The thing that we learned is that no matter how bad a weapon is MVM will always make it overpowered

5:24 Solemn Vow makes sense to craft, you need 9 samples of urine (Representing the 9 classes of the game) to see the health of your enemies, which, in fact, is what the Solemn Vow do

Missing the taunting scout but hitting someone just running by is a classic.

One niche thing the Heatmaker does well is long range sentry busting. Since the focus charge can be activated on demand and the damage penalty only applies to players, you can deal 150 damage shots to buildings slightly faster.

5:23 Actually Solem vow crafting recipe makes a lot of sense because Hippocrates (the guys who's head was used to model solem vow) really liked urine therapy so using jarate to craft it is a very cool historical reference

What we learned is that weapons that move the slide from single target to crowd control tend to do poorly or be less effective in the base game, where you won't fight the entire team at once, but in mvm where it's nothing but crowds they excel

I love this bizzare ratio that exists that seems to demand that if it's garbage in one gamemode, its broken in the other.

8:22 props to the spy who actually tried to pretend to be a sniper. only if he haven't gotten the same disguise as you

Honestly the hitman has always struck me as a weapon that promotes bad habits (being hard scoped a lot) but a lot of good players use it so I guess it’s just a me thing

Protip for MVM snipers! If you're playing with a friend or are great at persuasion, have your engineer place the teleporter on the rock on the right side of Rottenburg's main field. (Yes, you can do this) Doing this will make people teleported onto the rock invisible, just like in BigRock. Provided a dispenser is near the rock, and you're a good shot, you can basically solo Hamlet Hostility and Bavarian Botbash, with your engie covering for the tank.

you didnt talk about the fact that you can unscope after shooting way faster in focus than normal. it gives a good advantage in sniper vs sniper combat and also fighting enemys from multiple directions while trying to keep cover etc

Fun Fact: When your using focus the scope functions the same way it does on the classic in that scoping and firing are now two independent mechanics that don't effect each other, this is why you can stay scoped in after firing. However because of this you can also scope out immediately after firing a scoped shot, bypassing the small period of time that you would be stuck in scope if you had not been using focus. This makes it ideal for fighting second scoping snipers and staying out of tunnel vision.

that scout medic double tap at 7:53 was bonkers

The best use of the Hitman's Heatmaker is to counter second-scopers who wait to hear your gun go off before they shoot The silenced Hitman's Heatmaker keeps them waiting forever...

I'm gonna be honest with ya, i swear this weapon did not exist until like 1 year ago. I had never heard of it nor seen anyone use it, then i saw someone commenting about it in a discord server and i was so confused because i had been playing tf2 for over 2 years and had never even heard of the "hitman's heatmaker"

Personally I love the hitmans heatmaker because it’s perfect for my subclass, the sneaky sniper. The silencer is basically a soft buff to hide you better, and pair that with the shooters stakeout (or as I like to call it the discount boxtrot) you can get behind the enemy and snipe them in the most unexpected ways. It’s awesome to see the chat when I do this on pl defense lol

You are absolutely right that I only use the Heatmaker for aesthetic reasons. When I play sniper, I prefer the quieter sounds of the Heatmaker to the sounds of stock. I do occasionally use the charge but most of the time it doesn't really do much. The most value I get from it is being able to kill heavies a little faster.

Can confirm, I have indeed seen this weapon in my inventory occasionally.

My favourite rifle. Started using this early on to practice headshots. 125 hours of sniper later and never gave it up. Awesome weapon. Awesome design.

coolest thing about the heatmaker is that at launch the focus also gave your SMG tracers. it got patched out within a few weeks iirc but god was it terrifying while it lasted

@4:07 MAJOR correction: what the Focus meter actually does is that your *_NEXT_* shots will *_START AT_* 25% charge, rather than gain 25% more charge -- 25% more charge is what you see on the Sydney Sleeper, NOT on the Heatmaker while under Focus. This distinct difference is actually why the Heatmaker is so good in MvM; bypassing the usual pause in charge rate in-between every shot means you get more than just 150 damage out of every uncharged headshot, and this grows exponentially more as you upgrade the rifle's charge rate, damage and reload speed.

