Uncle Dane displays the best use cases for each of Engineer's weapons... including the bad one.
"You are going to need much bigger guns!"
—The Heavy on underpowered weaponry
Team Fortress 2 is considered a game where you can mix and match all kinds of weapons and still end up at the top of the scoreboard. That said, there are a number of weapons that are so useless that no one would ever want to try doing so in the first place.
Note, this page is mostly reserved for the lower tier weapons, since a lot of other weapons have their reputation due to being Game-Breakers, which has its own page.
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Scout
Primary
- The Baby Face's Blaster used to turn the Scout into a one-man blitzkrieg, as despite its smaller clip and slower initial speed, once he got up his Boost from dealing damage, he could evade rockets and grenades with ease and get around the map in no time (leading to a very persistent, but verifiably false urban myth that there was a bug that he could outrun his own hitbox — he couldn't, but that just goes to show how fast and slippery everyone felt he was). The weapon was then nerfed to be put under more control by making the Scout lose his boost and get slowed down when he receives damage or double jumps. A decent balancing method in theory, but even the slightest damage will remove nearly all your boost, and no player is going to be able to avoid getting hit occasionally, not to mention the double jump is one of Scout's most useful utilities, so the weapon went from being the meta to being almost totally unused.
- However, this weapon sees more utility in Vs. Saxton Hale Mode, where Hale's limited attack range and lack of teammates provide the Scout a significantly larger room for error when avoiding damage, giving him an edge against Hale's incredible mobility. That, and most of Hale's attacks can end up killing the Scout in one hit anyway.
- The Back Scatter is a gun that allows the Scout to deal mini-crits by shooting people in the back, with the drawbacks including a smaller clip and greater bullet spread. The problem? You still need the same number of shots to kill most classes even with the mini-crits, at the expense of versatility and clip size. You can one-shot all 125 HP classes, but this ability is pointless at best (Snipers and Spies should be easy to hit with a second shot at the range you can kill them in one shout) and wasted at worst (other Scouts are too slippery to consistently hit them in the back, and Engineers are usually guarded by their sentry, a scout's strongest counter). In short, it's worse in most situations, and doesn't have much benefit even in its niche.
- The Shortstop isn't terribly popular in its current state. Regarding the stats it had from the start, it reloads its entire clip at once, it has a faster rate of fire, and its bullet spread is tighter than other options, allowing the Scout to engage in combat from a safer distance. However, it conversely has a lower damage output, not helped by a slower reload time. At most, it can deal 48 per shot without crits with its 4 shots per clip, which is quite a step down from the Scattergun's potential 102 damage and ability to reload one shell at a time. Thus, many players avoid the Shortstop and gravitate toward the Scout's other options, most of which provide more immediate results.
- Updates have applied additional features to the Shortstop, to make it easier to overlook its weaknesses. First, it received a healing bonus (the Scout gains more health from health packs and the like) and a push-force penalty (The Scout receives stronger knock-back). One helped with the Scout's survivability, and the other could be used to the Scout's advantage to escape a bad situation. The reload speed was also buffed sometime after. However, this was apparently a bug, as the speed change was later reverted.
- Things only got worse for the weapon. After Meet Your Match, the healing bonus was removed in exchange for a shoving move. On the shove's own merits, it is extremely weak in both damage and knockback, giving it little utility and practical use. But what makes it especially bad is how antithetical it is to the Shortstop's long-distance playstyle. If a Scout is using the Shortstop as it was originally intended, there is absolutely no reason to use the shoving move; nothing else about the weapon encourages its use. It does make it more usable for MvM, since the Shortstop has above-average DPS with enough upgrades and the shove, while situational, can be used to push bomb-wielding robots into pits.
- On servers with random bullet spread enabled, the Shortstop becomes even less reliable, due to it firing less pellets per shot compared to other shotguns/scatterguns in the game.
Secondary
- The Winger, an unlockable pistol for the Scout, used to be considered a downgrade from the stock pistol. It deals 15% more damage at the expense of a smaller magazine. Too small, in fact, because the reload time results in less damage per second after the initial 5 shots, especially since both pistols have such a fast firing rate. Eventually, it would be redeemed by giving an increase to the user's maximum jump height when active.
Melee
- The Sandman has a history of updates sending it back and forth between one of the most overpowered and frustrating weapons to fight against, as evidenced in the game breakers section, and completely useless. Its current iteration is the latter. Instead of a full stun that would prevent the enemy from attacking, it now only slows them down momentarily which is nearly pointless and not worth losing 10% of your maximum health. It also doesn’t help that the slowdown is bugged, as the slowdown can be completely bypassed by just rapidly tapping the “A” and “D” keys while moving forward, making the upside completely pointless. Not helping matters is the fact that, even though successfully hitting an enemy player will damage them, said damage is absolutely pitiful: 15HP on a normal hit, 40 on a crit. The Scout himself is the only class that could somewhat suffer from such damage due to his low health pool in direct combat, but being the most mobile class in the game, they're already hard enough to his with hitscan weapons to bother with a (comparatively) slow-moving projectile that can easily be dodged. Trying to use the ball on Snipers would be foolish unless you can blindside them (at which point it would be much more useful to simply get closer and blast them with your scattergun) and using it on Spies would be likewise useless since they'll most likely cloak and run off as soon as they get hit. In essence, the weapon is now a strictly worse version of the Wrap Assassin.
- The Rift promotional weapon, the Sun-on-a-Stick, looks awesome and crits people that are on fire... but it's a melee weapon for the Scout, who has no way to set people on fire and generally has better things to do than stealing kills from Pyros. Its damage reduction even applies while the person is on fire to boot, so the crit only deals a meager 79 damage as opposed to the 105 damage of a normal bat crit, and barely more than a normal melee hit. note It was later buffed to give fire resistance while deployed, but the weapon's mediocre damage, Scout's fraility, and using your Scattergun generally just being better cause the fire resistance to only be useful for negating afterburn.
- The Fan-O-War is a melee weapon that deals heavily reduced damage, but marks enemies for death on hit, making them take mini-crits from all sources. Sounds fine on paper as a damage multiplier for you and your team, but in practice, in the time it takes to get in melee range, tag someone, and then switch to your Scattergun to shoot them dead, you probably could've just killed them the old fashioned way with said Scattergun about twice over (or even beaten them to death with any other melee weapon). The only places where the Fan-O-War sees serious use are Mann Vs. Machine and Vs. Saxton Hale, where the marked for death debuff is invaluable for fighting enemies with thousands of health.
