The no disguise kunai rebalance is actually crazy good, it not only fixes everything in a simple manner but also fits the theme as you are more of a ninja instead of a spy
However, that 15 health bonus is on a weapon that isn't always active. Weapons in TF2 that give extra health or damage resistance are always visible (see the battalion's backup and gunslinger).
So on the one hand, historically Ninjas did actually disguise in a sense- I remember something about blending in with crowds I think-, but on the other hand... A: Game balance, B: Anime.
Your weird buff idea would actually be a fun one, although I'm not sure if it fits the Kunai's identity. I feel like it'd be best to design a wholly new knife for that idea. Speaking of new knives, I always found it strange how only the Spycicle encourages heavier gun use and also I like the idea of butterknifing someone to death instead of backstabs, so I feel like the Rusty Butterknife (my placeholder idea for a name) would be a fun little concept.
ive thought a rapier would be fitting, as well fit the theme well. maybe borrow something from the FGC and have it have a sweetspot that encourages staying at a specific distance?
@@ChaoticCocoa I have been thinking about it to. Here is my concept The Rapier +25 base health + longer reach + on hit : gain a speed boost + Third successful hit in a row always crits +/- X% firing speed (for balancing) - Cannot backstab May also include + heal on kills - slower deploy speed
@@Loyde06 I really like this idea for the Rapier! As a suggestion, rather than the three-hit-crit mechanic like the Gunslinger uses, why not make it so that any hit that would normally backstab would land a crit instead? Meaning 120 damage instead of an instant-kill. Also, rather than a slower deploy speed, why not add the Honorbound mechanic to this sword? It'd fit thematically.
I’m so glad Uncle Dane makes a point I always agreed with, the fact that the brain rot combo of the dead ringer and Kunai promote such straight forward targeting, makes spy’s ability to take out someone who could wipe out the team less present, and instead rewards spy for targeting the closest person rather than the most dangerous or important
Not going to lie, pairing Kunai with ringer always sucked for me. With stock watch you don't have to worry about health whatsoever and every escape you make has more chances of being successful. Or you die to crocket
The Kunai in the Roblox-ripoff is actually better. You only steal the exact health that an enemy has and not their full HP (if a Scout has 20 HP, you'll only gain 20 instead of 125), and the overheal drains within 6 seconds. It does come with a new buff: overheal doesn't decay when cloaked.
I had an idea to make kunai to literally steal enemies health, so instead of killing them instantly, tou swap health with them, so if you had 5 health and you stab full-health heavy you get permanent 300 health and heavy is left with 5, allowing you to either let your teammates finish him off, or proceed to do so yourself with revolver, it also obviously makes it so if you swap health with someone who has little to no health, you basically gave them free health and signed your death certificate
Then isn’t there a priority on stabbing that overly-safe low priority target instead of going for useful assassinations who might not have that much health at a given moment?
@@DevtheViolinist if high priority target is at low health then either your team doesn't need your help with said target, or, you know, use the gun spy has. I think it instead insensifies you to go for targets your team struggles to kill, like medics or their overhealed pockets
@@CoolGirlAyden I feel like using the revolver at the front lines with 70 health is a bad idea for spy. When I said “low health target”, it doesn’t just refer to a heavy at 54 instead of 300. Spy is no longer incentivized much to go after snipers, engies, etc.
Can't wait to see the your eternal reward video though a suggestion I've always mentioned to people when talking about buffs for the weapon was causing the backstabbed target to not be able to use voice chat for 3 seconds effectively making spy somewhat better in competitive and it helps with the weapons unessasary cloak drain nerf
Preventing people from using voice chat is a wholly useless undertaking, because people in casual won't use their mics anyway, and competitive players use discord, not in game voice chat. If valve's competitive actually worked, it would be more useful, but not make any real difference in the long run
@@warmongerous Way to be so negative towards this but isn't this knife supposed to be the most stealthy weapon in this game? One of the spy's biggest counters is the voice chat system which can be heard across the map, works while dead, and is as easy as pressing a key on your keyboard. Sure Valve's competitive sucks and people who play competitive money matches/tournaments will be using Discord but what about text chat as well then? It's not that slow to type out "spy pyro" or "spy medic" in chat for the non-mic people and hell they are probably used to doing so since they have no mic.
