User:HitlineMiamo/Balance ideas

“

I never liked you. Click to listen — The Soldier on poorly balanced weapons

”

These are some of my personal ideas for potential weapon rebalances. This is mostly just theorycrafting with personal opinions, because I'm not a game designer.

Weapon	Changes	Reasoning
Shortstop	Reload animation now properly matches the actual timing on the reload.  Shove can now interrupt reloads.  Increased Shove push force.	These are mostly just quality-of-life changes to make reloading provide better feedback to the player and not completely prevent Shoves. Seriously, if you have auto-reload on (which I'm assuming everyone with more than 20 hours does), shooting the Shortstop once completely prevents you from Shoving for 1.5 seconds. If the Shove is supposed to be useful as a get-off-me tool, it should be usable when there's no ammo left. Also the push force needs to be increased because the Shove genuinely just sends people like two feet, which is almost useless.
Baby Face's Blaster	Boost system is scrapped entirely. The Scout now always moves at 160% movement speed, but cannot Double Jump at all.	The idea behind the BFB has always been for the Scout to move faster but lose out on air mobility. This change makes the BFB more consistent overall, as the Scout's speed won't wildly change every time he shoots or gets shot, and the loss of Double Jumps is a fair trade-off for the insane groundspeed provided. It might also be worthwhile to change some of the attributes of the gun itself (clip size, damage, spread, etc), although I can't say for certain how (maybe increase spread to encourage Scouts to use their newfound speed to weave in and out of close range?)
Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol	Reduced damage.	Given how fast pistols reload in TF2, having only three less bullets per clip is pretty much negligible, making the PBPP pretty much just a straight upgrade to stock. Adding a damage penalty puts it into the niche of allowing a Scout to heal mid-fight, but reducing his damage output and depriving him of an effective backup weapon when the Scattergun runs out of ammo.
Crit-a-Cola	Instead of having every attack provide Marked-For-Death for 5 seconds, Marked-For-Death now lasts for the entire duration of the effect and for 3 seconds after it expires.	Crit-a-Cola, as far as I can tell, is designed to encourage a hit-and-run ambush playstyle where the Scout drinks the beverage, flanks an enemy, and then retreats. In the weapon's current state, a Scout can use the mini-crit boost to one-shot light classes (especially other Scouts) or severely weaken other classes with no consequences until the damage has already been dealt. Having the debuff active for the entire duration forces the Scout to more carefully consider where and when to drink the beverage, and allows players to have a chance to prevent the Scout from getting that first shot off in the first place. (Honestly, Scout really doesn't need to be harder-hitting OR squishier. This weapon's existence has always perplexed me.)
Sandman	Fixed the bug where rapidly strafing allows players to completely bypass the slowdown effect.  Slowdown now always lasts for 4 seconds, instead of being range-dependent.	People complain a lot about how the Sandman doesn't completely prevent people from shooting their guns anymore. Personally, I think removing the stun mechanic is completely justified, and that slowdown can still be an extremely useful status effect. These changes make the slowdown effect more consistent, essentially allowing a Scout to "mark" a target so that he or his team can easily chase them down.
Righteous Bison	Something. Anything.	:(
Backburner	Now only does mini-crits from behind instead of full crits.	The sheer damage output of a crit flamethrower is enough to kill you pretty much instantly before you can react. Reducing the damage bonus gives players a chance to react while still rewarding the Pyro for catching enemies off-guard.
Phlogistinator	Taunting with a full "Mmmph" meter no longer grants invincibility.	The current version of the Phlogistinator allows for a Pyro to safely perform the taunt in front of the entire enemy team. Although they're pretty much guarenteed to get shot to death instantly after the taunt, they still force enemies to stop and wait for the Pyro to become vulnerable. Removing the invincibility forces the Pyro to think carefully about where to perform the taunt, and makes them weigh the benefit of performing the taunt closer to the enemy team, therefore getting more use out of the limited-duration crit boost, with the risk of being caught helpless mid-taunt.
Scorch Shot	Afterburn duration now scales with how close the target is to the center of the blast radius. Targets at the very edge of the explosion are only set alight for 3.25 seconds.  Flares now explode on impact with players, instead of bouncing.	The Scorch Shot, in its current state, is spammed through chokepoints or at crowds to instantly set the entire enemy team on fire for the maximum duration at no risk to the Pyro. Reducing the afterburn duration on non-direct hits encourages Pyros to aim to hit targets directly instead of shooting nearby floors or walls. (For consistency, this same change should be applied to the Detonator too.) In addition, the Scorch Shot also tends to hit enemies twice per direct hit, due to the flare bouncing off targets and exploding when it hits the ground. Removing this keeps the Scorch Shot's overall damage output in line with other flare guns.
Gas Passer	Coated enemies now explode when struck, similarly to the Mann Vs Machine "Explode On Ignite" upgrade but with significantly reduced damage.  The Neon Annihilator now registers coated targets as "wet" for the purpose of crits.  Gas meter now only takes 500 damage to fill  Gas meter no longer fills over time  Gas meter is lost upon death	The Gas Passer is currently the least effective of the throwable debuff items, as being set on fire is significantly less threatening than taking significantly more damage from all sources or healing enemies that shoot you. Having coated enemies take an immediate burst of damage in addition to afterburn makes the effect significantly more threatening. This increase in power is offset by the Gas meter now charging similarly to the Soldier's backpack secondaries, instead of over time. Allowing the Neon Anihilator to combo with the gas effect also allows the Pyro to take advantage of the crits-on-wet-targets effect without having to rely on map-specific water placements or teammates. However, depending on how much damage the explode-on-ignite effect does, this could potentially allow for instant kills on Soldiers/Heavies, which is NOT balanced. This is the kind of thing that needs to be finely tuned.
Hot Hand	Instead of slapping twice per "swing", it now only slaps once, like every other melee weapon.	Splitting the melee damage into two hits is essentially just a 50% damage penalty on top of the existing damage penalty if you aren't glued to your target 100% of the time.
Wrangler	Sentry Gun no longer has a protective shield.  While active, the Engineer takes 75% less damage from his own Sentry Gun.	Having a Sentry suddenly be able to take over twice as much damage as a Heavy whenever the Engineer presses the 2 button on his keyboard is just frustrating and annoying to fight against. The Wrangler should instead encourage players to take advantage of the manual control to fight enemies outside of the Sentry Gun's normal range, prioritize targets, or overpower enemies that would have otherwise been able to survive a Sentry Gun's fire. Having reduced self-damage additionally makes Sentry Gun-based jumps more practical, giving the engineer significantly more options in terms of Sentry placement, escape options, etc.