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Quoted from EmilioEstevez

but in general I’d rather see the whitelist opening up than arbitrarily keeping things banned.

This is stated a lot, and there are people who want the annoying and unfun weapons banned as they see the reasons for opening up the whitelist as appealing to valve which is pointless for HL. What are your reasons for wanting an open whitelist?

Haven’t seen Air Strike or Short Circuit being used at all while playing vs Feila and Latency Issues so not sure what to think of them. Air Strike sounds broken on paper and harder to deal with as a pyro, I think Short Circuit is fine albeit a bit annoying.

I was really excited about experimenting with the Diamondback but it felt like I was gimping myself while using it in 90% of situations. The only situation where I felt it was superior to both the Ambassador and Revolver is when you want to kill a buffed sniper wearing the Razorback with two crits since the firing rate of the Diamondback is higher and the shots are easier to line up. So I guess it’s basically the Ambassador but you don’t have 102 on demand although you have a higher rate of fire meaning Snipers have less time to react when you have first-shot advantage.

It also meant I had to run default sapper to make it worthwhile otherwise it would take me forever to get the crits (not saying RTR is bad, far from it it’s ridiculously good but they don’t really synergize too well). Sure, you can stab one person and then crit them in the face but you can essentially do the same with the Ambassador without needing to backstab anyone. I can see it being more potent in lower divs where stabbing two or three people consecutively is not a rare occurence. When people turn around after one stab, it’s more of a sidegrade. On Coalplant I ran Ambassador exclusively since due to its open nature it’s too good to pass up.

Red Tape Recorder is very good at making Engineers cry themselves to sleep, takes like 10-15 seconds before you can rebuild a mini sentry which is ridiculous. It’s not that good for sapping dispensers though, although I guess you can just shoot those instead.

I love Coalplant and I would prefer it over Ashville, I really like what they did with the lobby area. Badwater is fine I suppose, Pro gimps third holds more than it should but I like some of the changes implemented.

About DR:
Spy is hard to chase because for 6 or more seconds you can’t do anything, also he has a whip boost. Yeah, I can use milk or jarate, where is the problem? After the MM update when spy got medic’s speed, you still can’t agree with other players, it makes me sad. S-O keep saying their shit while they have godlike scout, the best pyro since s5, the best demo and the best spy in game. Guess what, we don’t have same players. Besides that we all know how this will end, S-O will be shittalking every player like they did before s11. In a meeting I didn’t hear Steve who was against the DR ban. I have to mention his words in a previous topic ” For the record my view is +Razorback ban, -DR ban, and maybe think about the spycicle a bit if the DR stays. The Spycicle has a lot going for it in both loadouts although it’s a little underused. I think it can be really effective if used well. ” Even with stock knife DR is easy to use.

“Which is an argument for listening to what he has to say since he is obviously doing something right.” Ok, try to don’t play with top prem players against godlike DR spy.

Quoted from STiNGHAN

About DR:
Spy is hard to chase because for 6 or more seconds you can’t do anything, also he has a whip boost. Yeah, I can use milk or jarate, where is the problem? After the MM update when spy got medic’s speed, you still can’t agree with other players, it makes me sad. S-O keep saying their shit while they have godlike scout, the best pyro since s5, the best demo and the best spy in game. Guess what, we don’t have same players. Besides that we all know how this will end, S-O will be shittalking every player like they did before s11. In a meeting I didn’t hear Steve who was against the DR ban. I have to mention his words in a previous topic ” For the record my view is +Razorback ban, -DR ban, and maybe think about the spycicle a bit if the DR stays. The Spycicle has a lot going for it in both loadouts although it’s a little underused. I think it can be really effective if used well. ” Even with stock knife DR is easy to use.

“Which is an argument for listening to what he has to say since he is obviously doing something right.” Ok, try to don’t play with top prem players against godlike DR spy.

