In my opinion a good nerf would be making the healing have a cooldown. For example, the first backstab would heal you as normal, but any subsequent backstab in a 5 - 10 second period wouldn't (kind of similar function to hard damage in ultrakill). This would deal with the tanking a lot of damage, while not removing chainstabs. Altho making it more different from the big earner is also a good idea.
Didn't like your proposed changes so I wrote my own, but not retreading it so I'll copy and paste it for your suggestion pleasures: - Insted of 70 health, make it 100 (this was a good change) - Backstabs now build up a "counter" - When killed, all counters are removed and for each "Soul count" you gain 50 health on respawn (totalling 250), but the kunai is unavailable for 10 seconds. (Ammo doesn't give it back faster) - CANNOT CLOAK OR HAVE CLOAK OUT WHEN USING THIS KNIFE (Don't worry this is not gonna be just a nerf) - Can throw your kunai for a "ranged backstab" with right click (think sandman projectile). Will instant kill enemies if hit in the back or head. 10 seconds of cooldown if thrown, (Ammo doesn't respawn it) Yes it is basically a "second deadringer" for concept wise with a ranged possiblity but.. I think removing the overheal for "stored health" is the way to go.
your proposed changes are _really_ interesting but they would completely ruin chainstab potential the big earner kinda works, but you will run out of health eventually, no matter how bad the teams are
Eh, if the problem lies in pubstomping and extremely risky in a pro lobby, your balance proposal is acceptable. Except maybe instead of removing the kunai entirely, you can only leech every 10 seconds, and -80% healing from all source, the either go big or go home weapon. But I'm not a Spy main and I'm afraid it will just become a better YER and inferior Big Earner so idk.
instead of removing the ability to stab after a stab, just give spy a heal cooldown, it'd be better than not being able to stab while still staying alive
That would actually fix the issue Spy can still gain a huge health buff from the enemy and it would still increase his survivability And with the health cool down killing the kunai wielding spy wouldn't become such a chore Like the way the kunai is right now makes it nearly impossible to kill a good spy player
I agree, only being able to stab ONE person may be a little harsh and probably (almost) nobody would use it anymore. A cooldown to the ability to heal yourself may help to solve the problem while not completely destroying the weapon in the process.
The letrange is almsot mandatory with the dead ringer to make it refill faster, hence why kunai spies suck with gunplay because they don't use it to get kills, but just to fuel their aggresive playstyle
@@wile123456as a gunspy main, it's not even close to necessary. You just gotta uncloak as early as it is safe to do so and be somewhat careful until it's back. The l'etranger just limits your DPS too hard for that to be a particularly good gunspy choice but it does have the massive upside of making it incredibly hard to die (which does count for something when you're not necessarily trying to get outright kills). But it really just isn't necessary for the watch to be good
TIL that the Kunai's healing scales with the victims health. I don't think I've ever seen a Kunai Spy not get 210 health form a stab... Actually, being a Heavy Main, that makes a lot of sense.
I find it interesting to think about how a weapon like the Kunai, a ninja weapon, ended up with its stats. My theory is that, at some point, they were trying to make the whole "ninja substitution" work (when a ninja avoids an attack by swapping places with something else, with fantastical representations effectively being a teleport). It didn't work out, perhaps due to similarities to the Dead Ringer, so it may have been generalized to "way to survive being attacked", which became the stats we know now. My pipe dream for the weapon would be a total rework into something more appropriately ninja-like.
in real life kunai are primarily throwing knives with stabbing being their "secondary" function, so i almost wonder if at some point in development they made attempts for a knife that Spy can throw but has some kinda cooldown like sandman maybe. probably got cut for conceptually sounding too difficult to balance and still make fun, while also probably costing a decent amount of dev time. not to mention Spy seems to be valve's most experimented class, as we've seen removed features like Spy's support buildings
@@Explosion_Mage Funnily enough, the Kunai being "thrown" would be a way to conceptually justify Jonto's 10 second cooldown stat. Of course not talking about actually having it as a mechanic, but the idea that they're disposable can still work out.
The only problem with the new kunai that I can find is the fact that 10 seconds is an incredibly long time to wait just to get one more stab, given that the majority of the time the knife is the only thing spy should use going into a fight I think it should either be lowered to 5 seconds, which still prevents chainstabs but doesn't feel boring or punishing for the spy, or allow ammo pickups to refill in the same way that the spycicle does
*Ahem* spy has a gun. Seriously yes his knife is his most powerful weapon going into a fight but once you use that. 5 or 10 second cool down doesn't matter. Your best chance is pulling out that revolver and firing at the enemy to keep them off your tail.
Kinda feels like the Big Earner then, but I guess the advantage is in like how people can’t really tell if you’re using the stock watch or C&D. They won’t know until you pull it out, so they need to guess if you’re going to be tanky or fast
@@samueljo7910 Big Earner makes chain stabs easier (speed boost). This proposed change makes you less likely to die because someone else saw you start a trickstab.
Great video describing why exactly the Kunai is so disliked. I definitely felt the same way as you for a while about “feeling like people were overreacting” but it legitimately sucks to be punished for bad teammates especially when you can’t control them in a format like casual. I definitely could’ve touched more on that in my review of the weapon, I decided to go the Highlander route mainly though simply because I wanted to communicate how big of a difference in viability something can have when everyone is of equal skill. Again great video jonto, looking forward to more 🫡
eyelander, fronteir justice, diamondback, bazaar bargain, cleaners carbine, all banners, killing gloves of boxing, übersaw, vita-saw, soda-popper, half-zatoichi, persian persuader, tide turner, blackbox,pretty boy's pocket pistol and big earner all share punishing you for bad teammates just like the kunai. Most of which you have a much harder time countering or stopping/preventing than a spy. Then if we go with everyone being at the same skill level: beginners wouldn't get much use out of the kunai as they kept dying to easier classes and then miss their stabs after getting 1 or 2 backstabs at most. At the 1k hour mark the spy would know how to secure their kills but so would the enemy, as such they'd go pyro and you'd never see that spy again. Once they're all great players the spy would not get to do anything more than a single stab, just like in highlander. The entire reason people are complaining about kunai in casual is because spy is much better than those they stab (if it's a trickstab else it's arguable) and no one is trying to stop them, not even the ones that complain. It's like they're just shooting at them with whatever they have thoughtlessly and then call it overpowered since that's enough to kill everything else. But add in just a little strategy and you'll kill the spy fairly easily
Kunai + deadringer + diamondback used to be my fav.. but now it's basically: "Phlog Pyro + Scorchshot + Power Hammer." It became that set... that punishes bad players hard. But in pro's it just mildly annoys them and will pop you on sight. I miss the old deadringer and diamondback since then the kunai would be less of a nuisance and more of a: "Well you found the moment" Since without the speed boost, the kunai is MUCH MUCH MUCH more difficult to use. And remove the backstab bonus on Diamondback again.. and suddenly we are back at tactically managing your resources as a Kunai spy. Insted of: "Spy go BRRR! HEALTH! CRITS!"
@@Psychicpie Anything not on spy has the downside of no DR and no cloak. It also takes a fight to make use of them 99% of the time. The Kunai is legit able to steal hp and give the spy 210hp, and then he can either get another stab by using the jank of hitboxes, or just DR and run away, likely keeping his hp higher then base 125.
if the kunai only gets unusable after a backstab kill you could probaly fus ho dah a uber medic off upward then backstab his heavy to get only a 5 second cooldown
Not a bad idea. It's already got built-in defense and speed buffs. Having it remove overheal shouldn't hurt the spy's general gameplay, and give the kunai a second-hand nerf without changing anything about how it's used.
