[TF2] The Curious Case of the Flying Guillotine 

The weapon itself is a reference to Valves butchered item balance

Thing about the Guillotine is often you only have one shot and opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted

Scout thinks hes the real slim shady

"Scouts melee slot is disposable." No, the fish is a necessity for any and all Scout builds lol

All I can hear is WUNUNUNUNUNUNUH

Important footnote: the cleaver is only banned in sixes, not Highlander, at least in North America. From my experience using it it’s really really good on koth, but not much else in HL.

6:55 Ok, this is so stupid. Not only he just died, but he also ate your projectile! Who needs enemies, with a dad like this?

For a long time, I thought you had to hit the head with the guillotine for guaranteed crits. It's one of those Mandela effect things I guess, but with TF2 stats.

I do wish that the cleaver would at least gain mini-crits on debuffed/airborne targets. I think that would be pretty fair since the strafing bug does exist and it gives him some niche team options. Perhaps dynamically increasing the cool down when this effect triggers would also balance it out. Right now it's less a weapon that rewards careful aim, timing, and game sense and more something you spam down chokepoints since the cool down is so godamn fast. Sure you can go for moon shots and trick shots, but you're not really getting rewarded for them. Also woe, cleaver be upon ye.

13:05 that shot on the retreating scout was a thing of absolute beauty! My man thought he was getting away clean

I'm still surprised you haven't made a video like how the Scorch shot is evil, but instead for the Vaccinator. I'd argue that MANY more classes hate fighting the Vaccinator than they do fighting the scorch shot.

Heres a little something to get your money up. Keep that chin up Fish

5:30 Ah, someone playing scout targeting the sentry first and not the Engineer that built it. Some things just never change, do they?

"Wait a second... I just remembered! CAPTURE THE FLAG HAS CRITS ON CAP!!!" Turns around, pulling out his cleaver as the Enemy Scout turns the corner. "YOU FOOL!" Throws the Flying Guillotine with a "Ty the Tasmanian Tiger" Boomerang SFX being played as the cleaver flies towards the Red Scout and cleaves their head open, causing a funny rag doll as they fall face first into the water!

Thumbnail is a great reference.

150 damage for the cleaver combo is a little unfair. 100 damage + bleed is pretty fair. Especially when the sandman basically doesn't stun you at all anymore.

Flava be upon yee

TBh comp shouldn't be really considered when it comes to balancing. 6's and Highlander are so different and so small that it's next to impossible to perfectly balance everything for both audiences. just let them ban it and leave it at that.

Undoubtedly, we live in virtual insanity

An item just not working for both casual and comp at the same time is best addressed by just keeping the balance pub-focused and letting it stay banned. Wish Valve had figured that out before they nerfed the Quick Fix.

I've only played TF2 for two years before they violently murdered The Sandman, I didn't even play Scout that much; yet another seven years later I still clearly remember every single Sandman + Guillotine combo compilation that I had watched. I really miss using sandman against other sandman users, it was really fun for me when I only started playing

Classic TF2 pub experience courtesy of "Bluegrass Boi" at 3:04

7:34 this can actually be a great way to train your aim. It certainly worked for me

8:28 when competetive player discovers that game can be funny

"it isn't well balanced for competitive" GOOD. The game isn't designed to be competitive, its a 12v12 chaotic frag fest. Comp will end up running mostly stock regardless

I can imagine a timeline where the Guillotine gets crits on moonshots to tie it back with the Sandman, but I think it'd have to get its damage cut down to 40 on impact just so you don't get huntsman arrows deleting Medics on a bodyshot. On that note, I think the Wrap Assassin should have mini-crits on moonshot, get that damage buff to the bleed.

The cleaver is part of my fav subclass: Knife Scout. Backscatter, Cleaver, Rune Blade. And don't forget to dress sharp :)

The flying guillotine has always been a curious case to me

I'd love if this became it's own series! We have bad weapon academy, covering bad weapons. In defence of, covering good weapons, and curious case where the weapons fall somewhere between the two.

