SERIOUSLY. It’s been about 5 days since this update, and I’m still pretty aggravated. Well, I just got all my weapons TODAY after getting all my Soldier milestones. But I’m not complaining, somewhat. Since I’m a bit more advanced with soldiers, I was going to get all those achievements. I got to milestone 3 in about 2 days. And all I got was the “Equalizer” apparently, the weekend that the update went live, the Steam servers were down. The larger problem with this was that the random drop system were giving people the new weapons. Meaning, that soldiers and demoman were running around with their Charge-n’-Targes and Direct Hits while some unlucky people were getting shot out of the air and/or decapitated. This left me at a loss of what to do, so I just went to go get some achievements the fun way. I’ll give a rundown of the Solder weapons that I’ve acquired (I’ll get through with the Demoman weapons as soon as I get them all.) THE DIRECT HIT: Ah, my sweet love. This weapon is perfect for airshots, due to the added speed. This is also really good for CQC (Close quarter combat), that is, if you’re still accustomed with the regular rocket launcher and try to aim for the enemy’s feet. With the Direct Hit, aiming for the feet is still a working strategy, but you will lose your rockets from that lack of splash damage. I suggest that people use this until they get a slightly better aim with this. The only small complaint is the mini-crits. “Mini-crits while the target is airborne.” is a very vague idea. What’s “airborne”? Apparently, airborne is anytime when the target is off the ground. This includes JUMPING. Now, in a situation like Scout Vs. Solder w/Direct Hit, the Scout would lose (just because one hit with a rocket is instant death.) But, for some classes, they would die instantly from mini-crits. Most classes avoid direct damage from a rocket is by jumping. With The Direct Hit, they would still jump, and the rocket would hit them dealing a mini-crit. BUFF BANNER Now this is a total team helper. It’s a useful for getting out of sticky situations or pushing further ahead of offense. A useful tactic is to uber the person with the banner so that they will be protected and also dealing those mini-crits. Only complaint is that I wish I knew the range of the banner’s effect like how when building a sentry, it displays the range as a blue or red circle. I would love to see this being used in comp. play. THE EQUALIZER Now this weapon, was thought of by the people at the Valve forums, which I would never think that something good would come out of. This weapon replaces the shovel, and I think it could be a permanent replacement. In replacement of dammage