Team Fortress 2 class balance

Which class in TF2 is the most powerful?

  • Scout

    Votes: 20 16.0%

  • Solider

    Votes: 1 0.8%

  • Pyro

    Votes: 2 1.6%

  • Demoman

    Votes: 10 8.0%

  • Heavy

    Votes: 9 7.2%

  • Engineer

    Votes: 11 8.8%

  • Medic

    Votes: 2 1.6%

  • Sniper

    Votes: 2 1.6%

  • Spy

    Votes: 19 15.2%

  • None; they're all evenly balanced.

    Votes: 49 39.2%
  • Total voters
    125
ManCannon said:
I think the people who are pointing out balance issues either haven't had enough time with the game yet, or just aren't very good.

It's a little presumptuous that some of you think you have the ability to judge the balance of a game despite it having only been out a week. Especially when the game was designed by very talented developer's who tested game balance for months upon months. I saw threads on other forums like, "Overpowered this" and "Underpowered that" within 24 hours of release for god's sake.

C'mon people.
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I don't think it takes a pro player or weeks/months of playing to be able to see how a game works right in front of your eyes and how well or badly each character does, especially when many people seem to be consistently getting very similar results from the same characters/weapons vs. not as good results from certain other characters.

There are many things you can tell almost right away about a game, though I will agree that you have to play for awhile to tell other things.

Even if you played one character long enough to "master" it, I think the majority of players would still get higher scores with Scout or Demoman than with Pyro or Medic as they are configured now in the beta.
 
ManCannon said:
If any class was overpowered, then an entire team of them would win more often than not right? But that's simply not the case, any team that all go the same class are going to get rocked, hard.
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When have you seen a whole team of one character? You don't know that would be the case unless it's been actually happening, (and I haven't seen one character teams yet). Otherwise you're just guessing.
 
Slightly Overpowered: Scout's scattergun. It's a little bit too accurate at longer ranges and a scout in the hands of a hardcore twitch gamer has very little to fear. I think they need to tweak the spread of the scattergun a little bit to force scouts to move in close to shoot and move out. That was their design after all, not to one-shot someone from 10 feet away with a crit shot.

Balanced: All the other classes except..

Badly Underpowered: Pyro is broken. He's fun to play but he's really broken and ends up using his secondary weapon (the one shared with half the classes in the game) far, far too often. Anyone that says "you're not playing him in the right circumstances" just needs to play him more often themselves. There are no circumstances where another class isn't infinitely better than him.


Loving the game so far and my favourite class is the Medic, with Demoman coming second.
 
I think the upped power of the scout and the dumbed down power of the HWG are both good indicators that the developers went for an appraoch which see's all classes equally combat effective.

The original TFC (can't speak for those before that) was far more CTF orientated and as such the classes were balanced so that each one was equally as useful, and useful in this circumstance doesn't automatically equate to combat effective. A scout could never take down a HWG it was a near impossibility, however scouts in TF2 who are handled well do stand a reasonable chance of taking out a HWG, I've killed 2 in a row with only my bat because of my ability to run circles around them AND wield a powerful melee weapon.

I don't think the class based system works nearly as well for these new gametypes as it did for CTF, that was a lot more fun and balanced and it meant that classes could have different combat strengths and that was OK because combat wasn't everything, the HWG for instance was feared in close combat because he just tore straight through the other classes.
 
aztec61 said:
When have you seen a whole team of one character? You don't know that would be the case unless it's been actually happening, (and I haven't seen one character teams yet). Otherwise you're just guessing.
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I have seen teams full of one character before, and sometimes teams full of all one character and one other one.

As for you talk of "pro" players, there are no "pro" TF2 players yet. I've played games for years upon years, and I'm not about to presume that I'm some kind of authority on how well a game is balanced, but I'm no more or less equipped to make judgment calls on how balanced this game is then anyone else here, or any pro player for that matter.

I still stand by what I said, I don't think anyone has played this game enough to start making blanket statements about class balance, not when 99% of us have only played in public servers with random teams. There's no competitive community for this game yet, and it hasn't been played on the level or scale required to start deciding if it's balanced or not.

