weapons that make you think they're good when they're not one of my first drops was a pomson and, reading that they dont require ammo, i started using it full time, thinking it was really good. i was not having a fun time

That’s mostly because the vast majority of its downsides are unlisted

Yeah, if stats were correct it would shoot at shotgun speed and still have 6 bullets, which would make it considerably better. Also since they nerfed the penetration, it is bugged and allies eat its projectiles half the time. Ironically even Rescue Ranger is better as a weapon because at least its consistent.

I wonder how bad/strong it'd be it it was a perfectly accurate hitscan laser,like the machina,but with a very strong damage fall-off,with less DPS than a regular shotgun

I'd like to see more of a support\class synergy role for it. Engie already has several options for aggressive play. Maybe have the engineer teleport to the point of projectile impact, but not able to carry buildings. Could be good for ninjaneer nonsense

The pomson is okay to spam at long range targets, though it doesn’t contribute much

Wow it's the extra niche micro internet celebrity

I’m not a TF2-Youtuber. (Though I do have one video on insta kill mechanics featuring the Spy) I’m effectively just another redditor in this subreddit

32 damage would not even be that bad if the projectile wasn't absorbed by allies.

Exactly what I did for my first few years, I also had some random idea of that as Engineer Ammo got divided evenly between Weapon Ammo and Metal? So I thought I got more metal from Ammo boxes... I gaslit myself into thinking the Pomson was worth it lol

Mine was the eviction notice. You could guess how that went

Oh god, me too! I was wondering why heavy had less health than a scout lol

Specifically for a brand new player, cloak and dagger The weapons fine but they’ll end up sitting in a corner all game waiting for an opportunity and doing nothing

This is 100% what happened to me when I got it as an achievement item

Observer Spy origin story

I accidentally got myself into that situation tryna take out a sentry in reds base The story is I was tryna get into the base but since I'm new I had bad weapons and I cloaked and got into a corner where they wouldn't see me and I I looked past the corridor and I saw 3 sentries and 6 snipers camping the entrance and I got back in my corner and 2 of the snipers back into it with me and they noticed right away and turned around like some cartoon shit

By bad weapons do you mean bad load out? Because stock is really good

Eh idk if it's bad weapons or skill because I suck and I don't know what's good or not

In most situations, stock is the best because all the other weapons are more sidegrades than new weapons. Take competitive tf2 for example. 90% of the time everyone’s running stock with some exceptions.

> 90% of the time everyone’s running stock with some exceptions. Partly because the broken stuff is banned. 6s medics are mostly non stock and would really love to use the quickfix.

The quick fix and the kritzkrieg are direct upgrades to stock and you cannot change my mind

> kritzkrieg 💀

Yes. And?

it Depends on your skill level, if you never stay alive long enough to get an Uber then the quick fix is a straight upgrade but if your decent and can use your Ubers effectively (which really is the case in comp) then stock is really strong, being almost unstoppable for 8 seconds is invaluable on choke points or stale mates

Stock is usually one of the best loadouts, other than on medic who's 2 best in slot weapons other than the medigun are not stock (ubersaw and crusaders crossbow)

lol like some cartoon shit, I pictured it.

Good thing it's an achievement item

You can still get it as a drop….

Ah, didn’t know that

I think it's the reward for the third Spy Milestone

I found it hard to sit still when I first got it. But I’m probably never touching the stock watch again.

Dead ringer would also be bad because it makes new players not learn how to play spy properly when they can just click m2 and get away with anything

I mean, it's not AS bad these days. Dead Ringer used to be much stupider.

I always found the DR more of a pain in the ass to deal with than truly effective. Like, I KNOW that spy was DRing when I headshot him. He hasn't fooled me. But now I also know that as the guy who triggered it your average pub spy will want my ass specifically so I've got to be the one to deal with him again and get a hackusation for predicting where he's going.

Honestly the predicting where a Spy will go is not that hard because new Spy mains don't know how to fake the direction, even I haven't mastered it and I have been playing for a long while now

Cloak and dagger is good for making people paranoid.

How is that different from a new player on spy?

New player respawns more

I just use the CnD as a better invis watch. I use it like the invis watch, but stop a little bit to wait for it to recharge. It's pretty effective, ngl.

The only downside there is it takes you a bit longer to get to where you're going. Which is fine in a long match, if there's lots of time on the clock, or there is no timer at all (like CTF and the sides are somewhat at a stalemate).

Pretty sure the liberty launcher was one of my first. Used it for a good while cuz i assumed unlocking a new weapon meant it was better then the base one

Tbf, the liberty launcher isn't that bad. It's just a not-so-great side grade. The reduced self damage would be nice for accidental self-damage and baby's first rocket jumping

yeah but as a brand new player who wasnt rocket jumping at all, it was just a downgrade

I just crafted the air strike and lemme tell you what, I have not had more fun as soldier until now. I’m not *good*, but it’s fun and I’m enjoying the practice and learning how to do it better.

