What constantly bums me is that every update hurts the soldier. When TF2 was released, I don't recall the soldier being a godly class capable of destroying whole teams with a handful of rockets. That would've been the demoman who has received not nearly as much negative attention from Valve as our patriotic buddy.

I think I've posted this before, but here's what Valve has done to help the soldier since its release:

1. Slightly decreased (20%) self damage from rocket jumps. (Not counting this recent extra 20% decrease which is what nerfs rocket jumps).

Here's what Valve has done to not help the soldier:

1. Decreased rocket damage all around.
2. Decreased damage at point blank range.
3. Decreased splash damage.
4. Decreased splash radius (twice).
5. Increased falloff (twice).
6. Reduced number of rockets carried.
7. Made the other main damage-dealing class significantly more powerful. (Decreased heavy's spread area twice, increased damage twice, decreased spin up and cool down times.)
8. Gave every class (except medic) the ability to remove sticky bombs when it was originally the role of soldiers and demomen.
9. Gave almost all classes knockback which used to belong solely to demomen and soldiers.
10. Gave spies more powerful weapons against other players in the form of the ambassador which is more accurate and does more damage over most ranges.
11. Made rockets not shoot through teammates.
12. Made air blast fire more quickly.
13. Added air blast. (The air blast is really only designed to counter rockets (because they fly linearly) and stopping ubers. Grenades, flares, jarates, and arrows can be deflected, but rockets are the slowest and the easiest to predict the path of.)
14. Made rocket jumping impossible.
15. Gave scouts the ability to 'triple jump' giving them the ability to reach places which used to be soldier/demo only.
16. Increased knockback from rockets. Now I find it far more difficult to juggle enemies because instead of firing immediately after the enemy is airborne, I either have to adjust my aim and hit him in the air or wait for him to fall some. This makes it hard against multiple enemies.
17. Increased healing rate of medics and dispensers. With the soldier's small clip and long reload times, this makes it hard to bombard enemies with fire and actually accomplish anything (as if the decreased rocket damage didn't do this already. It's impossible for a soldier to kill a stationary heavy on the opposite 2fort battlements if the heavy is being healed by anything (dispenser, sandvich, or medic (though he could kill the sandvich eater if the timing is right after several dozen clips of rockets)).
18. Made nearly all forms of knockback stop rocket jumps midair.


I'm certain that this is all some conspiracy by the illusive, shadowy characters of the "TF2 competitive community." That is, they persuade to make the soldier an increasingly worse class whose combat abilities on medium to large public servers has gone from good to mediocre.

Nope. Medic can take care of them. It just happens the needle type guns suck at taking care of stickies.

The good thing about soldiers when clearing mines is that they move them all over the place. None of the other classes (cept demos) can dislodge stickies. It greatly disperses the potential damage they can do to one person.

I also believe that the other classes can only kill one sticky at a time. If not, its just hard to kill more than one at a time.

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Also, after playing today, I see no great increase to the speed at which a medic heals. I may not have 300 hours of soldier like you, but I've had at least 150 hours as medic (can't prove this because I have reset my stats to get rid of those awful achievement server stats. :O You'll just have to believe me).

There MAY be a 1-2 HP/sec increase which would be hard to detect just by eyeballing the hp meter. Are you sure you aren't thinking of the fact that if the patient was hit less than 10 seconds ago, they are healed at of 24 HP/sec. From 10 to 15 seconds, this rate increases linearly from 24 up to a maximum of 72 hp/sec. I love healing at 72hp/sec. Its delicious.

That would be awesome and sucky at the same time.