I find the focus works really well at stopping pushes, as it refills your charge bar while reloading. That's just my upsides to it at least.

The only reason I dont use the heatmaker more is because of its firing sound, but Ill probably start using it more now. Nice video fish, keep it up

I swear by the heatmaker. It's a very team-oriented sniper rifle, it works best when you're supporting a push or a defense because of the fact that it obviously is for clearing groups. The noise will drown out your silenced gunshot. If you only land a bodyshot, that still takes off a huge slice of health from someone who is presumably fighting one of your allies. And if you are landing headshots, particularly with focus on, you can thin out a crowd to a manageable size all by yourself.

I fully agree, the Hitman's Heatmaker is definitely a weapon that exists

I remembered and old bug that happened where if you activated focus and switched to SMG, your SMG rounds would turn into tracers. Meaning you could spam a bunch of these particle effects around.

I remember Wambu talked about this weapon Its greatest value is that its downside actively encourages good sniping habits with the headshot reward while disensentivising body shots

I remember back around like 2016, I only used the Hitman's Heatmaker as Sniper for a few months just because I thought it looked cool. In all that time, I never figured out what it actually does.

It's not really how the rifle probably wants you to use it, but the fact you can use the charge whenever means that you can headshot one enemy, and then pop it for a tiny duration just to make sure you have a full charge for his mate you saw peeking around the corner.

Weapon reskins in TF2 have always been a strange case to me.

15:35 that Pyro air blasting the crit heavies was cheek-clenchingly painful

The way I see it, this is the epitome of “training wheels” great for learning how to blast their heads, but it may end up doing more harm than good if you’re good at headshots

The Hitman's Heatmaker's focus is significant because it removes a bottleneck in shooting. This is most notable in MVM but also can be seen in casual. When you fire any other sniper rifle, you have to unscope and work the bolt, which almost always takes the same amount of time. This is lousy in MVM because the unscoping and rescoping process is the only part that doesn't get upgraded when you upgrade charge and reload speed, so you'll always have the 0.2 bottleneck to firing charged shots, and it can feel very sluggish when you've upgraded every other aspect of the rifle but you still wait for that bottleneck each time. With the Hitman's Heatmaker, firing in focus mode skips that step altogether. This is the biggest deal in MVM because it means your rifle upgrades finally aren't bottlenecked. That said, it can be significant in casual too because it means you can fire the rifle again and again, and each shot is viable for a headshot. I honestly think you find this weapon underwhelming because you're playing too carefully with it. You're going for good shots that you'll probably hit, like some kind of careful sniper. I think the purpose of Focus is actually to encourage you to spam the hell out of it and try to shoot at enemies more frequently. Next time you use this thing (although you probably won't touch it after using it for a month), try focusing and spamming shots you might not hit if an enemy is trying to juke the one shot. Then again, Sniper is my least played class, so I am probably wrong.

"what's the world without a little bit of chaos?" - some beggar's bazooka soldier main 15:35

You can unscope immediately after a shot with a Focused Hitman though, meaning you can jump immediately afterward. It makes you harder to second-scope, and you could surf damage more easily.

The silencer is funny for flanking super far behind enemies

The neat lil trick I found while playing with Focus is that you can unscope immediately after firing. Usually, you'll be forced to stay in scoped mode for a bit after taking a shot when you are vulnerable but with Focus active, you can press M2 to quickly get out of scoped mode and possibly juke enemy snipers or incoming rockets. I think HiGPS did a vid about it. Ofc its hard to prove its viability for general combat but its a cool gimmick that seems to get glossed over.

Great video! I was really glad that you brought up MVM

I didn't expect to hear Deus Ex sountrack in your videos, you have a good taste!

Something I learned a while ago is that, despite the stats making it seem like it’s for going on amurder sprees, focus can be activated even with just a ninth of it loaded whenever you need charge. For example, the little over a second of fast charging you get from one assist is enough to almost let you pop a soldier, demo or pyro and long enough to fast-track your way to killing heavies in one shot on-demand. Assuming you land that kill, also, you get that charge back.

Hitmans Heatmaker is the best 1v1 sniper rifle in the entire game, when you have the charge meter, you can unaim instantly after shooting, negating in-scope stall which causes you to die after shooting in sniper fights.

