[TF2] Bad Weapon Academy: Neon Annihilator

videos like these are made possible by viewers like you who support the channel through patreon Channel memberships and stream donations and don't forget to check out the bad weapon Rehabilitation servers at www.bad weapon rehab. TF check the links in the description for more information and let's get into the video [Applause] [Music] welcome to bad weapon Academy where we take a look at the worst weapons cf2 has to offer and I show you how to best utilize them I made a video talking about subass last month and it was an interesting Deep dive into just what defines a subass partly because I now feel like people's attachment to a particular play style makes it more likely to gain subass status and I certainly enjoy partaking in plenty of sub classes if some can even be counted as such but one that I've been neglecting for quite a few years now has been one that many of people are fond of the Pyro shark a subclass defined entirely by the use of today's featured weapon the neon Annihilator some people really like pyro shark and that's reflected in the game I mean just look at it we got shark hats shark heads shark Trad Shark Bay shark bait and who doesn't love a good shark well when you're actually playing pyro shark you might end up getting the impression that being a shark isn't all it's cracked up to be even without China killing you on mass for nothing but your fins that don't even taste like anything so let's take a closer look at the neon Annihilator actually that's much too close never mind this is a melee weapon for pyro that deals 20% less damage and Deals no random crits in exchange for guaranteed crits against wet enemies and being able to remove sappers from engineer buildings in two hits as opposed to the one hit of the home wrecker which has the same function now being wet sounds a bit broad so let's take a look at what that means specifically the easy ones to remember that most people will take advantage of are enemies who are currently in some sort of water source present on the map this can be deep water you can swim around in like on well and Freight or shallow water that you can stand and walk around in like the kind you might find in the intelligence room of CTF Sawmill or more notoriously in the sewers of two for which is where you'll most often find pyro sharks players who go through any water source will end up remaining so Ed for some time even after they exit the water which in the case of the neon Annihilator can result in kills that may feel a bit unearned on the part of the enemy I prefer to think of them as calculated enemies covered by gerate or mad milk will also end up counting as wet and take full Cris from the neon Annihilator the trade-off I see for this is that Scouts will more often use mad milk as an actual support tool to help out their teammates which is beneficial for you and you get a big chunk of Health out of it if you do manage to hit someone but they don't run mad milk near nearly as often as snipers do with gerate because of Scout's long list of completely cracked out secondaries that give mad milk a bit of competition and snipers are more likely to just throw it at some flanker who gets too close to them instead of giving you that many support opportunities generally for Sniper this ends up being a less damaging and overall more difficult to orchestrate version of the gerate busha combo that he already has so also he could be using the Sydney sleeper but hey watch my video on that one odds are anyone he shoots with that thing is either not going to survive in the first place won't need a melee crit swing to kill even if they do survive or the gerate duration will be so short that you'll just end up making a fool of yourself for even trying although if style and disrespect is the name of the game there's nothing saying that it needs to be your teammate's gerate that needs to end up coding the enemy you can just as easily make do with the Enemy sniper ger with a bit of Air Blast it also warrants mention that being on a map that's raining or snowing doesn't count as soaking the enemies and the same goes for standing inside of a waterfall prop or anything else like that if there not an actual water source that you're touching it doesn't count I had to get that out there because I felt like some people might ask about it oh and neither is being DED by the gas passer because that weapon needed to be more useless apparently all right the main problem you're going to notice with the neon Annihilator is an immediately obvious one not every map has a water source on it and even maps that do have water sources may not have them being particularly well travel like the Intel room of CTF Sawmill is a pretty fantastic place to use it but this pathetic little puddle here on bat lands yeah not so much looking at a straight list of maps with accessible water on them I'll be filtering out all the Halloween Christmas Arena mode and maps that are not otherwise playable in general casual at all times and that already cuts out a lot of them I want to make this a list for everyone who wants to use the Dion effectively not just people who only use it on two for so in total we have both versions of two for the C version of Badlands Banana Bay cash workor doomsday double cross Frontier Hydro Lakeside mossrock which the wiki does not list as a map with water on it the third stage of Nightfall Pelican Peak Phoenix Pier the third stage of pipeline Powerhouse both versions of smill selian standon swegen sulfur Swiftwater the second stage of Thunder Mountain Venice Watergate and both versions of well so that's 30 Maps total of varying levels of usability from having massive areas to swim around in like well and two Fort to having a single puddle so small it's almost impossible to even notice unless you're looking directly for it like on Frontier yeah I bet most of you didn't even know the was here you can pyro shark here okay and that's out of 83 Maps I didn't count things like Pastime Manpower in vssh because you don't play those I've gone ahead and made a spreadsheet that ranks all of the maps that have water in