You may not have enough kills to rampup the bazaar bargain to being a straight upgrade.
Obviously this video is just for fun. Of course theres no weapon there is a straight upgrade (original and third degree excluded, And these are the closest thing we have to those
Surprised that the Vaccinator wasn't even mentioned. That thing has got to be the epythomy of the problem with these kinds of weapons. A noob Vaccinator medic might as well not be playing the game. A competent one turns their entire team including themself immortal.
spy and heavy main here. Yeah that kunai is very dependent on the lobby to if its skill based or not. i hate using the kunai because its braindead when im using it. its just find the weakest link, stab them, and now im immortal as i chainstab. however in a lobby full of good players. say competitive, its definatelly a far more skill based weapon
The kunai? Because you start with lower health? Give me a break. You see Hale's Own kunais all the damn time and they're dime a dozen. If you're not totally brain dead, you can get away with anything. Not op, but nothing to be proud of. If you see a Big Earner or YER with a lot of kills, be afraid. Nobody cares about Hale's Own kunais.
I'm unconvinced that the direct hit a straight upgrade from stock even with perfect play. For example, if you're shooting into a group of enemies, stock could easily out damage the direct hit.
Yeah. There are moments where stock just gives much higher total damage dealt that the Direct Hit can't match. There are even situations, like hitting an enemy behind a corner, that the Direct Hit does 0 damage in while the stock could potentially nab a kill. I like that it gives both weapons a clear niche even with aimbot-like precision and godly prediction skills. In that scenario, it is still dependant on if your team needs raw total damage/chokepoint pressure or if they need to have a problem enemy focused down and dealt with asap.
Really depends on what you mean by "skill". Its a spectrum, and most of the points you make are from the perspective of a new-comer, someone with very little skill in the game, let alone a specific class or even weapon. As a avid Team Fortress 2 Enjoyer, in my opinion, all the weapons you stated in this video are brain dead, by the BizBargin because consistency is a skill in and of itself. But I appreciate your video regardless due to the fresh perspective of a newer player. But here's my take, if you care; The Direct hit is just an upgrade once you understand the timing, as you said. I only use it once the other sweat lord soldier inevitably rage changes to it, as there's nothing funnier than mirror matching an ego-maniac. (I too am an ego maniac.) Kunai is just spy on easy mode. Play spy as he's intended and you'll never die, understanding when to retreat regardless of weapon is the skill to know for spy. The Kunai however allows you to extend your "fuck around" meter, by diminishing the "find out" section of being caught by allowing you to tank damage on par with a Soldier for...doing what spy's are meant to do...back stab a single human being. Widowmaker is just...No reloading. For hitting shots. Just don't be bad and you'll never run out of ammo, that's really it. There's a reason its banned in every version of competitive gameplay. Keep up the videos dude.
I think the big reason everyone hates the Kunai since its so painfully a win more button. A Spy uses basically the same skills for the Kunai and his default kit, so it then becomes less "You need to play better" and more "Hope some unlucky situations do not occur."
You could say that about any weapon that uses a 'snowballing' reward system. What does the Kunai, Eyelander, Baby Face's Blaster, Air Strike, The Frontier Justice, Bazaar Bargain all have in common? The better you are, the more picks you get, the more powerful you become... until you die. Then, when you respawn, you have to deal with being slightly gimped until you can maintain a steady flow of kills again. Even though all these weapons operate on the same principles as the Kunai, they're hardly complained about. Probably because people really don't like dying to Spy, like with everything else.
the kunai downside is completely negated if you get ONE backstab, after that you have more health then most classes and with the dead ringer, you become the tanklest class in the game.
The Kunai's health is only as good as how long you can keep it up. Not every kill will grant you 150+ health, it only depends on how much the enemy has, with as little as 75, only buffing you to 145, which again, drains. The Dead Ringer can help, but again, it's useless if you can't maintain a steady flow of kills. Not every game works with the two unfortunately.
The Kunai by definition is a skill-dependant weapon. But it is also a newbie punisher in both ways. If a new player uses it, they'll probably just double their rate of death and not even get backstabs. However, it also punishes not only lower skilled players, but a lower skilled player's entire team. Which is where I'd guess people start having a problem with it. It only takes one Heavy with a bad sense of Spychecking to provide a Kunai Spy - even a relatively new one - with a full heal and then some. Which no other weapon in the game offers. Some other newbie punishing weapons are the Bizzare Bargin, the Eyelander, the Half-Zatoichi, the Diamondback (in the same way as the Kunai, except offensively instead of defensively), and the Air Strike. All of them have some effect that rewards kills, and punishes a team for... basically not kicking their Gibus players. Some are less troublesome (the Eyelander is a gradual build-up, for example), while others are very troublesome (the Diamondback and the Kunai - both basically the top 2 Spy weapons - provide huge damage buffs and instant full heals).
i will say as a pyro main, yes your rockets are way faster then your normal rocket with the direct hit but that doesnt mean a decent pyros not gonna send that thing right back to you.
