Spy needs a buff

As it stands, the spy is incredibly difficult to play. I'm not saying this because I expect to be able to run around and backstab every person I happen to find, but because it's the opposite. Even after having played the spy enough to know what to do and what not to do, I still find being a spy a bit ridiculous.

One example: Sapping sentries. Why is it that almost every time I try to sap something, it turns into a comedy performance? Me, hopping around wildly trying to dodge an engineers buckshot or constantly placing sappers on the sentry, the engineer shooting at this acrobat spy who won't keep still while still trying to keep his sentry up and running. There are times, of course, when I can stab the engineer and sap the sentry and leave a wonderful mess for the enemy team to clean up without suffering a scratch, but those are few and far between. These situations often end up with the spy having a face full of buckshot.

So, I've come up with a few things that could make the spy a bit more enjoyable without horribly unbalancing things.

• A longer cloak time

This would allow the spy to perform reconnaissance for his team to a further extent. As it stands, you usually use the cloak to pass through the defense or escape from attackers, and while this is it's main use it can be used for so much more. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to perform recon when you have ten seconds to do so. On my clan's server, we doubled the cloak time and now using the spy is a lot more fun and it doesn't seem to unbalance things at all! :>

• Being able to pass through enemies while disguised

The reason for this is simple. What good is a disguise when you can be discovered by being bumped into? Many people just say "In that case, avoid the enemy!". Well, the downside to that is that people will just shoot at someone who is trying not to bump into people. This would only apply to spies who are disguised, not ones that are cloaked. If you are cloaked, you will still bump into people - disguised or not!

• Having your health while disguised reflect your actual health

Ever since I discovered that a disguised spies health is always around 3/4 full, I've been killing a lot more disguised spies. Having it reflect their current health would add a lot more depth to the spy. Do you damage yourself to half health in order to have an enemy medic follow you away from his real teammates and risk dying a lot faster then you normally would? Or do you keep all of your health, allowing you to operate behind enemy lines longer?

An alternative method would be to allow the spy to choose how much health to display. This way he could fake being damaged by his teammates, further convincing the enemy that he's on their side.

• Backstabbing an enemy allows you to take on their identity

But there's a catch! You would need to "charge" your backstab for five seconds, similar to the demomans sticky grenade charge before backstabbing would allow you to do so. This would eliminate the risk of bumping into the person whose name you took, but then there would be the risk of the enemy catching on. After all, isn't it a bit weird to see your teammate that just died run past you?

Also, while I'm making this thread, I might as well throw this out there: Would it be possible to make the disguise kit display all of the possible disguises in the actual kit instead of having a menu pop up? It's incredibly distracting and even slows my system down for some reason. The same could be done for the engineer's build and destroy pads. :>