Here's the thing that I've discovered about Spies who play with DR/Kunai: they don't like playing Spy, they like trying to get clips for a frag montage. How do I know this? Simply put, both of these weapons encourage doing things that you SHOULDN'T be doing as Spy. With the Kunai, as you and Dane said, you're incentivized to prey on the weak, when Spy's whole schtick is reminding the strong that they're anything but invincible. With the Dead Ringer, you're incentivized to just brute force your way in and out of situations and throw all caution to the wind, when the point of Spy is that he's not supposed to get caught. So when you put this playstyle together, you have a belligerent damage sponge that absolutely obliterates anything that gets too close to it. My brother in Christ... _THAT IS A HEAVY._
i think thats why these are called sub-classes to begin with? Same logic can be applied to Demoman and Demoknight, they're completely different playstyles that the only thing they share in common is being black
@@KannaDHD Except Demo and Knight aren't really that different in game plan, however with the Dead Kunai setup and normal spy their game plan are so different they're night and day, Normal spies rely on being able to fool the enemy and getting rid of problems, DK on the other hand is just go in head first pop DR and then just kill everyone in sight, And that's the main issue with DK it's FAR TOO DIFFERENT AND FAR TO PUNISHING TO DEAL WITH, with either demos you can deal with them and not be shooting your team in the foot or really any of the subclasses in the game, DK is the only outlier and an annoying one at that. If people want to be aggressive on spy yeah fine but the fact that DK just allows for spies to just make the other team into a lose-lose is unfair
An idea for a rework for the Kunai I thought of was something like Performing backstabs gives you 3 seconds of invincibility Trying to attack while invincible removes invincibility Damage lowers the time of invincibility you have left (Example: 3 seconds left, 65 damage dealt to spy while he's invincible, 2.35 seconds left of invincibility)
Just take the cloak drain from the yer, the afterburn extinguish on kill of the kunai, and swap them. Yer is much more consistent against pyros, and kunai is less effective with the whole “just dr and run for the hills” thing.
Kind of off topic, but after rewatching your videos, i started to not use the kunai and actually get good with stock spy, helped me alot to fool my enemies and now i'm the sneaky sly i've always wanted to be :)
I think the biggest change the Kunai needs is lowering the minimum health on kill. I think it fits in perfectly with that uncle Dane quote because a low health target is low priority, not a free 70 health pack
I think the buff to 70 hp and 210 max are good quality of life changes. MAYBE 210 is a bit high but being able to survive a random melee crit is worth it IMO but I'll stick by the nerf I proposed. I feel like that will make it far less effective for lesser skilled spies while not making a huge difference for good ones
People tend to forget the mouse has 2 buttons. Maybe for the Kunai do “left click only backstabs, right click takes health off” and then the right click is the one with the countdown. I'd get your proposed ideas for a completely different knife suggestion. That'll be a balancer rather than re-formulating the gun
I think it could be cool to make it like a knife equivalent of the letranger. On backstab, it instantly fills your cloak meter to full and automatically cloaks you with no cloak noise or animation, plus clearing any visible rebuffs you have. It’d be a good way to force the player to use their protection defensively as a mechanism to get away, since they obviously can’t go for chainstabs while cloaked, preventing the weapon from being abused and preserving the Big Earner’s identity as “the chainstab knife”. Replace the downside with a removal of the damage resistance you get in your cloak, and it becomes a much more spy-like weapon that can increase survivability when used well but decrease it when used poorly.
I just don't get why the kunai is such a big deal. Sure, a great kunai spy can run roughshod over a team of bad players... But a great sniper can run roughshod over an entire team of good players, and then pin you down in spawn. I just don't get why all the belly aching over the game's weakest class just because it has some pub stomping potential. BTW, dealing with the DR/kunai spy isn't _that_ hard. Go scout, mad milk and a Boston basher. Hang out around your most unaware team mate. The spy is sure to show up there. Frustrate him enough to get the rage quit. Most guys that put that much time in to kunai spy can't do anything else.
@@shrimpchris6580 After the nerf it is genuinely spy's worst watch. Very few people can use it effectively any more, myself included. I was never a big DR fan, but now the thing mostly just collects dust. I always go stock, unless they're extra paranoid, then I'll suffer with the Cloak 'n' DoNothing. But again, the bottom line is we are altering weapons instead of altering players. New players need to learn the game or fuck off. We were all bad once. Got to build up a little sweat-equity.
