Lots of raeg. Again.

ILU VALVE.

Removed health bonus from the Backburner

Finally. The days of overpowered kamikaze Pyros are finally over, I hope. Maybe they'll finally go back to ambushing. And finally I can go back to playing the Soldier! And yes, Backburner Pyros were the number one reason for why I haven't played much as the Soldier since the Pyro update. They were just goddamn impossible to kill with their ridiculous amount of health and I got so frustrated with them.

And the following updates and changes also make me happy:

Added a gear symbol behind the health bar for Engineer buildings, in both target IDs and freeze panels

Players killing themselves will now give a kill credit to the last enemy who damaged them

Because as a Medic I'm constantly checking everyone's health and it annoys me to hover over a bunch of people, see someone with low health and rush in only to find out that it was a damaged dispenser or something.
And now I won't feel so bad about suiciding as a Demo or a Soldier anymore. Except when I'm feeling like an asshole and the guy who almost killed me before I suicided is someone who's dominating me or otherwise being a total dick to me and I wouldn't want to give him any credit for getting the kill.

Now I'll just settle down to wait for the inevitable Demoman sticky nerf and the Heavy update.

And then back to out usual schedule of wanton babbling:
I was once again playing on a HK's Newbies Only server last night and it seemed like it was an Official Butthurt Day, because people were complaining about something, all the fucking time.
First someone complained about Demomen being overpowered for half a round on Gravel Pit. I was on RED, the whiner was on BLU, and there were two Demos on our team, me being one of them. I wasn't doing very good: I was close to the top of the scoreboard, I think, but I didn't have very much kills or anything, and at least I felt like I wasn't doing very good (which can be taken any way you want to, since I'm known to own everyone and still feel like I suck, so). Anyway, this guy, he kept on complaining about stickies, how even Valve calls them "winbombs" (old fucking news, dude, change the record), how they're ridiculously OP and how Demomen are cheap cheap cheap.
Christ, I raged.
I admit it, stickies are a bit overpowered, and they will be nerfed in some way or the other sooner or later (maybe they'll prolong the time in which a just-fired sticky can be detonated, or maybe they'll do a damage reduction, or no crits...), but they are not impossible to deal with! I get so angry whenever someone complains about stickies, because it's your own fucking fault if you step on them! What the fuck were you expecting, a simple flesh wound?!
Here, let Auntie Chrome a.k.a. Captain Obvious give you a little lesson on stickies and How To Deal With Them.

