I demand more nerfing.

Well well well. Last night I had the best melée only times on a random server with Sonneteer, one of her friends and a bunch of random people (who were awesome and immediately agreed on melee only rules). We melée only-ed our way through several maps and had heaps of fun - well at least I did. Naturally it lead into several interesting records, my max kills as a Medic is 7, and damage dealt about 1,400. My max kills as a Scout is 4, and my max captures as a Pyro is 9 and max points 24, which makes me rage a bit, because it's the same as my Medic record and dammit, I'm trying to keep my "career class" the one with the most points.
Also scored a few achievements, I actually got Sawbones completely out of the blue during a match in CTF Turbine (which sucks, by the way). What's funny is that the enemy players were Scouts at that point, so I got Sawbones by killing Scouts. That's... pretty wtf.
And dammit it feels like such a waste to run around with a full übercharge. And because I kept using the Übersaw (although it's admittedly inferior to the normal bonesaw in melee only matches), I had a full charge nearly all the time. I came pretty damn close to getting Placebo Effect, though (got killed when I was one kill away from it).

And I've actually never heard the "You vant a second opinion? You are also UGLY!" in game before. Couldn't stop laughing after my Medic yelled it after a few bonesaw kills.

I also got lots of progress to Peer Review, since Sonneteer was mostly playing as a Medic, and in the enemy team. She dominated me a few times, though, insane crazy crit streaks, dammit: I get out of respawn, attack her and immediately get critted in the face. So I get out of respawn, striving to kick her ass this time, and again I get critted in the face. And with the annoying fanfare the game informs me that I have a new nemesis.
It was hilarious. Crit magnet, I am.



I also got a few Pyro achievements. OMGWTFBBQ I got completely consciously, and dammit it truly is the most amazing thing EVER to kill someone with a Hadouken. And melee only of course inspires a great deal of taunting, so at some point I got Freezer Burn. And I'm 2/3 through Dance Dance Immolation. Getting Lumberjack goes almost without saying. And all of those lead into this:



Which means that I finally have hands-on impressions about the Backburner's overpowered-ness.
And yeah, I was playing on my own computer for a change, hence the crappy graphics and smaller resolution. Yes, I had the 20 fps handicap. Made the whole melee thing pretty difficult, but at least I got used to it after a few minutes of whining about it (ahaha serious handicap: playing with the Übersaw AND 20 fps, I wonder how well I would've done with the regular bonesaw and on my little brother's computer).

But the Backburner. Is the cutest little thing ever (it has a face!), and also very, very good at one thing: defeating its very purpose. Stick with me. So the Backburner gives 100% crit change from behind. I don't know how flawed the recognition was before the latest batch (which apparently fixed it), but it feels pretty alright: the enemy has to have your back right at you or else it won't work. I didn't even once get crits from the side or from the front, but then again sometimes I didn't get them from the back either. I suppose that could be because of lag, so I won't blame the game being broken. The Backburner also provides the Pyro with a +50 HP increase, and this is where the weapon defeats its purpose.
Valve said, and I quote, "This flamethrower is built for the Pyro who likes to ambush their opponents [...] To aid in survivability, it grants the Pyro an extra fifty health." Which means that the Backburner is supposed to be the ultimate ambushing weapon with the guaranteed crits from the back, and the health buff helping in making a getaway after the ambush.
With the health buff the Pyro has 225 HP, which is more than the Soldier has and only falling 75 HP short from the Heavy. Now add a Medic, and the Pyro has 318 HP - more than the Heavy has normally. The Pyro has no reason to ambush his enemies anymore. What with the flamethrower's damage fall-off reduced, the Pyro doesn't even need the crits to be a total killing machine in close range. And the +50 HP really aids with survivability, because you can just hit and run, and remain almost unscathed. Sure you can still ambush enemies, good for you, it's just that with the Backburner you don't have to. It affected my mentality immediately after I noticed that I could get away with almost anything: I just charged head-first at Demomen and Soldiers, even goddamned Heavies, took some damage, set everything afire (or in Heavies' cases circle-strafed them to death), and ran away to get a medkit or find a Medic and ready myself for the next attack. And dammit it worked, and felt so much more useful than waiting silently in ambush just to get a few crits. I don't think the weapon is balanced if it can be "abused" in such a way.
Dammit, the Pyro was good the way he was, I never felt he was underpowered. Backburner would be a good and balanced weapon if you removed the health buff, because then the Pyro would be forced to go back to ambushing, and the Backburner would be the more effective ambushing weapon with the guaranteed crits, while the regular flamethrower would be more suitable for other confrontations because of the ability to deflect projectiles and thus get right at Soldiers' and Demomen's faces. Now the Backburner is a clear upgrade from the regular flamethower instead of an alternative weapon.

