r/tf2classified • u/ChickenCake248 • 2h ago
Discussion The Hunting Revolver is now worse than gun Spy
The Hunting Revolver has been nerfed again, but this time in a way that is attempting to be a rework. The following changes were made:
Zoomed in firing speed has been reduced.
Mini-crits on no-scope headshots.
All crits and mini-crits have damage falloff.
In my opinion, the intention here is very good. They are trying to make HR Sniper into a mid-range duelist subclass, akin to Ashe from Overwatch. I've advocated for a long time to do something like this.
However, for some reason they threw in damage falloff on headshots, without tuning the falloff curve. Damage falloff for a weapon like this is extremely harsh. Headshots are doing ~70 damage at ranges where a Demoman can effectively sticky spam or a Soldier can effectively rocket spam. This puts the HR Sniper an awkward position. His damage requires him to be in a very narrow range of distance between close and mid-range where a Scout can easily close the distance and the Pyro is one Twin Barrel jump away. But his lack of survivability makes it so that a Demoman and Soldier can easily kill him at that range.
The mini-crit no-scope headshots do barely anything. Mini-crits are only a 35% damage boost. Most of the power of mini-crits are the nullification of damage falloff. That's why a Heavy with mini-crits is so powerful. But the Hunting Revolver has damage falloff applied to mini-crits. So now it's not even really worth it to go for headshots, as the extra difficulty in going for a headshot vs center mass shot isn't worth the measly 35% damage bonus.
And now my claim that gun Spy is better. I have around 500 hours using the Hunting Revolver. And I'd like to say I'm quite good with it, as many have commented as such. Yet, in its current state, I'm able to get more kills as gun Spy than with HR Sniper. This is because the Spy has invisibility with damage reduction and disguises. Both of these contribute to his survivability and allow him to get into the appropriate range to use his Revolver. The Spy can also see enemy health, which aids in telling him which enemies to target and when he needs to run away vs try to get the kill.
In order to fix this problem, while maintaining the intended mid-range duelist subclass of the HR Sniper, one of the following should be done:
Remove or heavily reduce damage falloff on headshots. This would put HR Sniper as an upper mid-range fighter.
Increase survivability. If the falloff curve is untouched, this would actually need to be increased by quite a lot, since you'd still need to be close enough that a Scout/Pyro can easily close the distance. This can be in the form of health, speed, and/or healing on headshots.
Overall, I'm just disappointed. It looks like the devs had good intentions, but clearly fumbled their execution. Given their handling of the Hunting Revolver, I'm convinced that none of the devs actually use it. I liked the Hunting Revolver because it gave a challenge. Even in its strongest state, I could still get more kills playing stock Sniper or almost any other class (despite my hundreds of hours using it and being quite good with it). However the challenge of going for headshots was very fun. Now the juice ain't worth the squeeze and it's not fun to play.
