The Paradoxical Straight Upgrade. If you never get hit, you never suffer the downside but if you never get hit you never benefit from the upside.

This weapon helped me learn how to better dodge direct hits and explosive splash damage. It is a must use for anyone wanting to improve at playing scout. Sometimes, intentionally nerfing yourself is very important to improve at something.

6:27 "i think only the liberty launcher and the air strike won't be able to one shot you. Even at max ramp up." Hold it right there, buster! You forgot about the Rocket Jumper.

Seeing the TF2 weapon that resulted in me being called "Candy" online for many years now in an episode of bad weapon academy is both amazing and painful.

The "Cheer" meter is *hilarious.* I love it. If nothing else, I'd like that to be implemented in some fashion.

At this point, you're gonna have to buy a Collector's Scorch Shot kit with all the donators.

What an epical weapon: not overpowered, not underpowered, just a somewhat niche yet still occasionally useful weapon. I might use it more (if I get back into TF2), thanks for really showing how it isn't just "Direct Downgrade: The Weapon" that I thought it was for the longest while. (Also, legit did not know that the health kit on kill was passive, I honestly thought you had to have used Candy Cane at least once before kill.)

Unlikely Synergy Moment: I have found great success when using the Candy Cane with a Back Scratcher Pyro friend. The Pyro can use the Back Scratcher to help heal himself more than usual from your healthkits, and the Pyro can also butter up targets for you and reflect explosives that you just cant deal with. The absolute sprees I have gone on with this strategy are stupid ridiculous. Also the Back Scratcher is just really strong anyways so yeah use it. Any Pyros who are reading this try out the Back Scratcher for a change, it might suprise you. The moral or the story is to give a weapon a chance even if it looks bad or inferior at first glance.

I absolutely love the idea of Scout hitting a bottle of pills at someone like a baseball. That's absolutely something he'd do

Who knew that all that sugar in that candy cane could also be the Scout’s demise?

I like Balance Mod's take on the Candy Cane: they removed the explosive damage penalty and instead you receive less healing from medics and dispensers. Basically the Back Scratcher penalty.

I really hoped the beginning montage would end with scout getting one shot by a pipe

Fish finally gets a breather with a not good, but not bad weapon, my man needs it after all the other weapon lmao

10:49 "The WINGer allows you to take advantage of this on the FLY"

I think just the self-overheal with packs buff would be enough to make this way more viable. Overhealing yourself would put you above the threshold to be one shot by explosives, even if its just a little. I'd say that overheal buff, paired with maybe a "overheal drains slower" buff, would be a great way to get around the downsides (think how the Kunai gets around its threshold downside in the same way). Honestly one of my favorite episodes, keep it up!

6:03 the funny thing here is that he would've gotten one shotted anyways, considering that that was a max damage ramp-up direct hit

*w h a t* Honestly, up until today, I thought this weapon gave you small health kits when you killed enemies _with the candy cane._ The fact that they also drop from enemies if killed by you with any other weapon makes it _so_ much better. I thought this thing was basically pointless. And now I know that it's... Uh... Kind of ok I guess? Still a huge improvement.

The clip at 3:15 couldve been the entire video. Absolutely incredible stuff

Welcome to good weapon academy, when we take a look at the best weapons tf2 has to offer and how to best gimmick them

I feel like this weapon was designed to be a "short range scout tool". for the player that orbitates around the point but doesn't just stick on it also, pyros as you pointed out, it combos very good with multiple weapons, and even more with teamates weaponry

In my early days, I would pair the Candy Cane with the Baby Face's Blaster. The idea was that if I could become so fast, projectiles would be less of an issue. Seemed neat in concept, but very difficult for me to pull off, and I'd just be screwed if I didn't have boost. I have gotten better at Scout and with the BFB, so maybe I should try the Candy Cane again with it or the Soda Popper.

missed opportunity to say merry fishmas. i thought tf2 was full of funnymen, smh my head irl for real. the healthkit on suicide thing actually gives you some insight into how killbinds work. if you ever wanted that. based off the "drop health on kill" buff, you can assume that killbinds are you killing yourself; it doesn't just work by killing you, but it actually goes through the motions of treating a killbind like a regular old kill, just with you filling both roles.

I saw this and thought, “He is gonna talk shit about my favourite weapon.” Thank god that wasn’t the case. And here is my idea for the perfect Support Scout: BFB- You can speed yourself up and rush forward to see what’s coming and warn everybody about it, making you a literal scout. Mad Milk- You have the ability to help your team by giving them chunks of health and kill the enemy. That is support to a tee. Candy Cane- Pretty much the same as the Mad Milk, except they don’t have to kill them if they are too low, and hey, with the BFB speed boost, it’s a 3-second job.

3:18 AMAZING timing right there, sums up the weapon

The candy cane has been an interesting weapon in my opinion. It has an interesting concept but the explosive damage weakness feels like it was just thrown in to make it have a downside. I would put an overheal penalty and also a damage penalty on it.