I wish Valve would realise this and remove the health buff. And dammit, this comes from a Pyro player who refuses to use the Backburner from now on, simply because it is ridiculously overpowered (and because I like the airburst).



And that's my 2 cents on the matter of the Pyro unlockables. NERF, VALVE. NERF.

I also played as Engineer a bit (because it's the easiest class to play with my low fps), and I've never randomly left my sentry in a more suitable moment: we were attacking in Dustbowl's third stage, and I saw our other Engineer (the team was whining about "too many Engineers" and I agreed, because when you attack you don't need but one Engineer if he can keep his act together) building his own sentry. I was BORED because I had just sat about five minutes behind my sentry, waiting for some action, so I fucked off to help him build the thing. I figured that okay, if he insists on being an Enigneer, at least his sentry should cover our back in case mine gets taken down, so I better help him with it (and I'm all for "All for one and one for all" attitude when I'm an Engineer, I help my comrades as much as I can, and then rage when they don't return the favour. Selfish fuckwit Engineers are the cancer that's killing my will to play the class).
And while I'm there I see a goddamn übered enemy Demo coming around the corner and starting to chuck stickies at my sentry. So what do I do? Upgrade the friendly sentry to second level, watch it massacre the Demo and his Medic, and then just simply return to my dispenser to put my sentry up again.
Damn. If I hadn't left I had probably died, because I'm still stupid enough to stay and hope that the Demo wouldn't kill ME too. And my colleague's poor little first level sentry would've probably been goners as well. I would've lost my dispenser AND my teleporter exit which kept our team pushing mercilessly. And we would've had to fall back.
And this, gentlemen, is why I was an MVP on Dustbowl's third stage, playing as an Engineer in BLU. I've never seen an Engineer being an MVP in the attacking team on third stage. And most of my points? Teleports. The main reason I even build a sentry was to protect the teleporter exit, I didn't really care if I got any kills (didn't, really, I got maybe three or four), as long as the sentry kept enemies from charging at us and destroying the teleporter. And at least we won, so it must've been a successful effort.

I'm thinking of going Strictly Engineer for a day.

Oh wtf again...

My final word on the Pyro update is that Pyro is so overpowered that it's not even funny anymore.

Because this is so wrong, on so many levels:



And I don't even have any of the unlockables yet (and I'll never even use the Flare Gun: I love the shotgun too much)! Needless to say, I also made a new max points record for Pyro. It's 21 now. Used to be 11.

Yes, I am actually whining about being good at something. That's a new one.

Pyros! Every-fucking-where!

Okay, the only way to stay alive on TF2 now is to be a Pyro. At least that's the only way I can stay alive right now. Fight fire with fire, you know.

