f13.net

http://www.teamfortress.com/war/administrator/

Demoman / Soldier update ?  :heart:

Soliderman up in than hoe!
Who has more Demo than Demoman? Demoman now break a man!

This will be epic.

I love valve  :heart:

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay  :awesome_for_real:

I can't wait to see how obsolete the engineer is after this update  :ye_gods:

I mean, they are already pretty useless against a team that has any idea how to play the game (which is admittedly pretty rare to find in a public server), but upgrade arguably the two greatest engineer killing classes (though the soldier isn't great) and you may as well just get an extra heavy out.

Yes, but that just means when they do the Engineer update last, they'll uber buff him to attempt to balance  :awesome_for_real:.

Anyways, great news!  Soldier is still my class of choice, nice they finally get an upgrade (with Demoman 2nd favorite).

I'm personally hoping for some stealth nerfs to both classes as part of this update.

For example, I think it'd be dandy if demomen had to choose between being able to blow up buildings really well and being able to blow up people really well.  Split the sticky bomb launcher into one gun that does 110% damage to people and 50% damage to buildings, and another gun that does the reverse.  For soldiers, you could do something like scale back rocket jumping and knockback for the standard gun and put it into a special gun that has better knockback but worse damage.

Probably won't happen, since I don't think Valve shares my view that demo/soldier spam is overpowered, but I'm pretty sure they won't outright buff them either.  Most of the previous class updates have been pretty good about that.

Spam isn't really an issue to be honest.  If there is a legitimate concern about demo/soldiers it is that they have a really high skill ceiling due to their ability to leverage advanced mobility. (Same with the scout, actually).  

I'm hoping that the new weapons give some options to less skilled players that give them something more fun/interesting to do than spam, while leaving the other weapons alone because I think that soldier and demo play really well as is at a high level.

Edit: Spam might seem like a bigger issue if you frequently/only play Attack/Defend maps which tend to have a lot of choke points and area denial can be achieved by spamming it with multiple demos/soldiers.  On 5 point maps, it is often less of an issue.

Closing the skill gap between bad players using demoman and solider and good players using demoman and solider will be met with much applause and tears. It will be interesting. I really want heat seeking rockets! But I have the weird feeling that he will get grenades...

Looks really bizarre to me.  So, they're updating both the demo and soldier, but one class is getting four weapons and one is getting three.  Which one gets four depends on whether more soldiers kill demos or demos kill soldiers over the next week... am I reading that right?

I think you are correct.  And I predict that the soldier is going to win because that's the class the dickwavers tend to favor more, never mind that in a straight up fight the soldier has the advantage.  For myself, I think I'm going to be playing a lot of demo next week.   :why_so_serious:

I secretly suspect that it'll be 3 weapons a piece and the 7th is going to be the engineer update

I would've thought it was clever if the 7th weapon was an item for the engineer that helped him kill that sort of character better. Just something incredibly situational and ridiculous. As it stands, ehhhh, whatever. I'd have to reinstall TF2.

Whatever, I'll still play sniper.

Was playing some. As much as I get excited about these things, as soon as I log in and the teams are all filled with just the update classes, I always quit.  I play a lot of demo and soldier, but when the whole server is filled with these too classes...well, its just a clusterfuck of explosions

With the other updates I'd just have fun playing the obvious counter class when FotM syndrome set in, but masses of demos and soldiers don't really have counters other than more of the same.

Yeah, it's basically ruined the game for the rest of the week.  :cry:

The rest of the week?  The achievements and items aren't even live yet.  It's going to be like this for a while.

http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part1/index.htm

I should reinstall and play a Soldier to help the Demoman count. :awesome_for_real:

I actually came to a similar conclusion last night.  The soldier/demoman matchup is ridiculously imbalanced at most levels of play.  After unintentionally feeding a bunch of demoman kills to soldiers I decided it would be more fun to go soldier and practice my melee skills on demomen.

That was my thinking too. I'm a terrible, terrible soldier. And I'm not much better at the demoman.

Seems like a good time to play a spy.

Yeah, I saw a lot of gibs coming out of thin air last night from people who thought the same thing.   :awesome_for_real: 

Oddly enough, I'm kind of digging all these Demos and Soldiers.  It's a bit like playing insta-gib :awesome_for_real:.

I'm just getting in to TF2. Played TF a long time ago. Keep dying. This game is tough.