Not even by pro players, who, if they're even playing this game, have probably only played in pub servers like the rest of us.
 
My point is that you don't have to be a 'pro" to see what is clearly obvious. As I and others have said: at the very least, the Scout is too strong just as the Pyro is too weak.

I'll wager that I've played as many vid/PC games as anyone on this site, including any of the mods/admins. I'm 46 and have fond memories of a misspent youth when I blew my coins in arcades when 'Pong' first came out. In our house, we had some of the first Mac and Commodore machines before most others did. When I was old enough to drive, I spent money on electronics and drove beaters when the other guys were souping up Camaros and Barracudas. ;)

I'm no expert but I think I can tell when a game feels a bit off or has a bug or one side has an unfair advantage over another. So I'm telling you that TF2 needs some adjustments before it goes from Beta to Gold.
 
Frosteh said:
I think the upped power of the scout and the dumbed down power of the HWG are both good indicators that the developers went for an appraoch which see's all classes equally combat effective.

The original TFC (can't speak for those before that) was far more CTF orientated and as such the classes were balanced so that each one was equally as useful, and useful in this circumstance doesn't automatically equate to combat effective. A scout could never take down a HWG it was a near impossibility, however scouts in TF2 who are handled well do stand a reasonable chance of taking out a HWG, I've killed 2 in a row with only my bat because of my ability to run circles around them AND wield a powerful melee weapon.

I don't think the class based system works nearly as well for these new gametypes as it did for CTF, that was a lot more fun and balanced and it meant that classes could have different combat strengths and that was OK because combat wasn't everything, the HWG for instance was feared in close combat because he just tore straight through the other classes.
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well those people playing heavy must suck balls then. yes you can run run circles around me with the scout, but I can still move sasha in circles faster than you. everytime a scout tries to do taht i just lead a bit more and take them out.
 
aztec61 said:
My point is that you don't have to be a 'pro" to see what is clearly obvious. As I and others have said: at the very least, the Scout is too strong just as the Pyro is too weak.

I'll wager that I've played as many vid/PC games as anyone on this site, including any of the mods/admins. I'm 46 and have fond memories of a misspent youth when I blew my coins in arcades when 'Pong' first came out. In our house, we had some of the first Mac and Commodore machines before most others did. When I was old enough to drive, I spent money on electronics and drove beaters when the other guys were souping up Camaros and Barracudas. ;)

I'm no expert but I think I can tell when a game feels a bit off or has a bug or one side has an unfair advantage over another. So I'm telling you that TF2 needs some adjustments before it goes from Beta to Gold.
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Well, I'm no expert either, and while I'm not going to use that disclaimer and then immediately speak as if I'm an authority, I'm going to say that my 26 hours in the game gives me every indication that at this point in time it's very well balanced. Maybe not 100%, but no class sticks out as completely overpowered to me, or completely underpowered.

The longer I play, the more I feel this way. In my first few hours as the Scout I thought "God damn, this guy is just incredibly powerful". Once I started meeting up with good Engineers, all I could say was "Holy shit, those turrets do a lot of damage, maybe a little too much damage". Then I played a Demoman and started ripping turrets apart with my stickbombs and clearing through people with my nades, at which point I said "This guy has it all", only to be dominated time and time again by the same pesky Scout. When I first played a Pyro, I switched the first time I died and said "Damn does this guy suck", but after dedicating some time to him and playing him like Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, all I could say was "This guy is frickin awesome!".

You say the Scout is overpowered, but I fail to see how the Scout is overpowered if all it takes is one well placed turret, a level one turret at that, to absolutely decimate him and eliminate his class as a viable option. All you need is one engineer on your team who isn't braindead, and the Scout becomes null and void.

He's also dogmeat if pit against a half decent Heavy, but he's one of the best classes for destroying a Heavy/Medic combo because while the other classes soak up the Heavy's bullets, he can run in quick and take out the Medic, which is a very important role because a good Heavy/Medic combo can do a lot of damage.
 
Medic and Scout are my favorite classes. I played a lot of medic last night, Twice during the night I found myself above an enemy medic healing a heavy and both times I dropped down, killed the medic with my saw and then killed the heavy with my saw.