them based on their effectiveness and you can see that hey hey it's a teer list now I bet you like that huh yeah that's what I thought down here in F tier you can find the maps that while they technically have water on them are so limited that you may as well will not even bother on them cth Badlands is so incredibly out of the way that you really won't be able to accomplish much if you try you can't even really spawn camp with it because you need to lure people into an area that they'd otherwise never go to and at that point they'll just want to shoot you this is easily the least useful spot in the game and borders on the fabled super F tier and cash Works Frontier and Swiftwater are all in this tier for the exact same reason as one another they have one spot of water in them right next to the first point that's serviceable to use if you're setting up an ambush on defense and then all traces of moisture completely disappear for the rest of what ends up being a very long map and your neon Annihilator just becomes a neon noodle neon noodle the D tier has some areas that might be a bit more useful but are still limited by their scope compared to the overall size of the map or their General utility doomsday has a little puddle around the Australian pickup which is definitely nice to have it around the objective but not only is the objective rarely at the pickup side on this map but it's in an area that's very out in the open and makes ambushes impossible standin Falls here too it's not a horrible spot to have water right next to the a point especially on a map where points are more frequently contested meaning once a is capped you'll still get a chance to see a plenty of traffic in this area but it's not very useful either there's basically no reason for anyone to enter the water willingly so you're pretty much going to need to air blast someone into this and the surrounding ramps and barriers might make that pretty difficult thund Mountain second has a similar problem as the previously mentioned payload Maps but with this section of the map being a lot smaller it's easier to justify this sort of design on a map with only two points and a static spawn and Lakeside is probably the most useful in D tier being centered around a large health kit right next to the point so this is a hot spot the problem is getting anyone into the water to begin with and the fact that this takes up like 2% of the entire map C tier is somewhere in the middle not amazing but not a joke either I'm putting Hydro in this tier because depending on the territory the neon can either be amazing like it is here where the entire area is run through by a shallow River with lots of cover and some health packs or literally worthless like here on the last capture where there's no water at all Nightfall third also goes here because it's actually a fairly significant portion of the map that has some nice points of coverage to Stage an ambush in but you have to sit through two stages of Nightfall to get there and finding a team willing to play even one stage of Nightfall is sadly going to be a challenge there are other payload race Maps besides high tower people like pipeline which finds itself in the same tier for the exact same reasons decently wet third point with some Ambush spots but overall it's asking a lot of you Phoenix ended up surprising me with how many puddles it had that were actually quite useful but these are only present in the first two points of the map after that they basically disappear except for this one puddle here which is a lot harder to stage and ambush in so C tier and then you have moth Rock which is kind of a mixed bag in that this one spot it has is pretty decent for ambushing and has a medium health pack nearby which lures enemies in and keeps yourself topped off while being a very high traffic zone right outside a blue spawn but it's just that one spot it's by no means a bad spot though so it fits comfortably in this tier B tier is where we get into the more worthwhile Maps these are mostly solid but might have something holding them back double cross for instance has a great Ambush spot here but it can be easily circumvented by anyone coming down the stairs and you're mostly being sedentary since these are the only wet spots on the map though being symmetrical you can at least use these spots both defensively and offensively Powerhouse goes here too since having the water around the middle point is pretty nice but for a lot of Powerhouse you're going to be chipping away at the marble statue that is the other team's base the Middle Point only really gets contested once it's clear that the map is about to stalemate again it is useful for getting that one powerhouse achievement though Watergate has a decent amount of water in it as well as plenty of high ground to get a good Detonator jump onto someone who's fallen in and plenty of people who will fall in after escaping the beam it's just that there's a lot of dry areas where you won't be able to do much outside of wait for people to get wet Pelican Peak isn't quite as good as some of the other CTF maps on the list but with a couple of high traffic areas have merged it does the job just fine how open this map is does kind of work to its detriment a little bit at least for this particular play style C Sawmill also finds itself here the flank routes are good places to catch out some enemies especially since air blasting them into the water is fairly easy here but it's not as often you run into people out here as on other Maps the first point of Venice here is is amazing for getting neon kills the second point is okay and it kind of tapers off from there but it's enough to land it in B tier in a tier you have really good maps such as Freight here this has huge underwater canals that will not only act as natural extinguishers for anyone who gets hit by your fire which you can easily use to your advantage but they also act as the map's flank routes meaning you can be a real nuisance to anyone who tries to slip past your team's defenses and both versions of well are a similar story almost identical really even down to the trains the CTF