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Amputator and Oberdose - buff?
Created 30th January 2014 @ 08:00
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Hiya
Personally, I think that Amputator must be buffed. In competitive, getting 25+ percents of uber in the middle of your fight will give you huge advantage (20% longer swing time makes no difference there). Now, using Amputator is useless, because it’s regeneration rate is available only when it’s active (which is again is not practical => uber building is impossible in this case). Taunting with Amputator makes no sense, because you become an easy target for roaming soldier in this case, you still can heal people during the same time, without losing safety. I want Valve to make +3 (lower?) regen not active, but passive (= applied, while you use heal gun). Then using Amputator is not useless, and we finally have counterbalance for Ubersaw in competitive 6v6! I don’t really like to play combat, so this update will make me really happy.
I’d like to talk more about Overdose. IMHO, Valve needs to do smth with this as well. Look, it has -1 hp (relatively to Syringe Gun) damage, and up to 10% speed increasing. In fact, during the fight, this (dis-)advantages make absolutely no difference (in most cases). Its effect must be stronger, so weapon is buffed and nerfed at the same time (e.g. up to +20% speed and -20% damage). Again, this would be a great counterbalance for commonly used crossbow!
What would you say?
Last edited by ian,
aaaaand why do you post this here?
Also, amputator will always be useless cause it doesn’t build the uubs.
Quoted from skyro
aaaaand why do you post this here?
Related to competitive, awaiting feedback?
Quoted from skyro
Also, amputator will always be useless cause it doesn’t build the uubs.
Maybe cuz it has a few other great advantages, e.g. regen rate which is INCREDIBLY cool when it’s passive. Ubersaw building still happens from time-to-time and for passive medics, Amputator would be awesome.
Quoted from skyro
aaaaand why do you post this here?
Also, amputator will always be useless cause it doesn’t build the uubs.
If the amputator’s passive healing was also active while holstered, it’d be more arguably more useful than ubersaw, purely due to the fact that a medic most of the time doesn’t even have the time to pull out a melee, or any kind of weapon besides medigun for that matter. The clutch uber plays happen way more rarely than you assume. Survivability in the long run is better in higher level of play, compared to lower levels, where you have more chances and easier time to actually use melee or any weapons as a medic.
+9 regen would be an insane benefit (+6 in combat) while the ubersaw is holstered 99% of the time.
As for overdose, you completely counter your own statement for preferring to be out of combat at all costs. Pragmatics aside, the whole point for why overdose MS bonus is so (arguably) low is because it won’t be utilized anyway. The chance of you dropping everyone with your uber and pulling out your needle gun are slim, especially if you have any clue for what you are doing. 20% movement speed boost puts Medic movement speed at close to scout’s (384) which is ridiculous. The 10% MS bonus of overdose is enough, but to make the weapon viable, in my opinion, they’d have to make it a passive bonus also (maybe 5% while holstered, 10% equipped) or just to make it scale better (5% MS bonus at 50%+ uber) because rarely a medic holds uber for longer than a minute and the bonus can’t be really noticed that easily. Either way, it’s almost impossible to tweak this weapon in way to make it viable and not overpowered.
Last edited by rviens,
Overdose and the Crossbow, purely down to the nature of the medic will always be straight upgrades to the stock syringe gun.
I disagree with both of what you said, I’ve played in a scrim albeit low level (d4) but we were on last and the medic taunted on the point of snakewater last with amputator, it didn’t really make a difference in that instance but I certainly think in that kind of situation when you are all out for the point it can be really useful, also I’d go as far as to say the weapon is straight up better than the ubersaw – hardly ever do you see medic get slices on that thing.
As for the overdose making the effect happen all the time would be stupid, we don’t want medics that run faster than they already do normally, this weapon is used for escape particularly when you have no-one to heal and while the crossbow is rightfully more popular you do see its use on tighter maps like granary.
Quoted from hr
I disagree with both of what you said, I’ve played in a scrim albeit low level (d4) but we were on last and the medic taunted on the point of snakewater last with amputator, it didn’t really make a difference in that instance but I certainly think in that kind of situation when you are all out for the point it can be really useful, also I’d go as far as to say the weapon is straight up better than the ubersaw – hardly ever do you see medic get slices on that thing.
As for the overdose making the effect happen all the time would be stupid, we don’t want medics that run faster than they already do normally, this weapon is used for escape particularly when you have no-one to heal and while the crossbow is rightfully more popular you do see its use on tighter maps like granary.
In a game that is all about speed and uber, the choice between an item that can give you 25% extra uber and one that you need to stand still for for a few seconds, seems one easily made imo. Even if you rarely actually hit anything with the ubersaw, you do get that extra uber when you do hit. That is massively better than the ability to heal a bunch of players while standing completely still, unable to dodge anything.