I hate having the forced down time after getting far enough away for people to not hear my cloak and I've rarely met a spy I can't semi consistently chase through it when I know they've popped. Kunai is honestly so much stronger with stock because it basically guarantees you can get away and get back in asap, especially since you already get cloak from backstabs most of the time. It's great because people don't expect you to decloak behind them in two seconds
One ideas I have for a balance rework, is make the Kunai work the same, but with a meter related to it’s curse aspect, because after every stab it will fill up quite a bit, and if it is full, spy will have to fully wait for it to drain in order to still get overheal, if he keeps stabbing after filling it up, he won’t be able to disguise, and one more time will mark him for death, but it will take 1.5-2 stabs close together to see it full, and it drains much faster if you haven’t filled it yet, meaning spy can still stab close together if he needs to while still getting overheal, but he cannot be too aggressive to prevent the full punishment from being active
after we nerf the kunai, we should nerf the sniper, ambassador again (i keep getting headshot), dead ringer again (theyre too fast), huntsman, direct hit, flare gun (i keep getting double flareshot across the map), wrangler, engineer in general (go play bloons instead), grenade launcher, stickybomb launcher, demoknight (they charge corners and i die), rocket launcher (big splash radius), blutsauger (theyre basically on uber, unkillable), spy's backstab radius (i want to gamble for a melee crit without getting trickstabbed). After all of these changes i think the game will be alot more enjoyable for me to play.
@@artifactU no one complained about kunai until more people started using it, the current iteration of the kunai was out for 9 years, but people started complaining about it only after 5-6 years after the buff when more spies started using it, should we break the snipers arms aswell because some people are really good at shooting pubbers with terrible movement? Maybe we should also nerf demoknight to the ground? The only reason people arent shitting on the demoknight or the big earner is because not enough people use them yet, but once people play them more, airheads like jonto will call for it to be nerfed once its popular enough
people like jonto are also calling for the dead ringer of all things to be nerfed to the ground aswell because its popular when its worse than the invis watch, i use the deadringer because i want to take more risk. If i wanted to competely shut down a pub i could use invis and be extremely unpredictable and annoying if i wanted to
My main problem with removing the overheal decay along with the guaranteed 210 health, is that it feels like it would reward the Spy too much for literally doing his job, similar to the Diamondback.
I stand by my choices. Treat the illness, not the symptoms. "Nerf" the Kunai, and it's entire family of snowball weapons, by making it impossible to run into bad players. AKA put a competent matchmaking system in Casual. Maybe it's a good time to finnally rework Competitive so it becomes basically Casual but with a matchmaker, no bullet spread and no random crits.
If the Big Earner punishes health for a speed boost, maybe the Konniver's Kunai should do the contrary: max health at 125 with the on-kill mechanic but your movement speed is at 97%
Overheal is a Medigun mechanic. I know Kunai also deals with it but you need to consider that a Medic is going to always overheal a spy at spawn before he goes on his merry way. The Spy will always have 150 hp without the decay and no Medic related downsides. No overheal at all may make him the best to collect uber from.
As a spy main while i do frequently run kunai dead ringer, i find that cloak watch is a much stronger pairing. While the dead ringer can get you out of trouble when you put yourself in a bad spot i find that the default watch can often entirely prevent me from getting into the scenarios where i would need a dead ringer.
Your previous kunai nerd proposal is eh, Cyber had the best one without nerfing Kunai too hard and taking it's identity but your previous one can still work, in order to buff spy specifically for comp settings. As for the "no disguise" kunai rebalance, nah dawg, that's overnerfing it for comp and will be a pointless nerf in casual since modt kunai spies don't use disguises too often
yea, there's a reason why the YER was changed to still allow disguising years after it's added something akin to a high cost to actually set up for a stab would probably be better, like a cloak cost for disguising, longer disguise smoke duration, or longer cloak transition duration would be pretty fair
@@artifactU What are you on? Spies are almost always disguised, unless going for a surf of some sort or avoiding post-spawn wall hacks. There is a hige difference on running towards your enemy as an undisguised spy and as an enemy scout
Man I really appreciate response videos like this. No weird drama, no over-the-top unnecessary anger. Just a reasonable follow-up discussion thingy with more insight and community ideas and stuff. Very pleasant to see sometimes.