Won't fix the initial problem just increase the risk. The problem isn't the overheal... since now he backstabs one person, gets an overheal, deadrings and goes vroooooom. Ooh no he lost the health from the initial backstab.. that's okay.. since he would lose it anyway . Now he has the high speed he needs to get the next stab easily and the overheal is back with avengence. If anything... the deadringer is the main issue with kunai spy. Not the kunai itself. Because before the deadringer changes... Kunai spy wasn't hated, it was just considered a different playstyle. One that rewards chain stabbing sure... but it didn't make em go vroom. Also the big earner was considered bad in those days XD
@@kotlolishIf you get rid of the dead ringer's speed boost it'd be kinda trash. You'd need to buff it elsewhere. Either in resistances or charge time.
As far as i remember the deadringer wasnt hated before they added the speed. I think they should just revert it back to when it let you fake being backstabbed and let you tank spawncampers. Just remove the free speed and its atleast not rewarding the Spy for tanking just letting him survive tanking.
@@kotlolish Agree that the DR is the main issue with the kunai but the kunai technically is a weapon with no downsides if you're good with it. (In the same way the 3rd degree is also a straight upgrade despite also not being overpowered or unfun to fight) They should at the very least add some persistent downside even when you're buffed. They could keep the upsides as is. Like maybe not being able to see enemy health to emphesize sneaking.
@@minibotas9496 not usually, but if you’re gonna make a video about the weapon it would be nice if it was at least listed in text, it makes my OCD very unhappy
@@orangejuice8279 People are "pretending" to have an OCD. A real OCD makes you daily life miserable. What you have is just impulse of needed perfection. Also you meant to write?, - "You Do not know me, laughing my ass off." ?
That's the thing, pub stomping sucks, for the new players they hate getting pub stomped, as anyone would, but for the veterans, in casual play the pub stomper is usually the best pick, it's uninteresting for the player, and lame for everyone else. Plus, Spy HAS a pub stomper already that's much colder: The Big Earner.
I have a proposition: Instead of completely removing the ability to chain stab, I propose that the healing / over-healing effect itself is on a 10 second cool-down. So whenever you backstab you will get all the healing and over-health for the first enemy, but not for any of the following enemies in that encounter. This means it would give you a choice of using that extra health to play more aggressively and get a few more picks at the risk of getting getting shut down, or choosing to use the extra health as an escape tool if you're caught out in a rough situation. This would also serve as complimentary to the deadringer, as at the cost of on-demand cloak the deadringer would allow for them to make a more convincing "death". It would allow spies to adopt a more aggressive playstyle without being overwhelming. It makes it easier to make the choice to use the extra health to be agressive, then when you dip below half you can use the deadringer to get out of that tough spot and make your "death" more convincing. Because of the cooldown as well, they would no longer be encouraged to almost always immediately drop cloak to get additional chain-stabs (though this would importantly still be an option).
For the proposed rework for the kunai, I think it's really interesting! However, I think that straight up preventing the knife's usage for 10 seconds is overkill. I think that rather than a straight up blockage of use, you could do either one or both of a temporary stacking healing reduction that affects all healing including the kunai to prevent constant HP refilling, or a temporary stacking attack speed debuff that will obviously make it a lot harder to get off these insane chainstabs. These will both reduce the effective ability to chainstab while also allowing it to occur and letting the knife keep most of its identity. The numbers can be tweaked as well
Instead of the knife being unavailable for 10 seconds, here's an alternative : After kill : Knife becomes bloody. When knife is bloody, its health on kill is disabled. You need to deploy the knife again to clean it. Knife takes thrice as much time to deploy.
It's strange how most kunai spies lose a specific weapon. They have no ranged options, like a weaker sniper rifle. It's strange how valve didn't give spy a ranged option.
10:40 why don't disable the health on kill for these 10 seconds, instead of the entire weapon, so it becomes a game, of "i have enough health to kill other person?"
I've kind of been wanting a knife that gives you benefits when disguised and cloaked. Be it some damage reduction when disguised, faster disguising, faster cloaking, or quieter cloaking. The Conniver's Kunai feels like something that could be a good fit for this, but I'm not too sure how I'd do it. Perhaps it'd be like an Eyelander, where kills will improve those variables (instead of a stacking speed boost).
nerfing the kunai in the way you propose in this video is more or less the exact same way that valve took away an entire aspect of spy's kit in the ambassador as an interesting and unique addition to his kit. by removing his ability to get multiple stabs, you're essentially reinforcing the idea that spy is just a worse version of the sniper. in fact, i'd say the only interesting part to playing spy these days are the cool things you can do with the kunai in regards to chaining stabs together. it's hard to really understand it at first, but there's a bit of an art to moving around in this game and weaving your movement with damage surfing. the kunai facilitates this aspect of spy's skill ceiling and although it is indeed frustrating to play against spies who farm your teammates, i still can appreciate it as (possibly the only) interesting part of spy's kit. if anything, i'd say it's fine as it is personally, as killing the weakest class in the game twice (in the case of the dead ringer) is not a hard feat.
I mean there's not a whole lot to say. It destroys buildings slower and costs the engineer a negligeble amount of metal if not removed in time. It's major upside is accidental: It's on the building for longer, so engineers have to wait before replacing their stuff.
It's an effective side grade, what is there to talk about? It doesn't destroy as quickly but it's more disruptive to the engineer -- an engineer that removes a stock sapper before it destroys a building pays a small amount of metal, an engineer that removes a RTR after only a couple of seconds has to spend 200 metal to upgrade again, and the sentry needs to re-play its build animation too, which disables it for longer even after the sapper is removed. In other words, it's fine how it is.
The Kunai to me always felt like a reverse niche weapon where it does well in 90% of the games as they will always have inexperienced players Spy can leech of, much to the frustration of the experienced players who know these tricks. I also agree that it teaches Spies the wrong things, rewarding mindless agression and not how to back away properly. The idea of the knife being unaviable after a stab is interesting but maybe a bit too much. Perhaps just putting the healing itself on a cooldown (sort of like a meter fill on damage weapon but reversed) would already do the trick. On a sidenote my favourite counter for it has to be to just shoot em up close with a disguised enforcer shot as that one does exactly 72 damage and ignores the DR defense. Grilling them is fine too. Also generally speaking I have to say I appreciate it when people maining ceirtain classes openly talk about their issues, makes discussion about the game more open in my views, I for example even as a Pyro main despise the scorch shot and always advocate for it to be split in 2 like the escape plan back in the day.
@@artifactU I thought about it as such that one flaregun has knockback (even more so on burning targets) where the other does the bounce and explode thing, tho the explosion only happens after it first hits somebody. When it comes to the stats themselves (like damage and afterburn) I never gave it too much though but I stand by the split idea. Sometimes I really want the knockback of the Scorch shot but it feels cheap for it to have two really strong properties.
@@dernamenlosefan theres already another flare gun which explodes that being the detonator, i dont see why you would need to make another exploding flare gun
@@artifactU There's a difference between remote and auto detonation. Not to mention that the bounce and setting an enemy on fire twice is the point of it, not just the explosion. The bounce actually allows Pyro to hit a target with two full power axetinguisher hits and spreads fire easier in a crowd as you don't have to time the detonation.
Outside of situations where you lose out on critical hits, don't most the Frontier Justice's risks get nullified by the Gunslinger? You get an HP bump so you're not quite as squishy. You can easily replace the mini-sentry when it's destroyed before going on a rampage.
I think another way to balance the Kunai would be to keep it as it is right now, but you can only get the health on kill once every 10 seconds. This would allow for chainstabs still but wouldn't let Kunai spies have infinite health packs.
As someone who now has 1000 hours and mostly played spy on casual or other community servers, I tried using the Kunai and I just found it unbearable to play spy with a base line of 75 hp instead of the usual 125. I also tried using it with the dead ringer and I found it even more unbearable because once the players know you're using the dead ringer, they'll continue to hunt for you until you are dead. So now whenever I play as spy, I mostly go with playing the stock knife, ambassador (for head shots if I'm in a pickle), and stock invis watch. I also try my hand with the big earner and while I wasn't the best with it, I found it way more enjoyable than with the kunai for chainstabs because funny vroom vroom.