version of well is a bit worse since it doesn't have the flank route to the middle of the map but it makes up for this by having the area in general be a lot more well traveled compared to CP well where you might be waiting on a cap to move the front lines towards you that's never going to come selan has the entire Beach area completely wet and while it's the only wet area on the map it's very sizable and not only has the final pathway of the seal but also two medium health kits meaning it's a high traffic area swegen is absolutely surrounded by water with plenty of fantastic Ambush spots but it also has a lot of dry real estate like sbian especially here on the outer fringes where all the snipers live so good luck with those while you have a neon sign and S tier is the cream of the crop the maps for using the neon Annihilator is genuinely a good idea in several situations of course you have the classic two Fort and its less famous cousin two Fort Invasion the waterways are extremely high traffic area since they're basically the map's only flank route but there's no issue with taking advantage of bad MAP design if it means making good use out of a bad weapon Banana Bay is loaded with water and being a single stage payload race map Mages will last a long time and plenty of areas will see high traffic so you'll be able to get some good use as a neon as you complete the objective normally and also will camping certain areas waiting for enemies to pass through Pier has some source of water next to every single capture Point see other payload Maps it's not that hard sulfur is in a similar boat with most points and spawns having some sorts of water next to them especially useful on the last point where you can air blast them in but the C point is completely dry but that's all right since no one's ever able to find the C point on this map anyway and finally we have CTF Sawmill I would argue this might be the best map to use the neon Annihilator on since the entire objective room is completely flooded in a tight cramped Corridor with lots of Corners to hide behind and much like double cross you can use this to easily defend your team's base or take the fight straight to them on top of having access to the other water sources that cost Sawmill has on offer the theme you'll notice here is that maps are at their best the more often water is in play no [ __ ] areas that people go through often in order to reach the objective or in order to reach a valuable resource like a health pack will be your Best Bets for Success so when you're playing the other 53 maps that don't have any water on them or you're in the portions of the above stated maps that don't have water on them which is a lot of them what the hell are you supposed to do with the neon Annihilator well unless you have a dedicated mad milk Scout or gerate sniper who doesn't just use it to instantly gerate busha anyone who comes too close to him and actually uses it to support his team the only thing you really can do with it is use it as a worse home wrecker or in the worst case scenario a worse fire axe the neon Annihilator ends up specializing into its role the only problem is that it specializes so godamn hard that in any environment outside of water it just flounders a theory going around for Spinosaurus is that it was extremely specialized into its environment of wet lands where it basically acted as a giga herin and ate all the fish it wanted but once the climate in Africa started changing and becoming drier they couldn't adapt and they all died out that's the neon as soon as there's no water on the map it's hard to compete with the karadant thesauruses of the world when you're just a giant shore bird with a fin unless you're the monster's resurrected Spinosaurus what the [ __ ] even is this there's a famous quote that says you can't judge a fish's intelligence by its ability to climb a tree but first of all mud skip exist and they can climb just fine so other fish clearly need to get on that [ __ ] and second of all I can judge that fish as much as I want when it decides to live in the middle of a [ __ ] desert especially when that fish is a shark now that worst home wrecker thing is honestly what kept me from doing a bad weapon Academy on this for so long because for a while I figured H the sapper destroying utility still has to be pretty good right but after doing a video on the home recer itself where I came to the conclusion that his ability to destroy sappers doesn't help you out nearly as much as you'd think it does and I ended up even destroying more sentry guns than I did sappers with it forget buildings that don't fight back I realized that the neon Annihilator needed the bad weapon Academy treatment because being worse at something that's already not super useful on the home wrecker is just not the biggest selling point for your weapon now on maps that do have water I think this is a nice little bonus to have especially if your engineer's Nest is somewhere close to a body of water or even inside of one like the CTF Sawmill Intel room or if your engineer is doing the funny and building their entire Nest underwater and using the dispenser to heal past the drowning and stay underwater forever I guess that's why they call them Turtle enies okay so that's a lot of details out of the way that don't have a whole hell of a lot to do with the weapon itself so let's suppose you're playing on one of the really good maps for this thing the a tier and S Maps particularly what then well then it's just a fairly solid pick I've talked before about how the Pain Train is a weapon whose usefulness is very game mode and team dependent while the neon Annihilator is exclusively map dependent but when you're on a good map for it it's basically like an extinguisher without the required setup and without the speed boost the damage penalty does honestly hurt it quite a bit even when it does get those crits though being able to onot other pyros and demos would make a world of difference for it but you can very easily offset that with the use of a shotgun which will also allow you to still do range damage even when completely submerged