History GameBreaker / TeamFortress2

* The [[https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Loch-n-Load Loch-n-Load]] became a favorite of Demomen and hated by every other class. It was intended to be the Demoman equivalent to the Soldier's Direct Hit, dealing 25 percent more damage upon hit but only having two shots and no splash damage on miss. The difference was that the Loch-n-Load traveled much faster than the Direct Hit, and the Demoman's grenade properties made it so it would deal monstrous damage at close range, as much as 150 damage per hit, letting the Loch-n-Load [[OneHitKO one-shot]] Medics, Scouts, Spies, Engies, and Snipers, more than half of the available classes. It also would deal wide splash damage on hit, meaning a single direct shot (especially if it [[CriticalHit crit]]) would blow up tons of enemies if they were all close together. All in all, a very frustrating weapon to fight against unless you were incredible at dodging.

Given how much benefit a skilled medic is to his team, Valve have been overall rather cautious with granting new weapons to the Medic. However a few of his weapons are at least better than their peers that they deserve mention here.

** The Medic has 4 primary weapon choices, 3 of which are syringe guns with minor variation in stats - while they deal high damage, the syringes they fire move so slowly and have such a drastic projectile drop, it's hard to consistently hit enemies with them unless they're incredibly close. They're also the only projectile weapon with a similar bullet spread to actual hitscan weapons outside of the Beggar's Bazooka, meaning even if youve practiced projectile control, you're still at mercy of the spread RNG. These issues relegate the syringe gun to a genuine last resort weapon, even more so than stock melee weapons, they're so unreliable.

With how useful some class and powerup combos are, it is no surprise that the gamemode was in beta for ''ten months''.

* The "Class Wars" GameMod stacks each team with a single class, chosen at random, at the start of the round. This is already a system that tends to create very lopsided matchups, with generalized offensive classes like Soldier and Heavy utterly rolling over specialized and supportive classes like Sniper and Spy. Even then, though, there's a single class that stands above all: Engineer. A team fully stacked with Engineers means that the Engineers now have functionally limitless resources, and can effortlessly lock down a map with Sentries built ''en masse'' while having Dispensers and Teleporters around every corner. What is more, a lot of the traditional counters to an entrenched Engineer are nullified by the mode's mechanics: the enemy team rolling Soldier or Demoman to try to overwhelm the Engineers just results in the Engineers equipping the Short Circuit and deleting those rockets and bombs instantly, Spies can handle a lone Engineer just fine but stand no chance against a nest (especially when the Engineers are guaranteed to be spychecking constantly), and stock Ubercharge, the strongest counter to Sentry nests, does not exist 8/9 times and has its effectiveness neutered when it does exist thanks to the only Uber targets being other Medics. The only weakness that Engineers have is that they need at least a little time to set up, which means that if they're playing offense, a sufficiently overwhelming defensive class like Heavy or Demoman can keep them locked up in spawn for the entire game. If a team rolls Engineer on defense... well, let's just say nothing short of a massive skill difference with a side of divine intervention is going to lead to the Engineers losing.

** Combining the Conch with the Black Box and the Escape Plan creates what people like to [[TierInducedScrappy not so affectionately]] call 'the Bad Box' build. The Black Box used to [[LifeDrain heal a flat 15 health]] per hit, in exchange for lowering the number of rockets a Soldier can fire down to three and max ammo down to twenty. This is not as big of a drawback as it seems, as the Soldier reloads rockets at about the same speed he can swing his melee and ammo drops when enemies are killed, which effectively makes the 'drawbacks' a non-issue. Combined with the Conch's passive regen, a good Soldier can effectively out-tank and out-DPS a ''Heavy'' even at close range, and even a bad one can still punch large holes in the enemy team before they finally go down. Should the Soldier ever find himself in a situation like that, all he needs to do is use the Conch, pull out the Escape Plan, and nope out at speeds ''faster than the Scout''. Because of how hard these Soldiers are to kill, how brain-dead the playstyle is, and just how ''effective'' it is even in the hands of a novice, it's become a widely hated loadout that has all the makings of a CrutchCharacter, minus the part where it falls apart at higher levels of play. An update altered the Black Box to have its healing scale with the damage dealt, meaning you now have to be consistent with landing hits to be able to replicate its healing at its strongest.