Idea: Just like other items being paired with others giving a special effect like scouts "milkman", spy would have the Kunai and Deadringer paired would make his health even LOWER at 50 but he wont take falldamage 2x the height he would take the same fall damage
It does makes sense to make it unavailable for limited time if you think that when ninjas used kunais to kill from distance, it was also 1 time usage. I doesn't need to make it fully unavailable for the player to use, it could be just the backstab function that would need to cooldown
Its fine on spy since hes the weakest class and its a melee weapon that requires you to get a back stab to gain its upsides which is harder than just meleeing someone normally. Spy is already punished to hard for things outside of his control, to easily killed by bullshit, this helps remedy that to an extent.
I cannot possibly describe the catharsis I felt watching this video, pausing and speaking aloud my frustrations about the Kunai + Deadringer combo before each talking point, only to unpause and have you describe that EXACT problem from the perspective of a Spy main immediately after. Just super on-the-ball, honestly. I mean you already spoke about all of this in the video, but that aspect of helplessly watching the Kunai + Deadringer Spy, knowing EXACTLY what they're doing and what they want to do, and basically having to stop playing the video game to attempt to prevent them from running over your team, is precicely how it feels experiencing the combo. It's only made even worse when they get the stab and all of the work you put in to stop them is immediately nullified. It genuinely feels like you might as well have just done nothing at all. Watching an enemy Spy not even ATTEMPT to play as an actual sneaky Spy is frustrating on a level that goes far beyond game balance or their actual tangible numbers on the scoreboard. It's simply not fun for anyone. And, yeah, all of this is an ice-cold take in today's TF2, but I will say I only recently (and independantly from community opinions) understood how painfully awful the combo is as a player who just got back into playing the game from a few years break. Coming back with much better overall gamesense than I did previously allowed me to see what was actually causing problems for me and my team... and if there was a Kunai + Deadringer spy in the game, it was almost always them. It's honestly baffling to me that I never noticed this when I used to play years ago. Awesome video.
The reason why your trickstab frag video has low view count is because people ain't gonna bother watching an average spy main when they can watch god tier spies doing crazy stuff
I like the kunai the way it is, it's so janky, it rewards agressive play but punishes you super hard for mistakes (atleast before the first bstab) good weapon to express skill imo
I just can't get behind using the Kunai. Every time I survive a fight using the Kunai, I just would have survived anyway if I was using any other knife.
i mean i turn kunais into scrap whenever i get them from item drops, so if it wasn't so annoying to go up against, i might stop throwing them in the trash
@@gekohno The playstyle of being hyper aggressive because backsta hitboxes are terrible and often result in facestabs? I agree this would be a bad change, but it still needs SOME form of nerf to it's health regaining power. Honestly a 3 second cooldown on the health regen of the knife would be better imho, since then it rewards the first kill, a chainstab is still gonna work out decently well because you gain the massive power of 210hp on a fast moving class.
I'd say the changes you purposed to the kunni is perfect but the dimond back maybe it needs a small nerf in causal tf2 not MvM, so an idea would be to lower the crits to mini-crits while either losing the damage penalty for mini-crit shots down to 5% or a different change would be it to turn it into the slow damage revolver holds 5 rounds in the chamber in stead of 6, add a damage increase of 15% when you have a mini crit shots. But to balance this it would have a 25% longer switch speed and your knife is out you take 15% more damage so that initial stab is harder to get. :D
Oh, so apparently, Spy isn't allowed to have a dom/sub class while every other class is.... Seems like everyone else wants Spy to keep being an easy kill. #FixTF2
Yea but then again, why is it the spy or the kunai’s fault that bad players are losing. I’m not even a spy main, I’ve tried playing him and it is very hard to use the kunai. BAD players are meant to lose
This idea is nice, but I feel it is a bit too radical I would just decrease the attack speed and add back the health scaling with target health to encourage picking targets
It would be pretty cool if you could throw the knife putting it on a 10 second cool down (cannot be restored with ammo packs) and dealing like 80 - 100 dmg
I also think it punishes mistakes on mid level players way too much basically causing a slip off to kill 2 more teammates while allowing the spy to get away, making kill binding an actual last resort you might use unironically, not to mention overheal just being mean to non Huo heavies
The Phlog sucks, and I get it, but the Phlog is basically like the Kunai, punished you because your dumb teammates don't pay attention too the constant burning noises, with the Phlog not having Airblast it ends up being pretty bad
I'm telling ya, eventually if Valve ever nerfs Kunai, Big Earner will become new "OMG GUYS THIS IS SO LE HECKING OP GUYS1!1!1 HE SHOULDN'T RUN SO FAST1!1!1" Kunai was just next weapon on chopping point after Amby nerf and after people thought DB is op, ao they search for more weapons to critique
100hp spy can't just tank 2 rockets and then stab the new player. The DB is 100% OP because of how it rewards simply playing spy with an instant 100 damage with no fall-off.
@@artifactU That's not the problem, the problem is people either nitpicking *weakest aah class* or worse jumping on a bandwagon of opinion created by one Tf2uber.
Hated the kunai even before the amby nerf. Went from a pretty cool unique weapon to…. Mainly every non-new player spy using it because it’s just free value in casual.
You should make a April fools video talking about how to counter engineer but saying bad way to counter him and lose. you also could ask uncle Dane to do the same thing with spy
People are really overstating this thing. It's Spy's only decent knife and Spy is a very underpowered class. Yes, I know he is "supposed to be", but even for those standards, he still is. And so what if he has a "super high skill celing brute force" option. GOOD! It's like what yous did to kill the Ambassador and also want to RUIN Sniper. Yous just want high skill ceiling people to get their weapons nerfed to the ground so you can W + M1 in peace. It is VERY easy to kill a Kunai spy.
Fr I like never in my life had a problem with a kunai spy. One was kinda annoying one match but that's just us losing and him being good. I think that people just don't register when they easily kill a spy but if he gets away or even god-forbid trickstabs them they get angry and only remember and think about that interactions.
@@heavydutydavid5020 Personally I don't think Spy should be able to eat more fire than a heavy-medic combo. It also leads to degenerate gameplay where you're better off waiting until you run out of bad teammates for him to stab before you start trying to kill him cause otherwise you make 0 progress.
I disagree. While I do understand that this weapon allows some spies to absolutely steamroll whole teams, it also puts your mistake allowance through the floor. Happened to stand next to a soldier while invisible when he just so happened to conveniently rocket jump? You're dead. Did dannygonzalez2013 happen to throw a pipe in your general direction just because he felt like it? You're dead. Sniper decides to throw an arrow in a chokepoint. Guess what? You're dead. What I'm trying to say is that while the Kunai has high highs, it also has low lows. You're at the lowest health threshold in the game. Pretty much everything can kill you. At least with the other knives, like Stock and Big Earner allows you to go invis and potentially survive, since the Invis Watch gives you a 20% damage resistance. But because you're so weak with the Kunai, that rarely comes into play. Also, saying that a certain weapon is strong because your teammates are stupid isn't a good way of determining balance. By that logic, every single snowball weapon in the game is busted and should be nerfed, because it can snowball by feeding off of bad players, whilst simultaneously nullifying their main downsides. Hell, the Half-Zatoichi is basically the Kunai but for Demo, which allows you to get a ton of overheal, whilst also having a shield with extra resistances against fire and explosives AND a grenade launcher, and yet I don't see people complaining about that weapon. Now when it comes to the Dead Ringer, it does increase your survivability and allows you to brute force your way to the enemy backline, whilst still feeding off of bad players. But if they are so bad that they don't heal the loud AF decloak and don't even notice the limping scout crouch jumping across the battlefield, I'm pretty sure they would have gotten steamrolled anyways if you played literally any other class, used any other watch like Stock or C&D, or if you used any other knife, like Stock or the Big Earner. Even its upside of health on kill isn't as insane as people make it out to be. If you don't kill a high health player, like a Medic or a Demo, you are still vulnerable to a lot of things, like crit melees and headshots. If you kill someone of low priority, like a low health Scout, if you're the guy who cloaks instantly after every kill, you'll end up barely above the health of stock with only a few seconds to make use of that extra health before it goes under 125 and you go back to having a knife that increases your risk for no crazy upside. Ultimately, the Kunai increases the risk you have before a stab, and lowers it after you get a stab. If you have good enough movement, you can largely circumvent the downside it has, which means that the person using it is skilled. And I don't know about you, but awarding someone with a higher reward because they happened to overcome a certain obstacle seems pretty fair to me.