Do bots count towards the kill count? Wondering if we'll start seeing Team Demo or Team Soldier servers with nothing but the opposite class bots with insta-spawn.

It hasn't hit too hard on the server I normally play, haven't seen a huge difference in demo/soldier/everyone else ratio. You would think it would be a good time to go spy, but demo + soldier spam everywhere is kind of  :ye_gods:

Noooo the soldiers are winning!

http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part2/index.htm

Fuck you all.  Go Soldier!!!

The Propaganda page (http://www.teamfortress.com/propaganda/) is full of so much win.

Check out the link on that page to the vaguely racist cartoon.

The one about hats? How is that racist?

"You are as presumptuous as you are poor and Irish" I'm guessing.

I don't mean to say I was offended or anything, because I chuckled at it, but still.

So...


Crafting. (http://www.teamfortress.com/crafting/)

hur

wat

:uhrr:

You two leave my beloved soldier alone!

I think I'm going to have to send in $1.06 for the Larate Kit (http://www.teamfortress.com/war/saxtonhale/poopyjoe.htm) and see what happens.

I recall reading a little while ago that they give it to you for free. You're not actually supposed to send money.

It was like 2 blog posts ago. I'm more interested in who's PO box that is in Saratoga NJ.

oops, missed the Irishness.

Also, crafting? W. T. F?

I saw that cartoon as mocking racism from the turn of the century, not actually racist.

Ironic racism is a tricky beast, even when it's about the Irish :awesome_for_real:

Hmm sounds like this crafting is a 1000x better than every iteration of mmo crafting I've seen. Valve does it it again!

So, the two new demoman weapons on the table are a sword and a shield?  This game is getting more MMORPGer by the minute.

And as far as I can tell, this basically splits the class in half.  You'll either equip both of these or neither, and I'm not sure how effective a melee only (plus your grenade launcher) demoman is going to be.  Not to mention the visual weirdness that this game is getting into.  Hats were odd enough, but now we've got guys rolling around the battlefield with broadswords and crap?  I mean, that concept shot of the demoman with this stuff equipped looks ridiculous.

He's a demoman, not William fucking Wallace.  Hand him something that explodes.

Its a CLAYMORE, get it?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymore  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M18A1_Claymore_Antipersonnel_Mine


Seriously though, I agree with you, I think its stupid, if for no other reason that melee mechanics are borked to hell anyway in this game.

I'm okay with the sword as long as that shield isn't too cheap. I wonder how much damage it does, especially if it rushes you down.

The sword and shield stuff is weird, but I still love to read about it. I have a huuuuuuge crush on their writers.

i don't even like the game
and fucking ordered

(http://store.valvesoftware.com/productshowcase/img.productshowcase/TF2-MannCoShirt/Zoom_TF2_MannCoShirt.jpg)

Also, the Direct Hit should've been called the Turn Pro and been less boring in the face of the awesome eyelander.

Scratch that, $10 shipping is stupid and I don't want to spend $50 on that stuff right now. Nowhere to put posters. :(

Soldier in new-weapon-not-being-a-retarded-design-or-completely-inappropriate-to-setting shocker.

 
Idea is solid, not sure if +80% isn't a bit too fast.

I'm not sure why I would be playing soldier if I wanted to snipe things.   :uhrr:  I can see the epeen OMG AIRSHOT set being pretty happy with this, though.

It seems like a pretty big upgrade for soldiers who are really good at juggling.  This is an interesting upgrade to me though, because unlike almost every other upgrade I've seen, it seems aimed at highly skilled players, rather than the general population.

Corrected.

Isn't that exactly what I just said?

Lolz, the new weapons! AWESOME!!!!!!! Demomen may win this!!!!

Won't it be harder to put people into the air in the first place with the blast radius being so much smaller, though?

Probably not that much harder with the rocket going twice as fast.

I am curious whether the smaller blast translates to smaller "kick".  I suspect not since if the new rocket launcher isn't as good for rocketjumping its primary audience is going to hate it.

If they throw a couple more rockets in the chamber I'm sold, if it's still just 4 then I'm on the fence.

That thing is going to be deadly at long range sentry sniping. An engineer currently can keep their guns up because of the slowness of the rocket barrage. If he let's just one slip through before starting to whack, it's down. With faster, more damaging direct hits those suckers are going down!

Yeah, I don't think the engineer is going to be all that great to play until their update after this. At least not without having a good knowledge of the map and being able to juggle sentry gun positions well.

