The Fists of Steel still get a pass from me, BARELY, because they fuck over Sniper. I feel like they were added so a Heavy COULD survive against a Sniper more often (in some rare cases).
Well if they didn't nerfed half of heavy items, he would've survived sniper encounter more often (Like GRU or dalokosh bar). But all of this can fully neglected by vac medic.
Heavy main here. As Big Joey said, GRU is now basically the Escape Plan on steroids. The health drain has little to no effect when at low health, making it a great retreat/reposition tool without requiring the Heavy to be on death's door to activate. Players think it's bad only because you can't use it on the approach, but I believe the new version is still just as viable, if used smartly.
The GRU are actually really good, I recommend playing around with them because the downside sounds really bad in theory but not that big of a deal in practice.
I hated the change at first but I grew to love it. I don’t think it makes a big difference now that I know how to deal with the downside. Medic’s overheal makes the downside nonexistent as well.
46:00 My favorite heavy weapon. Ah, the living sentry. As an engineer main, I adore this weapon. How often I wish to be able to pull what is effectivlly a level two out of my ass, and shred people to bits, but then pull out a shot....gun... to move around as engineer... wait.... is a brass beast heavy that uses a shotgun just a battle engineer that refuses to build a tele and dispenser?
@@The4DPotato they have both a deploy time and once they see a target, they don't immediately start shooting either. They gotta spin around till they can actually potentially hit a target.
I disagree that holiday punch shouldn't work on ubers. I think random crits should be disabled, and ubers should be punished for letting a heavy sneak behind their back.
It could work, it would turn it into a high risk/high reward weapon. Most heavies who use them just whip them out and hope for a random crit to land when faced with an uber, so it essentially relies on random crits to actually work (like the Third Degree). An ubered player probably isn't checking their back too often when ubered anyway cause Spies can't do anything to them (with stock uber at least) so it would give them something to look out for. Though, the fact that it CAN render an uber completely useless is still pretty bad. Remember when the Sandman was able to stun ubered players? Yeah, that was pretty broken.
Why would you use a shotgun on Heavy? To correct positioning or retreating on defense with the slower miniguns (Brass Beast, Natascha) without being caught out needing to spin up, all while not being nearly immobile too. On defense you're going to be playing around your team anyways, around health pickups, medics, dispensers so you won't be needing your lunchbox item nearly as much. However buffs to minigun rev up speed across the board made it less necessary.
shotguns are fun, but they also work well when you get caught off guard with no time to rev. Obvs not good against Scout cause he can outdamage you in a shotgun fight. Good against Spy and Pyro because you get enough mobility to move around them and not be instakilled or burnt to a crisp.
Shotguns are great for BB, good for Natascha, Okay-ish for Huo-long and Stock, and near useless for Tomislav. Maybe if you use the panic attack it’s okay for Tomislav because of the faster switching speed, and same thing for Huo-long and stock to lesser extent. The the lunchbox items are still almost always a better choice for 3/5 miniguns, though.
Absolutely, they had such a high chance to be relevant but unfortunately, Food items are still a very good choice for Brass beast and Natasha user, shotgun is mostly just worse than the family business. There is also the problem with these 2 miniguns, Natasha is considered underwhelming, brass beast is good but usually not the main choice (even if it's good ). Also for a defensive playstyle, if you argue that your team is behind you so you don't have to worry about carrying a sandwich , you could also argue most of the teammate behind you will start shooting at the target within your shotgun range. Shotgun is best used on these 2 but still remain situational. Buff brass beast + Natascha => indirect buff for shotgun
I honestly really like the GRU. Maybe it's mainly because I didn't get to play TF2 before the GRU was nerfed, but I find myself making good use of it very often.
Me too. I almost exclusively use the GRU when I play heavy because he is too slow otherwise. All you have to do is put them away a little while before getting to battle. It still gets you to the frontlines a lot faster if you use them for only 5 seconds.
Yup. Zesty just doesn't use it right. It's useful to either get into a fight if you switch off early enough, to escape fights, or for short repositioning if you aren't short on health. It's a Really good weapon.
The gru can be viable if you have a medic building a house inside of your colon, because the overheal kind of mitigates the health drain and makes the heavy get to the frontline with at least 300 HP.
It's actually better for lone heavies as you can squeeze extra healing out of the banana and dalokohs with more consistent lunchbox uptime. It does push you into playing a bit more sneaky though
Zesty is the only tf2 youtuber that I watch regularly. Mainly because he hasn’t made an entire video about snakes added to snake water. Sure the snakes is a funny addition, but the fact they did that and nothing else (other than quality of life chances that I haven’t noticed really). Imagine if Valve added a “testing ground” sort of thing, added a list to the casual queue with maps from the workshop that constantly rotated, we could give feedback to the workshop creators and valve. Or even balance changes to weapons. Just imagine that, maybe it’s a good thing or a bad thing. But at this point I think players would find that refreshing.
I personally use shotguns when I'm using the Brass Beast so that I can fight back against anyone who harasses me on the way to the objective. I normally only use the Brass Beast on defense, so losing my sandwich doesn't hurt much with all the dispensers lying around.
The GRU are fine, I'm just careful to just put them away before 200 hp. They're good for flanking, fleeing, flaunting, (f)rushing some chump, and that 100 health comes back pretty quickly. The speed you get, something that is such a valued commodity-especially for heavy-is profoundly useful. And I think the "bug" you referred to is just so gru heavies can't have it's downside nullified by a medic
Holiday punch can be easily negated by simply jumping repeatedly, as long as a target is airborne the holiday punch CANNOT force them to taunt, due to wacky anti-grief mechanisms when dealing with taunt interactions. so no id argue its not as broken, because you litterally just need to press space bar a few times and mow down the heavy that is trying to random crit you
Also its worse than Stock Fist if you are using them for the sole purpose of killing people, why would you hope for a crit that only stuns the victim, although a stunned victim is *almost* always a kill if he's standing near the frontline, might as well go for that juicy 195 that one shot anyone but Heavy (Soldier players will never have full hp, its an hidden rule in tf2 trust me)
Even as a Medic main.... I HIGHLY disagree with the Holiday Punch not effecting Ubered players. Just get rid of the random crits. Without the random element. You basically have to sneak up on Ubered players. Who will likely be with other players, as the slowest class in the game. If a Heavy against all odds does that? He earned that punish, in my opinion.
Also it only works if target can't jump, aka Heavy. So you have to either sneak up as the slowest class or rush down the most strong class close range(Heavy) and be lucky to random crit em or melee hitreg working. This is probably as rare scenario as two crit rockets
I do think the Holiday Punch as it is *with* random crits is broken, though, honestly. Speaking as someone who is both a Medic main *and* plays Heavy often. It's not as if this is a constant nuisance that completely ruins the game for me, but if you get some of the older, smaller, tighter and more chokepoint-y maps like Dustbowl, especially on a full server (which means you'll potentially be engaged by 5+ people when assaulting a point on offence), then it *really* doesn't cost much for a defending Heavy to sacrifice himself with the item to see if he happens to random crit you somehow and just completely waste that Uber. It won't work *too* often, but I think the fact it can work at all is really annoying, especially when BLU's opportunities to storm the point don't come easy, often or cheap.
LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO Heavy has the best Primaries, as while some have their issues, Heavy's general damage output is so great you can still manage to rip and tear with any that you may desire.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth a single Sniper who knows how to position himself well, read the game flow and has an actual good aim can single handedly shut down the enemy team, like, absolutely shut down the server, the infinite range one-shotting hitscan class is too op, there's no question, his primaries are the most damaging and powerful weapons in the game. While Heavy need to be super careful about positioning, all the Sniper has to do is click in heads while standing still (if he's using a headphone, he's basically immune to Spys too), he is definitely the most dangerous class (arguably the most influential too) in the game
The old eviction notice was one of the most well designed weapons from a thematic point, as a duelist weapon the speed boost on hit could only be outran by a demo charge or scout running away (but not backpedaling) and only lasted long enough to keep you on somebody to land another punch this means once you got somebody you committed to it, on a further note the damage penalty was large enough that it felt designed around random crits since it couldn't feelsbad somebody you randomly tagged while playing into the "beating somebody into the dirt because they owe you money" theme.
Fucking called it with the GRU. Your own words from the Soldier video: "Being able to get to the fight faster is an infinite advantage you could have over the enemy team." "Giving the soldier an on-demand speed boost would be really fucking strong, because the soldier is balanced by his slow speed, so him being able to move faster and cover ground more quickly at no strong penalty [...] is not a good idea." The reason why heavy's Health pool being drained for moving faster is balanced is the same reason why the Soldier and Demo blast jumping to cover ground is balanced - you trade bringing your high damage potential (and high health with the Heavy) to the frontlines faster by making yourself more vulnerable. The previous marked for death icon was not nearly impactful enough of a cost for using the item, especially not when rolling out to a fight but even as an escape tool because the speed boost was not dependent on you being weaker. Heavy's probably my 2nd fav class I don't find it nearly as punishing to use as you are making out to be, and I find the balance change made a lot more sense given the Heavy's design.
Hmm I mean if you put it like I guess but I still find it pretty dumb with the health drain or at least have it delayed or regain faster after you switch off of it but demo and soldier can reach the frontlines faster than a gru heavy.
My problem is that when you finally get to the fight, you still have to swap to your minigun, rev up, and become largely immobile to attack. The Soldier and Demoman don't have a significant delay between arrival and attacking like the heavy does, so they should be punished more by having to sacrifice health to move faster. Plus, they're high burst damage classes that need to be balanced in that way, because they can arrive to a fight and lay waste in one or two well placed, fast shots, with their reduced health pool not coming into negative effect until they've dished out a lot of damage But the Heavy? This doesn't happen. The heavy has a slow to start, steady stream of damage that is weaker within the first 1 second of firing. When he gets to the fight, he's automatically a sitting duck thanks to his slow movement speed and attack starting speed. And potentially sacrificing 66% of your health pool? Health drain as you move? I think it's an awful change to the GRU. Imagine if they had made this change to the powerjack because it made the pyro get to the fight too quickly. The weapon functions in the exact same way as the old GRU (except it swaps minicrits for the lower damage vulnerability, and still has full damage, attack speed, and health on kill). But why is it balanced on pyro? The pyro has limited range, and a steady stream of damage rather than high burst damage on demand. He just happens to have a faster movement speed. The heavy is slow to move, slow to attack, and even slower to get to the fight. So why potentially reduce his health pool to the point where he can't live long enough to be effective once he gets to the fight? The old version was fine. Like I said, revert it, and make it so Heavy can't get healed while they're out.
@@ZestyJesus the GRU is still really good. Literally all you need to do is switch back to your primary a few seconds before you fully make it to the battlements and you're good. Of course you're not gonna engage the enemy when you're at 150 hp. The weapon is especially effective when Heavy needs to walk a longer distance, like PL defense or Dust bowl Offense. Plus, it was easily the best melee for Heavy back before the nerf, casual or not.
