I disagree. The fact that the cow mangler is practically the same as stock when just counting the 4 rockets automatically removes it from being the worst. Stock is liked due to it's overall reliability and damage; since the cow mangler imitates that (except for buildings).On the topic of buildings in casual, I would just change to the direct hit anyway if sentries were that annoying.
@@objectionablycurious yeh i can agree with that. all im saying is that you cant say its practically same as stock because it does have fundamental differences
In my experience being able to disable wrangled sentries for a few seconds is more powerful than attempting to destroy it solo given how easy it is to tank a wrangled sentry, engineers can out heal a direct hit salvo provided they have enough metal. Given how powerful the wrangler is, and how widely it’s used I’d say that in its current form the charge shot is not that terrible. I do agree that it should receive something more, or just loosen up on some of the downsides, like allowing it to receive guaranteed crits like every other weapon with the no random crits stipulation. In my experience the no ammo consumption is very useful, not for yourself but for your teammates, especially engineers and heavys. While yes they could just find another ammo pack that still takes time away from doing something more important. Personally I cycle between stock, the cow mangler and the direct hit depending on what the situation calls for, aggressive consistency for stock, focused damage for the direct hit and over all team support for the cow mangler.
the cow mangler having infinite ammo is underrated, the right click definitely has its uses, and in conjunction with a demoman, who is actually supposed to destroy buildings, or even a somewhat coordinated push, you can easily use it to full potential. The same damage, and reload speed pretty much makes it identical to stock outside of the inability to random crit. Also the rocket launcher isn't really designed to destroy buildings as much as demoman, who is literally de facto the anti engineer class. Additionally, if you're going to be running different weapons, your playstyle needs to change as well. You can't run a stock watch like you're playing deadringer. You can't run krtizkrieg like you're playing stock uber, and you can't use the cow mangler like you're a sentry buster. You play a support role and assist pushes by disabling sentries or killing other players in 1v1s. Spamming is what makes soldier so good. Much like sniper and his sightlines, it's all about area denial by threatening chip damage. The charge shot is a support tool, so use it near your teammates and aim at sentries. Also the complaint that the cow mangler can't destroy a sentry and disabling it is asinine, is kinda moot by the fact that most engineers are near their building and tank sentry guns if they're in a decent position. And even if you use all your ammo, if that engineer is near a dispenser or metal pack, he'll tank the gun with the rescue ranger or wrangler, which are defensive engineer's best tools in his kit. An engineer can't tank a sentry gun when his gun isn't actually shooting the team shooting back. Now the cow mangler can actually kill enemies and does something to sentry guns. The liberty launcher is literally stock, but instead of rockets, it shoots pillows. You lose the ability to kill soldiers in 1v1s, you lose the ability to do sufficient damage to sentry guns, a rule you brought up against the cow mangler, all for what is essentially the gunboats version of a rocket launcher? Just use the gunboats, and if you really want another rocket for jumping purposes, just use the beggars. The liberty launcher isn't bad, it's just outclassed, which makes it bad by comparison. Anything it does can already be done by another item hundreds of times better.
People often forget the secret stat the Cow Mangler has; it’s practically a stealth weapon for soldier. It vaporizes bodies, allows for a large burst shot that lets soldier reposition while the projectile is traveling, and is very good at flanking objectives with a shotty follow up.
@@SimoneBellomonte the charge shot. It's a better burst (higher damage) option that, once launched, lets you run away instead of sticking around to spam 3 more rockets. Mind, having to reload hampers your mobility since you can't rj, and it leaves you open, so I'm somewhat skeptical, but that's what he means.
@@TheEpicPancake Soldier with 200 hp and stock shotty still 1v1s a lot of classes. Assuming you're peaking corners with the charge shot and sticking to flanking backrooms, you're probably running into spies, scouts, maybe some cocky demos or soldiers with less health due to explosive jumping, and in tight corridors where they're going to splash themselves. Worst case scenario you run into the rare flank heavy who just mows you down with the tomislav, but then you'd probably be dead even with 4 rockets.
6:23 "You are throwing"... excuse me but if the Medic CHOOSE to kritz a Cow Mangler, he is responsable. Every time I get a kritz while using this I stop and look at the Medic and do nothing cuz... Why would you kritz a cow mangler
This is what happens when a man looks only at the numbers and text without any experience to back hum up. Alright, lets blow up all your takes against Cow Mangler in one charged shot: About engineers and buildings: -80% damage penalty against buildings is not nearly as bad as you make it look like, if you killed all enemies around buildings before fighting building themselves. It does take 6 shots to kill minisentry, but if you killed the engineer before that (which you can do easily, since your rockets deal full damage to players) then killing sentry is a matter of nearly 4 or 5 seconds. For other sentries it will take infinitely more time to destroy them with the launcher *itself,* but you always have a sidearm or melee at your disposal. -equipping a shotgun is not at all necessary to deal with sentries. Always remember - fortune loves the brave ones, and if you want to kill a sentry, your best way of doing so with Cow Mangler is to disable it and then circle it down with melee weapon (circling down a sentry is jumping on top of it and then crouch-walking on the sentry in circles, it won't be able to turn fast enough to catch you, so you can kill it with melee easily). In my experience Equalizer works the best, it actually works best with cow mangler at all, but I'll save it for one of next points. Circling sentry is a very easy trick, you should learn to do it, it makes fighting engineer nests possible even when you are playing *trolldier,* who has no ranged weapons at all. -playing against team with no engineers is one of the most common scenarios in official casual mode. Most of newer players either don't want to play the "support builder" class or get too frustrated at dying too much to a spies, so engies are actually rather rare in casual, at least in european servers. Additionally, those who are playing engineers are mostly very inexperienced, so killing them before their sentry isn't a problem, and to kill sentry just refer to previous point. -if you somehow stumbled upon an actually experienced engineer, just wait for your teammates to catch up, the game isn't called TEAM Fortress for nothing, disabled sentry is as good as dead sentry as long as someone is shooting at it, while you are bullying engineer with your secondary, melee and 200 health reserve. No uber needed. Just learn to play with team if engineers are THAT big of a problem to you. Now about crits (note that i am not nearly as negative about crits as most other players, i find them funny and compelling to chaotic balance of the TF2, and i can even say that i love them as a game's part): -Judging a weapon by the fact that it doesn't have the "unfair" in most of players' eyes mechanic is a bit unprofessional, but i suppose you may be just like me and don't hate the random crits as most of people do, so it might be the downside for you, that is understandable. -still, while normal rocket launcher IS in fact known for it's crits, the reputation of crockets are more than negative. Majority of people (i almost sure including you) will be at least annoyed if they will die more than once in a game to random critical rocket. So the inability to crit only makes Cow Mangler objectively more fair, both in eyes of it's user and his enemies, which is by no means a bad thing. -inability to benefit from any source of guaranteed crits *may* throw you down, but if you have a dedicated pocket medic who wants you specifically to get his crits (maybe because you are the only soldier in the team, or you the most experienced one, who knows), and you *STILL* don't change your weapon to make his efforts not useless - you are a really mean and horrible person. If you have a medic that is willing to uber you with Kritzkrieg, it is YOUR job to make sure that his crits weren't wasted, and Cow Mangler description clearly tells you that it is NOT a weapon to be paired with kritz. Switching a weapon to make your medic's life easier is the least you can do for him, if you are not willing to do so, you aren't worth ubering. Now about charged shot: -Yes, it is slow. Yes, it is loud. Yes, you are vulnerable while you are charging up. That's the price you pay for dealing about 100 damage to a crowd of people at *any* range. Charge shot is what turns you from a fast roamer class to a support artillery class. And i can clearly see that you didn't use Cow Mangler for long enough to witness how powerful this artillery mode can be. You can shutdown snipers (which usually are too busy looking through the scope to be bothered by charge shot, ESPECIALLY in casual mode that you are referring to in video). You can destroy pushing ability of enemy assault groups with medics, because a good hit will either kill medic in one hit by afterburn or will leave him with single digit health, which is basically equal, since reloading one follow-up shot takes less than a second for you. And generally speaking, damage-wise, it is so strong to be able to deal ~120 damage at any range that i can't really tell you about it. You needed to get some good experience with charged shots, man. This is a perfect textbook definition of a sidegrade: you trade away your sentry busting ability in exchange for a super anti-personnel artillery weapon. It's more than fair. -Speaking of the slowness of charging process, an engineer will never start building sentry right in front of enemy. A heavy won't start eating sandwich right in front of enemy. So you too should not start charging your Cow Mangler right at the front line. IRL artillery also doesn't roll up to the front lines to start shooting, it supports troops from the back. So should you. If you can't find any good moments for a charged shots then your situational awareness is worse than a 2fort sniper's one. Plus you HAD some good footage of good charged shooting, so you are self-inconsistent in this take. -As i said before, the true strength of minicrits isn't the damage bonus - its the lack of damage falloff. Do not hesitate to spam charged shots from far away, it will kill people just as good as if you were much closer. -Yes, stock rocket launcher destroys sentry guns, but if there is an engineer that is sitting next to it and hitting it with a wrench - you can't do anything. The wrench healing is stronger than rocket damage (105 vs 90) so stock literally can't do anything against *maintained* sentry nests. While Cow Mangler makes dealing with these nests almost trivial - engineer can heal disabled senty, but charged shot will force him to retreat to health pack anyway to kill off the afterburn. So Cow Mangler literally gives your teammates a 4 second window to kill sentry gun without *any* opposition. You can even do it yourself, if you have a shotgun, or you can rocket jump on top of engie and kill him with melee, and then do the same with sentry. You just need to not waste time. Or have at least one teammate nearby. -speaking of disabling buildings, did you know that dispensers can heal people? Rumors say that wounded people tend to round up near dispensers to fortify their positions and regain health. And it also happens that Cow Mangler's charged shots are really good at dealing big damage to crowds of people, as well as disabling buildings. Imagine if someone would shoot a Cow Mangler charged shot at dispenser with 3 or 4 people around it. Can you hear the dinging noise of your hitsounds telling you how all these people burn with their last digits of health, while dispenser stay disabled and not healing them? If you didn't buy the sarcasm, yes, the most effective way of using the Cow Mangler's charged shot is to shoot the dispenser with some people around it. The damage will most likely kill them, since they may be injured, or at least make their positions much less reliable and strong. And you don't even need to get close to them, like demoman needs to - remember, the minicrit's true benefit? You clearly forgot about that. And finally some thoughts about infinite ammo: -you was almost right on this one. Infinite ammo is the least useful benefit of Cow Mangler, yet it has some uses for soldier's teammates, specifically, the engineers. Have you ever felt bad for taking a large ammo box to restock your rocket reserve, only to see how your friendly engineer is running up to that box and waiting for it desperately, because his sentry is almost dead and he needs to build dispenser really quickly? Well, with cow mangler, your will never let your engineer down like that, since you literally can't pick up ammo anymore (of course shotgun still will screw engineers, so don't run shotgun with Cow Mangler). -additionally, this is more of a mental buff than a direct gameplay buff, since you just will not worry about ammo at all. With default rocket launchers i usually find myself sticking to ammo pack spots a lot, and with Cow Mangler i feel more free to reposition, knowing that my weapon will always be ready to fire. I used cow mangler as my main primary weapon for more than full year now (EDIT: more than 2 full years now), and you wouldn't believe it, but with righteous bison as a main secondary i never had any bad plays that weren't my fault as a player. If the situation in a match is REALLY going against Cow Mangler, just switch to different weapon, even best weapons have their counters, that's what is called the balance. And if it is really that bad of a weapon, then why i see how every third soldier is using it? And they use it effectively, and they usually go to top of the scoreboard. So what i will say, is that you, sir, need to gain some more experience with Cow Mangler. You didn't learn how to use the weapon before mocking it and making a bad weapon academy parody about actually one of the best weapons. That is a unprofessional move. Good luck next time!
@@Wicked_Fox I just rewatched the video and noticed that almost all the times when he is talking about how bad Cow Mangler is his video shows him absolutely wrecking the house with it. This channel is a joke...
@@jumpinghunter9152 it's what happens when you create clickbait for the sake of clickbait without giving any thought to what you're actually talking about
I wouldn’t necessarily say the cow Mengler is bad, I would merely say it’s under powered. But, it is pretty funny to get those charge shot kills. Edit: wow that much for my opinion? Cool.
You don’t realize how powerful those 4 seconds on a disabled sentry are until you actually use the mangler because it’s something that an engineer can’t undo unlike stock where the problem is solved with a few wrench swings. This allows you to take down a sentry that is being tanked and your team can actually push
If an engineer was tanking his sentry it would be easier for him to swing his wrench twice and remove the sapper then have to deal with someone spamming it with multiple rockets though. Not to mention if there is mini sentries or other buildings you want to destroy it’s very impractical.
Christ i have 100hrs in game and even i see this as a dumb way to deal with the sentry. If u have enough team coordernation to push on a disabled sentry on a casual game of all things, then get a medic to run the kritzkrieg or/and stock uber and use the direct hit instead. Disabling the sentry doesn't really do anything when the engineer can just tank it anyways, and if your team doesn't destroy the sentry in time it effectively turns into a ww1 no mans land situation. Your better off putting all your eggs in one basket in destroying the sentry, cause destroying one cripples the the engineer far more then causing it to spasm for 4 seconds
@@deliqene3191 You don't need team coordination to deal with disabled sentries dude, if there's at least 2 people dealing with the same sentry there's gonna be SOMEONE attacking it while it's not immediately shooting back, also even with the Direct Hit the engineer can still heal his sentry at relatively the same speed your damaging it or just press 2 on his keyboard to triple the rockets needed in order to destroy the sentry.