It might come in handy when you’re holding last, but if that is your sole reason for a weapon choice then I would argue you should perhaps work on holding 2nd or winning your mid fight instead.
The same argument applies to the overdose. Anything that can make you faster fits in perfectly with how the game works – it is a blatant upgrade to the standard syringe gun, at any rate. Comparing it to the crossbow is a bit more complex due to its completely different mechanic, and choosing between the two is mostly down to the situation and personal preference.
Alright, let’s deal with some facts instead of theorycrafting on what ‘could’ve been’
Firstly let’s deal with the traditional weapon, The Übersaw. As we know this weapon will give you an extra 25% Charge on a successful hit. For the purpose of this post i will always assume building is done at the perfect rate (2.5% / s)
Taking the default switch time to be 0.67s, and swing time to be 0.96s, the minimal time you have to stop healing for to use this weapon is 2.3s or 5.75% charge. This means in actual fact the ubercharge advantage gained is at the most 19.25%, or 7.7s. However in reality you will not be able to switch weapons, swing and switch weapons at the minimum time, and this number is more likely to be closer to 16-19% (6.4-7.6s).
Assuming you and your target survives and you manage to hit the second ubersaw, at perfect timing you will have spent a minimum of 3.26s without healing (8.15%) So the ‘true’ advantage of getting 2 consecutive ubersaws is at the most 41.85% (16.74s). However, once again in reality there is likely to be a larger gap in between swing time, which could lower the advantage to as much as 14seconds (Hard to speculate on this one). Either way even 14 seconds is a huge game changing advantage.
Finally, I should also note the damage and some other damage related stats.
Each swing of the ubersaw deals 65 damage. 2 Swings will deal 130 damage taking 1.92seconds. Enough to kill a (non-buffed) scout and over 50% of a soldiers health. (Assuming he has rocket jumped and your pocket is not a complete retard it is likely this will prove fatal)
(It is important to note that in reality most ubersaws are used when the medic is separated from the pocket/demoman and could not otherwise be healing. So perhaps these values are red herrings)
Now, the Amputator.
First off, the healing. When the weapon is active you receive an extra 3 health regeneration, on top of the base line 3 health the medic receives naturally. Assuming you pocket died and you were running away for 5 seconds, equipping this weapon would give you 30 health per second. (Actually slightly more then this as if not damaged you natural regen per second begins to scale upwards to a maximum of 6 hps after 15seconds of no damage).
This of course could be seen as the advantage you need to escape, but it is also worth noting that perhaps the speed advantage of the overdose is more beneficial.
Onto perhaps the more interesting part of the Amputator. AoE Heals. All stats taken from here: http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Medicating_Melody
The Medicating Melody heals (In combat) 25 health every second to everyone within 450 units ( http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/File:Amputator_taunt_heal_radius.png ). However it is important to note that this only affects players who have a line of sight with the medic. Assuming every player was in combat, in range, in line of sight and damaged you would heal a total of 600 health over 4.2 seconds.
Comparatively, if healing a single target with the medigun for 4.2 seconds you would only heal 96 health to a single target. This also shows that the amputator has a higher hps then the standard medigun. (However notable, still less then the crossbow which is capable of healing 150 health in 4.5 seconds [33hps] at close range.
To try and neatly format this data:
Weapon – Heals per second – Total health given in 4 seconds
Stock Medigun – 24 – 108
Amputator 1 – 25 – 100
Crossbow – 33 – 132 (Can only heal in multiples of 1.5 seconds)
Amputator 2 – 50 – 200
Amputator 3 – 75 – 300
Amputator 4 – 100 – 400
Amputaor 5 – 125 – 500
Finally, a quick look to the damage stats of the amputator.
Each swing deals 52 damage, with a swing time of 0.8 seconds. This means it deals 13 damage less then the ubersaw, but can deal 104 damage in 1.6seconds, which is enough to kill most chasing scouts, but not perhaps soldiers.
Hopefully my stats are correct and i haven’t done any retarded math. Someone please feel free to error check this, there is likely to be at least 1 mistake. But hopefully this can dispel some of the myths behind the amputator being a bad weapon to choose.
Quoted from Fallen
Wall of text
You did math with the ubersaw and ubercharge advantages you get from it, yet you didn’t take that into account when it comes to amputator. While taunting you are losing both your mobility and ubercharge (mobility being something that can be sacrificed due to some circumstances, such as wiping enemy team). The damage numbers are correct, yet if I ever went for damage, I’d rather have more benefits together with it (+25% ubercharge).
