The Burn Ward

The Burn Ward
Level 10 Flamethrower
Victims share healing as long as they're on fire
-66% afterburn damage
Fire does not extinguish over time
Fire extinguishes on death

You might recognize this as another one of my Injury Update weapons. It was one of the better ones and I felt it deserved its own post and some concept art. If you're wondering what the deal is with the concept art, the little radar dish is supposed to be the receiving antenna that heals you whenever enemies heal themselves.

There was some concern when I initially unveiled this that enemies extinguishing themselves with healing would circumvent any use this thing had. After all, most forms of healing cure the fire debuff. So your earned healing would usually be limited to a medium medkit. There were also concerns that this would discourage enemies from healing burning enemies (unlikely given the busy battlefields of TF2).

I wanted the whole thing to encapsulate a very complicated sort of strategy. Enemies know that as long as they're on fire they're vulnerable to crit combos and their heals also heal the enemy, but killing the Pyro will sooth their pain. Entice enemies into attacking you from weak positions. The main problem here is conveying how differently this kind of fire works--making the unique nuances visible without breaking game readability.

Let me know what you think here, or on the related SPUF forum thread.

The French Tickler

The French Tickler

Not to scale

Level 25 Appliance
Attack chains between victims
+Alt Fire: Short Circuit Blast
-50% Afterburn damage
-75% Spread

The French Tickler fires a highly concentrated stream of particles which chain between opponents. Basically, when an opponent is struck with the beam, he takes X amount of damage, and the beam attaches to the next nearest opponent (within ~100HU), dealing X/n damage, and the next nearest opponent (ditto), dealing X/(n/2) damage. The weapon also ignites the principle target, but not any chained targets. Medics, cloaked spies, and disguised spies are protected from the chaining effect.

The alt-fire short circuit blast is just one idea, but I feel as though there should be more going on there. Possible projectiles destroyed by the SCB fill a bar that causes minicrits on chain attacks? Or on flaming targets? Something interesting without being too complicated, but also useful without hinging entirely on luck.

The French Tickler also appears differently in Pyrovision: rather than a hand-crafted stun rod, it looks like a long feather duster.