Good Demomen of course hide their stickies to their best abilities, putting them to the ceiling or around blind corners, but if there's a very visible sticky carpet on a point, on a chokepoint or in a doorway, why the hell would you stand on them?! You either find another way, try to deal with the Demo (who's undoubtedly somewhere near because he usually has a clear line of sight at his bombs, unless the stickies are on a point, in which case the Demo can be anywhere, because the HUD is all he needs to defend), or simply try to scatter the stickies, which makes them less deadly. One sticky kills weaker classes, but with the ones with higher HP just one doesn't do the trick (unless it's a crit, but that goes without saying. And in stickies' case you can see the crits, so you're a complete fucking idiot if you go near one). So if the stickies are scattered all over the place, they're not nearly as potent. Or you can be The Good Guy and sacrifice yourself for the greater good, ie. your team's cause: walk on the stickies, the Demo detonates and kills you, but the rest of your team are now free to charge the bastard, and he has no time to set his stickies back up. Unless he's very good. But yeah, hardly anyone ever thinks about the Team, at least not on pubs.
Or waste an über to take the Demo down. Stickies send charged people flying (best defense on Dustbowl stage three: just sticky the only way to the first point and detonate when the übered enemies try to charge in and take down sentries. Works every damn time, and people just don't pay enough attention to stickies when they're übered. Which is probably why people whine about them. Dammit, stop being so ignorant and do something about the stickies!), but in case it's a narrow hallway with a low ceiling, it's not like you'll fly anywhere.
Easiest way of course is to find a way around the stickies. If a Demoman is camping some doorway, just go around it, get behind him and hand him his butt. Scouts and Pyros work wonders, Scouts especially tend to be preeetty tedious (my damn nemesis class as a Demo, no, I'm not kidding. I hate good Scouts, can't hit them for the life of me and then they just bonk me to death. But that's how it is, Demos are weak against Scouts, it's part of the game balance, and I'm admittably not that good a Demoman, as you probably know). If there are Demos camping every damn doorway, well, then, maybe you're screwed. Or maybe you should, I don't know, be another Demoman, a Soldier, maybe a Pyro?
Because silly Pyros, so enamoured by the now-nerfed Backburner that they don't realise the awesomeness that is the regular flamethrower and its all-powerful airburst. Airburst scatters stickies very easily and makes a well-planned-out sticky carpet considerably weaker or downright useless (I don't understand why people still insist on standing on Dustbowl's second stage's last cap while it's thoroughly stickied. One airburst, a rocket, or setting of your own sticky clears the point and I rarely ever see anyone do it! Which is why I usually own as a defending Demo on Dustbowl). As a Demoman you hold one of the best weapons against stickies: stickies. Just fire one or two in the middle of the carpet, set them off and poof they roll into every direction, clearing way. I've seen Heavies clear sticky carpets pretty effectively. Shotgun works with lonely stickies, but against a carpet... I'd suggest you go find the nearest Pyro.
So for fuck's sake, the stickies are not all-powerful, not even in the hands of the world's best Demoman! Just learn to deal with them and you make many career Demomen cry in frustration! Although I'm quite sure that good (career) Demos don't really do sticky camping, since stickies are even more frightening when used like any other projectile (which is why I think that the "prolong the time in which a just-fired sticky can be detonated" nerf would be perfect and force Demos to do sticky camping, which is arguably easier to deal with - like I've just shown you - than those crazy sticky-chucking harbingers of carnage and destruction).

I have spoken.

Now back to my Official Butthurt Day story. So the guy was whining about Demos being overpowered, and I remember at some point I got a Medic with a full charge sticking to me and we went to demolish a sentry nest that the enemy had got up in the hallways leading from A to C.
And in a moment the guy said "There are the cheap Demos again. RED is so cheap."
So you think that an übered, somewhat skilled Demoman shouldn't be able to clear a sentry nest and kill half a team that's obliviously camping a narrow hallway? Really now? Butthurt much? Maybe we should just sit there twiddling our thumbs and watch as you take control of the hallways, and cap the point? You'd like that, huh? Just get your own über and come rape our sentries, for fuck's sake, and don't whine about us doing our goddamn job well.
But yeah, someone's always the sore loser.

So the map changed, we were in Dustbowl, defending, and suddenly some guy tells Slaverstrike to GTFO because his ping is too high. Apparently Slaver kept headshotting the guy through walls. And for the record, Slaver's ping is about the same as mine, 130-150.
And he wouldn't shut up about it. And I raged so hard, almost telling him to shut the fuck up (sure, I get defensive about my friends, don't fuck with them). Instead I kept on owning him with the bonesaw (I was playing as Medic, and he was too. Kept losing the melee duels, poor thing), and waiting him to tell me to leave because I was bonesawing him through walls or some shit. And it felt good to own him fair and square in melee and return to my team, sporting a full charge. Ha.
I don't know if servers compensate for lag, but do you have any idea how the lag works? ~140 ping is not that high. I myself don't notice any freaking difference when I play with 140 ping and when I play with 20 ping. I don't know how much others need to compensate to kill me (but do tell if you've played against me when I'm lagging. All I know is that with over 300 latencies it becomes a fucking job to kill the player who's lagging because they're just twitching all over the place), and since I don't play as high-accuracy classes such as the Sniper, I have no idea how much I would have to compensate to get a clean headshot. My little brother says he needs to shoot just a little bit in advance, so I'm gonna trust him, and figure that it takes some skill to be a good Sniper when you are lagging slightly.
But the point is, 140 ping is not high. Sure it's unacceptable in competitive play, but this is a freaking public server! Which of course gives you the right to whine about every single thing.
I wasn't the only one irked by the guy's whining: someone on his team said after a while that Slaver just got him with a clean headshot, he can't be lagging.
And if I remember correctly, there was a player with ~400 ping, and the guy never whined about him, which kinda proves my point on why's the real reason he was being an asshat. Sigh. Way to get butthurt about getting headshot by a good Sniper. Face it, there are better players than you. Stop whining about it like a little kid (...unless you are a little kid, and still it doesn't entitle you to anything).
Also, it's not a fucking dial-up, you do realise that people from other countries might be playing the game? We're on the other side of the fucking globe, of course our ping is higher.

