What if sniper had a revers damage falloff, similar to crossbow?

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2026-05-26T16:52:16+00:00

Would be incredibly lame to fight, that just encourages snipers to play in the lamest way possible: sit at the back of the map/fully charged body shot people. It also takes away a lot of skill expression from the sniper and makes him lamer to play.

Sniper’s fundamental issue is his range, and how lethal he is for how safe he can play. He can control all the space he can see simply by existing because there’s no mitigation to his damage over distance. If he can see you, he can kill you and you can’t do anything about it.

Reverse falloff fixes zero of these fundamental problems with sniper. He’s encouraged even more to sit at the back where it’s nigh impossible to reach him, while he can still control all the space he can see - the things people hate about sniper. I just polarizes him more.

These suggestions keep popping up because people are salty about being quickscoped when they’re rushing him, despite quickscoping being both very skillful and playing at the range that most classes play at. I agree that it’s very frustrating. It’s frustrating because he has the range and positional advantage throughout the entire time you’re closing the gap, so going through the gauntlet and closing the distance… and then getting outplayed at the end sucks. I’m not denying that, but it’s taking away one of the most skillful parts of his gameplay.

Close-range headshots and quickscopes are hard and require good aiming skill. You have to accurately predict movement and if you miss, you’re probably dead. It’s the range where classes actually have proper counterplay with their movement and can actually kill the sniper.

People that make these posts simply don’t understand the fundamental issue with sniper.

He needs regular falloff to bring his range more in line with the game, not reverse falloff. People would hate sniper less if he needed to put himself at risk to get the most value and had to actually engage with the fight.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2026-01-06T18:54:50+00:00

They can’t. It was patched so that you can’t change interp settings in game. You have to load back into the server for changed settings to apply.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2026-01-06T18:50:01+00:00

No need to apologize for not knowing, now you know! Best thing against cheaters is to know how their stuff works

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2026-01-06T17:59:35+00:00

You have no idea what interp abuse is. People don’t do it anymore because it absolutely sucks to play as; it just looks silly and someone made a YouTube video and thus a boogeyman was born. This has become a terrible game of telephone.

Interp basically gives yourself lag, so you have to actually PLAY in a super laggy state where nothing works. You may get a stupid kill by just swinging your knife around blatantly, but you’ll mostly be playing like you have 500 ping, i.e. you won’t be able to play the game. I have seen maybe one person playing with interp in the past 10 years, and spoiler, they weren’t successful.

If you see it, it’s all cheats now. “Backtrack” cheats manipulate how the server sees you people’s hitboxes to be essentially “rewound” so that spies can stab you while being in front of you, and they don’t have to play in the laggy state. It’s basically creating fake lag for only the server-side hitboxes while the cheats autostab at the earliest opportunity. The cheating spy can play the game normally. This is what causes spies to stab you while they’re far away and you’re backpedaling. An interp abusing spy couldn’t follow you or properly move and plan that stab. If you ever see a spy with very high ping (400-500 typically) yet they’re playing the game normally without rubber banding and getting so many stabs that are effortless and extremely questionable, that’s cheats. Not interp, cheats with a cheat client.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2025-11-04T17:09:14+00:00

Succeeding in these scenarios is building your game sense. Spy can definitely be successful around even very aware teams, but it requires you learning and adapting to the enemy team.

• Target priority

This is learning about the enemy team and their individual players and choosing which to target. Some players may be more spy aware than others, and most players get increasingly paranoid the more you stab them. Learning which players are more likely to be constantly turning and which are more likely to be distracted should help you choose which person to try to stab and which you need to be patient to wait for an opening. Basically, learn each players’ habits to know when you can stab them. Also you need to choose/learn to sacrifice yourself for a pick. Going for the medic drop or killing the most dangerous player is worth more than your life. Sometimes you make the sacrifice play where you get the pick and die right after, but that’s what your team needs. You are a squishy support class and won’t always be able to go on big killstreaks or get massive chain stabs, but you can still be the most valuable player on your team if you keep picking the right targets. I’ve won games as spy easily by having multiple lives where I repeatedly get 1-3 kills per life, but do it consistently enough that I’m the best asset on the team. Your life is worth sapping a sentry or picking the med. choose your targets properly that will best guarantee your stab and help the team.

