JENING’s Thoughts On The “Fixed” Ambassador Pistol

After playing the newly “fixed” Ambassador (i.e. after Valve had patched it so that it was no longer broken and overpowered), JENING has concluded that it may be too weak to be a viable alternative to the Revolver. Here are JENING’s thoughts:

Ambassador’s Headshot Mechanic
Many JENING friends have expressed confusion over the Ambassador’s headshot mechanic. JENING’s understanding is that an Ambassador headshot does not do any more damage than an Ambassador bodyshot. However, Ambassador headshots do not suffer from any damage reduction resulting from increased range (in contrast, a bodyshot at point blank will do significantly more damage than a bodyshot from the other side of the map). As a result, an Ambassador headshot is exactly equivalent to an Ambassador bodyshot at point blank. At a short distance, the two shots are still roughly comparable. Only at medium to long range does the Ambassador headshot impart any advantage over an Ambassador bodyshot.

Compared to the Revolver
The Ambassador does 15% less damage than the Revolver. This means that even an Ambassador headshot is weaker than a revolver bodyshot (without distance damage dissipation). Thus, the only application in which the Ambassador is a better weapon than the Revolver is when the spy is consistently headshotting a target from long range (since a shot from the revolver at ong range will generally suffer damage dissipation of greater than 15%). In practice, however, JENING believes that this advantage is marginal at best because:

• Headshots from range are extremely difficult since the gun has no scope, and since accuracy is severely reduced after the first shot.
• The shots are not powerful enough to kill quickly (a full health sniper still requires at least three headshots) and a target under fire will likely move or take cover. In contrast, the Revolver is still decently effective at range, and very lethal up close.
• The Ambassador plays against the Spy’s strengths and role as a close quarters combatant by encouraging the Spy to stay at range and snipe, a role the Sniper plays far better.

JENING’s Proposed Solution
JENING believes that to be a viable “sidegrade” weapon, the Ambassador should be altered in one (but not both) of the following two ways:

• Significantly increase damage dealt by a headshot, and increase the cooldown time: Not as powerful as a sniper headshot, but powerful enough where even at close range, a headshot will do more damage than a bodyshot. Then, like the Revolver up close, the Ambassador would have strong lethality in a narrow, limited circumstance (i.e. headshots). As a tradeoff, the cooldown time for the reduced accuracy should be lengthened. JENING believes that this change would still present players with a viable choice: the Revolver for those who want the reliability of consistent damage output, or the Ambassador for those who are willing to trade away bodyshot damage to gamble on getting headshots.
• Alternatively, keep the headshot mechanic in place, but eliminate the 15% reduced damage: By doing this, bodyshots will still be strictly weaker than their Revolver counterparts (due to the Ambassador’s reduced accuracy), but headshots (at any range) would now be equivalent to a point blank Revolver shot. To a lesser degree, players would still be confronted the same choice as in the previous suggestion: the consistency of the Revolver versus the Ambassador’s promise of higher reward for higher risk.

JENING invites your thoughts . . .

UPDATE: Apparently Valve does not want JENING’s posts to stay relevant for long! The Ambassador has been patched to provide for full crits on headshots. JENING looks forward to trying this out!