Isn't that already how engineers are?

Eh, the flip side to that is that most of the time the soldiers are relying on splash damage to get my shit.  They'll have to get direct hits every time (meaning they'll have to stand out in the kill zone longer), and they wont be doing damage to the Engineer and other equipment while blasting something.

Yeah, this.  If anything I think engy will be a little better after the update than it is right now.  We already have lots of soldiers and demos now, but after the update there'll be much less spam as people try out the new less-explosive weapons.

There's always been a few spots on some maps that are ideal for sentry placement as long as you constantly babysit them from snipers and soldiers pecking at them from a distance. I'm torn because I like playing engineer, but I also love catching a lazy/distracted engineer with a few direct rocket hits from outside the guns range and ruining his fort.

http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part6/index.htm

Hmm, this is the first  unlock patch where I'm not sure if I'll use a single unlock regularly.  Possibly the direct hit depending on how it plays.

I get the impression Valve used the patch to try and reduce "spam" by giving demos/soldiers things that aren't worth spamming,  which aren't worth spamming.  The question in my mind is, will they actually be better for death matching.  Only the direct hit strikes me as possibly being better for that.

Not a fan of Scottish Resistance, stupid camping demos.

Equalizer would be worth using, more as an occasional run buff than anything else.

Direct hit and Scottish Resistance seem like reasonable playstyle options - though Direct Hit sounds like it might be too strong.

The other three... jesus christ  :facepalm:

Depends what 'only the ones you're looking at will detonate' really means.

If the demo needs line of sight (not just facing in the right direction) it'll be hard to exploit.

I think they are actually trying to encourage camping demos with this.  Sticky deathmatching is definitely a more viable strategy than they originally intended, and even after their nerf to it, its still incredibly important to be proficient at it as a demoman.  I think they are trying to get demos to play more defensively (as originally) with the Scottish Resistance. 

I don't intend on using it though, too much loss of utility.

I was actually thinking Scottish Resistance could mess with sticky jumping, and that is probably the first thing I would test IF I happen to unlock this. Will probably install TF2 at home again sometime this weekend.

Achievement servers ho!

I wish Valve would just give players the weapons and stop with all this finding items and unlockable stuff.  Keep the achievements just as side things to do if you want, or keep hat drops if you REALLY must, but just give the weapons to everyone.  I've been saying this since I first learned that valve was doing this at all, and I'm still sticking by my guns. 

Yes, but you hate fun.

Curious to see how the crafting thing works.  I've got about a hojillion duplicate weapons just waiting to be melted down and reforged.  I suspect that'll be the new easy way to get the weapons quick.

The new sticky gun sounds possibly better for how I usually end up playing the demo (which is to say, pretty badly). I've never really mastered sticky jumping or airbursts, so something like this might work out better for noobs like me.

Yeah, I always preferred just sitting back and ambushing people, so Scottish Resistance looks pretty nice.

The pickaxe looks likes it could be fun as well, heh.

Yeah, the pickaxe sounds like a straight-up upgrade a la the axtinguisher.  They haven't actually said what its drawback is, so I assume it's something relatively minor like no crits.

The draw back is that its a melee weapon   :why_so_serious:

Alot of those soldier achivements look pretty damn hard.  However the names are all pretty fucking hilarious.  Though I think my favorite is:

Crockets Are Such B.S.
Shoot two non-boosted crit rockets in a row.
 :awesome_for_real:

The demo ones are fucking painful.  "Slammy Slayvis Woundya"?  Seriously?

But yeah, some of those soldier ones are damn tricky looking.  Does anyone know what the deal is with "Spray of Defeat"?  Is that going to be their taunt kill, or something?

Either that or they're having a larf.   :awesome_for_real:

My pet theory is that they're going to move to having multiple taunts for some weapons, like the spycrab taunt (which happens 10% of the time instead of the normal cigarette taunt).  The "21 gun salute" sounds like another new taunt, and we aren't getting a new shotgun that it'd go with.

This is by and large true.

Soldiers win it:
http://www.teamfortress.com/war/victory/

Boots for better Rocket Jumping!

Also, 2 new maps.

Guess the "Grenade" is a crafted item.

Soldier taunt kill.

edit also:

Interestingly, the demomen sneaked ahead and would have squeaked a win by a couple of thousand kills, but Valve added an arbitrary 35000 advantage to the soldiers score by means of a photoshop contest or something.

