[TF2] Spy's Best Weapon
Вставка
- Опубліковано 23 січ 2023
- Giving the Kunai the undivided attention it deserves. No tangents, not even a single anime reference.
Raw's channel:
/ @rawtf2
Roommate's Twitter:
/ dannkatt
Rebalance Servers: badweaponrehab.tf/
Twitter: / fsoas_
Patreon: / fishstickonastick
Main Channel: / @fishstickonastick
Discord - / discord
Music used:
Sly 3 OST
Berserk OST - Guts
Hades OST - From Olympus
Oahu Beach Stroll - • Oahu Beach Stroll - n... - Ігри
![[TF2] How I Beat A TF2 World Record (sort of)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hEGRkJPNl_Y/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TF2] How I Beat A TF2 World Record (sort of)](/img/tr.png)
![[TF2] In Defense Of The Ambassador](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/odd5NY6UCR4/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TF2] Spy's Best Revolver](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oRqHCRSl-uw/mqdefault.jpg)
best spy strat, Diguise as a sniper, then stand on a spot doing nothing but jumping or spinning, then after a while that player you are disguised as gets kicked
Your strats confuse and frighten me, sir
I have actually tricked people on the enemy team by disguising as bots before. It's really fun until you get quick-scoped by the very bot you're disguised as.
Bro Satan is afraid of you.
Sounds like fun
Damn bro I’m trying that now.
something interesting about the kunai is the decreased overheal decay is a byproduct of the reduced max health. all classes typical overheal lasts for 15 seconds, that goes for both heavy's 150 and scout's 60, meaning it decays quicker the higher your max health pool is. since the kunai gives you double your max health in overheal, that's 4x more overheal than is typical, but 35 health decays in 15 seconds.
Thanks you for mentioning this it isn't spoken of enough. Another nearly inconsequential implication of the lower max health is that fall damage is also based on max health so a kunai spy will take the lowest fall damage in the game allowing them to stretch that 210 hp even further in certain edge cases.
Does this mean back in the days of 60 and 195, that it was over 4x the duration?
@@mywither7878 i think so, some values are weird with rounding (ie 125hp only gets 60 overheal, 175 gets 85, 200 gets 100, 300 gets 150, obviously it's not exactly 1.5) but since it's based on the decay rate of how fast 30 overheal would decay with the medigun's buff, and since 60 is a round number and it's just the kunai giving extra overheal, it should decay in ~67.5 seconds (not sure how the rounding would work, but that's an extra 6-8 seconds of overheal compared to the current kunai though 15 less hp simply because you have 10 less base health.)
Fishstick! You forgot to mention that the dead ringer grants you a 75% damage resistance AND a speed boost which means not only will you have more health than a heavy, but also be faster then a scout! Bahahaha.
OH MY GOD IT’S ACTUALLY THEWHAT!!
Sadly the Dr sucks so it isn't the best option for spy :(
@@randomperson7350 eh still powerful, it doesnt suck really
its still good, just not too infuriating to fight compared to its previous versions of having 90% damage resistance and can be recharged by ammo packs
@@RandomFurry07 its pretty solidly the worst Invis watch because you lose cloak on demand for a glorified damage sponge that takes 20 seconds to recharge
Little less if you use the cloak gun to get back your charge
I just kinda use the "Your Eternal Reward" because people falling for the disguise is hilarious to me
Chad
I use it cause I don't like hearing screams.
@@Legend-Of-The-Sun What do you mean? The only thing I hear is screams from my teammates to stop using it
@@altersfalter9559 i love the "your eternal reward", i only use it for targeting snipers
@@mackinaw_gamer yes! one of my favorite things to do is just meme on 2fort killing snipers
14:44
The acknowledgement of how cool Raw’s falling stab against one of his teammates was lol
He was so flabbergasted.
that was my clip :3c
@@rawccoon OMG IS THAT THE SUPER POPULAR POR- im mean tftuber
@@rawccoon Ok, will change comment accordingly
Kunai isn't a crutch for bad spies, it's a fucking jetpack for decent spies. At least we don't live in a dystopia where every spy uses the diamondback on top of the kunai. Great video as always fish.
Facts
And they don't all use the dead ringer...
I want to waterboard every single one of those fucking deadringer kunai diamondback spies who ALWAYS wear the cone hat (you know the one) and either the noh mercy or some bandana.
The diamondback situation is so sad because it's such an easy weapon to fix. Keep the crits on building destruction, ditch the crits on backstabs.
At the moment, the diamondback rewards kills with more kills, a really bad rich get richer snowball mechanic that should be avoided.
With just building destruction, the diamondback will actually reward you more kills for taking the less-kills route. It's perfect balance.
In general, a spy tries for two things before death or escape: engi nest busting or sick chainstabbing. It is *very rare* that spies can accomplish both of these things simultaneously.
So, if you were to make a reward for spy, reward one with the other, don't reward one with more of itself.
This could also be a decent way to buff the red tape recorder. The more backstabs you get in one life, the faster the red tape recorder deconstructs buildings. Rewarding kills with building destruction.
agreed, personally a spy main and run ambi stock watch and kunai the diamond back feels way too cheap so i don't run it and the deadringer is just for chainstab pub but far far more likely bad spies that compensate for there mistakes and those are the same spies that will get little out of the kunai compared to a good spy. however personally don't use it as i play on uncletopia and deadringer apart from covering for mistakes is far less flexable and effective if you know truly how to use the stock watch well. and just use ambi as i find headshoting fun and do it consistently enough to not have to justify to switch to stock revolver.
Fun fact: the Kunai was a gardening tool, similar in purpose to the trowel. It was used by ninjas, but primarily as a climbing tool, not as a weapon, although of course ninjas were trained to use whatever they could get their hands on in a pinch.
