Things that bug me about TF2, #399,400
People complaining that the Pomson 6000 is broken.
“waaah it depletes my cloak!”
Big deal, you pansy. Know what else depletes your cloak? Getting set on fire. Oops I guess they’d better nerf pyros too! Okay fine, but so pyro is the “official” spychecking class. It’s not like they’ve given engie any other tools to ferret out the little bastards on their own, like say a wrench which causes the bleed effect.
“b-b-but it also removes uber from the medic!”
Aside from the Pomson, the only weapons that affect ubercharge rates are the Ubersaw and the Vita-Saw. Isn’t it about damn time someone had a way to decrease the charge? And as unfair as it seems for an engineer to have it, wouldn’t it be much worse on any other class? It’s not like engies are remarkably dangerous away from their sentries anyway — the damage was brought up to compensate for the penetration nerf, but it’s still roughly 20% less effective than the stock shotgun. It’s only really useful if he moves away from his nest, which brings me to the next point:
“It’s teaching newbie engineers BAD PLAY STYLE.”
News flash, kids: engineer is a really difficult class to play well. It takes both effort and experience to figure out quality defensive spots, efficient build order, ammo box locations, and why you don’t build both of your guns right next to one another. The class as a whole teaches bad style: all that time spent getting shot and backstabbed and not putting up dispensers could easily be spent learning how to get airshots with rockets and set up sticky traps. Instead, we get players who think the ideal strategy is to wait at the last point of badwater while BLU brings the cart to the edge of the final ramp before we start shooting back.
And frankly, the Pomson isn’t even the worst of his primary weapons. If my team’s engie is running up to the front with a laser and a mini-sentry and inconveniencing the medic for an extra four seconds, at least he’s doing something while he’s not building us a teleporter. My vote for the most aggravating is anyone using a Widowmaker when it’s patently clear that they don’t know how to aim and have no interest in moving away from the dispenser (“but it needs metal to shoot!”) Bonus angst if they’re backing it up with the Short Circuit.
Herein lies the truth: the real reason everyone is so pissed at the Pomson is because of the rare breed of engineer who’s good at it. It does low damage and it only holds four shots, so most players have dismissed it out of hand already. But a few of us stuck with it. We practised for a little while, realized it held its own in certain situations — a stolen moment, maybe, away from an idling gun, backing up our team from afar with medic-pestering lights. Or a heated battle against a DR-packing spy, who tries to fade away only to be revealed nearly instantly again by the drained output of his fickle watch. And now we raise hell against those who were once comfortable in their roles. We’re taking you out of the zone. Forcing you to relearn your skills, the way we had to relearn building management with the new hauling mechanic.
So why can’t you just play the game with us? Why all this rage, these angered demands to put everything back where it was, to deny the very tenets of evolution? The sandman, the loch’n’load, the wrangler — sometimes I think you’d be happier back on the 360 version of the game, with no upgrades or even an item system to cause you such grief. I personally hate the Spy-cicle, but I don’t try to get it pulled out of the game. I deal with it, because I’m a good player, and I’m having fun, and also my huntsman-sniper teammate just landed a jarate on Jack-ass Frost and now I’m gonna finish him off with the Neon Annihilator.
