CommunityFortress

Welcome, welcome! On today's agenda is a quick throwdown of yesterday's TF2 update, which includes a bunch of Deus Ex, a few new cosmetic effects, and plenty of Aerosmith references (for some reason).

Here's the link to the patch notes on the official wiki, if you're in doubt about my mystical prophetic teachings.

Onward! What'd we get in terms of weapons, those fascinating shooty-type deals?

First up is the first Engineer weapon in who knows how long, the Widowmaker! It's a brand-new shotgun that doesn't require a reload - no more awkward shell reloads, right? This baby's powered with your own metal reserve, and it's costly at 60 metal a shot. To compensate, every time you land a hit, all the damage you deal is added back to your metal reserve.

The biggest issue players are already having with this weapon is that it sucks way too much ammmunition to justify the lack of reloads. 60 damage? That's three shots. Assuming you're dealing 30 damage on a shot, which is a medium-range shot, you're still only at six shots, same as a good Shotgun - and you're sucking down your ammo supply for buildings! A solid Pistol and maybe even a Gunslinger may be able to back it up for offensive Engineering, but the metal depletion could tie you to your Dispenser more than you'd like.

Next is - yes! - an Engineer Pistol replacement, the Short Circuit. It's similar to the Goal Keeper idea that was kicking around during the last STS leak - it fires an electric pulse that destroys projectiles, but sucks up 35 metal and deals less than 10 damage on a connection with an enemy.

Like an airblast, without the reflecting. It sounds good on paper, but it fires slowly enough that you can't keep up with rockets or grenades, really. This note makes it comparable to the airblast, certainly, but without any real damage possibilities it's a bit awkward to use. Fine for tanking Engies saving their things from a Demoman detonation, certainly, but it's a bit of a niche. I'm assuming at this point that destroying friendly projectiles as well is a glitch, so we'll leave that out of any calculations.

Third, we've got a new rifle for the Sniper, the Machina! It functions largely like the default Sniper Rifle, which is excellent so far. If you're sitting on a fully charged shot, the bullet will deal 15% more damage AND penetrate targets! This comes at the cost of unscoped shots, which are now impossible, and your rounds are tracer rounds, with an obvious bullet path.

The Machina is going to be an interesting weapon. If you can keep yourself secret before the first shot, you've got a potential 172.5 damage on a bodyshot and 517.5 damage on a headshot - more than enough to kill anyone, for sure. Lining up enemies will make that shot count twice as much as well, but it's a gamble - miss, and your location is instantly known without any acknowledgement from the enemy team. Not being able to noscope will matter a smite more in close-quarters last-ditch combat, but this has potential to be put to use.

Finally, let's have a look at the Spy's new revolver, the Diamondback. Bucking the recent TF2 trend of "more damage, situational downside", this revolver deals only 85% of normal damage, but you can store a free critical hit for every building destroyed while being sapped, a la the Frontier Justice.

It's certainly harder to use if you're trying to backpedal and shoot down your pursuers, you're going to have to land roughly one more shot on lighter classes and 2 or more additional shots on heavier classes. Teamwork will make this gun great, and you store crits even if your Sapper wasn't the killing blow, as long as it was attached at the time of destruction. 102 damage is nothing to sneeze at, and if you can sneak behind enemy lines, a quick uncloak-and-unload will be devastating.

What else came in this update?

The Original now has its own crafting recipe, in case you were looking to play around with its tweaked rockets and weren't lucky with the drop system.

Four new Deus Ex cosmetics, including a pair of specs that change based on the class they're equipped on, another baseball cap, a robotic arm, and a nanotechnology helmet.

Eight new unusual effects, so you can show off in, well, eight new ways.

Three new hats added for the DotA tournament, though currently unobtainable.

Three new crates, with Strange weapons for the Medic, Sniper, and Engineer (and yes, Strange junkies, the Medigun counts Ubers and assists both!).

And a few other bugfixes and localization updates, of course.

Got an opinion on this update, or my opinions here? Comments, if you please!