9:14 yeah this definitely wasn't just a 10 hour player, but it's ok if you lie since your child viewerbase doesn't question anything you say in these videos anyways 😅
Additional have your watched a new player play Spy, they're obviously worse but they use their gun, the stupid knife shenanigans are what they're used to, a new player would follow common sense
The stat change will make the weapon feel unfun to use. You basically created garden warfare chomper, and in that game chomping sombody is the most unviable move you can do (yeah its still useful, but the intent was to make this his primary move, whilst in reality its useful in extremely specific scenarios)
Chomping someone only sucks because it leaves you slow and unable to fight back for several seconds, whereas this change still allows you to move at full speed and fight back with your gun
@@jblazerndrowzy your gun will only be able to pick 1 more guy. if the stab didnt make everyone notice you, the gun tottaly would. basically instead of consciously retreating youre forced to retreat onces theres more than 1-2 (MAYBE 3 if youre lucky) guys
@@jblazerndrowzy the icle works because it grants you immunity, which overhealth doesnt. so every elemntal known to man will chip your garnted overheal away
I think disabling the ability to backstab for 10 seconds would feel too bad and clunky, but thinking about cooldowns i thought about why not just add a 4-5 second cooldowns on the ability to gain hp. If u kill someone alone and someone else sees you, u can get killed (even if u still get someoje else in quick succession), but if u stab someone alone, take damage, and wait, the next stab would still give you the benefit of the weapon. Edit. Addition i thought about is at the same time you stab one person 2 cooldowns start: The 4 seconds cooldown on overhealth that's universal, so can't be reset or sped up. A new 4 second cooldown that locks your hp, so no over health drain, plus this one can be reset by consecutive backstabs. So the weapon would work something like this. First stab both cooldowns start (you are at 200hp) you get the overhealth and you don't drain it, if you stab someone 2 seconds after the first one, your cooldown for the hp lock goes back to 4 but no new overhealth is gained ( so know you are at 200 hp and have a new 4 seconds until this hp starts to drain, and 2 seconds until your next victim gives you more over health)
Also want to add that I say 4 seconds would be the best because from other games experience, 4 seconds on a cooldown it's still fast so it doesn't feel like a one time thing, but also leaves a more than enough gap to kill a SPY from all things.
About Proposed changes section, IMO the 10 second inability to stab on kill downside feels overkill, I am aware of getting extreme amount of health on kill and so I suggest reducing the overheal from reaching 3x of your health to 2.5x so you can still be a tad bit aggressive but you still won't be able to chain stab players. also bruh really gonna chain stab everyone IRL with the post outro part
i think it should be you dont get a health pack for 10 seconds instead of the knife is fully UNUSEABLE for 10 whole seconds, this feels like a bit of over nerfing it
Reminder that my proposed changes are not gospel
(some people have suggested that the healing simply has a cooldown instead of the knife itself)
🙏
In my opinion a good nerf would be making the healing have a cooldown. For example, the first backstab would heal you as normal, but any subsequent backstab in a 5 - 10 second period wouldn't (kind of similar function to hard damage in ultrakill). This would deal with the tanking a lot of damage, while not removing chainstabs. Altho making it more different from the big earner is also a good idea.
Didn't like your proposed changes so I wrote my own, but not retreading it so I'll copy and paste it for your suggestion pleasures:
- Insted of 70 health, make it 100 (this was a good change)
- Backstabs now build up a "counter"
- When killed, all counters are removed and for each "Soul count" you gain 50 health on respawn (totalling 250), but the kunai is unavailable for 10 seconds. (Ammo doesn't give it back faster)
- CANNOT CLOAK OR HAVE CLOAK OUT WHEN USING THIS KNIFE (Don't worry this is not gonna be just a nerf)
- Can throw your kunai for a "ranged backstab" with right click (think sandman projectile). Will instant kill enemies if hit in the back or head. 10 seconds of cooldown if thrown, (Ammo doesn't respawn it)
Yes it is basically a "second deadringer" for concept wise with a ranged possiblity but.. I think removing the overheal for "stored health" is the way to go.
your proposed changes are _really_ interesting but they would completely ruin chainstab potential
the big earner kinda works, but you will run out of health eventually, no matter how bad the teams are
Eh, if the problem lies in pubstomping and extremely risky in a pro lobby, your balance proposal is acceptable. Except maybe instead of removing the kunai entirely, you can only leech every 10 seconds, and -80% healing from all source, the either go big or go home weapon. But I'm not a Spy main and I'm afraid it will just become a better YER and inferior Big Earner so idk.
i wish valve would break their hiatus to do one thing, just buff the diamondback, then dip for another 8 years
That would be hilarious
The ultimate troll
And nerf the Bison
@@TheManinBlack9054 No, please, my baby has been nerfed enough, leave it alone.
W Valve, so tired of people whining about weakest class, seeing spy become viable might even make me become spy main 😂
instead of removing the ability to stab after a stab, just give spy a heal cooldown, it'd be better than not being able to stab while still staying alive
That would actually fix the issue
Spy can still gain a huge health buff from the enemy and it would still increase his survivability
And with the health cool down killing the kunai wielding spy wouldn't become such a chore
Like the way the kunai is right now makes it nearly impossible to kill a good spy player
I agree, only being able to stab ONE person may be a little harsh and probably (almost) nobody would use it anymore. A cooldown to the ability to heal yourself may help to solve the problem while not completely destroying the weapon in the process.
I’d agree to this. A ten second cooldown on it being able to leech health. I think that’d work with the other proposed changes
i wish that the kunai did just steal the exact health of the victim that way you want to prioritize healthy players more.
good idea 🐓
That’s how it was on launch, but it made the weapon unreliable and nobody used it. Kind of hard to believe now but that was the case back then.
Uh guys why does the spy have 520 health?
He killed our overhealed heavy
Uh oh
@@Fard-worshidderk74kid named overheal cap :
@@imabird1566oh yeah, the old cap was at 195
Reminder:the spy not only has the kunai but SPY HAS A GUN
The letrange is almsot mandatory with the dead ringer to make it refill faster, hence why kunai spies suck with gunplay because they don't use it to get kills, but just to fuel their aggresive playstyle
@@wile123456as a gunspy main, it's not even close to necessary. You just gotta uncloak as early as it is safe to do so and be somewhat careful until it's back. The l'etranger just limits your DPS too hard for that to be a particularly good gunspy choice but it does have the massive upside of making it incredibly hard to die (which does count for something when you're not necessarily trying to get outright kills). But it really just isn't necessary for the watch to be good
@@OmegaRC59 For good players, but remember, spies that try and abuse the DR and Kunai are 90% of the time, terrible.
13:09 so nice of Jonto to keep making videos even though he is in the backrooms
Sorry for putting him there
It's really gotten to his head, you can hear by the end he turns into yoda.
hows the signal down there
TIL that the Kunai's healing scales with the victims health. I don't think I've ever seen a Kunai Spy not get 210 health form a stab...
Actually, being a Heavy Main, that makes a lot of sense.
Heavy main? Nice
Heavy main? Liar.
a wild Lonqudor appeared
Hi LQ :3
Wow it’s the hit tutuber lonqudor
I find it interesting to think about how a weapon like the Kunai, a ninja weapon, ended up with its stats. My theory is that, at some point, they were trying to make the whole "ninja substitution" work (when a ninja avoids an attack by swapping places with something else, with fantastical representations effectively being a teleport). It didn't work out, perhaps due to similarities to the Dead Ringer, so it may have been generalized to "way to survive being attacked", which became the stats we know now. My pipe dream for the weapon would be a total rework into something more appropriately ninja-like.