And the grande finale, the final whine before we capped the last point on Dustbowl and I called it quits for the night: someone said "These pro players need to go play on the advanced server."
At that point me and Slaver were at the top of the scoreboard as a Medic and a Demo with over 100 points (...I think no other player on either team had over 100 points, but truth to be told I think we were kinda steamrolling by ourselves...), so I guess he was talking about us. Oh wow. Whoops?
Honestly, I was just kinda flattered. I've never been called a pro before. Haha. So do I need to find a clan now? I did feel a bit bad since I don't want to seem like an asshole who comes to play on a "noob server" to get easy points and point and laugh at players who are not as skilled as I am. Because that's not the case.

I've actually never played on the Newbies Only Advanced server, to be honest. I still think I'm not that good and I'm afraid I'd just end up getting steamrolled. I like playing with the "newbies" because the skill level is somewhat on par with mine. Except that, uh, yeah, I'm often on top of the scoreboard which might indicate that I'm better than others, and... I don't know! I still get killed very easily, even if I do get lots of points! Besides I don't know if my teamwork is good enough. Sure I keep talking about the importance of teamwork, and I try to be a good team player, but I have no idea if I really am.

And since I mentioned finding a clan to play in... I think I need to make clear that I am so joking, and I'm not interested at clan faggotry at all. Sure I've toyed with the idea of finding and joining a clan and trying out competitive playing, but then I realise that I don't want to do competitive gaming, I just want to play for fun.
Besides I would probably have to join a Finnish clan because of latency issues, and I'm horribly prejudiced against Finnish players. Guys especially. And although I just said that any male gamer with half a brain realises that girls too play FPS, I think it might be a whole different issue in competitive gaming. I don't know! I don't know if there are many girls in TF2 clans in Finland!
But I would sure love to see how an easy-going yet somewhat serious local clan would accept a girl as a member, but I don't think I have it in me. Because I'm not that good.
And I'm still too scared to communicate, so.
And the number one reason I don't want to join any clan, is that I don't want any clan tags ruining my name, haha. I would love to show my support for HK Central with the community tag, but aargh I hate wearing tags! I want to be Chrome, just Chrome, not [Clanfag]Chrome! (Sure it would help with identification, I'm sure there are quite a few Chromes on Steam, but my identification is my avatar: you'll know it's me. And the regulars on the servers I play on probably recognise me anyhow, so).

Lots of rage today. I just have zero tolerance for asshattery and general stupidity.

I'd love to show you some screenshots but alas, they're on my little brother's computer.

I'm getting nicknames already...

VALVEEEEE. <3
Newest TF2 update: "Added back some damage falloff to the Pyro's flamethrower. Not nearly as extreme as it was before the Pyro class pack." FUCK YEAH AWESOME. And so ends the reign of terror.
Well, no, but you get the idea.