Good choice of the jsr music 😊

Short stop + flying guillotine + fan of war. I love this lodaut, trow guillotyne and a full clip of the shortstop, reload and thorw yhe guillotine again. And the fan o war for heavys ans mini crit bleed. Love it.

The thumbnail is perfect ❤.

3:02 YT Unfriendly word in chat, just letting you know Fish

Man this, the sandman, and the ambassador make me incredibly sad, where did the good old days go? 😔

I think an area that is often overlooked with the Flying Guillotine or bleed items in general is that they essentially allow you to 'Dual weild' your damage. You can't use a pisol at the same time as the scattergun but having someone bleeding WHILE you fight them can feel like hell for the other dude While you did touch on it at the end I think an almost overlooked element of the cleaver is that it makes bursting down heavies a LOT easier if you tag them with the Cleaver first. 90 damage plus the scattergun is a crazy ammount of damage before some players can even react. It's genuinly a good weapon for 1v1's vs buffed players or heavies, usually good scout counters.

Well I appreciate the transparency Fish. Love your videos dude.

I guess being awake at 2AM is one way of being first

Woe, portable french revolution be apon ye.

hope things keep getting better for you, thanks for putting out awesome content you gave me a lot of newfound appreciation for tf2 as a whole

Guaranteed crits for however long the slow lasts for from the sandman, boom combo back, and nothing really needs to be changed because the sandman adds so little that you’re just health for a crit every once in a while

12:00 that might have not aged well, thankfully 😂

Rework idea: (x)% damage penalty Crits launched players (x)% deploy penalty No random crits Launched meaning rocket jumping players or players moved by other third party displacement like air blast, FAN, etc. would lead to hype combos/airshots, rewarding skill. Deploy penalty may be necessary to avoid an air blast -> reserve shooter situation. Could be replaced with “holster” penalty to punish spamming/ more clearly define the weapon as a finishing tool. Thoughts?

the structure of this video was actually fantastic, good work Fish

Remember, bleed damage is mostly psychological

Blu’s montages were goated either with the flying guilotine

It's kinda like the Smash Ball from Smash Bros. It's a ton of fun casually, but there are some aspects of Final Smashes (namely Peach and Daisy, who get a full, unneutered effect even with the weaker meter version), that prevent it from being in competitive. I do think a subleague featuring the Smash Ball or Final Smash meter could be fun though.

Can i suggest, for the dopamine hit of the Sandman Cleaver; -Bit less damage -Crit on Airshots and/or headshots -lower bleed damage per tick but a longer duration. Less straight-up damage for emergencies, but you get that snap decision of “Trolldier? WHACK! Another Scout? WHACK! A demo with stickies out? WHACK- Oh he pulled out the pipes and nailed me right in the kisser twice.”

“Videos like these are made possible by viewers like you” I just got reminded of pbs kids

it really seems like rent is due. noboy even talks about the guillotine since the crit combo was removed.

I would say that the balance of the Sandman Guillotine combo is actually having the skill to pull it off.

i love how half the vid he's running the flava loadout for scout

I think if we were to bring back the crit cleaver glory, there's a couple ways we could go about it. 1. Have the Guillotine crit against bleeding enemies. That would eliminate the "competition from the Wrap Assassin" issue (and in fact _encourage_ people to run *_BOTH_* weapons, instead), and would even have great synergy with the Boston Basher, as that also causes bleed. 2. Have the Guillotine crit whenever it would normally mini-crit. This one might be a smidge more balanced as Scout's only means of causing mini-crits is with the Fan O' War, but there's also the Buff Banner and Jarate that would become additional sources of crits. In either case, as you mentioned, I think the recharge time would have to be doubled or even _tripled_ from what it is, now.

Oh boy I can't to pay TF2 and deal with a bunch of clevers scouts for a few days

The flying guilotine has always been a strange case to me

8:35 lmao that disrespect for the sniper

That thumbnail is awesome

Fish needs to make a cameo next time Soundsmith makes a video on flava, it'd be glorious!