I had this idea where on backstab, your max hp becomes 210, but slowly goes back down to 70. Your hp stays as a percentage of that max hp. Like how the gru changes your max hp. However, this basically only covers criteria 2. And, depending on balancing, it could easily slip into 'basically straight upgrade' like the bazaar bargain or 'really underwhelming' like the baby face blaster
I have an idea, let's make kunai 100 base health and after each backstab, spy's max health will increase with 20 more hp, with five backstabs and 200 hp cap
I really like the 360 airblast idea as a separate knife idea. Maybe the form a Dr. Grordbort weapon. The victim gets vaporized and releases a huge shockwave. Highly disruptive to pub pushes, and in competitive would force enemies into disadvantageous positions.
I've had a kunai rework I've thought about, trying to set it more inline with its actual physical design of being a "Ninja weapon" where instead of providing health on kill, it instead makes you instantly invisible with the same 2 or so seconds of decloak time. I feel this still needs another rewarding feature, and I wanna say a speed boost, but these are both attributes directly tied to the current Dead Ringer, but I just feel like there's great use in going instantly invis after a stab and having a drawback of that being how long it takes to decloak so you can't chain stabs
The kunai having no overheal decay would make it a cloak and dagger combo and I would expect to see a lot of spy's hanging around flanks with this targeting alone flankers to get the buff.
4:26 A 7% movespeed penalty would be x0.93, not x1.7, that would be a 7% increase. Oh wait, that's the numbered bullet points... Probably should've left a space between the number and the suggestion Wait, you DID leave a space for the Kunai Buffs segment! Why the inconsistency?
Very good ideas here! And once again, I've come up with my own dumb little proposed change, except it's for the Dead Ringer as opposed to the Kunai. A simple one; a 50% decrease to all healing recieved... Including from Kunai backstabs. One of the main reasons the combo, and the Dead Ringer in general, is so powerful, is the fact a feigned death Spy can just run to the nearest health pack and revert all damage taken, or simply backstab some hapless sap and get all his health back. With this change, the only way you're getting ALL your health back's from killing a Heavy at max health, plus it makes it so you're more inclined to use the Dead Ringer for its intended purpose of slinking behind enemy lines because the enemy believes you're dead... Or as a nice little safety blanket to get past tough-as-nails defenses. Without a heal-up afterwards, you're vulnerable, especially with the Kunai, so making that regaining of health a bit more lengthy, you've really gotta pick when you decloak and where, as even chip damage is lethal without the means to get all your health back nearly as quick. Large Medkits become Meds, Meds become a bit better than Smalls, and Smalls are your last resort for healing, meaning you have to either try and get to high foot traffic areas and risk getting discovered, try and find a Dispepnser to sit on and pray noone finds you, or hope the HP you get back from a stab'll sustain you in the Kunai's case. Plus, it's really an underutilized stat. This, plus a Kunai change, would really make the two more difficult to use together, but not impossible, and definitely more fair.
This video gives me the idea to try to play in a way where I use the Kunai, L’Etranger, Stock Watch, only going for high priority targets, and not use disguises. It seems weird that I’d nerf myself this way since disguises are really good but I feel with Spy nerfing yourself helps you to learn parts of Spy that would all be helpful to put together in your standard Spy gameplay. I think with this idea I am trying to incentivize myself to cloak in, stab, and cloak out. I see gameplay of you on UNCLETOPIA literally uncloaking right next to enemies without getting caught and I realize I rely too much on my disguises to exist in the enemy lines and too much on my cloak to _wait_ for opportunities. I’m hoping this loadout + self nerfs will encourage me to try decloaking close to enemies for stabs since I don’t have the protection of a disguise and to practice escaping since I will have the extra health after the stab. Two things I’ve struggled with Spy in the past.
Not gonna lie, Jon’s weird buff reminded me of the Kai feat from For Honor, for those who don’t hate themselves enough to play for honor, it’s a level one feat on that some of the samurai faction can use that removes everyone’s stamina in a small area around the user, preventing them from attacking or running away.
