Everyone and his dog mailed us about this – and we thank everyone, and especially dogs, as we don’t get enough canine mail. Robin Walker has confirmed the next pack for TF2 will deal with Alec’s favourite, the Heavy. He also talks about the design issues they’re weighing up, which is a fascinating look at the thought-patterns of a heavy-weight design-group and worth considering while we’re heavy-waiting. Also, clearly, since he’s laid out what they want to achieve – make the Heavy more viable sans Medic without making him more monstrous when he is with one – we brainstormed what we’d do.
Kieron: Heavy’s actually one of my least played classes, so Alec’s experience is going to lead to him have better stuff. But when he was chatting he mentioned something anti-sniper… well, while the Sniper is the counter, I think you can make the relationship less pure Russian Brains On Floor/Sniper Laughs. Inspired by the Pyro getting the anti-Soldier move, something that allowed you to sacrifice offensive power to protect you from snipers may be interesting. If the RMB wasn’t already spinning up Sasha, I’d select something which hid behind the enormous gun.
Alternatively… how about swapping the Shotgun for a Riotshield. When you’re using it, you only move slowly – as if you’re firing the main gun – but you’re pretty much invulnerable from anyone shooting at you from the front. Clearly, you can’t return fire, but it’s a kind of moveable bulkhead. A sniper with people attacking from the flanks will counter it, but a sole sniper wouldn’t dominate in the same way. And there would be interesting dynamics with people taking cover behind you and moving in and out to take snap-shots,etc. But mainly I’d add a pose where he attempts to Fellate his minigun, because I’m wired badly like that.
Alec: Ammo’s the obvious weakness to cover, as those 200 bullets sure run out fast. There’s a lot of interesting ways they could do it. Simply bumping him up to 400 rounds and ditching crits is perhaps the most obvious route, though it’s not an especially fun one.
Perhaps he could have a slow trickle of automatic ammo recharge whenever he wasn’t firing, or better yet be followed around by a cute robo-ammo cart of his own – making good use of those “push little cart” soundbytes, y’know? Possible trade-offs could be a smaller targeting reticule, which would deal with some of the Heavy-is-for-noobs complaints, an even slower run speed (i.e. further emphasise that really he’s a human turrent) or that he’s left with, say, only 100 bullets if his cart gets killed.
Another alternative entirely is to decrease the spin-up time or remove the movement slow-down when he’s firing, but actually reduce his max ammo count to compensate for the increased speed/mobility – he’d be a bit more viable as a lone ranger that way.
The Heavy’s other great flaw is snipers, the dirty, camping little bastards. So some sort of headshot resistance makes a ton of sense – and if that’s what Valve are planning I hope and pray it involves a hat. There is nothing funnier than a hat. What about a Fez that renders headshots non-fatal, or an ushanka that adds 50 health? God, I’d love that. Again, slower movement could be the trade-off, giving snipers a chance to go for a second headshot before fatty’s out of range.
Another idea – have the bullet actually bounce off the Heavy’s thick skull at a random angle, even with a chance to hit the Sniper himself. Sweet, sweet justice.
John: Despite playing as the Heavy comparatively little, I still have my highest scores with him. I’ve no idea what that means. My suggestion would be for a Brick Shithouse mode, where he can enter a temporary state where he cannot fire, but can absorb massive amounts of damage. Human shielding with the lumbering man would be lots of fun.
Jim: The heavy should learn appropriate English enunciation.
Anyone else have any better ideas? I suspect we can safely assume in advance the answer is “Yes”.
Related Stories:
“WHAT?
- easily push away stickies
*Or you could shotgun them. Or a Soldier could rocket them. Or another demo could sticky them, etc, etc.
- blow medics away from their patients or vice versa
*Or you could kill the medics. I’ve never been in a situation (and I’ve tried) where the medics were better dealt with by moving them than outright killing them (other than when they’re ubered, and then you’re just putting them in the air – they’re still healing)
- blow people off ledges (this is hilarious in the OrangeX maps with towers, but useful in several other maps as well)
*Soldier rockets, Demo grenades, etc. I can only think of this being ‘useful’ in a place like Hydro, or maybe on a tower. Again, you’d have to get close, and you may as well just kill them.