* The [[https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Pomson_6000 Pomson 6000]] got a lot of flak for its low risk-and-reward capability to easily counter two of the Engineer's counters. Its normal attributes weren't anything to write home about, and its ability to [[OneHitPolykill penetrate targets]] was only really useful when holding down a corridor due to its mediocre damage at long range. The main problem came from its ability to strip 10% [=ÜberCharge=] from a Medic for each shot landed; just hitting a Medic twice (which is really easy to do given the projectile's large hitbox detection) was enough to set their charge time back by 16 seconds, long enough to create a window with which to kill the Medic while he's helpless; this becomes a major problem when a Medic has a full [=ÜberCharge=] meter, charges forward, only to have it taken away the second before he's able to pop it, completely shutting down a push attempt. Teammates trying to body-block these shots, the natural tendency when trying to protect a Medic, were also wasting their time, given the Pomson's ability to penetrate targets. The Mann vs. Machine update removed its penetration ability, greatly reducing its spammability. Gun Mettle further neutered it by applying falloff on the Uber and Cloak drain, and once Meet Your Match fixed invisible Grordbort weapon projectiles, the Pomson was declared less worthwhile than the stock shotgun (in fighting Medics, at least).

* The Engineer Update set a new standard for turtling. One of the Engineer's new weapons was the [[https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Wrangler Wrangler]], which allows an Engineer to take personal control of where his Sentry Gun shoots. Not bad by itself, but this also gives the Sentry infinite range (along with the fact that it has no damage falloff, meaning it does full damage at any range), and among the Wrangler's features is that it doubles the Sentry's fire rate (which is basically double damage), and projects a shield that causes it to take only 33% damage, tripling its HP. Furthermore, there's no downside apart from disabling the Sentry for three seconds when the Wrangler is un-equipped or when the Engineer is killed. Instantly banned in the competitive scene. Over the years, it was nerfed to reduce the repair-rate of the Sentry by 66%, same as its shield strength, and for the wrangled Sentry to be less accurate and have damage falloff. Now a few competitive rulesets allow it.

* The Halloween Spells ran into balance issues when it became possible to add them to non-Helltower maps. Teleport was the worst: the nature of Helltower's design made it impossible to teleport outside of the map [[note]][[https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?p=1847458 although this was later disproven]][[/note]], but on just about any other map, it was child's play to teleport out of bounds. A canny Engineer could easily build a Sentry nest under the ground, making it impervious to attack by anything except a Spy that managed to reach your teleporter, but entirely capable of insta-gibbing you the second you left spawn. Valve eventually removed Teleport from the spell list for non-Helltower maps.
** Carnival of Carnage, another spell-enabled map, has a similar problem. Acquiring the rare Minify spell or being under the effect of Merasmus' shrinking curse and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff8QcdGPLuE being in the right place]] when it wears off allowed you to get inside the rock wall under the giant Merasmus head. You could then build a Sentry nest inside the stone, sit back on your Rancho Relaxo, and watch anyone who goes near the Strongmann machine die and not be able to do a thing about it. This exploit lasted for nearly a week before it was fixed.

** There have been many, many bugs allowing players to enter enemy spawns before the round ended in a colorful array of methods, almost always leading to [[TotalPartyKill Total Party Kills]] and [[RageQuit Rage Quits]]. Because of this, [[https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?p=1847458 at least one server mod exists]] which [[NoFairCheating automatically slays anyone who gets into the enemy spawn prior to Humiliation]].

As the Scout is one of the primary damage-dealing classes in the game and is the highest TierInducedScrappy by a huge margin in 6v6 competitive, the class has had a rollercoaster of changes over the years and has more banned weapons/secondaries than any other class.

And so on and so forth. Every time an update ships, you can be sure that somebody will be complaining that the {{Metagame}} has been [[DarthWiki/RuinedForever completely ruined.]]

''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' has had at some point or another [[UpToEleven enough items]] believed to be a GameBreaker that it needed its own page. Usually each item is nerfed when there is enough of an outcry over the weapons in the general community.

*** Even after that, it was '''''[[UpToEleven still]]''''' not enough of a nerf, as Spies would frequently and repeatedly feign death, so the Jungle Inferno update introduced a change which prevents them from regenerating the watch by collecting ammo pickups.

** The Gas Passer, mostly thanks to its "Explode on Ignite" upgrade. Throw it into a crowd of weak robots and they pretty much instantly die if a bullet grazes them, due to the high density of chain-reaction explosions. And, the minute-long recharge of the Gas Passer is negated — since it charges faster if you deal more damage, dealing a lot of damage through the explosion charges it instantly. This upgrade is the one thing that nudged Pyro out of the tank-busting niche, giving them burst damage that lets them clear the front lines or pick enemy Medics, if a bit too effectively. Eventually, the Gas Passer was reworked such that its explosions would not contribute to its lengthy recharge timer, forcing the Pyro to actually engage the robots in combat if they wanted to speed up the Gas Passer's recharge. In exchange, the explosion itself received a damage buff, letting the Pyro now kill medium-strength bots with it.