@@ZestyJesus GRU is fine, my suggestion is don't put em on at the beginning, dont use them to get to the frontlines use them to navigate the frontlines dont have them on in a spot thats hot, if there is fighting mini gun out if not use them to get past open areas quicker and quickly return to your primary. an example is there is a door a sniper sightline then a door its not too wide use em then. ruclips.net/video/CjRnpX7Wer0/видео.html big joey has some good advice with em. Shotgun dont neglect it but sandvich will always be the better option, shotgun should only be considered depending on minigun choice
The initial purpose of the Shotgun was to use it in situations when revving up your minigun would be detrimental, like when you are trying to make your way to a fight but a Scout suddenly jumps at you, or if you need to escape and are being chased. But ever since the game introduced the Tomislav, which essentially made those situations not be much of a problem anymore because of the faster spin-up time, Shotguns really dont have a use for Heavy. The Sandvich makes it even worse cause being able to fully heal yourself is just so good for the Heavy.
They are decent if you have a slower minigun like the Brass Beast. Family Business is probably the best because you don’t have to worry about reloading it or missing too many shots.
The most hilarious thing is that you can STILL hit the 450 Overheal with the FoS out if you pull them out when you reach the max overheal so you can get something like 750ish effective HP, it doesn't immediately cut it down to 390.
@@poopyjoe7435 i imagine its something like [hp value](1 + [damage resistance]) so for a stock demo running targe itd be like 175(1+.50) to find effective hp against fire
Yea but still wrong about placement with GRU. Like seriously even if old GRU was better a speed boost is still a speed boost meaning that C is a stupid placement.
@Nathan Weatherspoon Yeah i agree. I also believe Zesty’s stance is based on the way he uses it. I believe you cannot use the Gru for an extended period of time, rather you should use it for short bursts of maybe 3-4 seconds. I use it this way and I’ve never gotten down to 100 health with it. It’s all about balance, knowing when to holster it and managing your health pool. Not just “i will hold these out for an eternity”, because that’s what gets you punished.
@@MrCastleburger I use them the same way. Limited speed boosts, and the occasional surprise melee F you against vax medics on random crit servers. I'll try to make a Heavy video sometime that's not payload to illustrate this.
shotguns on heavy are surprisingly useful for when you are running somewhere unrevved and surprise scout comes out of nowhere and is already getting up in your face. and i find that the tomi is a lot better at destroying sentries with the accuracy at range.
Brass beast is far better for sentries. You can literally pre-rev around the corner and annihilate it, don't need to worry about positioning when you can just focus fire it from close range and kill it long before it can kill you.
The Natascha is actually really solid as a support fire gun, slowing an enemy to a crawl making them fodder for your teammates alongside your own tracking is extremely valuable even at spray and pray ranges, especially against high value targets like Medics who are likely to try and retreat out of the fire zone. I find it a really fun other way to play Heavy
The Natascha turns the heavy from the hammer into the anvil, getting people into a position where the other members of your team can swoop in to finish them off. The Natascha's slowdown may be broken because of the slow effect being broken, but the Natascha is a support weapon on a class that has a number of secondaries designed to help himself and his team. Slowing enemies makes them easier for you to track, but it also makes it easier for projectile classes to hit their shots, or for scouts to be able to get the pick and get lut, or for a spy to get a key backstab. If you want a defensive minigun that shreds at more ranges, use the brass beast. If you want an offensive minigun, you use the tomislav. If you want to melt enemies in chokepoints and at close range, you use the heater. If you want consistency and a good weapon in most scenarios, you go for stock. If you want to support your team, and screw over jumping demos and soldiers, you pick the Natascha
I think it’s because the Heavy is a counter to the Pyro since the Pyro does the most damage at close range, but the Heavy does even more damage at close and mid range + way more health.
@@Spanishdog17 Also airblast was added to the game later iirc so maybe they just didn't consider adding it because it slipped their minds jn the time between?
The tomislav's revv up time is actually incredibly strong when you pair it with bunnyhopping. If you constantly jump and revv up your tomislav over and over at the same time while using your strafe keys to make turns, you can essentially have a minigun that's permenantly revved up without a speed penalty since you maintain your jumping momentum. Unfortunately not a lot of players use this trick.
There's an odd synergy with the chocolate and the GRU. The chocolate will always restore you to 300 max HP no matter how much you have depleted your health with the GRU
And If you do this glitch twice you can run around with the gru at 270 health (that's as high as I could go) without health drain. If you build like what seems overheal when eating chocolate at maxed drained health from the gru, the minimum health that the gru stops draining at is increased, so if you build this phantom overheal it will glitch out and not drain. Annnnd on top of that, if you build this twice without holding gru, you get what feels around 100 hp of regeneration overheal. You'll know this at 350 hp when the health icon acts if it's overhealed and when it seems to jump back and fourth from 349 to 350 hp. It puts the Chocolate Bar between A tier a broken tier for me, these upsides are really strong but you'll have to be eating this dam chocolate bar constantly and I've died many times by eating it twice instead of eating it once.
I’m still angry dalokah’s bar got nerfed because they couldn’t figure out a way to fix that infinite overheal glitch. I miss being able to have 400 hp.
@@Barsik727 the dalokah’s bar used to grant 350 max hp and 400 overheal. But the overheal was removed because if you spammed gru with the overheal you’d have infinite health. Search up immortal heavy glitch
Weapon changes ideas Eviction Notice +40% swing speed On hit: gain a speed boost and gain a stack of one-two -60% damage No random Crits Marked for death Hit right click to activate one-two, this cause the heavy to punch upwards with crit launching enemies backwards. Warrior Spirit +50 hp on hit Mini crits other warrior spirit heavies +30 resistance to melee attacks Honor bound
Nah man think about Medieval Mode when balancing melee. 50 hp recovered on each hit, 30% damage resistance against melee, minicrits against other warrior spirits? When the Katana needs a kill to recover 100, gets instantly killed by other katanas? That's not nearly even. Maybe it's funny as a "fuck demoknights" weapon, but guess what is also a "fuck demoknights" weapon? Any of the primaries, any of the other fists with random crits, heavies health pool in general?
The GRU's health drain can be completely negated by the Dolokah's bar, eat it at the end of your journey and by the time you're in combat you're back to full health. Also the bar can give you overheal while you still have the gloves out so you can move at base speed with over 200 health, it's kinda funny.
One of the tier lists I've been looking forward for Zesty to do because I'm a heavy main so I'm excited to see what his (based) opinions would be. Edit: Question about the shotgun or any of the shotguns and to be honest I think it has issues especially to replace the sandwich for example, with a shotgun you're able to close in with someone with higher dmg compared to the minigun which you're slow and probably wont be able to catch on to someone plus the dmg range isn't great either but I'd advise only to use it in smaller maps or maps you know have good health pickups.
Shotguns work well with the Huo Long Heater and Brass Beast, but yeah they're never better than the Sandvich or banana. And fat scouting with the KGB is fantastic since you wanna always get in someone's face, punch one, charge at the others with crit shotguns. Really fun. And the holiday punch should work on Ubers. They're good enough already, and it requires a heavy with his melee out to random crit or get behind an Uber which uh... not easy. Uber doesn't need buffs.
I only use the GRU when defending last as the enemy is currently capping. In a situation like that every second counts and getting into a defensive position quickly to rain fire on the enemy is more important than retaining health. But if I have to go any significant distance I have to use the chocolate bar because even at 100 health it will take you back up to 350 quickly.
Fixing "Broken" Items 4: Limbo with the Fat Man - Holiday Punch: Remove random crits, keep laugh enabled for ubered targets. Focuses specifically on heavy acting like a spy against uber, helps keep Kritz vs Uber war in equilibrium - Fists of Steel: Attack damage penalty, movement speed penalty, and damage resistance lowered. Melee vulnerability should still be on as. - Natasha Fix A: Make it Ludmila aka the healing mini-gun - Natasha Fix B: Each successful hit gives him "whip speed" for a short time, allowing him to potentially catch up on targets and get more successful picks on scouts or overall retreating classes
The GRU is actually still good for getting to the frontlines faster, you just gotta put it away sooner and you’ll get to the objective sooner with most of your health. Plus, they’re good for escaping after fighting and surviving with less then 100 hp
Combover haircut, glasses, long face, and lots of anime figures. Zesty, the killer jokes write themselves. Any of though seperate are whatever, but together? Well, you got yourself a Batman movie killer.
you can flinch snipers with the shotgun at any range while closing in and jumping around, makes it quite hard for them to hit you. much better than revving up and dying
I think with the Gru, trading health for speed is acceptable. But I think if the health drain was slightly lower and if the health regeneration was matched to the drain it could be cool.
5:42 fun fact: this was made to stop 1 million hp heavy, exploit which gave you INFINITE OVERHEAL and because its on heavy you could melt the other team in their spawn, counter? Spies. one backstab and gone heavy, but he killed 7-8 people on the process and are now respawning. Patched the previous one, but then new exploit was found of the same thing but now the health was capped at 450 but it still happened it was just hidden, but this made the heavy somewhat counterable, if it was only him pushing, because focus fire could potentially kill the heavy and of course snipers full charged, spies, demo with 2 crit stickies or soldier with 2 crockets, possibly even the dragons fury could, when crit boosted, 2 shot the heavy. Soooo this change was made so this didnt happen which is fair square it became from a game breaking exploit to a annoying problem individualy.
Health drain on GRU does make sense because the old version basically negated heavy's speed penalty when getting to the front lines for no real downside. I will admit though that it is buggy and I think the health regeneration could be slightly faster.
@@chuckmann7127 Or let that bastardized fan mode lie. I consider 6v6 no different than Saxon Hale or Zombie Fortress. We don't need to balance for it, it's a garbage choice for competitive. Highlander is the better choice if you really want to pick a comp mode because it's more in line with the game. Not every class exists in 6v6. You don't have to worry too much about heavy, engi, spy, pyro, etc. Highlander you're forced to consider their input and the volume of bodies allows certain weapons to exist. Every single person I come across that says balance for 6's I ask to balance the quick fix for both. You can't. Since medic is THE most powerful cornerstone of a team you can't fix all the other points.
@@shanehunt3019 I think you're wrong comparing it to Saxton Hale or Zombie Fortress since these two modes are extensively modified, especially the former. 6s is just TF2 with weapon bans
If you want to know how useless the shotgun is as Heavy, I’ve been playing the game for 10 years, mainly as Heavy. I decided recently to grind out every heavy achievement I didn’t have yet (which wasn’t much), one that was among them was rationing, which is kill an opponent with the shotgun as Heavy when your out of mini gun ammo. Keep in mind I didn’t have the Sandvich for the whole first year I played TF2. It’s just so hard to run out of ammo on your mini gun, since enemies drop medium ammo packs on death, so what’s in theory an easy achievement I just never unlocked until I actually went out of my way to do it.
- I think your comment is duplicated - The shotgun is actually pretty good for roaming heavy or general repositioning, this is because revving up your mini gun is slows you down and it takes time to shoot, so the shotgun is a great tool to mitigate these issues.
