It looks like the Team Fortress 2 beta game is finally going to have a purpose beyond testing Natascha variants. Earlier today, an update was added to the beta version of TF2 that doubled the base health of all 9 classes (and sentry guns, too). Now the mighty Heavy roams Dustbowl with a robust 600 health, making backstabs and headshots all the more important to bring down the big Russian.
I played a little bit of the beta with the new health modifications, and I have to say, it doesn't dramatically affect the game as much as you'd think. It just takes a little bit longer to kill or be killed. In one instance, I rushed up to the side of an enemy Heavy as a Pyro, and it took me at least a full five seconds to bring him down at point-blank range with the flamethrower. If that guy wasn't a terrible player and didn't just stand there and let me kill him, he could have easily turned around and chased me off with his minigun.
I very much doubt that Valve would bring this into the true game, but it's an interesting experiment nonetheless.