“All better rocket launchers than the Liberty launcher” *Scorch Shot is included* Painfully true. Travel speed of a direct hit, blast radius of the beggar’s bazooka. Edit: also, you made a joke about the Baby Face’s being “Oops all Natashas,” so would the Candy Cane be “Oops all Direct Hits?”

If the enemy team has no explosive classes it's a straight upgrade, but as soon as they have one you live in fear. I was really hoping you'd suggest overheal with excess kits as that is a great buff. When I play with it myself I find that I have basically no use for a lot of the health kits. Changing the damage vulnerability from explosive to general damage also makes a lot of sense, would mean that a quickscope sniper could nearly one shot a fully overhealed scout though, but that'd be the risk of using it.

I love using this when I decide to pretend to be a training bot, running in straight lines and following the walkable spaces like an NPC. Clubbing unsuspecting players to death as if I was some kind of soulless automaton.

Can i say 3:15 is the most perfect clip for any item showcase I've ever seen?

This really speaks volumes about the Scout that out of 20 episodes of Bad Weapon Academy, 4 of them have been for his crappy weapons. The most out of any class, even if you count the triple feature the Medic's Syringe guns got. I'd make a joke about a Sandman episode, but honestly that thing might be too garbage for even BWA at this point, given that the Wrap Assassin is almost a straight upgrade to it. Very nice episode though. Seems kind of weird to see this thing getting any use at all outside of memers or the occasional medieval mode I play.

I love feeling crippling fear of being one shot by demos and soliders

The candy cane could combine perfectly with the old shortstop, since (i think) the shortstop used to give you 150 health instead of the base 125 health.

I think my preferred buff would be to give it some kind of bonus to health received from health kits, like the back scratcher. Then you could capitalize on your own kills more than your enemies. Other than that I think it's pretty balanced.

The clips in this video were *really* well chosen to demonstrate the Candy Cane's upsides and downsides, as well as complementing your script.

the scorch shot in the 'better rocket launchers then the liberty launcher' thing bloody killed me

"Think of the Pocket Pistol as your Flame Belch and the Candy Cane as your Glory Kills..." Incredible

I think that the candy cane is one of those weapons that has a higher skill ceiling. Yes you take more damage from your class counters, but if you are good enough at avoiding explosive damage, via double jump, it’s essentially a direct upgrade.

A random concept I thought of on the spot is allowing the Scout to use it as a sandvich. It's a candy cane, so why not be able to drop it to people as a food item? Scout's don't use melee much anyway, so taking away access to it for on demand healing would be interesting. I wouldn't give it an eating animation, but on the other it would only be equal to a medium health kit at most. Tossing it would make it a small health kit. Finally, I would probably make its recharge duration something like 15-20 seconds. Scouts usually don't take much damage, so restoring potentially half health is a big deal. Even with the idea being fairly limiting, it still has the potential to overshadow Scout's other options. Scout just really doesn't have a good selection to choose from. EDIT: Another idea I had seen in another comment was similar to mine but fairly different. The Candy Cane would be consumable, but would provide a "sugar rush" buff, increasing speed and providing an additional buff, and whatever else. although whatever else might not be needed. The comment didn't give a cooldown, but it would ideally be a long one, or maybe even only available at a resupply locker. Still, it's only real competition would be the atomizer.

A good bit of your videos have always been on the line for me. I always kinda like them but am never too sure. This time you really did it for me. Great video man, keep up the good work

Man your editing style is so fun. Your intros always get me lol

This year just got a whole lot better with this new bad weapon academy video

On the bright side, Demoman will now turn you into a funny rag doll instead of gibs when they use pills. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I love your music choices. I find myself just vibing to the Pokémon and DKC OSTs and forgetting to pay attention sometimes lol

This video has some of the best footage I’ve seen, you really improved at scout in the past few months

4:44 I don't know if many have noticed, but to know if you have actually killed a Spy you can check on the upper bar of the screen when a teammate or enemy has been killed, it doesn't show the grey Spy image when a Spy feigns death.

I love the sandman heal idea, it sounds sick.

Fish: talks about getting god-like in the intro *Doesn't even have a kill streak kit on the candy cane*

I find the concept of the Candy Cane for Sniper really funny like "Oh you just dropped our Medic but at least I'll still get some of my health back so thanks."

Great work like always! Love the content

This brings back so many memories of my tf2 days, I used to run the baby face blaster, pocket pistol and candy cane as my main loadout and I had such a blast just popping off, those were the days :')

Those are some excellent season-appropriate music choices, Route 216, In a Snow-Bound Land and Ice Path? You have impeccable taste good sir

FSoaS: "Launching health packs at enemies could lead to greifing..." Hoovies: "And I took that personally."

Scout with candy cane: literally a walking health pack

i always knew this would come up, but i didn't expect a christmas one. good for you and +5 social credit

idk what's better, your amazing break down of why the candy cane isn't bad but also isn't good, or the amazing gameplay in the background. Merry Christmas and happy early new year fsoas! ;D

14:35 "THIS IS THE LAST OF MY HEALTH, PLEASE TAKE IT, MEDIC!"