I use the Heatmaker all the time and i start watching this video and i immediately start questioning if i missed an update to the weapon, thats how little the focus meter comes into my mind. Awesome work fish

The opening "made possible by viewers like you" brought me back to channel 2 in the 90s

at the end of the day, sniper is all about gerting head

12:05 | *You mean **_mag,_** right blud?* M A G A Z I N E

3:18 fish's aim is so destructive that even his teammate got headshot by him.

Finally, I've been waiting for this as your perspective as a Sniper. You cover the Jarate and Scottish Resistance, so I know there is more than BWA and since i figured you played Sniper a lot, you'd know about this and now this video is _finally_ here.

The intro basically shows the issue with so many modern games. All the weapons are essentially the same and the differences are minute at best. And in modern games that means they're all fully automatic rifles that play the same. How "good" a weapon is pretty much only depends on how much damange they do.

A couple thoughts on this video. 1- I think that the hitman's heatmaker's ideal use in standard play is to use it's focus meter for short bursts, more often. It would be ideal for taking on a small cluster of 2-4 enemies, where it could take them out before enough of them started firing at you. Smaller groups, more frequently. 2- I think that it's fine for a weapon to be overpowered in MvM. I'd rather valve focus on balancing a weapon's base stats for standard play than try to balance it for both. Explosive headshots is also the only way for sniper to be viable against that many enemies at once, and even then you still have to have good aim.

The thing about this weapon is that when you kill someone via headshot, the enemy's head will actually roll. As description says

3:18 Heavy jumpscare !!

Huge respect for using the original Deus Ex ost, a very nostalgic and powerful soundtrack for me.

About what you said about the Machina, I dont think its worse than stock. I prefer to constantly move around the map or just stay in one position to scare the enemy team into not crossing the sightline. Besides, you can either quickscope or use the stock smg to cope with a lack of noscoping. At least its good for taking down sentries and revved up Natascha heavies with a bullet resistantance from a vacc medic.

2:25 @fishstickonastick-gaming Can we acknowledge how bad of a day that demoman was probably having Dude literally died to a near-full-charge headshot in the middle of a shield charge. That's how demoknight typically goes for me

Well, it definitely is one of the weapons of all times.

This is a really good video very thorough

4:51 crocket gaming

Another awesome video as always,Fish

7:55 "Unless you're pretty much a god." *Proceeds to make the sound of a whining puppy

I think the Heatmaker would feel more special if it had a bit more extreme stats. So. Ditch the "no need to unscope" thing, up the damage penalty, and make the Meter refill slower if it's active (1 kill on an inactive meter means 25% charge, whilst 1 kill on an active meter is 10%) And in exchange for all those downsides, make the Heatmaker charge passively whilst unscoped. This means that when your meter is active, you have to Focus harder. It's a similar premise as the Bazaar Bargain, rewarding you for doing well with a snowballing power, except it's forcing the Sniper to be faster paced and riskier. When Focus is active, your most efficient option is quick scoping. It means less time sitting on a full charge and burning Focus, when you could be killing. A faster paced playstyle then means you have to take risks, putting yourself in more vulnerable positions that the enemy can counter.

Thanks for the vid. Good distraction noise as my Ma is in the hospital right now.

Ehhhh you forgot that this gun has so many secret stats on it. The focus metter gives you better movility and fast scope and unscope, there´s a few seconds delay when you shoot to unscope and with the metter it can be reduced to cero, making you a force to be recognized on sniper duels, not to mention that you can focus, shoot and then jump, a mechanic that has been removed due to being too powerfull for the sniper on posterior updates. If you are perma-scope with the hitman´s you are not using it right, there are a few instances were you can do that but it doesn´t mean that you should do that everytime, the weapon it´s not only about headshoting, but also movility and speed (speaking about scoping).

For such a long time I didn't know you can activate focus at any time. I thought you had to wait for the bar to fill up... you know... like every other timed buff in the game. It sure would be nice if Valve made that clearer because it transforms the Heatmaker from C-tier to a solid B+.

Never forget Smissmas 2020 where every server was plagued by the Festive Hitman bot using the heatmaker.