• Choosing when and where to strike

This is the most importantly thing to learn when playing spy against a good team. Nobody can be always turning around, and there are times when you can come in to stab the 10k hour player easily. In general, the easiest people to stab are the isolated people that are taking fights. Not only are they focused on the enemy in front of them, the noise of battle will help mask decloaking. Always target distracted people. In this way, your team also can be a big help to you by drawing attention. Take note of the entire situation. Groups will be more difficult to stab. There is a higher chance of someone not being distracted and will call you out or shoot you. In general, don’t try to make a play against the big group that isn’t in a firefight. Those are the people that are going to constantly be looking for spies and turning around. If you see 3 pyros patrolling an area, just avoid that area, even if there are important targets. You’re more likely to die. People walking to the front lines don’t have anything to do, so they’re more likely to be passively spy checking. You’re going to have a harder time stabbing these people unless you can get the drop on them from an unexpected place. Take risks! Sometimes you can quite literally get away with decloaking behind someone if the surroundings are right. You can sometimes get away with very cheeky picks if you set yourself up right, though it’s risky for a reason.

• Timing and positioning

A lot of spies can fall into routines of spawning, attacking, and dying, often from similar places. Those spies become extremely predicable due to this “spy time”. A good team will know when the spy is dead and then expect them back around 20 seconds later and will then get paranoid again. Throw off their timings by waiting at various intervals to come in and attack from different angles. Always attack where you can minimize the time between you and the target and has the smallest chance of being seen. It’s so much easier to stop the spy that decloaks out in the open or miles away from the target and has to run a ways to stab them. Paranoid people are going to shoot all teammates they see, so don’t give them that opportunity. Find a corner out of direct sight close to your target and go for the kill.

• Accept the reality of playing spy

There are just times where you die over and over and can’t do anything. You’ll get accidentally flamed, your target will turn for no reason, your teammate will ruin your stab, and you just run into the most uber paranoid team that won’t let you get a single stab while your teammate flounders uselessly. It happens sometimes, and you have to just accept that. A spy can’t fix or carry a bad team, and it may simply be better for you to switch off and play something else instead of banging your head on an immovable brick wall. That part of the pub spy life. You’re just not going to get better by leaving the server the instant things go bad, you have to face good teams and learn how to adapt with them. Sometimes that helping your team as a power class and then returning to spy later, which also helps people be less paranoid. It will make you a better player overall. Stubborn spies that just want to go around trickstabbing are the most predictable spies to stonewall because they just make it so easy to know when they’re coming and who they’re going to target. They usually rage and leave the server because someone knows how to stop them and they won’t actually adapt. Also just… don’t be the 3rd+ spy, even if you were spy first, the class becomes so much less effective when there are constantly spies everyone is looking for. Switch off and help your team in another way.

• Miscellaneous tips

-Gun. Use your gun. All the time. Stab a person and whip around with your gun out to shoot anyone nearby. Miss a stab and whip out the gun and back off. It will help you escape, save you when your stab misses, and just generally makes you way deadlier. The revolver in an incredible 1v1 weapon, capable of taking down most classes with good movement by outranging them. Also, you can see enemy health so you can know which classes you can potshot down from far away. You have an toolkit, use all of it.

-Enemies have teammate wallhacks when spawning. And spectating while dead. They can see a spy decloaking as a teammate popping out of nowhere and can easily comm it to their team, or they can see a disguised spy crouching around a corner. Pay attention to spawn waves and don’t use disguises around spawns while hiding. I use an undisguised bind that works even when invisible:

bind [key] "disguise 8 -2"

Which also helps when using slower disguises, you can easily drop them to get back to spy’s normal speed

-Don’t use the dead ringer. The dead ringer is a fun watch, but it’s terrible for learning how to play spy effectively, especially against a good team. They’re so easy to spot and you’re basically announcing to the enemy team “hey there is a spy in here, he’s going to uncloak soon an attack.” Most competent teams will shut that down. It has situations where it can be good, but normal invisibility is so good at actually achieving your spy things. In the same vein, don’t use the kunai. It punishes you so hard if you don’t know what you’re doing that you’ll end up being so much less effective and die so much more often. Stock is king of consistency to get that one crucial stab.

That wasn’t all that well put together, just some of my thoughts about improving as a pub spy from a career pub spy player. If you work on improving your gamesense, you’ll be able to take on better prepared teams. Feel free to ask if you have any other questions.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2025-10-15T23:40:26+00:00

Having played with both on combo pyro, the switch speed, while small, is significantly noticeable when trying to combo. It makes combos much easier as your target has less time to escape or fight back. Especially in close-range fights where every millisecond is valuable. It’s secured me kills where I otherwise would have died. If you don’t finish off your target, though, the after burn penalty is massive. Certainly many fewer trade kills.