Fun fact Ninjas aren't real, at least not what you think
@@shmoking466 And how would you know what I think? I've heard others say the same. Invariably, they were mistaken.
didn't know that a trowel was used for climbing
@@shmoking466
Ninjas were real, just not the kind that pop culture portrays. For the most part they never did any of that edgy dark clothing nonsense over just dressing up as a normal farmer and shanking their target because it turns out that blending into the crowd Agent 47 style is a lot easier than trying to pull some weird shadow-stealth bullcrap that sticks out comically badly in daylight.
The dark clothed pop culture ninja image originated as a stage prop in kabuki theater (people dressed in all black to blend in with a black background to carry things as ancient special effects that emulate floating objects and whatnot) that people ended associating with ninjas because...it just looked cool despite having no correlation with ninjas whatsoever.
@@shmoking466ninja's are just basically spies. Whenever they backstabbed someone while disguising as a farmer they took their life essence and became stronger. the legendary Captain phase tank is the last remaining ninja alive today and he has absorbed the life essence of thousands of players.... I mean... Farmers
I love using the Spycicle. I just love making people into beautiful ice statues and it was the first strange knife I unboxed, so it holds a special place in my cold dead heart.
spycicle is the best gunspy (most fun way to play) knife as gunspy IGNORES the knife for a gun, so why not be immune to afterburn/pyro?
I just love spy-cicle bc I hate w+m1 pyro's when im playing Gunspy
I find that effect really cool too and I think the backstab sound is less noticeable than the default AAAAAAGHHHH
@@quotastrider801 true, Its also just a big middle finger to pyro's, once you use it you can safely gun down the pyro with your revolver
my heart is cold (BALLS)
my moves are bold (BALLS)
never get old (BALLS)
i save the world (BALLS)
Another thing with the kunai is that it meshes along with one of the other annoyances of spy, which is how unreliable and inconsistent the melee system and backstab recognition is and how unreliable spy is because of that. Sometimes some backstabs aren't even that well earned which makes the kunai all the more infuriating, besides it punishing everyone for the mistakes of few.
It's called the Big Earner, not the Well Earned 'er
Search circle strafing and the whole spy oriented community that investigates Spy's backstabbing potential.
It's the melee system's jankiness that caused facestabs.
Yeah the melee system is ass but I don't see any spies complaining about facestabs or stabbing the air and getting kills.
@@xXToxicXxification probably because spy gets fucked over by dumb hitbox mechanics, than the mechanics help him.
now there are hundreds of Spies who will name themselves "Captain Face Tank" after this video.
good.
Finally a worthy name
its not that funny
@@user-nn9gl6rv3h it is
You're getting rolled by kunai spies multiple times a week? I'm shocked whenever I see a decent spy.
Right? I'm far more worried about really good snipers deleting everyone from across the map to notice many spies doing well.
@@fujitachi I'm curious what you think is so bad about his arguments. Personally, I think its very agreeable. I'm of the opinion that it's both unfair and unfun to play against a good kunai spy because of how generally difficult it is to protect you own teammates from spies. Fish stick's proficiency with spy is not really relevant since most of the video is about why playing AGAINST a kunai spy is problematic.
@@fujitachi Thanks for elaborating. I'll check it out when you post it.
The kunai is really strong but the video does just come off as making up some strawman turbo spy that haunts every pub and is a God because of the kunai and would be shit otherwise
@@nich3897 yea the kunai is only good against bad players and becomes a direct downgrade the second enemy doesnt have gibus heavies and snipers. No idea what fsoas was thinking while making this video
I airblasted a Kunai spy off a cliff one time and I swear to God I thought I saw him panic as he wondered why his Dead Ringer wasn't working.
GOOD LUCK FAKING THAT DEATH!
@@BLZ231spy falling while screaming
pryo mains try not to taunt spies challenge (impossible)
Bro made up a random scenario in his head delusional
@@ItsWoodSK I play TF2 ofc I'm delusional
The dopamine high you get being fast with the big earner will always be a reason to equip it over the kunai. The vulnerability of not being able to be full health after each stab really makes your plays while speedboosted mean so much more when you pull them off.
The kunai is just the easy way out tbh
It is, but you have to play your cards right still.
Big health boosts still mean nothing when your extra health can be shredded by a whole team that's now aware of you. The only way you can effectively escape if you can't get into their backs is to surf their explosions, their bullets, or use the dead ringer if you are a cunt.
Yeah, The Big Earner is honestly underrated.
And even if the Kunai can sometimes lead to big chainstabs, so can The Big Earner. The speed it gives you can honestly set up some fat chainstabs.
Heck, I'd even say that The Big Earner has massive utility in this regard because, like Soundsmith showed in his Mann's Guide video on it, you can absolutely get around to people's backs who are actively trying to aim-track you because they underestimate your speed.
I used to use the Big Earner because it was all i had, then i got the YER & boy have i really enjoyed the Among Us Spy, this shit is surprisingly terrifying in pubs.
The adrenaline highs you can get with the Big Earner are insane. I agree hard. You don't get that same feeling with the Kunai.
Honestly the Big Earner was my go to with the Dead Ringer even before the speedboost because of the cloak on kill. Its really one of my favourite knives in the game
The Conniver's Kunai: From glass cannon to *nuclear warhead.*
It makes me sad how I don’t see the Big Earner all that often and I usually always see the Kunai OR the Your eternal award. I freaking love the Big Earner because of the speed boost you get so you can jump in, kill 1 or 2 people, and jump out before you die. It’s really satisfying.
Same
Because one pipe and you're ded
The Kunai’s health penalty is a major reason on why I choose the stock knife.
To put it in simpler terms, a single stock melee (except for Scout) is enough to put you at 5 health.
A stock melee hit and a single pistol shot, one Tribalman’s Shiv hit (bleed included), blast damage from a single pipe, sticky and rocket, a single Warrior’s Spirit punch, a single Panic Attack meat shot, etc. can all kill you instantly.
most of the time when you get spy checked, you die anyway. also most kunai spies also run dead ringer so being on low health doesn't matter because the dead ringer will just tank the damage anyway
@@evan9730 most run dr because without using it it’s probably the most frustrating experience u can have in the game. The amount of times I have been unintentionally one shot while fully cloaked with the Kunai is kind of unreal.