- deflect Soldiers’ rockets, if your timing is good
*This is probably the only really good combat use, and if the soldier has any brains he’s shooting at the ground, and you don’t have the chance to reflect them back anyway. Soldier is one of my more played classes, and I never worry about Pyros somehow teleporting forward, DIRECTLY in line with my rocket, then bouncing it straight back.
- juggle enemies in front of allies or turrets
*As opposed to flat out burning them? How often does this even happen?
Honestly, if you still use the normal flamethrower, that’s your choice. But there is no way under the sun that the ability to sorta push things (taking 1/8th of your ammo per shot) is better than an almost 30% health increase, and 100% crit chance from behind.
I was actually thinking about possible heavy minigun replacements a few days ago. This one doesn’t really fulfill the points in the Valve post such as “less desirable with a medic,” but I think it’s an interesting choice regardless.
What would make the heavy consider leaving his beloved Sasha? How about twins, named Olga and Katya? Basically make a minigun with dual barrels. Right button would now make the right-hand barrel spin up and begin firing. The idea is that you remove the heavy’s ability to keep his barrel spun up to react faster, and in exchange he can pour out damage at twice the rate if he so chooses. Maybe make it so he can’t move if he’s firing both barrels at once. Between that and the truly absurd ammo consumption, I don’t know if it would need much further balancing.
Yeah, I’ve seen the air blast used all of four times since the update. Most pyros now have the Backburner equipped because it just hurts so good, which is one of the reasons I find myself playing less.
Keep the Backburner. I’ll be out violating ubered people while you cower in spawn. ;)
Okay, alright, the Backburner makes you the mean big brother of old-school Pyro. With a flamethrower forged from the knives of a thousand roasted spies. It is very nifty.
But the airblast? It’s a whole new ballgame. And the balls are heavies.
You really should try it.
Heavy update next? Servers full of less-than-experienced Men With Big Guns? All nervously scanning the horizon for their dread Australian Nemesis?
Note to self: stock up on high-tech cigarettes and snazzy suits.
I think you were onto something with the flak cannon idea. I’d like some feedback on this idea:
Instead of changing the normal characteristics of the minigun, make the unlockable a different kind of ammo. Flak shells, rubber bullets, soft-boiled eggs, what have you. Adjust the ammo capacity based on power. And change the color on some part of the gun model to make the ammo choice visible to others.
Regarding the shotgun, I love the idea of a double-barrel shotty. Someone mentioned it earlier, but not by name. Alt-fire lets you fire one barrel at a time for more control, but doesn’t affect reload speed.
And “me too” on the LOVE/HATE brass knuckles idea. That was the tops!
Heavy is my favorite class, so i do have something to say.
The main reason why a heavy gets offed without a medic is his short range, he doesn’t stand a chance against anything that’s not right on his face, with the possible exception of a pyro.
Put a heavy and any other class on opposite sides of the 2Fort bridge and the other class wins as long as they realize hey have a hand gun.
So what i want is, instead of a minigun, a heavy machine gun, something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjL5zdyRUE0
Bullet per bullet it does the same damage as the minigun, but it has a slower fire rate, so it does less damage, and it has much greater accuracy, nothing excessive, like the Spy’s magnum, but comparable to the engineer or scout’s handguns.
The Heavy is also be a bit slower than it would be with the minigun, but he doesn’t slow down while firing.
That would be enough to make a heavy more survivable with out a medic, but at the same time, every heavy will wish they had a minigun if they have a medic buddy and knows he can charge into a room full of enemies.
Also, the suggestion about more ammo is pretty useless, really, if you’re firing enough that you run out of ammo, you must at least have killed 2 players, then you just need to run over their bodies and collect their weapons, it’s even easier now that you can pick up scrap metal for weapons, i don’t think i’ve ran out of ammo even once since November last year, a powerup that just adds mode ammo would be a waste; However, i wouldn’t mind carrying, say, 50% less ammo, as long as each round did 50% more damage (Sasha now fires $300 dollar custom tooled cartridges!) , you wont be able to use this powerup if you really are a noob who can’t aim, and it would drastically reduce the stamina of the really good heavies that can kill 7 guys in less than 5 seconds.
