Hahahaha, that new grenade launcher seems completely fucking useless. I use the default grenade launcher for it's glorious area denial, corner-turning and into-room-behind-window-shooting abilities. I'm happy with any buffs to the grenade launcher. It's already a really powerful weapon and I dont see why anybody would want to use the Loch n' Load in the first place, but hey.
I use it for the same reason you do, but I'd wager the folks who like the LnL are using it like the Direct Hit - they're not using it for its potential versatility, but for its power in direct combat, and 3 round clips will likely make those folks happy. Remains to be seen if 3 shells is better than 2 with OHK potential, but we'll see. OHK on scoot was not good, since it's intended that they counter the demoman up close! This gives demo margin of error on missing, but also gives scout a guarantee for some breathing room if hit.
I don't actually see the point in the nerf to the grenade launcher, people that are good enough can still kill you with airstickies at any range.
This is really two nerfs - one reducing radius for both grenades and stickies to match rockets (159Hu->146Hu) and the second is the reduction/ramp-up that applies only to stickies.
First, the global reduction is a 146/159 ~= 9% reduction from original size. This matters, but it's not likely to show up or be noticeable on its own. However, it will be multiplicative with the airdet change.
(85%*91%~=77.35% when comparing to original, not 85%!)Since radius is constant and we're only comparing the difference in percentage, we'll compare them as though the original was a unit sphere (radius 1): 4/3*Pi ~=4.186666
The new version (at maximum reduction before ramp-up) would be: 4/3*Pi*(.7735)^3 = 1.937534
1.937534/4.186666 = 46.278686% of original volume at maximum reduction. Conclusion:
Airdet winbombs are now half the volume you'd expect out of the original gun, requiring players to be precise, or let them land. This will make it less viable to simply fire airdets at a pyro or nested engineer, and force the demoman to actually plant his stickies or be more precise with the aiming.
Assumptions:
1. Valve didn't forget to auto-ramp stickies that hit the world, have heard of issues with jumping making me think they did, but that could just be the 9% change affecting jump map specialists who have to have fine-tuned and highly-practiced routes.
2. Math still works like I remember.