Enforcer Ban Discussion
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enforcer, while strong in its intended use, is still very niche compared to stock or letranger
while a huge nuisance to engineers its hard to consider it overpowered
engineer without wrangler is far from helpless, at least on koth, where pistol is an equally viable option
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I would like to present a simple formula.
Defensive gameplay elements + Sniper = Unfun.
Sniper is only enabled to be such a degenerative influence in highlander because of the overabundance of defensive options teams are forced to run that let them slow the game down into a perpetual state of sniper dominance.
The Wrangler is just one of many examples. It is a weapon that is oppressively strong. Strong enough that it has warped perception of how stopwatch defense should be played massively. The idea of dynamic play on defense is almost entirely absent in highlander at all levels of play. It isn’t the only reason, but certainly one of the largest.
I am of the personal opinion that the wrangler is a toxic influence on the meta, removing counterplay to it seems like a frankly awful idea to me.
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@rosario
for clarification I meant on stopwatch defense, it’s not really my place to speak on it as I do not play engineer nor am I that familiar with the class, however some sort of framing was necessary for the purposes of the argument and response to the comparison made. I agree with the reasoning laid out in Daffodil’s post primarily.
I just don’t agree with the implication that the scorch should not be banned due to a perceived familiarity of sorts between the enforcer/wrangler situation, and the scorch/darwins situation. Different class, different factors, different influence on the meta. If either weapon is to be banned or justified as unbanned, it should be under the context of the influence it has, not that of others.Wrangler provides a niche in regards to gun oriented and defensive play, this is to a certain extent healthy, even if it’s begun to have a detrimental impact on the meta and development of the class long term.
Scorch’s niche is in reducing the niche of every other secondary option by it’s existence, this is in no way or form healthy.To reiterate what I am trying to say
The wrangler lets you do things you entirely otherwise can not, the scorch somewhat has the opposite effect of this. I am by no means trying to argue about if the wrangler should or shouldn’t be banned, as that should be left to people who are more informed on the class and dynamics.
I just wish to draw a line between the two weapons and cases to prevent what I see as a somewhat harmful conclusion from coming to fruition. It is not all that relevant to the ongoing discussion, but it was made relevant, and I intended to nip that before it came to full fruition. -
I don’t think we should be banning weapons based off other weapons being banned. The scorch shot and the wrangler are oppressive towards 9 classes and don’t require any skill to use. If we want to make a separate case for the danger shield / enforcer i think that is fine. But the way I see it those two items each serve to counter one class which may be annoying for those classes however with the scorch and wrangler being banned I see no reason for the danger shield or enforcer to be used. Like I said items shouldn’t be getting banned based off other items or infrequent use. I also think pyro and engie can both be played without those items and perhaps would make those classes more enjoyable to play since the skill cap will increase and they will get to use their brain more
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I am going to add one more distinction, and try to lean away from having personal opinions bleed through in this post.
The enforcer serves as a direct counter to the wrangler. No wrangler in the meta means no reason in the meta to run the enforcer, so thus no reason to ban the enforcer. Enforcer’s singular case of value is gone in that case. So the discussion and similarities end here in my opinion.
I really don’t want to get into a discussion about darwins at the moment. I’ll bite the potential bullet and say that the darwins can still effectively nullify other longer distance secondaries. I am not going as far to say that it will end up being used for that purpose, but the important thing to note is that it can.
It becomes a question of is it fair for sniper to have long range flame counterplay? This can be easily applied towards detonator over the scorch shot in the future. It may be good foresight to ban the darwins under this line of reasoning.
I will say that I doubt that the darwins will just not be used once pyros learn how to use the detonator, and I only find it a fair counterplay to the mechanically lacking nature of scorch spam.
That being said, this is not my point. I will reason that it is too early to try and argue that the darwins will not be used in the same way versus the detonator post scorch ban.
There certainly is theory that could be used, but said theory is not necessarily enough to warrant a ban yet.
I do think it is important to keep this in mind and act on it to ban the darwins if it is seen to be unintuitive counterplay to the detonator in the future.One case involves quite literally no reason to be ran if it’s counterplay is banned, while another may have some. I think it is important to draw this difference, and to view it from such an angle.
If one leads to a question, then I find it inaccurate to end the discussion before it’s over. I do not have the energy to delve into if long range counterplay to the pyro is fair at the moment, so I will not start what I can’t finish.The clear difference here is that one discussion immediately ends with a ban, and another could be seen as opening up. These are not the same circumstances, and a discussion about one of the weapon pairs does not accurately represent the other.
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Your argument essentially boils down to “no counterplay”. The enforcer was made purely as counterplay to the wrangler - and even then, it isn’t perfect. It takes a decent amount of time and commitment to kill a wrangled sentry with just the enforcer, and that’s not even accounting for how easy it is for the engie’s team to chase down the spy and punish him for that. Compared to a weapon like the scorch shot, which takes almost no commitment or time to spam away and have an impact on the game, the enforcer is a weapon that requires much more planning around its usage; comparable to the detonator, which I don’t think anybody is arguing should be banned.
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Reminder that the enforcer also has interactions with:
fists of steel
vaccinator
demo shields
heavy spin-up bonuses
battalions backup
spy cloaksAlso has the tech of 2-shotting 125hp classes at max ramp up from disguise.
Just in case people forgot that it can do more than pierce wrangler shields. -
@Daffodil “demo shields”??
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none of the shields have bullet resistance, only fire or explosive
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it’s annoying ig