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.

The Base Jumper’s problem was always rooted in the design concept of the weapon. When the enemy soldiers jump high and slowly float down on your combo you can’t both stare into the sky to stop them while also dealing with players on the ground. In the small amount of playtesting the item recieved it had a crazy high degenerate effects on teamfights. I honestly feel like this weapon deserves its own category for ban reason: Every other soldier secondary promotes more interesting play. This weapon isn’t worth it.

Mini-crits can do big knockback from far away. Soldier already sucks, please don’t create a reality where soldiers get denied by minicrit hitscan instead of just normal hitscan.

Soda Popper is probably fine because it kinda sucks with the constant reloads. Most people think the infinity jump is obnoxious so its not a popular opinion to want to unban this weapon.

Bonk was supposedly playtested and deemed problematic before I became heavily involved in 6s. The only change it has received since then can be circumvented by spamming movement keys perpendicular to the direction you are trying to go (spam a/d while going forward or back to nullify speed loss). I am willing to believe its a problematic weapon in regards to backcaps according to lore, and I also think giving caught out scouts the ability to possibly retreat with it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Crit-A-Cola should never be allowed into the game while you can circumvent its downsides by ubering the scout. Scouts having on demand access to mini crits during their ubers sounds like hell. Honestly it could still be too good if that wasn’t a thing anyways because of the insane flank playmaking you could get with it.

I don’t really want to play a version of 6s where all 12 players in the server have free high-damage highly spammable weapons so no thank you to the guillotine.

Mad Milk is banned in HL because the throwables are too powerful during teamfights. The same concepts apply to 6s except scouts account for 1/3rd of the players instead of 1/9th.

Pocket pistol can be unbanned. Stock pistol does more damage in a clip so the tradeoff is actually a thing even if people pretend like it doesn’t exist.

Cow Mangler charge shots are degenerate as fuck. The weapon does not deserve another chance at introduction (would be the 3rd time at least) until that mechanic is changed to be less low-risk high-reward and uninteresting.

Disciplinary Action gets a bad rep because of whipping offclasses to mid, but most don’t consider that scouts/medics/soldiers benefit from the whip just as much. I doubt it would make a difference in terms of offclass viability because of that, but I do think it would improve the state of soldier by a lot. Worth testing 100%.

Natascha isn’t even a good weapon. It is just universally considered annoying because of the slowstun mechanic. Unbanning this wouldn’t change a single thing about the game however people would probably bitch a lot.

Buffalo Steak Sandvich is banned because certain rollout lengths result in the effect ending at the exact second you get to your destination. I don’t think it matters, but the dogma of heavy out of last = bad makes everyone hesitant to touch it.

Fists of Steel becomes dumber the less players per team. Hard no.

Rescue Ranger is probably fine. Engineer is honestly a bit too one-dimensional without it in 6s. Buffing last holds is generally a bad thing, but honestly the only time a level 3 gun can impact a last hold heavily is when the attacking team is unaware of its existence (this would also apply with the rescue ranger, but it would let engineers position buildings differently sometimes).

Short Circuit makes demos in uber spend most of their time waiting out the three spirit bombs. This would probably be too beneficial to last holds to ever be unbanned.

Wrangler gives sentries 648 hp. Not fun, same concept as above.

Quick-Fix is probably fine but good luck convincing people to even test it given the PTSD from that one ancient ESEA LAN where it was allowed.

Vaccinator has similar unban argument merits to the rescue ranger- but it 100% makes last holds too strong. Not viable for unbanning if 5cp remains the main gamemode for 6s.

Machina is dumb.

Sydney Sleeper shouldn’t a be a problem but apparently is?

Jarate can impact teamfights too heavily its kinda OP.

Diamondback gives spy the ability to backstab an isolated flank player for a free crit when more valuable targets are aware. Also generally just rewards spies more for a mechanic thats already really high value. A spy who backstabs a medic doesn’t also need the ability to do a pills worth of damage to somebody around them.

@rvn hi i play invite 6s and talked about every banned weapon in my post. I also advocated for testing the whip because I think it could probably be unbanned.

also yerb is a pretty high level player as well.

@LegendaryRQA
Invite 6s players died to charge shots plenty of times and they generally have the best awareness/movement in the game. Everybody gets hit by spam, its just something that happens. Charge shots are just another type of spam. You can influence how much you get hit by spam (and good players obviously do) but nobody goes through an entire game without taking some.