Heres my idea for the minigun. My main focus was the whole medic / lone heavy idea.
When the heavy reaches his critical hit spree, instead of firing critical hit bullets, he starts to increase health at the rate at which a medic would be healing him. So the heavy with this unlock has a higher survivability when going lone wolf, but a medic, if given the choice, would heal the base heavy as he would recieve those deadly critical bullets.
Erlam: wouldn’t you say that giving the pyro abilities to match the soldier and demoman’s knockback is a substantial addition? Clearing stickies with the shotgun is tedious, time-consuming and relatively ineffective.
As far as knocking back the uber goes – the whole point of it is to prevent the ubered medic advancing with his charged friend. Generally, ubers are used on big pushes forward, not simply to remain in place, and the ability to kill the push forward is very valuable. The air blast provides finer control for uber disruption than, say, rockets, and it moves heavies a lot more.
I’ve killed some very good soldiers with their own rockets. The pyro’s air blast radius reaches right down in front of him, so that if the pyro times the air blast right, he need never fear splash damage, even from shooting at his feet. You haven’t played against the right pyros.
It’s notable that in most of the discussions I’ve read among competitive players, the Backburner is viewed as largely irrelevant (actual teams working together don’t leave that much scope for ambushing) whereas the air blast is viewed as enough of an upgrade to actually consider including a pyro. The Backburner is great on a disorganised public server with a bunch of chumps running into ambushes over and over again. It’s also great pyro vs pyro. If you’re facing enemies instead of ambushing them, though, the air blast gives more of an edge.
If they introduce the shield as shotgun replacement, then this should detiorate over time. Shotgun is not a weapon used by HWG unless he runs out of bullets.
Quirk:
Your notes on the Pyro matches my experiences pretty well. Having played some hours with the Backburner, I find myself getting killed by Soldiers and Demos more often than when I was still getting the hang of airblast–that is, when airblast was still new and mysterious in mine eyes. While seductive at first glance, the Backburner winds up looking like a somewhat-more-useful Kritzkrieg–placing emphasis on offensive power at the expense of survival.
It’s still amazingly satisfying when I manage to get behind the bomb in Goldrush, though. Those moments are why I bite the bullet and equip Backburner.
Though I miss the ability to separate an Ubering Medic from his Heavy. On Goldrush public servers, I took a special sort of glee in shutting down those metallic knuckleheads with my leafblower. Sure, it took half my ammo, but it’s not like ammo refills are especially hard to get in TF2.
Well the obvious one for punches is iron knuckles.
Otherwise i can’t think of anything to protect him from snipers beside a helmet.
“While seductive at first glance, the Backburner winds up looking like a somewhat-more-useful Kritzkrieg–placing emphasis on offensive power at the expense of survival.”
The extra 50hp helps with survival. I was never able to get the hang of the air blast, anytime it would have been useful my instinct told me to take out the shotgun. I guess i played a bit too much pyroo before the update :P
The Heavy doesn’t need a shield because he is one already.
The ideas I like best so far are the increased ammo pack, hat (I’d pay to put a ushanka on my Heavy) and knuckle dusters. When I play as Heavy I usually support an attack or defence by spraying bullets into the general vicinity while the pyros and soldiers charge ahead, so the enemy team can’t ignore me but has other things to worry about too. That means fewer kills for me, but more damage to the enemy team as a whole.
I’d put a muzzle flash suppressor on Sasha as the minigun upgrade: increase accuracy slightly but remove crits.
My idea:
Reflective knuckle dusters, while carrying them the heavy admires his reflection while running, you can see the heavy’s grinning face in your fists.
The trade-off is that a percentage of ammo picked up by the heavy goes towards keeping them polished.
The benefit? While they are out any medic who is healing the heavy with the dusters out has his heal beam reflected back at the the medic so that both the medic and the heavy gets healed. This is great in between fight, after the heavy deals with the enemies the medic problably took some damage, so the heavy switches to the dusters and the medic’s health regenerate faster.
Now that’s a good idea Jahkaivah. The medic is too often a sitting duck while healing, even when hiding around a corner.
