Highlander Season 16 Preseason Cup
June 26, 2018
With the dust settled on Season 15, let’s start the preparation for Season 16! This cup will focus around testing unlocks for the upcoming season to see whether these weapons should be allowed or not.
>>>Signup now!<<<
Whitelist changes
All the following unlocks will be banned during this cup. Feedback around the whitelist will be taken into consideration when making the whitelist for highlander season 16, this is by no means the whitelist for said season. The new whitelist can be found here.
Mad Milk: We feel mad milk is often too decisive in teamfights, the most prominent use on koth maps can shift the entire balance of a team fight.
Scorch shot: The flare knocks back enemies and can hit multiple people at a time as the flare explodes when it hits the ground. Contrary to the detonator the scorch shot flare takes little effort to effectively use, furthermore it mini-crits targets that are already on fire. This makes the scorch shot nearly a straight upgrade of the flare gun and detonator.
Iron bomber: Due to the pipe having little roll and far more predictable bounces missing a pipe is punished less. Moreover it has a greater projectile speed when compared to the stock pipes, making it a direct upgrade to the default grenade launcher.
Machina: Much like the iron bomber this weapon is a straight upgrade of its stock variant. The extra damage and player penetration are good upsides while virtually no downsides are present.
Map pool and timings
Each tier is divided into round robin groups of four teams meaning there could be multiple groups for each tier, teams that sign up sooner will be prioritized in getting a spot in the cup, so do not wait until the last minute to sign up! Keep in mind that there will not be any elimination rounds for this cup.
- Signups close: July 7th at 21:00 CEST
- Group stage round 1: July 8th 19:00 CEST- pl_upward
- Group stage round 2: July 8th 20:00 CEST- koth_product_rc9
- Group stage round 3: July 8th 21:00 CEST- cp_gullwash_final1
Upward will be played as a bo1 while product and gullywash will be played following the standard league rules.
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Posted by -Greenghost- in 1 Day Cup, Cup, Highlander
content rss
no milk >:(
r.i.p. mad milk iron bomber and machina you will be missed :c
scorch shot deserves the ban tho t b h
Milk is balanced tbh, it really helps in team fights, the other scout can use milk aswell Furthermore it can also be a big team helper weapon as u can use it to axtinguish teammates on crucial times, iron bomber is a great granade launcher that launches bombs fast , i don’t really understand the ban, and what’s the problem in machina really?
well imo the scortch shot is a good ban
Etf2l wtf?
murpheey so wet rn
Damn, spies are going to love these bans.
did i also mantioned that milk can help with spychecking? smh
EssentialsTF July EU Monthly cup is at the same time, just saying
trash milk getting banned???? time to make a comeback
thank god milk and scorch shot dead
“iron bomber is a great granade launcher that launches bombs fast , i don’t really understand the ban” lolwhat
Mad Milk, Machina and Scorch Shot banned? I feel like this is a dream, when am I waking up?
also rip lil claw [*]
Just also ban the fucking jarate and be done with this shit
im shook
mezzo: $QUAD – op_sqd said:
Today, 01:32
“iron bomber is a great granade launcher that launches bombs fast , i don’t really understand the ban” lolwhat
this made me wet
is the iron bomber really that much faster than stock?
Iron bomber is not faster than stock at all. It is, however, more consistent, because projectiles are affected by air drag in TF2 and the stock pipe’s tumble makes its trajectory have some amount of RNG. IMO this is poor design on the stock pipe rather than the iron bomber being broken. https://youtu.be/ACfafLuLmy8 <- sigsegv's video on it
As for the others
* machina should have been banned from the start
* milk is definitely a very strong item although I think teams almost never use it to its full potential, worth a test though
* scorch shot is braindead and I won't miss it
I don’t think any of the throwables (Milk, Jarate) should be a thing unless their radius is reduced by a fair amount, or their effects/duration are reduced. For Jarate the latter wouldn’t really work but the Milk is stupid to the point where you win virtually every 1v1 vs any other class as long as they’re milked and you don’t miss all of your shots.