This is complete BS. The infinite ammo upside allows you to remain on the battlefield until your health is 0 without running for an ammo pack (using it with the conch is actually really good for self sustainability) and you're talking about your weakness against engineers in a vacuum. There is always an ocean of anti sentry classes in pubs, especially in game modes like payload or attack/defend, and the charge shot can help your teammates take it down *without* using an uber, and the engi is left hopeless. Also the kritzkrieg isn't as common as stock, which any self-respecting medic will run on regular games (kritzkrieg is unreliable anyways and I'd rather use the quick fix or vaccinator). Calling the cow manger worse than the liberty launcher just sounds like you are trying to be contrarian for the sake of clicks. If you need random crits to get reliable kills you're just bad, not the weapon
What I got from this video: "I need random crits to get many kills in quick succession" "I need to be pocketed by my kritz med to get kills" "I'm not good at timing the charge shot and use it when staring down a sniper sight line." "I can't play around sentry placements and can't coordinate with randoms to destroy sentries."
You shouldn't have to play around sentry placements as a soldier. He's the second best class for sentry destruction other than demo. Regarding crits, my only point was that not being able to crit is a legitimate downside as soldier and not something to look over. As far as the charge shot, it's not about "timing". There's just very few scenarios where it actually does something beneficial that you couldn't have done with 4 normal rockets.
@banana 1: when you equip the cow mangler you knowingly give up your direct ability to destroy engie buildings, but you will likely not be the only soldier or demo on your team (just like it is unlikely to have no engies on the enemy team) and with the cow mangler you enhance your team's ability to destroy sentries by disabling them for other soldiers and demos to fire on it without taking the sentries fire. 2. The charge shot behaves as a weaker but controlled crit rocket. It has the same crowd control/ mass damage as a critical rocket, but you control when you get it. Which is also why it has downsides to using it. A burst of mini crit damage is hard to survive, 4 smaller bursts of damage with fall-off are more survivable.
I'd say the Cow Mangler is the definition of a side grade. It solid weapon comparable to stock. Equal in some cases, weaker in some, and stronger in niche scenarios
Not convinced about cow mangler being just worse stock, the downside of dealing no damage to buildings is usually not a big deal because your teammates can take care of sentries themselves, and the only really big downside is turning crits into minicirits (even though getting ubered by a med with Kritz is a rare occasion). Cow mangler is good for firing at chokes/being constantly at fight, not having to retreat for an ammo picks means you'll spend more time firing and dealing damage; and to what use with cow mangler, I'd suggest to try the mini crit banner, it works well when you fire non-stop
The Cow Mangler's downside of weaker sentry damage is still mostly why I only consider it on defense. And the infinite ammo does provide good sustainability to help charge banners more consistently.
The downside of being weak against buildings is pretty significant though? Your getting rid of one of soldiers biggest strengths. Saying that it’s not a big deal cuz you can rely on teammates to break the buildings for you is pretty dumb. By that logic couldn’t your teammates just also kill the enemy team and win the game for you, why even need a rocket launcher that does damage? It’s silly to act like it’s practical to rely on your teammates in casual (the average casual player is not very reliable) to always absolve your of one of your weapons main weaknesses
@@iUseDemFrapz When you pick a cow mangler, your role in a team changes from a powerhouse and sentry buster to pure powerhouse; by doing that, you take some responsibilities from your team on frontline and allow them to relocate the resources to do other stuff, like destroying engi nests (And besides, demoman is much better than a soldier at dealing with nests)
@@lol1013 yeah but the point is it’s not really worth the trade off even if ideally your team could cover for you (because they usually won’t and it isn’t practical to rely on them to do so in many common situations).
No, just no. The Cow Mangler is not Soldier’s worst launcher. Not even by a longshot. The Liberty Launcher will continue to hold that spot for eternity since valve will never regain access to the TF2 offices. If you think 20% damage to buildings is worse than 25% damage to everything you’re mad. Also I think you’re overhyping stock’s ability to destroy buildings. Stock rockets deal 90 damage, the wrench heals 100 health per hit if memory serves. Assuming you’re firing from outside the sentry’s range and the engineer has any metal you will not destroy his buildings alone. The damage is too low and the rocket travel speed is too low to compensate. The reason why the direct hit is notorious for sentry busting is because it doesn’t suffer from either problem. Soldier isn’t demo and while yes he is more of a threat to buildings than other classes, he’s not the biggest threat. Assuming he’s not using the direct hit, which is a nearly hard counter to engineer. The unlimited ammunition is definitely a nebulous upside, but it’s not a bad one. It’s just kinda there. I’m not going to argue that it’s not. On to something more absurd, if you bank on crits to such a degree that their removal is an actual downside you’re bad. I don’t normally go that low or say something so simple, but there’s no other way to put it. At that point you’re not playing TF2, you’re playing a glorified slot machine. As for the complete loss of crits that’s a different story and I agree that such a thing is a downside, arguably this weapon’s biggest downside. A Soldier with a Crits Medic is a murderous combination and being unable to do that is pretty bad. However unless you have a friend who does that for you getting a crits medic is out of your control and once again if you find yourself in that situation pick another launcher. Finally the charged shot is a gimmick, but a powerful one if used properly. A well placed charged shot can do 120-150 something damage. In a team fight being able to drop that amount of damage to a wide area can be a game changer. That’s such a powerful ability that the only other launcher that can match it, the direct hit, pays for that kind of damage by making it almost entirely single target only. You essentially have the ability to fire a direct hit rocket with max splash damage whenever you want. The charge has severe downsides and leaves you very vulnerable. Charging should be saved for special scenarios where you want to clean up an objective and you got enough teammates around you to cover you. It’s not an all the time thing, but when it’s situation arises it’s fucking murderous. The cow mangler is essentially the stock launcher with a damage penalty to buildings and an inability to crit. In the cases where engineers are everywhere and/or your team has a kritzkrieg medic you’re working with you just don’t use it. Still how often do you run into either situation? Medics are an endangered species in pubs and if your team has a demo or another soldier which is basically a guarantee that sentry won’t exist forever. In every other case it’s just identical to stock. How do those two scenarios make this the worst launcher? That’s an insane position. I’d talk about the Liberty launcher more, but this is long enough already.
The Mangler is definitely NOT a worse version of stock, but it underperforms in situations that stock excels in. The no ammo stat is great on maps that don't have too many ammo packs, but on some where ammo packs are abundant (such as Badwater and Dustbowl) and dispensers aren't too far from the front lines it loses a lot of it's power compared to stock. The charged shot is the second thing carrying the Mangler. It's use cases are questionable and committing to it in the incorrect situations will most likely get you killed, forcing you to think a little bit about when you think is a good time to charge it. It's sentry disabling capabilities is what makes the charged shot worth it, as a demoman, heavy, and whoever else can get the sentry while it's disabled. But casual players actually listening to callouts and such is entirely luck based. It's downsides are definitely preventing the Mangler from being an upgrade to stock, but it's infinite ammo supply and team support with the charged shot doesn't make it the worst rocket launcher. The Liberty Launcher is still the worst, as it's damage to players and sentries is laughable as it fails to be the jack of all trades launcher.
Even though I have never played TF2 and don't intend to, yeah, I really and honestly can't see how the Cow Mangler 5000 is bad, I mean the Liberty Launcher's attempt at being a "Jack of all Trades and master of none" is like an attempt on its life. Sure, it could be used in combination with the Reserve Shooter, or literally anything else to help it, but that's the weapon being supplemented and made up for its own weaknesses.
Not being able to destroy buildings is pretty bad, but then you have the Liberty Launcher which also struggles versus building not left unguarded, making it both worse versus players AND buildings with no compensatory stat like disabling them. Also using random crits and Casual as "default" for TF2 is rather reductive, considering many people have and currently play on community servers that usually have crits disabled as a courtesy anyways.
Also arguing that a 4% chance to deal extra damage being missing is a major downside. It's 4% It's not like melee weapons where the base is 13% or whatever.
@@vyor8837 Where the fuck did you get those numbers. Cause neither are right. Well, 4% is technically correct due to a little feature, but a 13% crit chance is impossible on a melee weapon. Primary and secondary weapons have a base crit chance of 2% but can have that chance increased up to a maximum of 12% depending on the amount of damage you have done over the past 20 seconds, with 800 or more damage giving you the maximum crit chance. So you can get a 4% crit chance if you deal 160 damage first. Melee weapons bump that base crit chance up to 15% and push the max crit chance all the way up to 60%, with the time constraints and damage requirements staying the same of course.
4:37 "it'll take you 6 whole rockets to destroy a mini sentry" my brother in christ you have a charge shot that can disable ANY sentry also you've demonstrated why i hate the way the nerd emoji is used just a MINUTE after that clip valid argument? i portrayed you as the nerd emoji, *_i win now_* 6:26 excuse me? so this medic walked up to me with his kritzkrieg out, most likely noticed that i was using the cow mangler, popped crits anyway even though it gets converted into mini-crits, and I'M the one to blame? i'm not even a soldier main and this just baffles me 6:48 NOT EVEN 30 SECONDS LATER, YOU DO THE LARGEST GOOF KNOWN TO MAN so you're telling me not having the silly one-shot haha rng crocket is hampering your gameplay with the cow mangler? if somebody gets a crocket and wins the fight due to it, i don't learn that it's something to fear, i get irritated that they won the fight due to rngesus saying "hey, i don't like this other guy, have a double damage projectile no strings attached" 9:59 because you're assuming a casual setting, considering one of your points was the no random crits, chances are you won't have a good medic. so, because your team can't afford to take sustained fire from a sentry gun, making sure it won't fire back while your team is attacking it is beneficial for your team's wellbeing. 10:55 *_SO YOU'RE TELLING ME REPEATEDLY FIRING AT A SENTRY WITH MORE EFFECTIVE HEALTH THAN A HEAVY IS A BETTER IDEA THAN ACTUALLY DISABLING IT?????????????????????????_* i exaggerated due to anger while making this comment i just want to let you know that i *_REALLY_* disagree with your opinions
yeah i agree, it sounds like the cow mangler killed his dog or something, since the cow mangler is an excellent example of a sidegrade, it trades the ability to effectively kill sentries for the ability to charge shots, and not need ammo.
For anyone confused at the 6:09 part. It's a custom server that lets you get grabbed my teammates. You can see the text at the bottom that the medic is grabbing the soldier.
I literally main cow mangler. Before valve made ammo pointless, it was really nice not having to worry about it, and the ability to get free flaming crits on demand was also nice. It can literally disable sentries just before a team push.
Absolutely true. I'm a Cow Mangler main roo, and it is THE support weapon for soldier. It turns you from the mobile roamer to a support second line artillery with it's infinite minicrit range, so it is at worst a fair trade, if not a really beneficial one. Amazing weapon.
@@teeby2037 You are not right, probably you didn't try using it in not 2fort-styled maps. Being able to oneshot or nearly oneshot medics and all lighter classes, as well as to locate spies with afterburn and force them to go for med pack is huge. Being able to shut down sentry nest from the safe distance, basically replacing high cost and high risk uber collecting process with 3-second charge shot is golden, your team will be more than thankful to you. This charge shot also functions as a slower but stronger scorch shot in a way that you can disturb snipers from the far away, but you can even kill them, if you will land a direct hit, which isn't really hard on immobile average sniper of TF2 casual. This is the most supportive primary soldier have, and the fact that you don't know how to use to in a right way doesn't make it any worse or niche.
@ 13:55 oopsies, here's banana's big mistake of the video (cause there always is one). Apparently the Charge Shot ALREADY disables all buildings (if I could read I'd know that). Shows you how relevant this upside is considering I didn't notice it a single time during all my footage. Edit: I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the point of the video. As I said, the Liberty Launcher is absolutely a worse weapon in actual gameplay. I'm not trying to imply that you'll be more successful using it than the Cow Mangler. My point is that I don't believe that the Cow Mangler's upsides are useful or relevant enough to give up your ability to destroy buildings or crit. I also never said that any weapon NEEDS random crits to be good, just that random crits on the rocket launchers specifically are very strong and that you shouldn't OVERLOOK the downside as being irrelevant.
The main thing i see about the crits to mini crits downside is the fact that the vast majority of Kritzkrieg medics i see are just pocketing for another soldier or a demo. And they are never using the cow mangler. But i do see how it can be a problem if you have no competent teammates.
@@crossedout_wizzkill1015 And I would argue the same thing about the rocket launchers. All have their own aspects that make them each good. Probably less equal though.
"I don't know how this is an upside" then lists several, and the biggest is wrangled sentries. I disagree with you on every point except that the charged shot needs a buff, but I understand where you're coming from. Well made video, you make your points well and don't attack those that disagree. I feel that the cow mangler really shines in large team fights, letting your team mates use the dropped ammo packs and removing the worry for running out of rockets completely.
5:23 mans really wasted an uber to try to destroy a building that can be rebuilt if the engie is not taken down knowing that he can't do much to the sentry instead of killing people 13:52 it already does that 14:32 maybe 6 seconds for buildings, and 4 seconds for player related pauses
I use this weapon as a more passive sidegrade to the stock launcher. Its quite fun to use in cases where you have other soldiers on your team already and you want to play a bit more of a supportive role. As it pairs well with the banners with how the charge shot deals massive damage from affar. It can also help in the many scenarios where you have to deal with an engineer who abuses the crap out of the wrangler.