Like the YER...
in real life kunai are primarily throwing knives with stabbing being their "secondary" function, so i almost wonder if at some point in development they made attempts for a knife that Spy can throw but has some kinda cooldown like sandman maybe. probably got cut for conceptually sounding too difficult to balance and still make fun, while also probably costing a decent amount of dev time. not to mention Spy seems to be valve's most experimented class, as we've seen removed features like Spy's support buildings
@@Explosion_Mage Funnily enough, the Kunai being "thrown" would be a way to conceptually justify Jonto's 10 second cooldown stat. Of course not talking about actually having it as a mechanic, but the idea that they're disposable can still work out.
I've had the idea for years: Spy needs a throwing weapon. It could work!!!!
Trying to give the Spy a Sombra teleport? I kinda want to see that as a watch, as replacing your ability to go invis sounds like a fair trade.
The only problem with the new kunai that I can find is the fact that 10 seconds is an incredibly long time to wait just to get one more stab, given that the majority of the time the knife is the only thing spy should use going into a fight
I think it should either be lowered to 5 seconds, which still prevents chainstabs but doesn't feel boring or punishing for the spy, or allow ammo pickups to refill in the same way that the spycicle does
How about a slower swing speed instead.
*Ahem* spy has a gun.
Seriously yes his knife is his most powerful weapon going into a fight but once you use that. 5 or 10 second cool down doesn't matter. Your best chance is pulling out that revolver and firing at the enemy to keep them off your tail.
_"...knife is the only thing spy should use going into a fight"_
YOU HAVE ALERTED THE HORDE
How about that the overheal you gain wont drain of you are clocked
if you allow it to refill its meter with ammo, then you would be able to pick up enemy ammo and it would be the same exact thing all over again
Personal opinion on Kunai reform: Let it always backstab, give it the guaranteed 210 hp, however put the health gain ability on a 10 second cooldown.
I like this suggestion, it forces you to either flee or try to make as much use of the extra health
damn, looks like we think alike.
Kinda feels like the Big Earner then, but I guess the advantage is in like how people can’t really tell if you’re using the stock watch or C&D. They won’t know until you pull it out, so they need to guess if you’re going to be tanky or fast
I feel like 10 seconds is a little too long
I'd say more like 5 seconds
It still allows the spy to die
Yet it isn't too punishing for the spy itself
@@samueljo7910 Big Earner makes chain stabs easier (speed boost). This proposed change makes you less likely to die because someone else saw you start a trickstab.
Great video describing why exactly the Kunai is so disliked. I definitely felt the same way as you for a while about “feeling like people were overreacting” but it legitimately sucks to be punished for bad teammates especially when you can’t control them in a format like casual. I definitely could’ve touched more on that in my review of the weapon, I decided to go the Highlander route mainly though simply because I wanted to communicate how big of a difference in viability something can have when everyone is of equal skill. Again great video jonto, looking forward to more 🫡
eyelander, fronteir justice, diamondback, bazaar bargain, cleaners carbine, all banners, killing gloves of boxing, übersaw, vita-saw, soda-popper, half-zatoichi, persian persuader, tide turner, blackbox,pretty boy's pocket pistol and big earner all share punishing you for bad teammates just like the kunai. Most of which you have a much harder time countering or stopping/preventing than a spy. Then if we go with everyone being at the same skill level: beginners wouldn't get much use out of the kunai as they kept dying to easier classes and then miss their stabs after getting 1 or 2 backstabs at most. At the 1k hour mark the spy would know how to secure their kills but so would the enemy, as such they'd go pyro and you'd never see that spy again. Once they're all great players the spy would not get to do anything more than a single stab, just like in highlander.
The entire reason people are complaining about kunai in casual is because spy is much better than those they stab (if it's a trickstab else it's arguable) and no one is trying to stop them, not even the ones that complain. It's like they're just shooting at them with whatever they have thoughtlessly and then call it overpowered since that's enough to kill everything else. But add in just a little strategy and you'll kill the spy fairly easily
Kunai + deadringer + diamondback used to be my fav.. but now it's basically: "Phlog Pyro + Scorchshot + Power Hammer."
It became that set... that punishes bad players hard. But in pro's it just mildly annoys them and will pop you on sight.
I miss the old deadringer and diamondback since then the kunai would be less of a nuisance and more of a: "Well you found the moment"
Since without the speed boost, the kunai is MUCH MUCH MUCH more difficult to use. And remove the backstab bonus on Diamondback again.. and suddenly we are back at tactically managing your resources as a Kunai spy.
Insted of: "Spy go BRRR! HEALTH! CRITS!"
@@Psychicpie My guy tried to sneak in the vita saw in there
Oh hello there, mr Crab
@@Psychicpie Anything not on spy has the downside of no DR and no cloak. It also takes a fight to make use of them 99% of the time. The Kunai is legit able to steal hp and give the spy 210hp, and then he can either get another stab by using the jank of hitboxes, or just DR and run away, likely keeping his hp higher then base 125.
Yes, more Kunai slander, I live and breathe for it.
cool
Wow they really weren’t exaggerating
Kunai wins again ez NOOB stick on a stick down
@@CharaGonzalez-lt7yw
Spycicle supremacy
@@Turtleboilolstock supremacy
he is the spy from hit classic team defense fortress 2
How bout, instead of 10 seconds, you can half your time by getting a kill any other way, causing people to remember SPY HAS A GUN :)
Kunai > db crit > kunai > db crit >
:')
@@heianwood6119 I was about to comment "good idea" lol
@@heianwood6119 this is the true power of the combo spy
why stick to melee when you can do melee AND out-snipe snipers at the same time?
if the kunai only gets unusable after a backstab kill you could probaly fus ho dah a uber medic off upward then backstab his heavy to get only a 5 second cooldown
@@heianwood6119 honestly, if the diamondback were balanced, i would not be against that combo
If the dead ringer is making the kunai much worse, why not make it so that feigning a death gets rid of a majority of the spy's overheal?
Not a bad idea. It's already got built-in defense and speed buffs. Having it remove overheal shouldn't hurt the spy's general gameplay, and give the kunai a second-hand nerf without changing anything about how it's used.
Won't fix the initial problem just increase the risk. The problem isn't the overheal... since now he backstabs one person, gets an overheal, deadrings and goes vroooooom.
Ooh no he lost the health from the initial backstab.. that's okay.. since he would lose it anyway .
Now he has the high speed he needs to get the next stab easily and the overheal is back with avengence.
If anything... the deadringer is the main issue with kunai spy. Not the kunai itself.
Because before the deadringer changes... Kunai spy wasn't hated, it was just considered a different playstyle. One that rewards chain stabbing sure... but it didn't make em go vroom. Also the big earner was considered bad in those days XD
@@kotlolishIf you get rid of the dead ringer's speed boost it'd be kinda trash. You'd need to buff it elsewhere. Either in resistances or charge time.
As far as i remember the deadringer wasnt hated before they added the speed.
I think they should just revert it back to when it let you fake being backstabbed and let you tank spawncampers.
Just remove the free speed and its atleast not rewarding the Spy for tanking just letting him survive tanking.
@@kotlolish Agree that the DR is the main issue with the kunai but the kunai technically is a weapon with no downsides if you're good with it.
(In the same way the 3rd degree is also a straight upgrade despite also not being overpowered or unfun to fight)
They should at the very least add some persistent downside even when you're buffed.
They could keep the upsides as is.
Like maybe not being able to see enemy health to emphesize sneaking.
The Kunai is one of those weapons that are useless when you aren’t good at the game. But extremely powerful when you play like a pro.
Nah it’s a weapon that’s useless if your opponents are pros at the game but extremely powerful when they aren’t good at the game.
8:41 Hay that guy seems familiar!
tf2 players would eat glass before calling this weapon by its full name
Be honest, do you call it by it’s full name?
@@minibotas9496 not usually, but if you’re gonna make a video about the weapon it would be nice if it was at least listed in text, it makes my OCD very unhappy
@@orangejuice8279 You dont have an ocd. That is not how it works...