Dude, I finally started getting on my spy grindset, using trickstabs, being sneakier and smarter with escapes, and pissing off the enemy. Since then, I've started using more risky weapons like the Kunai and DR and I finally know why they are so overused. Sometimes, it feels like spy can't get shit done cause the enemy makes it down right impossible for him and he struggles to keep up with his team and start pulling his weight. All this to say I've lost my hate of the Kunai and it is the most reliable knife to use once you get good and allows for a more aggressive play style than stock spy ever gave. Sure, the YER is good for sentry nests, the big earner is a shit ton of fun to get chainstabs with, the spy-cicle is nice to avoid a cautious pyro, but im now of the opinion that the Kunai is the best knife and has become my personal favorite knife.
One idea I had regarding this is instead of healing why not damage resist with 100 health (I have no idea how long the resistance should be), I understand that the Dead Ringer already does this but it doesn't regain health at all. No infinite health but it does help the spy survive afterwords. Possible to chain stab but at a limit because eventually the health will run out unless they run to a medpack. They could also add the removal of damage resist during cloak (before the stab, after the stab the resistance for the kill would be there for the determined duration) or no picking up health packs during cloak (both before and after stab) for the "mega dead" factor
Hey Mate! Have you considered that people you see in pubs using the kunai usually have a disproportionate amount of hours compared to people using other knives. The reason the kunai seems so op is that only good players stomp with it, these same players could also stomp with any other knife. After a certain point, only the skill of the player matters.
Can I suggest a an idea for the Kunai? I doubt it would do any good but I wnat to try and throw my hat into the ring since I palyed TF2 a long time ago. It could be its own knife though. So Screw it! I got at least one idea: The Sculpteur épineux (Thorny Carver) The weapon is a docorated wood carving knife with thorn pat with one side of the knife sharper. + On Backstab: REstores 50% base health on kill with excess going into overheal + ON Backstab: Removes debuffs + Max Overheal increases to 80% max Health (My math is off but it could be 210 Health so instead make it that.) - while Debuffed, Cannot Chainstab (the Backstab is treated like you hit a Razorback) - Fire Vulnerability +15% - Afterburn removes disguise The idea of the weapon is to be opportunist- jump in at the rihgt time to be a menance, or be punished for it. You jump in you can pull off the sick chain stabs and you have health to get away with it if they catch on. The downside though is if they catch you, and you won't be getting too far. Going as far as being hit by Mad Milk or Jarate kills your chances for it as you haveot make your escape and risking it for a backsttab would heal you to full but you won't be chainstabbing anyone. in fact yo u're better off to keep running. And it forces you to be REALLY wary of- or catch the Pyros off guard. Otherwise you're pretty much ashes since you know carrying a knife wiht a WOODEN handle that isn't fireproof would probably ruin your disguise too. Espeically since they all need is a puff of fire and you're dead on sight- and it allows anyone with a debuff (Fire, Bleed, Jarate, mad milk) to stop from making those moves and force a retreat. ESPECIALLY from a Nest if the Engineeer found you out (and gvies a Soutehrn Hospatality a new niche of catch Shear Spies). A Methodical weapon for a methodical class. With a stock watch can help you get in but try not to get bumped. Wtih Cloak and dagger, it pairs great wiht it! Just remember that anything that burns removes your disguise so don't forget to apply a disguise otherwise you' decloaking in front of a Sentry is going to get you in trouble. Sure you can pair with a Dead Ringer and you can be aggressive, but then what would what it do to a tema that can hear you coming and be aware of you? Just because you have more Health doesn't mean it isn't going to save you. And Yes yo ucan feign death, and havea speed boost But your opprtunity is ruined- and the enemy team is going to be chasing your tricky hide, including if that Pyro finds you. Best switch knives if you don't want to get cooked. Adn your disguise goes wit hit. And yo ucan get that overheal from that medic to top you off but now you haveto deal with a normal decay. It's no Kunai but it forces you tothink more carefully. So it becomes a question of Will cut them off or would you be cut off. Your skills better be point because its' either going to be 7/10 of you winning that.. or 7/10 you're stopped and cooked.