Soldier
Primary
- The Liberty Launcher isn't a bad weapon in and of itself, but it doesn't have anything special going for it that the others don't. The Stock and Original are simply better all-around weapons, the Direct Hit is good for sentry busting and taking out enemies from afar, the Cow Mangler is stock but with a Charged Attack and infinite ammo at the cost of doing pitiful damage against buildings, and the Beggar's Bazooka and Air Strike can do a Macross Missile Massacre all over the battlefield. Slightly faster rockets and an extra rocket in the clip isn't a particularly good trade off for lower damage (at close range, the shotgun does more damage), and it's also just rather boring compared to the more game changing options.
Secondary
- The Mantreads, a pair of boots that protects the Soldier from knockback and allows him to perform a Goomba Stomp when falling from huge heights on top of enemies. Nothing wrong so far (it's hard to pull off, but it works)... but it occupies one weapon slot, a weapon slot normally reserved for your trusty shotgun (extremely valuable for when your rocket launcher needs to reload or you're facing an airblasting pyro), and the upside just isn't as good as the Gunboats' (which drastically reduces the splash damage from rocket launchers, allowing you to rocket jump with little health cost), so the Mantreads are rarely used except by Trolldiers (who, by virtue of being Trolldiers, aren't playing the game seriously in the first place). It did receive a noticeable buff, which also improved air maneuverability—combined with the knockback resistance, it becomes a surprisingly decent option for Soldiers who are determined to reach their targets.
- The Righteous Bison is considered by far the Soldier's worst secondary weapon due to having nothing that justifies its use. A secondary-slot Ray Gun that effectively works as a miniature version of the Cow Mangler, it fires slow energy projectiles that lack the easy finishing power of a trusty shotgun, and its damage — featuring a piercing effect that can theoretically damage enemies repeatedly as shots pass through them — is still mediocre and by its design highly inconsistent. Bizarrely, the Meet Your Match update nerfed it even further by slowing down its projectile speed and making its projectile only hit a single target once, which Valve weirdly described as it fixing a "bug" that the weapon had, rather than treating it as the sole selling point of the weapon. This balance decision was so unpopular that the gun was reverted back to its previous version during the Jungle Inferno update, but unfortunately, the reversion was flawed, leaving the Bison's damage noticeably worse off than its already unimpressive height. It's still virtually useless, neither having the convenience of a shotgun nor the harassment power and actual damage of a rocket launcher.
- The Battalion's Backup was this before its buff. In order to charge it, you needed to take 350 points of damage. The thing is, the Soldier only has 200 health. So you have to almost die and be healed back up by a Medic or medkits twice. And self-damage, which the Soldier is very good at finding a practical use for, didn't count; you specifically had to take damage from enemies to fill it. Just to nullify enemy critical hits and reduce incoming damage by 30%. That's very useful, to be sure, but it's an enormous pain to use, especially since you lose all your currently built-up charge if you die (especially frustrating if it's an instant death you don't see coming, like a Spy's backstab or Sniper's headshot). The weapon was later changed so it charges with damage dealt like the Buff Banner, and it gives a passive +20 max health boost to give it an edge to differentiate from the other banners.
Melee
- The Equalizer once increased your damage and movement speed the lower your health got, but this was considered too strong, so it was split into two weapons: the Equalizer kept the damage bonus, while the speed boost was given to a new weapon, the Escape Plan. The result is that the Equalizer is now a terrible option, as the Soldier very rarely wants to hit people with his melee weapon on account of having the second slowest speed in the game, with Soldier players mostly using their melee for utility purposes. Making things worse, being low on health is the time when you'll be least inclined to attack in melee range. Meanwhile, the Escape Plan's speed boost makes it one of the most popular melees for soldier, allowing him to escape from what would be certain doom even after enduring an additional nerf. Even in MvM, while the Equalizer is in theory a good emergency weapon against Tanks as a last resort, usually you'll be spamming rockets against them due to ammo concerns being unnoticeable.
Pyro
Primary
- The Phlogistinator. The basic gist of the weapon is that after the player does enough damage, they fill up the 'Mmmph' meter, which then can be activated to receive guaranteed critical hits for 10 seconds in exchange for losing the airblast function of the other flamethrowers and no random crits. Experienced players hate it for simply driving home all of Pyro's problems as a class (encouraging the W+M1 playstyle, useless in high-level play but overpowered in pubs) without the utility of airblasting. Pub players hate it because it's a major pain to deal with in public servers, as the pyro will be able to nearly constantly fill the meter by simply spamming the scorch shot. Even people who like it often do so specifically for its ability to anger other players. The reasons vary, but everybody agrees that it is a very unbalanced weapon. That said, using it in Mann Vs. Machine is considered completely acceptable, partially because the high consistent damage is invaluable against the hordes of bots and tanks, and partially because bot enemies don't complain about overpowered weapons; in fact, the charge rate had to be quickly and severely nerfed in Mann vs. Machine shortly after the game mode's release because it was just that good against the robots.
- And then the Tough Break update happened, and not only has the lowered damage been removed but the Pyro now gains invincibility and full health during the taunt when the player has a full MMMPH meter. It quickly became the definitive Tier-Induced Scrappy Weapon among players, with many players complaining about how Valve buffed an already unbalanced weapon. Cue a patch in late January 2016 which re-nerfed the Phlog, making the MMMPH meter require more effort to fill and removed the health refill entirely. While many agree with the extended MMMPH meter now making it harder to get the taunt bonus in quick succession, the removal of the health refill on taunt made many deride the Phlog as a useless weapon.
- While the Backburner is good nowadays, its users were once the target of mockery. Before the Phlog, it was derided as the archetypal "W+M1 noob weapon" as it did guaranteed crits from behind in exchange for not having an airblast (later buffed to a higher airblast ammo cost), and it was often considered a direct step down from the Degreaser. However, after the Degreaser was finally nerfed, it's become more well-regarded and used nowadays, as it rewards ambushing enemies while also giving the flexibility of airblasting, and it doesn't have the same negative W+M1 reputation that the Phlog does as positioning is important to take advantage of its upside.
