Unban The Scorch Shot
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eXHunter yeah i played pyro when i first started out and although you definitely know alot more than me on this weapon i still think it gives a direct upgrade over detonator due to the fact that it can stunlock players and hit twice and takes significantly less skill to use compared to detonator and other secondaries. however, i also think that the decision is not up to me and instead should be players who know the class and have played invite on it.
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minty
You can look at this thread objectively and see that this is mainly a pyro mains being for the unban and sniper mains being against it.The fact is the weapon helps counter sniper so of course sniper mains aren’t going to like it.
In short, there’s some pretty strong bias on both sides.
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as the guy who helped get the scorch shot banned, keep that shit banned
gus said in Unban The Scorch Shot:
minty
You can look at this thread objectively and see that this is mainly a pyro mains being for the unban and sniper mains being against it.The fact is the weapon helps counter sniper so of course sniper mains aren’t going to like it.
In short, there’s some pretty strong bias on both sides.
I currently like the balance of no scorch no darwins. no scorch means no unfun stuns and movement-inhibiting abilities with low skill floor and ceilings, and no darwins means detonator can still be used to effectively spam snipers while offering a higher skill floor and ceiling.
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Micahlele said in Unban The Scorch Shot:
as the guy who helped get the scorch shot banned, keep that shit banned
gus said in Unban The Scorch Shot:
minty
You can look at this thread objectively and see that this is mainly a pyro mains being for the unban and sniper mains being against it.The fact is the weapon helps counter sniper so of course sniper mains aren’t going to like it.
In short, there’s some pretty strong bias on both sides.
I currently like the balance of no scorch no darwins. no scorch means no unfun stuns and movement-inhibiting abilities with low skill floor and ceilings, and no darwins means detonator can still be used to effectively spam snipers while offering a higher skill floor and ceiling.
I really don’t get the movement inhibition argument, TF2 is a game chock full of knockback(even the most powerful ability in game can be inhibited by a right clicking pyro), and usually the explosives that knock you back do not require a direct hit like the Scorch and deal more damage.
I’m fine with unbanning the Darwin’s with the Scorch, though I’ll point out that the det allows you to permanently keep the enemy sniper on fire without having to see or directly hit him, arguably more effective. Det timing also REALLY does not take more skill than direct hitting them. I am not even mentioning how DDS takes literally 0 skill and practically removes an entire class(at least a full mechanic, though that’s the Camper too) for the Sniper to deal with.
I get the knockback and unscope was annoying on Darwin v Scorch but at least the pyro and sniper had a chance to see each other, was it seriously worse than being given flinch for 15 ticks without having a chance to peek out of cover?
The only real extra danger provided by a Scorch is if a sniper gets double hit(likelier to happen if cozy camper is run) and has no med to arrow him, where he loses time finding a health kit(some might argue this extra downtime for snipers is a good thing though). Though I will note, a double hit with the scorch is often times not more than 125 hp, especially if you regen health ie CC
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So I have come back with some statistical analysis and data collection; I am not claiming this to be be-all-end-all data, I just tried my best and spent hours collecting all I can to see if the scorch actually performs better, feel free to do your own testing.
TL;DR: both my testing in mge and invite final logs with and without the Scorch show miniscule difference, the weapon is clearly not overpowered by any stretch.
1- invite grand final logs: 2 from before the ban, 2 from after. Constant being that the scorch was run by at least supreme toad in both 6 and 7, I didn’t verify that it was run full-time by both pyros, but it was allowed and run and this was verified through youtube recordings of the matches. More data would be helpful but also muddy the waters with more variables that cannot be accounted for. These were the best logs I could find and I made sure they’re from grand finals but they may be incomplete on a few.
S6: https://logs.tf/2826725
S7: https://logs.tf/2772629
-scorch ban here-
S8: https://logs.tf/2893335 (both pyros seemed to have unusually low dpm here)
S9: https://logs.tf/3001494
S6-7 GF Combined Average Pyro DPM: 169.5
S8-9 GF Combined Average Pyro DPM: 160
Scorch shot DPM difference: +5.94%
(supreme toad in particular only did 1 less dpm, it seemed to hit the other pyros worse)2- MGE Testing v Sniper: Since a lot of people seem most concerned about the Scorch’s effect on snipers. I know this isn’t the most applicable, but it’s better than no data.