It feels so good taking down a heavy with a mêlée weapon.
 
ManCannon said:
Well, I'm no expert either, and while I'm not going to use that disclaimer and then immediately speak as if I'm an authority, I'm going to say that my 26 hours in the game gives me every indication that at this point in time it's very well balanced.
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I didn't speak as an "authority" MC, I just told you where I was coming from. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree as far as the character balance.
 
ManCannon said:
You say the Scout is overpowered, but I fail to see how the Scout is overpowered if all it takes is one well placed turret, a level one turret at that, to absolutely decimate him and eliminate his class as a viable option. All you need is one engineer on your team who isn't braindead, and the Scout becomes null and void.
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But that's the issue - the only thing keeping the overpowered Scouts in check are the overpowered turrets. In respect to the rest of the classes and the way the maps play out, they both need a nerf to bring them back in line.

The Scout needs a shotgun nerf, and the turret needs to not be able to swing 360 degrees, as well as maybe a damage/knock-back nerf. Then buff Pyro and you'd have a near perfect power balance. Although there are still a couple classes that could use a little more flavor. Give the Medics syringe gun something unique, and give the Sniper something unique too - like maybe the ability to shoot through invulnerability or something.
 
I see more failings for each class than something being overly powerful.


The Scout has a damned powerful shotgun (as a heavy, I hate him for that), but when I play scout I die whenever I run by a sentry.


An Engineer's Sentry gun is very powerful, and with 360 degree rotation rather than the line of sight it shows, but a good engineer is likely stuck fixing everything, and it doesn't take much for a spy's sapper to ruin my hard work. That, and when switching through weapons, I've tried to switch to shotguns and accidentally demolished my own sentry. Powerful? Yes, but also mobility-limited.

Speaking of mobility-limited, the heavy. Not nearly as intimidating and powerful as I'd like. Demomen make short work of him though, so he's relatively kept in check.

The biggest problem I see in the game is, like was said, the pyro. I'd love to see the flamethrower do a bit more damage.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
...and the turret needs to not be able to swing 360 degrees...
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I could see them doing this if they added the ability to rotate a turret either as you place it or after you place it, like you could in TFC. Otherwise it would be impossible to use them in corners, which would suck.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
But that's the issue - the only thing keeping the overpowered Scouts in check are the overpowered turrets. I
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Exactly. And when there are no turrets around - which is more often than not - the Scout can run rampant over other classes because of his speed and firepower. I would say the Demoman is slightly overpowered as well.

It's a beta. It was put in public for just these reasons, to find how it plays with non-experts on typical systems in the real world. It has some issues to adjust IMO and it will be a pretty good game.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
But that's the issue - the only thing keeping the overpowered Scouts in check are the overpowered turrets. In respect to the rest of the classes and the way the maps play out, they both need a nerf to bring them back in line.
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You see, you're calling things overpowered but if there are things keeping them in check, how are they overpowered? That's the whole point of a class based multiplayer game, that certain classes play certain roles.

How is the Scout overpowered if the turret easily counters him? How is the turret overpowered if a Demoman or a Spy can take them out on their own? If there's a succesful way to stop everything, how are they overpowered?
 
Because most of the time you're running around in areas without turrets, and/or if there happens to be no Eng's in the game, then the Scout's got it made.
 
ManCannon said:
You see, you're calling things overpowered but if there are things keeping them in check, how are they overpowered? That's the whole point of a class based multiplayer game, that certain classes play certain roles.

How is the Scout overpowered if the turret easily counters him? How is the turret overpowered if a Demoman or a Spy can take them out on their own? If there's a succesful way to stop everything, how are they overpowered?
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This is my thought regarding spies. The methods for stopping a spy before he stabs you are much more limited and unreliable than the checks and balances between the other classes.
 
