> As an average scunt main I would to inform you that you are wrong. You say that the pyro nerf was bad. Duck you (politly) pyro is dumb.
average lime scunt main vs typical loch n load enjoyer (oh no I already did that bit)
I loved LnL+sticky+Persian persuader… play with stickies since you have plenty, save the LnL for spamming chokepoints (which is fine since regular GL explodes on impact too) and busting sentries, grind on the engineer’s dead buildings and turn it into three full-health packs.
Wanted more ammo? We had a tool for that: it was called “dying and going back to the respawn room”.
I get that scouts hated the OG two-shot LnL (with a chance of a 1-shot-kill) but scouts also control the engagement because of higher mobility, everyone used atomizer which gave triple jump even while using another weapon (before that was later nerfed), and you get one more jump than I have shots. Plus it’s specifically a “fuck that one class specifically” loadout with a large downside of having to actually hit your shots instead of rollers, and half the ammo loaded. I know that’s a controversial take but LnL was fine imo, if you push the fight and I land two direct hits (or your number comes up on the first pill) on your high-speed mobility class with triple jump that's a mistake on your part. If you want to make it nospread so damage output is fixed and it's guaranteed to take 2 hits... that's fine too, nocrit+nospread is better overall imo.
Same for Pyro. He has a flamethrower and a shotgun, if you as a scout choose to run in and force the fight over open terrain against a pyro who knows you're coming... you die. You can still kill him with two meatshots with no chance of response if you flank him unaware, the flare gun moves slow enough you can dodge. To not die to the shortrange juggle class, don't approach the shortrange juggle class with your mobility class. Skill issue, you have a pistol if you really need to plink on him, he either needs to land flares or use the shotgun, you 100% have the control of the engagement at all times right up until you let yourself approach and be juggled.
But yea modern scorch shot is busted, I think that one's just not fun for anyone, I don't feel good about just blind spamming with AOE fire grenades that block a choke for a couple seconds either. Not sure the current weapon design is saveable for that one, I run it too when I play pyro (because all the rest of pyro's combos have been stripped away) but it's basically a better version of the detonator in the sense of being horrifically annoying to play against for zero effort on the pyro's part. On the other hand, it also forces snipers to at least occasionally interact with the rest of the playing field.
The two I’m really torn on are rescue ranger and short circuit. Short circuit used to be actually fairly important for clearing stickies/etc, I’d use it plenty myself on offense pushing out of the gates etc, even as a demo main I felt it was reasonable (up until you got like three of them just vaporizing everything while they repair or rescue ranger). It went through a number of variations and I’m not sure any of them felt super great but it also did something kinda important and the class is otherwise very weak offensively (except for other unpopular weapons like mini sentry). Not that I like a couple turtled up engies vaporizing my shit but like, uber a heavy or a couple snipers with charged machinas to alpha-strike it, 2 charged shots on a sentry is instadeath even if they're swinging wrenches. That was always the charm of “silly little game” TF2, no matter how fucking lame a given strat was there was always something you could do to break it with an even sillier strategy.
Until the vaccinator came along that is. Like god it was decent to start with and was just buffed incessantly in the last few years. Oh you can trivially swap resists to block any class/loadout variation made to counter you, even pop multiple resists at a time, and oh also the charges now follow the patient so you don't even need to keep healing them? Yea just keep buffing it that's great /s. Meanwhile quickfix was done dirty, airblast immunity on uber was a situational strat for pushing on ramps (thundermountain, upward, etc) and you were vulnerable to damage to offset that, just shoot them till they die (damage, my one weakness!). That was fine, what was the problem?
Rescue ranger is another tough one to balance. I kinda feel like you shouldn’t be able to run both Short Circuit and RR together, that’s maybe a little too much mobility and tankiness for sentries especially when you have a couple engies. Forcing engineers to commit to the nest or walk the sentry out by hand is not a bad thing imo. Maybe that's a thing like the Equalizer where it really should be two weapons - the "repair gun" and the "teleport the sentry" gun... or just not have teleporting sentries.
Iron bomber should not have existed though, non rolling rollers are not a good gameplay idea, but whatever. Same with air strike and the parachute… just doesn't play well overall.
But that’s what I mean is all of the worst decisions came in the last few years of TF2 development. Jungle Inferno was 2017 and the last few years of decisions before that were already downhill, you got scorch shot, vaccinator, quickfix nerf, iron bomber, airstrike, tons of completely random shit that wasn't needed and actually added balance problems in a lot of cases, matchmaking/casual, etc.
2014-2015 was pretty much the apex of “silly little game” TF2.