the reserve shooter can even work out well in this role thanks to the faster switching speed while still keeping the tighter spread of stock and if you need more than four shots after slamming someone with 156 damage then you probably weren't going to kill them in the first place as far as weapon Synergy goes I'll also say that I prefer using the flamethrower or Degreaser in the primary slot as those give you the most Air Blast to work with which can help push enemies into the water and for secondaries that aren't the shotguns I'd recommend either the Detonator or the thermal Thruster to help close the distance on enemies who would normally be just Out Of Reach something that's especially common with the neon I will say the neon is also at its best during ambushes you can't just run at someone with this out in the open even if they're soaked you'll get your [ __ ] pushed in way before you get a chance to make a play this is why the Doomsday spot isn't all that useful it's also why two for and CTF Sawmill are such good locations the corridors are cramped and have sharp Corners to go around meaning you can just go swinging around a corner and before the enemy has time to even react they're already a goner in more open situations you can't rely on just walking at people I know this is really counterintuitive for pyro players but if you can either Air Blast an into the water and then strike them down with your neon or if they're already in the water and have the range Advantage you can use the Detonator in order to close the gap more easily The Detonator and Jetpack also let you do the sewer surfing thing in two Fort I tried getting the hang of it but it's [ __ ] hard but then with all that said we end up getting into what I think is the biggest problem when it comes to pyro sharking and that's the play style what is that play style well 90% of the time this just waiting for minutes on end waiting waiting waiting forget pyro shark a lot of open water sharks will just straight up die if they stay still for too long this is the weapon for people who want to role play as a spider maybe a crocodile either way or something horrible in Australian the point is if you're going to go out of your way to pyro shark and wait for people to come to you it's going to get boring fast I used to really enjoy pyro sharing when I was younger but but I eventually grew out of it and this is a huge part of why that is just waiting around for people to walk into you because even at their best the master provided only offers so much liquid real estate and it's just [ __ ] lame I honestly think that the best way to use the neon is not to wait for people to come to you but just to play Pyro on these Maps while having it equipped and if you happen to get in just the right situation then you can go for a neon kill I think it's way more fun to use it in incidentally rather than trying to force the situation to work for you especially because you get to maintain that element of surprise factor for way longer ambushes are good the one time but people eventually gain pattern recognition and soon enough your sit and weight spot is only going to be good for securing your own death not your enemies spontaneity not only keeps the gameplay more interesting but also catches people off guard way more often since even on the S tier Maps unless they're actively pyrro sharking you know Sitting Waiting waiting you're more likely to see General pyros running one of the tried and true melees like the power jack extinguisher or maybe the back scratcher the mindset of being a pyro shark often ends up limiting the play style and potential of the weapon because it encourages people to wait around and do nothing most of the time when a true shark knows to wait for just the right time to strike now when it comes to making this weapon better that can be tricky the easiest thing to suggest is just make the [ __ ] gas passer count enemies as wet because it should in the first place it's stupid that it doesn't um actually gasoline doesn't conduct electricity so technically I thought I [ __ ] killed you a massive problem with the neon that encourages the sit and weight play style I was just complaining about is that unless you manage to air blast someone into a water source or have a buddy with a jar weapon it's very difficult to instigate moist encounters and far easier to just let them come to you being able to bring the wetness of the enemy would instantly make the neon far more applicable even on completely dry Maps especially if the gas passer were also buffed in other ways that made it even remotely usable maybe you could also make the damage penalty only apply to dry enemies that would make securing those kills on enemy pyros and demos a lot more consistent I don't even think it would be all that strong compared to something that already exists in the game like the extinguisher especially because the extinguisher uses your basically bottomless pool of primary ammo as the starter to the combo while the neon would be using a consumable on a one minute long [ __ ] cool down God this weapon is trash these changes alone would fix a lot of problems with the neon but but it might still be a bit too situational even with the sapper destroying functionality added on top of that but even then I still think it would be more situationally viable than something like the third degree especially if you got a huge combo going on a bunch of ghast enemies making the neon into an actually decent weapon has even been a bit of a struggle on the rebound server it's a tough weapon to nail down properly but it's one that's important to get right because a lot of people really like pyro shark and two those pyrro sharks of the world go out there and turn the enemies into Chum tell them fish s you [Music] w [Music]

Channel: FishStickOnAStick - Gaming

Views: 188,847

Keywords: fsoas, fishstickonastick, tf2, team fortress 2, bad weapon academy, pyro, neon, neon annihilator, pyro neon, pyroshark, 2fort, tf2 neon annihilator, pyro neon annihilator, bad weapon, neon annihilator bad

Id: rA5jA9GENTU

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024