i've got a rework: upps +25 max hp +10% faster movement speed on wearer 75 hp on kill(includes butterknifing) on backstab: a small sized aoe slow effect on enemies downs +20% damage vulnerability while active -15% swing speed -50% cloak regeneration
6:49 BAD TF2 WEAPON IDEA Weapon Description: After an intense fight between Mann and Machine, the Spy managed to salvage something of worth from the destroyed remains of Grey's rusty tin cans. Who would've thought a giant steel pike with a spring coiling around it would make quite the effective weapon in the resourceful rogue's hands _The Coiled Disruptor - Level 1 Knife_ • Jonto's Really Weird Buff + Take 50% less fall damage and 20% knockback (airblasts, rockets, etc) - Gain 20% more knockback for 2 seconds after a backstab - No Random Critical Hits **Note: this will most probably be reworked, I'm just throwing some ideas out rn*
Going back to the old Kunai sounds like the perfect rebalance to me. No minimum health would force you to pick targets that are going to be a detriment to your team.
Exsept the old one is worse for both as it means killing high priority targets suck as they will have lost hp in the front lines but the low priority who stay back have the hp Sure it makes killing heavy’s less annoying for the other team but the weapon also would suck
Here are three custom balance ideas for the Spy's Kunai in TF2, each with a different balance direction: **Overpowered Balance Idea: "Kunai Mastery"** * Increase the Kunai's damage output to 75-100 (from 65-85) * Increase the Kunai's firing rate by 15% * Decrease the time it takes for the Kunai to recharge by 25% * Add a new attribute: "Kunai Mastery" - every 5 kills with the Kunai increases the Spy's movement speed by 5% for 5 seconds (stacks up to 3 times) This balance makes the Kunai an extremely formidable and reliable choice for the Spy, with increased damage output and firing rate. The new attribute rewards aggressive playmaking with increased movement speed, making it easier for the Spy to chase down enemies or escape danger. **Underpowered Balance Idea: "Kunai Novice"** * Decrease the Kunai's damage output to 40-60 (from 65-85) * Decrease the Kunai's firing rate by 10% * Increase the time it takes for the Kunai to recharge by 20% * Remove the ability for the Kunai to auto-crit on disguised enemies This balance makes the Kunai a less appealing choice for the Spy, with reduced damage output and firing rate. The increased recharge time and removal of auto-crit on disguised enemies makes it harder for the Spy to rely on the Kunai for consistent kills. **Medium Balance Idea: "Kunai Specialist"** * Increase the Kunai's damage output to 70-90 (from 65-85) when the Spy is behind an enemy * Decrease the Kunai's damage output to 50-70 (from 65-85) when the Spy is in front of an enemy * Add a new attribute: "Kunai Specialist" - every 3 kills with the Kunai increases the Spy's cloak duration by 1 second (stacks up to 3 times) This balance makes the Kunai a situational but powerful choice for the Spy, with increased damage output when attacking from behind. The new attribute rewards stealthy playmaking with increased cloak duration, making it easier for the Spy to stay hidden and pick off enemies. However, the decreased damage output when attacking from the front makes the Kunai less effective in head-on confrontations.
If I had to rework the Kunai I would change it's effects to instantly trigger your cloak on backstab, and lower your hp to 100 instead of 70. The instant cloak fits the ninja theme of the knife, contributes to the idea of being a survivor knife without making you tanky, and the forced cloak activation is a both a benefit and a downside, as you have to take the time to manually decloak before you can stab again which prevents chain stabs. Making it effectively the opposite of the Big Earner.
Given that disguises are one of the spy's main tricks, I think that disabling it entirely is a bit harsh. It would be quite difficult to get the first stab with a kunai if you not only have lower health, but no disguise. That's one reason why I used to not use the YER at all. Instead, maybe mirror the downside of the YER, so that you can disguise, but it consumes a full cloak meter. As stated in the video on knives, that means careful thought to your disguises.
Buffs: Kunai overheal is seperat from medic overheal, does not decay and has no upper limit. Nerfs: Backstabs don't remove debuffs, no longer at least 75 health back and only gain a 40% (this number could be changed) of health back.
I really like the shockwave and I think the best way to make it fit within the identity of the kuani would be a “special stab” that has a 10 second cool down that includes the health gain and the shockwave. This isn’t enough on its own but I think it’s a good way to make the shockwave fit into the identity of the kunai.
