Batallion's Backup used to give a damage resistance of 80%, making Hale only deal 40 damage to affected players.
This was reasonably overpowered as there was no limit on it, allowing multiple soldiers to charge the banner and take turns using it, effectively giving all players in a group 5x health. This was made ridiculously stronger by the addition of medics, especially ones with Amputator taunt healing, which effectively could heal banner users fast enough that focusing a RED as Hale wasn't enough to kill a single target.
As a result, the weapon got nerfed.
However, the current version of Batallion's backup only protects against 20% damage, meaning Hale deals 160 damage instead. The banner functionally does nothing for most of the team now. Even the banner user themselves are usually dead to rights after one hit, and the classes who do benefit from this banner are too few and far between, and likely cannot utilize this buff very easily; Soldier is left with 40 after a banner hit, likely less if he jumped in, which means he will die on trying to jump away, Pyro is left with 15 only if his HP is full, which he won't be if he's flare jumping, and Demoman will likely either have lost his shield first, or already have 4 heads, in which case he can already tank a hit. Heavy is left as the only class with an arguably significant benefit from this item, getting 80 extra health, but since we often do not get a lot of players on this class, this often does not happen.
In response, almost every player has stopped using this item.
Batallion's, in comparison to the other two available banners, is now commonly seen as a pure downgrade of an item choice.
Proposal is to buff the Backup to give a damage resistance of 40% (120 damage from Hale.) This would add one resistance hit for most of the RED team, two for Heavies, and zero for Kunai/Earner spies and Sandman Scouts, as well as any of 125HP classes not topped off on health.
This was reasonably overpowered as there was no limit on it, allowing multiple soldiers to charge the banner and take turns using it, effectively giving all players in a group 5x health. This was made ridiculously stronger by the addition of medics, especially ones with Amputator taunt healing, which effectively could heal banner users fast enough that focusing a RED as Hale wasn't enough to kill a single target.
As a result, the weapon got nerfed.
However, the current version of Batallion's backup only protects against 20% damage, meaning Hale deals 160 damage instead. The banner functionally does nothing for most of the team now. Even the banner user themselves are usually dead to rights after one hit, and the classes who do benefit from this banner are too few and far between, and likely cannot utilize this buff very easily; Soldier is left with 40 after a banner hit, likely less if he jumped in, which means he will die on trying to jump away, Pyro is left with 15 only if his HP is full, which he won't be if he's flare jumping, and Demoman will likely either have lost his shield first, or already have 4 heads, in which case he can already tank a hit. Heavy is left as the only class with an arguably significant benefit from this item, getting 80 extra health, but since we often do not get a lot of players on this class, this often does not happen.
In response, almost every player has stopped using this item.
Batallion's, in comparison to the other two available banners, is now commonly seen as a pure downgrade of an item choice.
Proposal is to buff the Backup to give a damage resistance of 40% (120 damage from Hale.) This would add one resistance hit for most of the RED team, two for Heavies, and zero for Kunai/Earner spies and Sandman Scouts, as well as any of 125HP classes not topped off on health.
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