Yeah and this exactly why toast is the only one who really aces the DR, the amazing flank and coordination from SO allows toast to use this style effectively where other spies find themselves being alone most of the time. Not to mention, toast is basically the one who perfected this playstyle, it’s only natural he’s the best at it currently. I myself and other spies like ze man and woolen get countered really hard by milk scouts, even the scout in your own team, Credu, is so desperate to kill me he even waits for me on upward last, right next to the dispenser so I can’t do anything. Even the scout from feila, bloodis, counters me very hard with milk. I honestly think that the invis watch or cnd is a much better option to get useful picks, but if the enemy team allows for a spy to aggresively use the gun, I see no reason not to use the DR.

I also keep hearing this argument that the DR is easy to use, I highly disagree with that. It’s the gunspies among us where the DR is really useful, for normal knifespies the DR doesn’t reward as much as the IW or CnD does. Especially in higher divisions where the flank plays a huge role, where most people paranoidly check for the spy and where most scouts use milk, the DR is really hard to use without good aim.

God can you stop the rants this isn’t useful to etf2l admins at all. Can we have a thread wipe or something? This thread is about the cup, if you wanna discuss DR or banning methodology make a separate thread. Stick to what’s in the cup and not what you just felt like chatting about.

If you want I can make a video or a written guide about how simple it is to counter DR on most of the popular maps and a separate one about counterplay to red tape recorder, air strike and Diamondback as a pyro. But please stop with this “we don’t know shit cause we play too high div”, were playing AGAINST the best players as well. It’s just that where you might choose to whine on the forums, we spend time improving and thinking about how to deal with stuff.

Quoted from STiNGHAN

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Yeah, stop doing that, good idea, I’m gonna get headshot and I’ll push point with 23 hp, good idea. I know he’s really good and I can’t just ignore him. Funny coz he is top scoring most of the time in your games. So if I’m going to chase Toast, your flank and demo can push easily. I think it’s not working for Emilio since he’s carrying you for 3 seasons straight. What about your previous cup? Check logs from your seasons and from the cup with the banned razorback and DR. I can notice a difference. You played against me yesterday Emilio, I couldn’t push 3rd and you couldn’t as well, but it’s easy, your op team can do that without a problem so yeah, keep playing it.

So your problem is that Toast is too good and not that DR is overpowered then? If he’s the only one who’s giving you problems doesn’t that point to him just being really good and not a reason for an item ban (especially since I dont think you’ve ever played against him on DR/Spycicle as he spends every UGC game playing with dumb loadouts).

Also we won the no deadringer cup and when I merced for Toucans yesterday we did push third. As did your team in the 2nd round. You just failed to do it in the first round.

I get that you and I disagree on the DR ban. Personally I’m OK with just a blanket unban on all non-bugged weapons, but how do you propose we decide who’s opinion to go with? Why is your opinion more valid than say Steves considering he’s the won more HL tournaments than anyone else. If we’re not just going to have a blanket unban shouldn’t we go with the person who’s been proven to know the most about the game when deciding what we should ban?

Quoted from Included_Middle

HL would be more fun if we just banned all of the stupid weapons like the short circuit, atomizer etc. HL gains basically nothing from opening up the whitelist to allow all of these unfun unlocks and the game mode would be improved if we banned them, this was shown with how much more fun the cup which banned the DR and razor back was.

Problem with basing a whitelist on the concept of “Fun” is it’s opinion driven and enjoyment of the game is so varied and dependent on factors such as:

– Skill Level
– Main Class
– Your personal perception on how the game should be played (Ie – You like to Pocket Heavies and put Demos in support, or you prefer to Pocket Demos and have Heavies in support…etc etc, neither is right or wrong but how you enjoy TF2 will inevitably be affected by your chosen style).

So you can understand from a practical perspective why stating “I think this unlocks are not fun so ban them” isn’t good feedback.

Provide more detail please.

Quoted from Hildreth

[…]

Problem with basing a whitelist on the concept of “Fun” is it’s opinion driven and enjoyment of the game is so varied and dependent on factors such as:

– Skill Level
– Main Class
– Your personal perception on how the game should be played (Ie – You like to Pocket Heavies and put Demos in support, or you prefer to Pocket Demos and have Heavies in support…etc etc, neither is right or wrong but how you enjoy TF2 will inevitably be affected by your chosen style).

So you can understand from a practical perspective why stating “I think this unlocks are not fun so ban them” isn’t good feedback.

Provide more detail please.

Check my previous post about spy’s speed