I think that enemies being able to pick up the health kit is already a big enough downside for the weapon, so I'd want them to either get rid of that or reduce the explosive penalty to like 10%.

One of my personal least favorite parts of countering Pyro with the candy cane, is that the mad milk just does the job better. Then again it’s not that important but it just leaves the Candy Cane kinda worthless in that aspect, especially because you have to scramble for the pack.

Merry belated Christmas fish and a happy new year! You are one of my favorite KZfaqrs and your content is amazing

that "kill bind to drop a healthkit" has saved my burning teammates unreasonably often I trade my ultimately probably short life for our medic with 95 uber, that's a trade I'll always take

In my opinion it's a pretty neat side-grade: you lose survivability against explosions in return for more survivability against everything else. It's kinda like Fists of Steel on Heavy, only it takes roughly two or three hits to kill FoS Heavy while the Scout dies to a single pipe and the FoS pros and cons work only when the weapon itself is active.

i wish we still had the old pocket pistol, the extra health helped a lot with surviving explosions.

Fun stuff! Never played TF2 in my life, but your videos are really engaging!

I've started using the guillotine recently, the thing changes up how you play scout immediately. I consider it stronger than the pistols. It pretty much allows you to man fight heavies just like the mad milk. And landing long range ones is dopamine.

12:17 he (kinda) got 3 melee random critz in a row lol

For the health kit throwing damaging enemies, it would have to have a very hollow plasticity sound on impact

I personally wanted this before the backscatter but I'm happy it's here now. Btw Merry Christmas fish

Ooh. I like that idea with the sandman like bar. Having more support play would be great. Merry Christmas.

with the miniguns in the intro thing, you should've excluded the Huo-long heater, for reasons everybody who's played with it knows

I think a good downside for the candy cane would be something like "doubles all debuff duration."

Have very merry christmas to you fish! Very nice video by the way

I don't play that much tf2 but I always enjoy these kinds of analysis videos! Keep it up fish!

What if the festivister de-festivised it?

Candy cane upsides: it drops a health pack Candy cane downsides: it drops a health pack Seriously i cant count how many times ive saved an enemy im fighting by giving them a health pack still love this thing tho

Loving the new uploads fish!!!! happy new year lad

Oh my fricking god I got in a video! I was that direct hit soldier that's me! 6:21 I am rahulneoma! Feels good man also good videos fish keep up the good work!

How about this for a negative stat: all hp kits heal 25 hp when equipping candy cane.

Man, its amazing how many playstyles tf2 has surrounding 1 weapon, it only takes a single melee, primary, or secondary to either ruin or complete a perfect or viable setup

Nice timing with the video fish

This was a completely wholesome episode, very nice to see that not all the weapons in this series suck so horribly that you'd try to pluck your fingernails out rather than play.

Man, I love the tweaks you suggested for this weapon

Don't agree with the changes but this is the first time you actually told useful tips for a weapon. Keep it up man. Merry Christmas.

Seeing this video in my recommended gave me such a serotonin boost

The video we all never thought about, but so desperately needed.

i get to say it again! ScoutKnight! candy cane as your main weapon for health on kill, mad milk for damage sponging or helping teammates, and the FaN for extra mobility and sentry chipping.

I do like the line "Explosives are kind of a Bitch" in this one. Nice job!

Bro I love you and all these videos! Keep on being awesome!

I love using this weapon as scout! Its a unique melee in that it helps me keep alive in situations that I might not survive in. I usually go with the Pretty Boys for the extra chip health, and Primary was almost always stock. However, I will give the soda popper a try if you insist fish. Happy New Year

This episode inspired me to use the candy cane a lot more , thanks Fsoas

And henceforth, after seeing this video, i cued up a match, equipped this thing, and after a couple matches of being wished a new year, i named this thing, "Fish said merry Christmas" and spread the taste of sweet peppermint and Christmas cheer. Merry Christmas fish

Ayy this was uploaded on my birthday hell yeah been waiting for this vid too

Merry Christmas fish, Im excited for the BWA sandman now!!

How what he says lined up with the video shown is beautiful

I agree with the supportive role idea: Using the healthkit like a baseball.

I actually really like that the candy cane *forces* you to improve at the class to use it well. Rewards you learning erratic movement to throw off projectile users.

This episode is both simple and sweet, fitting for the weapon known as the bonk since it’s a drink that gives a simple ability as is probably sweet

I appreciate that Master of Disguise reference of your name in-game Fish.

Cheer meter is the best idea ive heard in a while, sounds very exciting

This is the one Bad Weapon Academy that made me need to go back and see whether it was a Bad Weapon Academy video or an In Defense of the Candy Cane video, and either way it functions as both.

While the spy dead ringer thing is handy, I find it easier to either track my kills to see if it actually was a kill, or just look at the top bar to see if he’s dead.