Secondary
- The Manmelter builds off of the Flare Gun's stats, shooting a projectile that ignites enemies on hit, with the ability to extinguish burning allies for crits. However, compared to how the other flare guns work — they offer guaranteed (mini-)crits on burning enemies — the Manmelter's dynamic is often considered a direct downgrade. Rather than putting the power in your hands as Pyro by allowing the weapon to combo with your flamethrower, it's heavily predicated on the enemy Pyro being able to ignite your allies first for you to get crits from. The result is a bizarre and counterintuitive dynamic of wanting your team to catch fire to justify using the weapon at all. Even if you can get past that overspecialization, the faster projectiles unnecessarily throw off the aim of anyone used to the other flare guns. Compounding the Manmelter's uselessness is that, unless a Pyro is running the Phlog, airblasts are more valuable and viable for extinguishing teammates, especially thanks to the health bonus that comes from doing so with them.
- The Gas Passer from Jungle Inferno. It's a can of gasoline that the Pyro can throw to create a lingering cloud of gas—enemies who pass through it are coated and will be ignited if they get hit by any attack. It's just generally not useful—it takes too long to charge (60 seconds or 700 damage, and can't be refilled by spawning or resupply cabinets), the afterburn effect is ridiculously weak, its use is very limited outside of narrow chokepoints, and the cloud doesn't even last that long. For the effort it takes for you to charge it up, throw it into a group of enemies, and then coordinate with your teammates to have them shoot the gassed-up enemies and set them on fire, you could have gotten the same result by just unloading a few shots from the Scorch Shot or Detonator. On the other hand, the Gas Passer has become the go-to weapon for Pyros in Mann vs. Machine, as its upgrade capabilities in causing coated enemies to explode in flames upon being shot, dealing up to thousands of points of damage at once, allows Pyros to clear hordes of robots in record time while instantly refilling the charge. Even then, its conditionally overpowered nature loops around into causing players to hate it, claiming that it makes Pyro way too easy and linear, with several community MVM servers banning it entirely.
- The Reserve Shooter was once the de facto shotgun many Pyro players would use, due to its ability to minicrit anyone who was in the air, which they could take great advantage of whenever they airblasted an opponent. Jungle Inferno promptly ended this by making the weapon only minicrit players knocked in the air by explosions, preventing Pyros from getting minicrits from the gun if they used the airblast to knock them into the air. This now makes getting minicrits for Reserve Shooter Pyros almost impossible unless they have the help of the their teammates or if they're really good at reflecting enemy projectiles. However, this nerf was generally welcomed nonetheless, as most players considered the combo overpowered.
Melee
- Finishing the Moonman set with the Phlog and Manmelter, we have the Third Degree. What has the Third Degree got that causes it to be one of the Scrappy Weapons? Its fear-inducing ability is... to hit all players connected by a heal beam, or being healed by the Medicating Melody taunt. The Third Degree is probably one of the most underused, and most forgotten, of the Pyro melee weapons just by virtue of having no real bonus, since its only "attribute" is extremely situational and the Flamethrower does the Third Degree's job better and more efficiently - tellingly, it's one of the only remaining straight upgrades in the game (alongside the Holy Mackerel, which allows a Scout to see whether a spy used the dead ringer more as a Good Bad Bug than anything), as despite not technically having a downside, its upside just isn't that useful compared to other pyro melees like the Powerjack. It also doesn't help that the Third Degree doesn't have a damage boost, so you're just hitting two or more people with the stock fire axe. And it's more than likely that one of them is currently holding a weapon that's much more deadly than what you have on hand. It also doesn't help that the "bonus" is negated just by a Medic switching to a different weapon, which is almost guaranteed if they notice you're hitting them (About the only reason they won't is the fact they probably don't expect anyone to use the weapon at all and didn't consider how to deal with it). It does, however, see use in Mann vs Machine, since it's pretty regular to find eight medics healing a single giant Heavy, and getting rid of all of those medics at once can be pretty useful so long as someone keeps the Heavy from noticing you. However, even that's a niche use, since an upgraded Gas Passer (or a Demoman or Sniper) can take the Medics out just as effectively without requiring you to charge at a giant Heavy with a melee weapon and either praying for a random crit or wasting 100 bucks on a crit canteen, because if you don't get all the Medics in one swing, they will pop Über and you will die messily.
- The Axtinguisher (and its reskin the Postal Pummeler) was this until its rework. Previously, it was given back the ability to do full crits on anyone on fire again, but it now has a massive deploy speed penalty and swing penalty and does less damage than it used to do on a crit, making the Puff n' Sting near useless. It was eventually reworked to deal more damage proportional to afterburn and grant a speed boost on kills, making it less of a combo weapon and more of a finisher weapon. It's still considered overshadowed by the Powerjack, but it is no longer looked down as one of the worst weapons in the game like it once was.
- The other Rift promotional weapon, the Sharpened Volcano Fragment, is an ax that sets people on fire. On a class that has a flamethrower that deals way more damage at much longer range and can attack multiple people at once. Unlike the Sun-on-a-Stick, it hasn't received any useful buffs. Even in Medieval Mode, where it has the niche of giving Pyro back the ability to ignite people, it's still not considered very good since everyone drops health pickups on death, meaning its fire will usually be extinguished instantly and it's overshadowed by the Back Scratcher (which not only lets the Pyro heal more off those health kits, but also has a more valuable direct damage boost).
- The Neon Annihilator got this reaction as soon as it was introduced. At first, it would always do critical hits on players who were wet, in exchange for less base damage and, like everything else community-added, no ability to deal random critical hits. This severely limited the weapon's use, as it would only serve a decent purpose in maps where water was common (which are very, very rare) or if fellow Scouts/Snipers are carrying Mad Milk/Jarate - ergo, maps or player setups where Pyro is not a sound choice. Valve's reaction only confused the playerbase: give it the ability to remove sappers, something the Homewrecker (a Pyro melee that can destroy sappers in 1 hit as opposed to the Neon Annihilator taking 2 hits) can do better, with the only difference being a mostly unnoticeable damage penalty. Neon Annihilator users have earned the half-derisive nickname "Pyrosharks", for their habit of camping areas with water in them and then jumping anyone unlucky enough to go for a swim.
Demoman
Melee
- The pre-nerfed Ullapool Caber was the absolute terror of Snipers, Scouts, Spies, and Engies everywhere on release. It essentially turned the Demoman into an Action Bomb on hit, doing enough damage to one-shot those classes, and it works insanely well with the Sticky Jumper that let Demos rain Death from Above at will (a Good Bad Bug that made Demos immune to the self-blast damage didn't help either). Enter the Gun Mettle update which drastically reduced the base damage, essentially making it worthless as it didn't do enough damage to enemies anymore to justify getting in close and blowing yourself up. It doesn't help that the weapon has endured several other nerfs, such as an increased switch speed (meaning using it as a last resort Taking You with Me is likely to simply lead to the user dying while pulling it out), and the weapon in general being notoriously buggy (for instance, it's been known to fail to explode on hit, or worse, explode without doing damage, and even when it does go off, the damage is notoriously inconsistent). Fans have been clamoring for years since then for Valve to revert the nerf or rework the weapon, but it still remains.