The Kunai is seen as OP cause let’s be honest a newbie spy caught in a bad situation is gonna be dead REGARDLESS of whether or not they have the kunai, it rewards you for just playing spy normally just like the Diamond back
Direct Hit is my least favorite item in the game. It'd be fine if this game wasn't over a decade old, but there's a lot of people out there that either have no life and spend like 18 hours a day playing TF2, use cheats that allow the rockets to course-correct, or have just been playing since not long after launch that have effectively mastered using the Direct Hit to the point where that downside doesn't matter anymore, and that's how you get situations where one guy using it just fucking destroys an entire team. It desperately needs another downside. Even just a slightly slower firing/reload speed would be enough to at least give new players a chance against high skill players using this thing, man. Even the AWP in CSGO/CS2 has more downsides than this thing, and that's literally an instant kill weapon.
the widow maker doesnt encourage selfish engineer play, you will still build your dispenser and teleporters, but istead, you wont be waiting on a control point for 2 hours conga dancing , because the enemy team cant even reach the objective
As a somewhat new player and god awful spy I’d disagree with your take on the kunai the health penalty doesn’t matter much because when you are already a light class with no movement ability’s and all defensive options either take time to deploy (invisibility) precise aim (revolvers) or is the dead ringer getting caught before a stab is going to get you killed wether you have 125 health or 65 but the extra health that doesn’t need target priority helps tremendously and this is coming from that hypothetical new player that should do worse with it it gives you just enough of a buffer to go from dying after every stab to only dying after most which is huge for new spy mains
my issue with the kunai and the bizarre bargain (aside from how annoying they are to deal with) is that at base they're direct downgrades whereas after you get those kills they're direct upgrades. an example of a weapon i feel does this well is the air strike, at base it has a chunk of downsides that make it less appealing than stock while still having some upsides like the reduced self damage or the fast firing while mid air. but even at 4 kills it still doesn't overshadowed stock due to the damage penalty it has but still being good
Hey the Liberty launcher is a skill check weapon. If you’re shit you aren’t going to get kills! If you’re insane you’re going to own a collectors. If you’re good with it you’ll topscore with one of the worst primaries in the game.
9:10 points about how the kuni takes skill spies: spam the crutchy dead ringer and rely on abusing hitboxes rather than learn good cloak management, timing and postitioning
i swear to god whenever a non spy main talks about the class what they say proves they know absolutely nothing about what theyre talking about the dead ringer is not a crutch. maybe before it got nerfed, but currently its very much a sidegrade to stock with benefits and negatives, requiring a similar skill set. You cannot just dead ringer straight through the enemy lines, yall seem to think thats how it works, but no. You'll get caught and die. You still have to use your skills to avoid enemy contact, youre trading the enemy knowing youre through in exchange for more speed and immunity. It is very much on par with the stock watch. It's just that making a spies life hell is so fucking easy (turn around, randomly left click, be pyro) that sometimes even the best spy with a stock watch cant get through. Which is usually when ill switch to dr. I always hear this abusing hitboxes bs and i never understand what the point is. If youre talking about interp, it has been patched for years. If youre talking about trickstabs in general, coping about the worst class in the game you can easily kill (and also just back away from) not needing to be RIGHT behind you is a clear tell that you are completely braindead. You probably just run into a spy with your melee, which works %90 of the time because thats how weak spy is. When the spy trickstabs you the game is to blame. If youre talking about the hitbox being large in general, ive already said why thats not an issue but ill make another point. This game is really stupid. Each time youve gotten "facestabbed" as yall call it there are 10 times where that spy "failstabbed", missing an incredibly obvious stab. The issue is not one-sided.