Tell me you haven't tried using the Cow Mangler without telling me you haven't tried using the Cow Mangler. It's definitely not better than stock, save for extremely niche situations, but it's by far the best sidegrade (because the Direct Hit is a direct upgrade). And I mean best in terms of versatility. With any other RL, you have to change your mentality about how you approach mobility and combat. The Black Box increases survivability at the cost of sustained DPS and jumping, the Air Strike encourages bombing but demands clever timing and positioning if you want to survive, the Beggar's Bazooka adds incredible potential for movement and burst damage but makes your medium-to-long-range pressure nonexistent. The Cow Mangler is no different. For starters, when you equip the Mangler, you forego your responsibility as the Dedicated Buildings Destroyer. That is only necessarily a bad move when nobody else in your team can handle buildings. Cases where the enemy team has zero Engineers throughout the whole match are rare, but still far more common than your own team never having another Soldier, Demo, or Spy. Let them handle the Engie's toys while you go do your thing. It's not like you're entirely deadweight, as disabling a wrangled sentry is extremely powerful (mostly because of how broken the Wrangler is). Secondly, if your Medic is running the Kritzkrieg, it's on you to either swap or warn him not to Uber you as much as it's on him to pay attention to his patients and not Uber you. It's a 12 v 12, there's no way the Cow Mangler Soldier is the only viable Kritz Uber option. And on the matter of crits, yes, no random crits hurts the damage potential of the Mangler. That's a choice you accept and run with. It hasn't stopped other non-crit weapons from finding their uses, and it doesn't stop this one. You make up for reduced short-term DPS with more standing power. You even admitted yourself that the Rocket Launcher is one of the few weapons that is at feasible risk of running out of ammo. Even if restoring that spent ammo is so simple it might as well be a non-issue, it's still something you can potentially avoid by using the Mangler. The thing here ties back to what I said at the beginning, which is the way you use the weapon. You don't use the Rocket Jumper as if it were stock. You shouldn't use the Cow Mangler like stock either. Is the playstyle that the Mangler encourages (or at least supports) far less exciting, for lack of a better word, than regular Highlander Soldier play? Sure, but if you wanted to play regular Soldier, you wouldn't equip a different RL. You get to stand your ground, spam down chokepoints or just out in the open, accumulating chip damage with constant pressure. And you're still Soldier. You can still rocket jump in and out of trouble if needed. All your other secondary and melee options are available too. Lastly, all the problems you mentioned with the charge shot are honestly pretty valid. Except for the noise. It really isn't half as loud as you make it out to be. But that's where the major part of the "mentality change" comes into play. If you try to use the charge shot like a regular mini-crit rocket, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. It requires planning. It's a preemptive tool, not a reactive one. Gotta be aware of your circumstances when you use it. It's not as much of a brainteaser, but it's not so braindead that you can just use it whenever you feel like it. Banking it all on a single mini-crit isn't always the best call, sure, but isn't always the worst either. It takes time to fire off four rockets. Hell, sometimes you barely get the time to fire two after you expose yourself. Again, need to be aware of your situation. Even in the worst scenarios, you at least have an actually threatening (albeit very slow) Scorch Shot. 61 damage minimum (at the edge of the explosion due to splash falloff) plus afterburn is nothing to scoff at, especially if you hit someone separated from their team, like a Sniper far in the backlines. But to tie it back to my first statement. How is it the best RL sidegrade? In short, because you can still basically use it like stock and not get gimped by any harsh downsides (or "upsides"), aside from the building damage penalty (not an issue in the grand scheme of things unless your team is stupid) and a slightly slower initial reload speed (which is my benchmark for determining whether someone has tried using the CM. If you used it well, you'd have noticed that). Of course, you shouldn't use it like stock, but if you were to, you'd get the best mileage from it out of every other unlock (The Original is essentially a stock reskin), and that's what makes it versatile. It closes a specific door and opens another specific one, but all in all, most of your options with stock are still there if you want or need to take them, and a few more are included.
Refer to my last point, about "using it like stock". That reload speed penalty can really throw off your muscle memory. Not always relevant, but not "never an issue" either, so there are cases where even when buildings are not included, it can still lose to stock.
"Direct hit is direct upgrade" I agree it's not the most skilled rocket launcher but it most certainly is not a direct upgrade even if you hit all of your shots
@@HeDronHeDronHedron A weapon that makes aiming easier, and then rewards you for having good aim, isn't a direct upgrade? I wonder why people call it the best melee weapon in the game, or why it can two-shot even an overhealed Demoman. I wonder why it can delete any building with two rockets and any light class with just one. I wonder why that is if it isn't a direct upgrade.
Definitely its most relevant upside is that it lets you hold some very unconventional areas for a long time as Soldier, especially if combined with conch for healing. It's what I pull it out the most for, if there's a flank route to defend that has only meager ammo and health drops, or are hard to access while defending safely, these traits can come in handy. But otherwise, the sentry damage downside is just too much, like you said. Defense is definitely its strongest place, overall
10:55 It takes 6 rockets from the Direct Hit to actually destroy a wrangled sentry which keep in mind any of your progress can be completely undone In just a few wrench swings, if you think it's more effective to brute force your way into destroying something tankier than an overhealed Heavy rather than actually erasing the main source of what gave the Sentry more health to begin with your just dead wrong.
The fact that a mangler soldier completely gets shut down by mini sentries is what totally kills it for me as a weapon. Mini spam is just too common on pubs and soldier is the (second) best equipped class to deal with them. Taking that ability away is insane.
As a Cow Mangler user, I’d like to respectfully disagree. Yes the damage on buildings are terrible, but why are you soloing a turtle engineer anyway? Even with the direct hit trying to destroy a noob engineer’s nest is already hard, much less a wrangler engineer. And if you need random crits to win battle, that’s skill issues. The fact that crit, which triple your damage can happen randomly is both unfair and stupid. I agree that most classes should be able to freely roam the map and play alone, but it’s called TEAM Fortress 2 for a reason, team would is still key to winning. And with that, I rest my case.
The infinite ammo upside, sure, is extremely map dependent, but it has it's moments unless you play only on maps with ammo abundance such as what you described The charge shot's damage does suck for the downsides, but you give the disabling buildings upside too little credit, as 1. Disabling buildings allows other classes to not only destroy it more easily, but also not worry about taking damage and dying to the sentry in the process, the downside really only comes into play when you're the only one who's supposed to be equipped to deal with sentries, (which in casual only happens if a lot of your team is dead, but if that's the case you're not taking that sentry out with a direct hit). Also, your argument of "why disable sentry when can blow it up" relies entirely on an engineer not being present to heal the gun, which only happens if the engineer is dead (overextended/instakilled) at which point the sentry is going down soon regardless I believe the Liberty Launcher (and the rocket jumper i guess) is still a worse weapon than the Cow Mangler
@@peanutsveryepicchannel8699 Honestly for that spot I pull out Dragon's Fury Pyro, that gun goes down fast in 3 fireballs unless it's being wrangled and chances are the engineer is close enough to it to take some decent damage, and especially under uber you can literally pump all 40 shots into that thing... it's gonna go down eventually with the DF Try it out sometime if you want another good way to take care of that spot
You're supposed to pair it with the Buff Banner, very easily fill the rage meter safely by spamming charged shots (the afterburn damage helps a ton) Once you use the banner you'll do about the same damage as a charged shot, except you'll have 4 rockets, no afterburn of course, but those minicrit rockets won't have any damage falloff!
Did you realize that all the downside you said of the cow mangler are present in the rocket jumper right ¡? -Not able to deal with Sentry guns ( i don't know how is this even a problem on pubs, even if you are the only soldier there will be a demoman or a spy to deal with it ) -No critis But also it has more downside: -Its redundant, you can equip the Gunboats and the liberty launcher or air strike and it will be almost the same but with the benefit that you can actually do damage. -It need another weapon to be reliable, without the market gardener is complete useless, at least the cow mangler doesn't depend on a secondary o melee weapon to be useful. i really can't understand how someone will consider the Cow Mangler the worst rocket launcher when the rocket jumper exists.
i think the rocket jumper wasn't really counted - you're technically right but like it's not really a fair comparison. maybe it could be the cow mangler is the worst combat primary? d
The video: *shows the Cow Mangler as the worst Rocket Launcher* Me: *who is watching the video while having the Cow Mangler and uses it for incoming Spies*
I like Mangler a lot, especially since all of my friends play turbine and the infinite ammo is funny. One thing that differentiates the mangler from stock is that its firing position is in between stock's and the original's. It makes jumping slightly different and is somewhat relevant to those who know about it
I agree that the Cow Mangler needs a rework of we want it to be distinct from stock and not cause problems. This is going to sound a bit out there, but it might work if it was playtested and fine tuned. What if we swapped a stat with the Pomson. Both weapons need a change, and I think this could set them both apart. The Cow Mangler would take the Pomson's stat of the projectiles not able to be reflected or destroyed. The Pomson would gain the charge shot feature from the Cow Mangler. This would give the Cow Mangler a unique advantage against Pyros (and I guess the short circuit) in that it is not affected by them, at the cost of still having crits become minicrits and the building damage penalty. The Pomson would get a charge shot that enables engineers to have something to help against other buildings. The Pomson charge shot would need fine tuning, but I think it could work.
i think that a non-reflectabel shot on a soldier primaryh wuld be way too good, and there would be even less need for soldiers running shotgun, but i totally agree with you on the pomson getting the charge shot. engineers cant help big coordinated sentry pushes anyway, as they're slow, so they can do that to help.
For me the cow mangler is a purely defensive weapon, I only use it on red team on payload and attack/defence maps. The entire point of the charge shot is locking down chokepoints. I recommend anyone to try it on cp_steel, defending the E point from scouts rushing it at the start of the game, or defending it at the final stage. Not only can it nearly one shot them, it often sends them flying down the pit aswell because of the insane knockback or have the afterburn kill them. Very easy to lock down any chokepoint. You just have to play much more defensively than you would regularly on soldier.
>says random crits are a really big upside >says that the charge shit feels like its luck to get kills, says it in a way that makes it sound like its a bad thing >???
Ngl I think the cow mangler is pretty good. Ammoless shots is pretty useful when fighting players and the charge shot disabling sentries can actually be pretty clutch if you can stand far away
This is a pretty cold take, calling it the worst. You’re gonna be 20 times more productive with the cow mangler than with the liberty launcher, since it’s not like gently breathing on your enemies. And the difference between poorly designed and poorly executed is pretty irrelevant here, since developer intent isn’t gonna be getting you kills.
I think that it could find a purpose in Pyro fighting, if the projectile couldn't be reflected, like the Bison and Pomson projectiles. Being able to shut down that M2 happy Pyro would be worth all the downsides.
That sounds too op and honestly not fun to play against, throwing one of pyro's most important abilities away, which can save his entire team, because the soldier pressed m2 from far away sounds too strong and unnecessary. You simple shouldn't shoot rockets at a pyro that you know can airblast unless they are distracted or you are the distraction, and they shouldn't gave their skill negated for no reason
Wait... if the M2 happy pyro is more than a slight annoyance due to reflecting all your projectiles, doesn't that mean you are the one spamming since he is only reflecting what YOU shoot? Also Anti Pyro Crutch suggested, opinion invalid.
I'd still argue the liberty launcher is worse because it's just painful to fight anything other than light classes as it takes longer to deal the same amount of damage even with the additional shot loaded. Admittedly I might be biased because I don't really need any of its upsides and I dislike getting undeserved kills via random crits too, so I usually see the cow mangler as a fun side-grade (as long as there are no pesky engineers around for sure). More importantly though, the quality of the video and voiceover was great, points well delivered, fun gameplay to watch in the background. Hard to believe this is only your third video?
Rocket jumper: im a joke to you? Before of attack of troldiers and soundsmith fans: trading main source of huge splash damage for better (i guess?) rocket jumping ability - but without rockets you have only shotgun or market gardner. So you become worse scout or quasi spy (one class elimination) meme class BTW: nice editing tho, we will watch your career with great interest
Who let bro cook? Maybe the Cow Mangler is mid tier at worst, but calling the Liberty Launcher and Air Strike better is cap. Ammo is essential because it can allow you to be effective long term and not be something to worry about. It could be taken by your demo or scout instead. Crits are also not that essential, especially when you can guarentee the minicrit splash into a choke which with coordination will soften squishies up to get rid of them immediately. No one ever runs Krieg on pubs and if they are they arent gonna kritz a mangler soldier unless they are a 3 hour f2p. Also disabling a sentry and having your pyro or demo raid the nest is huge considering you can topple an engi nest WITHOUT a medic with über. Typically the sentry can body block the engi from rockets and he can heal it about as fast as you can damage it. This whole idea just needs to be reconsidered.
I dont understand this video, everybody knows Soldiers worst primary is the Liberty Launcher. Cow Mangler might be a direct upgrade from stock, depending on the situation and has a cool kill animation.
Personally I view this as a support rocket launcher since the gun just works better if you follow around teammates and don’t rocket jump, you won’t get locked up by a sentry since enemy engineers cants just walk into into 5 people and hope to build a sentry, the charged shot let’s you turn the tide of big fights since you can hide behind others and knock anyone out of the fight after taking the time to choose them.