Rehevkor said:
This is my thought regarding spies. The methods for stopping a spy before he stabs you are much more limited and unreliable than the checks and balances between the other classes.
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I don't know, I can usually tell who's a Spy and who isn't, and most of the time everyone is so on edge because of them they check anyone suspicious with a bullet or two. I know when I try to play a Spy I get next to nothing accomplished, but I have seen some pretty amazing Spies.

aztec61 said:
Because most of the time you're running around in areas without turrets, and/or if there happens to be no Eng's in the game, then the Scout's got it made.
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Really, you're on teams without Engineers that often? They seem to be a pretty popular class to me, rarely do I end up on a team no Engineers, and most of the time there's plenty of them.

But even without an Engineer, any half decent Heavy is going to rape a Scout, doubly so if he has a Medic.
 
aztec61 said:
Because most of the time you're running around in areas without turrets, and/or if there happens to be no Eng's in the game, then the Scout's got it made.
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Then your team needs to have some engineers put down some turrets!

If you are playing rock, paper, scissors and you know that your opponent keeps picking rock, why do you keep using scissors and not paper?

Heavy or Eng will rip scouts apart, just like scouts will rip pyro / demos apart. Soldier can take a scout if they are good and utilize splash damage, which is much easier to do than the demo unless the demo gets a lucky (or skilled) shot off that connects.
 
-pyro class needs more range on his flame thrower, not more damage i would say.
- the game is way to defensive right now. add grenades and strafe jumping to speed things up
 
mrkram said:
- the game is way to defensive right now. add grenades and strafeing to speed things up
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What exactly do you mean by "add strafing?". Strafing his moving from side to side, you know, what's done with the "A" and "D" keys in nearly every FPS for a long long time?
 
Also, if the game is so unbalanced, then why as a good player (score top or close in most games) am I constantly switching classes to better defend / advance? Surely if one class was the best I could just stick with that.

I even played some pyro last night, and had ~1:1 kill ratio (on 2fort, not camping). He could definitely use some extra range since its basically melee range, but fire+shotty is good for taking out people. He does have to head back to base to heal up though, as going into melee range with anyone will hurt. Also a slight speed boost vs range increase would work, as it would allow him to close in a bit faster vs soldier/demoman.
 
Rehevkor said:
I could see them doing this if they added the ability to rotate a turret either as you place it or after you place it, like you could in TFC. Otherwise it would be impossible to use them in corners, which would suck.
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When you have the blueprint up with the fire arc up, but before you place the turret - or any other deployable - press mouse2 (or whatever you have alt fire bound to) to rotate it. You can fit turrets and dispensers into oddly shaped spaces or farther back into corners this way and I do it quite often.
 
ManCannon said:
Really, you're on teams without Engineers that often? They seem to be a pretty popular class to me, rarely do I end up on a team no Engineers, and most of the time there's plenty of them.

But even without an Engineer, any half decent Heavy is going to rape a Scout, doubly so if he has a Medic.
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True, IF Heavy already has his MG spinning and IF the Scout is close enough. Otherwise, in the 85% of areas that don't have turrets the Scout is just too free to run amok.
 
So what you're saying isn't that the Scout is overpowered, but that Scout is overpowered if there isn't a Heavy around and if you have a team stupid enough to not lay down a turret.

Right? Because if that's what you're saying, I'm going to have to direct you to:

jmackay said:
If you are playing rock, paper, scissors and you know that your opponent keeps picking rock, why do you keep using scissors and not paper?
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Exactly.
 
saan44 said:
When you have the blueprint up with the fire arc up, but before you place the turret - or any other deployable - press mouse2 (or whatever you have alt fire bound to) to rotate it. You can fit turrets and dispensers into oddly shaped spaces or farther back into corners this way and I do it quite often.
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Awesome, thanks for the heads up :)

aztec61 said:
True, IF Heavy already has his MG spinning and IF the Scout is close enough. Otherwise, in the 85% of areas that don't have turrets the Scout is just too free to run amok.
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Heavy + RMB = starts up spinning, and even at range the heavy will land a few shots. The sporadic firing is actually semi useful vs a scout because it will auto lead and go in random directions, just like the scout will try to do. Also a few hits will knock the scout down in health a lot, which will make them retreat, or die faster vs your teammates.