The Flying Guillotine in TF2 has always seemed like a curious case to me.

6:52 Spy stole my cleaver, can't have stuff in boston

I think the cloak and dagger should get an in defense of episode it’s a nifty side grade that sacrifices mobility in exchange for being able to pick your battles Plus its similarities to stock has an added benefit of being able to trick people since they can’t tell which watch you’re using something not even the dead ringer can do.

"Woe, sharp rectangle be upon you" -the real scout shady

"Yeah, I can't pronounce "L'etranger" but I can pronounce "Guillotine,"" It's just so commonplace, especially when hungry

The absolutely evil way to balance the Cleaver is to change it from a secondary to a Wrap Assassin reskin. Gets around the ban (assuming WA isn't banned in comp, I really don't know) and makes it still usable. However it removes the soul of the item and any melee comboes one might have fun with so...

I didn’t catch it and now I’m bleeding out.

The flying peeotine

In all honesty, i think the Guillotine is in a perfect spot, on minor change i make is if you kill someone with the initial hit it makes the rag dolls go flying so you dont need crits.

The cleaver is IMO one of the best side grades out there and my go to for the rare occasion I fill scout, always pairing with the wrap assassin as there is no need for a melee to use as a melee, if I manage to wiff and still be alive by then there is a major problem. Comparing to stock: you lose the short-mid range rapid fire low damage (I can't seem to hit more than 1-2 rounds per clip even aiming at people who are not moving quickly or firing into groups) if I can land my clear it does like 2 hits of point blank pistol before any bleed damage, it can also be bleeding while I shoot my scattergun of choice or do something else, unlike the pistol which does no damage if I am not actively shooting and hitting with it. You gain alot of range, it does 50 up close and 68 after flying for 0.5 seconds where the bleed also increases to 54 total, the pistol loses damage over distance harshly even if there was no bullet spread causing missed shots at range. The pistol also doesn't have that many spare clips compared to the engineer which limits its ability to take its super low 8 damage a hit long range shots that are really only good at resetting a healing ramp up for when the medic gets to healing the target. By taking both you get 2 shots at long range harrasment on targets and if you hit both you can do 80 bleed in 5 seconds (94 at distance) combine with the initial hits and you can achieve 59(min wrap ball with bleed)+50(direct cleaver)+54 (distant bleed cleaver) for a total of 163, if I did my math correctly which if a class can't reach healing in 5 seconds would kill the scout, engineer, medic, sniper and spy, I think the medic's self heal requires ramp up time, starting at 1/s which would not be enough to prevent bleeding out.

the wrap assasin and clever can kill every light class and is amazing if youre trying to make the bfb work

I just miss the NISLT clips of Cleaver + sandman oh those we're the days...

3:06 nice chat message from Bluegraass Boi :-(

If you want a way to get long-range 150 crit burst damage to insta-kill light classes & medics, you don't need to get a kritz medic for your cleaver.

10:00 I would not mind that at the cost of the recharge rate, it crits when it would normally minicrit.

The sad thing is that I could recognise humming the baseline,sneakman and sweet soul brother ect in the background (I'm too far into jet set radio) edit: I feel like this is the universe telling me to do something with the amount of time i have put in to game.

Flava scout will always be my favourite subclass

I usually use like Luger because I have it. But I use the cleaver and wraps with my favored gun soda popper and it’s so much fun

If they were to try to balance this for competitive, I could actually see something where it receives a nerf if there's fewer people in the match. Like the cooldown is doubled if there are less than twenty people on the server.

The Guillotine mandated the nerfing of the Sandman, IIRC, when really they should have nerfed both weapons equally (but a bit less).

i don’t play tf2 but i think the best change here is makng the recharge time like 15-20 seconds but it crits on bleeding targets

just make the sandman ball go back to the stun but make it a one time use per life/supply closet refresh like the caber. maybe make it so if you pick up the ball within 10 seconds of it being hit, you get it back, but if it despawns it despawns, and if you hit the person, it also despawns

I hate comp players. "This weapon is fun, We need to gut it and make it unusable for everyone"

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I’m pretty sure the clever is banned more for being annoying than actually be overpowered. People need to remember the bans aren’t necessarily always for balance and more for making sixes a more enjoyable playing experience.