I agree with this entire video. the fact that it can't random crit alone makes it a direct downgrade, factor in that even when you are awarded crits it transforms them into 122 mini-crits and now it's below even the liberty launcher. engineer's sentries are like Legos, most soldiers can easily deal with a nest and an engineer's other buildings and the fact that you do a pitiful 18 damage and are given this gimmick charge shot that disables it for 4 seconds is so niche and nearly not as good as it sounds on paper. why disable a sentry when you can corner peak and destroy it entirely. infinite ammo really isn't that good of an upside since ammo packs and dispensers exists, even dead players drop a medium ammo pack making this "upside" just decent. one more thing about the charged shot, I guess you could technically one shot a light class here and then or just have it fired into a group of people but it uses your entire clip and not only that but it also slows you to a near crawl when charging which also takes about 3 seconds to fire off. in my opinion the cow mangler 5000 is truly the worst rocket launcher solider has, all it's upsides either counteract the way you have to play or it's downsides are always present. TLDR: cow mangler 5000 is just stock that can't random crit, has infinite ammo, and can only do 122 when you get crits making it a worse stock rocket launcher.
"The fact that it can't random crit alone makes it a direct downgrade" If your relying on random crockets to mow down crowds of people then you aren't playing TF2, your just rolling a dice and hoping you always get a 6 at the right time. The reason no one takes the inability to random crit seriously is because random crits as concept are an absolute joke that should not be in FPS games. You also overrate the Rocket Launcher's ability to destroy buildings, unless your using the Direct Hit, an engineer can still repair a sentry faster than a single soldier can destroy it, especially if they have the Rescue Ranger and Wrangler equipped in which the only reliable answer to those is a Spy. The charge shot of the Cow Mangler could use a buff, but it shouldn't be downplayed the way it is today. It's a rocket that deals the same damage as the Direct Hit with no falloff and sets everyone within the radius on fire along with disabling buildings, that's extremely powerful for crowd control, killing off oblivious Snipers, and dealing with wrangled sentries, and thanks to CM5000's infinite ammo, you can spam it as much as you want as long as your not in a vulnerable position.
th-cam.com/video/T0beshZh1mo/w-d-xo.html Maybe play TF2 first before spewing nonsense? Also it's not suprising that the youtuber supports false information.
One other point about the ammo: If you're consistently rocket jumping around as Soldier, then you're going to be taking self-damage and going to have to grab a health pack. What's right next to almost every health pack? Ammo packs! You're going to have to go to where health and ammo are barely less than if you're running any other rocket launcher. So the upside of "no ammo" on the Cow Mangler is even more of an upside that means absolutely nothing.
you could also make that argument for the liberty launcher and how reduced damage rocket jumping doesn't really do anything for you as you can just heal off of kits. And in the event you're in combat, where you don't have time for ammo management, it really comes in handy to not have to worry about it and focus on aiming and reloading.
Also your team will lose without a medic and casual medics will usually heal soldiers so health is never really a problem with rocket jumping to where your team is. If you're playing soldier as a solo class without accounting for your team, you're playing the wrong game
While I do disagree that it is a bad weapon (mostly just because I like to use it), this is a well presented argument. I would suggest definitely the improved charged shot but it takes 2 maybe 3 (dependant on testing) shots to fire it. Also a possible 5th shot in the clip if 3 shots are needed for the charge.
No ammo pool is both great and redundant. On one hand, you can go do your own things and don’t have to worry about ammo conservation, on the other, dispensers and ammo packs are not that hard to come by. The super shot is actually pretty good if you use it against a sentry. It negates the issue of less damage against buildings in a way. It’s effectively a long range sapper. But, it’s not that good against people seeing that it slows you down and fires a slow projectile. In all, I love the cow mangler but I get it’s kinda weird
That one bit on thundermountain, u could of charge shot that sentry and load a shot to jump away. Seems you lack quite bit of experience. You locked yourself in that spot
plus, demoman or spy is usually run specifically to destroy buildings plus plus, a demo is better to pop a kritz on plus plus plus, the rocket launcher is known for rocket jumping, not random crits, casual itself is known for random crits, and each class (excluding spy and sniper) plus plus plus plus, disabling a sentry makes it easier to destroy a sentry with stickies, allow a flanking scout to pass and kill the engineer to then destroy the sentry plus plus plus plus plus, it does disable all buildings plus plus plus plus plus plus, it is more annoying for an engineer, especially one who's running a mini, to have a disabled building plus plus plus plus plus plus plus, you are bad at using the cow mangler and don't actually know when and where to use the charge shot for example, pre-emptively charging around a corner for an enemy that's going to pass will almost certainly kill them (leaving demos and pyros on 2 health with full afterburn)
The cow mangler is good when you defend the last point in any point game modes like Payload when you reset the reload and charge the "big attack "I'm new to the game idk what it is but I dominated some people
I like using the Cow Mangler with a banner, as more of a team player. You can charge up the banner by lobbing those charged shots and collecting afterburn damage, and then blow the horn and disable the sentry and make a pretty significant push. Also, you don't ever use any ammo, which is funny.
Yeah same. The charged shot is great for harassing Snipers and taking potshots at large crowds. Though with or without proper team coordination, the weapon is undoubtedly a downgrade from stock.
Ludwig you should look at the newer dalokos bar exploit with thebgru, makes the food basically a free pockey medic, you can find the exploit on big joey channel
Seems like quite a bit of effort just to be wrong. Plus you didn't mention the only real downside, which is that the cow mangler has a slightly slower reload. Everything else isn't really a downside bc it makes the weapon a side grade that fulfills a certain role. The cow mangler is great for consistent spam in any location. The infinite ammo means you dont have to retreat/overextend for a pack, or hug a dispenser. The charge shot allows you to get meaningful damage off down long corridors and extend the time it takes for medics to heal the damage (bc of afterburn). If minis are a problem, charge shot into shotgun takes care of it. Otherwise, the conch allows for the best staying power bc infinite hp and ammo. Disabling sentries is arguably stronger than merely damaging them, as to safely take out a sentry nest you need time, good distance, and ideally a way to get the engie off the building. Diabling it is guaranteed 4 seconds for your team to do stuff, coordinated or not.
Your opinion is wrong. The Cow Mangler effectively gives you a mini Sniper rifle. You can take out that annoying Sniper on the other team. You can take out the engi who is constantly healing and tanking his sentry gun with the wrangler, and disable his sentry. You can do massive amounts of damage to enemies before a fight. These are pretty significant. No crits is not that big a deal on casual servers. Nobody is gonna kritzkrieg you, and you're not gonna get a massive random crit on the whole enemy team (like happens once in 100 games). With the Cow Mangler you can get consistent mini crit + afterburn damage if you happen to ever see half the enemy team on the point. No ammo required can be useful as well, some maps have otherwise advantageous positions that have no health or ammo packs. Pair the Cow Mangler and the Concheror and you can be self reliant in these areas. One spot I can think of is the roof of point B in Gravelpit. Many such cases. It's pretty situationally and generally good. There can be other players to deal with sentries if it really matters.
"The only scenario I can imagine this being useful in is if you coordinated with your team" Yup, that's it right there. If you're not a team player, it's not the launcher for you.
Have to disagree. The suggested changes are particularly egregious; You want to turn the cow mangler into.... a 130+ damage largest-splash-radius-in-the-game POMPSON? Are you insane? The most buff the Cow Mangler needs is a 10% buff to building damage at most; any more than that, and the cow mangler becomes even more of a jack of all trades than it already is (it's literally just the rocket launcher)
The best use for the Sentry disable stat is when they have a massive nest with multiple Wrangler engies where one Uber isn't quite enough and you have a second soldier. But you know what's usually better than the Cow Mangler in that situation? The sapper. Even the red tape recorder as the sentry needs just a bit longer to be active again. Even in the single useful scenario I can think of - I see so many more ways to be more effective. Especially when the engies use the short circuit on top of having a few wrangled sentries. It's laughable.
If you ignore the defining feature of the weapon (the right click charge shot), it can seem pretty redundant, but the charge shot is huge for pressuring choke points and charging buff. You gotta play for angles that let you get charge shots off in high-traffic chokepoints or sniper spots. Even if you do not get a kill you can pressure people out of the fight before it even starts. If you charge a backup and communicate to your team that you are mangling the sentry (assuming you wait for them) you can easily destroy a nest and all the people standing around it. I would argue that the Cow Mangler 5000 is one of the more interesting rocket launchers in the game because of the unique charge shot, behind only maybe the beggars and air strike.
This was an interesting video! I haven't seen anyone else dosuss the topic. Also; i know the Backscatter is outpaced by stock, but i love its audio design and physical design. And the mini-crits are cool too.
![[TF2] Scout's Most UNDERUSED Primary](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4aj7yTVEZDQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TF2] Scout's Most UNDERUSED Primary](/img/tr.png)
![[TF2] Bad Weapon Academy: The Brass Beast](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ItPiz9lQIp0/mqdefault.jpg)
I disagree. The fact that the cow mangler is practically the same as stock when just counting the 4 rockets automatically removes it from being the worst. Stock is liked due to it's overall reliability and damage; since the cow mangler imitates that (except for buildings).On the topic of buildings in casual, I would just change to the direct hit anyway if sentries were that annoying.
well yeh if you only count the 4 rockets. but you cant ignore the terrible building damage and the lack of random crits playing casual
@@mongoose6965 cow mangler is support, you're not supposed to bomb with it nearly as much as you would with stock
@@objectionablycurious yeh i can agree with that. all im saying is that you cant say its practically same as stock because it does have fundamental differences
@@mongoose6965 side grade, but not the worst rocket launcher in the game
@@mongoose6965 hey wanna know a secret.
Your using it wrong then.
In my experience being able to disable wrangled sentries for a few seconds is more powerful than attempting to destroy it solo given how easy it is to tank a wrangled sentry, engineers can out heal a direct hit salvo provided they have enough metal. Given how powerful the wrangler is, and how widely it’s used I’d say that in its current form the charge shot is not that terrible. I do agree that it should receive something more, or just loosen up on some of the downsides, like allowing it to receive guaranteed crits like every other weapon with the no random crits stipulation. In my experience the no ammo consumption is very useful, not for yourself but for your teammates, especially engineers and heavys. While yes they could just find another ammo pack that still takes time away from doing something more important. Personally I cycle between stock, the cow mangler and the direct hit depending on what the situation calls for, aggressive consistency for stock, focused damage for the direct hit and over all team support for the cow mangler.
the cow mangler having infinite ammo is underrated, the right click definitely has its uses, and in conjunction with a demoman, who is actually supposed to destroy buildings, or even a somewhat coordinated push, you can easily use it to full potential. The same damage, and reload speed pretty much makes it identical to stock outside of the inability to random crit.
Also the rocket launcher isn't really designed to destroy buildings as much as demoman, who is literally de facto the anti engineer class.
Additionally, if you're going to be running different weapons, your playstyle needs to change as well. You can't run a stock watch like you're playing deadringer.
You can't run krtizkrieg like you're playing stock uber, and you can't use the cow mangler like you're a sentry buster. You play a support role and assist pushes by disabling sentries or killing other players in 1v1s.
Spamming is what makes soldier so good. Much like sniper and his sightlines, it's all about area denial by threatening chip damage.
The charge shot is a support tool, so use it near your teammates and aim at sentries.
Also the complaint that the cow mangler can't destroy a sentry and disabling it is asinine, is kinda moot by the fact that most engineers are near their building and tank sentry guns if they're in a decent position. And even if you use all your ammo, if that engineer is near a dispenser or metal pack, he'll tank the gun with the rescue ranger or wrangler, which are defensive engineer's best tools in his kit. An engineer can't tank a sentry gun when his gun isn't actually shooting the team shooting back.
Now the cow mangler can actually kill enemies and does something to sentry guns.
The liberty launcher is literally stock, but instead of rockets, it shoots pillows. You lose the ability to kill soldiers in 1v1s, you lose the ability to do sufficient damage to sentry guns, a rule you brought up against the cow mangler, all for what is essentially the gunboats version of a rocket launcher?
Just use the gunboats, and if you really want another rocket for jumping purposes, just use the beggars. The liberty launcher isn't bad, it's just outclassed, which makes it bad by comparison. Anything it does can already be done by another item hundreds of times better.
Running a Spy with the Enforcer can really help in this case too, it's extremely strong against the wrangler overall
Why are you writing books in comment sections
@@Totally-not-a-scp-employee funny
@@Totally-not-a-scp-employeeDamn, the books you have read must suck, if they are this short.
People often forget the secret stat the Cow Mangler has; it’s practically a stealth weapon for soldier. It vaporizes bodies, allows for a large burst shot that lets soldier reposition while the projectile is traveling, and is very good at flanking objectives with a shotty follow up.
What do you mean allows for a large burst shot that lets soldier reposition while the projectile is traveling.
@@SimoneBellomonte the charge shot. It's a better burst (higher damage) option that, once launched, lets you run away instead of sticking around to spam 3 more rockets. Mind, having to reload hampers your mobility since you can't rj, and it leaves you open, so I'm somewhat skeptical, but that's what he means.
@@TheEpicPancake Soldier with 200 hp and stock shotty still 1v1s a lot of classes. Assuming you're peaking corners with the charge shot and sticking to flanking backrooms, you're probably running into spies, scouts, maybe some cocky demos or soldiers with less health due to explosive jumping, and in tight corridors where they're going to splash themselves. Worst case scenario you run into the rare flank heavy who just mows you down with the tomislav, but then you'd probably be dead even with 4 rockets.