@@mendyshelios0451 ur arguing semantics, my point is that it kinda bothers me how it’s never called “The Conniver’s Kunai”
Also you don’t know me lmao
@@orangejuice8279 People are "pretending" to have an OCD. A real OCD makes you daily life miserable.
What you have is just impulse of needed perfection.
Also you meant to write?, - "You Do not know me, laughing my ass off." ?
It’s a pub stomping weapon. That’s it.
That's the thing, pub stomping sucks, for the new players they hate getting pub stomped, as anyone would, but for the veterans, in casual play the pub stomper is usually the best pick, it's uninteresting for the player, and lame for everyone else. Plus, Spy HAS a pub stomper already that's much colder: The Big Earner.
very cool
Very cool
Cool it is much
very cool
Coolness
Very much
Montage where instead of there being trickstabs, it’s instead accidental trickstabs that were “totally on purpose”
Really enjoyed the pacing in this one. Good job with the editing!
0:15 [ A I R B L A S T ]
I have a proposition:
Instead of completely removing the ability to chain stab, I propose that the healing / over-healing effect itself is on a 10 second cool-down. So whenever you backstab you will get all the healing and over-health for the first enemy, but not for any of the following enemies in that encounter. This means it would give you a choice of using that extra health to play more aggressively and get a few more picks at the risk of getting getting shut down, or choosing to use the extra health as an escape tool if you're caught out in a rough situation.
This would also serve as complimentary to the deadringer, as at the cost of on-demand cloak the deadringer would allow for them to make a more convincing "death". It would allow spies to adopt a more aggressive playstyle without being overwhelming. It makes it easier to make the choice to use the extra health to be agressive, then when you dip below half you can use the deadringer to get out of that tough spot and make your "death" more convincing. Because of the cooldown as well, they would no longer be encouraged to almost always immediately drop cloak to get additional chain-stabs (though this would importantly still be an option).
For the proposed rework for the kunai, I think it's really interesting! However, I think that straight up preventing the knife's usage for 10 seconds is overkill. I think that rather than a straight up blockage of use, you could do either one or both of a temporary stacking healing reduction that affects all healing including the kunai to prevent constant HP refilling, or a temporary stacking attack speed debuff that will obviously make it a lot harder to get off these insane chainstabs. These will both reduce the effective ability to chainstab while also allowing it to occur and letting the knife keep most of its identity. The numbers can be tweaked as well
Instead of the knife being unavailable for 10 seconds, here's an alternative :
After kill : Knife becomes bloody. When knife is bloody, its health on kill is disabled.
You need to deploy the knife again to clean it.
Knife takes thrice as much time to deploy.
I feel like usually when i think a weapon is op and then i try to use it i realise that the people using it are just really good at the game
It's strange how most kunai spies lose a specific weapon. They have no ranged options, like a weaker sniper rifle.
It's strange how valve didn't give spy a ranged option.
0:45 I should get a name tag and call my kunai "no johns"
I love how you include funny comments made on your community posts!
10:40 why don't disable the health on kill for these 10 seconds, instead of the entire weapon, so it becomes a game, of "i have enough health to kill other person?"
5:10 or, because the spy wiggled his mouse funny and the game counts his butterknife to your face as a backstab.
I've kind of been wanting a knife that gives you benefits when disguised and cloaked. Be it some damage reduction when disguised, faster disguising, faster cloaking, or quieter cloaking. The Conniver's Kunai feels like something that could be a good fit for this, but I'm not too sure how I'd do it. Perhaps it'd be like an Eyelander, where kills will improve those variables (instead of a stacking speed boost).
12:00 amazing! I never thought the kunai could be the change for the spy to finally have noob friendly unlocks
0:21 pyro really hit a x10 kamehameha
nerfing the kunai in the way you propose in this video is more or less the exact same way that valve took away an entire aspect of spy's kit in the ambassador as an interesting and unique addition to his kit. by removing his ability to get multiple stabs, you're essentially reinforcing the idea that spy is just a worse version of the sniper. in fact, i'd say the only interesting part to playing spy these days are the cool things you can do with the kunai in regards to chaining stabs together. it's hard to really understand it at first, but there's a bit of an art to moving around in this game and weaving your movement with damage surfing. the kunai facilitates this aspect of spy's skill ceiling and although it is indeed frustrating to play against spies who farm your teammates, i still can appreciate it as (possibly the only) interesting part of spy's kit. if anything, i'd say it's fine as it is personally, as killing the weakest class in the game twice (in the case of the dead ringer) is not a hard feat.
0:06 wallpaper material right there
Yes the kunai is ballanced, but the diamondback? Hell nah
We don’t talk about the diamondback
@@bottleneck-5548He's the problem child
put crit falloff on dimondback pls
diamondback would be fine if they didnt nerf amby tbh
Use the amby
can we talk about Red Tape Recorder now?
True
Not bad. But not powerful neither
I mean there's not a whole lot to say. It destroys buildings slower and costs the engineer a negligeble amount of metal if not removed in time. It's major upside is accidental: It's on the building for longer, so engineers have to wait before replacing their stuff.
It's an effective side grade, what is there to talk about? It doesn't destroy as quickly but it's more disruptive to the engineer -- an engineer that removes a stock sapper before it destroys a building pays a small amount of metal, an engineer that removes a RTR after only a couple of seconds has to spend 200 metal to upgrade again, and the sentry needs to re-play its build animation too, which disables it for longer even after the sapper is removed.
In other words, it's fine how it is.
The Kunai to me always felt like a reverse niche weapon where it does well in 90% of the games as they will always have inexperienced players Spy can leech of, much to the frustration of the experienced players who know these tricks.
I also agree that it teaches Spies the wrong things, rewarding mindless agression and not how to back away properly.
The idea of the knife being unaviable after a stab is interesting but maybe a bit too much. Perhaps just putting the healing itself on a cooldown (sort of like a meter fill on damage weapon but reversed) would already do the trick.
On a sidenote my favourite counter for it has to be to just shoot em up close with a disguised enforcer shot as that one does exactly 72 damage and ignores the DR defense.
Grilling them is fine too.
Also generally speaking I have to say I appreciate it when people maining ceirtain classes openly talk about their issues, makes discussion about the game more open in my views, I for example even as a Pyro main despise the scorch shot and always advocate for it to be split in 2 like the escape plan back in the day.
can you explain your idea of spliting the scorch shot into 2? that sounds kinda intresting
@@artifactU I thought about it as such that one flaregun has knockback (even more so on burning targets) where the other does the bounce and explode thing, tho the explosion only happens after it first hits somebody.
When it comes to the stats themselves (like damage and afterburn) I never gave it too much though but I stand by the split idea.
Sometimes I really want the knockback of the Scorch shot but it feels cheap for it to have two really strong properties.
@@dernamenlosefan theres already another flare gun which explodes that being the detonator, i dont see why you would need to make another exploding flare gun
@@artifactU There's a difference between remote and auto detonation.
Not to mention that the bounce and setting an enemy on fire twice is the point of it, not just the explosion.
The bounce actually allows Pyro to hit a target with two full power axetinguisher hits and spreads fire easier in a crowd as you don't have to time the detonation.
< The Big Earner.
It’s always back time!
That's what we call a callBACK
(Also yes i know wrong Mann's guide)
@@ธนโชติธะนะหมี BACK to basics with this one!
These replies really take me *back* in time
Aerial back time
How did I only just notice that the cross on his necklace is two stock knives?
Ultrakill reference in a tf2 video?! 4:42
Outside of situations where you lose out on critical hits, don't most the Frontier Justice's risks get nullified by the Gunslinger?
You get an HP bump so you're not quite as squishy. You can easily replace the mini-sentry when it's destroyed before going on a rampage.
The your eternal reward is the best spy knife, i dont care how unbalanced the kunai is
The YER+l'entranger+the cloak and dagger is peak spy gameplay
BASED.
100% AGREE.
Kunai: I’m spies most broken weapon!
