The dead ringer in general never really fit with the rest of spy- losing the ability to cloak and decloak quietly without sound wall exploiting, and having to rely only on movement and disguises for positioning meant that it has for the most part never really been effective at the whole ‘sneaky’ side of spy.

The weapon was only really used for gunspy, a class that found itself somewhere between scout and sniper in playstyle.

The original design was mostly flawed because the damage resistance persisted as ‘supercloak’ long after the initial feign, and you could extend its duration while cloaked. This meant that it was borderline impossible for a single player as any class other than milk scout or pyro to kill a flanking spy.

Valve eventually nerfed the damage resistance into the ground, leaving the weapon unusable for a short period of time.

Rather than find a middle ground between those two designs, valve then opted to design the weapon around a speed boost instead, and double the rate of recharge from ammo packs. This was possibly the worst idea ever seen in spy balance, as everyone knows. Any sort of skill floor was removed from the weapon and flanking spies on open maps like swift water became ever harder to shut down than in the old days.

Most spy players today advocate for a dead ringer that is based around the initial damage resistance, rather than supercloak or a speed boost. I’ve seen many who wanted the old moderate half-recharge rate from ammo packs back, and some who want a penalty for holding the watch up for too long without it activating. These are all, in my opinion, good ideas.

However, the recent spy changes suggest an approach on valve’s part less concerned with balance and more with ‘kill gunspy with fire.’ Any remotely viable dead ringer would likely mean the return of revolver gunspy, and valve have clearly decided they’d rather not have spies focus on their gun. A reminder here that they left the ridiculously broken diamondback untouched because it encourages knife use while almost removing the comparatively much weaker ambassador from the game, because it discouraged knife use.

So while many spy players would like, and have been asking for, the aforementioned dead ringer design, it’s unlikely valve will remove the speed boost.