Team Fortress Tuesday #8

I didn't talk about this last week, but I am today.  Team Fortress 2 has had a Christmas update for a couple years now, and the tradition was continued this year.  It wasn't a major update, and no weapons were added, but a few were changed.  The Battalion's Backup and Concherer were buffed, but I never play with the backbacks outside of Mann vs. Machine, and I only use the Buff Banner there, so I'm don't want to say how good they are, but considering the only changes added to them were positive, they're both probably better than the were before. 

The Diamondback was also straight buffed and now gives a crit for backstabs in addition to sapped buildings.  I think this was an interesting change, and at this point, I would say the Spy's revolvers are all fairly well balanced.  Actually, I'm not entirely sure there's a good reason to use the standard revolver now.  Some people might not like that idea, but the other guns all have so much to offer now.  I personally am going to stick with the L'etranger and Ambassador when I play Spy(which isn't often), but now at least I would consider seriously using the Diamondback.

The Soda Popper received a significant, and frankly well-deserved change.  The hypemeter is still there, and still charges the same, but instead of minicrits it grants you the ability to quintuple jump.  I know I'm not the first to say it, but I'll say it anyway, the minicrits were awful to deal with.  It's a good thing Scouts who knew how to play felt guilty about using it, otherwise the lives of everyone would have been so much worse.  I can't say for sure how good the gun is now, but at the very least it isn't horrifically annoying anymore.

Now we get to the real controversy.  The Short Circuit.  A shot only costs 5 metal now, and it can be fired extremely rapidly.  Like 10 times a second rapidly.  You can literally walk up to a Soldier or Demoman and completely nullify their projectiles.  Completely.  When the update dropped, I immediately saw the potential for hilarity, joined a Hightower server, and promptly dominated a Soldier simply by walking into his face spamming left-click.  If you follow TF2 at all, you'll probably have seen this video, but I just want to say that I did my thing before that came out, so don't tell me I copied.  Anyway, it's a stupidly hilarious and broken weapon now, and while it can, and I have, used it properly, it's just so difficult to resist the temptation to run at someone with it.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the festives this year.  They are: the Force-a-Nature, the Black Box, the Flare Gun, the Eyelander, the Gloves of Running Urgently, the Wrangler, the Crusader's Crossbow, the Jarate, and the Sapper.  For the first time, I actually got stranges, both the Jarate and the Wrangler.  So, happy about that.  If you haven't seen the update notes, they can be found here.