Dead Ringer: No I’m spies most broken weapon!
Diamondback: *whomst has summoned the ancient one?!*
3:04 IVE WAITED YEARS FOR SOMEONE TO SAY THAT
really good video, ur kunai suggestion was crazyyyy though.
3:15 That's more common than you think.
War Thunder is one example of a game where this is incredibly punishing.
2:54 "they didnt out smarted or out maneuvered you" then proceeds to out smart and out maneuver the soldier....
I think another way to balance the Kunai would be to keep it as it is right now, but you can only get the health on kill once every 10 seconds. This would allow for chainstabs still but wouldn't let Kunai spies have infinite health packs.
Just found you through the talk with Uncle Dane. Great job, great editing. And I’m going to use this to counter spies better ;)
3:26 There I am, Gary! There I am!
9:13 this feels like watching a leach who has just touched sult throw around its body in pain
9:13 honestly think he might have just been a new player
New players use the gun
As someone who now has 1000 hours and mostly played spy on casual or other community servers, I tried using the Kunai and I just found it unbearable to play spy with a base line of 75 hp instead of the usual 125. I also tried using it with the dead ringer and I found it even more unbearable because once the players know you're using the dead ringer, they'll continue to hunt for you until you are dead. So now whenever I play as spy, I mostly go with playing the stock knife, ambassador (for head shots if I'm in a pickle), and stock invis watch.
I also try my hand with the big earner and while I wasn't the best with it, I found it way more enjoyable than with the kunai for chainstabs because funny vroom vroom.
Same here except I'm more of a L'etrenger guy
I WAS going to go to bed, but I'm watching this now.
I do nit regret this decision.
Putting all the music used into the description in chronological order makes me happy. Should be the minimum, but is kinda rare nowdays. Great video!
1:29 btd6 music :]
Idea: Just like other items being paired with others giving a special effect like scouts "milkman", spy would have the Kunai and Deadringer paired would make his health even LOWER at 50 but he wont take falldamage 2x the height he would take the same fall damage
Stop looking at kunai dr as a loadout and instead a subclass that forgoes most stealth
It does makes sense to make it unavailable for limited time if you think that when ninjas used kunais to kill from distance, it was also 1 time usage.
I doesn't need to make it fully unavailable for the player to use, it could be just the backstab function that would need to cooldown
Its fine on spy since hes the weakest class and its a melee weapon that requires you to get a back stab to gain its upsides which is harder than just meleeing someone normally. Spy is already punished to hard for things outside of his control, to easily killed by bullshit, this helps remedy that to an extent.
man that was awesome, so well put together, really enjoyable
This knife is only good when your enemies are complete idiots, that is why i use the stock knife, always reliable... also skins
Same
I cannot possibly describe the catharsis I felt watching this video, pausing and speaking aloud my frustrations about the Kunai + Deadringer combo before each talking point, only to unpause and have you describe that EXACT problem from the perspective of a Spy main immediately after. Just super on-the-ball, honestly.
I mean you already spoke about all of this in the video, but that aspect of helplessly watching the Kunai + Deadringer Spy, knowing EXACTLY what they're doing and what they want to do, and basically having to stop playing the video game to attempt to prevent them from running over your team, is precicely how it feels experiencing the combo. It's only made even worse when they get the stab and all of the work you put in to stop them is immediately nullified. It genuinely feels like you might as well have just done nothing at all. Watching an enemy Spy not even ATTEMPT to play as an actual sneaky Spy is frustrating on a level that goes far beyond game balance or their actual tangible numbers on the scoreboard. It's simply not fun for anyone.
And, yeah, all of this is an ice-cold take in today's TF2, but I will say I only recently (and independantly from community opinions) understood how painfully awful the combo is as a player who just got back into playing the game from a few years break. Coming back with much better overall gamesense than I did previously allowed me to see what was actually causing problems for me and my team... and if there was a Kunai + Deadringer spy in the game, it was almost always them. It's honestly baffling to me that I never noticed this when I used to play years ago.
Awesome video.
The reason why your trickstab frag video has low view count is because people ain't gonna bother watching an average spy main when they can watch god tier spies doing crazy stuff
I like the kunai the way it is, it's so janky, it rewards agressive play but punishes you super hard for mistakes (atleast before the first bstab)
good weapon to express skill imo
“Proposed changes”
Excuse me, what game have you been playing for the last 8 years?
everyone knows changes wont happen but thinking about stuff is fun
The production quality here is is crazy. Brilliant work!
7:46 "quck"
I just can't get behind using the Kunai. Every time I survive a fight using the Kunai, I just would have survived anyway if I was using any other knife.
Literally bro. I swear usually I'm doing waaay better if I have stock. Idk what people are ona out
3:44 what is this song i need it
I don't know the name but I think its from Mario 3D world
I also need it
every single upload impresses me with the quality of your editing. Amazing job mate.
If the kunai got the changes in this vid I would throw the knife in the trash and never use it again
Yeah it would completely remove the entire playstyle that people have put thousands of hours into mastering
i mean i turn kunais into scrap whenever i get them from item drops, so if it wasn't so annoying to go up against, i might stop throwing them in the trash
@@gekohno The playstyle of being hyper aggressive because backsta hitboxes are terrible and often result in facestabs? I agree this would be a bad change, but it still needs SOME form of nerf to it's health regaining power. Honestly a 3 second cooldown on the health regen of the knife would be better imho, since then it rewards the first kill, a chainstab is still gonna work out decently well because you gain the massive power of 210hp on a fast moving class.
@@Waskomsausefacestabs arent because of the hitboxes, its ping
@@WaskomsauseI would say just lower the max overheal because having cooldown on backstabs is ridiculous. Why use a knife that sucks so much ass
I'd say the changes you purposed to the kunni is perfect but the dimond back maybe it needs a small nerf in causal tf2 not MvM, so an idea would be to lower the crits to mini-crits while either losing the damage penalty for mini-crit shots down to 5% or a different change would be it to turn it into the slow damage revolver holds 5 rounds in the chamber in stead of 6, add a damage increase of 15% when you have a mini crit shots. But to balance this it would have a 25% longer switch speed and your knife is out you take 15% more damage so that initial stab is harder to get. :D
Oh, so apparently, Spy isn't allowed to have a dom/sub class while every other class is.... Seems like everyone else wants Spy to keep being an easy kill.
#FixTF2
10:28 what if they make back stabs give JUST 45 health it makes it manageable without being overpowered when having bad teammates
Yea but then again, why is it the spy or the kunai’s fault that bad players are losing. I’m not even a spy main, I’ve tried playing him and it is very hard to use the kunai. BAD players are meant to lose
Thank you
I agree with that, but good players shouldn't be directly punished because they have bad teammates
This idea is nice, but I feel it is a bit too radical
I would just decrease the attack speed and add back the health scaling with target health to encourage picking targets
I like how in the intro, Pyro was actually pronouncing the Japanese words, but the spy was just
*"what"*
Imo the Kunai is perfectly balanced. The issue comes not from the weapon itself, but the fact that your teammates are stupid.
It would be pretty cool if you could throw the knife putting it on a 10 second cool down (cannot be restored with ammo packs) and dealing like 80 - 100 dmg
Tf2 community: We hate the kunai!
Jonto: Uses it in every match
in the video he said that he had to go out of his way to use it
he clearly didn't watch the video or he did and saw kunai clips for demonstration purposes and went ooga booga hypocrite
I also think it punishes mistakes on mid level players way too much basically causing a slip off to kill 2 more teammates while allowing the spy to get away, making kill binding an actual last resort you might use unironically, not to mention overheal just being mean to non Huo heavies
0:26 false the phlog exists
He said *ONE* of the most hated weapons
But yeah phlog sucks ngl
The Phlog sucks, and I get it, but the Phlog is basically like the Kunai, punished you because your dumb teammates don't pay attention too the constant burning noises, with the Phlog not having Airblast it ends up being pretty bad
"There needs to be an escape plan"
My mind:
*insert TF2 item get sound here plus an image of the Escape Plan from TF2*
I'm telling ya, eventually if Valve ever nerfs Kunai, Big Earner will become new "OMG GUYS THIS IS SO LE HECKING OP GUYS1!1!1 HE SHOULDN'T RUN SO FAST1!1!1"
Kunai was just next weapon on chopping point after Amby nerf and after people thought DB is op, ao they search for more weapons to critique
oh no people have opinions we cant be having that now can we
100hp spy can't just tank 2 rockets and then stab the new player. The DB is 100% OP because of how it rewards simply playing spy with an instant 100 damage with no fall-off.