And I can't believe how much I actually nerd RAGE'd after realizing what Valve had done to the Soldier. I read the update message, "Removed Soldier's 40% damage reduction from his own rockets. Does not affect rocket jumps." but I didn't even realise (or think about) what it actually meant until I connected to the server today, saw the amount of Pyros and went Soldier. Because hey, at least before the update I was learning to kill them.
And guess what?
Nearly all my deaths? Suicides. If it wasn't some Pyro chucking my rockets back at my face (thank god nearly everyone is using the Backburner already, but more on that later), it was just me, playing like I've used to, and getting owned. Fuck, I'm so used to just shooting at my feet when a Pyro or a Scout or anything gets too close for comfort, and taking some damage but walking out alive. Now if I do that, I die. Not even mentioning the times my aim is a bit off and I shoot the goddamn wall in front of me and get a crit rocket in the face. Now such mistakes are an instant kill. It will probably take me forever to learn to jump whenever I shoot a rocket close enough to get damaged by it too (it apparently counts as a rocket jump then, I had to do some testing by shooting a wall in front of me while jumping, and I got the same old 40% reduction instead of the full damage of about 80 HP).
And imagine how much that must suck from the viewpoint of the player who was chasing me? They get NO points from chasing me down and actually making me suicide - which is not even their fault, but my own. I think that's kinda horrible. I know, because later on I was playing as a Pyro and a friend was a Soldier in the enemy team, and he was mercilessly dominating me. And after I had tried to kill him a dozen times, always getting owned, I finally managed to kill his Medic and chase him down and fuck me dead: he suicided. And I almost banged my head against the keyboard, because so much for my long-pursued revenge.
So at least Valve needs to do something about that, because it's downright unfair.
And if Demomen don't get the same fucking nerf I'm going to rage some more. Fucking unfair.

Okay, yeah, no one's going to agree with me on this, seeing how everyone else thinks that the Soldier is overpowered, the easy class that doesn't need any skill to be good at, and that it needs to be nerfed hardcore. It took me actually ages to learn to play as Soldier. Maybe it's easy to pick up by someone who has years and years of FPS experience, and be good at it, but I had to learn. And I've had fucking great times playing as Soldier. And it's not the easy class for me.
But yeah, Chrome vs. rest of the TF2 community. Valve did what they thought is for the best, and I want to understand, but it's pretty hard when one of my favourite classes is now nearly unplayable for me. And yeah, I feel quite horrible for whining about this, especially since I've been all "I wish I knew how to quit you!" with Soldier for the longest time. But yeah, it's a complete love/hate relationship. And it doesn't matter what I say, I have over 80 hours as a Soldier, I find myself going Soldier even when I think I shouldn't, so on some level I really must like playing as Soldier.
So I can still feel upset because of it, can't I?

But yeah, Pyros.
I'll just come out and say that Backburner is overpowered as hell. I mean ffs guaranteed crits from the back and +50 HP increase?! I know the tradeoff is supposed to be the lack of the airburst (which, I admit, is fucking awesome, and makes me think twice about starting to use the Backburner), but because the airburst is new and I rarely even remember to use it, Backburner just seems like an upgraded OLD flamethrower that has no drawbacks.
They could do without the +50 HP increase, for real. Both Slaverstrike and my little brother who played as Snipers today noticed that Pyros are fucking impossible to kill if they have the Backburner equipped. 225 HP is just insane. And when I did play Soldier, I am so used to juggling them into the air once, and the second rocket usually killed them. Backburner-equipped Pyros? Fucking unstoppable. Add a Medic and they're seriously invincible. So I needed to juggle them twice, which meant shooting at my freaking feet twice, which usually meant a suicide.
Flare gun seemed to correspond better as an alternative to the shotgun, and I actually didn't have anyone kill me with the Axtinguisher, so I can't really say anything about that. Only the Backburner seems a bit unbalanced, but, uh, I'll probably love it once I get my greedy little hands on it. Maybe I'll become a career Pyro. I mean, I was doing pretty fine without the changes (was I the only one? I never really thought the Pyro was underpowered, even against Soldiers. I died a lot, but once I adapted the kamikaze mentality - that I ambush and I might die, but it's okay - I came by pretty well as a Pyro. Maybe I was the only one.)

At least I was doing pretty well as a Pyro today.