@@iUseDemFrapz so? Dead ringer allows you to be careless before your first stab, kunai allows you to be careless after it. If you're consistently getting one shot by spam have you maybe considered that you need to stop walking into the spam
@@evan9730 have you maybe considered shooting the Kunai spy? Believe it or not 200 health is still not that much in tf2 and he’s probably not getting a backstab every second.
@@iUseDemFrapz the video points out that 210 puts you over the 2 shot break point of most weapons and that's assuming you're hitting close range meatshots or direct rockets. Your mistake threshold plummets because you have to hit perfect shots while also preventing him from getting another stab while his mistake threshold skyrockets because the extra health allows him to get away with stab that would have otherwise got him killed.
He's done the Scorch Shot, and now the Kunai. Let's hope for the Vaccinator next.
It's only a matter of time for the vaccinator. It's been in our radar for a long time after all
do know pyro counter vac medic hard right ?
@@ammi5311 ubersaw counters pyro
@@lovecrisis619 can confirm this is true
Only melee counters vacc, with crits, because good luck trying to do that when you are not a demokmight
I'll always love the spycicle the most even if it's not the best. I love the art you can make with it.
real life sander cohen
I rarely play spy, and I'm not good at him at all, but the silent backstabs does a good job at allowing you to escape after backstabbing some far off Sniper or Engineer.
Spycicle, Dead Ringer, Red Tape, L'etranger. The annoying pest who doesn't die, you get to deconstruct buildings for essentially free
'art'
Get off it mate.
22:54 Your disguise health was on max, which means not getting healed by a crossbow was quite logical. That's why he thought you were his teammate
does the crossbow not play a different noise when shooting a disguised spy?
@@MrJohn8apie it does, it makes the crunch sound effect it always plays when you hit an enemy
@MrJohn8apie maybe he didn't hear it
Once there was i red spy disguised as scout calling me to heal him and i saw how low his health was while i didn't even know he is a spy so i decide instead of medigun i used my Xbow to heal him quickly but instead i killed him 😂
Crusade crossbow is the best
I still remember when a lot of people used to pair the Kunai with the old Dead Ringer and it was hell on Earth to face against that I’m glad it got nerfed!
with either ambassador for more pain or le'tranger for different flavour of pain
Right? Plus the old Amby, it was a nightmare to play against, and I say that as a spy main. But now the spy is _at best_ "in a fine place", not at all OP. Given all the more experienced players now, spy is weaker than ever. The real problem is always team balance, and has been ever since Valve took away team scramble. Every game is a roll and all that changes is which side of the roll you're on.
@@LividImp and a roll for how long before you get auto-balanced
@@metagamer1341 Watched it happen several times last night.
Laughs in the cloak gun.
Kunai allows you to counter the biggest hard counter to Spy;
Decades of players playing TF2, knowing each of his tricks, and having basic game sense.
Yes
Yeah it said something that kunai is only balance and fair because how weak spy is for even a few aware teammates(especially a paranoid pyro).
Ja
To be fair, spy is weak for a very good reason. If you were to make an argument for which tf2 class *should* categorically be the weakest, it's probably spy.
And that's because spy isn't about strength, he isn't about topping the scoreboard, and he's not about lone-wolfing.
Spy lives and dies for his team. In the same way that engi is support for within your front line, spy is support for well past your front line.
Engineer is the defense, spy is the offense, but both are support. Engineer provides a location for the team to hold, spy provides an opportunity for the team to push.
Making a class that is that potentially impactful into something that also has frontline strength is a terrible idea, as we can see with what is happening with interp abusing frontline kunai spies
In every encounter with any other knife, spy is a joke at best, what the Kunai does is allow years of experience in spy to shine. The Kunai isn't throwing all of your years of experience in the trashcan, it's only forcing you to actually put this experience in practice instead of just shooting the spy once and laughing it off.
Gotta say I don't encounter it too much either. The most fear-inducing Spies I have seen use the YER to melt a team before you can even warn them in voice chat. But maybe that's just me.
I think a good way to balance the kunai would be if it gave the health slower. Rather than instantly gaining 75 health it goes up like the rolling health in earthbound. That way after two pipes a demo doesn't have to deal with a 210 health spy, but rather a 50 health spy still healing.
Thats sounds like a pretty cool idea. This would make the Kunai less aggressive, and force them to make a choice: Go for more stabs or wait for your overheal.
Or go half zatoichi route and allow 50% over heal (100hp) to be healed per stab
@@ccarmilluwallpathat’s how the kunai used to work, and it wasn’t that good because of it. I think lowering the minimum overheal to something like 55 would be more balanced, that way it’s not immediately a straight upgrade to stock after 1 backstab, but also not useless against low health target
@@orangejuice8279 or just reduce the amount of health you get.
It would have to heal at a rate over a quick fix uber, or the point of it giving enough to get out after a risky stab would be gone
It doesn't matter how good at the game _you_ are. Hell, it doesn't even matter how good at the game the enemy spy is. All that matters when someone runs kunai is how bad at the game one's team is.
when i play spy i either top score or at like 4 kills and 17 deaths never in between
You could apply this to any other knife, to be fair. I do still get the sentiment - Kunai gives you way more flexibility and survivability, so you're more LIKELY to get those chains on a team that's unprepared (especially if you're not a great spy, it gives a bit too large of a safety net), but you could basically say this about Spy in general.
Spy in general is going to destroy a team that is bad at the game.
It's always this fucking sentiment. People treat spy as a joke of a class that shouldn't be rewarded for skill so it's always your team that's bad or unprepared, but never hard work or game sense in the part of the spy.
@@SirCrusher There’s a lot of responses I could make to that, but for the sake of relative brevity, I’ll only use one.