It was added on both sides....

The propaganda contest boosted the soldier kills by 25,000, but it also boosted demomen kills by 60,000 (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=3255)

All in all, seems like a weird contest.  Everyone knew soldiers would win, at all times they were winning.  The propaganda contest narrowed that gap but didn't close it.  Kind of seems odd that Valve would design two sets of items but only deploy one based on (basically) a roll of the dice.

I'm sure the prize would have been the exact same for the Demomen.  Remember, they Grenade jump all the time as well.  All this decided is what class would be the best at explosive jumping.

I've never gotten the hang of rocket or grenade jumping, I've always been too busy missing the enemy to bother blowing myself up a lot in matches in order to learn. That and I mostly play medic or pyro.

Just bind it to a key

alias +rocketjump "+jump;+duck;wait;+attack"
alias -rocketjump "-jump;-attack;wait;wait;wait;-duck"
bind mouse3 "+rocketjump

Oh, cmon, there is much more to it than that. You also want to vary the direction you're rocket jumping in order to dodge or to get to higher places. Also, it's so fucking easy you don't need a script for it.

Beginner's version:

1) Point your reticle at your feet
2) Jump
3) Shoot a rocket before you reach the max height of your jump

As a bonus if you crouch jump and do this correctly, you will now get an achievement.

I was trying to get that achievement for a little while last night, couldn't figure it out so decided I'd come back to it later, and then got it accidentally while in a hectic fight with another soldier.   :drill:

End result was 33k more demomen killed than soldiers killed (all official numbers are in terms of the class being killed, not the class killing)

But the poster contest added 60k killed demonmen, 25k killed soldiers, ie. the soldiers won it, and added 35k to their lead at the time.

Without that, demomen would have won by 2k.

Fuck, I'm illiterate.  And pissed off, now. We were winning until someone at Valve decided that "boot in the fruit" was fucking comedy gold?!

belated edit:  Just took a stab at crafting.  Holy fuck.  If you want a specific weapon, you need a class token, slot token and a bit of scrap metal.  Class token costs four weapons from that class, slot weapon costs four weapons from that slot, scrap metal costs three weapons from any slot.

So, like, if you want the soldier's new rocket launcher, you'll need to sacrifice four other soldier weapons, four primary weapons from other classes, and four weapons from any other slot.  You'll be burning at least eleven weapons for every one you craft, assuming you (somehow) already have the right combination of garbage.

Most frustrating is the idea that you'd need four class weapons.  You'd obviously not want to trash your last copies of a weapon, so we're talking about needing either five copies of one weapon or six copies of two, obtained before you get the third weapon and render the whole thing useless anyway.

And hats are insane.  If you want a random hat, you'll need three refined metals.  Each refined metal is made from three reclaimed metals.  Each reclaimed metal is made from three scrap metals.  And each scrap metal, is again, three weapons from the same slot.  So one random hat requires you to junk eighty one guns.  If you want one for a specific class, that's even pricier (four refined metal plus a class token).  That's over a hundred goddamn weapons for one fucking hat!  World of Warcraft has a shorter grind than that.

Holy fuck that's ridiculous. I thought they were going to give some way of using junk loot but those numbers... Maybe if I'd been playing solidly for the last month I'd have enough to craft some weapons for classes that already had their updates but really it's way more likely I'd already have all their fucking weapons.

Yeah...this game is basically going full on RPG.  Hell, they even added an option of enabling floating combat text in this update (which I of course turned on).

I assume this is in addition to the random-"Hey here's an unlock"-stuff and Achievements?

If so, I don't see that as too bad as I'm likely to never get the Medic melee weapon. Now, I can just melt down the shit I don't need as a last resort.

You have eleven weapons you don't need, four of which are medic weapons, but you don't have the bonesaw upgrade?

Wow, TF2's weapon upgrade/crafting system is just fully retarded.

Don't you play medic almost exclusively?  Or am I thinking of a different Cal?

No, that's me.  Looking at it, I'm only a couple of achievements away from it (http://steamcommunity.com/id/cal/stats/TF2?tab=achievements&agroup=medic) since they lowered the last Milestone down to 22 at some point.

As to having enough spare weapons to craft something: I've destroyed quite a few Blutsaugers and Kritzkrieg in the brief time I've played since they introduced random unlocks.  I still wouldn't have been able to get the slot token as I can't think of any spare melee weapons I've gotten.