And that was the first time in ages I actually had some fun on CP Well. (Oh! That reminds me, I need to talk about CTF Well once I've said everything I need to about this Pyro stuff!)
I even got some achievements. I have Camp Fire, I Fry (and here I was thinking that there would be no Spies around, what with Pyros having a field day...), Burn Ward, Next of Kindling, Hot on Your Heels and Second Degree Burn. I'm also 13/15 through Fire and Forget, 8/10 through Spontaneous Combustion and Trailblazer, 15/50 through Makin' Bacon (and here I was thinking it would take forever... I would have at least 20 Heavies in this, but more on that in a moment...), about 25/50 through Arsonist (ahihi I dominated one Engineer, and he provided me with at least eight destructions: poor thing had always put a teleporter, dispenser and a level one sentry down when I came around the corner, and the whole little nest succumbed to my flames like a house made of paper), 250 through Firefighter/Fire Chief (...I was on a roll), and some others, but they're not yet worth a mention.
I also spent SO LONG on CTF Well trying to sneak behind enemy Snipers and use the Hadouken taunt on them (whoops! Chrome, acting like an idiot? On YOUR server? It's apparently more likely than you think!), but stupid friendly Snipers always managed to kill them right when I was behind them, readying my shotgun. Damn stupid Snipers!
And in one evening, I learned to use the shotgun. Seriously, I probably killed more people with the shotgun today than I've killed in those 30 hours I had as a Pyro. No, really. Too bad that most of those were fellow Pyros (which I used to be very weak against), so I don't have much progress on Combined Fire yet.
And yeah, about Makin' Bacon... I was kinda going crazy on Badlands. I think I killed about eight Heavies with the axe. I imagine them being beyond pissed: one crazy Pyro kept just ambushing them from behind and axing them to death. I even critted ridiculously often against them. But damn it, Heavies are so much easier to kill with the axe than the flamethrower! Usually they don't even have time to turn around before they're dead meat.
And then I realised that the achievement is named "Makin' Bacon" because I have to kill 50 Heavies with the flamethrower, and went aww dammit. At least I had lots of fun. And I imagine my Medic was having fun as well, following me around while I melée-killed Heavies (Medics liked me today).
Too bad that my axe kills record remained as two, I didn't get Lumberjack.

And finally, the regular flamethrower's new airburst. The best thing ever. It took me ages to remember even trying to use it, and luckily I remembered it just when an übered enemy Pyro was rushing at me. One poof, and flying they went. Another poof, and flying they went again. Goddamn, who seriously even needs Soldiers anymore: Pyros do juggling too these days.
Then I once again forgot to entire thing until I saw a crit rocket heading towards me. One poof, and the rocket chenged colours and I couldn't stop going FUCK YEAH THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER! when I saw the crit hit someone in the distance. Ahihihi. I didn't actually kill anyone with returned rockets although I did it a few times after that (I even started to remember using it after a while), but it's always a blast to see the crit rocket changing colours and directions and at least hitting something. I blasted people away from control points and the bombcart in Gold Rush. I saw a Medic/anyone combo approaching and blasted them once before hightailing and trying to get behind them.
I got killed once with a bounced grenade, though. It sucked, haha.

Oh! Yeah! CTF Well! Is actually fun now! I was really surprised when I saw the changes to it, and I was having a blast playing there! The new central area of the map is AWESOME, and the reduced size makes it easier to defend AND attack. I have to say that it's easily much more fun than 2fort has ever been, seeing that 2fort turns into an insane turtling fest nearly always and on Well there was this INSANE battling going on near the central area nearly all the time, because both teams tried to get control of it in order to get easier access to the enemy base.
Or then I'm just so happy that it's almost a whole new map and you probably know how much I love those.

That's about it for now, I think.
And yeah, I'll be playing as Pyro until there won't be as many around as there are now. And until I get over the Soldier nerf, pick it up again and learn to jump whenever I fire a rocket. Dammit, Valve...

Oh yeah! I also wish they would change the Medic achievements to correspond to the Pyro pack, and the Milestones would come at 10, 15 and 20. Because I'm slowly getting pretty sick of still being two achievements away from the Kritzkrieg, and I still refuse to farm any of them. My pride, it is my downfall.
Seeing that the Medic achievements are so much harder than the Pyro ones. Besides, everyone has the Kritzkrieg and Übersaw already, so it would be just me, har har.