@@artifactU That's not the problem, the problem is people either nitpicking *weakest aah class* or worse jumping on a bandwagon of opinion created by one Tf2uber.
@@danielsurvivor1372 spy shouldnt be strong tho thats the problem
Hated the kunai even before the amby nerf. Went from a pretty cool unique weapon to…. Mainly every non-new player spy using it because it’s just free value in casual.
You should make a April fools video talking about how to counter engineer but saying bad way to counter him and lose. you also could ask uncle Dane to do the same thing with spy
People are really overstating this thing.
It's Spy's only decent knife and Spy is a very underpowered class.
Yes, I know he is "supposed to be", but even for those standards, he still is.
And so what if he has a "super high skill celing brute force" option. GOOD!
It's like what yous did to kill the Ambassador and also want to RUIN Sniper.
Yous just want high skill ceiling people to get their weapons nerfed to the ground so you
can W + M1 in peace. It is VERY easy to kill a Kunai spy.
Fr I like never in my life had a problem with a kunai spy. One was kinda annoying one match but that's just us losing and him being good. I think that people just don't register when they easily kill a spy but if he gets away or even god-forbid trickstabs them they get angry and only remember and think about that interactions.
The problem is it's not a high skill ceiling knife, it's a high skill floor knife. It's the captain facetank knife.
@@dojelnotmyrealname4018 And how exactly is that a problem???
@@hussar7733 Exactly, they also don't care how hard it is to get.
They cry for nothing
@@heavydutydavid5020 Personally I don't think Spy should be able to eat more fire than a heavy-medic combo. It also leads to degenerate gameplay where you're better off waiting until you run out of bad teammates for him to stab before you start trying to kill him cause otherwise you make 0 progress.
I disagree.
While I do understand that this weapon allows some spies to absolutely steamroll whole teams, it also puts your mistake allowance through the floor. Happened to stand next to a soldier while invisible when he just so happened to conveniently rocket jump? You're dead. Did dannygonzalez2013 happen to throw a pipe in your general direction just because he felt like it? You're dead. Sniper decides to throw an arrow in a chokepoint. Guess what? You're dead.
What I'm trying to say is that while the Kunai has high highs, it also has low lows. You're at the lowest health threshold in the game. Pretty much everything can kill you. At least with the other knives, like Stock and Big Earner allows you to go invis and potentially survive, since the Invis Watch gives you a 20% damage resistance. But because you're so weak with the Kunai, that rarely comes into play.
Also, saying that a certain weapon is strong because your teammates are stupid isn't a good way of determining balance. By that logic, every single snowball weapon in the game is busted and should be nerfed, because it can snowball by feeding off of bad players, whilst simultaneously nullifying their main downsides. Hell, the Half-Zatoichi is basically the Kunai but for Demo, which allows you to get a ton of overheal, whilst also having a shield with extra resistances against fire and explosives AND a grenade launcher, and yet I don't see people complaining about that weapon.
Now when it comes to the Dead Ringer, it does increase your survivability and allows you to brute force your way to the enemy backline, whilst still feeding off of bad players. But if they are so bad that they don't heal the loud AF decloak and don't even notice the limping scout crouch jumping across the battlefield, I'm pretty sure they would have gotten steamrolled anyways if you played literally any other class, used any other watch like Stock or C&D, or if you used any other knife, like Stock or the Big Earner.
Even its upside of health on kill isn't as insane as people make it out to be. If you don't kill a high health player, like a Medic or a Demo, you are still vulnerable to a lot of things, like crit melees and headshots. If you kill someone of low priority, like a low health Scout, if you're the guy who cloaks instantly after every kill, you'll end up barely above the health of stock with only a few seconds to make use of that extra health before it goes under 125 and you go back to having a knife that increases your risk for no crazy upside.
Ultimately, the Kunai increases the risk you have before a stab, and lowers it after you get a stab. If you have good enough movement, you can largely circumvent the downside it has, which means that the person using it is skilled. And I don't know about you, but awarding someone with a higher reward because they happened to overcome a certain obstacle seems pretty fair to me.
9:14 yeah this definitely wasn't just a 10 hour player, but it's ok if you lie since your child viewerbase doesn't question anything you say in these videos anyways 😅
How would he know? The item servers were offline and I’m pretty sure tf2 doesn’t tell you how many hours each player has
Additional have your watched a new player play Spy, they're obviously worse but they use their gun, the stupid knife shenanigans are what they're used to, a new player would follow common sense
i think when i first started playing spy i saw a lot of people really liked the kunai and after 10 minutes i never touched it again
The stat change will make the weapon feel unfun to use. You basically created garden warfare chomper, and in that game chomping sombody is the most unviable move you can do (yeah its still useful, but the intent was to make this his primary move, whilst in reality its useful in extremely specific scenarios)
Chomping someone only sucks because it leaves you slow and unable to fight back for several seconds, whereas this change still allows you to move at full speed and fight back with your gun
@@jblazerndrowzy your gun will only be able to pick 1 more guy. if the stab didnt make everyone notice you, the gun tottaly would. basically instead of consciously retreating youre forced to retreat onces theres more than 1-2 (MAYBE 3 if youre lucky) guys
@@jblazerndrowzy the icle works because it grants you immunity, which overhealth doesnt. so every elemntal known to man will chip your garnted overheal away
@@Dr_Dan_ Yeah, at least you can run. With Chomper, you’re fucked no matter what the moment you eat a dude.
@@jblazerndrowzy equally unfun
I think disabling the ability to backstab for 10 seconds would feel too bad and clunky, but thinking about cooldowns i thought about why not just add a 4-5 second cooldowns on the ability to gain hp.
If u kill someone alone and someone else sees you, u can get killed (even if u still get someoje else in quick succession), but if u stab someone alone, take damage, and wait, the next stab would still give you the benefit of the weapon.
Edit.
Addition i thought about is at the same time you stab one person 2 cooldowns start:
The 4 seconds cooldown on overhealth that's universal, so can't be reset or sped up.
A new 4 second cooldown that locks your hp, so no over health drain, plus this one can be reset by consecutive backstabs.
So the weapon would work something like this.
First stab both cooldowns start (you are at 200hp) you get the overhealth and you don't drain it, if you stab someone 2 seconds after the first one, your cooldown for the hp lock goes back to 4 but no new overhealth is gained ( so know you are at 200 hp and have a new 4 seconds until this hp starts to drain, and 2 seconds until your next victim gives you more over health)
Also want to add that I say 4 seconds would be the best because from other games experience, 4 seconds on a cooldown it's still fast so it doesn't feel like a one time thing, but also leaves a more than enough gap to kill a SPY from all things.
my dog is dead
Two of mine are dead, but this is not the place to bring that up.
Bros like begging about his dead dog
3:18 isn't this like the whole point of the spy class? that he is meant to punish bad teamwork?
About Proposed changes section, IMO the 10 second inability to stab on kill downside feels overkill, I am aware of getting extreme amount of health on kill and so I suggest reducing the overheal from reaching 3x of your health to 2.5x so you can still be a tad bit aggressive but you still won't be able to chain stab players.
also bruh really gonna chain stab everyone IRL with the post outro part
i think it should be you dont get a health pack for 10 seconds instead of the knife is fully UNUSEABLE for 10 whole seconds, this feels like a bit of over nerfing it
The voice acting in the beginning awoke a memory of those sonic fan videos and the "nothing personnel kid"