BWR - Changelog 11/01/26

B.A.S.E. Jumper
- Removed increased air control
An oversight in the weapon's nerfing shows this added buff is not necessarily needed.

The Sandman
+ Added: Gain a 3 second speed boost on killing your BONKED! target
- Removed speed boost on applying the BONKED! effect
Last feedback on the weapon showed it's buffs allied on-hit to be rather strong for the user. Instead, the speed boost is now granted on-kill as a reward to incentivize the scout to take advantage of the damage bonus granted.

Fan O'War
- Removed speed boost gained on kill against marked target
The added reward for the rather crippling mark seemed a bit excessive, thus was removed.

Buff Banner
+ Added: Wearer gains +15 health on each kill
- Removed max primary ammo bonus
Last feedback on the weapon showed the upside to feel too situational, only really effective with a spam-heavy playstyle. In exchange for that, an upside was added to fit the theme of the added survivability granted by other banners, but one that fits the more offensive use of the banner.

The Mantreads
  DIVE is performed with JUMP rather than SPECIAL ATTACK
- Removed reloading of your primary on-kill
The reload benefit was just another in the long line of upsides added to incentivize it's use, and one that didn't feel terribly fitting for some playstyles.

Disciplinary Action
+ Removed increased blast damage taken from rocket jumps
- Added: Wearer is marked for death while rocket jumping and just after landing
Rather than a direct nerf to the user's rocket jump which has been difficult to balance around, this new downside was added to make sure the user is more conservative when they can jump.

Thermal Thruster
+ Added: +35% jump height on wearer
- Removed mini-boost from pressing jump in mid-air
The mini-boost had been tweaked with quite a bit and has been extremely difficult to balance around. As a more drastic change, it's been retired for now to instead experiment with a boost to the user's jump height to instead passively improve their mobility to get around or throw-off enemies in a less drastic way.

Sharpened Volcano Fragment
+ Volcano marked targets take +30% fire damage
+ Removed all afterburn being extinguished on death
- Added: This weapon deploys 20% slower
- Volcano marked targets no longer return health to user
- Volcano marked targets no longer maxes out target temperature
The weapon's bonus was refocused on comboing with your other weapons for boosted fire damage with a much less severe downside, as the prior version seemed to be more compromising to use than helpful unless you went out of your way to exploit the upsides.

Neon Annihilator
+ Increased damage with full CHARGE to +150% (was +100%)
+ Decreased CHARGE drain once active to 7%/second (was 10%/second)
+ Added 40% longer melee range
+ Removed slower move speed penalty
- Removed movement and switch speed bonus while CHARGE is active
- Charge only builds with 150 melee damage (was 400 other weapon damage or 2 melee hits)
The melee's bonuses seemed very confusing to deal with and were difficult to balance around. Instead it's been stripped down and focused to purely be focused on the last-resort melee damage, and synergizing with it's comboing with the gas passer. It's been additioanlly given a boosted melee range to help in this endeavor.

Ullapool Caber
+ Removed blast damage penalty when below 50% HP
- Removed blast damage bonus when above 50% HP
The weapon's inconsistent damage wasn't the best decision to really make it less obnoxious, and has the potential to be more detrimental to a demoman that uses it before they've already taken too much damage in last resort.

Persian Persuader
- Removed bonus to ammo gained from ammo packs
The additional upside in ammo gained wasn't that necessary, in that it somewhat remove it's intended downside to restrict use without sticking to a melee-focused playstyle.

Tribalman's Shiv
+ Decreased damage penalty to -35% (was -50%)
- Reverted bleed duration on-hit to 6 secs (was 8 secs)
- Removed damage piercing resistances and buffs
The increased time spent waiting for bleed to kill the enemy wasn't the necessarily the best choice for an enticing self-defense option. Instead, it's less damage penalty was restored to make it more immediately threatening in the interaction.