I understand they don't want the thing to become du rigeur but Jesus Christ, you basically are resigning yourself to exactly 1 backstab/sap with the thing. Make it count.
I think you guys just don't know how to use it right. I've had 36-6 rounds with it on maps like pipeline where I have gotten close to 10 backstabs in a single life. If anything I'd say it was the normal watch that forced me to resign myself to one backstab unless there was an ammo crate and medkit near by, so I don't really follow you, Brent.
Also, why are people saying it has a long assed recharge time? It actually charges 180% faster than the normal watch does. So you know... what?
The thing about the dead ringer is you can't use it as a way to get into position like you do with the other watches. The point of it is that you use it as an ESCAPE and in that role it really is quite flawless. I love the thing because the aspect of playing spy that always annoyed the shit out of me, was being caught before or even after I could do what I wanted to and just having to resign myself to death in most cases. The dead ringer almost completely eliminates this as its shimmerless cloak and 90% damage shield lets you walk away from any bad luck discovery. Hell, you can even fool pyros if you play it right and manage to get out of his flame range before you ring (or get close to some water).
The loud ring is annoying but when the watch is being used correctly, that is, close to a large battle and distracted enemies or far away from anyone, it almost always goes unnoticed or can't get you in trouble anyway because people have more immidiate threats to worry about.
The short cloak time is a fair trade I think because of the damage shield.
It does seem a BIT weak at the moment, but the fact that it caters to my play style so nicely makes me not care so much. Really the only buff I wish it would get is them letting you recharge it with ammo pickups. I think that's perfectly fair and would allow good players to do more damage in less time with it. Either that or give me full cloak time or take the loud ring away.
But yeah, just a break down for the uninformed:
-180% faster cloak charge AND discharge
-you cannot activate the Dead Ringer unless you have 100% cloak charge
-activating the dead ringer causes the next damage you receive (even fall damage) to drop a corpse and instantly cloak you
-you only receive 10% damage from whatever hit you
-your cloak is shimmerless meaning you don't shimmer with your team colour when shot or bumped into like with other watches' cloaks
-you still collide with the enemy and block them though.
-when you turn off the cloak or it runs out, a loud discharge ring is heard
-turning it off when you still have some cloak left reduces cloak charge to 0
-ammo does not charge cloak
-activating the dead ringer will extinguish you if you are on fire and the last fire tick you take will be what drops the corpse and cloaks you but you can still be reignited while cloaked, you won't shimmer in your team colour but you will be on fire and therefore "visible"
-When killing people who thought they killed you, it IS necessary to admit that you really though you were that corpse too. After all it was the spitting image of you, a dead ringer you might say.
-All dead ringer corpses are actually your genome soldier brothers. Did you know that you've killed 229 of them since the patch hit?