Snail

First, let me preface this by saying that i love demo. Its my favorite class by far and i hope Valve doesnt nerf him too bad or at all....but the "winbombs" or stickies can be downright disgusting. Heres an example of how powerful a demo can be -

http://rapidshare.com/files/132456264/demo3.dem.html

Go to tick 8000 cuz i sucked in the beginning. A lot of it is just spam but if you want to hold on to your last CP in dustbowl, THIS is how to do it. I had a few good shots with the nade launcher including a decent air shot on a demo. I was able to control that corner for the whole rest of the round.

Demo tip - When youre not shooting you're reloading. The stickies reload slow as well as the nades so reload reload reload!! You dont wanna be caught with your pants down when you get rushed and need a nade to their face.

Anyways, it was ridiculous...ill try to make a demo on map that isnt as friendly to demo spam to show some better stuff if i can but this is how you play it on dustbowl. This was the scoreboard at the end...

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/555...owl0004aw1.jpg

As you can see...way too easy...maybe thats why its my fav class lol. Advance demoing does take skill. Sticky jumping, using stickies as rockets, and hitting moving targets with the nade launcher are all very much skills. Anyone can spam. Although some do it more effectively than others.

Another demo tip - the nades come out of your gun a little to the right of the reticle so you have to account for that especially if theyre close to you.

Hopefully this sheds a little light on why you might see a demo nerf in the future....i sincerely hope they dont ruin the class tho if they do, but i have faith...now go blow something up!

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Braidedheadman

I honestly don't know what they can take away from that kit without completely screwing it over. With a 1-2 second delay before they can detonate stickies (I've never actually timed it), they have virtually no CQC strength if they haven't already laid stickies out in advance. And with pipes that only detonate on contact in the first impact, you need to be either lucky (crits) or very, very good at placing pipes in order to come out on top in CQC vs just about any other class. Their best bet is often to drop the launcher and whip out the bottle, and that's never a very reliable thing to do.

What we see in the OP is merely the kit being played to its strengths, like any other, which in this case happens to be area denial at a choke point, especially if he is working with the rest of the team. It works in much the same way at the far end of the bridge on 2Fort where, if left unchecked, stickies can cordon off the front entrance and pipes can ruin all the sniper's fun up on the battlements.

It's my feeling that, given their weakness in CQC, the demo is not that OPed. There are more worthy kits in whose necks should fall under the nerfecutioner's axe. And as long as we are talking about crits shifting the balance of power, whatever argument can be made about the Demoman's so-called "win bombs" can equally be made about the Soldier's "spam-until-you-crit" rockets - or worse when attached to a Kritz-Medic.

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thundeer

After watching luuser play demoman tonight I have newfound respect for the demo class (No that wasn't me playing demo on my account ). But ONLY when playing offensively. If all you do is camp an area, try shooting stickies more than 10 feet away at a fleeing enemy. I have seen and been on the receiving end of conscript, bhack, and luuser as demomen and they FRIGHTEN ME. I'm sure there are more of you but there's something freaky about being 100 yards away from conscript while running away around a corner, and seeing a sticky land perfectly RIGHT AT YOUR TOES.

I mean sure, a demo is good at spamming pipes around a corner because they bounce off the wall and eventually might settle at someone's feet, and setting stickies and waiting until someone turns the corner onto them, but hey it works! Some call it "area-denial", I call it brainless camping. It definitely works though, which is why it's frustrating. You can't expect someone to shoot off all 8 stickies covering the corner. Which is why once you see some poor soul on your team rush forward and take the stickies, RUN FORWARD TOO! He sacrificed his life to clear the area, so rush in there before the demo puts down more of them! Always be aggresive towards demomen once you know they don't have stickies down.

IMO it's a lot more fun to play offensively, going out into the corner and trying to counter enemies running away/towards you. Some may have the same sentiments towards snipers And yes I hate camping snipers as well but it's what they do best, so I'm going to try my best to counter that as best I can.