I wish they'd implemented trading before this stupid crafting system.  I got a fourth ubersaw today, I could give away all of them and still only be down about 1/3 the cost of someone making one from scratch.

Otherwise, I'm generally liking the soldier stuff (the pickaxe not so much, but whatever), but the demoman gear is pissing me off.  They can equip the sword and shield and run around meleeing people, get a kill, and then hit their charge button to get out of the room before anyone can kill them.  Then they come back with more health and do it again.  Then they can run around with more health than a soldier, and whenever they hit their charge, they can move faster than a scout and insta-kill half the classes.  Which would be annoying in itself, but they can do this while carrying the damn intel, which is crazy.  Come up on a room full of defenders, hit the charge, be through and out before anyone can fire twice, and nobody can catch up with you.  Hitting an uber with the intel won't work, bonk won't work, cloaking won't work, so why does this charge thing work?

I suspect the very next patch will make the charge not work with the intel.  The first time I saw someone charging with the intel I knew that tactic's days had to be numbered.

They could do that, but you're stuck with melee when you're carrying the intel this way. Bonk should work though, surprised to hear it doesn't.

The shield charge thing doesn't limit you to melee.  Doesn't really matter anyway.  For carrying the intel you'd just use it to put distance between yourself and pursuers, and then run normally while lobbing pipebombs behind you.

Its still slower than sticky jumping, though of course you have to trade health to do that.   I have a feeling they will take it out though.  Frankly the only weapon I'm using for "real" is the pickaxe.  The Direct Hit is ok, but I'm not convinced the extra damage is worth the splash loss on most maps save maybe arena where it is literally only death match.  The bugle is nice, but you really only need one per team.  The Scottish Resistance is just not as good as the regular sticky launcher period, the game is fast paced enough that I rarely want to be sitting back and setting up 1 sticky trap let alone multiples, even on defense.  The sword and shield are fun shenanigans, but isn't actually that effective against someone head on, as even with the charge pretty much any class can take you out as long as they don't miss.

Bonk was pretty overpowered when you could carry intel.  If you were dedicated enough you just inch an intel out of the enemy base with bonk-die-respawn-runback-repeat, it was cheesy but actually really effective.  Now the best you can do with bonk in that regard is to get free touches on the flag to prevent it from returning to base, still useful, but I think more fair.

Haha, I just got that "Gore-a!  Gore-a!  Gore-a!" achievement and it was fucking sweet.   :drill:

Someone at Valve loves me and gave me the Eyelander and buckler for free, in addition to giving me the Soldier pickaxe I was owed.

I REALLY liked the update. Even if I stink with Demo, the new items make the class playable for me now.

Not worth another thread, but fairly well done:

The 12 Days of Tf2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQLcqBlIMQg)

A neat rocket jumping video... I'm going to have to download this map later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9_E5faIHOw

Veteran tags incoming

AND

Coming Soon Engineers! (http://www.teamfortress.com/119/comingsoon.html)

Oh, they added a Beta-era badge... which I apparently have now?  Okay.

Yea, I have one of those equipped. Desperately exciting. Guess they had to fill that accessory clothing slot.

Engy is my most played class and I gotta say... this is going to suck...

The medal was to satisfy the Steam forum troglodytes. They've been begging for another way to measure their epeen.

Just caved and bought this after playing it on a friend's compy. Is there a noob quickstart guide on how all the systems work? A THIS-IS-WHAT-A-HAT-IS type of thing would be nice.

Hats do nothing, as far as I know.  They're purely cosmetic.

There are three ways to "unlock" things in game, unless I'm forgetting one: Achievements, Crafting, and "Random Unlocks"

Random unlocks happen randomly over time (e.g. every hour you've got a 50% chance to find a new weapon or hat, numbers pulled directly from my ass).  These can be any weapon or hat, including ones you already have unlocked.

Achievements allow you to unlock specific weapons for the class.  For example, completing 16 Scout achievements will finish your "Scout Milestone II" achievement, and unlock the Scout's Sandman weapon.  Most hats don't have an achievement associated with them (except the Ghastly Gibus) so you'll be forced to rely on crafting or random unlocks for them.

Crafting is also possible, but it takes retarded amounts of items to do.  It'll be way easier to just unlock things by achievements, usually.  It can be used to craft spare weapons into hats and junk, just make sure you don't break down your last remaining copy of a weapon or you'll lose it until you can re-craft it.  List of recipies, (http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Crafting) if you're interested.