I am not here to discuss viability or usefulness. I am here for sportsmanship

the moment I recognize Blu's loadout struck a nostalgia trip on me. both him and the sandman combo

Before seeing the video, the only thing i want from the guillotine is a bleed distinct from the wrap-assasin, so that i can do 8 damage per second instead of a pitifull 4. After seeing it, my opinion does not change.

I personally think the guillotine being a combo weapon was an interesting concept (I wouldn’t want to old crit on stun though) I think it would be interesting for the guillotine combining with things like the Fan O War or mad milk where it provides an upside, maybe giving a crit when mini crit like the bushwaka or like a crit on wet players like the Neon. Probably just mjni crits on debuff would be fun to see But even then, I think the guillotine is very balanced right now, but it would be interesting to see some mechanic like this to give scout a subclass in some way

The Scout needs to cleaver as much as the Soldier/Demo Needs the rocket/sticky jumper

Cleaver is a free ninety damage, overall. It's actually banned in 6s for this reason.

I have no problem with the guillotine. It's slow enough that most classes I can avoid it. Only Heavy and Soldier I have trouble dodging. I think I've only ever been hit a handful of times with it and most of those were when I was the Hale in Versus Saxton.

I have an idea, this probably a bad idea but screw it. Increase it's recharge rate to 7 seconds and make it mini-crit bleeding enemies. Make a much weaker version of the sandman cleaver with the wrap assassin cleaver.

One more thing about cleaver vs wrap assassin is physics. The travel speed and weight of the cleaver compared to the ornament makes it so much easier to aim IMO.

One note I think you minorly glossed over is how well it works as an opener. Let's say you're flanking behind an enemy and notice that you have a chance to kill one. If you spend the time running up to them without doing any damage they might be able to get help from their team in time or get to a source of health, so you need to get some damage while you're running up to them. But if you use your pistol they're then immediately aware that you exist and you might end up in the same situation as previously described. Additionally, if you're running towards them shooting your pistol, you're then going to have to spend the time to swap your weapon to your scattergun. Although that small weapon switch time isn't a lot, sometimes those few moments are crucial for securing a kill. What the cleaver allows is the perfect balance. You can throw it at the enemy and since it's a projectile and not hitscan it will take time before it hits the enemy. This also then allows you to immediately swap to your scattergun and have no swap time for engaging, allowing you to more easily surprise the enemy with a high burst of damage from both the cleaver and the scattergun shots. Micro things like projectile weapons and weapon switching often get overlooked, but they can often be the difference between getting a kill and getting killed. Sorry for the rant post, I'm bad at saying what I mean in a concise manner.

but what if the Guillotine crits on bleeding enemies?

you heard him. Flava is meta confirmed

"We're so back clever bros, we just have to play the objective on 2fort servers :) "

Havent played this game in 8 years idk why i watch so much tf2 content

I dislike the cleaver because it encourages you to hang back and fish for a random hit befoe each fight for a massive advantage. While hit or miss weapons are usually risky by design, missing the cleaver does not matter when you have the high movespeed to run away with and such a rapid cooldown on the cleaver. "Yeah let me just spam it at people who are at midrange and run in for an easy kill if it hits!" "Oh it missed? i guess ill just run away for 3 seconds and try again!" Sure it's not so strong that it needs a nerf or anything, it just rubs me the wrong way.

I just don’t use the cleaver because I much prefer the wrap assassin in every way and I can still use a different secondary like the pocket pistol.

I want the cleaver combo back, even if it's nerfed or doesn't do anything beyond playing a satisfying sound effect. It was just satisfying.

i think if crit clevers were to ever come back it should pair with the fan where you mark someone with the fan then the mini crit would become a crit for the clever, or it should be paired with the sandman again but the clever crits whenever to slowed targets