I don’t think it is viable to assume players wont ever get hit by charge shots, so its important to know how strong they actually are. They have a small element of risk involved with use (you lose your entire clip and can’t really move while charging) but it was normal for soldiers to safely use them many times in a match. If hit on the edge of their splash radius they do 61+afterburn. This damage scales to 122+afterburn on a direct hit regardless of distance, or 151+afterburn with ramp-up (Minicrits have ramp-up but not fall-off). They were very strong, and if they clipped a target in their splash they generally did enough damage to follow up on for the pick. Even a lone charge shot from a soldier across the map had the capability to one-shot scouts or force a medic. It wasn’t common for sure, but it was far from unheard of.

In general, charge shots have an imbalanced risk-to-reward ratio. Low-risk high-reward tools will always be favored in competitive games, and they also tend to make for the least interesting gameplay. I don’t think its wise to unban the cow-mangler at all.

If snipers are wasting their time with crouch peeking to win svs duels there is an exceptionally high chance their map presence is low and they aren’t helping their team by pressuring important sightlines.

Punish it with your non-sniper classes via tactical application of the W key. Additionally, your own sniper can shoot other things until their sniper actually plays the game. Taking svs fights isn’t mandatory if the other sniper is being useless.

listing your tryouts every post means nothing, people only care about the mains on your team.

i direct this at every lfp thread on the forum but especially this one because i have gotten like 4 alerts from being @'d in it

I don’t really buy into the idea that NR6s devolves into cheese comps and strats. Everyone who played that gamemode was mentally checked out, refused to make any attempts at improving, and didn’t give a single shit at any point of the formats lifespan.

The problem with the gamemode has nothing to do with the gamemode itself, and is more of a meta reason- Nobody wants to put in effort for NR6s given that the format has 0 translatability to bigger scenes. It is more time efficient to call the format bad, and only show up for matches to get the badge/prize$/league history. Is the format actually bad? That’s subjective, but saying that its unbalanced and cheesy is a pretty bold claim given how nobody is good enough at the format to speak with any real credibility.

The idea that certain strats that were found early by a few teams (mine included) were the definitive ‘cheesy’ way to play the format is just flat out wrong. The format had plenty of room for innovation, but nobody actually wanting to innovate whatsoever.

The vaccinator makes a great example to show off how little people actually thought about the game. Everyone thought this weapon was the bees knees and grossly overpowered. Notably, many NR6s teams ran double medic comps featuring 1 to 2 vaccinator medics. By the end of season 2 I heard staff debating about whether the weapon deserved to be banned.

How many people actually spent more than 2 seconds thinking about what could possibly counter the vaccinator though? Double medic strategies have a large variety of pros and cons. It takes more words than what I am willing to type right now to do a full dive into that. The relevant result of running a double medic composition is that single player picks become much stronger against your team.

The vaccinator seems like an intelligent choice knowing that. Bubbles are more flexible and can be used to bail out players or enable aggression frequently enough at the small scale that you can win the long game based on having more heals/ubers. Luckily, there are non mirror-matchup tools that have a lot of potential against the vaccinator.

• Stock Ubers provide Invincibility, which is stronger than damage type resistance. You can have access to more stock ubers than the opposing team.
• Diversified damage types and tankier team compositions. Equipping shotguns on soldier, heavies in combo, etc.
• The forgotten mechanic of fire damage and the the pyro class as a whole.
• The battalions backup charging as if doing full damage against vaccinator bubbles.
• Market Gardener + Quick Fix ubers smile

If against 2 vaccinators, you also gain the advantage of knowing your buffs are stronger than the enemy buffs, so you can pressure flanks exceptionally hard.

How many people actually used these things? Probably nobody.
I don’t think using my matches on Cat Noises presents a good example of what the format should have ever looked like. My team had some big noobs (myself) and had 0 scout mains, while b4nny’s team was carrying uncle dane. If vaccinator was truly problematic in lower divs (which is likely), you also need to check if any true counterplay was ever attempted (which is much less likely). Maybe things in NR6s are cheesy and awful, but I don’t think anybody is truly in a credible position to say that given how awful the ‘testing’ of the 2 seasons were.

Proposal:
Permaban players who say slurs or who otherwise try to rulebook about what bigoted behaviors are acceptable or not.