A "healing cooldown" idea but streamlined: Upon backstab: - Gain 50 health (no overheal). - *Then* get your current and max health scaled up to 200. Now your first backstab gets you from 70hp to 200, while also healing off any stray bullets caught on your way. Your consecutive stabs will heal you only by 50 health, which is enough of a reward for pulling off a chainstab, and gives you an extra chance to escape, but still reasonable for the opponents on your tail to outdamage.
Random half-thought: What if instead of overhealing and the max health penalty, it had the cloak drain rate penalty from the Y.E.R. and had the full heal upon backstab that was suggested?
While we're at it, something that I think would be really sick alongside removing cloak DR is giving the spy its own damage reduction on backstab kills. This would mean that, while they can't run faster like the Big Earner, they could potentially damage surf explosives or a sentry away from the enemy team and rely on the spy's ability to do so instead of just "lmao infinite healing". Even if you do refresh the damage reduction, you don't heal back damage taken and tie it directly to spy's high risk instakill move instead of right-clicking whenever.
Honestly, I was just thinking about putting the health boost concept onto a Syringe that you can use to fill up on the Enemy's health, and be able to give that health back to your teammates or enemies at the cost that anyone who's overhealed by this health will have their speed lowered. However, this thing allows for a lot of classes to have a lot of health, it still needs to backstab enemies, the speed penalty does nothing for Snipers, Soldiers, Demomen anf Demoknights, and Heavies, while it could potentially assist Turtling Engineers and give better survivability for Medics. Scouts would probably be the last class you would ever want to overheal with this syringe weapon, because a Scout's speed is incredibly important, and as for Pyros, meh? I mean, if they have mobility (Which they will, there is literally no reason for them not to have stuff like the Powerjack) then it could help offset the overheal speed penalty, but if they don't, you basically have created a stationary flaming sentry. Maybe also provide an attack speed, reload speed, switch to and from speed penalties for the overhealed targets and cap the maximum overheal at 500? Also, allow for Spies to use it on themselves or to store it for later despite the stored health decaying over time and being lost upon death, meaning speed is something you'll need with this knife. For the Kunai though, just make it into a lighter, weaker stock knife with it having 3 throwable 150 Backstab damaging knives.
I have a cool idea for a rework. Make the health penalty be the same as the big earner but add a downside that bumping into people while cloaked not only blips u but drains 25% of your cloak. It would invalidate brute forcing with the dead ringer and make it even more difficult to maneuver around fights.
Just seems like the knife should be reverted back to now it was. Only heal the amount of health you take from the enemy. U kill someone with 10 health u gain 10 health. U kill a full heavy u gain 150 max
This sounds like something only sensei wu from ninjago would say but I think the only way reach spys full potential is amby + dead ringer and kunai often referred to as the tryhard loadout. I just think that if there was a robot playing the game absolutely perfectly it would give the most kills in a minute
If the shockwave were to be on a knife, I would go with it being a new weapon. Maybe a microphone themes knife with a 360 degree speaker on the end of the knife. Maybe it would be a meter that fills up after each backstab, and you need 5 to set it off. So every 6 backstabs the shockwave would occur. Maybe you also could get the health of a gunslinger engie. But you have a 1 second cooldown on crits being dealt by backstabs, and instead they would be mini-crits.
Pros: Upon kill you get 70 overheal Damage resistance of 20% Screams are quiet Cons: Max health is 70 The more you stab within a 7 seconds moment your back stab speed is decreased Overheal also draining 10% faster then of kunai
I really like the idea you came up with...but the knock back won't work. Instead, to have the Kunai work you have to think "Ninja". Here's what I got: Kunai Stats: -Spy starts with 85 HP -Adds 35hp to health for successful backstab (up to four times like Eyelander) -Backstab kills are silent -On backstab, instantly cloak and speed boost for 4 seconds (Uses 25% of cloak meter) With these stats, I feel like the Kunai would work great as a high priority knife with an added reward for each backstab.
Another cool idea is maybe keep 90% of the kunais main functionality, and just make it, so the spy CANT at all, use med packs, or be healed by medics, having them rely on their healing stabs. Not even ubercharge could be farmed off teh spy. Also another thing might be to remove the 75hp minimum cap, so that will let newbie team mates not have such an impact on the spy thats about to stab them.