Same goes for demos. To counter: GET IN THEIR FACES. If they're smart, they switch to pipes and hit you point blank. To me a smart demoman doesn't shoot stickies at your feet, he shoots stickies at the nearest exit. Most people panic and run away from demo, but it's the only class I always run TOWARDS (besides medics and snipers) because I have a much better chance of winning a fight if I'm in their face, no matter what class I am. Even if it becomes melee-melee, it's still 50-50, better than running onto stickies covering my only escape route.

Be aggressive towards them, don't panic and run in a straight line away.

I can definitely understand the need to nerf them though. Even something as simple as 'only being able to put down 4 instead of 8' or 'each sticky does half as much damage now' would help a lot. They could still do their job but it would make it more of a challenge and less spammy.

Santa

Valve has admitted that they have long held the belief that the demoman is overpowered. Here is the quote from the interview:

I dont think valve will change the damage or anything like that, as thats a silly way of balancing something. Instead, I think theyll change the class around a little. My idea is to reduce the number of stickies in the gun from 8 to 4, as well as the number of stickies deployed from 8 to 4. This way a skillfull demo can still use them nicely, but ya better not miss. It wont hurt nooby demos (ie most demos) because 4 stickies can still cover a doorway easily, but will make the good demos not quite so dominant.

Although ive always thought the demoman is a bit overpowered, ive never worried about it because very few people have the proficiency required to make it overpowered. Most of the kits in this game, you can only really become so good with them before you pretty much hit a ceiling. Because of how the demoman is setup, there really doesnt seem to be a ceiling. For this reason, MOST demos arent scary. But the few that are quite good can be absolutely dominating.

Braidedheadman

What is the underlying problem with Demomen, really? That people are dumbassed enough to walk into a trap when it's plain as day that there are stickies nearby rather than move them with explosives or compressed air (which I find goes sorely underused)? Or are we suggesting that they are actually better in a firefight than, say, a soldier? If it's the former, why are we blaming the kit? If it's the latter, I'd like to see this labbed - 2 demos on 2 soldiers or whatever - between guys we can all acknowledge are our best, each team taking a turn with the kit, the others trying to defeat the Demoman in whatever way seems them best. Start the competition by first having a wide open room to fight in (that tennis or basketball court map would be ideal), head to head, then select a map with no restrictions - fight it out anywhere, anyhow.

I have some predictions with regard to the results: The Demo will lose handily in upfront confrontations, but may come off with an edge in less direct engagements (if he's smart about it).

If we are going to call the class OPed, let's at least have some data to work with rather than hearsay and opinion. "They are campy, spammy, brainless retards," is not a valid argument.

But why shouldn’t a demo be able to clear out an L3 sentry, dispenser, and active Engineer if he's been given the time to place enough stickies to do the job? In the time it takes to get that many stickies out, the defending team should have been able to easily bring him down, remembering that the last sticky will take 2 seconds or so to arm. That's an eternity considering that just 2 rockets, or one crit rocket, will destroy your common Demoman. And if he's ubered, what now are we complaining about? We might as well lump that complaint in with the anti-everything, un-ubered Pyros circle-strafing an L3 sentry and ancillaries into so much slag and gore too. And as I recall, that argument was dismissed out of hand as well. "If the sentry is placed near a corner, they SHOULD be able to take it down," was just one of the comments made that comes to mind...

Also, did everyone fail to notice that Demos are listed under the "Defense" category when selecting their kits? Why complain about it when they are fulfilling that role behind a row of stickies? No one complains about the L3 sentry camped out on defense fulfilling area denial rolls...

I'm sorry, but limiting them to 4 stickies on the floor is a bad, bad idea as any heavy, and even soldiers and now (more ridiculously) BB Pyros, can walk through that and keep on trucking - and yes, it does happen. Four in the tube seems reasonable, however, as when playing the kit I never set traps by unloading all 8 onto the floor in one go anyhow.

Personally, I've felt the frustration at running across a sticky trap I didn't see (or ignored like an idiot). But I've NEVER had a problem with a Demoman I've caught and closed to in CQC save for that he landed a lucky crit pipe, in which case I feel frustration with an aspect of the game not related to Demomen specifically.

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Santa

If you look at valve's quote they dont even mention anything about the sentry, dispenser, and engineer dying to 3 stickies. That was just the interviewer that doesnt understand the game very well.