I absolutely believe in rewarding spies for skill. The problem is there’s not a single other weapon in the game that simultaneously lets you get away with playing like an absolute moron while also snowballing off others doing the same as much as the kunai.
@@purplehaze2358 but the Kunai doesn't do that. If a bad spy player has bad habits and manages to perpetuate them by using the Kunai, then he'll be stopped by average players. Bad habits will get you killed whether you have the Kunai or not, and if the Kunai gives the illusion that you're doing better while you maintain bad habits you're actually less effective in the long run.
7:57 i hate you with every fiber of my being
this is why I always use the shahanshah. It lets you oneshot kunai spies that haven't gotten a stab yet, or ones that have gotten a stab with a crit if you've already been damaged. If you're above 50% health, it doesn't lose out on any damage thresholds against kunai spies.
The kunai is one of the few weapons I think should be balanced around casual rather than comp.
It's not a knife to be used by bad spies, it's a knife to be used against bad players
I think the entire concept of the weapon is busted as a result. Extra Credit made a video about it, but the TL;DR is you don't want new players to ragequit forever because they're getting dominated by a Kunai Spy. (The good players should still get better results, but you want weapons, characters and the like to encourage the worse players to hang around and git gud rather than punish them into leaving.)
Yeah let's nerf Spy even more! The weakest class in the game, getting more nerfs, ever sending him into obscurity.
Quit meet riding. Fish made a super L take.
@@Harrisonmego No, spy is still extremely fun when you're not dominating everyone by getting one stab
Nerfing one knife isn't fundamentally nerfing spy, it's nerfing everyone reliant on it
@@NotFine Nerfing a weapon for a class makes the class less fun because it eliminates choice and variety. Do I need to run down the list of busted Spy unlocks for you?
@@Harrisonmego there's like only 2 right now
1 change I've always wanted to see is having cloak resistance lessened or removed with the Kunai. It would help make the downside more problematic while making it work worse with the dead ringer. The Kunai is (in my opinion) flawed on a conceptual level because of how it punishes you for randomly being on a team with a new player.
Recently in asian servers, especially on community servers like uncletopia, kunais have been becoming more and more rare.
During 2018-2020, almost every spy was using kunais, probably to counter the spike in pyro players, and throughout covid, as more people started playing the game for longer, it died back down.
One possibility is that people just simply got bored of it, and wanted a challenge, to be able to feel something after that 7-player chainstab.
I realised this way before my tf2-maturity, and eventually just traded my kunai. Now I am a significantly happier spy main, and actually enjoy playing spy more than ever before. The lack of kunai has also forced me to get gud with my revolver aim, and I have been hitting more and more ambassador headshots ever since.
Any gunspies in asia? Revolver boys rise up
This comment reads like a guy getting off of some kind of addictive drug and improving his relationship with his family and children.
@@galacticgamer6635 what's the difference?
personally when I play spy i use stock revolver but its cause i cannot aim for the life of me and body is bigger than head.
@@cewla3348 If you can aim, stock is better than the ambi anyway. You need to be at the edge of the ambi headshot range for it to outdamage stock just pumping out bodyshots, and that's just incredibly difficult even for the best players. So keep that mf thang on you and just learn to aim it better, ahah. It's definitely a hard weapon to use though
The main issue is once a kunai spy gets a backstab (even more so if they are also using the Dead Ringer), the only thing that can consistently kill them is a backstab from another spy. This is a problem since spy v. spy is not only not encouraged in game, but is a rarity even if it was encouraged.
14:22 This chainstab... I don't doubt that the Kunai has problems (though I think Valve would kill it if they ever decided to nerf it) but the problem with this whole segment was backstab registration and once again clueless players. It's just that the Kunai allows you to *continue* to abuse those to aspects of the game by keeping you alive the whole time.
I’d agree that the amount of damage tanked is excessive, but those were all from behind and not laggy stabs of luck
I have to say, watching footage of a Kunai spy chain-face-stabbing three Heavies as they were actively pumping him full of bullets really made me think the problem isn't as much with the Kunai as it's at least partially on turbo janky facestab detection.
Perhaps, but the Kunai uniquely encourages taking a chance on spamming facestabs because you have the health to manage it and potentially will get an insane reward from it. With the other knives, you might occasionally get a bullshit backstab but your ability to seek them out is much much lesser.
@@disappointedoptimist255 Yeah, the Kunai isn't the most well thought out weapon, but it's made way worse by the fact it's design unintentionally encourages exploiting jank game mechanics.
I find the melee hitboxes cuck me just as often as they help me if not more
wdym there's absolutely nothing wrong with being backstabbed while you were looking directly at the spy, it's a """"""""feature""""""""
Face stabbing is and always has been a huge problem but spy players cry about it if you bring it up
The best way to sum up the Kunai's problem IMO is that it punishes you for having bad teammates. Other weapons punish you for controllable and practicable things like aim, positioning, resource management, etc. but only a scarce few punish you for something completely out of your control. And conditioning you to see your teammates as liabilities in a team-based game? It just misses the point of the game as a whole.
"-it punishes you for having bad teammates. . ."
"-conditioning you to see your teammates as a liability. . ."
I mean-
You just said it yourself. Only BAD teammates (players) feed the beast, so how is it not literally their fault? Bad teammates and poor team-play SHOULD be a liability to that team's chances. This is TEAM Fortress 2, not "Lone Wolves carry the team Fortress 2"
Yes, it "feels" punishing for someone stuck on their team. But that's literally ANY team-based shooter with ANY loadouts. You ALWAYS get punished for having bad teammates, because your team-play suffers. You can't really do anything to choose your teammates in those games, either.
Unless you're telling me that bad team-play should just be REWARDED. By the way, using how something "feels" to a player is a totally subjective and useless metric to discuss balance anyways.
