a commonly known broken upgrade that new players sometimes find out about the hard way

as the damage bonus attribute uses multipliers rather than additions, the rocket jumper will never deal damage with any amount of upgrades since multiplying by 0 always gives 0

the 2nd and 3rd tick of the degreaser's afterburn damage upgrades don't work due to the game rounding the damage back down to 2

the first tick doubles the afterburn damage from 1 to 2, which is a higher percentage increase than on other flamers, although still weak

the 4th tick increases the damage to 3, but it costs 1000 credits in total to get - only a handful of missions will allow you to buy it after maxing out pyro's potential

since the jungle inferno update that changed how afterburn duration works in general, afterburn timer upgrades no longer work at all on any of the flamers and flare guns, but its weak cost/performance ensured that no good pyro previously bought it anyway

the initial hit from the loose cannon will always deal up to 50 damage regardless of upgrades, though the explosion and double donks correctly apply the extra damage

against tanks, the projectiles will explode on contact like any other grenade launcher and deals between 100 and 180 damage

the 4th tick of charge recharge on the splendid screen is capped at 400% rather than 450%, so you only get half the value for the cost

the first three ticks do stack properly with the innate 50% increase

on the tomislav, the 1st tick of firing speed doesn't work due to gametick rounding, but the other three do work

on all other miniguns, it's the 2nd tick that doesn't work, and the other three do work as well

you can see this on the chart below by sigsegv

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=524625631

the 1st tick works normally
the 2nd and 3rd tick don't increase the duration, and the increased knockback only takes effect on airborne enemies, since rage knockback is limited to the bot's walking speed when grounded

the firing speed upgrades for the short circuit only affect the primary fire and not the alt fire, though it is unwise to increase its firing speed anyway as it will drain your metal quickly for little benefit

another commonly known broken upgrade is the sentry firing speed's third tick, but I can't blame new players if they buy it anyway; some of this ♥♥♥♥ really is counterintuitive, so I'll list it here in full details;

• 1st tick works normally on both regular and mini sentries, but tick rounding artifacts can still occur (i.e 4 rounds shooting faster, then shooting at base speed, repeat)
  
• 2nd tick only works with the wrangler or crit canteens, and also guarantees that the aforementioned tick rounding effect doesn't happen
  
• 3rd tick doesn't work at all, not even on level 1 or mini sentries

the vaccinator's unorthodox uber design doesn't allow it to last more than 2.5 seconds per charge no matter how many uber duration upgrades you buy still lasts longer than you when you do her in bed

seems like one of valve's oversights when creating the upgrade, or simply didn't care about fixing it

fixed as of 2022/07/07

this one is a special case - the charge rate upgrades on the bazaar bargain progressively lose their value as you get more heads, since the charge rate is capped at +100%

• 4th tick stops working at 3 heads
  
• 3rd tick stops working at 4 heads
  
• 2nd tick stops working at 5 heads
  
• 1st tick stops working at 6+ heads

it's not a bad idea to buy it anyway if you can't hold a killstreak late game, but it's something to consider



with the sydney sleeper, the 4th tick doesn't work since it's also capped at +100%

no I didn't forget about rocket specialist past the first tick; the radius and projectile speed does increase properly on every upgrade as intended. you can see what it looks like in the video below, also made by sigsegv

dec 17 2024: added changelog section, added video link, fixed missing short circuit image (hopefully for good this time), minor rewordings