- The Claidheamh Mòr was considered fairly decent for a little while due to enabling "ping-ponging" (being able to charge an enemy and immediately charge again when combined with the Tide Turner), but its rework in the Tough Break update left a lot of unhappy Demoknights in its wake. Its previous increase to charge duration was changed to restoring a smidgen of health on kill, while its health penalty was changed to an increase in damage taken while out; these changes immediately led to the weapon being abandoned and derided as a downgraded Half-Zatoichi. Valve eventually relented and gave the Claidheamh Mòr back its charge duration bonus, but it still isn't held in very high regard, between the increase in damage taken remaining without any way to get it back and the Tide Turner also being nerfed. That said, it has found a fair niche as a tool for "hybrid knights", who use the increased charge duration as more of a mobility tool and appreciate that it's the only sword with no downsides when sheathed (the Persian Persuader, the other main candidate for a charge-focused Demoknight, basically cannot use grenades).
Heavy
Primary
- The Brass Beast is widely derided for having an even longer spin-up time than the default Minigun and reduces the Heavy's already slow speed while firing by 60%, thus making him a sitting duck for basically everything under the sun (especially Snipers and Spies). Its main upside, a 20% damage bonus, is generally considered overkill since Heavy's damage output is already ridiculous. Like a number of other weapons here, the Brass Beast only ever sees serious play in Mann vs. Machine, where the damage increase is meaningful and the downside is negligible due to robots not being able to take advantage of it, and because MvM Heavies are going to be holding down the trigger for most of the time anyway.
- The Natascha is hated because being slowed down in a high speed arena shooter where mobility is incredibly important aren't fun to play against. Natascha doesn't get much love even in Mann vs. Machine, since the slower fire rate (and thus lower DPS) is a real deal-breaker in a mode that's all about raw damage. As such, it's only considered a niche pick against Super Scouts at best, and even then most teams would rather have the Heavy body-block them with the Brass Beast or the Engineer block them with his Sentry Gun.
- The Huo-Long Heater is supposed to be used to deter Spies from backstabbing Heavy. Not only are the flames not deadly enough to stop a spy from backstabbing him (excluding a Spy using the Spycicle which melts in fire), a spy can simply jump over the flames to avoid being hit at all. The downsides are also harsh, as it eats way too much ammo for a rarely relevant upside, making it only really useful on Payload maps where Heavies can auto-refill their ammo from the cart and ignite Spies looking for easy chainstabs. It eventually got a change to deal more damage to burning players... But like the Brass Beast, this is generally overkill, especially at point blank range where the heavy will be able to ignite enemies himself. Not only that, but its damage against non-burning players is now reduced compared to stock. While it's better in MvM, compared to the Brass Beast while downside of decreased ammo is negligible, and the robots tending to have no brains when charging to an Heavy with a Huo-Long Heater, not to mention the main source of spreading fire, Pyro, is easily available thanks to his Gas Passer, this tends to make the Heavy even more specialized against beefier robots such as Giants, and almost nigh-useless against Tanks, since they cannot be burned at all (though to be fair, the Tanks have an 75% damage resistance against miniguns). As such, they tend to especially shine in Two Cities, where there are no Tanks and more Giants.
- While the Tomislav is considered an arguable candidate for the best minigun in standard play (with the stock minigun being the only real competition), in MvM, it's practically worthless. The Tomislav lacks in damage relative to the other miniguns due to its reduced firing speed, but in exchange, it's quicker to spin up, silent while doing so, and has a tighter spread, making it great for ambushes or rapid response without sacrificing much in direct combat (since the Tomislav isn't much less scary to face at short range as the minigun). But when you're fighting robots who can locate you without needing to hear you, travel in large groups or as giant targets you want to be close to, and don't require you to move around much by design, the Tomislav's strengths become far less applicable, and its reduced firepower starts to sting badly.
Secondary
- For most classes, the stock Shotgun and its variants (which, for Heavy, includes both the Panic Attack and his own Family Business as stat-swapped variants) are held in fairly good regard as Boring, but Practical weapons. However, in the Heavy's arsenal, they're infamous for rarely seeing use. This is because the advantage of the shotgun is serving as a low-to-mid-range Hitscan weapon that can be used as a backup over the primary when it's unreliable or needs reloading... but the Heavy's miniguns are already low-to-mid-range hitscan weapons that never need to reload, while also boasting several times the damage output at almost any range where the shotgun has any effectiveness. The only advantage the shotguns can claim is not requiring the Heavy to slow down and rev up, but this advantage isn't seen as much when the Tomislav already somewhat patches the issue of revving and the Heavy is slow no matter what. This is especially the case when it requires giving up the massive gain in survivability and team support that the various "lunchbox" items provide. Heavies that make significant use of a shotgun in combat (traditionally the Family Business, due to its expanded clip size and faster firing speed at the price of slightly reduced damage making it more effective as a continual-fire primary) are informally referred to as "Fat Scouts", and it's usually considered a form of Cherry Tapping.
- The Buffalo Steak Sandvich, notable in that it's simultaneously banned from community 6s and considered useless in casual games. In competitive, it's banned for giving Heavy even more speed than the Gloves of Running Urgently for even less of a downside (since the effect, and therefore, the melee weapon lock, is likely to wear off by the time the Heavy gets to the middle point), while in casual, it's considered the worst of the lunchbox items (with the Dalokohs Bar leading a close second) because it takes away the Heavy's main method of damage and adds a hefty damage vulnerability, leading to the user dying before they can get anything worthwhile done. It however becomes the meta for Heavy in Medieval Mode, where the vast majority of ranged weapons are unavailable, giving the Heavy an automatic advantage, especially coupled with the KGB.
- The Dalokohs Bar, a chocolate bar similar to the Sandvich. It doesn't heal as much as the Sandvich, but it can increase the Heavy's maximum health from 300, which is already really high, to 350. The problem is that a Medic's overheal doesn't stack with the Dalokohs Bar's ability, and can only give him 150% of his normal health, which is 450. Many buffs were later made to the Dalokohs Bar; the time to recharge the weapon (which was already pretty short) after eating it was removed for a time, then restored when it was given the ability to be dropped to heal teammates like the Sandvich, then it was provided an overheal on top of the aforementioned 50 health, but it's still used much less than the Sandvich and Second Banana. It did have its one moment in the sun where a bug let it give its user effectively unlimited health, but after the bugfix, it was back to the trash heap.