Also, tell me how this is literally any different than bad teammates just walking in straight lines and handing heads to the 3000hr Bazaar Bargain Sniper? Actually, that scenario is FAR more punishing, because that Sniper can do what he does from across the map AND his bonus for picking off your pitiful noob teammates NEVER decays until he dies.
Hardly ever hear anyone complain about the BB or even Sniper in general, though, and when people do, they get heckled by morons who don't know the first thing about game balance.
@@Eye_Of_Odin978 The difference between having bad teammates in general and the Kunai is how it affects your play experience specifically, which is what most casual players care about. Will having 3 Anger Snipers and 2 Gibusvision Pyros cause you to lose the round? Yeah, most likely. But is their presence going to wear on your performance specifically? No... unless the enemy has a weapon like the Kunai. That's what turns playing around useless teammates from marginally better than going it alone, to an active handicap to *you*.
And if you were to go into a server where everyone's willing to cooperate in order to win the game? Then the Kunai becomes a lot less punishing. But at that point you've already gone more tryhard than a large majority of pubs, which is where the Kunai is so incredibly effective.
Don't see how the bazaar bargain is any different, only that after two kills it makes the strongest class in the game even stronger, but okay, the kunai is the real problem in the game.
At what point did I imply that the Bazaar Bargain is less problematic than the Kunai? Am I somehow at fault here for dedicating my entire comment to the Kunai on a video about the Kunai and not the other instakill-class snowball weapon?
@@Sjon_E Fish has talked about the issue with the BB, the difference is that the sniper is still at a 125 health so he can still die fairly quickly, the spy on the other hand gets a reset to his health at 140 or 210.
Imagine if the eyelander could heal 150hp per kill... wait a minute.
That's just the half zatoichi
From this and the big earner video, it seems peoples main problem with those weapons is that they are punished for things outside of their control. I find this ironic since that is one of the main staples (and problems) spy players face in actual matches.
i feel like the argument of being punished for things outside your control is dumb becuase thats the logic behind EVERY snowball weapon.
I'm glad you finally made a video about this to fill in your lore, people who don't play and watch your editorial TF2 vids have been confused about why kunai spy was so bad.
Also, all the problems you bring up apply to sniper, helpless feeling, feeling that you need to switch classes or play to hard focus them, a highly skilled player making it a nightmare for everyone else, etc.
The main problem is that kunai makes the big weakness of the spy, which is bad to meh direct combat options once caught out and high chance of death once that happens, irrelevant. Just power through and find some poor f2p to stab and go on your merry way.
It would be more applicable if sniper had an unlock that invalidated his close range weakness... oh wait, Jarate. NVM.
@@bartoszkrawczyk5921 or if Sniper could pull out a quick scope at close range and negate their close range damage drop off, perhaps?
@@Joural0401 the chances of even a good sniper pulling off a quickscope at close range is extremely low if you have decent movement skills as scout
other close range combat classes like soldier, demo, demokinght, pyro can just decimates the sniper since they can survive a quick scope unless the sniper is good enough to quickscope + bodyshot or smg at close range in which case the sniper kinda deserves that kill
you can also make arguments for other classes negating their main weaknesses like pyro having flareguns and demo having the lochnload and quickie laucher which helps them perform better outside of their effective range but for some reason these aren’t considered when discussing about “sniper is overpowered”.
Because with pyro and demo you're changing out super important slots to make up for your shortcomings, while creating new shortcoming in the process. With sniper you can equip jarate with basically no downside.
@@brianraley686 well yes i agree that jarate is overpowered but by picking sniper you’re sacrificing powerful combat abilities and pushing power of other classes for single target elimination
11:19 "A meta weapon is a meta weapon. You can't say it helps with team coordination."
-TJ ""Orange"" Yoshi
One thing I've always thought about when it came to rebalancing the Kunai is make it so the overheal doesn't come instantly, but builds like you were being healed by a Medic until it reaches the amount of health you got from the backstab.
bro is writing weapons down in his death note
all jokes aside, i really appreciate it that you were able to get the thoughts a lot of us have across like with the scorch shot
@14:25
The worst part about this clip is that he then proceeded to literally decloak in front of the enemy team and survive a constant 1v3+ for like 20 seconds as he gets kill after kill after kill.
That Spy absolutely had _no business_ getting away with that much. And yet he did.
not trying to defend the kunai but goddamn the rocketsurfing kills feel so good if you actually pull one off and it's almost impossible to do with any other knife. i had like 1k spy hours before i quit but i only did it once and i felt so accomplished you wouldnt believe
If the spy is better than 3 teammates? Yeah he does.
@PurpleColonel He's not better than three teammates. He's a Spy. In open combat. Outnumbered.
@@KopperNeoman That's what I'm saying. If the player is a SPY and can still beat 3 people who know he's there he deserves that win.
Why do people get like this when a spy forgoes traditional stealth and goes for a playstyle based on mechanical outplays in 1v1’s and life-stealing melee, people get pissed and say “its not a traditional role, he cant do that!”
But when a demo forgoes hit traditional kit for a playstyle based on mechanical outplays in 1v1’s and life-stealing melee, people say “wow that guy is a cracked demoknight, nice stuff dude”
And people complaining about facestabs is just exasperating, real facestabs happen with massive ping differences (which have always caused problems in gaming) or extreme interp abuse (which I and many others consider cheating)
A genuine, low-ping, stabbed in the frontal lobe is extremely rare (never happened once to me in about 800 hours
You’ve seen the clips of streamers getting legitimately stabbed, and complaining about facestabs because they cant take the ego hit of getting fooled in a video game.
Dude I agree we all feel this pain for than 10 times a good spy with kunai is one of the most dangerous classes now since you have to make sure you have to kill him before he gets another backstab
Real bonkdrinker from the elmaxo channel?
11:19 AH! SELF JUMPSCARE!
Fr tho, I'm glad you liked my comment enough to feature it here.
I agree with your opinion that it's the best knife in the game, but only in the context of an especially skilled spy. I feel as though only the spies who learn all of the tech behind backstabs benefit from this weapon at the level you describe.