Clearly this community is incapable of growing as people or self-policing their behavior.
Its depressing

would like to play next season

adv/invite on scout/soldier/demo

adv on pyro

invite on med if you guys are cool

Reminder that the enforcer also has interactions with:

fists of steel
vaccinator
demo shields
heavy spin-up bonuses
battalions backup
spy cloaks

Also 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.

my team just died and i would still like to play this season

soldier invite/challenger
would also play scout demo and pyro in challenger as well

lf sub-IM teammate.

want to snipe the discord nitro from the div 3 prize pool

If snipers are wasting their time with crouch peeking to win svs duels there is an exceptionally high chance their map presence is low and they aren’t helping their team by pressuring important sightlines.

Punish it with your non-sniper classes via tactical application of the W key. Additionally, your own sniper can shoot other things until their sniper actually plays the game. Taking svs fights isn’t mandatory if the other sniper is being useless.

bind mouse1 +attack;lastdisguise

DONT tell the admins

@LegendaryRQA
Invite 6s players died to charge shots plenty of times and they generally have the best awareness/movement in the game. Everybody gets hit by spam, its just something that happens. Charge shots are just another type of spam. You can influence how much you get hit by spam (and good players obviously do) but nobody goes through an entire game without taking some.

I don’t think it is viable to assume players wont ever get hit by charge shots, so its important to know how strong they actually are. They have a small element of risk involved with use (you lose your entire clip and can’t really move while charging) but it was normal for soldiers to safely use them many times in a match. If hit on the edge of their splash radius they do 61+afterburn. This damage scales to 122+afterburn on a direct hit regardless of distance, or 151+afterburn with ramp-up (Minicrits have ramp-up but not fall-off). They were very strong, and if they clipped a target in their splash they generally did enough damage to follow up on for the pick. Even a lone charge shot from a soldier across the map had the capability to one-shot scouts or force a medic. It wasn’t common for sure, but it was far from unheard of.

In general, charge shots have an imbalanced risk-to-reward ratio. Low-risk high-reward tools will always be favored in competitive games, and they also tend to make for the least interesting gameplay. I don’t think its wise to unban the cow-mangler at all.

Proposal:
Permaban players who say slurs or who otherwise try to rulebook about what bigoted behaviors are acceptable or not.

Clearly this community is incapable of growing as people or self-policing their behavior.
Its depressing

I don’t really buy into the idea that NR6s devolves into cheese comps and strats. Everyone who played that gamemode was mentally checked out, refused to make any attempts at improving, and didn’t give a single shit at any point of the formats lifespan.

The problem with the gamemode has nothing to do with the gamemode itself, and is more of a meta reason- Nobody wants to put in effort for NR6s given that the format has 0 translatability to bigger scenes. It is more time efficient to call the format bad, and only show up for matches to get the badge/prize$/league history. Is the format actually bad? That’s subjective, but saying that its unbalanced and cheesy is a pretty bold claim given how nobody is good enough at the format to speak with any real credibility.

The idea that certain strats that were found early by a few teams (mine included) were the definitive ‘cheesy’ way to play the format is just flat out wrong. The format had plenty of room for innovation, but nobody actually wanting to innovate whatsoever.

The vaccinator makes a great example to show off how little people actually thought about the game. Everyone thought this weapon was the bees knees and grossly overpowered. Notably, many NR6s teams ran double medic comps featuring 1 to 2 vaccinator medics. By the end of season 2 I heard staff debating about whether the weapon deserved to be banned.

How many people actually spent more than 2 seconds thinking about what could possibly counter the vaccinator though? Double medic strategies have a large variety of pros and cons. It takes more words than what I am willing to type right now to do a full dive into that. The relevant result of running a double medic composition is that single player picks become much stronger against your team.

The vaccinator seems like an intelligent choice knowing that. Bubbles are more flexible and can be used to bail out players or enable aggression frequently enough at the small scale that you can win the long game based on having more heals/ubers. Luckily, there are non mirror-matchup tools that have a lot of potential against the vaccinator.

• Stock Ubers provide Invincibility, which is stronger than damage type resistance. You can have access to more stock ubers than the opposing team.
• Diversified damage types and tankier team compositions. Equipping shotguns on soldier, heavies in combo, etc.
• The forgotten mechanic of fire damage and the the pyro class as a whole.
• The battalions backup charging as if doing full damage against vaccinator bubbles.
• Market Gardener + Quick Fix ubers smile

If against 2 vaccinators, you also gain the advantage of knowing your buffs are stronger than the enemy buffs, so you can pressure flanks exceptionally hard.