I personally actually quite like the gru, it seems pretty good for specifically the heavy. Any other class it would be dumb. Heavys main weakness is supposed to be they are slow. Them being able to run faster to get out of situations. Or into situations they normally wouldent be able to get to in time. Is actually really powerful. As they have the highest health and highest damage (sometimes) they should be slow. But it could probably be better balanced. I would like to instead see the marked for death last for maybe lets say 1 second or half of a second, after you put it away.
Another argument for having the silent rev on tomislav is that the sound of constant explosion can be less noisier than a revved up minigun right around the corner. Any class will walk further into a trap before noticing your presence compared to when they hear a revved up heavy, accomodating the damage penalty since your foe have further distance to escape and even surprisingly making the difference between killing an unsuspecting enemy and just scaring them away. Very similar to placing a sentry facing a wall to make people walk further into the middle of a room before noticing the sentry as opposed to the sentry just shooting those people while making them immediately retreat.
I enjoy the shotgun on heavy since heavys biggest weakness is unrevving and being rushed by almost like any class. Scouts can kill heavies in 3 shots, so when you unrev people always go in for you and dont expect you to bring out a fucking shotgun, i fins myself getting like 1 shotgun kill per 4 minigun kills when playing heavy, and it saves my ass alot. With a medic on your team i would say shotgun is the best choice (with shotgun i mean family business or panic attack). Without a med, i would say sandvich or banana wins
Looked up the banana's stats out of curiosity, it actually recharges 66% faster than the sandvich (10 seconds for the banana and 30 for the sandvich) instead of the 50% it says. Dunno how they messed that up
To GRU and Eviction notice can be paired with the chocolate bar to recover faster. Still not great but better than having basically no health and you eventually get to 349-350.
Also, as a player who has a hard time putting his Family Business AWAY when he's playing heavy to use a lunchbox item instead (I even mostly use stock minigun, not ass beast or huo long) having a shotgun on heavy is extremely useful for repositioning and retreating, the former you should be doing and the latter you inevitably will be. If you are fighting 2 players at once who you can't simultaneously mow down with your minigun (way more common than you think, picture for example peppering a sniper to throw off his aim when a spy attacks you) it is better to have a shotgun because being able to MOVE and shoot at the SAME TIME is so good on heavy and you really don't know what you are missing until you un-learn sandvich habits. (Always let your team know you are shotgun so your medic doesn't just stare at you hoping for heals as he dies) Even in one on one scenarios, you are a hell of a lot more likely to be able to beat a demoman or soldier if you can dodge their pipes/rockets and shoot them at the same time Not to understate lunchbox items ofc but Shotgun heavy is the true mobile heavy, not GRU, because you can spend more time moving at a speed that isn't snail while still adequately defending yourself.
I feel like the way they can make Shotgun Heavy much more useful is to give Heavy his own lunchbox slot so you can have both a Shotgun and a Sandvich at the same time so if you’re eating and someone is coming round the corner, you can easily get out your shotgun and kill them before they can kill you
I really wish they'd give the family buissness to Engi. I know it sounds weird but I just want every shot gun to be on engi but I think it could be fun too. Also i wish heavy did get more shotguns I know lunchboxes beat the shit out of shotguns but its fun
Zesty, the reason the eviction notice got nerfed with the gru it's because that specific stat that got nerfed on the gru is linked to the eviction notice as well, or so i think, same way as the natasha spin up resistance while under 50% health is linked to the brass beast's. i dont know why or how but it is the way it is. more sourcespaghetti i guess, hopefully that changes with the heavy update if there is ever one.
I honestly forgot who said this but the GRU is almost the objectively the best melee because you use it to shorten the downtime of while you are running around to get into the fight. If the health pool is problematic when you get into the fight then just unequip it some seconds before an estimated brawl breaks out. Unequipping the gloves in that period makes you arrive 1 or 2 seconds later which rarely affects the outcome but keeps you alive, while not equipping the GRU at all delays you 5 or maybe many more seconds which may be just enough time for your team to fall. Of course getting ambushed or having a teleporter is a reason not to use it, but instead those scenarios are the NICHE, or in simpler terms there are more general scenarios in which you want to use the GRU. Would like to have a weapon that fills the niche for escaping heavy tho. And the eviction notice deserves better.
Must be noted that the +25% dmg against burning players from the Hou Long is applied to the base 90% damage the weapon has, not to the 100% damage, so it doesn't give you a raw 115% but around 112.5% which is not much different bus is worth noting . The brass beast is based on base damage that's why it's 120% damage
While i agree minigun offers superior damage. Tomislav will kill the minigun at medium range in a heavy vs heavy fight. I have never lost a fight against another heavy at mid range with the tomislav becuz the accuracy actually matters more over spitting out more bullets. Your bullets don't properly connect. You only lose vs other heavies if they are already spun up at close range.
As a heavy main i’m glad theres someone who is talking good about the huo long heater it deserves more it sucks that even some heavy mains shun this weapon saying that its bad
Maybe not the bar so much but it can be good for the overheal if you somehow manage to maintain your normal health but huo long I like I just wish the ammo use wasn't so hurtful and plus spies can jump over your ring and backstab you especially with the spicle
@@wealthybone2990 if you're humping the payload cart, there's no reason not to use the Huo-long heater. Yeah, spies can jump over the ring. But are you just staring ahead the whole time? If not, the Huo-long combined with basic awareness and actually turning around makes it much more difficult for spies.
@@wealthybone2990 no, but it's still better than not having the ring. It helps if you can mentally keep track of the spies and get a sense of when you've been looking straight ahead too long.
The Dalokohs bar is only unpopular because the banana is borderline OP. The Dalokohs does not need a buff, but the Banana needs a nerf. I have been a proponent of that since it was released. 200 health in essentially the same time frame as the Dalokohs is outrageous. In my opinion, the Banana needs a 15 second recharge time. It would still heal more than the Sandvich in the same time frame, but it would also indirectly "buff" the Dalokohs bar.
On payload maps, generally I use Tomislav on the way to the first point as a lot of players are going to be on the outer limits of heavys effective range, which the accuracy of the tomislav does work well against, and I am able to get on and off the cart when needed due to the faster spin up time. When the cart is being pushed through chokes however, I much more prefer the stock minigun as it shreds through enemies a lot better, and the opposing team tends to be on the cart a lot more. For defending it's the same. Tomislav when shooting the cart through open areas, and stock minigun through chokes.
while I agree with nearly everything in this video, your balance philosophy regarding the GRU I think is flawed. heavy's entire gimmick is that he's an amazing defender, but a slow attacker. he revolves completely around being at the right place at the right time. the GRUs effectiveness comes from the fact that he could get to where he needed to be much faster, not the fact that he runs fast in general. so the mini crits the heavy would take are pointless, since his health pool is already massive, and the mini crits only persisted for a few seconds after putting the weapon away which is not at all enough time to punish the heavy for essentially negating his only main weakness. the health drain (while still a ridiculous amount) balances the item almost perfectly, since now the heavy will actually trade one upside, a very large health pool, with another, faster positioning. the only thing I'd do to the GRU is bump up the minimum amount of health heavy can have from 100 to something like 175-200. he'd still be at a massive health disadvantage but it's much more forgiving, and the slow health regen will keep the weapon balanced if the enemy can capitalize on the lower health. plus, max overheal will still be less than the heavy's base max health. (also fix the overheal lmao) thank you for reading my masters thesis on TF2 balancing.
Personally, I think the shotgun's usefulness stems from it's burst damage and lack of speed penalty when using it. Against other players who try to corner peek you, you can switch to the shotgun in order to rush them down. It also makes a good weapon when you're just behind the front lines, either getting or escaping from the fight, where you can use your shotgun to quickly pick off flanking/overextending classes. Of course it's nowhere near as powerful as the sandvich, but in a situation where your medics are taking care of themselves or there are a lot of corners/flanking classes, you might consider pulling it out
Fists of Steel could make it so you can't be over healed while active, and if you currently had over heal when switching to them it could drain faster and not able to try replenishing it before it's fully drained.
3:15 i dont understand this take, people often trade health for mobility. Just look at soldiers or demos also your statement about health being everything is very questionable. If health was everything in this game, then every engineer will run gun slinger and every soldier would run conch and every single demoman would run demoknight, but thats clearly not the case
@B O ꓭ1. sandmans not used because the balls useless and 2. heavys balanced around being the strongest and slowest class so anything that negates his slowness needs to negate his strength too otherwise its unbalanced
@B O ꓭ It was scouts most used and OP weapon pre nerf and still had the health penalty which is proof thats not the problem. 15 health is irrelivent. Its just that slowing down enemys for a few seconds is a useless upside. You went very offtopic here. Warrior spirit and steak is a meme build so i have no clue why your bringing that up, thats like saying soldier is weak because market gardner + rocket jumper + gunboats is a super weak combo. We were talking about GRU were we not? And steak on its own is one of the best lunchbox items for heavy due to letting him rollout to the frontlines quicker in exchange for not having a lunchbox healing item while on the frontlines
First of all, great review! I think that the health drain from the heavy's speed fists is an ok concept. It feels like it's meant to restrain how far they can go effectively. I'd just cap it at 200 (KGB) and 250 (Evict. Not.) respectively.
The hu-long eater is so underrated, especially against scout. The best way they have to deal with a heavy is jumping around them at close range, so you mess up with their aim and land meatshot after meatshot, but against this minugun the enemy must stay at a distance where tracking is not as hard
Yea the punch sucks ass because you have to get a 90 degree hit on a enemy and have to deal with hit detection and you are the slowest class in the game
Since I don’t actually use most Heavy items despite playing a lot of Heavy, I’m just gonna leave my opinions on my own loadout. Stock minimum because it feels the best (I tried Tomislav and it didn’t feel right, the other guns have legit reasons for me to not use them). Then Second Banana in secondary: I don’t expect a medic up my butt, so I go with the loner’s Sandvich by default, plus its lower healing still covers most fight aftermaths. Melee is Fists of Steel: getting to mid faster is suicide now, so my alternative is reducing the damage I take before I can get in range.
The reason you'd use a shotgun for heavy is because you have the spin up the minigun in order to fire it, which also makes you even slower than you already are. The shotgun can be used instantly in comparison, allowing you to not be completely caught off guard when moving from place to place. Still not better than the other lunchbox items but there is a reason to use them.
