Projectile Persuasion

Archer and Mage seem to have taken over casual CTF. A vast majority of new players become glued to Archer once they realize they can get kills by clicking once (over and over compared to Assassin), and good Mages can give any competitive player a tough time depending on the scenario.

How do we fix this?

As @Zarpin mentioned a while back, making Archer a premium class is a relatively new approach to taming the stacks that plague casual when it happens to be alive these days. The class itself is "balanced" enough in comp that the community can't really justify a rework, but one key detail has been sitting in plain view without mention: Archer is the only free class with a strict limit of 1 in comp. You don't have to be insane at it to drop 50 kills a map if you're uncontested, and it's a role that people take into consideration very early in drafts. If this class has so much innate value, why doesn't it have a price tag? Archer sits in the same realm as Pyro and Assassin on defense, and arguably is the top value spot depending on the roster - those classes have been premium from day 1, so why is Archer an exception? The first argument many will make is that some form of bow class should be available to new players... but that level? There's a line to be drawn between distribution and true balance, and Archer is the single major outlier in the free class pool.

Mage has always been a special case. It's the only class that refuses to adopt meaningful melee utility, but the ranged utility is amplified to the point where it actually goes beyond compensation. Between the true damage and massive crowd control potential, a Mage can single handedly wall & kill several people at once on some maps, all while having a free medic tap in their pocket if something finally reaches them. Even an experienced Ninja has to play strategically to take out a comp level Mage, which would be fine if its output potential wasn't so massive; Ninja vs Heavy has a clear winner, but that Heavy can't dream to contest incoming players like a Mage can. The solution? Cut Mage in half. No freeze or lightning. Damage and flame are already effective enough due to their faster fire rates, but the other two tend to be incredibly broken if used properly. With those out of the way, the Mage doesn't just have a pause button for something they don't want to shoot at immediately, and they can't just fling you away and heal if they get mobbed. Good Mages already aim well enough to be viable without freeze or lightning - the real issue with them is that one good lightning or one good freeze can allow defense to group and crush whatever you were trying to pull off. Having 2 clutch factors in 1 player alongside the already strong core defense classes just makes a full defense with a Mage brutal to capture against.

These changes would only affect CTF in the areas it needs it most. Comp would be completely unaffected by this as far as meta goes, and Mage is usually only pulled out because of its current reputation. Mage is the lesser of the two issues presented here, so I just went for something out of the box to spark other ideas on that front. The Archer change should be seriously considered though, especially now that it isn't buried in Discord spam & can be discussed methodically.