@@eurasian8492 the damage that triggers the dead ringer gets reduced by 75%. Not only that but it also gets refilled within 2-3 letranger shots. Not only that but you also have a speed boost making escaping piss easy unlike with stock or the C&D where you actually have to manage your cloak and position yourself manually. even with the nerf it is still possible (but fairly unlikely) to sneak past the frontlines with the dr if you have a basic knowledge of the map. unlike medics ubers where you have to build it up with healing for about 30 secs or a soldier banner by dealing 480-600dmg (depending on banner) the dr just recharges at the same rate of stock or being refilled almost instantly via letranger meaning it literally has no downsides. combine that with the kuni where you could backstab someone whos at 1hp and get brought to more health than a soldier especially on medieval mode making the gamemode borderline unplayable unless you go razorback huntsmen sniper then it bloody is a crutch because once again "why bother learning good cloak management when you can just right click and instantly tank over 270 damage"? just ignoring the fact the games melee hitreg is inconsistent, abusing hitboxes (trickstabs) completely makes spies whole schtick of "disguising as enemy players and infiltrating the backlines to get key picks then repositioning) redundant. Why bother practicing imitating classes and positioning yourself to where they would be when you could just spam A & D turn 0.5 degrees to the left and "backstab" someone who you are clearly within line of sight of? This is especially bad for heavies because of their larger size and slow movement they get the worst of it even whilst revved (this also applies to scouts strafing towards them) leading to a lot of pellets just refusing to connect. as for you not understanding it basically players hitboxes outstretch their models slightly which is why you have 180 degrees of which you can backstab someone (which explains sometimes how you can backstab someone despite their entire bloody back being against a wall). This further ads to the "why bother learning to manage cloak and position yourself when you can just spam strafe turn slightly and facestab everyone? If you use them sparingly it isn't too bad but the vast majority of spies would rather spam trickstabs instead of playing the class as intended. I'm not a very good spy but I'm at least competent. I shoot the guys out of knife range, I sneak past the large groups to take out snipers/teleporters an on very VERY rare occasions i might try to trickstab. I don't walk blindly at spies with my melee out (except when demoknighting duh) so i shouldnt be fucking punished if a spy gets in front of me
Jarate, scorch shot (or just pyro in general), splash damage. Try to imagine where you would go if you were the spy running away. Maybe towards an ammo kit? Or maybe another flank? When you get better qt the game, it becomes easy to counter the kunai (unless if they have the diamondback serioualy fuck that weapon)😊
Even if you were perfect with the direct hit, it's still wouldn't be the best option for competitive. Using splash damage to hit multiple enemies, spam choke, and hitting enemies behind walls. Are crucial for Soldier, you have to change your play style in order to make it work. The befits are increasing your range, more oneshots on light classes/low health enemies, and faster ttk due to the projectile speed.
I mean, technically, anything ever takes skill. Irrelevant of just how simple anything is, it takes skill for your brain to do everything it fires to do what it does with how quickly it both reacts and interacts with anything.
Then you must have not been paying attention to the video since he already stated in the beginning of the video that every TF2 weapons, regardless of how easy it is to use, require skills to some extent.
"unless youre some UGC god" this isnt an insult to you, but ive always found it amusing when casual players seem to think UGC, probably the least meaningful tf2 league with real visibility, is (or has ever been) like the epitome of competitive tf2 or something. its pretty much always been outshone in major regions in pretty much every regard except i suppose highlander in NA before rgl started running that format. its never really held prestige in 6s due to the existence of ESEA/CEVO/RGL in NA, ETF2L in EU, OZF in AU and AF (and the other asian league i dont recall the name of) in AS. it served only as a beginner/more casual league in NA during the ESEA era because UGC is free (and it also was the main place for NA highlander before RGL), and honestly idk what its purpose in EU ever was given that ETF2L has always been free, though i believe highlander prestige used to be more equal between the leagues. at this point though idk what the purpose of the league really is but they made the decision a couple of years back or something to unban every weapon in highlander because they recognised they were irrelevant next to RGL and had to provide something radically different, which i respect. oh they also scammed some ramen place out of a ton of ramen semi-recently. enjoy random rant you spurred on with that comment lmao
I get what you're saying about the kunai. but I feel unreliability should be a down side of such a weapon not skill. I feel that when it comes to game balance skill should never be a real balance factor. sure you don't want your strongest weapons/options to be easy and your worst to be hard. but consider that a weapon being easier or harder to use doesn't change how good the weapon is only how fun or rewarding it is to use. for example getting your first back stab is fun and feels rewarding but they aren't as fun the more you get cause of over saturation. getting a back stab is risk reward using the kunai does not change that it only changes the difficulty to do so which can have the effect of fun for a experienced or lucky spy and more likely disappointment and frustrated for an unfortunate one. I don't blame the weapon personally for this problem part of it is a hold over from the design of spy to begin with, the kunai just emphasizes it. I would prefer it if the kunai had the simple addition to give health on hit like 20 over heal on butter knives and to balance it have max over heal reduced to a flat 200. if it were like that getting a miss would be slightly less punishing on miss the skill floor would be slightly lower so that players that fail to get their backstabs at least have a reason to keep using trying it instead of having 20 second re-spawn waits. I also personally agree with fishstickonastick's view of the kunai of how it doesn't make the spy have 210 health but infinite health as long as their is an opportunity for a back stab.
No Dragons Fury? Thats thing is a massive pain to hit cause projectile is much smaller then visual effect indicates. And unlike direct hit you are not given massive dammage upfront, you have to land CONSECUTIVE hits to see any damage.
people forget that it's their fault for getting stabbed and that 3k hour spy main (shock) might be actually good at the game, even 200hp spy is easy to take out