Geez this one IMMEDIATELY has a take that I disagree with lmao The GRU downside makes perfect sense. Trading health for mobility is something that already exists ala explosive jumping. I would be OK with them tweaking the health drain or making your health regen faster when you put them away but yeah heavy's base speed really should come at a massive cost to buff. Its not the same as Pyro running a tiny bit faster with the Powerjack Also the eviction notice weren't competitively viable because they did the exact same thing as the GRU but were worse. If the GRU were nerfed and the eviction notice were not than people would have just switched to maining the EN without batting an eye. Heavy only requires half a brain at ALL because of his severe downsides. Making him as fast as a demo outside of combat makes him completely brainless. The GRU as they were practically had zero downside. You don't use the GRU in combat so the minicrits on holding them would never ever come in to play unless you choke or maybe a spy starts revolvering you. It was a free speed buff to the class whose primary weakness is that he is slow. Yeah, no, thanks, keep the GRU nerfed into the dumpster where they fucking belong. If you wanna buff heavy buff his strengths don't remove his weaknesses. Your comparing of the GRU to the Escape Plan is mildly infuriating. The Soldier is already insanely mobile. By the time you rocket jump enough to be moving at sonic speeds with the EP you are already across the map anyway (and oh hey would you look at that it only works AT ALL when you are low health). It is not used even remotely the same way as the GRU was/is and even if it was it has more severe downsides
@@occulticplate2401 People must really want into the discord, it's like that one South Park episode where Cartman buys an Amusement Park all for himself which creates massive "let me the fuck in" syndrome
As a sailor, let me say, the fact you don’t know the very obscure fact that the anchor chain is the thing that actually holds most the weight and stopping power rather then the anchor itself incredibly infuriates frustrates and fills me with, jokes, nah I’m messin, love these videos by the way
@@diegov1743 no it’s true, the anchor acts as a stopper not for the ship, but rather the chain, that’s why most are shovel or spade shaped, to dig into the ground and stop the chain from slipping, after a certain point the weight of the chain is greater the force of wind/current/drift of the ship and it stops
Your assessment of the GRU is just maximum clownage. A heavy with a marked for death sign is dead. The new GRU are the BETTER escape plan. Your health slowly dtaining down to 100 doesn't matter if you are already taking heavy damage and will go down to 100 health in two seconds anyways. You know what does matter in that situation? Marked for death, which makes it so that those 100 hp are blown off by a singular rocket. Sure, they aren't quite as good for general mobility - if you get caught out after moving them, you're fucked. But they are now better for escaaping than the actual escape plan, and they are still good for general mobility if you have some capability of reading the game state so you don't get caught out right after using them.
My theory for why the warrior's spirit and the buffalo steak both have damage vulnerability is because valve probably thought that a heavy with no damage vulnerabilities brainlessly running at people doing 100+ damage would be too OP or something, so they intentionally fucked over both weapons so they would be awful to use together.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 ya, but the old one negated every class but extremely good snipers and heavies using stock or the brass beast. Soldiers, Demos, Scouts, Engies, Spy, and Medic just got deleted by it. There's just nothing they can really do bar, I don't know, using the wrangler? That's the sign of an overpowered weapon. And he thinks it negating those classes is fine because "lol just use sniper", a class he believes should be nerfed to the point it would no longer be a viable counter to it. Zesty is a god damned idiot.
45:49 as someone who mains the Brass Beast, i can tell you, that gun is SCARY I consistantly top score with it on defense and koth It perfectly embodies my motto: "I may be slow, but when i get there, ohohoh you are *fucked* " Yes i may die a lot without a chance to retaliate, but it's a sacrifice i am willing to make
Balancemod's Natasha fix is godly good. And I play support heavy sometimes when I feel lazy. Edit: if the holiday punch didn't random crit but did Instacrit from behind.... I think that would be INFINITELY better. As for working on ubered players, of it only crit on the back or with a Kritzkrieg, I think that would be hella cool. Also I like to say I am a game designer, but I think your years of experience trumps my experience in design.
I do disagree with you on the mittens, as I think they should do away with the random crits, as then it makes heavy actually try to hit them in the back for ubers, rather than just running at them full on, as the mittens were designed to be stopping ubers in case other classes can't, I do think that you did make a great point in that it shouldn't effect ubers, but then ubers would be super difficult to counter besides using airblast or launching them with stickies.
I really dislike Zesty's opinion on the mittens. Does he not realize that you can still be executed while wearing them? Your slow speed as Heavy means you need to ambush them just to get the Uber stop, and that's if your punch counts as a back attack. It's good as it is right now without being busted, since all you need to counter the Uber stop from Heavy is situational awareness and just deleting the Heavy before he gets to you since he's not that fast.
Fun fact: The second banana has a 15 second cooldown, but like all other consumables the recharge starts immediately after you take that first bite from the item. The eating food animation takes about 5 seconds to finish meaning you get the banana back in just 10 seconds when you’re no longer idle which is really fast because most fights you come out of take around the same time if not longer which means whenever you need to eat the banana, it’s almost always available to eat.
I way disagree with your take on the gloves of running urgently. I use them the same way as the escape plan quite frequently. I prefer the gloves of running urgently over the escape plan because with heavy a quick escape just feels more reliable to pull off with it than it does with the escape plan when being directly focused fired. When Valve balanced it they changed how you're supposed to use the item and you are just trying to use it the way that it used to work and being punished for it instead of working around it.
When your HP is low the GRU doesn’t drain any health drain. I used to hate the rework but then I remembered that having extra speed is still really strong on Heavy, and a Medic with overheal can make the downsides nonexistent.
I use the Fists of steel along with the Buffalo Steak Sandvich to meme around. Most people really forget about the damage vulnerability to melee whenever I use this weapon and just keep shooting me with whatever primary/secondary they have. So, I basically get the benefits of Buffalo Steak Sandvich and still get 40% damage resistance to ranged weapons. But whenever they remember how screwed I am towards melee, I can get one shot by a random ubersaw crit.
lemme get this straight, every time people talk about nerfing/buffing a weapon, it's always in the eyes of the competitive community? not in the eyes of the people who just wanna have fun?
Possiblity of taking more damage to deal more damage is the glass cannon type of deal, which I'd say is what Scout is; he has low health but a great damage output. Unlike with Scout, Heavy doesn't have the speed to be able to dodge or avoid damage. That's why I find some of the melee's where you sacrifice health/damage resistance for more damage, Heavy wouldn't be able to make it work or survive in the long run compared to someone like Scout.
4:51 That's the problem, while I believe Escape Plan is still op... Gru was more op, it gave FLAT speed boost meaning it was a better movement option for everything except escape or combat. Again just don't use GRU for rollouts, most cart games have atleast one Engy (unfortunately), just use telies which is still faster than GRU. So again, if you'd think objectively here, you'd see it's actually more of a sidegrade ans not a nerf. GRU now isn't a king of free bs rollouts, but now it's a king of free bs escapes. Before it was just Powerjack on steroids, now it's escape plan om steroids. Why y'all complaining about GRU??? It's still best choice for Heavy
I think the best part about the GRU is when you pair it with the chocolate bar, it helps to partially negate the downside of the GRU. Suddenly if you lost 150 HP to health decay, you're at 200 and you'll probably regen back to 300 before you get into the fight if you time it right, leaving you with a max 350 hp with effectively 50 of it being healed in combat, which can be really REALLY good. You get to the front lines slightly slower than if not using the chocolate, but it's so worth it to move faster than normal with limited downsides
The Fists of Steel still get a pass from me, BARELY, because they fuck over Sniper. I feel like they were added so a Heavy COULD survive against a Sniper more often (in some rare cases).
crazy
ANY weapon that fucks over Sniper gets a pass, period.
Well if they didn't nerfed half of heavy items, he would've survived sniper encounter more often (Like GRU or dalokosh bar). But all of this can fully neglected by vac medic.
You are so fucking salty about 1 class, holy shit.
Sir I'm gonna need that intro video link if there's a full.
Also that guy in your chat batching about Asuka. Its a drawing , chill lmao
"I'm only ever compared to murderers, cult leaders, or villains."
Considering people always compare your appearance to Jerma, that's pretty accurate.
*burger eating clip*
Jerma killed many SPHEEs
Absolutely DERANGED streamer ZOINKS off in front on LIVE audience
so we got murderers, cult leaders, villains (jerma aka all of the above) and napoleon dynamite
Also Milo from Tarzan
Heavy main here.
As Big Joey said, GRU is now basically the Escape Plan on steroids. The health drain has little to no effect when at low health, making it a great retreat/reposition tool without requiring the Heavy to be on death's door to activate. Players think it's bad only because you can't use it on the approach, but I believe the new version is still just as viable, if used smartly.
Absolutely agreed- but geez... the eviction notice
Wtf heavy mains exist??? No way
@@roman108 | We are the rarest players in all of TF2
Yeah I was thinking the same thing, I think some people don’t give the GRU a chance cause it isn’t as good as it used to be.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth idk spy crabs are near extinction rn
In the past, I only used Fists of Steel when there were bot snipers. Then the bot tsunami happened, so I have them on default now...
Same
I got them in the middle of the bot crisis so I’ve been firced to use them exclusively since I got them
Pair them with the Panic Attack so you can get up close and quickswitch to a hitscan when they try to melee you
Unfortunate that it's the only real stopgap to the automated menace.
@@aegisScale the VACcinator
The GRU are actually really good, I recommend playing around with them because the downside sounds really bad in theory but not that big of a deal in practice.
I hated the change at first but I grew to love it. I don’t think it makes a big difference now that I know how to deal with the downside. Medic’s overheal makes the downside nonexistent as well.
I’d recommend using the GRU with the dalokhas bar
46:00
My favorite heavy weapon.
Ah, the living sentry. As an engineer main, I adore this weapon. How often I wish to be able to pull what is effectivlly a level two out of my ass, and shred people to bits, but then pull out a shot....gun... to move around as engineer... wait....
is a brass beast heavy that uses a shotgun just a battle engineer that refuses to build a tele and dispenser?
The only issue is that sentries dont have a rev up
@@The4DPotato They do. It's called a deploy animation.
@@The4DPotato they have both a deploy time and once they see a target, they don't immediately start shooting either. They gotta spin around till they can actually potentially hit a target.
And Heavy with Brass Beast and Sandvich is a Sentry-Dispencer combo
@@Woodland_Adventures which is why you can avoid sentry damage by running in circles on top of the sentry
I disagree that holiday punch shouldn't work on ubers. I think random crits should be disabled, and ubers should be punished for letting a heavy sneak behind their back.
It could work, it would turn it into a high risk/high reward weapon. Most heavies who use them just whip them out and hope for a random crit to land when faced with an uber, so it essentially relies on random crits to actually work (like the Third Degree). An ubered player probably isn't checking their back too often when ubered anyway cause Spies can't do anything to them (with stock uber at least) so it would give them something to look out for.
Though, the fact that it CAN render an uber completely useless is still pretty bad. Remember when the Sandman was able to stun ubered players? Yeah, that was pretty broken.
Without random crits it's gonna be even rarer to punish uber
I mean, go ahead but Holiday Punch isn't banned in comp, so why nerf it?
@@dyllie1913 with the sandman you could do that across the map with the holiday you HAVE to punch them so
Yea if a heavy flanks your team you kinda deserved it
You also forget that you can negate the crit laugh by jumping. Which believe it or not, a lot of people do, for some reason?
Why would you use a shotgun on Heavy? To correct positioning or retreating on defense with the slower miniguns (Brass Beast, Natascha) without being caught out needing to spin up, all while not being nearly immobile too. On defense you're going to be playing around your team anyways, around health pickups, medics, dispensers so you won't be needing your lunchbox item nearly as much. However buffs to minigun rev up speed across the board made it less necessary.
