AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I think DR is the best watch for high level pub-stomping. My own spy is flaccid, but when I watch stabbystabby he seems pretty much invincible with the DR. Sure, he does great with the other watches as well, but I feel he was unstoppable with the DR. On other levels of play the Spy is still the worst class though, so a nerf wasn't really necessary. The DR was frustrating to play against though, so I understand it from Valve's perspective.

Once you're good enough to pub-stomp I think you've qualified for being good no matter what weapons you have so it seems like a moot point.

nah

the DR lets you survive the onslaught of spam thats guaranteed on every map, ever

with the regular cloaking watch, its both hilariously easy to reveal AND predict where the spy is going

if you accidentally graze anyone, which you will, because TF2 is a chokepoints game, all they half to do is fire around them immediately, which is even easier as an explosives class, pomson douche or pyro, and your 125 health will do the rest (this is espcially true if you play on any stock maps, as those are chock full of spammable chokes)

again

was 6 six seconds truly that difficult to wait out

Except you're a flippin' spy. Your job isn't to rush down the middle of maps and take bullets. You're supposed to consciously avoid the main fight and flank around.

With the invis. watch, you're just as easy to reveal as with the DR. The major difference is that unlike the DR, nobody needs to see you first. You do not need to give away that you are there. This makes ambushing people, you know, the spy's main aspect, significantly easier.

A lot of people use the DR as a way to be significantly more pro-active as spy, and to be a distraction, but if you're going to actually try and kill people as the class with the least health in the game it's much easier to actually be invisible when you want to be and not when the other team sees you.

The DR is also actually terrible at letting you survive anything thrown at you consciously. It's good for leaving situations where you might need to take a few random shots, but if anyone actually actively hunts you down because they know where you are, or run in to you just randomly, you're fucking dead. There's no getting around it, every team is going to be able to see you because the shots hitting you will reveal the cloak, and they will focus you down.

It's not like the feign isn't predictable now either. At this point, most people automatically assume that any spy is a DR spy, and after killing one, there is always a pyro searching the area. Alternatively, a spy without the DR isn't going to attract that kind of attention if they manage to get behind lines, because they are invisible and nobody can know.

So no, the DR doesn't protect you against anything at all, really. It's a different play style, yes, but it's not the best play style by far.

The Dead Ringer blocks 90% of all damage you receive. That's powerful enough that it would be viable if it left you visible.

'youve got to flank around' loses a lot of its meaning when every alternate route inevitably leads to the next choke where a demo is waiting and pop flyin' to spam grenades in the vague direction of the other team

or a soldier

or a pyro

or a pomson

or anything with any sort of weapon, really

DR lets you get past this; Invis watch lets you die

Or, if you manage to squeeze past everything (with the inevitable oh fuck moment because you dared to try and slip past someone and the turned at the last moment and ran face first into you) you have no survival tools beyond the invis watch, which the DR beats because of the damage reduction

ANY nerf to the spy is pretty unjustified at this point because no matter what happens there are so many specifically anti spy counters that you don't even have to try to find one anymore

To the contrary, the Dead Ringer nerf is pretty well justified and has been coming for a long time now. Granted there are situations where the other watches just don't cut it because of spam or whatnot, but pre-nerf the DR was just too easy. Even if you knew a Spy had DR-ed it is often very difficult as anything but Pyros, Pomson spammers, and maybe Scouts to effectively hamper his ability to escape. Pyros, specifically, were forced to burn through a large portion of their ammo airblasting the guy into a corner which rendered them much more vulnerable to other hostiles - especially if the Spy had a modicum of sense and tried to run towards his teammates.

It was even worse when paired up with the Spy-cicle since it pretty much reduced the Pyro to blind guessing where the Spy would run and spamming flames/airblasts around in hopes that he'd get a noise from a hit. The effort necessary to actually kill a Dr. Spycicle was pretty ridiculous.

I'm not sure if this particular fix is what was needed, but a nerf definitely was.

Every time a DR Spy complained how I was able to spam airblasts to pin him in a corner the response "Alright, use a non-invincibility watch and when you're caught you'll die on time" shut them up.

I don't think the 'Its too easy!' argument is valid when the pyro, heavy and engineer exist, especially in the context of the Spy, which has a higher skill ceiling than they do

But then there are so many counters to the spy that getting rid of his one genuinely viable watch isn't going to suddenly make people realize the value (and forget the incredible weakness) of the invis watch and its shittier version

People are just gonna stop playing Spy

Its already a frustrating enough class because of how easy he is to both counter and kill, even with the Dead Ringer

I'm just waiting for the day they fix the bug where the DR doesn't remove jarate.

Meaning we'd have fewer teams with 5 Spies simultaneously? That'd be pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

Or it might make them adjust their playstyle to the kind of sneaky Spy is theoretically supposed to be instead of a 6-second get out of jail free card. With this nerf there might actually be a decent argument to removing cloak drains from the Pomson.

the pomson shouldn't exist

like, period

but still, the way spy is 'meant' to be played is still countered by like, bodaciously everything

including bumping into them, which is also inevitable

should probably make 'pass through people' baseline for the invis watch if they're going to gut the DR this way, anyways

tbh itll just make it so ppl who know how to use it, use it more wisely. in my eyes its just makin people who try out spy go "hey maybe the other watches actually have some merit"

im more interested in the other weapon nerfs/buffs/changes tbh

The only way Spy works in it's original design is if the other team plays poorly. That's the frustrating thing about playing Spy. However I think it was an interesting design choice that should have let to people biding their time to get a valuable pick and serving mostly as a distraction (hard to shoot the guy in front of you when you have to constantly watch your back) instead of seeking out chain stabs or just running around blasting people with their gun. Of course that's entirely the design's fault, not the player's.

All for the DR nerf, hopefully I'll finally see a spy or two not using the daisies thing. And I'm pretty sure it remains a viable class, and if it doesn't, that's a problem to be fixed the next patch, and preferably not by forcing a singular gimmick watch on everyone.

I like the Battallion's Backup buff too and I hope the other weapon tweaks they do will be just as good.

I don't see where you all are finding this information at