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[Flying Carcass]

The problem with the tideturner nerf is that getting hit by anything while charging is like being hit by the Natasha.

[Zombi]

The problem with the tideturner nerf is that getting hit by anything while charging is like being hit by the Natasha.

I mean, the Tide Turner is supposed to be an ambush weapon, not a "charge right into your face weapon." If you're not charging around a sharp corner to attack and unsuspecting enemy, you're doing it wrong. If you want to charge out in the open, use the Targe or the Screen with Wee Booties.

[Leafsnail]

And miss because they can see you coming and you can't change direction

[EnigmaticHat]

And miss because they can see you coming and you can't change direction

Or shoot you in the head/airblast you/direct hit you with a knockback weapon.

Really, the way I'd describe it is that the targe is for survival, where you equip it for its defensive properties and primarily charge AWAY from combat.  I don't even know what the screen is for, point blank charges I guess.  Tide turner is pretty vital for offense; even before the update the really good pure demoknights were the ones using the charge turning exploits.

[miauw62]

Assumptions:
1. Valve didn't forget to auto-ramp stickies that hit the world, have heard of issues with jumping making me think they did, but that could just be the 9% change affecting jump map specialists who have to have fine-tuned and highly-practiced routes.

I'm fairly sure they explicitly mentioned that any stickies that touched the world automatically got max range.

[Reudh]

Posting to watch, mainly because i have 400 hours and it'd be criminal not to contribute.

[miauw62]

i really wonder why people get so mad about minisentries
am i just too gud for this world

[EnigmaticHat]

i really wonder why people get so mad about minisentries
am i just too gud for this world

If you were a gud scout you'd get it.  They have faster turn speed so you its much harder to go inside a minisentries range and pop out without taking damage, their small hitbox makes them at least as tough as a level one against your scattergun, and their faster fire rate means if you jump at all the pushback will completely fuck you up.

Then there's all the antics of dropping it mid combat.  See, even if pyros and scouts (and wierdly enough, heavies) completely ignore everything and run right up to the damn thing and shoot it, its small hitbox and insane health regen (sorry, build speed) mean that you'll take a few seconds to kill it, or possibly even fail to kill it before it constructs.  All of this is time that the engi can be getting close range meatshots on you, or retreating to do it all again.

Then there's the fact that it makes backstabs somewhat suicidal, while being such a low priority target that the sacrifice of giving away your position isn't worth the gain of sapping it.

Basically you play for dozens of hours to become a terrifying omnipresent force that appears behind people and murders them in seconds, and then some noob locks you out with an impenetrable wall that can be rebuilt in <3 seconds without having to pick up any extra metal.

[TheDarkStar]

Minisentries are why I carry the Eternal Reward on spies and why I don't trade the default demoman grenade launcher for any of the other ones with shorter explode times.

Also, I got the Tide Turner recently. Much fun has been had.

[miauw62]

Pyros melt right through miniseries, though. Most things do. Snipers prioritize them for being easy targets, and sapping them is basically the best thing you can do, since you have to wait out the sapping or remove it before you can build another. A well-placed grenade or sticky or rocket destroys them.

They're very versatile, but so are soldiers. And normal sentries basically chain you down, they're expensive, slow to build and easily killed if there's no other people beside the engineer. So you have to babysit them, which is boring.

Placing them in the middle of battle is basically the point, too.

It doesn't require no skill at all and turn you into an unstoppable murder machine or anything. (It's not the phlognisator).

[WealthyRadish]

There's a long list of things in TF2 that have been irritating or unbalanced since their introduction, but people just got used to how annoying they are and found ways of coping. It doesn't mean the game wouldn't be better if they were changed, it just means most people have given up on Valve doing anything.

The Dead Ringer's a good example, since it recently got tweaked. How many years was it until they finally did something about the Dead Ringer? And even after the nerf it's still obnoxious, they just curbed the most outrageous usages of it. How many times do you have to see an undisguised spy walking in a straight line to your base, deal 3 damage to them to trigger the ringer, and then hunt them down before you get worn down and just rationalize that shit as acceptable?

Spoiler: wall o' miniraeg (click to show/hide)

With minisentries, there are any number of changes that could keep it viable while making it less irritating to play against. The fact that it has 100 health means it can't be killed by a single normal rocket, for instance. The fact that it builds so much faster means that it's not vulnerable while being built, both in terms of health and time before it starts shooting. The fact that it has the same range as a standard sentry combined with its smaller hitbox makes it lethal over a ridiculous area given its cost and ease of building. Combining that with their rotation speed and fire rate means that targeting and firing from any angle happens almost instantly, unlike every other sentry where placed direction matters.  Having it cost 100 means that it's possible to have to fight 3 of the things to get to the engineer placing them... that's 300 health worth of damage, plus overkill.