Melee
- The Warrior's Spirit is notoriously regarded as Heavy's worst melee pick, and for much the reasons as the Steak Sandvich. It provides a hefty 30% damage boost and 50 health on kill, but also sticks a 30% damage vulnerability on the user. Even by the standards of melee weapons, 30% more melee damage isn't that high, especially when compared to the raw power of any minigun, and the 30% damage vulnerability handily cancels out the health gain because slowly lumbering at enemies with melee out is the worst time to be taking more damage. Even if you are planning to actually melee enemies as Heavy, the Holiday Punch's stun and the KGB's crits-on-kill are far more beneficial; hell, even the stock fists at least have a taunt kill to work with. Bafflingly, the weapon was in a set with the Steak Sandvich, which means the apparent intended playstyle was to try to melee enemies while running at barely above-average speed and taking 67% more damage than normal (at that point, anything from the stock shotgun on up two-shots you) and somehow not die.note MvM does treat it much better, since against Tanks, it's able to bypass the damage resistance since it's not a minigun, and combined with the Buff Banner or Kritzkrieg, can make the Heavy an powerhouse against them (though it's still considered inferior to the Gloves of Running Urgently, and mathematically the Brass Beast still outdamages it against Tanks).
- Despite its revisions, the Eviction Notice remains one of the weakest unlockable melee weapons for the Heavy.
- Its first iteration is easily the worst; its only stat changes compared to the stock fists were lower damage and higher swinging speed, leaving the weapon with lower DPS for nothing in return. With the Eviction Notice lacking a real purpose, even the Official TF2 Wiki recommended against equipping it until it was changed. Even then, its poor offensive stats never improved.
- The final version of the EN is intended to be a more forgiving version of the Gloves of Running Urgently. In exchange a lesser movement speed buff while active—15% instead of 30%—the Heavy's health is drained for less health per second. Upon punching someone, the Heavy receives a speed boost that stacks on top of the buff, making him faster than he would be with the GRU. Unfortunately, none of these changes improve how the Heavy performs in melee combat. He's still pretty slow even with the initial speed buff *, and he's still a big target; landing that prequisite hit for the boost is still a tall order for him. And thanks to his miniguns, the Heavy isn't wanting for effective close-ranged weaponry, so the incentive to fight with the EN is even smaller. Thus, most players prefer the GRU's greater immediate speed buff, leaving the EN regarded as either a mediocre, highly situational alternative, or an utter joke.
- However, the weapon has found a comfortable niche in Vs. Saxton Hale mode, where melee weapons have guaranteed crits and extra knockback against Hale. This means the Eviction Notice can peel or trap the raging Australian pretty easily with its faster swing speed, giving Heavy some much needed utility in the mode.
Engineer
Primary
- The Pomson 6000 was originally considered overpowered because it drained a Medic's Ubercharge just by spamming it through hallways, making it incredibly frustrating to fight against. It's been nerfed to the ground since then and is barely usable: the projectile is painfully slow, the fire rate is poor, the clip size is small, the projectile can't pass through your own teammates, and the damage is rather low, such that the gun is arguably outclassed by the Rescue Ranger in combat—a gun where the entire point to it is poor combat performance in exchange for utility, but boasts far faster projectiles, a better fire rate, and only slightly less damage. It's also based on impractical strengths that don't even make sense anymore — a shot of the Pomson at point-blank range eliminates a small chunk of a Medic's Ubercharge, while a few blasts of buckshot to the face can eliminate all of it. Many call for a rework because not only does it feel bad to play with, the drain mechanic it's balanced around justifying is something that doesn't belong in TF2.
Melee
- While the Gunslinger is a good choice for more offensively-minded Engineers in standard play, it's considered the absolute worst choice for his melee slot in Mann vs. Machine. Because MvM is a wave-defense gamemode that emphasizes DPS over flexibility and mobility, the Gunslinger's Mini-Sentries are much less useful compared to the full-sized ones that the other wrenches can build, and the weapon's other advantages don't do enough to make up for this drawback.
Medic
Primary
- All of Medic's Syringe Guns (the stock, Overdose, and Blutsauger) are almost universally considered outclassed by the Crusader's Crossbow. While they aren't especially "bad" weapons (with the exception of the stock, as it doesn't really have anything going for it that the others don't), none of them have the sheer potential utility of the crossbow, instead acting as mediocre, awkward-to-handle submachine guns that are almost exclusively limited to attacks while retreating and not much else. Compared to the other options' passive abilities (bonus speed while equipped for the Overdose and Life Drain for the Blutsauger), the crossbow's versatile long-range damage and healing is seen as almost always seen as more powerful and thus more worth using. Although it is worth to note that despite the crossbows higher damage, it is generally not used offensively, due to the fact the medic is pretty much good as dead once any enemy (except for snipers and other medics) notices them, even if they hit the crossbow syringe, allowing syringe gun users to justify their usage of them, due to syringe guns still offering a slightly better chance of getting out alive. They're more useful in MvM, however, due to the "mad milk syringes" upgrade allowing Medics to provide an additional source of healing for teammates, especially the Overdose since it allows for quick getaways from robots, though good luck finding a Medic main who uses these.
Secondary
- The Quick-Fix was like this when it was first introduced. While it both healed and charged uber faster and provided a speed boost when used with Scouts, it could not over-heal and its charge only healed the user and their target very quickly rather than granting invulnerability. The lack of overheal was particularly damning, because the weapon was encouraged for use in keeping the entire team healthy and alive. As soon as you were done healing someone, they would get grazed by a few bullets and no longer be in perfect health. It was eventually given the ability to overheal to fifty percent of that of a normal medigun and the ability to activate the Ubercharge on yourself for self-preservation purposes, making it a much more useful weapon. However, it's considered a Game-Breaker in competitive matches because the ability to quickly heal people is much more pronounced the fewer people there are, so it's a still considered a scrappy weapon.
