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December 2025

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[scroggage]

There have been loads of rumblings of discontent with TF2 at the moment on these forums and elsewhere. And I can say I'm beginning to feel the same.

Since the updates started all that time ago with Medic, then Pyro, the balance has always shifted a little. With the Solly and Demo update, it's just highlighted for me how underused and ineffective some of the other classes have become.

Basically I'm talking Pyro, Heavy and Engineer.

Pyro has very little role in a team now due to the more effective shock/disruption class of melée demoman. Pyro was really satisfying back in the day, with well-timed airblasts and ubers you could be very useful, but now there are so many counters to a pyro uber and so much spam that airblast seems less than useful now.

Heavy had so much to contend with already that his update didn't really deal with... if they do the Gloves of Expeditious Running like they said they might, he may become more useful again, but the problems of unavoidable spam, soldiers who have a new rocket launcher that eats heavies, the old addages of spies and snipers (both now with useful unlocks), just seems like everything is against the fatty.

Engi is probably the worst hit. During this update, it seems that any sentry nest goes down in seconds just to spam. The direct hit helps take things out really easily from range. Engis have never really had the same level of effectiveness that other classes have when played extremely well. Gasman was a top-notch engineer main-class, but even he would probably admit that his class has been a bit overlooked.

The point of this thread is that all of you lot are a canny bunch of TF2 players and I'd be really interested to hear your ideas and opinions about the state of the game now and (mainly) your ideas about how it could be fixed.
Actually, post anything that you think could do with a tweak! I'm interested to read.

[claws]

You've pretty much nailed my exact feelings on it. I think part of the problem is that there's a dependency between these classes : for example, pyro and engie go together. Heavies and pyros are often good for medics, and so on. Heavy and engie in particular are awkward because they have little 1on1 power now : 1 engie or 1 heavy is likely to get murdered, but 3 heavies or 3 engies can be effective to the point of tedium. I wouldn't say those three classes are obsolete, but I do feel soldier/demo have pushed them that way a bit. Oh, if you check the steam stats pages engies are still popular, but then the most played map is still 2fort...so it's a different world!

As for fixes, I'm not sure whether it's an issue of balance re updates, or whether one too many 'silly' updates has tipped TF2 over the edge a bit. Possibly a bit of both. Interested to see what others think on that.

[Chaos]

part of this issue is that it's hard for valve to contend with people getting better at their rolls..
sollies are getting better at airshots/using shotty more, demos are really starting to learn the value of pipes for spam and short range..
It's all about big damage = bigger payoff in games

It's hard for a class to remain fun when everyone around you is owning you.. so people switch away from engie and pyro becuase people know all to well how to counter you

[Guilt is a rope... etc]

I've felt a bit disenchanted with it recently, im hoping it will settle down when people get bored of the new weapons and acheivements.
I think it's mainly down to the mix of players. like having 3+ engies, 6+ demos\soldiers on each team does make a game suffer. I think the new weapons should be easier to counter when the demo and soldier numbers return to normal.

[Ringelbeatz]

I played a lot of Heavy since the update, and I don't think that it's so much harder.
Maybe it's because there are not many spies around, because of the spam.

But you're right, Pyros aren't there anymore and Engie is the big loser since the update.

edit: a lot of whine here:
---------------------------------
What I can't understand is why they gave a f****** sword/shield to a Demoman.
It's a DEMO. He is born to blow stuff up. How can a sword do that?
Right - IT CANT!
Why do we need something like that?
And why does he get a shield, that gives him 65% reduced explosive damage?
To make it easier to get kills?
The Pyro got the airblast, that requires somekind of timing and skill, but a shield that makes you less vulnerable is just poor.

The soldier trump is way to powerful.
Example: Last point on Dustbowl.
The attackers have a charge and the trumpet = win

But for me as Soldier it's unimaginable to put away me shotgun for that...
Same with the sticky-launcher.

Okay, enough whine...
--------------------------------------
I think Valve missed the point when they did this update.
(esp. the demo part)

It was mentioned above: the other updates weren't that powerful.
Or didn't changed the playstyle that hard. (long range to close combat - demo)

Like Guilt said: Let's see how long it takes to get the game back to normal...
After that we will see how OP some of the new unlocks really are.

[Teatime]

Good points all around.

Truth to be told I think this is the first update Valve actually screwed up (yes, I know some people would give that honour to the scout update, but that's a different matter).

