What makes me at least a halfway-decent Demoman?

Because it's really, really hard to be a good one.

Seriously, most of the time, people just use those damn sticky pipe bombs and that's it. And those people are the ones who really give the Demoman a bad name, since a lot of them would be torn to shreds if they couldn't use that weapon. I've somehow gotten to the point where after nearly 9 hours of Demoman time in TF2, I've mastered the grenade launcher and can pretty much use it like any other weapon in the game, but it's still not easy or very precise. Those 9 hours have also given me plenty of time to look critically at the Demoman and try to figure out how Valve can make him better when they eventually decide to update the black Scottish cyclops. That is, without breaking him and drawing the complaints of a bunch of gamers who can't deal with getting blown to bits by a hidden nest of stickies. Sissies.

So I sat down and came up with a few ideas before refining them down to three things that Valve should include in a future Demoman update:

1.) A short-range weapon. Preferrably, something shotgun-esqe. Make it the secondary weapon in place of sticky bombs to help balance out the Demoman. As it stands right now, a Demoman has no defense against a Pyro, Scout or Spy. His grenade launcher doesn't have the close-range capabilities to take them out, his sticky bombs sometimes work and sometimes don't work quick enough, and the liquor bottle doesn't stand a chance against a knife stab or the red-hot tip of a flamethrower. A short-range weapon would give the Demoman a little bit more on the personal defense side because, let's face it - I'm tired of getting taunted by Scouts after they jump over my short-range grenades and crit bonk me.

2.) An improved grenade launcher, perhaps one with a lowered crit rate, but with better defensive stats. The Demoman is supposed to be a defensive-minded member of the team, but really, I end up playing Demoman on two types of maps most of all: payload maps for the defense, and on capture point and CTF maps, but more for the offensive aspects of the Demoman against Engies and Heavies defending points. The grenade launcher as is remains practically useless for defense, forcing most defensive Demomen to resort to spamming the sticky grenade on points to try and stop enemy advances. And that only works if you're somewhere they can't maul you to death at via Heavy machine gun, Pyro flamethrower or a nice cloaked Spy backstab. Maybe something like Natascha, where getting hit with one of these new grenades knocks you back, might be more helpful to defensive-minded Demomen than a sticky spamfest.

3.) The liquor bottle melee weapon is removed entirely for a third, yet related explosive device - the Molotov cocktail. Only three of these can be held at any time and they do not regenerate when you pick up ammo, to keep people from spamming a capture point or spawn point with these. No crits, but they deal fire damage in a huge radius. This would make a good exchange for the sticky bombs, which are already used primarily for things like protecting capture points or catching people off-guard. And since the Pyro has had his update, he can't very well use them. Plus, they can be used to create chaos, and I love creating chaos.

But hey, that's just me. Any ideas out there from the Dtoid community?