And according to the official blog the Heavy seems to be getting the next unlockables (I already heard rumours about it a few days ago). Well, at least it will probably mean a field day for me as a Medic. What I'm really waiting for are the Soldier updates, and, uh, Demoman too. And I think Engineer seriously needs something to help him, playing as one is really starting to feel like a job, ie. it's not particularly fun anymore. But maybe it's just me, the stats are telling that Engineer is the second most played class right now.

Nothing else to say, really. Been playing a lot of Demo (and Medic because I find it extremely difficult not to go Medic whenever there are none in my team), unsurprisingly.
And last night I was dubbed "The Guy Who Never Misses" by a server regular who was apparently unlucky enough to always get a pipe bomb exploding at his face. And then I dominated him.
Thankfully he didn't know I had played Demo for only about five hours. It probably wouldn't have made him feel any better about it.
And I kinda like being a guy on default. Not that anyone has any reason to think otherwise since I still don't use my mic. I should, though. Because being able to communicate would be pretty useful. And I figure some regulars would be surprised to find out that The Guy Who Never Misses is in fact a girl. GASP. Not that I like to go around flaunting my gender, but if I open my mouth it kinda does become glaringly obvious. That, or everyone thinks that I'm twelve.
And oh, now I want to rant!

I hate the so-called "Girl Gamers," those who do flaunt their gender, basically scream "LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I PLAY HALO I AM SPESHUL!" and make it such a gigantic deal that they are GIRLS who play GAMES. Like they think that they're really special because of it. Wtf gender has nothing to do with it! I hate stereotypical gender roles anyway, and I think it's kinda funny that while those girl gamers try to fight against the assumption that girls don't play games, yet they actually promote such gender roles by assuming that they exist in the first place (I believe any male gamer with half a brain realises that girls too play games. "Guy games," even, like horribly violent first person shooters). Damn, even industry's slowly realising that girls play games as well (although I hold infinite amounts of RAGE against all the games that are geared towards girls. Nintendo, I am looking at you. They are nothing but insulting, and that's about the only thing I admit having in common with girl gamers. That, and boobs). Can I just be one of the guys and play the goddamn game without making a big deal out of it? Well, apparently I can.
I hate "girl gamers" just as much as I hate all the guys who think that girls don't and can't play videogames. And if they do, they're casual players who play stuff like Sims and maybe WoW. Or JRPGs like Final Fantasies. FPS is out of question. Girls don't play FPS! No way!
I am not that good at TF2, for example, but I don't think that has anything to do with my gender. Come on, people.
Yeah, I'm a girl, I play games (and I have played videogames for nearly two damn decades, so I figure the whole gaming culture is pretty much ingrained in me by now), but I am not a "girl gamer." I am not a casual gamer either. Even if my Nintendo DS is girly and pink and I play Final Fantasies.

But yeah, I know lots of girls who play TF2, and there are several regular players who are girls on the servers I play on, and I've never seen anyone fly off the handle when they hear a girl voice over the voicechat, so. I only need to get over my irrational fear of sounding like an idiot and starting to stutter when I use the mic.

/end rant.

And maybe I really am not that bad a Demoman, because our team usually lost immediately after I was killed and my stickies disappeared into thin air. Haha. Come on guys, why am I the only one defending, dammit?!
And I'm getting really angry at Medics who über Heavies or Soldiers on Dustbowl's last point to take down sentries. Okay, I understand if there are no Demomen around but FUCK YOU I AM STANDING RIGHT THERE. Then I go and take them down without a goddamn über (usually dying in the process, but sacrifices must be made). Yeah sure I'm not the best Demoman around, but dammit even I can take down a sentry so much better than any Heavy (if we're talking about distant sentries here, sure Heavies take down anything if they get close enough). And please Medic if you do über me, go first. Demomen are not Heavies, we can't push against the stupid sentry fire by ourselves and the closer I get the easier the sentry is to take down. It's just like übering a Pyro and trying to take down a sentry. You need to draw the fire to yourself.
And yeah, if there's another Demo, über him, not me. Haha. I can take down anything when I'm not under obligation of doing so (I like the slow and sneaky approach, even if I do take damage because of it), but I'm probably just going to fail because the pressure to actually succeed and not let my team and the Medic down is too much. I don't like being the one the whole team suddenly depends on. Maybe that makes me a bad team player?