6:23 "You are throwing"... excuse me but if the Medic CHOOSE to kritz a Cow Mangler, he is responsable. Every time I get a kritz while using this I stop and look at the Medic and do nothing cuz... Why would you kritz a cow mangler
Yeah as if the Medic doesn't have 10 potential other Uber targets to use it on. And ignoring how rare of a situation this is to begin with.
cuz its funny
To be fair, if you have no other targets and there are enemies, giving the soldier free mini crits might at least save your lifes
Also when DO you see a medic in valve casual!?
@@thelastmlg2699 Absolutly, but that still not your fault if you are using the Cow Mangler
This is what happens when a man looks only at the numbers and text without any experience to back hum up. Alright, lets blow up all your takes against Cow Mangler in one charged shot:
About engineers and buildings:
-80% damage penalty against buildings is not nearly as bad as you make it look like, if you killed all enemies around buildings before fighting building themselves. It does take 6 shots to kill minisentry, but if you killed the engineer before that (which you can do easily, since your rockets deal full damage to players) then killing sentry is a matter of nearly 4 or 5 seconds. For other sentries it will take infinitely more time to destroy them with the launcher *itself,* but you always have a sidearm or melee at your disposal.
-equipping a shotgun is not at all necessary to deal with sentries. Always remember - fortune loves the brave ones, and if you want to kill a sentry, your best way of doing so with Cow Mangler is to disable it and then circle it down with melee weapon (circling down a sentry is jumping on top of it and then crouch-walking on the sentry in circles, it won't be able to turn fast enough to catch you, so you can kill it with melee easily). In my experience Equalizer works the best, it actually works best with cow mangler at all, but I'll save it for one of next points. Circling sentry is a very easy trick, you should learn to do it, it makes fighting engineer nests possible even when you are playing *trolldier,* who has no ranged weapons at all.
-playing against team with no engineers is one of the most common scenarios in official casual mode. Most of newer players either don't want to play the "support builder" class or get too frustrated at dying too much to a spies, so engies are actually rather rare in casual, at least in european servers. Additionally, those who are playing engineers are mostly very inexperienced, so killing them before their sentry isn't a problem, and to kill sentry just refer to previous point.
-if you somehow stumbled upon an actually experienced engineer, just wait for your teammates to catch up, the game isn't called TEAM Fortress for nothing, disabled sentry is as good as dead sentry as long as someone is shooting at it, while you are bullying engineer with your secondary, melee and 200 health reserve. No uber needed. Just learn to play with team if engineers are THAT big of a problem to you.
Now about crits (note that i am not nearly as negative about crits as most other players, i find them funny and compelling to chaotic balance of the TF2, and i can even say that i love them as a game's part):
-Judging a weapon by the fact that it doesn't have the "unfair" in most of players' eyes mechanic is a bit unprofessional, but i suppose you may be just like me and don't hate the random crits as most of people do, so it might be the downside for you, that is understandable.
-still, while normal rocket launcher IS in fact known for it's crits, the reputation of crockets are more than negative. Majority of people (i almost sure including you) will be at least annoyed if they will die more than once in a game to random critical rocket. So the inability to crit only makes Cow Mangler objectively more fair, both in eyes of it's user and his enemies, which is by no means a bad thing.
-inability to benefit from any source of guaranteed crits *may* throw you down, but if you have a dedicated pocket medic who wants you specifically to get his crits (maybe because you are the only soldier in the team, or you the most experienced one, who knows), and you *STILL* don't change your weapon to make his efforts not useless - you are a really mean and horrible person. If you have a medic that is willing to uber you with Kritzkrieg, it is YOUR job to make sure that his crits weren't wasted, and Cow Mangler description clearly tells you that it is NOT a weapon to be paired with kritz. Switching a weapon to make your medic's life easier is the least you can do for him, if you are not willing to do so, you aren't worth ubering.
Now about charged shot:
-Yes, it is slow. Yes, it is loud. Yes, you are vulnerable while you are charging up. That's the price you pay for dealing about 100 damage to a crowd of people at *any* range. Charge shot is what turns you from a fast roamer class to a support artillery class. And i can clearly see that you didn't use Cow Mangler for long enough to witness how powerful this artillery mode can be. You can shutdown snipers (which usually are too busy looking through the scope to be bothered by charge shot, ESPECIALLY in casual mode that you are referring to in video). You can destroy pushing ability of enemy assault groups with medics, because a good hit will either kill medic in one hit by afterburn or will leave him with single digit health, which is basically equal, since reloading one follow-up shot takes less than a second for you. And generally speaking, damage-wise, it is so strong to be able to deal ~120 damage at any range that i can't really tell you about it. You needed to get some good experience with charged shots, man. This is a perfect textbook definition of a sidegrade: you trade away your sentry busting ability in exchange for a super anti-personnel artillery weapon. It's more than fair.
-Speaking of the slowness of charging process, an engineer will never start building sentry right in front of enemy. A heavy won't start eating sandwich right in front of enemy. So you too should not start charging your Cow Mangler right at the front line. IRL artillery also doesn't roll up to the front lines to start shooting, it supports troops from the back. So should you. If you can't find any good moments for a charged shots then your situational awareness is worse than a 2fort sniper's one. Plus you HAD some good footage of good charged shooting, so you are self-inconsistent in this take.
-As i said before, the true strength of minicrits isn't the damage bonus - its the lack of damage falloff. Do not hesitate to spam charged shots from far away, it will kill people just as good as if you were much closer.
-Yes, stock rocket launcher destroys sentry guns, but if there is an engineer that is sitting next to it and hitting it with a wrench - you can't do anything. The wrench healing is stronger than rocket damage (105 vs 90) so stock literally can't do anything against *maintained* sentry nests. While Cow Mangler makes dealing with these nests almost trivial - engineer can heal disabled senty, but charged shot will force him to retreat to health pack anyway to kill off the afterburn. So Cow Mangler literally gives your teammates a 4 second window to kill sentry gun without *any* opposition. You can even do it yourself, if you have a shotgun, or you can rocket jump on top of engie and kill him with melee, and then do the same with sentry. You just need to not waste time. Or have at least one teammate nearby.
-speaking of disabling buildings, did you know that dispensers can heal people? Rumors say that wounded people tend to round up near dispensers to fortify their positions and regain health. And it also happens that Cow Mangler's charged shots are really good at dealing big damage to crowds of people, as well as disabling buildings. Imagine if someone would shoot a Cow Mangler charged shot at dispenser with 3 or 4 people around it. Can you hear the dinging noise of your hitsounds telling you how all these people burn with their last digits of health, while dispenser stay disabled and not healing them? If you didn't buy the sarcasm, yes, the most effective way of using the Cow Mangler's charged shot is to shoot the dispenser with some people around it. The damage will most likely kill them, since they may be injured, or at least make their positions much less reliable and strong. And you don't even need to get close to them, like demoman needs to - remember, the minicrit's true benefit? You clearly forgot about that.
And finally some thoughts about infinite ammo:
-you was almost right on this one. Infinite ammo is the least useful benefit of Cow Mangler, yet it has some uses for soldier's teammates, specifically, the engineers. Have you ever felt bad for taking a large ammo box to restock your rocket reserve, only to see how your friendly engineer is running up to that box and waiting for it desperately, because his sentry is almost dead and he needs to build dispenser really quickly? Well, with cow mangler, your will never let your engineer down like that, since you literally can't pick up ammo anymore (of course shotgun still will screw engineers, so don't run shotgun with Cow Mangler).
-additionally, this is more of a mental buff than a direct gameplay buff, since you just will not worry about ammo at all. With default rocket launchers i usually find myself sticking to ammo pack spots a lot, and with Cow Mangler i feel more free to reposition, knowing that my weapon will always be ready to fire.
I used cow mangler as my main primary weapon for more than full year now (EDIT: more than 2 full years now), and you wouldn't believe it, but with righteous bison as a main secondary i never had any bad plays that weren't my fault as a player. If the situation in a match is REALLY going against Cow Mangler, just switch to different weapon, even best weapons have their counters, that's what is called the balance. And if it is really that bad of a weapon, then why i see how every third soldier is using it? And they use it effectively, and they usually go to top of the scoreboard. So what i will say, is that you, sir, need to gain some more experience with Cow Mangler. You didn't learn how to use the weapon before mocking it and making a bad weapon academy parody about actually one of the best weapons. That is a unprofessional move. Good luck next time!
Banana ain't coming back from this absolute fact
@@Wicked_Fox I just rewatched the video and noticed that almost all the times when he is talking about how bad Cow Mangler is his video shows him absolutely wrecking the house with it. This channel is a joke...
@@jumpinghunter9152 it's what happens when you create clickbait for the sake of clickbait without giving any thought to what you're actually talking about
"But dispensers don't move! So when you shoot the dispenser, EVERYONE *DIES"*
the infinite ammo is actually insane on stalematey maps like gullywash or snakewater, you never have a reason to leave an angle you're holding
I wouldn’t necessarily say the cow Mengler is bad, I would merely say it’s under powered. But, it is pretty funny to get those charge shot kills.
Edit: wow that much for my opinion? Cool.
I don't think the Cow Mangler is _bad_ per se, but it's definitely a downgrade from stock right now.
@@ArbitraryOutcome also extremely boring to use, might as well be stock
@@ArbitraryOutcome honestly nah infinite ammo is unbelievably good for chokepoints
@@ArbitraryOutcome more like sidegrade, if it was allowed to fully damage buildings it would basically better than stock
Cow mangler is fun. I used it in many situations on community servers where ammo was a problem or I wanted to have some funny charge shots
You don’t realize how powerful those 4 seconds on a disabled sentry are until you actually use the mangler because it’s something that an engineer can’t undo unlike stock where the problem is solved with a few wrench swings. This allows you to take down a sentry that is being tanked and your team can actually push
If an engineer was tanking his sentry it would be easier for him to swing his wrench twice and remove the sapper then have to deal with someone spamming it with multiple rockets though. Not to mention if there is mini sentries or other buildings you want to destroy it’s very impractical.
Christ i have 100hrs in game and even i see this as a dumb way to deal with the sentry. If u have enough team coordernation to push on a disabled sentry on a casual game of all things, then get a medic to run the kritzkrieg or/and stock uber and use the direct hit instead. Disabling the sentry doesn't really do anything when the engineer can just tank it anyways, and if your team doesn't destroy the sentry in time it effectively turns into a ww1 no mans land situation. Your better off putting all your eggs in one basket in destroying the sentry, cause destroying one cripples the the engineer far more then causing it to spasm for 4 seconds
@@deliqene3191 Krits doesn’t do shit against building and Uber takes time
@@deliqene3191 You don't need team coordination to deal with disabled sentries dude, if there's at least 2 people dealing with the same sentry there's gonna be SOMEONE attacking it while it's not immediately shooting back, also even with the Direct Hit the engineer can still heal his sentry at relatively the same speed your damaging it or just press 2 on his keyboard to triple the rockets needed in order to destroy the sentry.
@@kfcemployee9692 it does shit to the guy healing it lmao
It's almost like it's a situational side-grade.
straight upgrade*
@@scidja8567 engineers:
@@FletcherCat with effective teamwork it could be argued it’s better than other rocket launchers
Especially if the engie is using the wrangler
This is complete BS. The infinite ammo upside allows you to remain on the battlefield until your health is 0 without running for an ammo pack (using it with the conch is actually really good for self sustainability) and you're talking about your weakness against engineers in a vacuum. There is always an ocean of anti sentry classes in pubs, especially in game modes like payload or attack/defend, and the charge shot can help your teammates take it down *without* using an uber, and the engi is left hopeless. Also the kritzkrieg isn't as common as stock, which any self-respecting medic will run on regular games (kritzkrieg is unreliable anyways and I'd rather use the quick fix or vaccinator). Calling the cow manger worse than the liberty launcher just sounds like you are trying to be contrarian for the sake of clicks. If you need random crits to get reliable kills you're just bad, not the weapon
Well said, exactly my thoughts.
Bro didn’t even respectfully disagree 💀
@@KlassicLoL why would I respectfully agree with bad clickbait
Also using buff banner with cow mangler is equivalent to having a kritzkrieg pocket
Weapon is still poopy L
What I got from this video:
"I need random crits to get many kills in quick succession" "I need to be pocketed by my kritz med to get kills" "I'm not good at timing the charge shot and use it when staring down a sniper sight line." "I can't play around sentry placements and can't coordinate with randoms to destroy sentries."
useless video
It seems to be like this guy is trying to be like Stutteringmania: be contrarian as possible, even when it makes no sense to be so
You shouldn't have to play around sentry placements as a soldier. He's the second best class for sentry destruction other than demo. Regarding crits, my only point was that not being able to crit is a legitimate downside as soldier and not something to look over. As far as the charge shot, it's not about "timing". There's just very few scenarios where it actually does something beneficial that you couldn't have done with 4 normal rockets.
@@tf2bananatf2 charge shot can achieve mass damage to a group + extra damage with afterburn
Quite useful
@banana 1: when you equip the cow mangler you knowingly give up your direct ability to destroy engie buildings, but you will likely not be the only soldier or demo on your team (just like it is unlikely to have no engies on the enemy team) and with the cow mangler you enhance your team's ability to destroy sentries by disabling them for other soldiers and demos to fire on it without taking the sentries fire. 2. The charge shot behaves as a weaker but controlled crit rocket. It has the same crowd control/ mass damage as a critical rocket, but you control when you get it. Which is also why it has downsides to using it. A burst of mini crit damage is hard to survive, 4 smaller bursts of damage with fall-off are more survivable.
