Team Fortress 2 Strategy

The Walker said an update was due today, and here it is. The precursor to the Scout Update. Nom nom nom. Also one of the more eclectic updates in recent memory, but given its length it manages to touch all the right bases. It’s a big list, so I’ll let you have a read yourself, but I’ll point out the big ones, in my mind:

• Added percentage to UberCharge HUD panel for the Medic
• Added upgrade progress and levels to Engineer HUD panel for all buildings

Nice to be able to see what you’re doing a little better. People have been wanting the Medic to be aware of their uber percentage for as long as I can remember.

• Fixed Natascha not getting the proper 75% of damage and slightly increased the strength of Natascha’s slowdown

This seems to be quite a buff for Natascha, and I found her much more effective during my, ahem, ‘playtesting’ earlier today. Bring on the Scout update so I can get harvesting!

• Fixed cloaked spies having a particle-beam effect while standing next to a dispenser that’s healing them

Interesting, I haven’t tried this out yet. Does this mean you can heal invisibly (and recharge cloak) on an enemy dispenser? And if so, why? I imagine this would make the Spy considerably more formidable. Question: does the dispenser still make a healing noise while healing a cloaked Spy?

There’s a bunch of other patches, such as fixing the Pyro animation (or lack thereof) in the class selection menu and flagging various console variables (including r_aspectratio) as cheats. There’s some stuff in there for mappers too, but I’m just hoping “Fixed client ‘timeout on mapchange’ problem” Source Engine actually works.

Anticipation status: rolling boil.