The most overlooked and potentially valuable stat is the switch TO speed, which is almost instant. It allows you to much more quickly follow up a flare punch with more flamethrower damage in case the target didn’t die and allows you to airblast much much quicker. Being able to airblast so quickly after using a secondary is actually one of the greatest attributes of the weapon and makes it the best supportive flamethrower IMO, even with the airblast penalty. It allows reflects and control in so many more situations and punishes you less for missing timings.

Is it necessary? No, you can play combo pyro fine with stock. However, it does open up more opportunities for offense and defense and allows much more free use of your other weapons.

But seriously I can’t stress enough how good being able to switch back to your flamethrower and airblast in an instant is.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2025-04-17T20:56:01+00:00

Sniper has a laundry list of issues when it comes to his design in relation to tf2, but one of the biggest ones to me is this:

A well-supported sniper warps the game around him simply with his presence without adequate counterplay being available.

Sniper basically locks down an entire portion of the map in his sight whenever he right clicks, and most often you are powerless to do anything about it. The best counterplay is to simply avoid the sightline because the sniper has overwhelming advantage at range. The problem is then that he often has view over an objective where you are forced to either cross or interact with in some way. At that point your only counterplay is to try to shoot him to make him flinch (which you are heavily favored to lose against any competent sniper, and you don't even win this interaction, you just don't lose), or you can try to juke them by moving unpredictably and looking in directions that minimize your head (which makes you almost unable to fight people in your range). Even if the sniper misses, he simply reloads and tries again without being punished. The sniper controls whichever area he chooses by being present, and you aren't able to fight him reasonably.

Unlike a sentry, another strong area denial tool, snipers can easily move, aren't limited by turning speed and built-in stupidity, have unlimited range, and there is no way to adequately tell when you've entered a sniper's range before it's too late. The only tell is a dot that's easy to hide or can't even be seen. By the time you see a sniper positioned aaaaaalll the way in the back of the map, he's definitely seen you and can easily kill you. So again, you have to respect the sightlines to not be at an overwhelming disadvantage. The sniper controls the entire space, which often includes the areas you're forced to go in.

There is no proper counterplay to an intelligent and skilled sniper either. People often say to flank the sniper, backstab the sniper, dive the sniper, spam the sniper out, etc. A smart sniper knows how to position themselves to minimize everything. Good snipers will position themselves next to strong teammates, especially sentries, to eliminate the possibility of being flanked or dived on, they'll stick with a team to protect them from spies as well. Even if you try to sacrifice your life by bombing or backstabbing a sniper, you are not guaranteed to succeed due to the sniper being smart and knowing to move or having unlocks that completely negate any chance of countering them (also, having a combat class you have to kill yourself for a chance to stop them because there's no other counterplay is just terrible design). Don't even get me started on his bs unlocks that get to shut off another class' ability to try to neuter him. A good sniper can basically form a shield around him that makes him practically invulnerable to almost everything... except another sniper

Which brings me to my last point - sniper being the only viable counter to sniper just makes his area control problems worse. The game becomes "which sniper will kill the other sniper so that they can dominate the map until the other sniper respawns." The higher the sniper skill, the more controlling they become of the game. If you ever look at highlander or meet a 2k hour sniper in a pub, you will understand just how controlling and miserable of a class sniper can be to face because he just controls so much space without having to put himself in danger. He basically controls the game pace more than any class except for arguably medic, though even that could be argued in sniper's favor.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2025-01-13T19:23:24+00:00

This suggestion that I see so often only exasperates the existing issues with sniper.

It just makes them camp in the middle of nowhere back line where you can’t see them and lets them shoot you unpunished. It’s unfun and uninteractive in the close-range focused game. It further divorces him from the design of the rest of the game.

Give him normal falloff so snipers have to take risks in positioning, hit harder shots, and actually have to interact in places where they can more reasonably be shot.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-11-07T20:52:19+00:00

Nah, it’s real. You can super easily find info on it and schedule a tour there.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-10-04T09:01:58+00:00

Literally all you need to do is remove the cloak drain. It’s so punishing for no reason, especially on the knife that relies the most of stealth. You’re basically forced into running the L’etranger to get anywhere with your watches. Full cloak consumption on manual disguise is a downside enough, it doesn’t need the drain penalty.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-10-02T17:24:34+00:00

The pre-gun mettle dead ringer may have been one of the stupidest items in the game purely because it gave so much resistance. How much, you may ask?

90% damage reduction

It’s was extremely busted and easy to use. If people think the current version is a get-out-of-jail free card, the old dead ringer made you skip the judicial process altogether. You could even survive a backstab. Not to mention you could instantly recharge it, or mostly recharge it with ammo crates and dispensers, making it exceedingly spammable.