I'd say the Cow Mangler is the definition of a side grade. It solid weapon comparable to stock. Equal in some cases, weaker in some, and stronger in niche scenarios
yeah its a great alternative, i use it almost exclusively largely because it doesnt need ammo and charged shots are quite fun to use
Not convinced about cow mangler being just worse stock, the downside of dealing no damage to buildings is usually not a big deal because your teammates can take care of sentries themselves, and the only really big downside is turning crits into minicirits (even though getting ubered by a med with Kritz is a rare occasion). Cow mangler is good for firing at chokes/being constantly at fight, not having to retreat for an ammo picks means you'll spend more time firing and dealing damage; and to what use with cow mangler, I'd suggest to try the mini crit banner, it works well when you fire non-stop
Oh yeah, about ammo packs from dead players, there are not always an opportunity to pick it up, especially if you are on offense
The Cow Mangler's downside of weaker sentry damage is still mostly why I only consider it on defense. And the infinite ammo does provide good sustainability to help charge banners more consistently.
The downside of being weak against buildings is pretty significant though? Your getting rid of one of soldiers biggest strengths. Saying that it’s not a big deal cuz you can rely on teammates to break the buildings for you is pretty dumb. By that logic couldn’t your teammates just also kill the enemy team and win the game for you, why even need a rocket launcher that does damage? It’s silly to act like it’s practical to rely on your teammates in casual (the average casual player is not very reliable) to always absolve your of one of your weapons main weaknesses
@@iUseDemFrapz When you pick a cow mangler, your role in a team changes from a powerhouse and sentry buster to pure powerhouse; by doing that, you take some responsibilities from your team on frontline and allow them to relocate the resources to do other stuff, like destroying engi nests
(And besides, demoman is much better than a soldier at dealing with nests)
@@lol1013 yeah but the point is it’s not really worth the trade off even if ideally your team could cover for you (because they usually won’t and it isn’t practical to rely on them to do so in many common situations).
No, just no. The Cow Mangler is not Soldier’s worst launcher. Not even by a longshot. The Liberty Launcher will continue to hold that spot for eternity since valve will never regain access to the TF2 offices.
If you think 20% damage to buildings is worse than 25% damage to everything you’re mad. Also I think you’re overhyping stock’s ability to destroy buildings. Stock rockets deal 90 damage, the wrench heals 100 health per hit if memory serves. Assuming you’re firing from outside the sentry’s range and the engineer has any metal you will not destroy his buildings alone. The damage is too low and the rocket travel speed is too low to compensate. The reason why the direct hit is notorious for sentry busting is because it doesn’t suffer from either problem. Soldier isn’t demo and while yes he is more of a threat to buildings than other classes, he’s not the biggest threat. Assuming he’s not using the direct hit, which is a nearly hard counter to engineer.
The unlimited ammunition is definitely a nebulous upside, but it’s not a bad one. It’s just kinda there. I’m not going to argue that it’s not.
On to something more absurd, if you bank on crits to such a degree that their removal is an actual downside you’re bad. I don’t normally go that low or say something so simple, but there’s no other way to put it. At that point you’re not playing TF2, you’re playing a glorified slot machine. As for the complete loss of crits that’s a different story and I agree that such a thing is a downside, arguably this weapon’s biggest downside. A Soldier with a Crits Medic is a murderous combination and being unable to do that is pretty bad. However unless you have a friend who does that for you getting a crits medic is out of your control and once again if you find yourself in that situation pick another launcher.
Finally the charged shot is a gimmick, but a powerful one if used properly. A well placed charged shot can do 120-150 something damage. In a team fight being able to drop that amount of damage to a wide area can be a game changer. That’s such a powerful ability that the only other launcher that can match it, the direct hit, pays for that kind of damage by making it almost entirely single target only. You essentially have the ability to fire a direct hit rocket with max splash damage whenever you want. The charge has severe downsides and leaves you very vulnerable. Charging should be saved for special scenarios where you want to clean up an objective and you got enough teammates around you to cover you. It’s not an all the time thing, but when it’s situation arises it’s fucking murderous.
The cow mangler is essentially the stock launcher with a damage penalty to buildings and an inability to crit. In the cases where engineers are everywhere and/or your team has a kritzkrieg medic you’re working with you just don’t use it. Still how often do you run into either situation? Medics are an endangered species in pubs and if your team has a demo or another soldier which is basically a guarantee that sentry won’t exist forever. In every other case it’s just identical to stock.
How do those two scenarios make this the worst launcher? That’s an insane position. I’d talk about the Liberty launcher more, but this is long enough already.
The Mangler is definitely NOT a worse version of stock, but it underperforms in situations that stock excels in. The no ammo stat is great on maps that don't have too many ammo packs, but on some where ammo packs are abundant (such as Badwater and Dustbowl) and dispensers aren't too far from the front lines
it loses a lot of it's power compared to stock.
The charged shot is the second thing carrying the Mangler. It's use cases are questionable and committing to it in the incorrect situations will most likely get you killed, forcing you to think a little bit about when you think is a good time to charge it. It's sentry disabling capabilities is what makes the charged shot worth it, as a demoman, heavy, and whoever else can get the sentry while it's disabled. But casual players actually listening to callouts and such is entirely luck based.
It's downsides are definitely preventing the Mangler from being an upgrade to stock, but it's infinite ammo supply and team support with the charged shot doesn't make it the worst rocket launcher. The Liberty Launcher is still the worst, as it's damage to players and sentries is laughable as it fails to be the jack of all trades launcher.
whats with people saying the liberty launcher is bad? it’s genuinely really strong!
@@teeby2037 If u want to shoot pea shooter at people the damage suck
Even though I have never played TF2 and don't intend to, yeah, I really and honestly can't see how the Cow Mangler 5000 is bad, I mean the Liberty Launcher's attempt at being a "Jack of all Trades and master of none" is like an attempt on its life. Sure, it could be used in combination with the Reserve Shooter, or literally anything else to help it, but that's the weapon being supplemented and made up for its own weaknesses.
@@midnightbat344 the lack of damage is made up for in better mobility and more consistency
@@teeby2037 Well yeah but when u do only 40-50 damage it not ideal
Not being able to destroy buildings is pretty bad, but then you have the Liberty Launcher which also struggles versus building not left unguarded, making it both worse versus players AND buildings with no compensatory stat like disabling them.
Also using random crits and Casual as "default" for TF2 is rather reductive, considering many people have and currently play on community servers that usually have crits disabled as a courtesy anyways.
Also arguing that a 4% chance to deal extra damage being missing is a major downside.
It's 4%
It's not like melee weapons where the base is 13% or whatever.
@@vyor8837 the thing is that chance goes up with dmg dealt, I still dont support the random crit argument btw
Crits do matter but is not game changing.
@@drq_seed Yeah. I don't think you should consider random crits as a legit argument.
@@vyor8837
Where the fuck did you get those numbers. Cause neither are right.
Well, 4% is technically correct due to a little feature, but a 13% crit chance is impossible on a melee weapon.
Primary and secondary weapons have a base crit chance of 2% but can have that chance increased up to a maximum of 12% depending on the amount of damage you have done over the past 20 seconds, with 800 or more damage giving you the maximum crit chance. So you can get a 4% crit chance if you deal 160 damage first.
Melee weapons bump that base crit chance up to 15% and push the max crit chance all the way up to 60%, with the time constraints and damage requirements staying the same of course.
tell me you dont play soldier without telling me you dont play soldier!
4:37
"it'll take you 6 whole rockets to destroy a mini sentry"
my brother in christ you have a charge shot that can disable ANY sentry
also you've demonstrated why i hate the way the nerd emoji is used just a MINUTE after that clip
valid argument? i portrayed you as the nerd emoji, *_i win now_*
6:26
excuse me? so this medic walked up to me with his kritzkrieg out, most likely noticed that i was using the cow mangler, popped crits anyway even though it gets converted into mini-crits, and I'M the one to blame? i'm not even a soldier main and this just baffles me
6:48
NOT EVEN 30 SECONDS LATER, YOU DO THE LARGEST GOOF KNOWN TO MAN
so you're telling me not having the silly one-shot haha rng crocket is hampering your gameplay with the cow mangler?
if somebody gets a crocket and wins the fight due to it, i don't learn that it's something to fear, i get irritated that they won the fight due to rngesus saying "hey, i don't like this other guy, have a double damage projectile no strings attached"
9:59
because you're assuming a casual setting, considering one of your points was the no random crits, chances are you won't have a good medic. so, because your team can't afford to take sustained fire from a sentry gun, making sure it won't fire back while your team is attacking it is beneficial for your team's wellbeing.
10:55
*_SO YOU'RE TELLING ME REPEATEDLY FIRING AT A SENTRY WITH MORE EFFECTIVE HEALTH THAN A HEAVY IS A BETTER IDEA THAN ACTUALLY DISABLING IT?????????????????????????_*
i exaggerated due to anger while making this comment
i just want to let you know that i *_REALLY_* disagree with your opinions
yeah i agree, it sounds like the cow mangler killed his dog or something, since the cow mangler is an excellent example of a sidegrade, it trades the ability to effectively kill sentries for the ability to charge shots, and not need ammo.
@@Helperbot-2000 "the cow mangler killed my grandma, okay?!"
Ayo I think you might be on the spectrum
@@naf8787 incredible argument
@@Helperbot-2000 concrete
As a cow mangler user, this video crumbled and shooketh me to heart core
the cowmangler is still pretty good tho
@@TraffysKone yo mama is good hahahahahaha (i have brain damage)
This man actually thinks that disabling an ubercharge is balanced.
His opinions are shit.
For anyone confused at the 6:09 part. It's a custom server that lets you get grabbed my teammates. You can see the text at the bottom that the medic is grabbing the soldier.
Thats cursed as fuck
Pfp Sauce (Artist)? 🗿
Also I don’t see any text about a medic grabbing any soldier… wrong timestamp dude.
@@SimoneBellomonte This is my character. You won't find it anywhere.
@@SimoneBellomonte bottom of the screen, says "❤❤❤❤❤ is grabbing you!"
I literally main cow mangler.
Before valve made ammo pointless, it was really nice not having to worry about it, and the ability to get free flaming crits on demand was also nice.
It can literally disable sentries just before a team push.
Absolutely true. I'm a Cow Mangler main roo, and it is THE support weapon for soldier. It turns you from the mobile roamer to a support second line artillery with it's infinite minicrit range, so it is at worst a fair trade, if not a really beneficial one. Amazing weapon.
@@jumpinghunter9152mangler is not a “support” weapon lol. it has one niche option that rarely supports anyone but himself.
@@teeby2037 You are not right, probably you didn't try using it in not 2fort-styled maps. Being able to oneshot or nearly oneshot medics and all lighter classes, as well as to locate spies with afterburn and force them to go for med pack is huge. Being able to shut down sentry nest from the safe distance, basically replacing high cost and high risk uber collecting process with 3-second charge shot is golden, your team will be more than thankful to you. This charge shot also functions as a slower but stronger scorch shot in a way that you can disturb snipers from the far away, but you can even kill them, if you will land a direct hit, which isn't really hard on immobile average sniper of TF2 casual.
This is the most supportive primary soldier have, and the fact that you don't know how to use to in a right way doesn't make it any worse or niche.
@@jumpinghunter9152 bro typed an essay just to be wrong. nutty
@@teeby2037 "haha you are wrong. no i am not going to explain why, you just are" 🤡
@ 13:55 oopsies, here's banana's big mistake of the video (cause there always is one). Apparently the Charge Shot ALREADY disables all buildings (if I could read I'd know that). Shows you how relevant this upside is considering I didn't notice it a single time during all my footage.
Edit: I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the point of the video. As I said, the Liberty Launcher is absolutely a worse weapon in actual gameplay. I'm not trying to imply that you'll be more successful using it than the Cow Mangler. My point is that I don't believe that the Cow Mangler's upsides are useful or relevant enough to give up your ability to destroy buildings or crit. I also never said that any weapon NEEDS random crits to be good, just that random crits on the rocket launchers specifically are very strong and that you shouldn't OVERLOOK the downside as being irrelevant.
Damn i wonder where you got that idea from
@@Ban-zx9se It was you my friend, thanks for pointing it out haha
@banana thank lol. Great vid btw. 👌
At around 5 minutes in you took out a mini sentry by disabling it with a charged shot.
Maybe read the stats of the weapon before you make a video about it.
5:22 is a perfect example of how bullied cowmangler players are unless they run a backup kit.
The main thing i see about the crits to mini crits downside is the fact that the vast majority of Kritzkrieg medics i see are just pocketing for another soldier or a demo. And they are never using the cow mangler. But i do see how it can be a problem if you have no competent teammates.
Saying soldier has a "bad" launcher is like saying demoman has a "bad" shield. They're all good, but some are less good than others.
Yeah, even the Liberty Launcher has its uses as a combo tool and fallback option for Trolldier.
Liberty launcher is like way way way less good though, absolutely a bad weapon.
@@airhead7379 nah
Pretty bad anology tbh all the shilds have their own unique uses and are equal
@@crossedout_wizzkill1015 And I would argue the same thing about the rocket launchers. All have their own aspects that make them each good. Probably less equal though.