- The Kritzkrieg is rather controversial when it comes to whether it is pointless or overpowered. What it does is that it builds up an Uber 25% faster, and upon popping an Ubercharge, the player and his patient don't get invulnerability, but instead gain 100% chance to deal critical hits. This can make it a monstrously effective damaging tool if the Medic's heal target has any amount of skill, practically on the level of being able to wipe out a whole team in a single clip (which, needless to say, makes it the choice for the stereotypical "eternally pocketing medic girlfriend"), but it sacrifices the invulnerability that makes the stock Medigun so vital for breaking stalemates, or on the defense, stalemating an offensive Uber and its critical boost does not give any kind of damage boost against sentries, making it ineffective for any kind of offensive push. It is effective on defense since sentries aren’t an issue though. That being said, the Kritzkrieg is absolutely essential in Mann Vs. Machine, mainly because the most important thing is boosting how much damage you deal at one time, and the Kritzkrieg excels at this with its ability to gain guaranteed crits for 8 seconds, letting a Kritzkrieg-Ubered Soldier, Pyro or Heavy decimate Giants in record time, and it builds up Uber faster so the Medic can pop it more frequently. And since Medic has an upgrade that lets him share canteens and Uber canteens are cheaper than Crit canteens, it effectively renders the stock obsolete.
Melee
- The Vita-Saw, like the Buffalo Steak Sandvich, used to be bad in pubs and banned in competitive. In casual play, it was derided as a crutch for bad Medics since it let you keep a percentage of your Uber on death at the cost of 10 less health, a rather poor trade even considering Medic being a priority target, whereas in competitive play (where having an Uber before the enemy Medic can make or break a game) the health drop was unnoticeable most of the time, making it near-impossible to tell whether the opposing Medic had an Uber advantage on respawn and thus forcing your Medic to run one as well to not fall behind after a Medic trade. After Jungle Inferno reworked the weapon to instead require you to hit people with it in exchange for keeping up to 60% uber at four hits, the weapon is now considered one of Medic’s worst melees in both environments since the Uber-Saw gives a full charge with the same amount of swings and neither requires dying to get any use out of its benefits nor slashes your health.
Sniper
Primary
- The Classic gets this treatment because although it has the distinction of being able to charge and land headshots without the need for scoping, it cannot headshot unless fully charged, a large penalty considering that non-fully-charged headshots from the other rifles (save for the Sydney Sleeper) are enough to deal with most classes, most crucially including Medics and other Snipers. And just to add insult to injury, it also has a damage penalty on body shots, which essentially forces the Sniper to stand still and fully charge every shot while making himself a sitting duck, or end up doing next to no damage. This means you are more or less guaranteed to lose a fight against a competent Sniper with any other weapon, as they can headshot and kill a non-overhealed Sniper right after scoping in. It also charges independently of zoom, meaning that one's fingers will be strained in charging shots. The strange thing is, only the last thing applied to the Sniper Rifle in TFC (one could perform headshots without a full charge). The role of an unzoomed sniper rifle already goes to the Huntsman, which is a far more powerful and useful weapon. Like it did for the old Eviction Notice, even the official TF2 Wiki states that veteran Snipers rarely use this thing. It's fitting that there's an achievement for melee killing 10 Classic-wielding Snipers named "Punching Bag".
- The Sydney Sleeper is looked down upon by many, being a sniper rifle that can't get headshots in exchange for covering its target in Jarate if you stay scoped for long enough. It has a slightly faster charge rate and can mark enemies for others to kill no matter where you hit the enemy, but in the end, the triple damage you'd receive from a headshot is seen as just too much to give up, so the weapon is often seen as a beginner's trap for those with no faith in their ability to land headshots. Even though you can get some mileage from headshots thanks to it receiving the ability to deal mini-crits, it's still generally not a Sniper's first choice as you lose a Sniper Duel against any other rifle except the Classic.
- However, in the Mann vs. Machine mode, the Sydney Sleeper is better received, because while it doesn't deal headshot damagenote it can still perform Explosive Headshots. By upgrading any sniper rifle (Sydney Sleeper included), when you get a headshot on a robot, nearby robots receive damage and slow down, allowing you to destroy many robots with one shot. Shoot the head and it still can perform an explosive headshot, and also coating the robots in Jarate is very useful.
- The Huntsman is normally considered a tradeoff weapon in standard play: it replaces the rifle with a bow, which gives a noticeable damage penalty and arcing projectiles, but also provides a a faster charge that doesn't slow you down as much, and a better field of view (along with fire arrows and a notoriously wonky hitbox), making it a good option for Snipers who want to stay on the move and play more aggressively. In MvM, though, it's notoriously regarded as one of the worst weapons in the game. This is due to the fact that the main thing giving Snipers usability in that game mode is the Explosive Headshots upgrade, which lets the Sniper deal damage to a whole squad whenever they headshot something... an ability that the Huntsman can't take. Instead, it gets bleed damage, and while the bleeding can certainly stack up on giant robots if the Sniper spams arrows enough, it also means the class has essentially no crowd-control options in a mode that practically requires those options, while also not having much of a damage boost on any other rifle-user.
Secondary
- The Darwin's Danger Shield has been this ever since the Jungle Inferno update. It was nerfed because it granted immunity to quickscopes, which made sniper battles incredibly one-sided, forcing the other Sniper to run it as well. It has since been totally reworked to give fire resistance and afterburn immunity, which makes it essentially a counter to Scorch Shot-spamming Pyros, which sounds useful on paper, but now it has the major flaw of being overspecialized. It doesn’t have any general benefits like the old Danger Shield did, now making it useless apart from that one use case with the Pyros, and even then if a Pyro catches up to a Sniper, they’re practically guaranteed to die.
- The Razorback does nothing except prevent one backstab and handicap the Spy that tried to do it for a few seconds. However, wielding it requires you to give up your secondary weapon, meaning that you have to rely on your rifle and melee weapon for self-defense. Oh, and the only class to use backstabs also has a revolver that can kill you in three hits (or two if they have the Ambassador, which came out in the same update as the Razorback), and can see your backstab-preventing shield. Since its release, it has been indirectly buffed by the introduction of new knives that give bonuses for backstabbing people, since it can deny Spies those bonuses and make them much more vulnerable (even if at the cost of the Sniper's life regardless), but still remains largely useless outside of Medieval Mode (where the shields are the only secondary items you can use and Spies can't use their revolvers to get around it).
- Interestingly, it was actually nerfed because it was too powerful on Competitive Mode. The Sniper is easily one of the more powerful classes by virtue of being a long-ranged specialist in a game full of short- to mid-ranged classes. An effective Sniper only has two counters: another Sniper and a Spy. The Razorback immediately deletes one of them because Spies will die the second they try to get their gun out in comp, and Medic overheal deletes the second because 1) an overhealed Sniper can survive an uncharged headshot, and 2) against another competent Sniper, attempting to charge up your shot is suicide. The nerf prevents the Sniper from being overhealed while equipped with the Razorback, making it possible to kill him with an uncharged shot even with a medic. In other words, you hard-counter spies, but at the cost of being unable to hard-counter sniper. This also came with a buff of the shield eventually regenerating after being stabbed, though this only really matters if a Spy is stupid enough to do so in the first place.