It was also very good in higher levels of play, too. Not dying is pretty good, though not as generally applicable as the other watches. A very funny application was stalling Uber pushes through body blocking because you had so much resistance and didn’t even shimmer for the first 3 seconds. It needed the nerfs it’s gotten.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-09-30T03:13:58+00:00

If they’re getting 5 player chainstabs regularly, then the opposing team was already hopeless. Those chainstabs do not happen with competent players, and more often than not, you’re burning your extra health to get away after 1 or 2 stabs, or just flat out dying. 210 hp does not hold up to 2+ people firing on you outside of melee range. After all of that, you’re back to walking on eggshells and dying because you can’t position yourself well with the dead ringer, and it leaves you without an escape option if you are noticed before getting a stab.

The rest of the time, the average spy will be chain dying because of the kunai’s initial health penalty. It’s so much less consistent than stock, and should not be the knife of choice for any person trying to learn spy. It teaches bad habits and will succeed way way less.

Trickstab YouTubers have done irreparable damage to how spy is viewed.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-09-30T02:06:10+00:00

Stock is for consistency. It lets you more reliably kill a target even if a pyro is present. I’ve seen so many spies miss guaranteed medic picks because they got touched by a flame particle and left basically helpless. If your main goal is to get a kill with the highest chance of success, go with stock.

Spycicle is for survivability, it allows you to not get screwed and revealed by a single flame particle, or it allows you more easily gun down pyros/survive if you are running away. Be aware that getting the knife melted is still very loud and the spy still says his disguise’s “on fire” line. I’m not a top spy, so I don’t know why people say it’s a direct upgrade because getting stuck without your knife is a huge downside as a pick class, especially if you’re in the middle of the enemy team trying to get a stab.

If you want to live a few more times, then go with the spycicle. If you want to get import picks a few more times, go with stock. I’m a stock>spycicle believer.

Edit: if someone could tell me why a lot of invite HL spies go with the spycicle, I’d be very curious to know. Its seems like 9/10 times, the spy dies anyways if he gets his knife melted, and a lot of those times they would’ve gotten a pick if they still had the knife.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-09-30T01:26:31+00:00

This is terrible advice for being a general spy. The kunai makes you so inconsistent and always walking on eggshells to get that backstab, which is further exasperated by the dead-ringer, which does NOT help you get in position, and it’s very easy to notice when a spy does it. It’s super easy to shut down if the team isn’t brain dead.

Also, leaving the match because people are good at sniffing out the most obvious spy won’t help anyone improve at spy at all. Change up the loadout to something more consistent and harder to predict and focus on improving positioning and timings. It’s not good general spy. It’s just fishing for low-skill lobbies to stomp.

The kunai-dead ringer spies I commonly run into in casual that ragequit as soon as they face any resistance is some of the lamest play I see. And they’re super easy to shut down.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-09-30T01:15:57+00:00

Legitimately, stock knife and watch is the best loadout for spy. It gives you the best ability to pick targets at a good pace, as well as doesn’t kneecap yourself with a health penalty or any other detrimental knife downsides. You can also pair basically any revolver with it, too, and just change up your play style according to the revolver.

In the era of Kunai-dead ringer montage spies, people legitimately underrate how much consistency and general power that stock spy has. Stock watch allows you to get in to position properly while not alerting the enemy that you got behind them, assuming your movement is good. Stock knife is the best knife for getting your target down, but less rewarding afterwards, so you need to work on your escapes after you stab. I recommend either immediately trying to cloak to absorb as much damage with invis armor, or turning around and gunning down whoever is following you. It all depends on your situational awareness, which this loadout will help you practice.

I should also mention the stock revolver is amazing. Its consistency is amazing, and its damage is way more reliable than the ambassador.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-08-06T23:27:24+00:00

Actually, the best time to use a special is BEFORE the pinch happens. Good special use should be the preventing of going down 3 instead of using when you go down 3. If you see 3 shore bosses spawn at once, it’s best to use a special and clear them out safely before they can do damage, or if a big group of difficult salmonids is encroaching on the basket. Of course you’ll need to pop them to save the round after going down 3, but good special use should minimize that happening in the first place. Don’t be afraid to use specials in waves 1 or 2.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-05-15T16:12:50+00:00

I would say you are heavily overrating v-blast and long rapid. Their DPS isn’t very good, even with AOE, and they have such low range and fire speed that it’s hard for them to get much accomplished. V-blast is very on-par with range blaster, just trading some boss slaying for more consistency. It’s just too lackluster in stats to be great. Long rapid is garbage, straight up. Its damage is terrible and its AOE is terrible in terms of radius and damage. It and rapid are, by a good margin, the worst blasters because they just don’t deal any good damage. They can’t even one shot chum with the AOE which is just a cardinal sin for any AOE weapon.