I agree and pretty much close to what I said about the shotguns aswell.
I use the shotguns for goofing off and for no other reason. The lunchbox items are just straight up better.
shotguns are fun, but they also work well when you get caught off guard with no time to rev.
Obvs not good against Scout cause he can outdamage you in a shotgun fight. Good against Spy and Pyro because you get enough mobility to move around them and not be instakilled or burnt to a crisp.
Shotguns are great for BB, good for Natascha, Okay-ish for Huo-long and Stock, and near useless for Tomislav. Maybe if you use the panic attack it’s okay for Tomislav because of the faster switching speed, and same thing for Huo-long and stock to lesser extent. The the lunchbox items are still almost always a better choice for 3/5 miniguns, though.
Absolutely, they had such a high chance to be relevant but unfortunately, Food items are still a very good choice for Brass beast and Natasha user, shotgun is mostly just worse than the family business. There is also the problem with these 2 miniguns, Natasha is considered underwhelming, brass beast is good but usually not the main choice (even if it's good ). Also for a defensive playstyle, if you argue that your team is behind you so you don't have to worry about carrying a sandwich , you could also argue most of the teammate behind you will start shooting at the target within your shotgun range. Shotgun is best used on these 2 but still remain situational.
Buff brass beast + Natascha => indirect buff for shotgun
I honestly really like the GRU. Maybe it's mainly because I didn't get to play TF2 before the GRU was nerfed, but I find myself making good use of it very often.
Me too. I almost exclusively use the GRU when I play heavy because he is too slow otherwise. All you have to do is put them away a little while before getting to battle. It still gets you to the frontlines a lot faster if you use them for only 5 seconds.
It was also OP pre nerf
Basically the gru was a weapon you used to get to the fight before it was changed. Now you use it to dip out of a fight and reposition
I did use them back then, but even then i still use them, i can't live without the speed
Yup. Zesty just doesn't use it right. It's useful to either get into a fight if you switch off early enough, to escape fights, or for short repositioning if you aren't short on health. It's a Really good weapon.
The gru can be viable if you have a medic building a house inside of your colon, because the overheal kind of mitigates the health drain and makes the heavy get to the frontline with at least 300 HP.
It's actually better for lone heavies as you can squeeze extra healing out of the banana and dalokohs with more consistent lunchbox uptime. It does push you into playing a bit more sneaky though
"Building a house inside of your colon."? What?! What the fuck does that mean?!
@@doorkey73 late response but what he's saying is basically that if you have a pocket medic
Zesty is the only tf2 youtuber that I watch regularly. Mainly because he hasn’t made an entire video about snakes added to snake water.
Sure the snakes is a funny addition, but the fact they did that and nothing else (other than quality of life chances that I haven’t noticed really).
Imagine if Valve added a “testing ground” sort of thing, added a list to the casual queue with maps from the workshop that constantly rotated, we could give feedback to the workshop creators and valve.
Or even balance changes to weapons. Just imagine that, maybe it’s a good thing or a bad thing. But at this point I think players would find that refreshing.
I love u sweeden man
Based
This and the return of the Public Beta for tweaking weapons old or new
Yeah so what part of the video is this comment about? Or did you just want to say you have a custom Zesty Jesus Youtooz in a jar?
I personally use shotguns when I'm using the Brass Beast so that I can fight back against anyone who harasses me on the way to the objective. I normally only use the Brass Beast on defense, so losing my sandwich doesn't hurt much with all the dispensers lying around.
The GRU are fine, I'm just careful to just put them away before 200 hp. They're good for flanking, fleeing, flaunting, (f)rushing some chump, and that 100 health comes back pretty quickly. The speed you get, something that is such a valued commodity-especially for heavy-is profoundly useful. And I think the "bug" you referred to is just so gru heavies can't have it's downside nullified by a medic
Holiday punch can be easily negated by simply jumping repeatedly, as long as a target is airborne the holiday punch CANNOT force them to taunt, due to wacky anti-grief mechanisms when dealing with taunt interactions.
so no id argue its not as broken, because you litterally just need to press space bar a few times and mow down the heavy that is trying to random crit you
Also its worse than Stock Fist if you are using them for the sole purpose of killing people, why would you hope for a crit that only stuns the victim, although a stunned victim is *almost* always a kill if he's standing near the frontline, might as well go for that juicy 195 that one shot anyone but Heavy (Soldier players will never have full hp, its an hidden rule in tf2 trust me)
Even as a Medic main.... I HIGHLY disagree with the Holiday Punch not effecting Ubered players. Just get rid of the random crits.
Without the random element. You basically have to sneak up on Ubered players. Who will likely be with other players, as the slowest class in the game.
If a Heavy against all odds does that? He earned that punish, in my opinion.
Also it only works if target can't jump, aka Heavy.
So you have to either sneak up as the slowest class or rush down the most strong class close range(Heavy) and be lucky to random crit em or melee hitreg working.
This is probably as rare scenario as two crit rockets
I do think the Holiday Punch as it is *with* random crits is broken, though, honestly. Speaking as someone who is both a Medic main *and* plays Heavy often.
It's not as if this is a constant nuisance that completely ruins the game for me, but if you get some of the older, smaller, tighter and more chokepoint-y maps like Dustbowl, especially on a full server (which means you'll potentially be engaged by 5+ people when assaulting a point on offence), then it *really* doesn't cost much for a defending Heavy to sacrifice himself with the item to see if he happens to random crit you somehow and just completely waste that Uber. It won't work *too* often, but I think the fact it can work at all is really annoying, especially when BLU's opportunities to storm the point don't come easy, often or cheap.
@@FamilyTeamGamingPress spacebar to completely negates Holiday Punch's entire gimmick
I want to buy a Strange GRU and rename it "Gloves of Running Aids" both for the pun and because like Aids, the GRU slowly weakens you.
Interesting you should do that lol.
Aids for Running Urgently
LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO
Heavy has the best Primaries, as while some have their issues, Heavy's general damage output is so great you can still manage to rip and tear with any that you may desire.
Sniper would like to say a word
@@-_-murilo2865 | A single heavy who knows how to position and read a game's flow can be more effective then a single sniper who can aim well.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth a single Sniper who knows how to position himself well, read the game flow and has an actual good aim can single handedly shut down the enemy team, like, absolutely shut down the server, the infinite range one-shotting hitscan class is too op, there's no question, his primaries are the most damaging and powerful weapons in the game. While Heavy need to be super careful about positioning, all the Sniper has to do is click in heads while standing still (if he's using a headphone, he's basically immune to Spys too), he is definitely the most dangerous class (arguably the most influential too) in the game
@@-_-murilo2865 sniper has the piss shot and the classic. Both are pretty meh or bad.
@@silverdededestruction2197
Piss Rifle is actually really good. You can one shot Medics even faster.
That's why it's banned in comp.
The old eviction notice was one of the most well designed weapons from a thematic point, as a duelist weapon the speed boost on hit could only be outran by a demo charge or scout running away (but not backpedaling) and only lasted long enough to keep you on somebody to land another punch this means once you got somebody you committed to it, on a further note the damage penalty was large enough that it felt designed around random crits since it couldn't feelsbad somebody you randomly tagged while playing into the "beating somebody into the dirt because they owe you money" theme.
Fucking called it with the GRU. Your own words from the Soldier video:
"Being able to get to the fight faster is an infinite advantage you could have over the enemy team."
"Giving the soldier an on-demand speed boost would be really fucking strong, because the soldier is balanced by his slow speed, so him being able to move faster and cover ground more quickly at no strong penalty [...] is not a good idea."
The reason why heavy's Health pool being drained for moving faster is balanced is the same reason why the Soldier and Demo blast jumping to cover ground is balanced - you trade bringing your high damage potential (and high health with the Heavy) to the frontlines faster by making yourself more vulnerable. The previous marked for death icon was not nearly impactful enough of a cost for using the item, especially not when rolling out to a fight but even as an escape tool because the speed boost was not dependent on you being weaker. Heavy's probably my 2nd fav class I don't find it nearly as punishing to use as you are making out to be, and I find the balance change made a lot more sense given the Heavy's design.
Hmm I mean if you put it like I guess but I still find it pretty dumb with the health drain or at least have it delayed or regain faster after you switch off of it but demo and soldier can reach the frontlines faster than a gru heavy.
Like yeah I agree with basically everything you've said.
My problem is that when you finally get to the fight, you still have to swap to your minigun, rev up, and become largely immobile to attack.
The Soldier and Demoman don't have a significant delay between arrival and attacking like the heavy does, so they should be punished more by having to sacrifice health to move faster. Plus, they're high burst damage classes that need to be balanced in that way, because they can arrive to a fight and lay waste in one or two well placed, fast shots, with their reduced health pool not coming into negative effect until they've dished out a lot of damage
But the Heavy? This doesn't happen. The heavy has a slow to start, steady stream of damage that is weaker within the first 1 second of firing. When he gets to the fight, he's automatically a sitting duck thanks to his slow movement speed and attack starting speed. And potentially sacrificing 66% of your health pool? Health drain as you move? I think it's an awful change to the GRU.
Imagine if they had made this change to the powerjack because it made the pyro get to the fight too quickly. The weapon functions in the exact same way as the old GRU (except it swaps minicrits for the lower damage vulnerability, and still has full damage, attack speed, and health on kill). But why is it balanced on pyro? The pyro has limited range, and a steady stream of damage rather than high burst damage on demand. He just happens to have a faster movement speed.
The heavy is slow to move, slow to attack, and even slower to get to the fight. So why potentially reduce his health pool to the point where he can't live long enough to be effective once he gets to the fight?
The old version was fine. Like I said, revert it, and make it so Heavy can't get healed while they're out.
@@ZestyJesus the GRU is still really good. Literally all you need to do is switch back to your primary a few seconds before you fully make it to the battlements and you're good. Of course you're not gonna engage the enemy when you're at 150 hp.
The weapon is especially effective when Heavy needs to walk a longer distance, like PL defense or Dust bowl Offense. Plus, it was easily the best melee for Heavy back before the nerf, casual or not.
@@ZestyJesus GRU is fine, my suggestion is don't put em on at the beginning, dont use them to get to the frontlines use them to navigate the frontlines dont have them on in a spot thats hot, if there is fighting mini gun out if not use them to get past open areas quicker and quickly return to your primary. an example is there is a door a sniper sightline then a door its not too wide use em then. ruclips.net/video/CjRnpX7Wer0/видео.html big joey has some good advice with em. Shotgun dont neglect it but sandvich will always be the better option, shotgun should only be considered depending on minigun choice
The initial purpose of the Shotgun was to use it in situations when revving up your minigun would be detrimental, like when you are trying to make your way to a fight but a Scout suddenly jumps at you, or if you need to escape and are being chased. But ever since the game introduced the Tomislav, which essentially made those situations not be much of a problem anymore because of the faster spin-up time, Shotguns really dont have a use for Heavy. The Sandvich makes it even worse cause being able to fully heal yourself is just so good for the Heavy.