I and an rgl HL friend who shall remain unnamed consulted vorboyvo to be able to collect data accurately enough. 10 matches of Granary middle were run and timed, 5 with det, 5 with scorch. Sniper ran cozy camper and rifle. I tried to avoid getting in super close as that tends to be an engagement that doesn’t happen. My opponent doesn’t want the Scorch unbanned and was trying to win. Match results were all within the same ballpark, no matches where either of us did noticeably better or worse.
Bias:
- Granary middle is a flat map. The Scorch Shot would do worse in practice as snipers tend to have height advantage.
- My opponent is not the best sniper and the Scorch Shot also benefits from this as it requires more eye-contact to score hits compared to the detonator. This would be punished more by a better sniper.
Results:
- Detonator won 5-0, Scorch won 4-1. 100-61 score and 98-63 score respectively. Detonator resulted in a %5.39 bettter K/D
- Detonator matches took 1924 seconds, Scorch matches took 2019 seconds. Detonator did 7.22% better kills/minute
Even without allowing the DDS, and with testing arguably biased toward it, The Scorch Shot did worse fighting a sniper than the Detonator. The difference was admittedly not massive, but it’s not the nuke people seem to think it is.
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this thread is officially the worst one behind the medic ampy one about policing private discords
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All of the data analysis in this thread completely ignores what was the primary reason for banning the scorch in my view. It is far more effective than any secondary at pressuring any player that is away from their medic.
A direct hit from the scorch shot not only stuns a player for half a second (allowing them to be more easily shot by your teammates) but also hits a second time, doing about ~60 damage on direct hit, and with afterburn, does over 125hp. The detonator does not do this. This is why there isn’t much of an outcry to ban the detonator - sure it’s really good damage over time, and that’s annoying. But it does not guarantee kills for your teammates the way the scorch shot does. And I haven’t even mentioned how much the scorch shot affects heavy players - on product, for example, a heavy pushing through dogbread is pretty standard, and a scorch shot direct pushes the heavy back a significant amount, as well as ruins his healrate.
I played sniper while the scorch shot was unbanned, and I can tell you with certainty that the scorch is far more annoying to play against than the detonator. It just straight up does damage faster than the det because of the direct hit hitting twice. It gives pyro far more freedom to “fire and forget” so to speak - spamming the sniper with the scorch shot does not take as much attention from the pyro as spamming the detonator.
Your argument about how “annoying” weapons like the Natascha and DR aren’t banned is flawed, because these weapons are undeniably not as viable for full time use as much as the scorch shot is. The Natascha straight up does less damage than stock and tomislav, and the DR makes opportunities the invis watch can give impossible. -
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all this talk about numbers and stuff ignores the fact that, when we played with it, we collectively came to the opinion that it was fucking annoying to play against. so we (once again, as a collective) decided to not play with it
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So I’m only commenting on this because of your data and methodology. I have no valid experience playing pyro at a high level and can not speak to the discussion about why it should be banned/unbanned.
All data should be done and presented with context. The context here being the scorch shot is overpowered…. But you never explain why it is overpowered. It appears from your posted research that you believe the scorch shot is overpowered because it does a lot of damage and it hard counters sniper. What you should have done and opened your post with is the discussion that the invite-level pyro mains are discussing in this very thread (and the ban thread previously posted). They seem to feel the overpowered nature stems from the knockback, so a better analysis might have been to see the scout deaths pre and post (for a crude example). Your reasoning for the data presented is the FOUNDATION of your analysis.
Your first presented experiment is to determine the effectiveness of scorch shot in high-level matches. What about mid-tier? Low-tier? Look at the amount of players in each tier and see how skewed this data is when you only select the cream of the crop. You also claim to have a small sample size in order to not “muddy the waters.” I know I’m going to sound like a joke for saying this and I know this is just a video game…. but claims like this a fantastic way to get kicked out of a research institute. Your justification (albeit not great) should have been these are all the invite grand finals before and after the ban. If the metric gets exponentially worse as you increase the sample size, it’s probably not a good metric to base a claim on. Perhaps look at ALL matches on product pre and post ban and present trends (or lack thereof) off of that much larger data set.