In a perfect world, switching to amputator, taunting would be the same as losing 4 seconds of advantage against your opponents, which in many cases can be a crucial part of pushes failing.
The amputator taunt is not a viable way to keep your team alive in any push.
You become immobile, an easy target for anyone to kill you, meaning your taunt heal will most likely not last as long as it supposed to. Not only does that mean that your team loses a lot of healing in the long run, but it means that your team loses any kind of uber advantage. However even when speculating that the taunt lasts for the whole 4 seconds that means for it to be perfectly effective the whole team would have to stand around the medic. That means that having your team dance around the medic leaves them vulnerable to AOE spam as 400 units isn’t really a big amount.
Non crit-heals are 24HP/s, which during the time you taunt adds up to 96HP, which, for one person is just below how much the taunt can heal over the whole duration.
So for it to be worth to taunt you’d have to do little amounts of math:
1 player – full 4 seconds of taunt
2 players – 2 seconds
3 players – 2 seconds (I assume it ticks, not heals up like a heal beam, correct me on this)
4 players – 1 second
5 players – 1 second
To assume that there will be 4 or 5 players around you at one time is quite naive, therefore that is quite a useless statistic. That’s when you are left with 3< amount of players. And then there is the problem of the teammates keeping their distance right next to you. Also, even though theoretically you heal everyone in that radius, you are most likely not healing high priority targets (pocket, demo etc.) meaning that you might be wasting heals.
Losing mobility.
Losing ubercharge while taunting.
Basically guaranteed instagib after a few seconds of cast time.
Realistically – you taunt to heal both your demo and soldier who are being chased, or being pushed at, leaving you immobile. They are being healed for 25 per second, but since they are most probably being pressured by something they are very likely to leave the radius of healing and just leave you as a medic behind to die and lose any kind of advantage. There is literally no way in a higher level of play that you would be able to cast the taunt for longer than 2 or so seconds on more than 2 people.
If you want to argue that it's a good way to heal up your teammates when you are not pressured, then why use a taunt if you can just heal them with no problem and together with that not lose any kind of advantage.
As a weapon for self defense the amputator can be useful but you get little to no benefits when using it solely for that purpose alone. I'd rather use bonesaw over amputator if I was to bring in damage into equation.
ugh, why did i red too much today already…BUT taunting doesnt work, 1 rocket to your feet and you send flying and the taunt stops working and you are fucked, there is 0 point in using the taunt.
Well, i thought it would be obvious that you aren’t building uber when you are using the amputator. I also didn’t give any statistics relating to how much the ubersaw heals while equipped because it kinda doesn’t heal.
All i was trying to do was list the statistical advantages and disadvantages of each weapon, it wasn’t an opinion piece. Personally i prefer the ubersaw/crossbow combination by far. But I don’t believe the amputator to be completely useless. If you are a medic (or even team) that plays very defensively, you may not find yourself ever using the ubersaw in games anyway.
Personally, after researching into te amputator, I think the only 2 buffs i would consider giving it is removing the need to be in LoS of the medic during taunt and make it similar to the Hi5 taunt where you hold down to make it last longer/shorter. This does of course open it up to abuse however.
I agree that it does make you vulnerable during taunt and I would never advocate using the amputator on most pushes. The Main exception i believe would be last pushes/holds. But even then the increased vulnerability of the medic may prove too much.
I do think that given the range of the taunt it is more then possible to heal 2 targets at a time, with correct positioning and timing. The main problem with theorycrafting with this weapon (or even the ubersaw) is that you can’t base any strategies around using it. You can take it and you may find that 1 in a 100 chance of using it suddenly appears before you.
Yeah the heals come in 4 ticks approximately every second for 25,25,25,26.
Quoted from Fallen
Assuming every player was in combat, in range, in line of sight and damaged you would heal a total of 600 health over 4.2 seconds.
It would also mean that you’re going to be dead before that time is over.
Guys, I finally asked for comments about my ideas, everybody know that amputar is useless now.
Quoted from ian
Guys, I finally asked for comments about my ideas, everybody know that amputar is useless now.
Yeah usually you can easily determine how usefull a weapon is just by seeing the amount of people actively using it in comp, i have never seen a person use the amputator after the set removal, its that useless now, taunting is really only viable on medieval servers now.
And really even though you can theoretically heal alot of players with the taunt in comp no one would be stupid enough to use it except when the enemy team would be wiped, however it would be a high priority to build uber in that case so we must assume that its a wipe AND that the med has a full charge. However if they have wiped the enemy team and have full charge then they should push so the only scenario to use this weapon in comp would be to taunt after a push that wipes the enemy team whilst having uber and stacking on a point when everybody has taken 100 damage before or more.
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