For someone like me, who literally spreads my playtime evenly between all 9 classes, I makes a much less noticable difference cuz I can barely get stabs when people haven't found me out, idt I've ever had a chain stab bigger than like 2 or 3.
Edit: nevermind you address this in the second half. Fair enough
Gotta say, you’re definitely in an alternate dimension. I see Kunais about as much as stock, and the YER is based as hell
Reason why to use other knives; half the thrill of playing secret murderer games is the fear of getting found out, so it’s probably the same with spy.
the only reason I can think of why spy often gets really strong weapons is because hes a fragile class and his ability to win is drastically effected by the enemy team's skill, like if a spy wants to take out an engineer nest, a pyro with a homewrecker will make the spy's job absolute hell. So most of the knife unlocks have abilities based around giving a bonus on backstab to help you out. Its just that kunai, lets you get away with things you shouldn't have.
a pyro with homewrecker cannot kill the spy, and while they're distracted with the buildings there is now a knife in their back.
@@cewla3348 it takes one hit at the building and the sapper is gone, they can literally just hit it and immediately turn around, or at least light the spy on fire before hand so he can't even hide or escape once the pyro wastes like 1 or 2 second saving the buildings, or airblast him, especially with the degreaser
This is less of a reason for strong weapons like the Kunai to exist and more of a reason for Pyro to be unable to remove sappers.
Honestly he should have never been in the game to begin with
TF2
A game that PRIDES itself on player skill
Has a class whose core design is antethetical to the whole concept
@TheAircool1
Spy? Explain further.
As an ex spy main (for now i switched to scoutie), my favorite loadout of all times is a stock clock reskin, ambassador and the big earner and i feel honored by this video.
12:25 "his combat options are still limited"
MF who just almost single-handedly backstabed all of them in this clip:
1:52 I'm friends with this person this has got to be the worst way you could be featured in a video lmao
I'm a hard stuck 200+ hour stock spy main and I'm proud
You're a amazing
my respect for you
Finally, a respectable spy
Same honestly. I got a strange for each of the stock items. Maybe I just suck but whenever I equip the kunai or big earner every demoman on the server gains magnetic grenades.
@@OldandAbandonedHarcorte I'm a spy main with 150+ hours in the class, usually going with the stock loadout. When Fish said that you don't get hit much when you're invisible I had to pause the video and sigh
I'm surprised you didn't even mention the potential synergy with the Diamondback. In addition to 200 health, what if every link in your chain stab gifted you a free gun crit? Just imagine stabbing half the team, skedaddling with the Dead Ringer, then picking off the other half with your bounty of crits. Totally earned team wipe.
a bit like the frontier justice, but flavoured for spy.
Gotta love your music choice for your Spy videos. Glad I'm not the only one who seems to remember Sly Cooper.
I remember in one of STAR_'s TF2x10 videos, a soldier had the black box and it instantly healed him for 200 hp per hit. And despite getting shot like 10 times with fully charged minicrit sydney sleepers and multiple flares, he just would not die.
the gun mettle buff really turned this weapon into the old ambassador, it just overshadows everything now. can the devs at least make the health gain minimum 55 to match your starting health? i mean, at least it declines, so you won't stay at 125 for any longer than a second or two unless you're really fast.
at least all of the pro spy gameplay confirms my ‘hold strafe keys and pray’ strat
to quote the 'sniper is OP' crowd:
"Just Because it's hard to pull off, doesn't mean it's balanced"
Ironic considering how often he complains about sniper not being dominant and overpowered
Why have a skill celling when people are going to cry nerf when you reach it
3:17 Oh no! Fish turned into a PNGtuber! It won't be long before he starts crossing his arms!
I think the land you speak of, is the dangerous and long lost land of casual pubs, strange places with few strangers as they are, and full of wild and unique creatures, some of which have gone all but extinct in other realms
Edit: just to clarify, I mean VALVE match made pubs, specifically, if there is even a distinction to be made
So by his logic the big earner is a straight upgrade
Ik this isn't related to the actual video's content in any way, but I always gotta appreciate whenever Fish used background music from the Sly Cooper series in his videos. I recognized the Opera of Fear chapter's hub world AND encounter theme from 3 damn near instantly because of how much these games are ingrained in my memory 😁
I'm glad you mentioned it. Those games are still some of my core memories
I have 2 ideas on how to maybe fix the Kunai.
If you want to keep the upside of gain hp on kill and overheal, then a downside that could be done to at least make it harder would be to lower the backstab radius. Make it harder to just trickstab people because you were angled a certain way on their hitbox. This has been done in the past by Valve but it was a universal knife change that was reverted.
The second idea is the completely change it's stats, but make it have the same sort of identity. Every backstab gain +15 max hp, up to a max of 150, and with every backstab heal 35hp. Downsides would be the Kunai swings slower, so the window of opportunity for your team to turn around is increased before they continue the chainstab. And either increase cloak drain, or add the old Enforcer downside of +.5 seconds to activate cloak (especially if you can figure out how to make it work on the Dead Ringer).
Maybe these ideas are bad, idk. But these are just my thoughts on how to maybe fix the Kunai.
Or maybe add a cooldown to the lifesteal. idk
I think either a cooldown on lifesteal or greatly diminishing returns on subsequent stabs in a small time frame would work well to balance the knife's current stats.
Because the spy desperately needs a nerf
Instead of cooldown on lifesteal, just make it so kunai spy cannot receive overheal while having any overheal.
This will also create dramatic moments of tension and decision making, as spys overheal is now both a timer to get things done fast, as well as a restriction from doing so well that you run out of guys to stab for health before you can actually heal again
@@CorwinTheOneAndOnly i second this opinion
It's sort've like the diamondback in my opinion where it simply rewards spy more for doing what his class should be doing in the first place.
yet both of those do the same thing as the scatterback for Scout but the Scatterback brings nothing else to the table.