I think the inital ideas for most of the weapons are actually not bad, but Valve put those into the wrong update, and on top of that they went overboard with some of the weapons.
- Equalizer is a great idea, but would be more suited for a weaker class (e.g. engy).
- Buff Banner is another great idea, but would have needed to be more carefully balanced.
- Eyelander/Chargin Targe: I actually don't mind the idea too much nor the fact that they gave it to the demo, but all three factors together (crit damage on charge, damage deduction and the bloody charge itself) is simply too much. Reducing or removing the charge would be a good place to start.
- Still don't know about the Scottish Resistance.
- Direct Hit: Apparently too easy to handle well and therefore overpowering an already strong class. Either the damage bonus would have to go or other adjustments would be required (perhaps fewer projectiles loaded).
- And don't get me started on the bloody gunboots.

Valve gave weapons which are too powerful to start with to the two classes which are already the most powerful and versatile in the game. Not only does it screw the class balance, but it also makes other classes pointless (as scrog said). It also encourages people more than necessary to play these two classes, reducing the diversity of game and gameplay drastically (played yesterday on the NUB server Dustbowl and our 5 players attack team consisted of 3 soldiers, a medic and a stubborn pyro (=me)).
Sure, some of that will ease back into a more normal gameplay, but people will always graviate to powerful classes, especially in pub games to get easy kills. So while we might see the reduction of the numbers of soldiers and demos we currently see I'm willing to bet that those numbers will not return to it's pre-update level.

Right now I'm really losing some faith in Valve. This was not simply a screwed up update, this was an error of judgment.

[Magathery]

Doesn't this follow a pattern though? What was the aftermath of the pyro update? There were certainly a lot of loony flame thrower wielding buggers about. But people adapted their game style. The heavy update wasn't that bad was it? Or the Medics? I remember the scout update. Strewth there was a lot of discussion over the stunn effect thing. Then it was the turn of the snippers and the spys. Dead Ringer anyone? Now it's soldier and demo. So that leaves the engineer (unless I've missed some one). You know Valve will tweak things. There's gonna be updates. Isn't there something about the medics gun that changed? Drains life now from the wielder or something? Didn't used to do that. I'm sure the other classes that have been updated have been fettaled down to try and bring a ballanced dynamic to the game. So I'm sure that in the months to come thing will change slightly. But your right in that this isn't the game it was not that long ago.

[Power]

I'm just glad that I got it out of my system before the update even got released. I'm waiting for the usual post-update trauma to pass and distracting myself with many other good games (there are some around, really!)

[Junta]

We're considering some class limit experimentation to see if this will ease the problems caused by the latest update... we'll see....

[discordance]

Tea i don't think it was an error of judgement, i'd assume now that engi is the last class to update they already have a plan for him and from then onwards the rebalancing of all classes. I'm hoping engi is going to get some horrifically overpowered sentries and everyone else will get some buffs and everything will start evening out again. Perhaps to something with slightly more ludicrous weapons than we started with but a balance nonetheless. I just hope the engi update and the enevitable rebalancing comes soon and we're not waiting 3 months for it all to be fixed.

[Brahms]

Yeah I'm hoping that they just drop th engy update as fast as possible and seriously rebalance this thing. Games are looking stupid atm. I don't really care about instant death, easy mode, stuns, uber counters bla bla bla just make every class useful.

[Cheez]

Trouble with buffing every class to make the game balanced again is that sooner or later we'll end up with every class being stupidly good and it will just be ridiculous. If I wanted that, I'd just go play insta-gib unreal tourny.

[Teatime]

I agree with Cheez, and more than that I don't see how an engy update could in any way correct the problems which I currently see in the soldier/demo update (at most the could do something to make buildings safer, which - as Cheez correctly pointed out - would just put things more out of proportions).
Also so far the intervals between updates have been ~3 months, so I won't hold my breath.

[discordance]

A sentry immune to explosives? Forcing the team to go spy, heavy, pyro, whatever.

And its not so much the engy update itself, just that when all classes have unlocks then the game can be properly rebalanced. If they do it now engies just going to come along and break it with uber sentries.

[Cheez]

A sentry immune to explosives? That would be way overpowered as long as you put it at a distance it would be impossible to kill. eg. all the usual sentry spots on second point of goldrush stage 1.