Demoman over powered?

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l3eeron
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Demoman over powered?

Post by l3eeron » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:52 am

I was milling around over at steam TF2 forums...

horrible place, BTW, I had to get a little rant off my chest.


I've noticed over the last month or so, that there's alot of people who think the demo is vastly over powered. Claiming that stickies are too powerful, have too much blast radius, mid-air dets are ruining the game. Pipes are just for spammers. Sticky jumps give an unfair advantage....The list goes on and on... There's a few that think the demo is fine.

Well, since I mostly play demo, I'm biased. But, I would have to say that, a really good demo is almost untouchable. Especially when playing in a defensive role. Reaching that skill level is definitely a huge under taking. Because of the nature of his weapons, he has to anticipate and be situationally aware, more so than other classes. Playing demo forces you to think ahead, when mastered can make it see like the class is over powered when really, it's just a player who's knows where everyone is, was, and wants to be....


The same goes for any class though, really. I've seen an example for every class where the person is just owning everyone. I think to single out the demo and request valve to nerf the class (as they have over at steampowered.com) is plain lazy. The demo has his weakness (close quarters combat) just like all the other classes. It get frustrated when people would rather cry than learn to exploit the weakness of what ever class they are having trouble with.


I can't even imagine how much complaining is going to happen wen the demo get his unlocks :?

Then, again, I'm biased.... so what do you guys think? I would like to hear some opinions from people I actually respect.

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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by DeafOfficeWorker » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:13 am

Every game = whiners who claim "over-powered"/"unbalanced"/blah dee blahdy blah...
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Post by Dog » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:19 am

Oh God....don't read the Steam forums!
Most of the regular posters over there are whining, negative folk with not a lot of good to say about the game.

And the moderators are so bad at what they do. They will let some people post their game server IPs and community URLs.
I got my knuckles rapped for posting "www.theville.org" once, even though it was us that found the cure to a stinkin' VALVe exploit and I was just posting it to help the community at large.
Bastards.
Hate the moderators there.

Anyway, if they think the Demo is overpowered now, what will they think when the update comes out for it.
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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by Thom Yorke Obliterator » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:21 am

[quote="l3eeron";p="124944"]I've seen an example for every class where the person is just owning everyone.[/quote]

That about sums it up. A good player is a good player.

Here's my theory: being a good Demoman is more fun than being a good anything else. That's my personal opinion but there are a lot of players who would agree. If you see a lot of good Demos around, it's because we're having a lot of fun.

Ironically, the ammo nerf for Demo and Solly may have made them more fun to play. I enjoy resource management.
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Post by Cpt. Winky » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:25 am

the one complaint i have is a body shot rocket does less damage then a pipe blowing up near your feet. i think the rockets and pipes should do about equal damage.
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Post by DeafOfficeWorker » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:28 am

[quote="StrontiumDog";p="124948"]
I got my knuckles rapped for posting "www.theville.org" once, even though it was us that found the cure to a stinkin' VALVe exploit and I was just posting it to help the community at large.
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Post by l3eeron » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:33 am

[quote="Cpt. Winky";p="124952"]
the one complaint i have is a body shot rocket does less damage then a pipe blowing up near your feet. i think the rockets and pipes should do about equal damage.
[/quote]

Looks pretty even to me If anything the rockets are more reliable, in that they always do at least 105 dmg.

(from tf2 wiki) http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Main_Page

Pipes

Direct Hit: 64-132 (296 crit)

Self damage: 25-64 (25-64 crit) Note the damage you take depends on how far away you are from the explosion.

Rocket


105-112 (Direct hit 270 crit, Splash at 3ft/1m: 226 crit, Splash at 6ft/2m: 140 crit)

Self damage: Shooting straight forward, does 46 / 51 shooting straight down (Same for crit)


(These numbers are not published by valve. Research done by community efforts)

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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by Yahoo!! » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:36 am

Nah

I will be honest, there are really no broken classes, but good players that use the class well. As much as the demoman seems broken, he has lots of weaknesses. Close range, he is very weak and has to land some important pipes or he is dead. With the compression blast, stickies aren't as useful anymore.

I mean, people have told me the spy is overpowered for crying out loud. The class that needs a significant boost is the scout however. They just don't seem to get any love these days.

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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by abiscuit » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:05 am

You know, I'm surprised a topic like this hasn't shown up until now. I'm sure a lot of people have had this thought through their mind with any given class. I play most of the classes, so I would think I have an unbiased opinion here. I'm also not expecting a lot of people to put up a discussion here or to question anything, so I'll do it.

There's two major variables with this: skill level and the map. You can't quantify skill level, as you said someone that is extremely good with a class is going to lay waste to most people. Sometimes the map favors a class over another, Warpath and Dustbowl are good examples. So with these two variables putting a ton of influence in the game, how can anything be determined? I'm sure Valve realizes this isn't an easy task. There's that invisible line somewhere that Valve is trying to find, we know that they are collecting a ton of data to try and determine this.

