Sniper Upgrades

Wow, nearly the end of August and i've only done 1 other post this month, and that was at the start. Well, I keep doing other stuff like watching TV programs, or actually playing games.

So, I'll post here since it's midnight and I can't be bothered doing much else.

A week or two ago I went on TF2, where i've got most of the unlockable upgrades, infact all of them apart from the alternate healing gun for the Medic. So I went on, and I put back a load of weapons to what they originally where, not all of them, but alot of them.

For the scout specifically that i've posted about, I put all 3 items back to the original, although I do keep switching to the FaN and back simply because I can't choose. Double jumping and using a Pistol is winning it for me, so I'll mourn the loss of a stun, but nevermind!

Sniper has always been one of my favorite classes, I think on played it's 3rd, but it was second just after Pyro for a long time, and has been bumped down to 3 because of me playing pretty much nothing apart from the Engineer. There isn't a situation I don't think "Playing an Engineer would be good here" and end up switching, even when I have trouble killing as a Heavy, I can kill people with an Engineers shotgun and rack up the points.

Sniper Rifle / Bow
This choice still fills me with confusion, i've come across alot of people who'll happily be vocal on the fact that one of them is a "noob" weapon. The confusion comes two fold, first is the fact that it seems to be around 50/50 over which is the actual "noob" weapon, I hear just as many people suggest that the Bow is for Pros as I hear say the Rifle is for Pros.
The second comes from the fact I can sometimes have trouble with what people are classing as a "noob" weapon. Fair enough when you're in a situation where 1 weapon is far inferior to another, the inferior weapon might be something a "noob" picks because they don't know better, or because it has some flashing lights on or whatever... Where as, people will happily complain that the Pyro is a "noob" class because any idiot can play it, especially if this "noob" has just killed 5 people, and even more especially if the person complaining is a spy. If a Pyro is that good, why not play a pyro yourself?
So maybe the Rifle is the "noob" weapon in respect that its worse and only idiots will pick it, and the Bow is the "noob" weapon because it's easy to do well with. Or visa versa, or even more likely, people just like to complain.
Similar to how in Arena I can hear (read) at any given point something along the lines of "You're playing badly" whether its because i'm not moving from our spawn point, or i've made a bad tactical choice, been outplayed, or i'm simply clueless. These comments usually come from people who died before me, which gives me pause.
My girlfriend phoned me while I was playing once, just before the game started (Nucleus) so I switched to Heavy and talked to her while I just stood there with my gun spinning ready to fire. Some guy complains at me that I'm not being helpful because i'm not moving, which is all well and good, but I was killing 4/5 people a game. Especially in Nucleus people are always running by your starting point, and you'll always get spys and scouts thinking it's funny to kill an AFK player with a Taunt. And I think it's funny when you shoot them in the face while they're half way through their taunt realising their mistake...

While I run off on a tangent, it's mostly because I feel I need to point out that I have no idea in the Rifle/Bow choice which one i'm "supposed" to take, although I feel it's probably the bow.

Anyway when I first got the Bow I couldn't hit anything, the arching took alot of time to get used to, but I think i've got it. Although maybe I haven't got it because I find aiming with the sniper rifle alot easier, I can also stalk targets alot easier with it since I don't have to mess about unholding an arrow. I also find it much easier to kill people without the sniper scope when they're running at me than I can with the Bow, since people often dodge the bow more I suppose.

Either weapon I think is very much about person preference, and mine is definetly with the Sniper Rifle, but I'd suggest to anyone to try both.

Machine Gun / Shield / Jarate
The main annoying thing about these upgrades is that they'd be far better if they replaced the melee weapon than the Machine Gun.

Lets face it, the Shield which stops a backstab is only useful against a Spy, and the Jarate is mostly useful to stopping a Spy from going into stealth, so what we're talking about is replacements to kill spys or stop spys killing you.

If i've used a Jarate on a Spy, or he's just broke my shield, the only way to kil him is to melee him, which can be quite tricky, a good spy player probably has more melee practice than a good sniper, if you only had your machine gun...

Anyway, I often find myself using the Shield, because I'm looking down a scope and can't turn around every 2 seconds to check for a spy, so the shield helps alot. Often I try and leg it from a spy because I don't have my machine gun. Although it helps alot that I also headshot team mates just incase they're spys.

So overall I quite like the Sniper update, added stuff that's very nice choices, not automatic upgrades, I would say more, but I can't think of more to say!