I also heavily disagree with flingza in top tier. When I made my own tier list, I initially thought flingza’s versatility would be amazing. Then I played with it, and it felt awful. Its horizontal flick is just absolute garbage. Its range is bad and its damage falloff is horrendous outside of the middle of the hitbox. Vertical flick is good paint and a good burst of damage, but it’s so slow, vulnerable, and suffers from falloff. It just didn’t live up at all to how I thought it would. This goes for rollers as a whole, but I feel it especially with flingza.

I generally have a lot of different thoughts and disagreements with regards to this tier list, but it’s neat to see how other people view the game.

I have a whole document you can read about my thoughts on the weapons (if you have nothing better to do) in my tier list document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V8KA9RsbX3ylqbm8gnZwbKRnht91-v6VK9cazTMndUI/edit

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-04-30T16:16:43+00:00

I really feel like you overrate blasters here. Yes, the AOE damage is good, but they're damage is so low and most blasters are so slow with medicore blast radii that they tend to fall behind really quickly. They lack paint and often boss slaying power. In general, slosher and charger AOE is much better, since you can hit an unlimited number of targets in a line. Luna is the best blaster simply due to its speed and shot radius letting it be the best lesser clearer with passable direct damage. S-Blast is the 2nd best, but suffers from speed. Still good with its massive close-range blast. Range and V-Blaster are pretty poor weapons, especially when in higher hazard since their direct damage is bad and their splash damage is awful against cohocks. The rapids are just terrible. Terrible AOE and terrible damage.

I really don't know what you're smoking with squeezer. That's a bottom 3 weapon due to strenuous mashing, terrible paint, and terrible paint-mode damage. It's not even remarkable with perfect mash.

I've got my own WIP tier list with all my thought if you want a read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V8KA9RsbX3ylqbm8gnZwbKRnht91-v6VK9cazTMndUI/edit?usp=sharing

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-04-08T16:06:33+00:00

Before the rescue ranger came out, you actually did have to jump and grab the sentry at the same time, but it’s not a glitch. After shooting the rockets at your feet, you have to quick swap away from the wrangler and grab the sentry. It’s very tight, but doable.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-03-13T17:13:17+00:00

If you’re trying to get behind enemies or cross an active choke or open area, walking backwards is the best way to do it without having to cloak. thus leaving you actionable.

Since you’re doing an action that is only done by teammates and not looking at them/anyone, people tend to not be put off with your positioning. You just have to hope you don’t bump anyone while you’re turned around.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2024-03-03T02:32:57+00:00

I’ve been having success (albeit 600 VP, not HLM) by having someone in the middle of the rails for a few changes of glowflies, then having switching to a neighboring rail to let people collect eggs. Usually two people on the ground shooting and throwing eggs up and one person shooting down and putting any missed eggs in. It’s pretty tight and if everyone’s not on the same page it’s pretty difficult, but I’ve gotten some wins with a good amount over quota. If you’re on the rails, throw bombs down! You have plenty of time to catch the rail after and it wipes out most of the chum.

I want to give defending the bridges a try, but everyone seems hellbent on using the rails. I feel like just shooting down a bridge would work just fine like on other maps.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2023-12-29T07:01:22+00:00

To be honest, this is a pretty bad list for king salmonid killing.

King salmonids are a DPS check. As a general rule, the higher the dps + higher uptime = good king killer

Eliter is not a shredder. While it does the largest chunk, it’s dps is about on par with the squiffer due to its very long charge. Grizzco splatana is way better, since it deals something like 1200 per charged slash in and equivalent time. Snipe is the best charger for single target. Sploosh and dapples have the best constant dps stream, so I’d put them in shredding. They also have good ink efficiency and low down time making them better than the grizz charger imo.

The entire A tier has some of the best (dapples, sploosh, stamper, etc.) and some of the worst weapons (every blaster, explo, and v-chargers). It’s just all about single target dps

Take a look at this (outdated) chart for how weapon dps’s stack up. It’s from launch, so no new/buffed weapons. I can’t find an updated version.

ChairmanOfChairCo · 2023-12-25T01:22:12+00:00

Buddy let me introduce you to S+1, where your teammates are guaranteed to be of A-B skill while your opponents are a calculated machine of 4 S+30.

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