And I fucking hope Soldier gets the next unlockables and achievements. Soldier needs some love after all that nerfing.

"Dad? Dad, put mum on the phone."

Yeah, I'm late to blogging about this, so without further ado, some extremely amazing things are heading this way some time tomorrow.
I've been following the news about the update ever since Steam told me it would be coming this week, but for a change I'm being a lazy blogger.

Also, Meet the Sniper, which immediately became my favourite yet (Meet the Soldier used to be my fav). Extremely well-done, seems like Valve kicked it up a notch after Meet the Scout, which was, in my opinion, a bit of a let-down. Demoman's little slapstick act was priceless (nooo, his good eye!), I lol'd at FOAD and the "I think his mate saw me. Yes, yes he did," (bit of Steve Irwin, eh?) and the whole parents thing was hilarious. I also always kinda imagined Sniper as an enormous prick, but whaddaya know, he's a really laid-back (resisted the urge to write "mellow") fellow. He's even pretty charismatic! Outrageous!
And noticing Pyro wielding a new flare-gun-like bright blue weapon that later turned out to be the Flare Gun was a source of much speculation and anticipation. Sneaky, so sneaky, Valve.



Jars of piss!

But! The Pyro update. I'm actually really looking forward to it, especially now after seeing what the unlockables are. Pyro is my fourth most played class with 30 hours, I like playing as one (although I don't play it that often on any other map but Hydro and sometimes CP Well), and I like to think that I'm not entirely horrible at it.
So Backburner is a massive DO WANT for me, since I'm always doing everything I can to get behind enemies' backs whenever I am playing as Pyro. Flare Gun sounds awesome indeed for teasing Snipers and Engineers, and Axtinguisher... well, sure, I want to have one, but I'm more afraid of what it will do to ME when I'm not Pyro. Guaranteed crit when you are on fire sounds... terrible. As if good circle-strafers don't kill me well enough when I'm playing as Heavy!

And sure, as a Pyro player I am really liking the sound of the changes to the regular flamethrower. Being able to deflect projectiles definitely helps a bit with the long range disability that Pyros have been suffering from day one. I mean, Pyro is supposed to be THE close range combat class whose defect IS the fact that they can't fight worth shit over long range, forcing players to seek ways to ambush enemies. Which made especially Soldiers somewhat overpowered against Pyros. Pyros still can't attack over long range (the new Flare Gun being the exception, but the tradeoff with that is the inability to finish off burning enemies), but they can defend theirselves, which improves their chances to survive. Which has been the number one turn-off at playing a Pyro: they generally don't live for very long.
So, excellent.
I also suppose there's gotta be some drawback to using the alt-fire (a few seconds between blows?). Without it all the Pyros would be just running around tapping alt-fire and being basically invulnerable.
/end a Captain Obvious moment.
What doesn't make me happy about the new change is naturally the fact that I play a lot as a Soldier.

Story time: I've told many times how I'm extremely weak against Pyros as a Soldier. I get owned by the BAD Pyros, those who charge right at me from distance rather than try ambushing me. I am never able to actually hit them and a confrontation with a Pyro ended in my death nine times out of ten.
That's how it used to be. Now that I'm only playing with good framerate instead of the sucky 20 (more on that later), Pyros don't actually stand a chance against me. Ever since I started playing with good framerate I can't remember a single Pyro actually killing me by charging right at me (when I'm on full health), and even if they DID kill me (afterburn is a bitch), at least they didn't walk out of it alive.
So I was actually never weak against Pyros, it was my low framerate handicap all along (I never even realised how much the bad framerate actually affected my playing). Now I just hit their feet with a rocket, send them flying, and aim another at where they land, and BOOM. So much for that.
(Btw, juggling enemies is awesome, I was never able to do it before.)
But now they're able to deflect my rockets, so, umm, I'm afraid I'll start getting owned by Pyros (and my own rockets...) again.
And the question is: if a deflected rocket kills the Soldier that had fired it, does the Pyro get a kill or a finish, or is it marked off as a suicide? We'll see.