Semi-mobile shields could be brilliant. Everyone keeps whining about how they would be unbalanced. So make the shields have their own health that can be whittled/blasted away. (And repaired by engies.)
How does a shield help the Heavy when he’s alone though?
Well, it IS a “Team” Fortress.
Also, getting from one place to another.
Hmm, another take on this whole shield idea thing, the Heavy Personal Force Field.
Basically it’s a minigun attachment, to use it just hold alt fire and when the barrels reach full rotation the shield comes up and protects from a helluva lot of damage (maybe even all of it).
It consumes ammo faster than regular fire, if you start shooting normally the shield is turned off, also the gun cannot crit and you cannot be healed whilst the shield is up.
I think that would be a lot more interesting and tactical than a large shield that replaces a gun entirely, honestly being the guy just standing there getting shot at is no fun unless you can shoot back.
Huge anti-tank style rifle/cannon that fires large, wide shells that cause damage and knockback to targets, but causes small (1 or two steps?)knockback to user after each shot to keep Heavy’s speed limited. Acts as replacement for minigun for medic-less/solo Heavies, bringing them closer in solo offensive capacility to solo soldier (without the splash damage, one of the soldiers distinct traits). Also works as a feasible sniper-scaring weapon.
A stylised bomb disposal suit (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/D0475812-0-large.jpg) replete with ushanka, replaces minigun with some sort of automatic rifle with only 3 40 round clips, no wind-up, no crits. All sniper headshots treated as normal shots, nullifies splash damage from explosives to some degree.
Replacing fists with a two-handed, extremely slow swing of the minigun. Has extended melee range and potential knockback, will gib on crit.
I’d say having a short-term accurate fire mode (alt fire) that overheats but lets you target snipers a bit better could work. Also as balancers to this (or anyone else suggestions) would be either faster ammo depletion or stopping the heavy from moving at all, including little to no turning. It sets up the heavy as ‘bracing’ himself and the gun as he lets rip with a more powerful burst. A medic can stay with him but then two people won’t be moving forward and in the open he becomes a target to everyone else, especially scouts that could avoid the focused fire with ease.
Etc. anyway, my 2 cents.
PS. Also, all these ‘health buff’ ideas are really not keeping in mind that the medic will make that buff even greater and they don’t want to unbalance that aspect. The heavy is already hard enough to kill at 300hp base!
I don’t think its been suggested yet, but I thought that having a mini-gun that fires one of a few shots behind him could help disarm spies, while keeping his role largely the same, and weakening his ability to team with a medic. I also liked the magnet ideas to draw headshots down. This would all work to make the heavy better alone, and roughly the same with a medic, since the shots that fire behind would still use the same ammo pool.
Plus, doesn’t everybody want to see a two-sided mini-gun?
What are the bonuses the medic gives? Healing, clearly. Ubercharge, maybe. It means the Heavy can take chances, too. I would imagine the knuckle dusters will end up regaining some health – he can’t melee with a Medic, it’s too dangerous, but it helps him when he’s alone. That more or less fits Walker’s requisites, right?
I think This-
Melee: Brass Knuckles
Secondary: Semi Auto Shotgun (Spas 12, Benilli M3/M4)
Primary: Either M249 or a M60 MG
That sounds pretty good to me, if they showed me an auto shottie I would praise the lord, because when I saw the Pyro didnt have one, I sulked. DAMN FLARE GUN.
PS- Cant w8 to see the new pistol! maybe an M1911!
I don’t like the idea of a shield, because along with the medic, it would make the Heavy far too difficult to take down. Also how about making it so the most damage a single sniper shot can do to a heavy is about 75% of full health, so the sniper still stands to be the biggest threat, but he can’t take out a heavy with 1 shot?
Replacing the fists with the Brass Knuckles really fits the Heavy character’s image well. What about replacing the Shotgun with a motorcycle chain that he can swing the clear out a circle around him.
Maybe make the Brass Knuckles or the Chain stun the target(s) for a second or two, to give him an extra edge in melee combat? Or the berzerker idea, where his fists do a level of damage inversely proportional to his health, since typically you’d switch to fists once you ran out of ammo.
@ Vengarato: Um, the Heavy class pack got released a while back.