"just rocket jump to a ammo pack if you have no rockets!"
"I don't know how this is an upside" then lists several, and the biggest is wrangled sentries. I disagree with you on every point except that the charged shot needs a buff, but I understand where you're coming from. Well made video, you make your points well and don't attack those that disagree. I feel that the cow mangler really shines in large team fights, letting your team mates use the dropped ammo packs and removing the worry for running out of rockets completely.
5:23 mans really wasted an uber to try to destroy a building that can be rebuilt if the engie is not taken down knowing that he can't do much to the sentry instead of killing people
13:52 it already does that
14:32 maybe 6 seconds for buildings, and 4 seconds for player related pauses
I use this weapon as a more passive sidegrade to the stock launcher. Its quite fun to use in cases where you have other soldiers on your team already and you want to play a bit more of a supportive role. As it pairs well with the banners with how the charge shot deals massive damage from affar. It can also help in the many scenarios where you have to deal with an engineer who abuses the crap out of the wrangler.
Tell me you haven't tried using the Cow Mangler without telling me you haven't tried using the Cow Mangler.
It's definitely not better than stock, save for extremely niche situations, but it's by far the best sidegrade (because the Direct Hit is a direct upgrade). And I mean best in terms of versatility.
With any other RL, you have to change your mentality about how you approach mobility and combat. The Black Box increases survivability at the cost of sustained DPS and jumping, the Air Strike encourages bombing but demands clever timing and positioning if you want to survive, the Beggar's Bazooka adds incredible potential for movement and burst damage but makes your medium-to-long-range pressure nonexistent. The Cow Mangler is no different.
For starters, when you equip the Mangler, you forego your responsibility as the Dedicated Buildings Destroyer. That is only necessarily a bad move when nobody else in your team can handle buildings. Cases where the enemy team has zero Engineers throughout the whole match are rare, but still far more common than your own team never having another Soldier, Demo, or Spy. Let them handle the Engie's toys while you go do your thing. It's not like you're entirely deadweight, as disabling a wrangled sentry is extremely powerful (mostly because of how broken the Wrangler is).
Secondly, if your Medic is running the Kritzkrieg, it's on you to either swap or warn him not to Uber you as much as it's on him to pay attention to his patients and not Uber you. It's a 12 v 12, there's no way the Cow Mangler Soldier is the only viable Kritz Uber option. And on the matter of crits, yes, no random crits hurts the damage potential of the Mangler. That's a choice you accept and run with. It hasn't stopped other non-crit weapons from finding their uses, and it doesn't stop this one. You make up for reduced short-term DPS with more standing power.
You even admitted yourself that the Rocket Launcher is one of the few weapons that is at feasible risk of running out of ammo. Even if restoring that spent ammo is so simple it might as well be a non-issue, it's still something you can potentially avoid by using the Mangler. The thing here ties back to what I said at the beginning, which is the way you use the weapon. You don't use the Rocket Jumper as if it were stock. You shouldn't use the Cow Mangler like stock either. Is the playstyle that the Mangler encourages (or at least supports) far less exciting, for lack of a better word, than regular Highlander Soldier play? Sure, but if you wanted to play regular Soldier, you wouldn't equip a different RL.
You get to stand your ground, spam down chokepoints or just out in the open, accumulating chip damage with constant pressure. And you're still Soldier. You can still rocket jump in and out of trouble if needed. All your other secondary and melee options are available too.
Lastly, all the problems you mentioned with the charge shot are honestly pretty valid. Except for the noise. It really isn't half as loud as you make it out to be.
But that's where the major part of the "mentality change" comes into play. If you try to use the charge shot like a regular mini-crit rocket, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. It requires planning. It's a preemptive tool, not a reactive one. Gotta be aware of your circumstances when you use it. It's not as much of a brainteaser, but it's not so braindead that you can just use it whenever you feel like it.
Banking it all on a single mini-crit isn't always the best call, sure, but isn't always the worst either. It takes time to fire off four rockets. Hell, sometimes you barely get the time to fire two after you expose yourself. Again, need to be aware of your situation. Even in the worst scenarios, you at least have an actually threatening (albeit very slow) Scorch Shot. 61 damage minimum (at the edge of the explosion due to splash falloff) plus afterburn is nothing to scoff at, especially if you hit someone separated from their team, like a Sniper far in the backlines.
But to tie it back to my first statement. How is it the best RL sidegrade? In short, because you can still basically use it like stock and not get gimped by any harsh downsides (or "upsides"), aside from the building damage penalty (not an issue in the grand scheme of things unless your team is stupid) and a slightly slower initial reload speed (which is my benchmark for determining whether someone has tried using the CM. If you used it well, you'd have noticed that).
Of course, you shouldn't use it like stock, but if you were to, you'd get the best mileage from it out of every other unlock (The Original is essentially a stock reskin), and that's what makes it versatile. It closes a specific door and opens another specific one, but all in all, most of your options with stock are still there if you want or need to take them, and a few more are included.
well no it isnt even worse in most situations, its only worse against buildings, otherwise its the same or better in all situations
Refer to my last point, about "using it like stock". That reload speed penalty can really throw off your muscle memory. Not always relevant, but not "never an issue" either, so there are cases where even when buildings are not included, it can still lose to stock.
@@saint_ladd well im gonna be honest ive never even noticed that but fair enough
"Direct hit is direct upgrade" I agree it's not the most skilled rocket launcher but it most certainly is not a direct upgrade even if you hit all of your shots
@@HeDronHeDronHedron A weapon that makes aiming easier, and then rewards you for having good aim, isn't a direct upgrade? I wonder why people call it the best melee weapon in the game, or why it can two-shot even an overhealed Demoman. I wonder why it can delete any building with two rockets and any light class with just one.
I wonder why that is if it isn't a direct upgrade.
Normal ,,cow mangler bad,, fan VS ,,laser pew rockets,, enjoyer...
Definitely its most relevant upside is that it lets you hold some very unconventional areas for a long time as Soldier, especially if combined with conch for healing. It's what I pull it out the most for, if there's a flank route to defend that has only meager ammo and health drops, or are hard to access while defending safely, these traits can come in handy. But otherwise, the sentry damage downside is just too much, like you said. Defense is definitely its strongest place, overall
10:55 It takes 6 rockets from the Direct Hit to actually destroy a wrangled sentry which keep in mind any of your progress can be completely undone In just a few wrench swings, if you think it's more effective to brute force your way into destroying something tankier than an overhealed Heavy rather than actually erasing the main source of what gave the Sentry more health to begin with your just dead wrong.
The fact that a mangler soldier completely gets shut down by mini sentries is what totally kills it for me as a weapon. Mini spam is just too common on pubs and soldier is the (second) best equipped class to deal with them. Taking that ability away is insane.
For real, even the liberty launcher can kill minis in two hits, lots of people acting as if engie was a rare class to encounter in any gamemode
dude that's his BEST one. what are you talking about.
As a Cow Mangler user, I’d like to respectfully disagree. Yes the damage on buildings are terrible, but why are you soloing a turtle engineer anyway? Even with the direct hit trying to destroy a noob engineer’s nest is already hard, much less a wrangler engineer. And if you need random crits to win battle, that’s skill issues. The fact that crit, which triple your damage can happen randomly is both unfair and stupid. I agree that most classes should be able to freely roam the map and play alone, but it’s called TEAM Fortress 2 for a reason, team would is still key to winning. And with that, I rest my case.
Bro is trying to win the contrarian Olympics
The infinite ammo upside, sure, is extremely map dependent, but it has it's moments unless you play only on maps with ammo abundance such as what you described
The charge shot's damage does suck for the downsides, but you give the disabling buildings upside too little credit, as
1. Disabling buildings allows other classes to not only destroy it more easily, but also not worry about taking damage and dying to the sentry in the process, the downside really only comes into play when you're the only one who's supposed to be equipped to deal with sentries, (which in casual only happens if a lot of your team is dead, but if that's the case you're not taking that sentry out with a direct hit). Also, your argument of "why disable sentry when can blow it up" relies entirely on an engineer not being present to heal the gun, which only happens if the engineer is dead (overextended/instakilled) at which point the sentry is going down soon regardless
I believe the Liberty Launcher (and the rocket jumper i guess) is still a worse weapon than the Cow Mangler
cow mangler really works on pl_upward last for that one sentry balcony spot that everyone uses
@@peanutsveryepicchannel8699 Honestly for that spot I pull out Dragon's Fury Pyro, that gun goes down fast in 3 fireballs unless it's being wrangled and chances are the engineer is close enough to it to take some decent damage, and especially under uber you can literally pump all 40 shots into that thing... it's gonna go down eventually with the DF
Try it out sometime if you want another good way to take care of that spot
You're supposed to pair it with the Buff Banner, very easily fill the rage meter safely by spamming charged shots (the afterburn damage helps a ton)
Once you use the banner you'll do about the same damage as a charged shot, except you'll have 4 rockets, no afterburn of course, but those minicrit rockets won't have any damage falloff!
Did you realize that all the downside you said of the cow mangler are present in the rocket jumper right ¡?
-Not able to deal with Sentry guns ( i don't know how is this even a problem on pubs, even if you are the only soldier there will be a demoman or a spy to deal with it )
-No critis
But also it has more downside:
-Its redundant, you can equip the Gunboats and the liberty launcher or air strike and it will be almost the same but with the benefit that you can actually do damage.
-It need another weapon to be reliable, without the market gardener is complete useless, at least the cow mangler doesn't depend on a secondary o melee weapon to be useful.
i really can't understand how someone will consider the Cow Mangler the worst rocket launcher when the rocket jumper exists.
i think the rocket jumper wasn't really counted - you're technically right but like it's not really a fair comparison. maybe it could be the cow mangler is the worst combat primary? d
@@exigency2231 then the liberty launcher is worse
No contest
The video: *shows the Cow Mangler as the worst Rocket Launcher*
Me: *who is watching the video while having the Cow Mangler and uses it for incoming Spies*
I like Mangler a lot, especially since all of my friends play turbine and the infinite ammo is funny. One thing that differentiates the mangler from stock is that its firing position is in between stock's and the original's. It makes jumping slightly different and is somewhat relevant to those who know about it
I agree that the Cow Mangler needs a rework of we want it to be distinct from stock and not cause problems. This is going to sound a bit out there, but it might work if it was playtested and fine tuned.
What if we swapped a stat with the Pomson. Both weapons need a change, and I think this could set them both apart.
The Cow Mangler would take the Pomson's stat of the projectiles not able to be reflected or destroyed.
The Pomson would gain the charge shot feature from the Cow Mangler.
This would give the Cow Mangler a unique advantage against Pyros (and I guess the short circuit) in that it is not affected by them, at the cost of still having crits become minicrits and the building damage penalty.
The Pomson would get a charge shot that enables engineers to have something to help against other buildings. The Pomson charge shot would need fine tuning, but I think it could work.
i think that a non-reflectabel shot on a soldier primaryh wuld be way too good, and there would be even less need for soldiers running shotgun, but i totally agree with you on the pomson getting the charge shot. engineers cant help big coordinated sentry pushes anyway, as they're slow, so they can do that to help.
@@exigency2231 Make it reflectable, but make it not destroyed by the short circuit.
Having no random cirts is actually a downside when tf2 is played the ways developers intended.... with RNG dammit.
For me the cow mangler is a purely defensive weapon, I only use it on red team on payload and attack/defence maps. The entire point of the charge shot is locking down chokepoints. I recommend anyone to try it on cp_steel, defending the E point from scouts rushing it at the start of the game, or defending it at the final stage. Not only can it nearly one shot them, it often sends them flying down the pit aswell because of the insane knockback or have the afterburn kill them. Very easy to lock down any chokepoint. You just have to play much more defensively than you would regularly on soldier.
works offensively on pl_upward final, especially when there is a sentry nest on that one balcony spot that everybody knows but is always surprised by
Where not a single player is playing engineer: quite often
Always a joy to hear bastion music in video essays
>says random crits are a really big upside
>says that the charge shit feels like its luck to get kills, says it in a way that makes it sound like its a bad thing
>???
This video has to be satire like there’s no fucking way you could have a take this bad
Ngl I think the cow mangler is pretty good. Ammoless shots is pretty useful when fighting players and the charge shot disabling sentries can actually be pretty clutch if you can stand far away
This is a pretty cold take, calling it the worst. You’re gonna be 20 times more productive with the cow mangler than with the liberty launcher, since it’s not like gently breathing on your enemies.
And the difference between poorly designed and poorly executed is pretty irrelevant here, since developer intent isn’t gonna be getting you kills.
me with 52 kills on my strange rocket launcher and 592 on my strange cow mangler
I think that it could find a purpose in Pyro fighting, if the projectile couldn't be reflected, like the Bison and Pomson projectiles. Being able to shut down that M2 happy Pyro would be worth all the downsides.
I think neglecting air blast could be quite op
That sounds too op and honestly not fun to play against, throwing one of pyro's most important abilities away, which can save his entire team, because the soldier pressed m2 from far away sounds too strong and unnecessary.
You simple shouldn't shoot rockets at a pyro that you know can airblast unless they are distracted or you are the distraction, and they shouldn't gave their skill negated for no reason
Wait... if the M2 happy pyro is more than a slight annoyance due to reflecting all your projectiles, doesn't that mean you are the one spamming since he is only reflecting what YOU shoot?
Also Anti Pyro Crutch suggested, opinion invalid.
