Quick talk about the Market Gardener Nerf (TF2 Chat)

In Smissmas 2015, Valve release the Tough Break update for Team Fortress 2. The update made A LOT of changes to both weapons and classes within TF2. Lots of people have talked about the Phlog's much needed nerf, and the major changes with Demoknight, but few have talked about the nerf to the Market Gardener, which added a 20% attack speed penalty. While this does not pose much of a problem, as you usually only need the one swing to kill an enemy, it has some downsides.

1. The MG-Hit-Hit on heavies: This was previously fairly straight-forward. You market garden a heavy, then wail away on him twice with your shovel until he dies, 300-195-65-65 = -25, and the heavy is dead, hopefully before he's realised he's gonna die and spun up his minigun. With the 20% attack speed decrease, this gives the heavy WAY more time to spin up his minigun and fill you with $2000 dollar's worth of metal.

2. Killing Sentries: Killing sentries as a trolldier was always tricky, especially if you couldn't sneak up on it. But you could jump onto the sentry, spinning fast enough for it to not track you, then do a little dance on it's head while laying the beat down with your shovel. 4/5 hits later, you got yourself a dead sentry, and an angry engie to boot. But now, the engie's got enough time to stop sitting on his ass drinking beer, and run to the aid of his personal aimbot. And as any trolldier knows, the slightest damage while doing your sentry-avoid-dance (see what I did there, heh heh... anyway) will allow the sentry to get a lock on, as fling you higher than the skybox on plr_hightower.

In conclusion, the nerf is more of a small annoyance than a downright travesty, and one I have easily come to accept as the norm. I understand why they nerfed it, it was nearly a straight upgrade to the shovel (like the 3rd Degree to the Fire Axe, but crit's on demand are a little stronger than killing that one medic through his pocket), and it simply gives you more incentive to hit the MG on the first try, rather than going all Rage Shovel on everyone.