And really... aren't scouts supposed to be able to run free when there is nothing to counter them in place? ;p
 
ManCannon said:
What exactly do you mean by "add strafing?". Strafing his moving from side to side, you know, what's done with the "A" and "D" keys in nearly every FPS for a long long time?
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i was refering to strafe jumping - ill edit my post to clear that up
 
Oh, so I take it you're a TFC player who'd like to see all the bugged out physics, grenade spam, and trickjumps come back as well?

Thanks, but no thanks.
 
ManCannon said:
So what you're saying isn't that the Scout is overpowered, but that Scout is overpowered if there isn't a Heavy around and if you have a team stupid enough to not lay down a turret.
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No, that's not what I said. A Heavy can be in the vicinity BUT he's useless against the Scout's speed WHEN he's not spinning, since the Scout has either left the area or has killed him by the time the MG is firing.

Your Eng can be plenty smart about turret placement, but in the majority of play there is no turret around, or it's a weak one that hasn't been upgraded yet. The Scout thus has a great advantage the majority of the time.
 
bugged physics? strafe jumping was in the original quake and if i remember correctly half life uses the quake 2 engine which of course has strafe jumping......... i don't see how it was a bug. half life 2 has strafing and that uses the source engine. tf2 uses source engine obviously so i dont see how one of the games on the engine is "bugged" and the other isn't in regards to a strafe jumping feature. and yes i'm all for trick jumping and strafe jumping - why wouldn't you want those features in a game?
 
I think the fact that a Scout has very low health, is neutralized by any level turret, stands little chance against a halfway decent Heavy, and can be killed by a direct hit from a rocket, grenade, or shotgun blast is more than enough to balance out the fact that he's fast and has a pretty good shotgun.

I've played Scout the most of any class, mainly because his movement style is very similar to UT, which is a game I love. I've run up against teams that absolutely locked me down more times than I care to admit, and I've been forced to switch to other classes quite often.

Hell, a couple times I was on another team with a Scout, and we were totally railroading the other team, we took 3 rounds in less than 3 minutes, and on the fourth round they came in with one Heavy and one Medic, and they won the round easily.

The whole game is about seeing what the other team is doing, and countering it. The Scout is easily countered whether you care to admit it or not.
 
ManCannon said:
The Scout is easily countered whether you care to admit it or not.
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"Easily countered" under near-perfect circumstances, so no, I don't care to admit something that's not true.

I'll bet that most people that play the Scout more than anything else do so because it's easy to rack up "Most Kills" and thus bragging rights. But that's not too impressive when you know that the characters are unbalanced.
 
ManCannon said:
The whole game is about seeing what the other team is doing, and countering it. The Scout is easily countered whether you care to admit it or not.
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If the other team is throwing cloaked spies at us, backstabbing the heavies, medics, and anyone else in the way (not to mention sapping engineer constructs), how do we counter? Go pyro and run around throwing fire everywhere? Even ignoring the fact that most people agree the pyro is weak, he does have limited ammo for that flamethrower. Besides this, I don't see any reliable way to spot a cloaked spy, or a disguised spy that entered your side of the map while cloaked.
 
ManCannon said:
I think the fact that a Scout has very low health, is neutralized by any level turret, stands little chance against a halfway decent Heavy, and can be killed by a direct hit from a rocket, grenade, or shotgun blast is more than enough to balance out the fact that he's fast and has a pretty good shotgun.

The Scout is easily countered whether you care to admit it or not.
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You're exaggerating for your own benefit. Except for the turret part, because that currently is the only thing keeping Scouts in check. Can a Heavy kill a Scout? Sure. But only if the Scout lets him.

All other classes are at a disadvantage against a class that shouldn't be combat focused. Nerf the shotgun.
 
Pyro+Medic+inclosed space= one hellish Enferno!


All the classes are good its just have to use them as they are intended. You wouldn't charge around in the open with a sniper, so why do it with the pyro? its not what they are designed for. They need tight enclosed spaces just like the sniper needs range.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
You're exaggerating for your own benefit. Except for the turret part, because that currently is the only thing keeping Scouts in check. Can a Heavy kill a Scout? Sure. But only if the Scout lets him.
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Do tell, what exactly am I exaggerating? I'm pretty sure everything I said is true.