I think you’re the only KZfaqr who has covered nearly every different tf2 weapon

The Heavy Is A Class That Exists

I actually didn't know you could activate focus before it was full, thanks lol

i love using the heatmaker cuz on days you do well, it feels like you are the king of tf2, and i know the Bazaar bargain does too, but with the heatmajer idk it is just something else..... underrated weapon

ok but there is one thing that not a lot of people talk about this weapon having, which is scope cancelling. this used to be doable with all snipers back in the day, but it was patched out a long time ago. if you use focus, you can shoot and jump within like 5 frames of the shot to cancel your reload animation all together. its so incredibly powerful for svs battles and no one seems to know about it

I was just thinking about how all of these upsides would make it broken in mvm, then you said it.

I think one way to make the Hitman's Heatmaker a bit more interesting is to play further into the idea that the weapon is for hitmen, silent assassins, so, what if the weapon gained the "Silent Killer" attribute, where the enemy team cannot see kills by this weapon in the killfeed. It would still have the focus meter, but maybe as a way to make the silent killer attribute not too powerful, the Heatmaker would have a reduced maximum charge headshot damage, maybe something like 300-350 or some other number. I'm still terrible at suggesting weapon rebalances, so, I could still be spewing complete nonsense with this stuff.

New rifle idea: Heavy Rifle (the Perth Punisher) When unscoped, same damage output as stock, but it has a 1 round clip with a long reloading animation, since these are decently sized boolets -50% on body shots and buildings when scoped Ignores enemy resistances When scoped, reloading is separated to scoping, so you can stay scoped, but it takes twice as long As an upside, you are fully charging when you are scoped. Headshots do a full 450, body shots do 75 On a side note, the damn shot is loud, so any curious flankers will know you’re open for a good while

i use this rifle and im not disapointed, i like the "focus" effect, it really helps me

Oh my god the heatmaker is my favorite rifle and I never knew you could activate focus without a full bar

I've kind considered the remain scoped while reloading a bad mechanic, as you can change your settings to remaining scoped while reloading and it will apply for all snipers.

most weapons being sidegrades is one of tf2s biggest strengths. the fact that most stock weapons, at least stat wise, aren't just disposed of immediately after unlocking something is awesome. means that no matter how new u are ur still on a level playing field with the only differing factor being time and skill. that said i only use the heatmaker bc i like the aesthetic of it and i love to use full class sets like the milk man or the urban professional

im glad im not the only one who forgets about the heatmaker’s focus meter

This title sure is one of the all time ways to describe a weapon

The main thing with focus for me is you can get out of your scope instantly after shooting so it drastically increases your evasiveness vs other snipers.

13:25 dont forget the brass beast (i get 150k damage with it often in two cities)

A clever way to animate the slower reload speed for the Bizzare Bargin would be to have Sniper physically struggling to open the chamber. It is a rusty musket after all

To me, the Heatmaker is just the sniper bot's wet dream

Fun fact: the faster charge rate is BECAUSE of the unscope thingy. Otherwise it doesn't have a faster charge lol.

1:28 Nobody starts being able to play any class perfectly.

In practise, I usually use focus as some kind of machine gun. Pepper the enemy with body and occasional headshots to break their concentration as your team continues to attack them.

Honestly, the only thing I’d change about the hitman is remove the laser. It’s supposed to be a stealthy sniper, and it would help combat counter snipers because they wouldn’t be able to know if you’re pre aiming them since you’re mostly always scoped in because of focus. (Even thought I think personally, you win those 1v1’s most of the time because you can reload and fire faster since you don’t have to rescope) and since snipers surprise headshots lose the surprise factor after they hit or kill someone, it would help you at least keep some sort of stealth by not letting people know where you’re pre aiming until you shoot