I don't think that specifically is the issue though. Are banners and babyface's blaster op because you're rewarded for doing damage?
A bit over dramatic don’t you think?
How to nerf Kunai without pissing off (maybe?) most Spy mains:
Make the overheal decay faster.
The Kunai overheal decays slower than the Medics' overheal...
Kunai wasn't always 70 health it was 60 before its small buff
One time I was playing as engineer and randomly shot my shotgun, accidentally getting a meatshot on an invisible kuni spy, killed him in one hit.
Decided then and there that I'd never use the kuni, now a proud spycicle main
so based, every other knife except kunai gang rise up
Cloaked spies killed is the best strange part.
spycicle and big earner gang where you at
@@HayabusaCrimsonShadow yes
I personally use the YER just because the silent kill and disguise let you slip into the usual tf2 chaos and stab whoever you want. way too often you can just stab someone being pocketed by a medic and grab a free heal or even get ubered.
only real downside is it encourages such a weird playstyle that any other knife feels weird to use
The argument that “He wont die to X weapon in 2 shots anymore is redundant because the health decay is active until he goes under 70 hp
No one is hitting 2 pipes on a spy who JUST backstabbed someone before he even loses 10 hp.
Another thing worth noting, is that the Kunai allows Spy to change how they play to such an insane degree, that it's almost like a subclass, but you aren't giving up Spy's actual kit. You can still do all of the normal Spy things, but now you can also forgo stealth to start acting like a power class through the enemy team. Sure it isn't necessarily easy to do, but difficulty alone shouldn't justify insane rewards (a similar point I make against Sniper's balance, because difficulty can be overcome with experience).
I'd say for a Kunai rework: What if they reduced the health penalty to either -25 or -35 (putting you at either 100 or 90 base HP respectively), and then making it so the knife no longer grants you immediate chunks of health. You would instead get a weak health regeneration for "insert duration" on backstab (say 10 or 15 HP/s). This regen would allow you to overheal, similar to a Medigun, and if needed they could make it so the overheal rate is slower (sort of like how the Vaccinator takes longer to overheal a target). Now sure, this would allow the Spy to get to a high health total, but you'd have to literally be choosing to not damage the Spy for a long time.
This would significantly reduce a Kunai Spy's ability to ignore damage, but it would also still make it a good escape knife, especially when fleeing with your cloak.
You can't act like a power class lmao, that's an exaggeration. Spy doesn't have the damage potential a soldier or a demo has
@@SirCrusher Yes, of course it's an exaggeration, I shouldn't have to state that, but I guess it isn't obvious enough for some people.
The point is that the Kunai lets you play very differently to how Spy is intended to function, without any major kit sacrifice to do so. Instead of being a pick class that ambushes important targets, you can throw subtlety to the wind and stab to your heart's content, unless the enemy team decides to direct their undivided attention to you.
It'd be like if the Gunslinger was still able to make level 3 Sentries, or if the Demoknight still had access to the Stickybomb Launcher.
@@trainershade1937 that's not actually true, if you don't pick important targets the power classes will get you. That's what always happens. People adapt to the Kunai too easily. It's one of those weapons that seem strong but lose power once people notice it
Nah, I think it's fine as it is.
Spy doesn't deserve another weapon nerf after how many years of his weapons getting fucked over for years
@@SirCrusher Sir, the man can literally instakill anyone. You can't GET higher damage potential.
Oh no here it comes.
The sequel to the Scorch Shot episode.
you probably should have factored in the health drain from the overheal, since that might have been an important detail to add
One must imagine Fish Stick On A Stick happy…
"i guess the wrench really suffers there though" brother, as an engi main, stock is one of the better wrenches, especially when playing a more aggresive playstyle. being able to knock sapper off is 2 hits with no downsides is super userful. some would prefer the urika effect, but i find the benifits of it to not outweigh the downsides, especially when you're not playing somthing like payload where you dont need teleporters as much
Adding a cooldown of like 5 to 10 seconds to the lifesteal of the kunai would balance it quite well i think. It would force the spy to think more carefullly before running into a big group, and give others reasonable time to kill him.
Just make it add max hp on kill. Problem solved.
Your video spawned in more Kunai spy mains into my games
I'm glad you managed to find the best named kunai in the game for us
If Kunai is recruit difficulty eternal reward is veteran
I just hit 50k kills on my YER. I run it with Amby and stock invis watch. Hearing someone say "spy as me" gives me dopamine that can't be compared to using kunai dead ringer.
@@00coolman1 that’s a pretty chad loadout
The YER actually has a hidden stat that no one talks about which is its a sentry repellent, with the auto disguise feature backstab sentry guns will always ignore you, making it really nice to bust turtling engies up
Closing in on 4k kills with mine. An amazing, underappreciated weapon. I usually use Letranger and C&D with it.
@DocUri Anytime I hear "spy as me," I just sigh with disappointment.
8:58 roguelike fans be like "yo this gameplays fire"
"SpY's A bAd ClAsS."
No, he's hard to master.
hes actually a bad class AND hard to master
you can literally kill a spy on accident just because you were trying to kill a heavy
Problem with the kunai is that very often, even if you are too savvy to be consistently backstabbed by that same spy during the whole round, you are still often dealing with an unkillable nuisance, arguably the same issue with the dead ringer.
Sometimes is not like they accomplish that much but rather that it transforms a lot of their mistakes from game changing issues to slaps-on-the-wrists. And of course a beast of a spy is a nightmare unless you can actually outsmart him (good spies are more based on outsmarting them rather than overpowering them).
I think I might live in that alternate dimension. I haven't played in months, but I don't remember ever seeing just kunai spies. I have over 600 hours on Spy and my most used knife is stock. I don't even think I play better with the kunai. Maybe it's my playstyle. After I get a few stabs, I usually just run away. Never really tried the facetank strategy, because I'm not good with trickstabs. Besides, I use my gun more. I have more kills on my strange revolver than my strange kunai, and they're both far from Hale's Own (although, tbf, I haven't used either too much).