As for the Scout only dying at the hands of a Heavy if the Scout "lets him", that's just ridiculous. Talk about exaggeration.

If you play halfway intelligently, position your Heavy in a relatively open area, and keep your eyes peeled so no one gets behind you, a full team of Scouts could rush you and you'd mow through all of them like nothing.

Rehevkor said:
If the other team is throwing cloaked spies at us, backstabbing the heavies, medics, and anyone else in the way (not to mention sapping engineer constructs), how do we counter? Go pyro and run around throwing fire everywhere? Even ignoring the fact that most people agree the pyro is weak, he does have limited ammo for that flamethrower. Besides this, I don't see any reliable way to spot a cloaked spy, or a disguised spy that entered your side of the map while cloaked.
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If a Spy is smart enough to always run backwards, make sure he never uncloaks in front of anyone, avoids the person who's name he has, and convinces everyone he's actually playing his class without being able to fire his weapon, then he deserves to go undetected.

Of course, the second he does something to sabotage the team it should be pretty obvious. As soon as you see "Player X sapped Player Y's Sentry" or "Player X backstabbed Player Y", you know he's around and you know to check anyone suspicious. I've never seen a Spy dominate a server in 26 hours of play, not once. He might be able to sap a sentry or two, get in a backstab, but it's not like they go on a bunch of uncontested killing sprees.
 
The only concern I have at the moment is the zero recharge time on sappers. Which means the engineer has to constantly babysit the turrets, dispensers ( and what not). Unless you start mounting turrets on rooftops
 
ManCannon said:
Do tell, what exactly am I exaggerating? I'm pretty sure everything I said is true.
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You mentioned that a single shotgun blast, grenade or rocket would kill a Scout, which isn't true at all. Perhaps if it were a crit shot, but then that's true of almost any class.

ManCannon said:
As for the Scout only dying at the hands of a Heavy if the Scout "lets him", that's just ridiculous. Talk about exaggeration.
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If a cocky Scout wishes to engage a Heavy, then yes, there's a good chance they'll die. But the Scout always has the option to escape and work his way around.

If you're going to be the poster boy for class balance, I think maybe you should probably put some more playtime in with the other classes first.
 
krameriffic said:
I'm sorry, but the Pyro just plain sucks. Every other class can significantly impact the outcome and play of a game. You have to deal with every other class in different ways. A pyro is absolutely no threat to anybody who can either stay out of his range or kill him with two shots, which is pretty much everybody. A spy is better for ambushing, and the demoman and engineer are much better for holding choke points. Every game I play with the heavy, demoman, scout, spy or soldier I utterly dominate. I don't care for the campy nature of the sniper or engineer nor wasting my talents on the medic, but I have found no way of effectively using the Pyro to significantly impact the outcome of a game in my admittedly limited gameplay time with him. Hell, I can't even bring myself to keep playing him after about the .5 k/d ratio point.

He sucked in TFC, and he sucks in TF2, and all of the morons touting about how they raped a bunch of people with him have forgotten that under the right circumstances, any class can rape a bunch of people. I don't know why the people who think he's fine now are rejecting the addition of some kind of a buff to the class, but if they are so content with playing a broken ass, unfun class like that, I say, let them. I just don't want to hear any shit when I kill them with the scout before they even have time to turn around and start missing me with their slow ass flames from the flamethrower.
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Sounds like they stayed true to the old TFC with Halflife then. :D I recall playing the pyro only when bored and wanting to kill people with fire just to be unique.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
If you're going to be the poster boy for class balance, I think maybe you should probably put some more playtime in with the other classes first.
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The only classes I haven't played a good amount are the Sniper and the Heavy, because they both bore me.

As for the rockets, grenades, and shotgun blasts killing a Scout, I'm pretty sure that's the case, but if I have to I'll get TF2 installed on my brother's computer, set up a LAN, and start testing the damage.

But I know for sure that I've killed quite a few Scouts with grenades, and I'm 95% sure a good hit with a rocket would put one down. I've also been killed with one shot point blank from a shotgun while playing a Scout, so I know that would take one out.
 
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