Visualization of the Jarate/Milk radius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hYZbyUK170
It would be sad to see the milk go because it does add more depth to scout but I guess we’ll see if the game is more fun without it.
can we ban sniper then?
i can understand ban scorch shot and machina, but ban milk and iron bomber its autism
Banning iron bomber seems normal if machina is banned, they’re both pretty much straight upgrades from stock.
Choosing to ban milk but not jarate is questionable, I’d say ban both or none, and banning would be very punishing… We’ll see how it turns out
bye bye scorch shot feelsgoodman
Seems good. Also, MoreBuckets, you listed the reasons they were banned lol
So glad about the iron bomber and scorch shot bans jesus christ…
Im also glad im not the only one thinking the iron bomber is a direct upgrade, and yes it is a faster projectile cuz the trajectory is different, if not the pipe size and hammer unit speed registering in source engine.
Weirdly enough i also feel like the hitbox for the iron bomber pipes is larger than regular ones, like the amount of times on normal ping that ive been damaged by pipes that like explode in the pocket of air next to me is ridiculous (not just on heavy xd)
When signing up for the cup the drop down tier select gives me the old school Divisions 1-6 + Premiership, is this deliberate or an error?
I would guess 80% plus of the HL community has never played the division system so it is gonna be pretty difficult for team leaders to sign up in an accurate skill tier.
Then ban Ubersaw too, lol
The Iron Bomber is not faster than stock. Make sure to watch the WHOLE sigsegv video. Very rarely, both stock and Iron Bomber can reach slightly further. But mostly they’re identical. It’s very unfortunate that the very first shot shows Iron Bomber getting that rare bit of extra distance, and many people seem to stop watching there.
https://youtu.be/ACfafLuLmy8
I accept the Milk ban, but Jarate should get the same treatment. Jarate is just as much of a teamfight winner and it’s also a group killing weapon on a single target class. Jarate also seems stronger than Milk to me, with a significantly longer duration on targets who are getting healed, often forcing an entire combo to give up their fight.
Both of these throwable weapons should get their splash reduced to a level where it basically requires a direct hit.
ban everything
I usually do not care about highlander but this iron bomber ban seems very uncalled for and not based in reality. As people have pointed out the projectile speed is not faster it is merely the inconsistency of the stock pipes that make it seems so, this is however almost not noticeable. Yes the rollers are a bit easier to hit but tends to do way less damage because of the -15 blast radius, same when you hit two players near each other in this area the grenade launcher is clearly better and this is probably very common in highlander. You also loose the ability to long range spam when using the iron bomber and saying that it is a straight upgrade is just wrong.
I’m sure most demos use the iron bomber for reasons like mine, they like the ability to consistently spam chokes and to use the roller as a jumping tool as well as preferring the smaller arch compared to the grenade launcher.
who’s the pubber that decided to ban the iron bomber?? greater projectile speed?? direct upgrade?? ahahaha
As pointed out, it’s false to say that the iron bomber has an increased projectile speed (and kinda worrying that anybody in a position of making weapon ban decisions in ETF2L would ban it on this basis). As shown in the video people have linked, it travels slightly more reliable due to the physics of the projectile but in reality the effect of this is minimal and I would argue that this is more a flaw with the stock launcher than anything else…
In my experience, it’s true that the rollers have more utility when you do miss a pipe since they stay in the area rather than rolling away. At the same time though, it does change and limit a lot of your options for spam (as well as limiting your range in general). Not sure about the explosion radius… IMO it’s hard to really tell specifically when it matters but it’s certainly not a positive. Iron bomber is a side-grade and a balanced one at that.
Oh, and I see jarate used a lot more to greater effect than the milk but maybe that’s just me. Strange that only the milk gets banned.
Machina, sure, but I find the comparison to the iron bomber amusing.