In fact, if you're lost, a lot of basic info can be found on that wiki. (http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Main_Page)

Class upgrades that have made tf2 a better game, an exhaustive listing:


Spy
I dunno pyro maybe?

fin.


So the odds are not looking good.

Note that if you end up with two duplicate hats from random drops (which I actually did), you can craft them into one random hat.  So there's that.

I've also been diligently melting down my extra weapons and hoarding metal.  I'm at 2 refined and 1 reclaimed metal, so I only need 18 (out of 81) more weapons for a new random hat.  Currently the random drops happen about 1 per hour, so it shouldn't be much longer.

You're insane.

What about his insane?

Probably, but what, you don't like the spy? I thought new watches were neat enough, and they fixed the broken revolver.

Personally, I hated the watches.  With the new motion sensitive watch, they can literally spend the entire match cloaked, and the dead ringer watch means that even if you kill one, you don't know if he's really dead or not.  So now you have to spend the whole match shooting into every corner and down every hallway because even if you haven't seen a spy in ten minutes, even if you just killed the spy, he might still be there.

Most of the other updates were decent, though.  I liked the medic and heavy ones, especially.

But what's most worrying to me is the idea that when this pack is released, it's going to be another "single class" update.  Whole maps of engineers leapfrogging sentries trying desperately to get a kill against the two people on the enemy team not babysitting a dispenser.

That damn revolver is overpowered imo.  :oh_i_see:

But no, the spy update was fine.  I just think all the updates made the game better.  Some certainly could have been done better than others, but I feel they all helped the game out.  The inevitable period of everybody playing one class right after the patch sucks, but thats bout the only draw back to any of the updates.

Originally they said they were going to avoid shipping the engineer on his own to prevent the single class syndrome. I'm hoping they roll out some new toys for his natural enemies as well.

Any spy that spends that much time cloaked is worthless. And the dr is only annoying if your team doesn't have a pyro (or is just has tunnel vision and doesn't know how to check for spies).

No, the dead ringer is annoying because it gives a spy who just fucked up a few moments of invulnerability.

Yea, that needs to go.  Nothing like chaingunning the shit out of a burning invisible spy, only to realize that you've just wasted all your bullets.

I found playing as a medic until I sort of knew the map layouts to be a decent way to learn the game. You just latch onto someone (a heavy or pyro are my favorites) and follow his ass around. When he dies, you latch onto someone else. Bear in mind I had never really played anything FPS-y before TF2, so the medic had the added bonus of me not having to actually try to shoot anyone.  :awesome_for_real:

You people are exactly the reason why dr spies get away with being the nuisance that they are. Chase him down, and kill him. Every time.

Dude, they're invulnerable and then can just flip the cloak back on. Can also be tough to chase down if you're not next to the spy.

They aren't invulnerable, just cloaked. They burn just fine.  :awesome_for_real:

No.  Once they decloak, they are sitting ducks for something like 15 seconds until it fully recharges.  Just keep shooting and follow the shimmer in the air.  Or listen for the loud decloaking sound.  One way or another, they are now decloaked, unable to cloak again, and very squishy.

When spies get hit by fire and they're using Dead Ringer, they get 6.5 seconds of 90% reduced damage.  The Dead Ringer knocks off the fire, but usually they're immediately lit again - taking only 10% of the fire's damage.  So you can see their outline, like you normally could an regularly invisible spy who's been hit by fire.  But they're taking 90% reduced damage.  It's incredibly frustrating to try to determine whether you're shooting at a regular spy who just got de-cloaked by fire, or one who's got Dead Ringer and functionally invulnerable.  So you pretty much have to shoot him.  And 6.5 seconds of sustained fire is pretty much all your ammo.  Also for a good spy, 6.5 seconds is more than enough to find a way to disappear whether they're on fire or not.  So you're pretty much not going to kill them without a sniper headshot.

Basically, Dead Ringer is so powerful in the right hands that I don't really think it deserves that damage reduction.  Or at least take away the sustained DR, and just give 90% reduced damage on the first hit - the one that pops the Dead Ringer.  That is if fire is supposed to be the rock to the scissors, anyway.

Now for something completely different: Portal guns in TF2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdHE_NBmLwU&feature=player_embedded)

I hope thats one of the things they give the engineer in the update.   :why_so_serious:

Ok, that portal gun shit is actually pretty awesome.