* [[https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Baby_Face%27s_Blaster The Baby Face's Blaster]] was initially viewed as a high-risk, high-reward weapon, as it let the Scout build up boost through damage that would let him run 175% faster than usual, but ''one jump'' would drain all his boost and slow him to roughly as fast as a Demoman. But then a following patch softened the penalty, so that one double jump would only reduce 25% of the Scout's boost and at zero boost he'd move only 10% slower. This made the Blaster overpowered, as a zero boost Scout was still faster than every other class and it'd only take 99 damage to gain full boost; in other words, a single meatshot. The double jump penalty also wasn't so bad as a Scout skilled in aerial combat could keep dealing damage while jumping and so negate the boost loss. This, combined with reports that a full boost meter allowed a Scout to ''outrun his own hitbox'', meant that the Blaster's only real downside compared to the Scattergun was the slightly smaller clip size. Eventually, the Gun Mettle update patched the Blaster to lose boost based on damage taken by the Scout, making him easier to slow and demanding he play more cautiously.

* The [[https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Sticky_Jumper Sticky Jumper]], a JokeWeapon intended for training how to [[RocketJump sticky-bomb-jump]] quickly proved to be a LethalJokeWeapon in the right hands. While it deals no damage, and initially had a damage taken and max health penalty, a Demoman can use it to fly through the map so quickly that it is nearly impossible to hit them. Additionally, it replaces the secondary weapon of the Demoman, compared to the Soldier's Rocket Jumper which replaces his primary weapon. As such, a Sticky Jumper Demo still has a Grenade Launcher, and could quickly make a mockery of game modes like Capture The Flag. A glitch was also present that made the player immune to self-damage from other weapons, removing the primary drawback of the Ullapool Caber combined with the ease of flying back to spawn to replace each caber. Valve eventually blocked players from carrying the flag while having the Sticky Jumper equipped, reactivated self-damage from other weapons, then reduced the amount of active stickies usable at one time from eight to two, reducing Demos' flight distance while enforcing more realistic sticky-jump practice, as a Demoman will not be able to reasonably survive the blast if trying to jump with 3 or more stickies.

** The Jungle Inferno update nerfs the Reserve Shooter's powerful combo potential with airblasts as it will no longer mini-crit enemies launched by airblasts, only allowing mini-crits against demos and soldiers that blast jump, players launched by a reflected projectile, or Pyroes with the Thermal Thruster. This makes it impossible for the Pyro to actively use the effects without relying on what the other team does.

** In the Tough Break update, the Axtinguisher was changed back to dealing crits vs burning targets regardless of angle of attack. However, it now has a slower switch-to speed penalty, so players now have some time to react to an incoming Axtinguisher crit, and the weapon took an overall damage penalty[[note]]crits now do 131 damage instead of 195[[/note]] — the crit would definitely hurt, but couldn't one-shot most classes by itself. Along with the ability for players to now be able to air-strafe to counteract the pushing power of the airblast, and an alteration to the weapon switch speeds of the Degreaser, the entire Puff-and-Sting combo was essentially killed. Most Pyros just use the Powerjack now.
** It was reworked once again in Blue Moon, changing its crits to minicrits again, but removing the draw speed penalty (though it still takes longer to holster), adding a speed boost on kills, and giving the quirk of extinguishing the target at the price of them taking a massive chunk of damage depending on how long the afterburn would have lasted. This seems to have finally gotten the community on its side, though [[InMemoriam the dedication to Sketchek]] didn't hurt (a dedication that was later removed when Sketchek revealed he had faked his death to see how people would react).

*** However, it is the only Medic primary that can heal teammates - if you hit a teammate with a bolt, it'll heal based on reverse distance scaling as well. It isn't over time healing, either - hitting a teammate at any range will heal instantly. Then, the healing was updated in the Tough Break update to also provide ybercharge, based on reverse-distance scaling. All of these add together to make a weapon that is objectively better and easier to use than its contemporaries in every way. It could even be considered warping for Medic's power in the grand scheme of Class balance - while already an essential Class thanks to his healing potency and the necessity of Ubercharges, a good Medic can now heal a teammate at any distance, almost immediately, and still reliably protect themselves in most situations.

** In the first nerf attempt, Valve nerfed the Loch-n-Load to not exceed more than 124 damage per hit, giving weaker classes a LastChanceHitpoint to fight back... except they also gave it an extra shot per clip, making it just as easy for players to keep spamming the weapon and so blow up any survivors. Gamer {{WebVideo/Muselk}} then showed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTKLaxFVeTY it was extremely easy to chain the Loch-n-Load with the Eyelander]], turning the supposed weakness into a strength so the Demoman could keep gaining health. Finally, in another patch Valve nerfed the weapon to only deal extra damage to Engineer buildings, making the speedy grenades the only reason a player would choose it in combat over the Grenade Launcher.