Your next experiment consisted of an MGE between a sniper and a pyro. You negate all outside variables present in this fictitious matchup that might almost never happen in an in-game scenario without explicitly stating what they might be. A good researcher tries their hardest to prove their own research wrong. I’m not saying this experiment was not useful, but you should try to determine the pitfalls of this experiment. If you can’t, get it… peer-reviewed (ha) by someone with experience on sniper, pyro, HL, etc.
Research presented without foundation or validation is a dangerous weapon. I know this is simply a test of ban vs unban, but I just want to make everyone a little bit better at conducting research!
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RapidKebab I meant to reply to this^
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Buddy sat down and crunched the numbers
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What an ungodly silly post. Knock back from running at a Pyro is very different from a choke being softcore stuffed by a Pyro at a distance. Detonator forces you to keep it out when u det it, increasing risk of being walked at or bombed by spy soldier demo vs scorch where u just can fire, spycheck/deny a bomber, and fire again rather easily and quickly. The det has a much shorter time of area denial, as it dets and is gone, vs the lingering scorch shot after it makes contact once. Imo the major reason to ban the scorch was the miniscule amount of input for all the output. I’m fine with the detonator cuz its input/output is significantly more balanced, and has the added benefit of making Pyro much more versatile if used proactively (see players det jumping to their China to get rid of spy pestering their combo). Scorch shot is silly. Keep it banned. Idc if the det is banned but Pyro with it unbanned is atleast slightly more interesting and keeps the phlog viable on swiftwater first, makes Asheville Pyro much more viable in bombs and roof control.
in conclusion Pyro sucks don’t play itEdit2* I am fairly confident not a single player involved in the original ban debate watched any* video on scorch vs det.
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Secretly Satan Thanks a lot for the informative comment. I appreciate the feedback.
I am aware that the data is lacking in sample size and could be analyzed in a myriad more ways, however it’s incredibly hard to control for variables, meta shifts, and even finding matches w/ logs and video was a challenge, along with the fact most will disregard any non-invite data.
I did the analysis I thought would be valuable in determining if the Scorch outperforms the Det, and pointed out the pitfalls of having low amounts of data for invite play and my mge testing being rather arbitrary, and tried to balance my testing in favor of the scorch shot to try and reduce or remove effects of bias, and contacted vibe specifically so that the data wouldn’t be worthless at least. I will note the context for me wasn’t that the Scorch is or was op or not, it was that it was being claimed as op and I went to see if there was a statistical or experimental way I could reproduce this extra effectiveness, which I could not.
I provided the logs and methodology for all my findings raw so that if anyone wants to analyze them differently or do similar analysis for different divs or experiments they are free, and in fact welcome, I’m happy to be proven false, especially statistically.
I would do more data collection and analysis but it’s finals season and spending 6 entire hours testing and finding logs and verifying the scorch was run etc was enough for my sanity. I’ve done my best explaining why I feel it should be unbanned based on what I read in the ban thread alongside providing data to dispel the argument that the weapon was or is overpowered. I’m happy to have at least opened a discussion for players better and more experienced than me and even have had some agreement thrown my way. I’ll stop posting here as I feel I’ve run out of unique things to say, and let people debate it amongst themselves.
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pajaro I must point out, the scorch categorically almost never guarantees a double hit, but fair point on the effects of the pushback from hit. I’ve also done a bit of checking on how/when a double hit occurs, but originally didn’t post it since the data from matches and experiments seemed more valuable and better applicable to actual play.
A heavy moving forward into the pyro with a revved minigun will never be double hit if the scorch hit stomach or above. A heavy who is standing still(worst case) and starts running toward the pyro upon being hit also will never be double hit by a scorch aimed stomach or higher.
This, combined with the fact that HL players are almost always moving means the scorch shot in practical terms deals no more damage(IF NOT LESS), due to det splash being more consistent without height advantage. All of the data and analysis of such I could scrounge up also ended with this conclusion.
The detonator gets a bit more effective dps(I cannot prove w/ data that this is actually the case, but it certainly provably doesn’t get less) and better mobility, the scorch shot gets a long range boop. The boop I cannot quantify the effects of, but it seems like a fair trade and giving the pyro a unique ability in exchange for movement and maybe dps.