- The Cleaner's Carbine, an alternate SMG. Once players deal enough damage with it, they can activate the 'Crikey' bar, which causes all of the Sniper's equipped weapons to deal guaranteed mini-crits for 8 seconds. While this sounds good on paper, one has to remember it's basically a stock SMG that fires slower, has no random crits, and has a smaller clip size, meaning its damage is quite terrible for the intended SMG purpose of being an Emergency Weapon. It encourages you to run into combat and go on tears with a streak of massive damage, but this runs counter to the Sniper's entire playstyle and lack of mobility or staying power, and it'll usually just end in you getting killed. About the only real use is to combo it with the Bushwacka for guaranteed critical hits, but this can also be done with the generally more useful Jarate (with the exception of Mann vs. Machine, where the Carbine is seen as one of the best tools in the Sniper's arsenal for bringing down tanks).
Melee
- The Shahanshah is in a similar position to the Liberty Launcher. It does more damage when you have less than half health and less damage if you have higher. This effectively means it's simply slightly more likely to kill if you're at low health, but less otherwise. It's not objectively bad, but it's seen as a very uninteresting choice, particularly compared to the Bushwacka which can be paired with Jarate for guaranteed critical hits.
- The Tribalman's Shiv has 50% less damage than the Kukri, but compensates by dealing a total of 48 bleed damage over six seconds upon hitting someone with it. This sounds like a good tradeoff—33 damage plus 48 bleed totals out to 16 extra damage in total—but the problem is, most of the time as a Sniper, you pull out your melee because you want to get someone off your back right now, not six seconds from now, and the initial hit is basically tickling the enemy. Additionally, the bleed doesn't stack, so two hits in quick succession from the Shiv will usually deal less damage than stock. The main foes a Sniper worries about fighting are Spies, and if you're aware of a Spy and you have your melee out, then the Kukri can already kill them in two swings or a single random crit (the Shiv's base damage is so low that it fails to one-shot even with a random crit). The intended use of the Shiv is to help you fight cloaked Spies by allowing you to see them bleeding while cloaked, but one patch changed cloaking to halve the timers on certain effects, so now the bleed only works for three seconds and deals a total of 57 damage. Said patch also gave cloaked Spies 20% damage resistance, meaning that damage drops further to a miserable 46 compared to the Kukri's 52, and the difference becomes even more pronounced if you land a random crit (a cloaked Spy can actually survive both a Shiv crit and the ensuing bleed, whereas a Kukri crit would still kill them on the spot). And if you want a way to shut down a cloaked Spy, the Jarate does that job much better.
Spy
Secondary
- The Enforcer was originally a go-to Spy revolver as it provided a direct damage boost over stock. However, the Gun Mettle update severely nerfed it by making the damage boost only apply when you're disguised. Since that only applies to a single shot, and since it's really inconsistent/buggy whether the damage bonus will actually apply at all, you're stuck with a stock Revolver that fires slower. Pretty much every Spy ignores it in favor of the other ones nowadays, especially the Ambassador (less damage, but more accurate and crits on headshots), the Diamondback (also less damage, but stores crits for every backstab or building destroyed while sapping it) and even the L'Etranger (slightly lower base damage than the Ambassasor and Diamondback, but grants longer invisibility, refills a bit of the invisibility meter on each hit, and also has the ability to deal random crits).
Melee
- For the longest time, the Big Earner was considered the Spy's most underwhelming knife, trading out some health in exchange for cloak recharge on-kill. Not a terrible tradeoff in a vacuum, but the problem is that the health loss is far more significant than it sounds, since Spy's health is already low enough that a lot of attacks leave him barely surviving. Suddenly, the list of things that can kill a Spy in one hit skyrockets, including point-blank hits from the Rocket Launcher, a Scattergun or Panic Attack meatshot, direct hits from the Grenade Launcher, charged Huntsman bodyshots, Sticky Bombs at their epicenter, and even things like crit shots from the Ambassador and Diamondback. The Conniver's Kunai has a similar (actually even more severe) downside, but it compensates by giving you a hefty bit of overheal on kill, making the problem far more manageable as long as you can get in one good stab, and the L'Etranger's cloak boost means that you can have a similar benefit without dealing with being one-hit-killed. Fortunately, the Big Earner was finally salvaged with the Gun Mettle update that gave it an on-backstab speed boost, creating an almost entirely new playstyle that nowadays is considered a worthy addition to Spy's arsenal, though it still requires the user to be careful.
- Your Eternal Reward has largely displaced the Big Earner as the worst knife in the game. It's intended to let a Spy make a kill without anyone noticing; it has no sound effect for its backstab, targets killed by it don't show up in the kill feed, and upon killing someone, their corpse vanishes and you instantly disguise as them, allowing you to immediately take their place. Unfortunately, the weapon suffers from very hefty downsides—an enhanced cloak drain rate, and assuming a disguise normally now eating up a full bar of cloak—that make it rather more difficult to get that first knife in. At launch, this was even more problematic, because the weapon negated standard disguises altogether. And of course, the upside of the knife can be negated simply by the victim tapping their voicechat key and informing their team they just got stabbed, and due to it nerfing your cloak, it's now much harder to get away.
Building
- The Red-Tape Recorder is often considered a direct downgrade from the Sapper; rather than damaging buildings, it slowly causes them to lose levels over time. However, it takes such a long time to downgrade buildings (especially Level 3 ones) and has such a slow placing speed that it's basically certain they'll be removed before they can do anything useful (initially the rate was fast enough to guarantee that it would take out one level even if the Engie is really attentive, but people disliked that for the opposite reasons). While the current viability of the Red-Tape Recorder is still debated (the defense being that its slow speed can be a blessing in disguise against inattentive Engies that don't maintain their buildings, as since they can't destroy sapped buildings on will, it'll put them out of commission for longer as they have to either run to remove the sapper or wait it out, especially deadly against Battle Engies with mini-sentries), the overall consensus is that it's still too disappointingly situational to be a true sidegrade to the stock sapper.