I know it's probs me being bad at spy but I find I can never use the Kunai, I think the bonus HP isn't that strong cuz it goes away in time plus if you make a minor mistake and get hit by something small it matters alot cuz your hp is tiny
you can tell fishstick is tealking from a place of in-experience because most of his clips of actually good gameplay, arent his clips, or are repeats from earlier in the video
its like fishstick was like "the knife is op, very very rarely, but im going to make it seem like its op, almost always"
"the only reason not to use the kunai, is because you dont want to, or dont have one"
this sentence alone discredits fishsticks opinion here, its like he has never used it, and if there wasnt (some) footage of him using it here, i wouldnt believe him if he had told me he had used it
I just realized something:
The more you focus on the spy, the less time you spend on focusing on the enemy team. So in other words, the more clueless and braindead players you have on your team, the more time you will be forced on focusing down the spy, which in turn makes it easier for the enemy team to focus you down and kill you. In other words, the spy can easily force your attention onto him more often than his team.
To anyone who says "Spy needs the kunai because he's a bad class", he's not. You're just bad at using every other knife.
Spy is not a bad class and I don't understand why people think that.
He’s not even a bad class, if used in the right hands he can be a goddamn menace
@@thebushbros6626 well that applies to every class though. It's just spy, relatively, is the worst out of all of them
Thx, you convinced me to switch to Kuni; I didn't know it was that good! Kuni, diamond back and dead ringer main now ;)
It doesn't "Encourage good team coordination" so much as "Reward good team coordination and punish a lack of team coordination" but not actually changing the likelyhood of said coordination occuring.
The Kunai is Spys best knife, and it still doesn't stop him from being massively underpowered to the point of near unplayability in anything except a pub match. And saying something is overpowered in a pub isn't exactly a profund statement.
The reason a lot of spy use kunai in pubs is because of its health of course, it allows for back stab chains and a lot more im not gonna type out, spys actual best knife is the big earner, you need an understanding of movement and your enemy for this to be the best, its speed boost is very powerful, when used correctly you can avoid damage and through people off with its speed boost for trickstabing/running away, if you looked at highlander spies you would know this... please dont base EVERYTHING off of casual. The hp downside is an actual downside, you could use that 125 for surfing damage to get away, surfing damage in general, or using that extra health combied with your movement and invis watch to get away. You also need an understanding of good movement and spy himself, you arent the best spy player out there so talking about this would need a lot of back up, which you dont have, im not flamming your skill level but i'd understand your raw points if you were actually decent at the game. Theres so many aspects you left out and just said "its not a downside lol" please do WAY more research before flamming a weapon. "either risk it all getting close to him and getting 1 shot" WHAT DO YOU MEAN!?!! YOU HAVE A MOUSE AND A WRIST, JUST TRACK HIM, you have so many bad takes in here that im actually going insane "you are helpless when a spy is backstabbing your teammates" again YOU CAN CONTROL THIS, if you are near your teammates pushing the cart or whatever and see a spy, SHOOT HIM, that is 70 hp to get rid of, if you cant get rid of 70 hp within the decloak endlag or if hes walking up to your teammates then idk what to say to you "im getting rolled by a kunai spy every week" this is COMPLETELY YOUR FAULT, you can LITERALLY DENY A SPIES ENTIRE APPROACH, until other classes in this game, spy is almost ENTIERLY DEPENDENT ON THE ENEMY, How to counter a good spy, turn around a lot, spy check, dont let him backstab you, how to counter trickstab spy. DONT RUN AT HIM WITH MELEE, EITHER USE YOUR WEAPON OR PRESS YOUR S KEY. I see so many people like this guy saying that "kunai is busted" "kunai is very hard to counter" NO IT ISNT. There was this one spy right, really good at the game and spy himself, rolling my teammates. He wasent rolling me though, yk why?? BECAUSE I WAS TURNING AROUND AND NOT CHALLEGING HIM WITH MY MELEE. it's so simple to just either walk backwards or just turn around a lot. Spy is overall weak when at a good players mercy, the kunai gives him more survivability, I get your point about the f2ps I fully agree with that, but dont complain and shit on something when you arent even that good at the game NOR the class in the first place.
Spy knives in tf2 have always been a strange case to me
The man finally made a good weapon academy video
I love these best weapon vids you should do more of them
I recommend a 10 second cooldown on the kunai's health reward after each stab. You still get the risk-reward, 70 to 200, but you have to hold on to it.
Spy is my most played class and I've rarely used the Kunai, the only times I have are mainly mvm or when I was achievement hunting with friends, although I will admit that my own personal tastes and playstyles contribute heavily to not using it. I like the whole sneaky and stealth approach to spy since you can't really do that as any other class unless you pretend to be friendly or something.
It's funny how you say that's the best while you're almost instantly killed by everyone if you make the smallest mistakes. Sure it can be great when there's a good spy but that can be said with every spy knife.
At least kunai spies dont steal healthpacks from medics.
Local sniper player talks about how 'strong' spy is
The clips with the "trickstabs" aren't trickstabs. Those are blatant highway robbery.
i love how in the rare ocasions where i get a perfect backstab oportunity and get behind someone it just doesent count as a backstab and i just use the knife and get instantly killed
paused the video at 19:40 and found the single frame of a sniper with a questionable sign image
@@swallow_skyla3602 it's loona from helluva boss
This is why my desire to use the YER is so high because it's this...really fun weapon that's made for mindgames. Kunai is something that I actually have never touched because I see everybody using it, and it has the same feeling as using the Wrangler, Diamondback, or Jarate/Bushwacka combo. It just feels dirty to use.
The desire to use underpowered and occasionally really bad weapons is strong here, as I like to push the level of stupidity with the tools I wield. Unironically use the Red Tape because it's awful and I love it that way.