Let's be honest, the cow mangler is the Huntsman of Soldier. That's all.
Funny sniping rockets, not going further.
I'd still argue the liberty launcher is worse because it's just painful to fight anything other than light classes as it takes longer to deal the same amount of damage even with the additional shot loaded. Admittedly I might be biased because I don't really need any of its upsides and I dislike getting undeserved kills via random crits too, so I usually see the cow mangler as a fun side-grade (as long as there are no pesky engineers around for sure).
More importantly though, the quality of the video and voiceover was great, points well delivered, fun gameplay to watch in the background. Hard to believe this is only your third video?
Rocket jumper: im a joke to you?
Before of attack of troldiers and soundsmith fans: trading main source of huge splash damage for better (i guess?) rocket jumping ability - but without rockets you have only shotgun or market gardner. So you become worse scout or quasi spy (one class elimination) meme class
BTW: nice editing tho, we will watch your career with great interest
Who let bro cook? Maybe the Cow Mangler is mid tier at worst, but calling the Liberty Launcher and Air Strike better is cap. Ammo is essential because it can allow you to be effective long term and not be something to worry about. It could be taken by your demo or scout instead. Crits are also not that essential, especially when you can guarentee the minicrit splash into a choke which with coordination will soften squishies up to get rid of them immediately. No one ever runs Krieg on pubs and if they are they arent gonna kritz a mangler soldier unless they are a 3 hour f2p. Also disabling a sentry and having your pyro or demo raid the nest is huge considering you can topple an engi nest WITHOUT a medic with über. Typically the sentry can body block the engi from rockets and he can heal it about as fast as you can damage it. This whole idea just needs to be reconsidered.
I dont understand this video, everybody knows Soldiers worst primary is the Liberty Launcher. Cow Mangler might be a direct upgrade from stock, depending on the situation and has a cool kill animation.
Also, for a crit factor for this video was this was just a cash grab.
Personally I view this as a support rocket launcher since the gun just works better if you follow around teammates and don’t rocket jump, you won’t get locked up by a sentry since enemy engineers cants just walk into into 5 people and hope to build a sentry, the charged shot let’s you turn the tide of big fights since you can hide behind others and knock anyone out of the fight after taking the time to choose them.
I agree with this entire video. the fact that it can't random crit alone makes it a direct downgrade, factor in that even when you are awarded crits it transforms them into 122 mini-crits and now it's below even the liberty launcher. engineer's sentries are like Legos, most soldiers can easily deal with a nest and an engineer's other buildings and the fact that you do a pitiful 18 damage and are given this gimmick charge shot that disables it for 4 seconds is so niche and nearly not as good as it sounds on paper. why disable a sentry when you can corner peak and destroy it entirely. infinite ammo really isn't that good of an upside since ammo packs and dispensers exists, even dead players drop a medium ammo pack making this "upside" just decent. one more thing about the charged shot, I guess you could technically one shot a light class here and then or just have it fired into a group of people but it uses your entire clip and not only that but it also slows you to a near crawl when charging which also takes about 3 seconds to fire off. in my opinion the cow mangler 5000 is truly the worst rocket launcher solider has, all it's upsides either counteract the way you have to play or it's downsides are always present.
TLDR: cow mangler 5000 is just stock that can't random crit, has infinite ammo, and can only do 122 when you get crits making it a worse stock rocket launcher.
"The fact that it can't random crit alone makes it a direct downgrade"
If your relying on random crockets to mow down crowds of people then you aren't playing TF2, your just rolling a dice and hoping you always get a 6 at the right time. The reason no one takes the inability to random crit seriously is because random crits as concept are an absolute joke that should not be in FPS games.
You also overrate the Rocket Launcher's ability to destroy buildings, unless your using the Direct Hit, an engineer can still repair a sentry faster than a single soldier can destroy it, especially if they have the Rescue Ranger and Wrangler equipped in which the only reliable answer to those is a Spy.
The charge shot of the Cow Mangler could use a buff, but it shouldn't be downplayed the way it is today.
It's a rocket that deals the same damage as the Direct Hit with no falloff and sets everyone within the radius on fire along with disabling buildings, that's extremely powerful for crowd control, killing off oblivious Snipers, and dealing with wrangled sentries, and thanks to CM5000's infinite ammo, you can spam it as much as you want as long as your not in a vulnerable position.
liberty launcher is still worse but i get ya
0:34 excuse me?? The overdose is WAY better than the crossbow
That is a hill i will die on (and before you say shit i held this opinion for years before zestys video)
@@smugplush its better in the majority of situations
spongebob tf2 taught me that bad weapon academy is bad
The cow mangler disables non-sentry buildings
It disables sentries too
th-cam.com/video/T0beshZh1mo/w-d-xo.html
Maybe play TF2 first before spewing nonsense? Also it's not suprising that the youtuber supports false information.
*FRAGS IN BACKGROUND FOR 20 MINUTES*
One other point about the ammo:
If you're consistently rocket jumping around as Soldier, then you're going to be taking self-damage and going to have to grab a health pack. What's right next to almost every health pack? Ammo packs! You're going to have to go to where health and ammo are barely less than if you're running any other rocket launcher. So the upside of "no ammo" on the Cow Mangler is even more of an upside that means absolutely nothing.
counter-counter argument:I have a medic gf
Unless you’re holding a point with a medic or you don’t constantly rocket jump
you could also make that argument for the liberty launcher and how reduced damage rocket jumping doesn't really do anything for you as you can just heal off of kits. And in the event you're in combat, where you don't have time for ammo management, it really comes in handy to not have to worry about it and focus on aiming and reloading.
Also your team will lose without a medic and casual medics will usually heal soldiers so health is never really a problem with rocket jumping to where your team is.
If you're playing soldier as a solo class without accounting for your team, you're playing the wrong game
@@objectionablycurious fe
I tend to spam chokes on Uncletopia with charge shots
this did not stop me from buying a strange professional killstreak cow mangler
I can't hear any of the arguments past the sound of "In Case of Trouble" in the background.
The cow mangler is really good on class wars soldier vs heavy.
While I do disagree that it is a bad weapon (mostly just because I like to use it), this is a well presented argument. I would suggest definitely the improved charged shot but it takes 2 maybe 3 (dependant on testing) shots to fire it. Also a possible 5th shot in the clip if 3 shots are needed for the charge.
To be honest if it received balance update I can see the damage sentry can be tore down
"How often you play games where there is no engineer?"
Maybe 4 out 5, in my team, the enemy team always have one ._.
The Cow Mangler is great and I will not change my mind. It really is better stock
Not straight upgrade, but sidegrade
@@mariustan9275 Better. Stock.
No ammo pool is both great and redundant. On one hand, you can go do your own things and don’t have to worry about ammo conservation, on the other, dispensers and ammo packs are not that hard to come by.
The super shot is actually pretty good if you use it against a sentry. It negates the issue of less damage against buildings in a way. It’s effectively a long range sapper. But, it’s not that good against people seeing that it slows you down and fires a slow projectile.
In all, I love the cow mangler but I get it’s kinda weird
That one bit on thundermountain, u could of charge shot that sentry and load a shot to jump away. Seems you lack quite bit of experience. You locked yourself in that spot
I use Bad Weapons only in MVM like Liberty launcher, but in Casual i use The Original. I also use Cow mangler but its decent for me
plus, demoman or spy is usually run specifically to destroy buildings
plus plus, a demo is better to pop a kritz on
plus plus plus, the rocket launcher is known for rocket jumping, not random crits, casual itself is known for random crits, and each class (excluding spy and sniper)
plus plus plus plus, disabling a sentry makes it easier to destroy a sentry with stickies, allow a flanking scout to pass and kill the engineer to then destroy the sentry
plus plus plus plus plus, it does disable all buildings
plus plus plus plus plus plus, it is more annoying for an engineer, especially one who's running a mini, to have a disabled building
plus plus plus plus plus plus plus, you are bad at using the cow mangler and don't actually know when and where to use the charge shot
for example, pre-emptively charging around a corner for an enemy that's going to pass will almost certainly kill them (leaving demos and pyros on 2 health with full afterburn)
I too think that Fish on a Stick is some god.
The cow mangler is good when you defend the last point in any point game modes like Payload when you reset the reload and charge the "big attack "I'm new to the game idk what it is but I dominated some people
It cannot be reflected
Can stun sentry's ,can charge "the BIG ATTACK"
I like using the Cow Mangler with a banner, as more of a team player. You can charge up the banner by lobbing those charged shots and collecting afterburn damage, and then blow the horn and disable the sentry and make a pretty significant push. Also, you don't ever use any ammo, which is funny.
WHO LET HIM COOK
The Cow Mangler? more like :
Tick-tock
Heavy like a Brinks truck...
✝😧
Honestly I just use the cow manglers charged shot to screw with snipers on 2fort and upward
Yeah same. The charged shot is great for harassing Snipers and taking potshots at large crowds. Though with or without proper team coordination, the weapon is undoubtedly a downgrade from stock.
The dalokos bar is the best lunchbox item. That extra 50hp makes a difference. And the faster recharge rate helps. I don't use anything else.
if that works for you ok i guess that's ~16% more hp which is a lot
Ludwig you should look at the newer dalokos bar exploit with thebgru, makes the food basically a free pockey medic, you can find the exploit on big joey channel
10:10 Th Charge shot shuts down ALL buildings it hits, that dispenser wont be healing anyone lol
also, its useful againt stacked sentries. Any idea how powerful that knockback is with constant healing?
Rocket jumper literally gives you utility thst you alr have using a secondary and still having a damage source outside of melee
I know, I was being tongue in cheek when I said that the rocket jumper was "bad". I guess that didn't come across too well.
Seems like quite a bit of effort just to be wrong. Plus you didn't mention the only real downside, which is that the cow mangler has a slightly slower reload. Everything else isn't really a downside bc it makes the weapon a side grade that fulfills a certain role.
The cow mangler is great for consistent spam in any location. The infinite ammo means you dont have to retreat/overextend for a pack, or hug a dispenser. The charge shot allows you to get meaningful damage off down long corridors and extend the time it takes for medics to heal the damage (bc of afterburn). If minis are a problem, charge shot into shotgun takes care of it. Otherwise, the conch allows for the best staying power bc infinite hp and ammo.
Disabling sentries is arguably stronger than merely damaging them, as to safely take out a sentry nest you need time, good distance, and ideally a way to get the engie off the building. Diabling it is guaranteed 4 seconds for your team to do stuff, coordinated or not.
Cowmangker is my goto for wrangler sentries
Your opinion is wrong.
The Cow Mangler effectively gives you a mini Sniper rifle. You can take out that annoying Sniper on the other team. You can take out the engi who is constantly healing and tanking his sentry gun with the wrangler, and disable his sentry. You can do massive amounts of damage to enemies before a fight. These are pretty significant.
No crits is not that big a deal on casual servers. Nobody is gonna kritzkrieg you, and you're not gonna get a massive random crit on the whole enemy team (like happens once in 100 games). With the Cow Mangler you can get consistent mini crit + afterburn damage if you happen to ever see half the enemy team on the point.
No ammo required can be useful as well, some maps have otherwise advantageous positions that have no health or ammo packs. Pair the Cow Mangler and the Concheror and you can be self reliant in these areas. One spot I can think of is the roof of point B in Gravelpit. Many such cases.
It's pretty situationally and generally good. There can be other players to deal with sentries if it really matters.
"The only scenario I can imagine this being useful in is if you coordinated with your team" Yup, that's it right there. If you're not a team player, it's not the launcher for you.
I mean... the liberty launcher exists you know...
Have to disagree. The suggested changes are particularly egregious; You want to turn the cow mangler into.... a 130+ damage largest-splash-radius-in-the-game POMPSON? Are you insane? The most buff the Cow Mangler needs is a 10% buff to building damage at most; any more than that, and the cow mangler becomes even more of a jack of all trades than it already is (it's literally just the rocket launcher)
The best use for the Sentry disable stat is when they have a massive nest with multiple Wrangler engies where one Uber isn't quite enough and you have a second soldier. But you know what's usually better than the Cow Mangler in that situation? The sapper. Even the red tape recorder as the sentry needs just a bit longer to be active again. Even in the single useful scenario I can think of - I see so many more ways to be more effective. Especially when the engies use the short circuit on top of having a few wrangled sentries. It's laughable.
The charge shot has its place as a wrangler counter
Does it not already disable all bulidings?
>disabling uber across the map
Yeah no
If you ignore the defining feature of the weapon (the right click charge shot), it can seem pretty redundant, but the charge shot is huge for pressuring choke points and charging buff.
You gotta play for angles that let you get charge shots off in high-traffic chokepoints or sniper spots. Even if you do not get a kill you can pressure people out of the fight before it even starts.
If you charge a backup and communicate to your team that you are mangling the sentry (assuming you wait for them) you can easily destroy a nest and all the people standing around it.
I would argue that the Cow Mangler 5000 is one of the more interesting rocket launchers in the game because of the unique charge shot, behind only maybe the beggars and air strike.
Alternate opinion:
Cow mangler soldiers are based because they care about their engineers
13:51 It does disable all buildings though, not just sentries... And it always has...
It's a direct upgrade your just to good to use it.
Bro is just a nay sayer 😭
This was an interesting video! I haven't seen anyone else dosuss the topic. Also; i know the Backscatter is outpaced by stock, but i love its audio design and physical design. And the mini-crits are cool too.