An aimed sniper is the only class guaranteed to take a double hit from a scorch, which with DDS deals a whopping 46 damage(on direct), compared to a detonator today which will deal 70-85 without a direct. You don’t get knockback anymore but take almost double the damage and afterburn flinch for 7.5 sec. This should be worse, even if it doesn’t feel it. You’re obviously the sniper main and higher div than I am, with actual comp experience vs Scorch and I do respect your opinion immensely, but your memories from 2 years ago might be misleading, as neither logic nor data back you up as far as I can see it.
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This is a very reddit.com thread and also ultimately pointless cause no shot people vote to unban this shit, I think pubbers hate it even more than comp players and sort of doubtful that invite unbans it. That being said I like writing nerd essays and I feel sort of sympathetic to OP so I shall type many words.
A weapon being stupid/annoying or easy to use is 100% a valid ban reason. Weapons that are fundamentally uncompetitive should be banned; whether this manifests itself in warping the meta because it’s blatantly overpowered or as a weapon that is antithetical to the competitive spirit (excessive rng, very low skill expression) is entirely irrelevant. As a thought experiment, a pyro shotgun unlock that has worse DPS than shotgun at all ranges (even a good chunk worse) but aims for you LMAOBOX style should 100% be banned because that would be very stupid. Natascha is poorly designed but still requires a modicum of tracking ability and the rev penalty requires gamesense to play around and finding DR annoying is an /r/tf2 opinion.
I agree with previous posts that AOE denial effect of scorch + ability to just fire and forget (i.e. switch back to primary) makes it more braindead than det. Personally I also find timing the det on detonator to be not 100% free but I think I’m just dogshit at it lol. Regardless, it makes the brain cell to in game value higher than the detonator; for some like hunter and johnny it’s not different enough to warrant having separate ban decisions on the two, for others it is. The important takeaway for OP though is that clearly the scorch shot is close enough to the detonator in in-game utility. Showing that it is marginally worse than the det is whatever because it is easier to use than the det (and nobody is gonna believe any analysis that shows it’s significantly less effective in game, especially with the questionable stats I’ve seen so far). You would probably have to somehow argue that the weapon requires enough skill relative to the in game value you achieve to make it not inherently uncompetitive.
tl;dr ban both det and scorch lol because that would be epic funny (give me the cozy camper also though i agree with johnny sniper is aids enough)
edit: typos
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Yeah, the study did come to the finding that in a 1v1 setting between sniper and pyro, the latter will win about the same on det and scorch shot. But
- This finding cannot be generalized to just any gameplay, and
- It doesn’t account for any of the other reasons to keep scorch banned, such as a) degeneration of the low-level meta to low-skill players relying on scorch as a crutch rather than learning how to use other secondaries effectively, b) massive power creep to pyro, c) being overpowered in team fights pyro doesn’t naturally fit in (i.e. mid-range) leading to being oppressive to the meta forcing other pyros to run it on certain points, etc.
- Scorch shot is very annoying to play against, regardless of how good it is, and is pretty clearly basically a straight upgrade skill wise to detonator with only minor penalties, ability to do splash in more and easier environments, etc. - leading to teams having to contend with basically 0 skill all luck minicrit bounces and having to divert heals or get a health pack for a pyro halfway across the map. (note, annoying has been well defined by BMPD here in a way that isn’t just “waaaaaaah i don’t like it”)
Pyro in competitive TF2 is not the same as pyro in casual TF2. It is not meant to be a mindless DM machine - that only happens bc of the uncoordinatedness of pubs and the inability to focus fire. Pyro, the overall weakest class, will not get meaningfully stronger if the scorch shot is unbanned - it will just get power creeped into fulfilling more and more roles for a class that already has so much to do and so little to do it with.
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Also, since my name was brought up: I helped in the data collection and at least given the variables (low div pyro, low div offclassing sniper, granary mid MGE) it is internally valid, but cautioned against its interpretation in the game as a whole. In particular, I do not think the results for K/D per minute would be significant overall.
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pajaro I’m no math genius but where are you getting 65 dmg on a direct hit?
No even the flare gun which does the most direct dmg does that.
Straight from the wiki it has a direct dmg of 20 and if the mini-crit flare hits (which rarely does it) it does a whopping 46 dmg max. Wanna pretend you are brain dead and you let the afterburn continue all the way to completion. The total is 106 dmg with afterburn thats just one pipe worth of dmg in 7.5 seconds.