DR spy medigun pickup
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Everyone has been talking about this in their friend discords. Recently it was found out a med can swap their medigun with a medigun dropped from a DR spy and it would cancel the active ubercharge. People have found use out of it from the shutter on Swiftwater 2nd to effectively bait an uber. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a thread about it already, and I want to ask for everyone’s thoughts
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Meh not game breaking as it meant to be. No decent invite team would pop Uber with a flashing Uber demoman.
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Context for those who are not in the know.
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Really the only way I can see this being super impactful is that teams, especially in low divs, will actually have to verify a full uber is being used (esp on swift 2nd) rather than just saying “oh they used, we should counter” - which i think is a good thing regardless, instant counter use without phlog or kritz or another really good reason is kinda dumb
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Totally a feature that has no home in competitive TF2. I imagine this will get considered an exploit and will be subsequently banned from use.
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Doesn’t work in koth and pl, swiftwater second is the only area in the entire game that can be used semi okay. Even then it can be countered by just looking at the Uber.
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@JohhnyFromCali
there was discussions of a med on koth picking up a gun your spy drops in pocket when they try and sac in to kill your medic. You can pop more now with less fear, kill them and swap the guns a couple times to only lose a bit of uber rather than the whole thing. So it has some small things outside of the safety of swift 2nd.Personally I would find it dumb if it got banned. It encourages creative gameplay and out of the box thinking which we need more of in this game. Its not like this doesn’t cost anything. Your spy has to be on DR, can’t be in position for something or comming. You have to be in a spot where your spy can take enemy damage or fall damage. It has to be refreshed every 30 seconds, either by your med toggling the guns (prob not the best imo) or your spy dropping another one.
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If you can make it work and it’s effective you deserve that 100% of the time.
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its niche no matter how you look at it. I think swift 2nd (maaaaybe steel B?) def are the biggest contenders for it. Really though its can turn spy into a suedo loadout bind if their counterpart is running the desired item. Mini engi to wrenches, shield demos to stickies, gunboats/banner to other banner. In practice I only think its useful for the medic stuff. Still no reason to remove it as an option for those who want to explore it
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@GeneralNick said in DR spy medigun pickup:
Totally a feature that has no home in competitive TF2. I imagine this will get considered an exploit and will be subsequently banned from use.
The one thing is I don’t think it is an exploit technically. Since the individual mechanics perform their intended roles: the spy drops a copy of the disguised player’s weapon, the medic interacts with the dropped weapon, and uber is canceled (and depletes) when dropped onto the ground.
I’m not necessarily saying it belongs in the game, but I feel like it’s important to create a distinction. A combination of mechanics we don’t want in highlander is not the same thing as a game exploit being used to cheat
I will say though I think it’s a little weird to ban things off of theory crafts. I would prefer it if more people play around with it during scrims and prove that it’s busted versus us just humoring the idea that it’s broken.
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@GeneralNick i think calling it an exploit relies on an extremely broad, rather unfaithful definition of what it means to exploit.
are you exploiting the game mechanics as intended? or are you actually finding unintended behaviour in the game’s code that very clearly should not be there?
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@Constantly said in DR spy medigun pickup:
@GeneralNick said in DR spy medigun pickup:
Totally a feature that has no home in competitive TF2. I imagine this will get considered an exploit and will be subsequently banned from use.
The one thing is I don’t think it is an exploit technically. Since the individual mechanics perform their intended roles: the spy drops a copy of the disguised player’s weapon, the medic interacts with the dropped weapon, and uber is canceled (and depletes) when dropped onto the ground.
I’m not necessarily saying it belongs in the game, but I feel like it’s important to create a distinction. A combination of mechanics we don’t want in highlander is not the same thing as a game exploit being used to cheat
I will say though I think it’s a little weird to ban things off of theory crafts. I would prefer it if more people play around with it during scrims and prove that it’s busted versus us just humoring the idea that it’s broken.
I think Constantly nails the issue right here, and I hope it will be considered when a decision is taken. Also what Johnny said
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The real meta is when the defense on swift 2nd does it too, and then offense is surprised when they trade 10 seconds later
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@Markers no exchange ever happens as people keep faking ubers
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Hello everyone, as one of the people who discovered the “tech”, I wanted to share my own input on it.
One, to johhny’s point of “No decent invite team would pop Uber with a flashing Uber demoman”, you can uber more than just a demo, we tested it in scrims and the other team ALWAYS forced when we ubered a phlog pyro into swift upper (we were scrimming an invite team). Also, you can send more than just that, it’s fairly easy to uber a mantreads soldier and a demo and flash them both, and still keep 40-50% of your uber. If your team isn’t going to force to that, then gg you guys are nuts.
To vibe’s point of “this isn’t an exploit”, I want to make sure we are all aware that an EXPLOIT from RGL’s pov does not necessarily mean “cheating”.
The example that comes to mind for me is “Animation canceling by destroying a teleporter to cancel the phlogistinator animation is not permitted” which is found in section 1003.4 of the rgl general rules.
The pyro is technically supposed to stay ubered for a moment if he gets knocked out of his taunt animation, but the fact that it gives one team a ridiculous advantage over the other team means that it is banned.
I think this same logic applies to every single person saying “this requires setup” or “it has tradeoffs” etc. Having a phlog pyro get uber for 3 seconds by destroying a tele also requires setup and has tradeoffs, yet people generally agree it should be banned.
I’m aware that this isn’t a 1:1 comparison, but it was the most prominent example that came to mind.Basically, yes, it does require some amount of setup, and yes, it is technically a creative combination of intended mechanics, but at the end of the day it gives one team an unfair, essentially irreplicable (for the defending team) advantage that makes the game less competitive.
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How do you consider it unfair? This isn’t a bash or anything but I find it hard to see that especially in consideration in the way I posted. You might say its unfair in the original scenario, but what stops red from doing it, they also have to move their spy over to do it?
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@Pain-Seer next level team wide bait
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@JohhnyFromCali thats when you meta meta game and pop in normally as they expect you to fake it
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@ben that’s why I said decent invite team would stop and not pop. Especially if they know that’s what you are doing. If it happens to work it was more of red fucking up than blu making it work.
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Exploit might have been the wrong term to use. This is clearly not an intended game mechanic and is more so just the consequence of how the game engine interacts with spy weapons and uber. I can say with 99% certainty that Valve did not intentionally add this into the game to create a situation where teams can fake ubers. TF2 is not balanced for the competitive scene, but for the pub scene, so just because you can do something in the game does not mean you should be able to from a competitive perspective. If the ability to fake ubers (beyond just voice commands that indicate you are fully charged) was something that was already part of the game, this would not be so bad, but the truth of the matter is that, barring certain updates decades ago, once an uber has been visually triggered, there is no way to end it and retain large amounts of the charge. There is really no way to know whether or not a team is doing this. Your spy can’t check to see if their spy is running DR, and is a team supposed to assume that everytime they kill the enemy spy disguised as a med that every uber is a fake one? Pushes like swift 2nd really take place quite quickly, too quickly for any team to rationally determine whether or not the ubered phlog pyro or demo isn’t actually ubered. There is no skill needed to abuse this game mechanic and there is also no real counterplay other than waiting, but being able to fake ubers is not a mechanic in the game, so there is 0 established counterplay/convential wisdom about that. I doubt this will be a widely used/abused mechanic, but the point stands.
