@Matuno if we’re working under the logic that you have to understand both sides of on the scope and off the scope, we should also exclude Jostabeere’s opinion because he’s already expressed that he only just played Vasilli when he got the Humble Bundle pack. And that would be silly. As much as I don’t agree with his opinion, he has every right to express it coming from a side that rarely or never is on the side of the scope. Does it invalidate his opinion? No. Does it make his opinion stronger? No. Is it still a valid opinion? Yes.
Maining a merc doesn’t make your opinion any less weak, it just gives you a specific insight into them. I have a lot of time logged into Vasilli, much more than any other merc, but my arguably best merc is Arty. I’ve given and received scope action both as Vasilli and as other mercs, and it doesn’t make my opinion on Vasilli’s balance any better informed than somebody who plays exclusively Vasilli, somebody who doesn’t play Vasilli, or somebody that plays Vasilli from time to time. Reason for that? Because every type of player will experience Vasilli’s balance in some way, shape, or form.
A person who never plays Vasilli will still experience the effects of Vasilli’s balance (see FE-LIX 80 damage per shot). A person who plays a lot of Vasilli will experience the effects as well, but in different ways (see instagib changes and jump shot changes). Balance changes will inevitably be felt by both sides of the scope, and it’s important to distinguish when this change is meaningful and overall positive.
And so we have to evaluate every side’s opinion on the jump shot changes, diehard mains or diehard haters included. And if we do look at it, virtually nobody complained about Vasilli being overpowered before the jumpshot change. If anything, people were complaining about Vasillis being useless campers most of the time, but brutal in the hands of a good player. Which isn’t a bad thing, any merc can be brutal in the right hands, and Vasilli wasn’t creating any specific meta around him at the time either. If anything, he was considered weak compared to Redeye in the competitive scene.
What happened after the change? Well we can see. Some people, who never mentioned jump shots being a problem before, suddenly appeared and lauded the change, while a lot of Vasilli players (not all of them, but a lot of them) complained about the change because it felt like an unnecessary nerf for a merc that had a struggling competitive role. And the average complaint that I usually see is still of bad Vasilli players who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if given 20 minutes to line up the shot, and still being brutal in the hands of a good player. All that changed was Vasilli’s competitive viability was bulldozed into the ground.
Essentially, all the change did was cement Vasilli into the category of pub star merc, and gutted his competitive viability in the face of supreme recon overlord Redeye and the PDP. And is that a good change? No, it really isn’t. Competitive play only benefits from having wide merc diversity, since a wide merc diversity at least shakes up a stale meta team comp with variable components. There’s only so much Fragger, Sawbonez, fire support/engineer, other medic/engineer, Redeye/engineer you can watch before it feels like watching a rerun. And nerfing the PDP wouldn’t even mean a return of Vasilli, since Vasilli was already being replaced with another fire support after the instagib changes.
