Lets Talk About - Short Circuit (New Series!)

[Khookillerklan]

Hello and welcome to my new op weapon fixes where I choose weapons in tf2 that are too OP or OP in the hands or professional players in the tf2 community. A thing I would use as an example is the B.A.S.E Jumper before the nerf, if you remember when you could re-deploy the B.A.S.E Jumper it was a little OP in the hands of professional players making them impossible to hit with non-bullet weapons. My aim is to try to balance weapons to be useable in competitive tf2. Also this is all my own opinion, feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section and feel free to give more suggestions on balance changes.

 

Ah yes, the Short Circuit also a famous weapon for being incredibly annoying to spies and non-bullet based weapon. Oh how I love my Kritzkrieg Uber gone, wasted and endlessly annoyed as why valve made such an item a staple in offensive engie, and as Uncle Dane says, "The payload cart's infinite metal supply nullifies the entire balancing set of making the energy ball expensive." So one of the major balancing factor is now gone, meaning an engineer can stop a combo (demo and med pair or solider and med pair) unless they use their melee which because of the engineer having a shotgun putting him at an advantage. Not only that but the brightness of the energy ball can block vision so if the enemy is in a choke-point they can get spammed and they can't do anything except blindly shoot at wherever they think the enemy team is and the only weapon that somewhat requires aim are explosives with large radiuses but those are deleted too. Now the part on how to balance it:

 

Old stats:

Alt-Fire: Launches a projectile-consuming energy ball. Costs 65 metal.
No reload necessary
No random critical hits
Per Shot: -5 ammo
Uses metal for ammo

New stats:

Alt-Fire: Launches a projectile-consuming energy ball. Costs 100 metal. (or) Alt-Fire: Launches a projectile-consuming energy ball. Can only fire Once after a recharge.

No reload necessary

No random critical hits
Per Shot: -5 ammo
Uses metal for ammo

 

Changes and reasons:

I made the ball cost 100 metal instead of 65 metal so payload carts can 100% nullify the down side of the energy ball, another possible change if still not balanced is to change the alt fire to be like jarate or madmilk where they have a recharge time making them less OP and usable in competitive tf2.

 

and another change is not making the short circuit a flash bang and dim down the opacity making it more transparent and see trough.

 

[Chomps]

Yo sup!

 

The problem here is, I do not think there is a way to ever, ever make the short circuit competitively viable. It's main design of 'energy ball deleting projectiles' is a great, fun idea, not a very balanced one. The entire secondary slot for engineer is just dominated by the WRANGLER's existence. I mean, I would rather have the sentry gun's health TRIPLED by just pulling put a weapon instead of having to waste 65 metal on what could be used to repair the sentry when I tanked with the wrangler.
 

Again, I'd like to point out another flaw in this post: The short circuit.... really isn't all that 'overpowered' in competitive, and I'd argue that in casual the current stats are quite balanced as well. In 6v6 format, engineer just isn't good, unless you're defending last. That means this post can only be talking about Highlander format, which in most games, engineers use the wrangler.

 

Also, payload carts are only a problem on ONE side, on ONE gamemode.

 

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Ah yes, the Short Circuit also a famous weapon for being incredibly annoying to spies and non-bullet based weapon. Oh how I love my Kritzkrieg Uber gone, wasted and endlessly annoyed as why valve made such an item a staple in offensive engie,

The Kritzkrieg Uber lasts for 8 second, long enough for any demoman or soldier to destroy everyone on the team. The engineer only have 3 shots (at max) to counter their 4 rockets / 4 pipes + 8 stickies, and if the medic was smart enough, they would either just switch Kritz target to a heavy or just use uber all together.

 

Offensive engineers (not the Twitter offensive) tend to use the short circuit, sure, but there are also a handful who uses wranglers instead, against experienced players, short circuit isn't going to deny any uber push.

 

Quote

Alt-Fire: Launches a projectile-consuming energy ball. Costs 100 metal. (or) Alt-Fire: Launches a projectile-consuming energy ball. Can only fire Once after a recharge.

This is more or less of a direct nerf, which I don't think it needs, at all, this would only drive engineers away further from the short circuit.

The second part is the same thing, just another nerf 😕

 

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I made the ball cost 100 metal instead of 65 metal so payload carts can 100% nullify the down side of the energy ball,

This, again, doesn't solve the payload cart problem, instead it just nerfs it, rendering it more un-viable

 

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another possible change if still not balanced is to change the alt fire to be like jarate or madmilk where they have a recharge time making them less OP and usable in competitive tf2.

The main problem here once again, is that the short circuit isn't overpowered in competitive tf2 in the first place. The jarate milk solution could work but just removes the entire balance premise of metal management for the engineers.

 

Once again, this is an interesting concept on trying to balance weapons, but for I don't think Short Circuit is a good candidate for trying to rebalance for the competitive scene.

Have a nice day

[BlλckMesa]

i like the idea of adding a charge meter for the energy ball, or atleast make it more expensive to fire, right now it's stupidly unbalanced and you can just spam the thing while on the cart, and the hitbox is so huge you only need to aim in the general direction and that's it, no projectiles are coming from that way, and it also deletes sticky traps through walls, so yeah not a fan of that weapon tbh, i honestly hope it gets nerfed to the ground