They are decent if you have a slower minigun like the Brass Beast. Family Business is probably the best because you don’t have to worry about reloading it or missing too many shots.
Nerf the tomi
@@leonardo9259 nerf ur mum bozo
@@xailonut8763 lmao this dude uses the tomi
@@leonardo9259 I use ur mum clussy
Matter of factly I never use the tomislav
The most hilarious thing is that you can STILL hit the 450 Overheal with the FoS out if you pull them out when you reach the max overheal so you can get something like 750ish effective HP, it doesn't immediately cut it down to 390.
I’m confused on how to calculate the math of damage vulnerabilities/ resistances in tf2
@@poopyjoe7435 i imagine its something like [hp value](1 + [damage resistance])
so for a stock demo running targe itd be like 175(1+.50) to find effective hp against fire
Was a bit surprised by the GRU and Panic placements, but as always well reasoned and well presented. Good stuff as always Zesty.
I approve 👌
Yea but still wrong about placement with GRU. Like seriously even if old GRU was better a speed boost is still a speed boost meaning that C is a stupid placement.
@@CIA871 what do you mean i cant get a speed boost on the slowest class for free? smh trash weapon
@Nathan Weatherspoon
Yeah i agree. I also believe Zesty’s stance is based on the way he uses it. I believe you cannot use the Gru for an extended period of time, rather you should use it for short bursts of maybe 3-4 seconds. I use it this way and I’ve never gotten down to 100 health with it.
It’s all about balance, knowing when to holster it and managing your health pool. Not just “i will hold these out for an eternity”, because that’s what gets you punished.
@@MrCastleburger I use them the same way. Limited speed boosts, and the occasional surprise melee F you against vax medics on random crit servers. I'll try to make a Heavy video sometime that's not payload to illustrate this.
shotguns on heavy are surprisingly useful for when you are running somewhere unrevved and surprise scout comes out of nowhere and is already getting up in your face.
and i find that the tomi is a lot better at destroying sentries with the accuracy at range.
Minigun fully accurate on the first shot so you can actually just keep clicking to destroy sentrys at range with any mini
@@josephg1125 but the tomislav kills them a lot faster than clicking and waiting for the spread reset.
Brass beast is far better for sentries. You can literally pre-rev around the corner and annihilate it, don't need to worry about positioning when you can just focus fire it from close range and kill it long before it can kill you.
The Natascha is actually really solid as a support fire gun, slowing an enemy to a crawl making them fodder for your teammates alongside your own tracking is extremely valuable even at spray and pray ranges, especially against high value targets like Medics who are likely to try and retreat out of the fire zone. I find it a really fun other way to play Heavy
The Natascha turns the heavy from the hammer into the anvil, getting people into a position where the other members of your team can swoop in to finish them off.
The Natascha's slowdown may be broken because of the slow effect being broken, but the Natascha is a support weapon on a class that has a number of secondaries designed to help himself and his team. Slowing enemies makes them easier for you to track, but it also makes it easier for projectile classes to hit their shots, or for scouts to be able to get the pick and get lut, or for a spy to get a key backstab.
If you want a defensive minigun that shreds at more ranges, use the brass beast. If you want an offensive minigun, you use the tomislav. If you want to melt enemies in chokepoints and at close range, you use the heater. If you want consistency and a good weapon in most scenarios, you go for stock.
If you want to support your team, and screw over jumping demos and soldiers, you pick the Natascha
It annoys me how they gave the Heavy a 50% resistance to knockback (except for sentries) but not airblast.
Wait for sentries and not airblsst?
Knockback works on sentries and airblast, correct.
@@wealthybone2990 Its 50% KB resist to everything except sentrys and airblast
I think it’s because the Heavy is a counter to the Pyro since the Pyro does the most damage at close range, but the Heavy does even more damage at close and mid range + way more health.
@@Spanishdog17 Also airblast was added to the game later iirc so maybe they just didn't consider adding it because it slipped their minds jn the time between?
The tomislav's revv up time is actually incredibly strong when you pair it with bunnyhopping. If you constantly jump and revv up your tomislav over and over at the same time while using your strafe keys to make turns, you can essentially have a minigun that's permenantly revved up without a speed penalty since you maintain your jumping momentum. Unfortunately not a lot of players use this trick.
There's an odd synergy with the chocolate and the GRU. The chocolate will always restore you to 300 max HP no matter how much you have depleted your health with the GRU
And If you do this glitch twice you can run around with the gru at 270 health (that's as high as I could go) without health drain. If you build like what seems overheal when eating chocolate at maxed drained health from the gru, the minimum health that the gru stops draining at is increased, so if you build this phantom overheal it will glitch out and not drain.
Annnnd on top of that, if you build this twice without holding gru, you get what feels around 100 hp of regeneration overheal. You'll know this at 350 hp when the health icon acts if it's overhealed and when it seems to jump back and fourth from 349 to 350 hp.
It puts the Chocolate Bar between A tier a broken tier for me, these upsides are really strong but you'll have to be eating this dam chocolate bar constantly and I've died many times by eating it twice instead of eating it once.
I’m still angry dalokah’s bar got nerfed because they couldn’t figure out a way to fix that infinite overheal glitch. I miss being able to have 400 hp.
@@Barsik727 the dalokah’s bar used to grant 350 max hp and 400 overheal. But the overheal was removed because if you spammed gru with the overheal you’d have infinite health. Search up immortal heavy glitch
Weapon changes ideas
Eviction Notice
+40% swing speed
On hit: gain a speed boost and gain a stack of one-two
-60% damage
No random Crits
Marked for death
Hit right click to activate one-two, this cause the heavy to punch upwards with crit launching enemies backwards.
Warrior Spirit
+50 hp on hit
Mini crits other warrior spirit heavies
+30 resistance to melee attacks
Honor bound
Nah man think about Medieval Mode when balancing melee. 50 hp recovered on each hit, 30% damage resistance against melee, minicrits against other warrior spirits? When the Katana needs a kill to recover 100, gets instantly killed by other katanas? That's not nearly even. Maybe it's funny as a "fuck demoknights" weapon, but guess what is also a "fuck demoknights" weapon? Any of the primaries, any of the other fists with random crits, heavies health pool in general?
Uh
What is this “one-two” you mention? Is it for the Alt-Fire?
@@centri-sol yeah one-two is a common expression for punching.
@@shybandit521 Yeah, I know, dw; the mechanic in Jack's idea was just a little unclear.
Warrior Spirit :
50+ hp back on kill
10+ hp on hit
30% damage bonus
30% slower firing speed
The GRU's health drain can be completely negated by the Dolokah's bar, eat it at the end of your journey and by the time you're in combat you're back to full health. Also the bar can give you overheal while you still have the gloves out so you can move at base speed with over 200 health, it's kinda funny.
One of the tier lists I've been looking forward for Zesty to do because I'm a heavy main so I'm excited to see what his (based) opinions would be.
Edit: Question about the shotgun or any of the shotguns and to be honest I think it has issues especially to replace the sandwich for example, with a shotgun you're able to close in with someone with higher dmg compared to the minigun which you're slow and probably wont be able to catch on to someone plus the dmg range isn't great either but I'd advise only to use it in smaller maps or maps you know have good health pickups.
heavy main gang?
@@AnnaSue81 Да.
@@wealthybone2990 si
heavy mains exist???
Shotguns work well with the Huo Long Heater and Brass Beast, but yeah they're never better than the Sandvich or banana. And fat scouting with the KGB is fantastic since you wanna always get in someone's face, punch one, charge at the others with crit shotguns. Really fun. And the holiday punch should work on Ubers. They're good enough already, and it requires a heavy with his melee out to random crit or get behind an Uber which uh... not easy. Uber doesn't need buffs.
That overheal removal bug lets you generate ubercharge faster when moving to the frontline, but the restore rate needs to be faster.
These intros get better every episode, keep it up Zesty!
"intro is"
I only use the GRU when defending last as the enemy is currently capping. In a situation like that every second counts and getting into a defensive position quickly to rain fire on the enemy is more important than retaining health. But if I have to go any significant distance I have to use the chocolate bar because even at 100 health it will take you back up to 350 quickly.
Fixing "Broken" Items 4: Limbo with the Fat Man
- Holiday Punch: Remove random crits, keep laugh enabled for ubered targets. Focuses specifically on heavy acting like a spy against uber, helps keep Kritz vs Uber war in equilibrium
- Fists of Steel: Attack damage penalty, movement speed penalty, and damage resistance lowered. Melee vulnerability should still be on as.
- Natasha Fix A: Make it Ludmila aka the healing mini-gun
- Natasha Fix B: Each successful hit gives him "whip speed" for a short time, allowing him to potentially catch up on targets and get more successful picks on scouts or overall retreating classes
The GRU is actually still good for getting to the frontlines faster, you just gotta put it away sooner and you’ll get to the objective sooner with most of your health. Plus, they’re good for escaping after fighting and surviving with less then 100 hp
in my 5000+ hours since 2012 i have literally never seen an uber get stopped by holiday punch outside of trade servers
If you let the slowest/biggest class in the game get behind you and your medic you deserve to die.
aint no way bro complained about the holiday punch 😭😭
Combover haircut, glasses, long face, and lots of anime figures. Zesty, the killer jokes write themselves. Any of though seperate are whatever, but together? Well, you got yourself a Batman movie killer.
THOSE ARE BIONICLES HNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH
@@goodassjob7714 He does own a few Asuka figures, too.
If medieval mode was considered the buffalo steak sandwich + boxing gloves of killing can solo the entire last push
30:27 That's an irl friend of mine, absolutely amazing to see him just randomly pop up here lmao
you can flinch snipers with the shotgun at any range while closing in and jumping around, makes it quite hard for them to hit you. much better than revving up and dying
I think with the Gru, trading health for speed is acceptable.
But I think if the health drain was slightly lower and if the health regeneration was matched to the drain it could be cool.
5:42 fun fact: this was made to stop 1 million hp heavy, exploit which gave you INFINITE OVERHEAL and because its on heavy you could melt the other team in their spawn, counter? Spies. one backstab and gone heavy, but he killed 7-8 people on the process and are now respawning. Patched the previous one, but then new exploit was found of the same thing but now the health was capped at 450 but it still happened it was just hidden, but this made the heavy somewhat counterable, if it was only him pushing, because focus fire could potentially kill the heavy and of course snipers full charged, spies, demo with 2 crit stickies or soldier with 2 crockets, possibly even the dragons fury could, when crit boosted, 2 shot the heavy. Soooo this change was made so this didnt happen which is fair square it became from a game breaking exploit to a annoying problem individualy.
Health drain on GRU does make sense because the old version basically negated heavy's speed penalty when getting to the front lines for no real downside. I will admit though that it is buggy and I think the health regeneration could be slightly faster.
It doesnt make sense
The comptards still will ban it, let casual have their fun
@@leonardo9259 Don't see why it can't be balanced for both. It's not comp's fault Valve sucks at play testing their weapons.