If you’re banning things that are “straight upgrades” compared to stock why isn’t Ubersaw, crossbow, Boston basher and other weapons (that are more required than the iron bomber) banned? Just ridiculous really. A medic without a crossbow will cope a lot worse than a demo without an iron bomber, so what’s the reasoning lmao
Not banned* smh
Why are people saying the more consistent projectile of the Iron Bomber is hardly noticeable in game? Literally eversince it’s become the the most used pipe launcher, the damage output has increased so much compared to the stock grenade launcher. There’s officials where demo’s have more than 50% of there damage dealt by the Iron Bomber. This does mean that sticky damage will be a bit less, but because of the Iron Bombers rollers, there’s a lot of moments where you wouldn’t spam stickies at all and just go for Iron Bomber. The projectiles stick on the ground and detonate quick, not that different from stickies, but you don’t have to detonate and it reloads quicker than stickies. If you do this with the stock grenade launcher you have to deal with the randomness and longer detonation time, so stickies would be the smart option there. The benefit of this also is, you can spam as much as you want with the iron bomber because it reloads quick and you’ll have 8 stickies loaded whenever needed.
I notice these things a lot and that’s why I think it’s an upgrade and I agree with the ban
the iron bomber is easier to use than the stock due to the points mentioned previously with the source engines air drag and trajectory. There is little reason to even use the stock over the iron bomber simply because demos hit more pipes with the iron bomber; its a visible problem within the source engine, and if there will be no fix in that regards then an iron bomber ban is an interesting place to start. Demos who rely on pipes will probably get angry because they end up doing less damage lol
Again, Iron Bomber does NOT have a different air trajectory. the trajectories are IDENTICAL. Either of them can very rarely reach a little bit further. Watch sigsegv’s video. Ignore the first clip which just happens to have more distance on the Iron Bomber. Compare stock and Bomber on every shot. Also check the shots with gravity enabled.
Sometimes stock goes a tiny bit further. Sometimes Bomber goes a tiny bit further. The vast majority of the shots they are exactly the same, regardless of spin.
On the very last shot you can even see stock go further than the Loch. I think this demonstrates a problem with the drawn lines.
Iron Bomber is still better though, but ONLY because the rollers are better. Almost every missed shot with stock is a completely missed shot. Most missed shots with Iron Bomber get a second chance to deal damage in the same area. The rollers also detonate quicker.
But I don’t think this small advantage is a big enough to ban the weapon. The main purpose of pipes is to hit directs, and demos that miss a lot of directs will generally be worse off, roller hits or not. And like others have said, since there’s much less randomness in the rollers, I think it should be promoted as the default competitive option over stock, in stead of banned.
Ban Spy Dead Ringer aswell. Its straight upgrade from normal since you can fake death lmao.
ban everything
ban the admins
vanilla tf2 or riot
The iron bomber ban would never have happened if moist was head admin #MoistForHeadAdmin
ban dr, only spy mains care
ban iron bomber, EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS
how can there be virtually no downgrade to machina if you dont even have to be in mumble to know where the enemy sniper is?!?
also machina cant noscope, i recommend for the (b)admins to read up on wepons @ whitelist.tf
http://www.ugcleague.net/forum/showthread.php?62632-ETF2L-is-considering-on-banning-Mad-Milk-Scorch-Shot-Iron-Bomber&p=338428#post338428
Some funny salt here from our burger friends, upset we are testing bans in a one night cup rather than the NA way of just doing it in the actual season OmegaLUL.
wow wow being braindead ez to use shouldnt be a reason to ban, with that logic we could just ban pyro as a whole
also whats more likely to be op: a side unlock everyone uses (iron bomber) or a sidegrade almost noone uses (scorch shot)
and iron bomber also nerfs pyro by the fact that if you poof it back in an akward angle it ends up dealing 140 damage and humongous knockback to yourself and unlike rollers you can’t really dodge it
stock grenades are literally better in hl anyway, u fire 1 pipe and hit 5 people. the larger explosive radius means more dmg / more ppl hit.
ALSO ITS NOT FUCKING FASTER ROFL
bye scorch shot , now pyro must actually aim
Scorch shot ban = give braindead snipers more space.
Scorch shot is ebola most of the time(pyro weapons not being balanced or fun to play against,what a surprise)
While removing mad milk makes scout to lose 1v1s against people that can aim/even more useless without the beam/reducing impact in salvaging teamfights
Apparently we can’t let scout being relevant (especially in payload).
And machina is barely an upgrade(die to spies without razorback or deal no damage when getting flanked) if you don’t count the white lines in the air after every shot.It may be better than stock if you are protected by a lvl 3 sentry but that is about it
People living in denial that Iron Bomber isn’t a straight upgrade to Grenade Launcher smh.