I do think one thing we can look at here is class strengths/counters. While nothing is guaranteed, I'm sure we can all agree, for example, that if you are a Pyro then you will have a better chance at killing a Spy. I thought about this for a second and wondered if Demo had a direct counter? The pyro to his spy in other words. Maybe the dedicated Demo players can help me out here, but I can't seem to recall many situations where I was at a disadvantage playing as a Demo based on my enemy's class. However, this is where the map variable comes up again. Scout was a class that went through my mind as a potential counter. They're fast, hard to predict, and can exploit the Demo's poor close quarters weakness. Then I remembered how many of the common maps played hate Scout. You could make an argument for Sniper or Spy, but typically they are going for more important targets. I think because there's no "direct" counter for Demo is the reason why people complain about it the most.

I'm not saying any class should be changed, yet. There's too many outlying factors. If anything, I think there should be more maps that give something for every class. Badlands is one of my favorite maps for this reason and it's the same reason why I hate Dustbowl. I'm trying to spark some discussion, get some more opinions on the matter.

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Post by l3eeron » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:12 am

Scouts are def demo's weakness. They can jump over stickies, if you aren't watrching your sticky trap, they scoot right by. Add to that how deadly the scatter gun is at point blank and how hard it is to land a pipe on him. Scouts a brutal for any demoman.


Also, a decent pyro can easily make a demoman's game go to pot. Reflecting pipes, blasting stickies... plus, pyros main strength is close quarters, which is a demos main weakness.

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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by DeafOfficeWorker » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:16 am

Since demos camp a lot, that makes them susceptible to spies and snipers also. ;)
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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by Guardian » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:24 am

The steam forums are mainly just:

1. THE (insert class here) IS OVERPOWERED!!! (9/10 these are angry players who got dominated on a server and have come here)

2. Spy is underpowered, lets give him a hard to program and overpowered item

3. Suggestions for unlocks everyone else has come up with before and 3/4 of the time they are overpowered (some of them are good thou)

4. This guy was using hacks can you ban him valve, he was a pyro and he kept on getting crits always against me and I couldn't never see him coming too (usually followed by calling the OP noob).

5. Come see my awesome video of me pwning everyone

6. OMG sentries are overpowered, we need granades to take them out

7. If you think *X class* is overpowered/underpowered then you are a noob lol!

8. OMG I HAVE LEAKED DATA THAT PROVES THE SPY IS NEXT GUYS

9. UPDATE THE BLOG VALVE

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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by Flobee » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:25 am

I hate Demomen.

And Spies. Mostly spies, but I do REALLY hate Demomen.

Infact those two are the only classes where I actually feel somewhat offended after being killed by one.

Anyway, I understand that there is a lot of skill required in being a good Demoman. I respect that. Mr S is amazing at Demoman, and he's one of my favourite people to give my uber charge to when I'm rolling Medic.

HOWEVER.

The majority of Demomen I encounter are absolute wankers. They just rapidly fire pipes and stickies in the general direction of the enemy, and rack up absurd amounts of kills. The splash damage of a couple relatively nearby explosions is enough to kill almost anything, and don't even get me started on crits. Demomen should not be capable of critting. It's INSANE. It makes me cry.


Disregard what I say. I'm a whiney, neurotic man-child.
where doing this man.
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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by Nick Mame » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:29 am

On TheVille, demomen are favored. They thrive on choke points and servers with a lot of players. Since our most popular servers are Warpath and Dustbowl, there are a lot of thriving demomen out there.

They can also involve quite a bit of spam. Pipes fire and arc quickly, making it very hard to avoid once the shots have been fired, and eight stickies is often enough to hit something. People who play this way are quite likely to die in most situations except when they can spam from the safety of their own base. On maps which allow that situation, even completely random fire can result in quite a bit of dominations.


What I hold against most demomen is that they don't know how to aim with their grenade launcher. I think stickies are far too dominate in the demoman's arsenal and would like them to take on a support role of area denial and sentry removal rather than something capable of handling all situations. The grenade launcher is so neat: you can fire it straight up and have it arc over a huge (see-through) wall hitting your target flawlessly. Stickies are so boring: you fire two of them and splash takes care of the rest. I have a lot more respect for demomen who know how (and when) to use grenades; it makes the class a lot more elegant.
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Re: Demoman over powered?

Post by Reipin » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:36 am

The reason people are whining about the stickies is because Valve gave them a reason to.

In an interview someone asked why three stickies are able to kill a sentry, dispenser, porter,a nd engi all in one shot or something to that effect, and the Valve employee was like, Over here at Valve we call them winbombs! Commence whining.

As far as the "demonman update" I wouldn't be worried about that. valve has already shown that they are willing to make near useless weapons for an update.
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