@@chuckmann7127 Or let that bastardized fan mode lie. I consider 6v6 no different than Saxon Hale or Zombie Fortress. We don't need to balance for it, it's a garbage choice for competitive. Highlander is the better choice if you really want to pick a comp mode because it's more in line with the game.
Not every class exists in 6v6. You don't have to worry too much about heavy, engi, spy, pyro, etc.
Highlander you're forced to consider their input and the volume of bodies allows certain weapons to exist.
Every single person I come across that says balance for 6's I ask to balance the quick fix for both. You can't. Since medic is THE most powerful cornerstone of a team you can't fix all the other points.
@@shanehunt3019 I think you're wrong comparing it to Saxton Hale or Zombie Fortress since these two modes are extensively modified, especially the former. 6s is just TF2 with weapon bans
@@leonardo9259 I don't know any league that bans the GRU
If you want to know how useless the shotgun is as Heavy, I’ve been playing the game for 10 years, mainly as Heavy. I decided recently to grind out every heavy achievement I didn’t have yet (which wasn’t much), one that was among them was rationing, which is kill an opponent with the shotgun as Heavy when your out of mini gun ammo. Keep in mind I didn’t have the Sandvich for the whole first year I played TF2. It’s just so hard to run out of ammo on your mini gun, since enemies drop medium ammo packs on death, so what’s in theory an easy achievement I just never unlocked until I actually went out of my way to do it.
- I think your comment is duplicated
- The shotgun is actually pretty good for roaming heavy or general repositioning, this is because revving up your mini gun is slows you down and it takes time to shoot, so the shotgun is a great tool to mitigate these issues.
The shotgun pairs well with the Brass Beast because it is slow to setup.
@@Spanishdog17 it's also still good for any other heavy loadout, especially if you like some damaging option on repositioning.
The holiday punch feels like a joke but is surprisingly powerful
Sigma Pre-Glowing Properly Hydrated Terry Davis Reviews Weapons and Tools for the Heaviest Man in Gaming History
I personally actually quite like the gru, it seems pretty good for specifically the heavy.
Any other class it would be dumb.
Heavys main weakness is supposed to be they are slow. Them being able to run faster to get out of situations. Or into situations they normally wouldent be able to get to in time. Is actually really powerful.
As they have the highest health and highest damage (sometimes) they should be slow. But it could probably be better balanced. I would like to instead see the marked for death last for maybe lets say 1 second or half of a second, after you put it away.
Another argument for having the silent rev on tomislav is that the sound of constant explosion can be less noisier than a revved up minigun right around the corner. Any class will walk further into a trap before noticing your presence compared to when they hear a revved up heavy, accomodating the damage penalty since your foe have further distance to escape and even surprisingly making the difference between killing an unsuspecting enemy and just scaring them away. Very similar to placing a sentry facing a wall to make people walk further into the middle of a room before noticing the sentry as opposed to the sentry just shooting those people while making them immediately retreat.
I enjoy the shotgun on heavy since heavys biggest weakness is unrevving and being rushed by almost like any class. Scouts can kill heavies in 3 shots, so when you unrev people always go in for you and dont expect you to bring out a fucking shotgun, i fins myself getting like 1 shotgun kill per 4 minigun kills when playing heavy, and it saves my ass alot. With a medic on your team i would say shotgun is the best choice (with shotgun i mean family business or panic attack). Without a med, i would say sandvich or banana wins
Looked up the banana's stats out of curiosity, it actually recharges 66% faster than the sandvich (10 seconds for the banana and 30 for the sandvich) instead of the 50% it says. Dunno how they messed that up
To GRU and Eviction notice can be paired with the chocolate bar to recover faster. Still not great but better than having basically no health and you eventually get to 349-350.
Also, as a player who has a hard time putting his Family Business AWAY when he's playing heavy to use a lunchbox item instead (I even mostly use stock minigun, not ass beast or huo long) having a shotgun on heavy is extremely useful for repositioning and retreating, the former you should be doing and the latter you inevitably will be. If you are fighting 2 players at once who you can't simultaneously mow down with your minigun (way more common than you think, picture for example peppering a sniper to throw off his aim when a spy attacks you) it is better to have a shotgun because being able to MOVE and shoot at the SAME TIME is so good on heavy and you really don't know what you are missing until you un-learn sandvich habits. (Always let your team know you are shotgun so your medic doesn't just stare at you hoping for heals as he dies)
Even in one on one scenarios, you are a hell of a lot more likely to be able to beat a demoman or soldier if you can dodge their pipes/rockets and shoot them at the same time
Not to understate lunchbox items ofc but
Shotgun heavy is the true mobile heavy, not GRU, because you can spend more time moving at a speed that isn't snail while still adequately defending yourself.
I feel like the way they can make Shotgun Heavy much more useful is to give Heavy his own lunchbox slot so you can have both a Shotgun and a Sandvich at the same time so if you’re eating and someone is coming round the corner, you can easily get out your shotgun and kill them before they can kill you
Honestly shotguns are eh for heavy so it's a great tradeoff with no need for a lunchbox slot
at the beginning when he says everyone compares him to murders maybe its because he looks a lot like hp lovecraft
I really wish they'd give the family buissness to Engi. I know it sounds weird but I just want every shot gun to be on engi but I think it could be fun too. Also i wish heavy did get more shotguns I know lunchboxes beat the shit out of shotguns but its fun
I don’t always agree with your tier list positions but I always like hearing what you think of each weapon.
Zesty, the reason the eviction notice got nerfed with the gru it's because that specific stat that got nerfed on the gru is linked to the eviction notice as well, or so i think, same way as the natasha spin up resistance while under 50% health is linked to the brass beast's. i dont know why or how but it is the way it is. more sourcespaghetti i guess, hopefully that changes with the heavy update if there is ever one.
I honestly forgot who said this but the GRU is almost the objectively the best melee because you use it to shorten the downtime of while you are running around to get into the fight. If the health pool is problematic when you get into the fight then just unequip it some seconds before an estimated brawl breaks out. Unequipping the gloves in that period makes you arrive 1 or 2 seconds later which rarely affects the outcome but keeps you alive, while not equipping the GRU at all delays you 5 or maybe many more seconds which may be just enough time for your team to fall. Of course getting ambushed or having a teleporter is a reason not to use it, but instead those scenarios are the NICHE, or in simpler terms there are more general scenarios in which you want to use the GRU. Would like to have a weapon that fills the niche for escaping heavy tho. And the eviction notice deserves better.
If the intro was on the tier list, it would be S tier
Must be noted that the +25% dmg against burning players from the Hou Long is applied to the base 90% damage the weapon has, not to the 100% damage, so it doesn't give you a raw 115% but around 112.5% which is not much different bus is worth noting . The brass beast is based on base damage that's why it's 120% damage
While i agree minigun offers superior damage. Tomislav will kill the minigun at medium range in a heavy vs heavy fight. I have never lost a fight against another heavy at mid range with the tomislav becuz the accuracy actually matters more over spitting out more bullets. Your bullets don't properly connect. You only lose vs other heavies if they are already spun up at close range.
As a heavy main i’m glad theres someone who is talking good about the huo long heater it deserves more it sucks that even some heavy mains shun this weapon saying that its bad
I hope the huo long heater and dalokas bar get good placements, I think both are better than people give them credit for
Maybe not the bar so much but it can be good for the overheal if you somehow manage to maintain your normal health but huo long I like I just wish the ammo use wasn't so hurtful and plus spies can jump over your ring and backstab you especially with the spicle
@@wealthybone2990 if you're humping the payload cart, there's no reason not to use the Huo-long heater. Yeah, spies can jump over the ring. But are you just staring ahead the whole time? If not, the Huo-long combined with basic awareness and actually turning around makes it much more difficult for spies.
@@ludwigiapilosa508 True you're right but I meant as if you have a bunch of enemies in front of you're not gonna really about your behind.
@@wealthybone2990 no, but it's still better than not having the ring. It helps if you can mentally keep track of the spies and get a sense of when you've been looking straight ahead too long.
The Dalokohs bar is only unpopular because the banana is borderline OP. The Dalokohs does not need a buff, but the Banana needs a nerf. I have been a proponent of that since it was released. 200 health in essentially the same time frame as the Dalokohs is outrageous. In my opinion, the Banana needs a 15 second recharge time. It would still heal more than the Sandvich in the same time frame, but it would also indirectly "buff" the Dalokohs bar.
On payload maps, generally I use Tomislav on the way to the first point as a lot of players are going to be on the outer limits of heavys effective range, which the accuracy of the tomislav does work well against, and I am able to get on and off the cart when needed due to the faster spin up time. When the cart is being pushed through chokes however, I much more prefer the stock minigun as it shreds through enemies a lot better, and the opposing team tends to be on the cart a lot more. For defending it's the same. Tomislav when shooting the cart through open areas, and stock minigun through chokes.
while I agree with nearly everything in this video, your balance philosophy regarding the GRU I think is flawed.
heavy's entire gimmick is that he's an amazing defender, but a slow attacker. he revolves completely around being at the right place at the right time. the GRUs effectiveness comes from the fact that he could get to where he needed to be much faster, not the fact that he runs fast in general. so the mini crits the heavy would take are pointless, since his health pool is already massive, and the mini crits only persisted for a few seconds after putting the weapon away which is not at all enough time to punish the heavy for essentially negating his only main weakness.
the health drain (while still a ridiculous amount) balances the item almost perfectly, since now the heavy will actually trade one upside, a very large health pool, with another, faster positioning.
the only thing I'd do to the GRU is bump up the minimum amount of health heavy can have from 100 to something like 175-200. he'd still be at a massive health disadvantage but it's much more forgiving, and the slow health regen will keep the weapon balanced if the enemy can capitalize on the lower health. plus, max overheal will still be less than the heavy's base max health. (also fix the overheal lmao)
thank you for reading my masters thesis on TF2 balancing.
Mans entire pfp and banner is r34, down bad man
Zesty: *says huo-long heater is good
Me a huo-long heater user: *visible happiness
You *do* know the Natascha’s slow mechanic can barely be negated if you’re being hit back-to-back…right?
Because it reapplies it with every bullet
lol you’re expecting zesty to have good weapon takes
@@seva7500 Revisiting this after unsubscribing, and yeah, it's shit
Personally, I think the shotgun's usefulness stems from it's burst damage and lack of speed penalty when using it. Against other players who try to corner peek you, you can switch to the shotgun in order to rush them down. It also makes a good weapon when you're just behind the front lines, either getting or escaping from the fight, where you can use your shotgun to quickly pick off flanking/overextending classes. Of course it's nowhere near as powerful as the sandvich, but in a situation where your medics are taking care of themselves or there are a lot of corners/flanking classes, you might consider pulling it out
when I look at you, I keep getting the sense of an 80s computer programmer mixed with a disco nerd.
So a beegee John Carmack?
Fists of Steel could make it so you can't be over healed while active, and if you currently had over heal when switching to them it could drain faster and not able to try replenishing it before it's fully drained.
