first impressions -
New Pistol: +15% comes out at a non-round number? or my maths is really bad. it's in the 145hp ballpark anyway. gonna have to wait til the Pyro frenzy dies down before we see how it actually fares, because nobody's going to be using it with half of the other team on Pyro. after that, i can see this becoming a must-get unlock simply for the sakes of winning scout duels, and we've got a few too many of those already.
New Scattergun: ...what does 40 percent 'more accurate' mean? tighter spread? does that effectively counterbalance the damage reduction? again, not sure on the numbers for this one. 2x speed on a scout sounds completely ridiculous though, but i guess it's 2x of the already lowered run speed. if all it boils down to Vanilla Scattergun = jump to dodge stuff vs New Scattergun = run really fast to dodge stuff, and the damage numbers more or less work out, then i can see this being really cool.
New SMG: to be used 24/7 by Call of Duty types from now on forever and ever amen
at least it'll get them off of heavy? also, it's gonna be a helluva lot worse if 'On Kill' applies to a kill with any sniper weapon and not just the SMG. [edit: maybe not, depending on range on stuff, and the fact that a lack of jarate means he won't have his insta-kill knife. could actually raise hell when paired with a huntsman. hmm.]
New Rifle: cool! very similar to the Bazaar Bargain, but with less 'risk' (easier to get the bonus built up) for less reward, and it encourages headshots over body picks. me likey.
New Rocket Launcher: the fact that you can use it as a vanilla rocket launcher with no downsides (really, who cares about not being able to refill from a dispenser?) is a bad start, means we've pretty much got another straight upgrade. and then we have the 'one'-shot-kill thing. i'll have to wait and see what the projectile deviation thing is, but i'm not holding my breathe (at least it probably means that far-off sentry's won't be getting molested by it). upsides are the fact that it's as likely to kill the soldier as it is his opponent at point-blank range (if you can call removing skill from a class an upside) and that reflecting pyros are gonna have a ball with it. again, charge time, chance of overload, alignment of in-planets blabla whatever, i think that soldier just completely changed (broke?) the peak-round-the-corner game that is a huge part of TF2 in general.
New Flaregun: ITS A PIPE LAUNCHER THAT SETS THINGS ON FIRE WHAAAAAAAAAA-
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so basically, appears to be a good bit better than some of the crap we've seen recently - not that that's saying very much - but i still gots my reservations, particularly about the soldier's new push-to-win button. is it a cop-out if i say "wait and see" once again?
i'm always doom and gloom about new unlocks, but in the end, they turn out... umm... well, not alright, but... they turn out, anyway. but i prefer to see them restyling vanilla weapons over making new lasers and bullshit, so this is a step in the right direction design-wise, and we only see 'No Random Crits' once and it's not for the sakes of justifying a weapon as balanced, and that's good too. they coulda done alot worse!
edit 2: another design point - the models are
sexy as hell. more of this, less of Cow Manglers, and i'll be very very happy