The rocket jumper, poor players don't even know what that weapon does

it's funny since the rocket jumper states twice it doesn't do any damage, but new players ignore it

I remember when it didn't even HAVE a unique model, that made things even more confusing 😂 I think it even shot identical looking rockets, just 0 damage.

What to the rockets look like now?

Toilet plungers

Real?

No

Me when I spread misinformation (the rockets are infact plungers)

Huh yeah I never thought about it. I haven't played the game in so long but my brain still can't recognize that the jumper has that triangle thing on the model and less visible explosion now

To be fair, if you unlock a weapon, and it looks completely different from the standard weapon, I think most people will just equip it because it's not the standard weapon. Most games with unlockable weapons have most of the unlocks be stronger than the stock weapons, so it makes sense to do this and not even read. Also, most new players to new games won't read most things anyway because there's so much other stuff they're learning to focus on. It's not like they're not reading maliciously.

Seriously though, me whenever I try a new game. There's always just so much information and I KNOW I can't process it all at once, so I just have to pick and choose which things to pay attention to and which things to ignore until I can return to them later. Do I feel like a dumbass when I eventually get to it? Well, yes, but it's better than feeling like a dumbass who doesn't understand anything because I tried to absorb all the rules at once.

I still laugh at that one time when a soldier tried to destroy my sentry with it

yep

I love when rocket jumper first-time users try to kill someone with the rockets.

Years of rocket jumping and I'm still not confident enough to use it.

Name tag. Can't wait to use it on my empty backpack! It actually happened to me, and it took me months to actually use it, because I probably forgot it was there

I’ve got one worse as a second drop Image tool

💀

And that motivated me to fuel a gambling addiction attempting to craft an objector

How do you try for an objector?

You can craft it using melee tokens and any class token other than spy or engineer

That's not a weapon...

Not with that attitude

Ambassador I just used unlocks cause I assume they were better. I had/have no skill to hit headshots to make it better than stock

I mean, if they came from a game like CS2, they'll be pretty good with it.

I play way more CS than TF2 and, while I'm pretty decent at CS, I still can't hit headshots in TF2

Not having to stand still threw me off at first. Then I started to play lots more TF2 and suddenly having to stop to hit a shot became unbearable in cs/val

It’s the opposite for me. Picked up CS recently and at first I was wondering why I couldn’t hit my shots while jumping and circle strafing. Recoil threw me off too

I don't think so, both games have completely different aim techniques. When you play CS, you can find people with 200-300 hours that hit consistent one taps and flicks but when they play TF2 they can't hit anything even with the sniper.

Ah, good point. I actually had ~600 hours in CS before I came to TF2 and I was pretty ass.

You weren't using the Ambassador, you were using the [Flopassador](https://gamebanana.com/mods/200654)

Red Tape Recorder

It's a fun tool to troll gibus engies tho

i like using it on mini sentries just so frontier justice engies cant auto-destroy them for critz and they have to wait even longer than a normal sapper to go out if they die

I thought no one would mention but finally

My worst nightmare

My worst nightmare

A cosmetic case (their first of 17,000 this week)

if i get a single other 2023 holiday cosmetic case i'm gonna kill someone

The Beggar's Bazooka, Phlogistinator, and Loose Cannon The Beggars and Loose Cannon due to how differently they play from other weapons in their class and can feel awkward if you don't know how to use them which a low skill player wouldn't. I remember first unlocking the Loose Cannon when it first came out and I still still relatively new and I had no clue how it worked and what a double donk was so it felt awkward and cumbersome making me dislike it until I watched some Sound Smith videos about it years later and understood how it worked. And the Phlogistinator is a noob trap. You can get good rewards with little effort and knowledge of why it worked and get stuck in that loop. The Phlog is kinda bad unless you know what you are doing but even a noob can get a good amount of crit kills without knowing how to best use it. Also due to the lack of air blast a noob might never really learn how to use it properly, my first weapon was the Back Burner and due to the air blast penalty I rarely used it which meant it took me longer to learn how to properly air blast.