- In MVM however, there’s a bug with the recorder that causes Engineer robots to completely ignore it when it’s sapping their teleporter provided it’s fully constructed. This means that in MVM, the it can be used to stall robots from teleporting in closer to the bomb. However, when used on robots, it functions identically to the stock sapper.
PDA
- The Cloak and Dagger is often considered to be the worst of the three invisibility watches Spy has. Although the watch recharges when you're remaining stationary and invisible seems useful at first, the 50% cloak drain whenever you're moving tends to encourage players to stand in one spot to avoid running out of cloak, which discourages meaningful contribution to the team. It's become the butt of many jokes about spies using it to simply hide and do nothing for the entire game, waiting for a "perfect moment" that never comes. Ironically, using it to hide and seemingly do nothing is often why it's the go-to watch in competitive, especially in the rare occasion he's used in 6s, as Spies can still feed information to their team while hiding and disguises are rarely able to fool players for more than a second. You also only get one attempt to make a stab before the jig is up, and the Cloak and Dagger helps the Spy wait for a good opportunity to arise.
- The Dead Ringer was widely hated by players, as its function, which is to have the Spy fake his death, is often used as a "Get-out-of-jail free" card whenever the Spy is in a situation he otherwise wouldn't survive. Then came Jungle Inferno, where it was nerfed so that Ammo kits and Dispensers won't refill the Dead Ringer's cloak meter. This caused the watch's use to heavily decrease amongst Spy players since you're basically a sitting duck for several seconds after using it, having to rely on the disguise kit to fool players (which rarely happens) while the watch recharges. That being said, it can still be considered annoying to deal with because of the primary function, especially if a Spy is using it alongside the L'Etranger and Big Earner to circumvent the recharge time. Not to mention, in MvM, a spy will most likely use the same tactics as well when dealing with Giants and can still get away with it. In addition, the Dead Ringer is considered the watch to use in Vs. Saxton Hale, where the Spy's normal abilities of cloaking and disguising are considered worthless as opposed to being able to take one of Hale's overpowered One-Hit Kill punches and survive.
Multi-class
- Reskins in general. With the exception of skins like the Saxxy, the Frying Pan, the Original, the Freedom Staff, the Fortified Compound, Bat Outta Hell, the Conscientious Objector, and the Prinny Machete, which are generally well-loved by the fanbase, most players see the rest as a waste of space offering nothing new to gameplay sans a different look. It doesn't help that the reskins often have a nicer design than the original, often being pegged as wasted potential and just plain lazy on Valve's behalf. When a large update primarily comes with reskinned weapons as opposed to weapons with unique stats, anger usually ensues. Adding to that is the fact that nowadays that largest updates tend to be chock full of these, and the rather natural anger buildup that comes from multiple updates in succession bringing nothing but reskins.note
- The stock melee weapons are considered this, not because they're bad weapons, but are usually ignored because all they do is deal damage, where they're outclassed by the primary and/or secondary weapons. There's very little reason to use the stock Fists, for instance, when you have access to a minigun that does almost ten times the damage at melee range. As a result, they're usually ignored for something with more utility (ex. the Soldier would use the Escape Plan to get away from a bad situation instead of the default shovel). The only exceptions are the Knife, the Wrench (since the Spy and the Engineer have some utility to their melees by default), the Kukri (since Snipers lack other useful close-range options outside of the SMG), and the Bottle (because most alternative options for Demoman were designed with Demoknighting in mind, leaving it as the least bad pick for an explosive-focused Demo). It doesn't help that many of these weapons remain nearly as effective in combat despite a damage penalty if random crits are enabled. The Disciplinary Action in particular is generally considered superior in combat due to its greatly increased range, on top of the ability to gain a speed boost by hitting teammates.
- The Panic Attack. Its original stats were that it reloaded 33% faster, shot 15% faster (and even faster as the wearer's health got depleted), but loaded four shells only and it would fire like the Beggar's Bazookai.e.. Almost immediately upon release, the Panic Attack was derided for being the worst weapon in TF2. Much of this was due to the reloading mechanic - Soldier, Pyro and Heavy all use this use it as a secondary, so they couldn't just switch to the gun and already have four bullets inside it, thus they'd need to reload first in a heated firefight and then probably get killed. The Engineer could see some more use out of it, as it's a primary weapon for him, but since it fired right after loading the fourth shell you still couldn't have an immediate source of damage. The larger weapon spread on lower health meant that you'd need to get closer in order to deal more damage, which is probably the exact opposite of what you should do when low on health.
- The Panic Attack received quite a few changes throughout its time in the game. First, it was buffed to fire 30% faster as well as reload and deploy 50% faster, and in a further update, it was given the ability to load the fourth shell without having to fire immediately (though you can't switch weapons while shells are loaded). While Engineer can use it effectively now, it's still considered a downgrade from the stock Shotgun for the other three classes able to use this weapon. Later, it was completely overhauled. Now, it is designed to deal more consistent initial shot damage at the expense of lower damage and less accurate shots. The weapon is now considered a viable secondary loadout, but most lament the loss of what made it unique among the shotguns. One thing it is praised for is having a fixed spread of bullets, rather than the random spread of other shotguns, which allows good aim to be more consistently rewarded.
- The B.A.S.E. Jumper is another "weak in casual, banned in competitive" candidate, swapping out Soldier's secondary and Demoman's primary for a deployable parachute that allows them to slowly float to the ground while airborne. For Soldier, the damage falloff for rockets is significant and they're fairly slow in the air, meaning that using it airborne at a good distance cuts the Soldier's offensive potential to near-irrelevance. This is particularly problematic for the intended partner of the weapon, the Air Strike, which already has a damage and splash radius penalty to deal with, resulting in many an erstwhile user attempting to set up a massive carpet bombing only to watch four direct hits fail to down a single Medic. The Demoman, meanwhile, has to give up the power and versatility of the Grenade Launcher, and while he can do some significant damage with various Sticky Launchers (which don't need to deal with falloff and should arm immediately upon hitting the ground), the loadout is only useful in very open areas. Since the parachute slows you down in the air, it also makes the user a sitting duck for hitscan classes. Conversely, the weapon was found to be overpowered in sixes, because strong mid-to-long-range hitscan in that metagame is rare, meaning that zigzagging with the B.A.S.E. Jumper and repeatedly deploying the chute made you basically invincible and allowed for a lot of stalling. This caused the weapon to be smacked with a nerf that reduced air control and made it so you could only deploy your parachute once per jump, but it was still too difficult for Soldiers and Demomen to airshot the user and so it remained banned, while the likelihood of being popped out of the sky by a Sniper only increased.
