It seems as if the latest TF2 blog entry hints at it...but one can only hope.

I would say that I play Soldier, Demo, and Engie primarily, so I have been disappointed with all the previous updates, now its my turn, I just hope I can actually use the new weapons.

(I don't use Huntsman or Sandman because I feel they are overpowered or have an unfair advantage and I will continue to not use a weapon I don't feel either fits the game, or is overpowered. Shit, I try not to even attack a stunned opponent because of this.)

Undoing everything they've done to hurt the soldier will be good enough. Teammates' and friendly buildings' hitboxes are so big, hitting the broadside of a barn (and thus not taking 95 self damage) with them somewhat in front of you is a challenge.

Oh, and increasing rocket damage, or at least removing falloff is a must. It's definitely broken now, because if a soldier and heavy stand motionless and shoot at each other with primary weapons from opposing 2fort battlements, the heavy should win with some breathing room.

Even though soldier is my favorite class next to heavy, I am severely pissed off that the soldier takes more damage than the enemy at close range. I've also noticed that not all rocket jumps do less damage. Some of the more lateral or horizontal movements do full damage which is incredibly annoying.




A heavy in the hands of Big Mac is effectual at all ranges...

Get ready for the demo's update...its gonna be... ANOTHER DEMO NERFING! screw stream.

The minimum heavy bullet is 5 damage, though ranged hits sometimes to 6-7, I'm not too sure about the long-range maximum. Assuming 1 bullet out of every 2 rounds fired (that's 1/8 bullets, and I think a fair estimation of the heavy's accuracy) hits, that's 8 seconds of firing for the heavy to kill the soldier, assuming minimum damage with each bullet.

The soldier needs to deal 300 damage. With the rocket falloff as it is now, that's either 6 or 7 rockets, depending on how lucky he is. Assuming the worst, it'll take the soldier 5.6 seconds to fire 7 rockets and another 2.4-2.7 to reload three more, making the two classes take the same amount of time.


It looks like it's about the same, but there's no reason in the world why it should be. So I put it to a test on a bot server at a distance roughly equal to the 2fort bridge, because I couldn't find anything longer.

Heavy: An average of 62.5 shots to kill the soldier.
Soldier: 7 rockets to kill a heavy (7 each time)

At this distance, the heavy wins handily, killing the soldier as the soldier fires rocket number 6.

Interestingly enough, a sniper can kill a heavy at this range (or any longer range) faster than a soldier can simply using uncharged body shots (half a second faster)!

I took this a bit further and aimed the rocket at the wall behind the heavy (about 1/2 of a TF2 body away). It took 10 rockets to kill the heavy with this splash damage, which is about 33 damage, I reckon. Yeah, only 33 damage from a bloody rocket. At point blank, a soldier will always suicide while killing a heavy with 3 rockets, while it takes a heavy only 4 ammo to kill a soldier and take 0 damage.

A soldier takes an average of 77.5 splash damage from firing directly at a wall (or enemy) and 85.5 damage from firing at the floor. A "proper" rocket jump results in only an average of 45 damage to the soldier (and full damage to the enemy).

Let's compare the demoman to the soldier and heavy now.

At the length of the 2fort bridge, it takes a demoman two grenades to kill a soldier and three to kill a heavy. It takes the same at medium and point blank ranges, too. Even though the grenade does more damage than the rocket, a demoman's splash damage off of an enemy is only ~72.5, which is less than the soldier.


But enough about how much the soldier has been screwed, let's focus on how Valve has screwed the soldier (wait what?) since TF2 was released.

1. Decreased clip size
2. Made rockets no longer fire through teammates
3. Gave every class the ability to move/remove sticky bombs (instead of just soldiers and demos)
4. Greatly increased falloff damage
5. Gave pyros the ability to redirect rockets (at a point in time when only demos' and soldiers' weapons could be deflected)
6. Significantly decreased splash damage

And things Valve has done which have put the soldier at a disadvantage (along with other classes):

1. Decreased sentry lock-on target time
2. Increased burn damage (soldiers are slow and have relatively little health compared to the slowest class, which isn't all THAT much slower)
3. Increased scout damage slightly
4. MASSIVELY increased pyro damage range and practically removed falloff damage from flamethrowers


So what is the soldier update going to do? Probably make airblasts cost 0 ammo, remove rocket jump damage decreases, add useless weapons, and add something else to another class which is target directly at the soldier.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but the Soldier (as is) is pretty useless. Not completly, but practically.


Pros: Rocket Jumping to Height (for cp captures/defenses)
Fragging

Cons: Pretty ineffective against Sentry guns with a half decent Engie
SLOW
Reload time is astonishing long
Ready-to-go ammo is small (considering to use one of the pros you do have to use one of your rockets)

When you really think about it, the cons heavily outweigh the pros, but its probably my favorite class to play...go figure.

Silverwasp, there is a reason that no medic will, or should uber a soldier. The reload time pretty much kills any sort of argument you just made. The fact that the class with the second highest hit points has to be used as a "support" and cannot operate on its own is just stupid. The only way you can win battles is to get a considerable standoff distance to most classes, or just outsmart an engineer and try to attack him or his dispenser from far away instead of going straight for the sentry gun. They just need to do some serious revamping and think about what they've done to the soldier.