But back to the Pyro update. It would also seem that Valve learned something from the impossible Medic achievements ("impossible" standing for "impossible to get during normal gameplay without acting like a total dick"), and all the Pyro achievements seem like something that anyone would be able to get while playing normally and doing just what Pyros do. I know it won't stop people from farming the achievements, but at least any achievement-seeking Pyros won't probably ruin gameplay for others.
I figure it will take quite a while to get Makin' Bacon, though, ha ha.

I am also wondering if achievements like Firefighter, Fire Chief and Pyromancer will take your existing stats to account, like Intern, Specialist and Chief of Staff did. Because it would seem that I'll be getting both Firefighter and Fire Chief right away, since I have 1,339 kills as a Pyro. I'm far away from Pyromancer, though, my damage dealt is only at 365,998. Ehh. That guarantees that it will take a good while until I get to enjoy from the Axtinguisher (yes, all the other achievements seem like something that I will and can get sooner or later).

Also OMGWTFBBQ raises an interesting question: does the Hadouken taunt actually do damage from now on?! If, it will be the most awesome thing ever.



And I'm so happy of getting two community-made custom maps wrapped in an official package. <3 I've been playing basically nothing but Dustbowl and Gold Rush for the last month or so (still not getting tired of them), because, you know. All other maps bore the hell out of me. I'd rather watch grass grow than play even a single game on 2fort.
I wonder if Turbine will make CTF fun.

I guess that wraps it up. I don't know if I'll be able to get to play the moment the update comes out (since I believe Valve hasn't given any specific ETA for the update - maybe they're actually learning...), but I am trying to. I don't think I'll be playing as Pyro (and add to the inevitable influx of gasmask-clad, gimp-suit-wearing, flamethrower-wielding pyromaniacs), but I certainly want to try out the new maps. I am itching to start getting the achievements and trying out the new flamethrower, but I think I will wait for the initial excitement to die out, just like I did with the Medic update.

So, "I'm only playing with good framerate instead of the sucky 20." That's right. I've been playing on my little brother's computer the last few weeks. He moved out two weeks ago (I am staying at my parents' house for the summer), so I thought I wouldn't get to play on his computer any more. So I sucked it up and tried playing on my own.
And I found it impossible. All the killing I did as a Soldier was out of luck. Playing as Medic was also nigh impossible with all the twitching: locking onto new targets was a total bitch. Playing as Heavy was completely out of question. The whole thing only made me angry.
So luckily my little brother is the most awesome little brother in the history of ever, and doesn't mind at all if I come over and spend a few hours playing TF2. I thought he wouldn't want his big sis hanging around his new pad (despite the fact that we're kinda close as siblings), but whaddaya know, I was wrong.
Of course there's something in it for him: I let him play Sniper every once in a while, and he doesn't have to buy the game just for snipan gaems. So from now, whenever you see me as a Sniper, it's my little brother.
I naturally can't play quite as often as I'm used to playing, but I'm happy if I can play few times a week with a good freaking framerate, until I get paid enough to buy myself a brand spanking new computer.

I also noticed it's not just my imagination that I'm a much better player with good framerate. I've been playing mostly on a 24/7 Dustbowl/Gold Rush server lately, so I went to check the server's stats at its Gametracker page, and much to my joy I noticed that my points per minute average was 0.75. Yeah, I know, not that good when you think about it, but stick with me. I've been checking my stats on my regular servers every now and then (because I'm a stats whore, you should know this by now) and they've mostly been around 0.4. In fact, my score/min average was around 0.5 on that server the last time I checked (before starting to play on my little brother's computer), so I really did get better. A lot better, in fact.
I'd provide screenshots of my recent awesomeness, but I'm afraid all the screenshots are on my little brothers' computer. Duh. Will show some at a later date.

And now for something completely different:
I've also been playing some Metal Gear Solid 4, but more on that later (this entry is long enough as it is). Long story short: it's made of awesome, I love it, and I'm dying to play it more. I have to play it on my friend's terms (the friend owns the PS3, see), so I've only had a massive eight hours of playtime as of now.