0:31 jonto heavly disagrees

The Sniper's primaries are weird to me, because unlike most other 'bad' sidegrades in the game, they're all really easy to make more interesting. It takes about 3 seconds of thought to fix these guys. The Machina - add a slight sin wave to the damage scaling graph. -17% damage on an uncharged shot, +17% damage on a charged shot. This would mean that an uncharged headshot could still kill low health classes like scouts and engineers at 125 damage, but a fully charged body shot could now kill +health demomen and pyros at 175 health, playing into the Machina's ability to pierce characters. The Hitman's Heatmaker - Normally I would never suggest this, as it would be too strong, or too close to the classic's niche, but because of the 20% damage penalty on bodyshots, it would be pretty interesting to give thIs weapon a baseline buff to firing speed and reload speed let's say of around 15 percent respectively. This would very rarely mean anything at range, but could give the sniper way more control over close quarters combat - if they can snap-aim, and land scoped/unscoped headshots to minimize the damage penalty The only really difficult sniper rifle to fix is the bazaar bargain... That shit is inherently broken, there's no way I could think of to fix it without completely altering its core mechanic, unless you want to go the boring route and give it +15% bullet damage taken or -15 max hp or something. If I were the lead of the balancing team, I would keep the weapon as it is, but starting at 3 or so Heads collected, have enemy corpses start dropping stacks of cash, to play into the shopping theme. These stacks of cash act as special health drops, comparable to a medium health kit, except they give whoever picks them up a very slow-fading overheal, so that the enemy team has a better chance of dealing with the now turbo-charged sniper. They also serve the double purpose of letting nearby players know the enemy team has a bazaar bargain sniper in the first place in pubs. ...I know this sounds crazy, but frankly even this may not be a big enough nerf, this weapon is fucked.

It makes a really good training tool for punishing body shots.

i guess it is a weapon that exists

An interesting mechanic I've seen posed for sniper is the idea of minimum charge. I think the idea was for a cleaner's carbine rework but I think its worth mentioning here as it could easier be applied to a sniper rifle. If I recall correctly the idea was to have it so instead of granting mini-crits after fully charging your crikey meter, crikey would drain over time but the higher you had it the higher your rifle's charge would start at I definitely like the idea more applied to a sniper rifle, maybe one that can't build charge normally and requires you to either land headshots or get kills to build your charge. Would make it so you could drop a medic with 150, then a solider with your now higher damage, before moving onto the heavy, dropping them all with a single quick shot

good tip on mvm hitmakers if there is an engie that knows what its doing stand next to the dispensers as it gives you infinite ammo to boot but if you dont have an engie or an engie that more prioritizes on the dps class have ammo canteens

I personally love the Heatmaker since you can hardscope and go tunnel vision. I just personally enjoy that the Sniper class has a true "focus" mode while he gets warmed up, it's more of a symbolic thing than a meta thing for me.

Yunno, it’s kinda funny how two different games have a sniper rifle buff, that grants explosive headshots. Yes, I’m looking at Payday 2’s “Graze” mechanic, where getting a killing headshot creates a cylinder around the bullet that deals damage to all cops in that radius. While I would like an explosive headshot sniper rifle someday, I’d probably nerf its capabilities significantly, by having the “explosion” deal base damage to all enemies nearby.

The only REAL downside of this gun is that it isn't the Awper Hand. Jokes aside, Non_The_Ninja has made what is probably the best video about this rifle. The Focus meter is obviously the important topic any discussion about this weapon will hinge on, but being able to de-scope independently of your reloading (something the Classic can also do) can keep you more mobile in Sniper 1v1s. The Classic can't ever abuse such a tactic, since it's got a hard baked ~4 seconds before being able to headshot, but this gun really lets you get away with some quickscopes that almost feel like robbery.

I honestly would really like a sniper designed to take uncharged unscoped shots, I have this bizarre playstyle since I can’t click on heads, I’ll just body shot then use the smg, having a better sniper or smg for that would be nice

4:51 "Get down mr president!"

The point Fish makes about reaload speed or clip size is so true. Give this rifle a slightly faster reload speed while using charge and give the Bazaar Bargain a universal slightly slower reload speed and you get better balanced versions of the weapons.

The actual benefit of HH above all else is that you can shoot and still secondscope while using the ability meter. Basically you use it in sniper duels best; if you miss vs another sniper, you can actually unscope literally right after you shoot if you're ability is active. The thing is... some snipers will wait for you to fire the first shot, so this tricks them into going for the shot and likely missing due to the trick, and so you get to punish them for it.

8:23 props to the spy for method acting but come ON, right next to the guy you’re disguised as?