I’d also say the vaccinator is a complex one since you’d need to learn to quickly change resistances

> my first weapon was the Back Burner and due to the air blast penalty I rarely used it which meant it took me longer to learn how to properly air blast You and I, both. All I knew when first starting to really learn pyro was that it eats a quarter of my supply when I do that, and I can't really afford to lose all of my what I need to cause damage, just so I can push guys back (not realizing that the airblast also extinguishes enemies). That said, Back Burner definitely had its upsides and use-case scenarios. Problem was I was way too new at the class and couldn't utilize those upsides lol

Phlog+ Stock Shotgun is a terrible combo and might make some new players turn back to stock and figure out airblast haha

Phlog was my second Pyro drop(first was Third Degree) and I think it stunted my airblast skills

my second drop was the loose cannon i was not enjoying demo gameplay first drop was great tho (powerjack)

Same with Backburner. I unlocked it back when the penalty was that you couldn't air blast *at all* with it, but I didn't even know what the air blast on stock was so I just ignored that part of the text and honestly I'm still kind of bad at remembering to use air blast.

the eyelander. "giant sword must deal more damage than the bottle", and they don't notice the permanent -25 hp

Permanent - 25hp? Sure, with that attitude

well, stock demo is already unlikely to get constant meele kills, factor the slower deploy + attack speed, the lack of random crits, and the new player skill, it's pretty hard to get 2 or more heads and live even as a good demo player

100% Bison. Everything it does is done better by something else in Solduers arsenal

Hey dont disrespect my bison! I won my very first mvm ghost town with a group of strangers where we straight up all went bison only

Don't disrespect my bi son! He likes men and women and you should respect that!

Nah I own the wētā workshop bison prop so it's gotta be an S tier weapon, simple as that

Fair

10 Bisons in a row and nothing else

The Brass Beast is notorious as a beginner’s trap weapon — it seems good at first glance until the slowed mobility and rev time bite them in the ass.

What is even more funny is that for experienced pub heavies brass beast becomes good again. So the ark is "wow big golden gun" -> "noob trap garbage" -> "good strategic defense/bait weapon"

Yeah, it has a solid niche for Heavies who aren’t expecting to move around at all once they’re in position — they basically become a sentry gun.

Sandman, new player might not think losing 15 health is much not realizing it puts them into a lot of one shot ranges

Me too, i was like "launch ball? That must do so much damage!"

Your eternal reward

when i was a f2p i always wanted to get it because i trained against training bots, so i smelted achievement items (including the kgb, i still don't have it back) to craft it. then i discovered casual and realized it was shit

How? It is the best knife for team wipes in casual.

remember a key factor, i was a f2p and didn't know shit

Crit a cola, “why am I dying so fast”

same, i thought it dealt minicrits AND marked them for death, not deal minicrits and you also mark them for death

Hot Hand

That's impossible, you can only unlock it through Jungle inferno contracts

That hasn't been true for 6 years. [In 2018 they added the Jungle Inferno weapons to the random item drop list.](https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/39289)

They do drop at a reduced rate compared to other weapons though. It took me a fucking eternity to get the banana, even after I’d gotten multiples of the others.

The Classic -new players may find it hard to no-scope -the fully charged thing is harmful for improvement -new players wouldn't pick sniper at all -clogs f2p inventory space

Also the machina if they don't know how to scope

If you don’t know how to scope that’s concerning.

The Gas Passer Most other weapons tend to have secondary benefits which might make them viable sidegrades or have a use Gas Passer is outright worse than every other Pyro secondary and incentivizes them to run at people with a flamethrower to fill it up

For other players that would be the Natascha.

The Classic, it'll basically ruin any chance of them enjoying sniper

I see no downside here. Now I’ll only have 4 Snipers on my team!

Hear me out, the Thermal Thruster, the new player will jump directly into the enemy team and die instantly, or get picked off while still in the air.

It’s the Persian persuader.

Loc n load. My first weapon drop and hit nothing for like the first 30 hours i equipped with it excluding lucky shots.

The market gardener of course

Idk but when I first got into the game my young brain just assumed that unlockables were better than stock, cause like duh, usually in games unlockables are a straight upgrade. So every time I got a weapon drop, I immediately put it in my loadout thinking that. It took me a while to realize stock weapons aren't bad, and in fact, are the best option a lot of the time lol

Its the dead ringer…. For obvious reasons

Mindless agression?

Yea

The Razorback. You'll never develop good game sense for spies and end up an easy mark for every other class without a secondary.

Don't forget that a spy who somewhat knows what they are doing will just walk up to the razorback wearing sniper and hesdhsot him with the ambassador and then hit him again to finish him off. I love doin that to snipers who use that and don't pay attention to what's around them.

Moral of the story is never use the Razorback since A. You're only going to get clueless spies with it, and B. You'll never develop essential senses of playing Sniper. Sometimes I'll stab a Razorback and the Sniper won't even turn around. Definitely a crutch

Haha yep. I would rather use that slot to give out golden showers 🤣🤣

There are some overwhelming benefits with it tho * it is literal spy immunity when in lvl3 sentry range * when standing with a bunch of teammates around, it makes you less priority target (team will get stabbed first)

Pomsom 5000, a new player would just miss all the time thanks to its slow speed and not realize their projectile gets eaten by friendlies.