Also got autobalanced in the middle of a match in Well, when my team was steamrolling. So I got switched to the losing team, AGAIN, but thanks to ME we fought the enemy team over the last point for almost five minutes. I had a Kritzkrieg-Medic backing me up, and while I disagreed with his decision to use the Kritzkrieg, I couldn't help but be pretty damn "OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK" when he used the charge on me in the middle of an enemy attack. JESUS CHRIST THE CARNAGE. Crit stickies! Everywhere! I probably killed half of their team with that. And they probably didn't even realise there was kritzkrieging going on before it was too late, because... well, I haven't actually seen a lot of Kritzkrieged Demomen around.
Anyway, we were fighting them off pretty well and then I suicided, completely misreading the entire situation (there were two enemies on the sticky-covered cap with me and I thought that was all, so I detonated, suiciding but killing the enemies. And unfortunately it was a grand mistake, there was another wave of enemies just coming), and we lost within a few seconds from that. Oh well.

Oh yeah, I bonesawed another sentry last night. And I killed the Engineer too. No, I wasn't übered. Well, I was, but it was my own über. I had to panic-launch my charge, and the Soldier I was übering was completely oblivious to everything around him and overlooked a sentry going up behind him. So I just ditched his ass, ran to the sentry in the protection of my charge, whipped out the Übersaw and killed the sentry. And the Engineer who desperately tried to escape. And then I went back to the poor oblivious Soldier with a half-full charge. Oh, Übersaw, how I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Yeah, I should use the mic.

I used a mic today.

I know! Wild!

And nothing happened. Except that some totally random guy sent me a friends request some time after I had used the mic for the first time, but I'm kinda hoping it's completely unrelated. It could be, but I think he was in my team when I spoke up at one point to inform people of my teleporter. (He sent the friends request during the next map, and he wasn't in the same team then).
He was kinda nice, though, I asked if there were any takers for my über in Dustbowl Stage Two and he was like I'll take it, and we capped the first point.
I just don't know if I should friend him back, because whoooa kinda creepy. Then again it would be kinda rude to ignore him, because I kept following him around in Dustbowl because he was a good Soldier and didn't waste my übers completely, damn it.

But anywho, I was glad to notice that no one pulled any strange shit when they heard a girl voice, so yay (I might be a bit prejudiced, but I've heard my share of horror stories about basement-dwelling lifeless gamer nerds... plus I don't ever wanna hear anyone go "Ha ha, a girl, no wonder you suck!"). I'd rather not make a big deal out of my gender (I like being "one of the guys" on default), but sacrifices must be made, and I want to be able to communicate with my team (and I hate typing).

Now if I only could be less nervous when talking and not stutter like some idiot...

Also! Great news!

HEAD OF THE CLASS GET!

I was just missing Spy! Had to endure a full fifteen minutes of utter humiliation in Granary, but getting the achievement was totally worth it. And I'd still like to play more as a Spy, I'm just SO. BAD. at it. Yeah I got a few lucky backstabs, but somehow everyone just sees right through me. Like the enemy Spy who backstabbed me when I was disguised. Granted, he was a pretty good Spy, whereas I'm... not.
And I was feeling really bad at some point when people started going "WE NEED MEDICS COME ON!" and we were getting slaughtered (but hey, we managed to hold them off the last point!) and I knew I wasn't contributing anything to the team and I was almost about to change classes, but... I'm sorry, team. I'm never doing that again.

Also tried to play Engineer a bit differently and tried moving my buildings often, rather than camp just one spot. Works really well and keeps enemies on their toes because they can never know behind which corner the sentry is this time. Should experiment more.