i always appreciate the main highlander masterminds speaking out on topics of what’s fair and what’s not, i am sure people utilize the weapons to their maximum potential the same way they do in adv/inv
it’s a weapon i think is fine in sixes since a lot of the time you can come wide and give yourself the space to move around and dodge the pipes coming your way. 6s also has the most mobile classes in the game so hitting the loch pipes isn’t extremely easy since you can’t just spam a single angle the entire game knowing that eventually it is going to land and hit someone for -100.
in highlander, just the sheer presence of the sniper on the map blocks off a lot of the mobility and dynamic gameplay that 6s provides. the prime example i could use would be product, where if a sniper is present and posted up locking down that area from either rock or china, you would have to essentially hug the wall of the cliff alongside the rest of your combo to contest the sightline with minimum risk of getting your head blown.
since the way you move around the map in hl is so much more restricted, the loch and load becomes significantly stronger. a demoman experienced with spam angles could pre-aim the same angle as the team is walking down and hit the blind spam across the map, while literally never having to directly contest the combo head on. in a theoretical scenario where i want to dodge the loch blind spam as a medic while also having a sniper pin me down in an area, i would have to completely neglect the sniper sightline to dodge the pipe, which is a lose-lose scenario since competing vs the best of the best on sniper, over peeking the sightline even for a slight bit could result in dying. alternatively, when i avoid the sniper sightline, i am putting myself at risk of getting hit with the loch pipe that i am unable to dodge due to limited space. also, due to the presence of the sniper on the map, in the scenarios where the sniper is alive and a team is actively looking to play out of sniper sightlines, teams end up bunching up in areas that block off most sightlines, forming a literal blob susceptible to any spam.
the second problem of loch and load in hl comes to the fact that there are more slower classes present on the map. scout is a class that would be able to avoid the loch spam relatively consistently, being the fastest class in the game with an ability to double jump making them avoid spam even better. the same could not be said about the hl specific classes such as engineer/heavy/pyro, since even if they do see the blind spam coming their way they aren’t afforded the same mobility as scouts are to move out of the spam angles. since hl teams naturally group up in areas, avoiding the sniper sightlines, the blind loch and load spam becomes ten times as strong. the invite hl grands were the perfect showcase of those grouped areas that were being mindlessly spammed, resulting in either relatively free and easy kills or significant amounts of damage being dealt.
so it’s not just “annoying to deal with”, it completely alters the approach at which you have to take any fights, making it both unfun and unhealthy
Iso said in BAN THE LOCH:
The shortage of demoman players is already the limiting factor on team creation across most of the league, so maybe it would be healthier to avoid rule changes that make that class even harder.
if any demo quits hl over the loch ban i will actually giggle my ass off