So I have no idea why, I woke up early and started watching this video like half asleep still. In the midst of him talking about the nerfs and buffs, my brain thought "A smoke bomb would be a cool dead ringer reskin!" to which it promptly followed with thinking about the body being replaced with a cloud of smoke. No idea why I felt the need to share this here but ninja spy go hard!
Jonto what if the kunai makes you have 220 hp but on backstab you lose 40 hp you cant go lower then 70 hp and you cant heal by medipacks or your medic but the enemy medic CAN heal you simply rewarding good acting and thinking
Kunai: For existing kunai Upside: Give full overheal on kill Immune to random crit for 3sec Downside: Cannot chain healing cd 5 sec Health=50 High risk high reward
Honestly some spies annoy me, but i always remember how if i literally had 3brain cells i could beat them Like even the strongest of spies can be destroyed by someone who has a brain(aka not me)
Something that would fit the ninja vibes of the kunai would be making it *lock* you into cloak for 3s with 1/3 normal drain and a 70% faster cloaking effect, (and no cooldown,) just vanishing after a successful backstab. If you chose to uncloak straight away by pressing the cloak button before the lock ends, you just pop back into existence with the 70% faster cloak transition speed. You up and pop in and out of existence. You still have semi-chainstab potential and potential for movement jiggery-and/or-pokery. To balance this madness, 100 health, like the big earner, so there’s emphasis on picking your targets carefully to make sure your first stab gets you the cloak to either leave or go in to get your actual priority targets with the bonus invisibility. To balance, -1 full mag of ammo for your revolver. Less defensive ability, for more stealth and evasiveness
That goofy buff made me think of a stupid name for a knife like that The BackBlower, although I think it's debuff should be a tighter backstab radius and a cool down before it can push others away again
An idea I had while watching this video was that the Kunai would function like the Eyelander, in that you start with 70 health and gain 35 max health for every backstab until you reach a max of 210, with no speed boost. It's a fun idea and it turns the Kunai into more of a snowball weapon. Just like the eyelander, killing someone at 4 "heads" while not at max health (maybe like 110/210) would heal some HP, in this case 35 HP (145/210). Sure it invalidates it's own downside, but it takes some time and you only heal 35 hp per stab so chainstabs are harder. Feeding off bad teammates will still happen by nature of the snowball design, but after every stab you'll be less incentivized to go after them, taking your high HP and going after the good ones. It keeps you alive after a kill by high HP, but the low stab healing (35 hp) will make chainstabs harder. What makes this design good is that it's balanced. If you fall for the spy curse and only get 1 or 2 stabs, you're just using a worse stock knife. If you get 3 or 4, it's better. I like Speyelander.
I like the idea of making the healing an overtime effect instead of an instant heal. So I suggest for the Kunai that, on backstab, clear all status effects, and additionally gain 210 healing over the course of 7 seconds that overhills up to 210 total health. (Non-stackable.) In addition to a passive 75% reduced overheal decay. And as a nerf to the Dead Ringer I suggest a passive 50%-65% reduced healing from all sources. (Making it harder to bounce back from taking a lot of damage.) :3
dumb idea: either remove or significantly nerf the health reward for a backstab, but: on backstab, refills cloak meter and immediately cloaks you. like- frame one, youre completely invisible. this would make it: -easier to escape, as, by the time anyone's turned around, theres just no one there -harder to chain stab, as you have to de-cloak every time you want to stab someone, making a noise when theyre _already_ on alert for you. -fit the theme of the kunai, as you literally just vanish after a kill, making it look like to everyone else that by the time they turned around, you killed their teammate, re-cloaked, and are already so far ahead of them that they didnt even catch where you went. while it still kiiinda makes bad teammates a problem, the reduced hp gain makes it much less of _your_ problem, since you can still take them out if you can keep track of them. but, as intended, good luck doing that.
I still think the problem is that people think that punishing bad players is a bad thing about the kunai since honestly isn't the whole point of the spy class that punishes bad players and bad teamwork?
I don't really see how it's bad against coordinated teams, or at the very least is worse than spy in general is against coordinated teams. As fsoas puts it if you're caught out as spy, stock or kunai, you're just dead, and other than getting nailed by spam while invisible I struggle to think of a situation where anyone is dying BECAUSE of the kunai, and would survive with stock instead. This factor of the kunai is far more noteworthy to complain about than its sustainability against bad players imo because in almost all circumstances it has no relevant downsides.