How many people actually used these things? Probably nobody.
I don’t think using my matches on Cat Noises presents a good example of what the format should have ever looked like. My team had some big noobs (myself) and had 0 scout mains, while b4nny’s team was carrying uncle dane. If vaccinator was truly problematic in lower divs (which is likely), you also need to check if any true counterplay was ever attempted (which is much less likely). Maybe things in NR6s are cheesy and awful, but I don’t think anybody is truly in a credible position to say that given how awful the ‘testing’ of the 2 seasons were.

@rvn hi i play invite 6s and talked about every banned weapon in my post. I also advocated for testing the whip because I think it could probably be unbanned.

also yerb is a pretty high level player as well.

Pyro

pyro.

The Base Jumper’s problem was always rooted in the design concept of the weapon. When the enemy soldiers jump high and slowly float down on your combo you can’t both stare into the sky to stop them while also dealing with players on the ground. In the small amount of playtesting the item recieved it had a crazy high degenerate effects on teamfights. I honestly feel like this weapon deserves its own category for ban reason: Every other soldier secondary promotes more interesting play. This weapon isn’t worth it.

Mini-crits can do big knockback from far away. Soldier already sucks, please don’t create a reality where soldiers get denied by minicrit hitscan instead of just normal hitscan.

Soda Popper is probably fine because it kinda sucks with the constant reloads. Most people think the infinity jump is obnoxious so its not a popular opinion to want to unban this weapon.

Bonk was supposedly playtested and deemed problematic before I became heavily involved in 6s. The only change it has received since then can be circumvented by spamming movement keys perpendicular to the direction you are trying to go (spam a/d while going forward or back to nullify speed loss). I am willing to believe its a problematic weapon in regards to backcaps according to lore, and I also think giving caught out scouts the ability to possibly retreat with it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Crit-A-Cola should never be allowed into the game while you can circumvent its downsides by ubering the scout. Scouts having on demand access to mini crits during their ubers sounds like hell. Honestly it could still be too good if that wasn’t a thing anyways because of the insane flank playmaking you could get with it.

I don’t really want to play a version of 6s where all 12 players in the server have free high-damage highly spammable weapons so no thank you to the guillotine.

Mad Milk is banned in HL because the throwables are too powerful during teamfights. The same concepts apply to 6s except scouts account for 1/3rd of the players instead of 1/9th.

Pocket pistol can be unbanned. Stock pistol does more damage in a clip so the tradeoff is actually a thing even if people pretend like it doesn’t exist.

Cow Mangler charge shots are degenerate as fuck. The weapon does not deserve another chance at introduction (would be the 3rd time at least) until that mechanic is changed to be less low-risk high-reward and uninteresting.

Disciplinary Action gets a bad rep because of whipping offclasses to mid, but most don’t consider that scouts/medics/soldiers benefit from the whip just as much. I doubt it would make a difference in terms of offclass viability because of that, but I do think it would improve the state of soldier by a lot. Worth testing 100%.

Natascha isn’t even a good weapon. It is just universally considered annoying because of the slowstun mechanic. Unbanning this wouldn’t change a single thing about the game however people would probably bitch a lot.

Buffalo Steak Sandvich is banned because certain rollout lengths result in the effect ending at the exact second you get to your destination. I don’t think it matters, but the dogma of heavy out of last = bad makes everyone hesitant to touch it.

Fists of Steel becomes dumber the less players per team. Hard no.

Rescue Ranger is probably fine. Engineer is honestly a bit too one-dimensional without it in 6s. Buffing last holds is generally a bad thing, but honestly the only time a level 3 gun can impact a last hold heavily is when the attacking team is unaware of its existence (this would also apply with the rescue ranger, but it would let engineers position buildings differently sometimes).

Short Circuit makes demos in uber spend most of their time waiting out the three spirit bombs. This would probably be too beneficial to last holds to ever be unbanned.

Wrangler gives sentries 648 hp. Not fun, same concept as above.

Quick-Fix is probably fine but good luck convincing people to even test it given the PTSD from that one ancient ESEA LAN where it was allowed.

Vaccinator has similar unban argument merits to the rescue ranger- but it 100% makes last holds too strong. Not viable for unbanning if 5cp remains the main gamemode for 6s.

Machina is dumb.

Sydney Sleeper shouldn’t a be a problem but apparently is?

Jarate can impact teamfights too heavily its kinda OP.

Diamondback gives spy the ability to backstab an isolated flank player for a free crit when more valuable targets are aware. Also generally just rewards spies more for a mechanic thats already really high value. A spy who backstabs a medic doesn’t also need the ability to do a pills worth of damage to somebody around them.