Saying that there is any actual skill associated with using it is puzzling, considering that placement doesn't matter in the slightest due to its health and size, and they can be rebuilt fast enough that an engie is usually better off just plopping down another one wherever he is than actually fighting the person who destroyed it. I've seen minisentry engineers who literally would never fire a shot, who seemed to be completely unaware that they also have guns, and if you cornered them and somehow they didn't have metal to build another sentry would completely draw a blank and die helplessly (probably hammering their building binds). But it didn't matter, players like that still end up with a top 3 score by the round end just by building and rebuilding them. It's an interesting thing to see from a weapon called the "gunslinger". People say that it's supposed to free engineers from maintaining a nest that they never leave, but how many minisentry engineers ever actually fight outside their sentry's area? Even with the extra health it gives (for some reason), most aren't nearly confident or skilled enough to fight anyone without that 48 DPS handicap backing them up, and why would they even if they were?

Let's take a basic interaction, a soldier using the default rocket launcher against a minisentry engineer. The soldier walks into an area and is immediately assailed by a minisentry built in some moronic spot that any normal sentry could never survive in. If we say it'll take the average player 4 seconds to deal 150 damage to an engineer at mid range (generous considering most players), then the minisentry engineer just matched it and killed the soldier without firing a shot. So let's say the soldier destroys the mini first (requiring two rockets), which would take 2*(rocket travel time + 0.8 seconds) + reaction time. Let's call it 2 seconds. That soldier just took 100 damage destroying a minisentry, and now only has two rockets left loaded to deal with the engineer. If the engineer does what most do in this situation and immediately builds another before backing away and shooting, we might expect the soldier to fire a rocket at the engineer and then refocus on the new sentry. The engineer is now at a safer distance from the soldier, took maybe 50 damage, has all his weapons fully loaded and another sentry building. The soldier can't kill the engineer before the sentry finishes building in less than 3 seconds, so has to fire his last rocket and load another one to finish it off (that'll take the same 2 seconds from earlier plus 0.92 to load another rocket). Let's say the engineer can't aim for shit and does 50 damage in those 3 seconds. You now have a 50 health soldier with no rockets loaded fighting a 100 health engineer who had more than enough time to position himself advantageously. The engineer builds another sentry.

Who do you think is going to win this fight? Who do you think was the more skilled player? Do you think maybe Valve should've spent 20 minutes testing this and reduced minisentry health from 100 to 90? Or 100 to 50, 20, or hell, 10 HP?

I'm not complaining because I find dealing with minisentries difficult or think they don't have easy counters. I'm complaining because the average pubber on my team is going to fail spectacularly at dealing with them on their own, with entire teams being paralyzed as a result of something so stupid, and because any random begibus'd player who's never used a keyboard before can completely change the nature of a match just by building minisentries everywhere. I don't want to have to dedicate myself to purging the server of them before actually enjoying myself. They're simply the most unfun element in the game right now, conga excluded.

[EnigmaticHat]

Pyros melt right through miniseries, though. Most things do. Snipers prioritize them for being easy targets, and sapping them is basically the best thing you can do, since you have to wait out the sapping or remove it before you can build another. A well-placed grenade or sticky or rocket destroys them.

They're very versatile, but so are soldiers. And normal sentries basically chain you down, they're expensive, slow to build and easily killed if there's no other people beside the engineer. So you have to babysit them, which is boring.

Placing them in the middle of battle is basically the point, too.

It doesn't require no skill at all and turn you into an unstoppable murder machine or anything. (It's not the phlognisator).

Pyro is one of the worst classes to fight minisentries with, I have no idea what you're talking about.  The flamethrower is even lower damage than usual due to the lack of afterburn, you have to walk well into the sentry's range to do any damage at all.  You basically have to either lose half your health, or slowly ping it down with the flare gun, if you want to take out a minisentry as pyro.

Sapping a minisentry is a poor life choice for a spy.  Why would you give away your position to mildly inconvenience someone?  That's like, what, 8 seconds lost for the gunslinger engi?  And even in that time they can be harassing with their primary or building a dispenser or something.  Or murdering you.  The only time I would really bother is if I'm about to backstab someone, but sometimes the sapper sound will cause people to spin around so its still a risky play.

The phlog is terrible.  It requires no nerfs, if anything it needs a buff (not that I'm suggesting it should get one!).  What it is, is a way for a player far more skilled than the other team to massacre them.  Its a pubstomping weapon.  The minisentry is the opposite, it let's anyone do nearly unavoidable damage or area denial to vastly better players.

[Leafsnail]

its small hitbox

This is pretty much why mini-sentries used to be hard to deal with.  Then they fixed the hitbox and now they're pretty useless unless you're playing against like an all scout team.

[miauw62]

I do agree that a single rocket/grenade/sticky should kill a minisentry. And not using your shotty or pistol is also pretty dumb, considering that they're fairly powerful weapons. Pyros melt right through them on account of doing minigun-tier damage at point blank. Afterburn is rather insignificant during short periods of time. People have destroyed my minis before I could build them a lot. I can only build two, anyway.

I wouldn't mind a toning down of minis, since I don't think it's very likely to make them lose much of their utility.

[The Scout]

I'd like to see mini-sentries returned to their little hitbox along with halfing it's damage. Might actually be something decent and not horrible death.