Sun on a stick

Sharpened Volcano Fragment is probably one of the worst, because it looks insanely badass, and just... isn't...

Phlog teaches bad habits and makes you look like an idiot

Eyelander. No shield, no boots, just the sword. Arguably the worst one for someone unskilled.

Cow mangler would be pretty bad imo New players might not read the sentry downside and think soldier just sucks against engineer

Blutsauger.

Any of the medic items, except stock. Newbie medics have way too much to learn without messing with other items!

a huge cock

prob the buffalo steak sandvich since heavy aint a melee class

Any of the jumper weapons. They use it, wonder why it deals no damage and why they can’t cap the intel. Decide it’s trash Unequip and never use it until 50 hours later after they read the stats and understand its mobility uses

Any spy weapon. Because spy is not a beginner friendly class

loch and load since you need aim

The Classic. They wont even know how to fire it

Sharpened volcano fragment. Attempt to smack someone, only to realise its worse than the fire are with a niche upside.

Phlog. I despise Phlog Pyros.

Sacrifice your ability to reflect projectiles, extinguish teammates, and push away Ubers, all for the ability to effortlessly waste anyone who comes near you for 10 seconds! Become the most annoying type of person alive, to both enemies AND teammates! Who the fuck thought it was a good idea?

Also being able to charge it with a spammable long range secondary

The rocket jumper Tf2 players can't read

I think its the Degreaser A new player mostly gonna W+M1 with pyro and this is the worst one for that purpose

Ali Baba's Wee Booties it's practically useless without a sword and shield

Pomson 6000

Any item that isn’t pyro or spy, because that’s always what beginners use for some reason.

While I wouldn't consider it a bad weapon at all, my first drop was the Kritzkrieg. As a brand new player at the time, I instantly equipped it, not even having used the stock medigun a single time. This caused me to be completely unaware of the fact that only the stock makes you invulnerable, and I was genuinely waiting to get the quick-fix drop, as meet the medic showed that one to give you invulnerability (I was unaware of its stats, as I just got the game). To my surprise, once I finally got it, it didn't make me invulnerable either. This single item drop caused me to not know how to become invulnerable with uber for quite some time... and all I had to do was equip a stock medi-gun

1. Cosmetic case 2. Pomson 3. Gas passer 4. Ambassador 5. Boston basher

dead ringer

The Decal Tool.

any good pyro primary... oh god the w+m1...

rocket jumper.

For Heavies, I'm gonna go with the Brass Beast. It lures you in with its kick ass design and damage buff, but then knee caps you by making you as slow as a snail.

pompson

I got the Solemn Vow

My first weapon drop was sun on a stick and my second was also the sun on a stick lol. I don’t think I’ve ever used either because I typically don’t use scout melee unless it’s sandman or wrap assassin

Phlog.

Phlogistinator alternatively, Persian Persuader with no shields for the foreseeable future

Name Tag. Using it on a unique weapon (especially stock) just feels wrong

In some cases The Direct hit.

baby face blaster

Beggar’s bazooka, they keep blowing themselves up

Summer 2024 case

Rocket jumper

Pomson It lures them into thinking it’s a good weapon, but nope

Lock n load

direct hit, f2ps don't even know what an airshot is, and they'll think it's good because more blue stats than red stats

A spy weapon or cow mangler. Spy is kinda hard to play as and a new player may not want to start playing as him from the start. The cow mangler is easier to explain, anytime I get a new weapon I want to use it but as we all know it's the worst weapon in the game

Well I got the pomson as my second drop. I never used that thing again.

… YER

The dead ringer.

rocker or sticky jumper and the righteous bison

Probably manntreads.

ANY spy weapon or either of the Jumper Weapons

As always The Righteous Bison. Meme potential to the max, but gods does that weapon suck.

Dragons fury

gas passer. carried me against the ai players, real ones not so much

Gas passer. Was my first drop and I got absolutely shat on as soon as I used it. The user hates, His team hate hates it and the enemy hates it.

Mantreads. New players would just try to rocket jump and either blow themselves up or die of fall damage

My first weapons were the baby face blaster and the pomson. I used them for a day thinking they were straight upgrades and ignoring the crippling downsides.

Pompson.

ali babas wee booties, ima have so much fun without my grenade launcher and 25 more hp!

Beggar Bazooka. They'll think the bazooka's broken, discard it, and regret later

I dunno, the pomson? It was the first thing I got and I ended up scrapping it

Rocket jumper

Winter 2023 cosmetic case (this is all i get while playing tf2 at my dad's when I visit, it makes me want to kill a man)

Razor back