What I think valve was referring to are the people who play the kit very offensively and are capable of plopping stickies down directly at people's feet. As someone against this, theres not really much you can do. As someone doing this to others, although its difficult, once mastered its extremely deadly. You mentioned that demo is listed as defense, which may have been valve's intention, but its the offensive capabilities of very good demos that is what valve probably sees as overpowered and wasnt intended originally. So, whenever they do rearrange the demo kit, it will probably somehow lessen the offensive capabilities i was talking about (laying stickies at people's feet and such) but not diminish their value on defense. Even they dont seem to know how theyre going to do that yet.

Also, youve apparently never run into conscript or snail before

EDIT: Just thought of this, but its very interesting how the balance of this game is so very similar to RTS balance. In this case, demoman isnt overpowered for the general population, but is among the best. The same was true in CoH. Many aspects of that game were just fine for the general population, but among the top 100 players there were gigantic imbalances because people were good enough to exploit (for lack of a better word) them.

XCannon

I guess I am one of the few who doesn't think the demo is OP. The only time I really have any problems with them is if I'm not paying attention and fall into a trap, or if there is a crit sticky. (or their skill vastly overshadows mine)

The only two classes that I use to go toe to toe with a demo is a Scout; where I rush in on them, or a soldier; I try to RJ over top of them.

It's weird that I hardly ever run into demo vs demo. Then its a case of prediction with the sticky and nades.

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Let's play a game. It's called quit looking up at me and finish!

Seancho

it sounds like the only reason its over powered is because people get good with it...

a few shots to the head of something very booze enriched and a hammer to the hand should bring there skill back down

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Braidedheadman

Just a couple more comments to make then:

1. If a person's skill defines the kit as OP, then it's likely that person will OP any kit he/she chooses to play with. Isn't that fair to say? I mean, if you can plop a sticky at someone's feet, what's to stop them from doing the same with a rocket? Or being equally adept with more twitch-sensitive weapons like the sniper rifle or other hit-scan weapons? If anything, given that there's an extra step involved in detonating a sticky that they've successfully plopped at someone's feet, it's that much harder to use than a rocket. Why penalize skill? If it works for the general population without being OP, why nerf it because the minority of elites are able to excel with what is otherwise just another ordinary class?

2. We've addressed RTS-style balancing in this game before (albeit from a more simplified "tic-tac-toe" point of view) with respect to balance between kits and their respective roles in the form of hard and soft counters. The consensus then seemed to be that the game was already finely tuned and well balanced enough that such considerations were moot, which is why it kind of surprises me that we're even having this discussion now.

It just seems to me that people are more frustrated with how the Demomen are being played rather than anything specific about them being OPed. It further occurs to me that TF2's particular emphasis on run'n'gun has taken such a hold that, when encountered, a Demoman being played to its uttmost - and therefore clogging up chokepoints either on defense or offense - provokes these feelings of frustration and complaints that the kit is somehow intrinsically OPed relative to the other kits.

While we wait for a couple of people to step forward and lab the demo kit against the other kits, we do have this set of data to work with: TF2 Stats.

What we can gather from these tables is that the Demoman is not nearly as OPed as is being suggested. He routinely falls behind Heavies and Soldiers in most categories, most notably kills per hour, points per hour, and assists per hour where he is a cellar dweller next to snipers and spies. What makes it truly interesting is that the kit is played more than both Soldiers and Heavies yet manages to come up with less. Far less when compared to the Heavy, who has less than half the percentage of total time played than the Demo has.

I'm not drawing any conclusions, per se, but at first glance the data does not seem at all consistent with what is being said about the kit. If it were truly OPed, you'd expect better results on the tables.

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L10N

I think those stats are skewed by the number of idiots on pub servers who just sit and spam with no aim and rarely hit or kill anyone. I don't think skill should be punished but I think the way demo stickies work right now is a grey area. On one hand yes it does reward skill, but on the other it has a listed intent and purpose. That is for defense, not mid air detonations to be like the rocket launcher. It faces the same problem snipers face in many games, a player of high skill can just snap off point blank shots completely neutering the need of any other class, that is what the demo stickies do, eliminate the need for a class like soldier.

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