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Quoted from Tikcus

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off topic but you answered your own question, the soldier got a massive speed bump he can get to mid without learning the jumps – lowering the skill level required to play soldier

You make a way bigger deal out of the soldier rollout than it is.
And even then, it still doesn’t lower the skill. You still need to be able to do rocket jumps, even if you equalize to mid. And most soldiers will know their rollout anyway, even if they equalize to mid.

I second the idea of a slower weapons switch. Not quite sure how high a percentage for the slowdown but it would effectively greatly increase a Heavy’s “set up time”.

By impacting the switch from GRU to sandvich *and* the switch from sandvich to whichever big gun our exemplified fat man is using, it somewhat offsets the fast run to mid as it’s going to be an age before he actually starts shooting at anything. That way the run to mid isn’t quite as hurtful to the other team and a Heavy can still use his speed in the rest of the match making him a more viable – while not broken – option.

Not only that but players that catch a “sprinting” heavy by surprise have a very good chance of killing him. I think this solution would fix GRU as right now (and I’m a big fan of it) it’s just better than its alternatives.

Quoted from RaCio

The idea is nice indeed, although I’m not sure it would change the problem that occurs at the middle point. We need a solution that with the GRU makes the heavy faster to get into position, but weaker once in position in relation to a non GRU heavy. A small health decrease or extra vulnerability would be best imo.

Well as I mentioned a Heavy would take longer to set up as he’ll have to do 2 switches to heal himself with his sandvich and *then* shoot at stuff (this is assuming the Medic is busy healing the demo or sollies) therefore giving the opposition more time to get into position to counter the Heavy.

The delay takes half a second, I don’t really see how you can say it would solve all problems when it’s not such a huge change (on mid). The main change is the delay for taking your sandvich, not the split-second it takes to switch weapons when running to mid and still arriving with the minigun out….

The times I’ve used GRU I’ve not seen a huge difference in performance on mid. I find it harder to survive with GRU since I have to take the first wave of spam, which my teammates otherwise do.

The only maps I use soldier to mid on is Obscure and Granary, where the heavy is simply too slow. If the speed increase would be 20% instead of 30% it would still be enough increase to be able to run heavy to mid on those maps.

I wouldn’t care if I took minicrit damage whenever it’s equipped either, I just want to get to mid a bit quicker on certain maps.

20% less damage overall as I read someone suggested here is just silly, GRU just needs some finetuning, and GRU should not affect sasha, sandvich or the max health when using them in any way, because then it won’t be worth using.

Another possible way of balancing the GRU is that the speed slowly increases when using it, so it starts off in normal heavy speed when equipped and gets up to max speed (for example 30%) after ex. 5sec. That way it helps to run longer distances (which certainly is where I find them most important), rather than a tool for quick retreat.

Quoted from Alx

Another possible way of balancing the GRU is that the speed slowly increases when using it, so it starts off in normal heavy speed when equipped and gets up to max speed (for example 30%) after ex. 5sec. That way it helps to run longer distances (which certainly is where I find them most important), rather than a tool for quick retreat.

I quite like this how about you could tweak it based on health similar to the equalizer (that no one seems to have an issue with)

Current heavy + GRU speed = 99.67%

heavy @ 300+ HP = 77% speed (normal Heavy speed)
heavy @ 294 HP = 80% speed (soldier speed) (1 second of bleed)
heavy @ 282 HP = 93% speed (demo man speed (3 seconds of bleed)
heavy @ 270 HP = 100% speed (sniper/pyro/spy speed) (5 seconds of bleed)
heavy @ 246 HP = 108% speed (medic speed) (9 seconds of bleed)
heavy @ <150 HP = 128% speed equalizer soldier (escaped speed)

This would also stop a medic being able to charge uber by healing the heavy, making the soldier have to rocket jump increasing the risk of a soldier being slow to mid

Quoted from Koeitje

Currently is also limits the amount of rollouts that can be effective on certain maps. For example, you don’t really want to do a valley roll-out vs a team that is using a hwg. Yes, it brings more diversity in terms of viable classes and weapons, but at the same time also limits the amount of plays that can be effective.

Yeah noticed that as well, on obscure it really limits agression to.

Quoted from Tikcus

[…]

I quite like this how about you could tweak it based on health similar to the equalizer (that no one seems to have an issue with)

I quite like the part where your idea has 0 relevance to the post you quoted. (hint: “I wouldn’t care if I took minicrit damage whenever it’s equipped either, I just want to get to mid a bit quicker on certain maps.”) You idea does the total opposite of wat alx wanted to achieve.

Quoted from skeej

I vote for weapon switch delay (1-2 seconds) and 250 base health (making overheal 375). This way the heavy needs to be sure of the position he will take (and will be able to take due to his fast travel speed) yet cannot shut down an area completely due to the increased vulnerability to spam and focus fire.

Good point. You’ll end up with a more mobile heavy who is a bit more vulnerable as downside. Although -hp can also be changed to for example explosive damage vulnerability. A heavy is already quite weak against scouts who pop up while he’s running and the switch delay would make it cost even more time.