3:15 i dont understand this take, people often trade health for mobility. Just look at soldiers or demos
also your statement about health being everything is very questionable. If health was everything in this game, then every engineer will run gun slinger and every soldier would run conch and every single demoman would run demoknight, but thats clearly not the case
Coach Soldier?
@B O ꓭ1. sandmans not used because the balls useless and 2. heavys balanced around being the strongest and slowest class so anything that negates his slowness needs to negate his strength too otherwise its unbalanced
@B O ꓭ It was scouts most used and OP weapon pre nerf and still had the health penalty which is proof thats not the problem. 15 health is irrelivent. Its just that slowing down enemys for a few seconds is a useless upside. You went very offtopic here. Warrior spirit and steak is a meme build so i have no clue why your bringing that up, thats like saying soldier is weak because market gardner + rocket jumper + gunboats is a super weak combo. We were talking about GRU were we not? And steak on its own is one of the best lunchbox items for heavy due to letting him rollout to the frontlines quicker in exchange for not having a lunchbox healing item while on the frontlines
First of all, great review!
I think that the health drain from the heavy's speed fists is an ok concept. It feels like it's meant to restrain how far they can go effectively. I'd just cap it at 200 (KGB) and 250 (Evict. Not.) respectively.
Zesty Bestie
Ayyy favorite ARG youtuber is here
The hu-long eater is so underrated, especially against scout. The best way they have to deal with a heavy is jumping around them at close range, so you mess up with their aim and land meatshot after meatshot, but against this minugun the enemy must stay at a distance where tracking is not as hard
tHeY cAn StUfF uBeRs
You let a heavy get close to you
Yea the punch sucks ass because you have to get a 90 degree hit on a enemy and have to deal with hit detection and you are the slowest class in the game
Since I don’t actually use most Heavy items despite playing a lot of Heavy, I’m just gonna leave my opinions on my own loadout. Stock minimum because it feels the best (I tried Tomislav and it didn’t feel right, the other guns have legit reasons for me to not use them). Then Second Banana in secondary: I don’t expect a medic up my butt, so I go with the loner’s Sandvich by default, plus its lower healing still covers most fight aftermaths. Melee is Fists of Steel: getting to mid faster is suicide now, so my alternative is reducing the damage I take before I can get in range.
This is certainly one of the tier lists of all time.
The reason you'd use a shotgun for heavy is because you have the spin up the minigun in order to fire it, which also makes you even slower than you already are. The shotgun can be used instantly in comparison, allowing you to not be completely caught off guard when moving from place to place. Still not better than the other lunchbox items but there is a reason to use them.
Geez this one IMMEDIATELY has a take that I disagree with lmao
The GRU downside makes perfect sense. Trading health for mobility is something that already exists ala explosive jumping. I would be OK with them tweaking the health drain or making your health regen faster when you put them away but yeah heavy's base speed really should come at a massive cost to buff. Its not the same as Pyro running a tiny bit faster with the Powerjack
Also the eviction notice weren't competitively viable because they did the exact same thing as the GRU but were worse. If the GRU were nerfed and the eviction notice were not than people would have just switched to maining the EN without batting an eye.
Heavy only requires half a brain at ALL because of his severe downsides. Making him as fast as a demo outside of combat makes him completely brainless.
The GRU as they were practically had zero downside. You don't use the GRU in combat so the minicrits on holding them would never ever come in to play unless you choke or maybe a spy starts revolvering you. It was a free speed buff to the class whose primary weakness is that he is slow.
Yeah, no, thanks, keep the GRU nerfed into the dumpster where they fucking belong. If you wanna buff heavy buff his strengths don't remove his weaknesses.
Your comparing of the GRU to the Escape Plan is mildly infuriating. The Soldier is already insanely mobile. By the time you rocket jump enough to be moving at sonic speeds with the EP you are already across the map anyway (and oh hey would you look at that it only works AT ALL when you are low health). It is not used even remotely the same way as the GRU was/is and even if it was it has more severe downsides
You can fuck over the FoS's holster speed penalty using the panic attack.
Pre-Nerf Eviction Notice wasn't even that good in Medieval Mode. It was crazy that it was nerfed.
Fuck, I've somehow missed the Discord link 5 times in a row
You literally have to have perfect timing. Like literally under 45 seconds timing. It’s insane
clicked on the notification when it was “16 seconds ago” and the link was already closed
@@occulticplate2401
People must really want into the discord, it's like that one South Park episode where Cartman buys an Amusement Park all for himself which creates massive "let me the fuck in" syndrome
As a sailor, let me say, the fact you don’t know the very obscure fact that the anchor chain is the thing that actually holds most the weight and stopping power rather then the anchor itself incredibly infuriates frustrates and fills me with, jokes, nah I’m messin, love these videos by the way
Wait so is it true or not?
@@diegov1743 no it’s true, the anchor acts as a stopper not for the ship, but rather the chain, that’s why most are shovel or spade shaped, to dig into the ground and stop the chain from slipping, after a certain point the weight of the chain is greater the force of wind/current/drift of the ship and it stops
Your assessment of the GRU is just maximum clownage. A heavy with a marked for death sign is dead. The new GRU are the BETTER escape plan. Your health slowly dtaining down to 100 doesn't matter if you are already taking heavy damage and will go down to 100 health in two seconds anyways. You know what does matter in that situation? Marked for death, which makes it so that those 100 hp are blown off by a singular rocket. Sure, they aren't quite as good for general mobility - if you get caught out after moving them, you're fucked. But they are now better for escaaping than the actual escape plan, and they are still good for general mobility if you have some capability of reading the game state so you don't get caught out right after using them.
My theory for why the warrior's spirit and the buffalo steak both have damage vulnerability is because valve probably thought that a heavy with no damage vulnerabilities brainlessly running at people doing 100+ damage would be too OP or something, so they intentionally fucked over both weapons so they would be awful to use together.
Yet they are part of the same weapon set.
GRU is actually really good right now. It just requires any degree of thinking which makes it unplayable for certain players (for some reason).
Like Zesty, who thinks that an item the negates 7 of 9 classes is balanced (see: his opinions on the old parachute)
@@vyor8837 base jumper still needs a buff its really bad rn
wait you gotta know when to use this weapon strategically so that youre at full health when you get to the fight? nah bro its bad
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 ya, but the old one negated every class but extremely good snipers and heavies using stock or the brass beast.
Soldiers, Demos, Scouts, Engies, Spy, and Medic just got deleted by it. There's just nothing they can really do bar, I don't know, using the wrangler? That's the sign of an overpowered weapon.
And he thinks it negating those classes is fine because "lol just use sniper", a class he believes should be nerfed to the point it would no longer be a viable counter to it.
Zesty is a god damned idiot.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 it does, ya. Maybe a single redeploy would work?
you are a great performer. You make talking for 1 hour about some items in a fps very enjoyable and entertaining
45:49 as someone who mains the Brass Beast, i can tell you, that gun is SCARY
I consistantly top score with it on defense and koth
It perfectly embodies my motto:
"I may be slow, but when i get there, ohohoh you are *fucked* "
Yes i may die a lot without a chance to retaliate, but it's a sacrifice i am willing to make
Yeah me too. I used to have one named ' if I get reved, you are dead.' Cos it definitely feels like that.
Balancemod's Natasha fix is godly good. And I play support heavy sometimes when I feel lazy.
Edit: if the holiday punch didn't random crit but did Instacrit from behind.... I think that would be INFINITELY better. As for working on ubered players, of it only crit on the back or with a Kritzkrieg, I think that would be hella cool.
Also I like to say I am a game designer, but I think your years of experience trumps my experience in design.
I do disagree with you on the mittens, as I think they should do away with the random crits, as then it makes heavy actually try to hit them in the back for ubers, rather than just running at them full on, as the mittens were designed to be stopping ubers in case other classes can't, I do think that you did make a great point in that it shouldn't effect ubers, but then ubers would be super difficult to counter besides using airblast or launching them with stickies.
I really dislike Zesty's opinion on the mittens.
Does he not realize that you can still be executed while wearing them? Your slow speed as Heavy means you need to ambush them just to get the Uber stop, and that's if your punch counts as a back attack.
It's good as it is right now without being busted, since all you need to counter the Uber stop from Heavy is situational awareness and just deleting the Heavy before he gets to you since he's not that fast.
Fun fact: The second banana has a 15 second cooldown, but like all other consumables the recharge starts immediately after you take that first bite from the item. The eating food animation takes about 5 seconds to finish meaning you get the banana back in just 10 seconds when you’re no longer idle which is really fast because most fights you come out of take around the same time if not longer which means whenever you need to eat the banana, it’s almost always available to eat.
I way disagree with your take on the gloves of running urgently. I use them the same way as the escape plan quite frequently. I prefer the gloves of running urgently over the escape plan because with heavy a quick escape just feels more reliable to pull off with it than it does with the escape plan when being directly focused fired. When Valve balanced it they changed how you're supposed to use the item and you are just trying to use it the way that it used to work and being punished for it instead of working around it.
When your HP is low the GRU doesn’t drain any health drain. I used to hate the rework but then I remembered that having extra speed is still really strong on Heavy, and a Medic with overheal can make the downsides nonexistent.
Or just use the FoS
I use the Fists of steel along with the Buffalo Steak Sandvich to meme around. Most people really forget about the damage vulnerability to melee whenever I use this weapon and just keep shooting me with whatever primary/secondary they have. So, I basically get the benefits of Buffalo Steak Sandvich and still get 40% damage resistance to ranged weapons. But whenever they remember how screwed I am towards melee, I can get one shot by a random ubersaw crit.
lemme get this straight, every time people talk about nerfing/buffing a weapon, it's always in the eyes of the competitive community? not in the eyes of the people who just wanna have fun?
Possiblity of taking more damage to deal more damage is the glass cannon type of deal, which I'd say is what Scout is; he has low health but a great damage output. Unlike with Scout, Heavy doesn't have the speed to be able to dodge or avoid damage. That's why I find some of the melee's where you sacrifice health/damage resistance for more damage, Heavy wouldn't be able to make it work or survive in the long run compared to someone like Scout.
4:51 That's the problem, while I believe Escape Plan is still op... Gru was more op, it gave FLAT speed boost meaning it was a better movement option for everything except escape or combat.
Again just don't use GRU for rollouts, most cart games have atleast one Engy (unfortunately), just use telies which is still faster than GRU. So again, if you'd think objectively here, you'd see it's actually more of a sidegrade ans not a nerf. GRU now isn't a king of free bs rollouts, but now it's a king of free bs escapes. Before it was just Powerjack on steroids, now it's escape plan om steroids. Why y'all complaining about GRU??? It's still best choice for Heavy
It really isn't, FoS are better
I think the best part about the GRU is when you pair it with the chocolate bar, it helps to partially negate the downside of the GRU. Suddenly if you lost 150 HP to health decay, you're at 200 and you'll probably regen back to 300 before you get into the fight if you time it right, leaving you with a max 350 hp with effectively 50 of it being healed in combat, which can be really REALLY good. You get to the front lines slightly slower than if not using the chocolate, but it's so worth it to move faster than normal with limited downsides