Team Fortress 2 Servers - Why you hate that class
Posted in Team Fortress 2 NewsJuly 20th, 2008
Team Fortress 2 - as the name subtly suggests, you can’t be a lone wolf. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best Engineer since Scotty first rubbed against a warp drive, if you’re being held off the last dustbowl cp with two teles already up it’s time to don surgical gloves. Most players on TF2 servers can handle a few classes, but there’s always one mooching at the bottom of your “time played” table - and every second of those few minutes was spent swearing. Here we look at your weaknesses and tell you how to improve.
1. Scout
Symptom: You keep exploding! Or burning. Or just falling over dead when an enemy gives you a stern look.
The Problem: You really want that kill! You die because you allow an enemy to see you for more than a second. The Scout was never designed to go toe-to-toe with anything but a capture point, and even then only when he’s lucky. If you land two good hits of any description on anything your job is already done - your mission is now to escape before somebody decides you’re worth the splash damage. And for the love of god, when you’re chasing that retreating engineer, try to remember that they can build things that begin with Ess-Gee.
2. Soldier
Symptom: You consider the Soldier boring - you and your skills are more important than that!
The Problem: You know what’s really boring? A Team Fortress 2 server with two scouts, three snipers and four spies failing to hold a single CP for a single second. It turns out that in a game based on blowing the opposing team to smithereens, a man with a rocket launcher is pretty useful. A soldier is NEVER a bad addition to a team, now learn to rocketjump and rain splash-damage death down on the enemy!
3. Pyro
Symptom: You’re stuck at a 1:1 kill ratio, at best
The Problem: Argh, you REALLY want that kill! It doesn’t matter how “on fire” they are - running straight at someone who has a rocket launcher is ALWAYS a bad idea. If you want to be a good pyro learn to love the assist. Love it, want it, value it more than the kill - once an enemy is ignited your work is completed. Yes, you know they’re running for a medkit or a doctor - and every step they take back to that pickup is one they’re not taking towards their objective. A good enclosed space barbecue does far more damage than even the most critically sniped headshot - you and you alone can turn an entire offensive wave into a screaming pack of (burning) little girls, running home and crying for their medic mommy.
4. Demoman
Symptom: Even scouts beat you up, and that’s frankly embarrassing
The Problem: The Demoman requires an unprecedented level of tactical planning for an FPS, requiring you to think three, perhaps even four seconds ahead. It’s best to think of having a “personal space” radius of four meters, and anybody closer than that is way the hell TOO close. One-hitting scouts into chunky soup may be one of the best sights in this or any other game, but it’s not something to count on - back off and back often, lest you give the enemy the second best sight: an array of sparkling crit stickies disappearing from the CP in the white light of a demoman who died before his time.
5. Heavy
Symptom: Twenty deaths, no kills.
The Problem: Basic math misunderstanding - three hundred does not equal infinity.
Also, scientists at the Fortress for Team studies recently proved that Heavy skulls actually magnetically attract sniper bullets. Suck them right out of the gun into their brains. Damnedest thing they ever saw. The Heavy isn’t the home of the keenest tactical mind on the team, but you still need some spatial awareness. Specifically, being aware of which spaces have medkits or snipers in them.
6. Engineer
Symptom: Tending a sentry gun is boring!
The Problem: The Engineer is actually a deeply exciting and rewarding class, as long as you focus on TEAM rather than your own score. It’s a critical indictment of human nature that this focus is so rare, but when it happens it can turn the whole tide of the battle. Helping other Engys raise level 3 sentries quickly rather than raising a patch of level 1s to be flattened by the first Soldier to look at them, constant spychecking, even a single good teleporter route can make all the difference.
Watching the filthy BLU tide breaking against the rocks of your defense (and professionally rebuilding within instants of the inevitable uber) is greatly entertaining - and the meaty thump of a wrench hitting a spy is the greatest sound in the Team Fortress audio files.
7. Sniper
Symptom: More deaths than kills.
The Problem: Valve has cunningly balanced the richly interlocking skillsets of all the classes, but one fact is unchangeable: if you’re a crappy shot you will be a crappy sniper. There’s an easy test - do you headshot the enemy sniper, or is it your brains splattered on the gravelpit? If the latter, hit that “,” key and choose a different class. You should also change if
- Your team has a sniper with a higher score. No, it doesn’t matter who was there first.
- There are more snipers than medics. Medics are ALWAYS better than snipers.
- You find yourself catching fire, thereby proving you don’t even have the remotest idea of how you should be using that class
8. Medic
Symptom: You die before deploying an ubercharge/kritzkrieg.
The Problem: If you are not getting at least one complete charge per spawn you are failing as a medic. This problem has been particularly bad since the update, with hordes of demented doctors running around waving bonesaws like they’ve been possessed by Jason Vorhees (with a corresponding drop in intelligence). Your job is to heal people, get the hell out of there when things get rough, and help smash sentries to rubble.
9. Spy
The Symptom: You don’t like playing spy because you’re bad at it
The problem: No problem! Keep it up, and god bless you for not being a spy!
If people who suck at spy would just stop wasting playerslots running around failing backstabs and catching themselves on fire the average TF2 IQ would increase tenfold. Every failed spy is a valuable bullet-absorbing soldier your team doesn’t have, extra points for their pyro, and at best - at best - all they’ll manage is to sap an unimportant dispenser for all of a second before they get spotted, desapped and shotgunificated. Even if Valve released a update with a “James Bond” class and a map called spy_espionage, there would STILL never be a good reason to have more than one spy per team.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Now if we could just get people to follow this advice….
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
Short, simple and to the point. Overall very true.
Although i would add something to the heavy analysis. Heavys are all about situational awareness and understanding to ebb and flow of the map. The key is to have the tactical foresight to know when and where you can jump in with the mini gun blazing. This is where you need to rely on your team mates to do the scouting for you, because a heavy who doesn’t have his mini gun spun up and ready to go is basically just a big slab of meat.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
I wholeheartedly agree, especially with #9. Of the few hours I’ve spent as a spy, I’ve regretted every wasted minute. I think spying well may be an art, or magic, and that proves I shouldn’t play the class.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Well spoken. I must admit that I am a noob in all classes. From a noob poínt of view, heavy and scout are the most rewarding I think. Scout when you wanna be fast moving and heavy when you want to get those kills.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Really, I hate people who switch classes because someone else is kicking ass with it, it specially pisses me off when its my class they’re switching to, there’s 4 of them doing this, and the class is a spy, leading to more fierce spy checks.
Hell, spy is my number one most played class, so I’m decent with it, but I swear to god that I check to make sure we have one ENG on the team before I play it.
I do suffer from the Pyro problems though…
July 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I read this article because you said you were going to suggest improvements for not being limited to a class or two. And yet, some of that was just “don’t play the class”. That’s not helpful towards expanding horizons and playing other classes. It’s good advice for helping the team, but contradictory when trying to learn to play other classes. Reconsider your premise.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Maybe you misunderstood where it says “Here we look at your weaknesses and tell you how to improve.”. That was the premise, and the article does a great job at pointing out weaknesses and stating the sometimes obvious remedy.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
“Pick another class” isnt a solution to make you better at playing a class…
July 24th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
It never says pick another class, it suggests choosing the appropriate class to complement your team to begin with. It also shows some common mistakes made by each class and how to avoid those mistakes.
Overall, it’s an entertaining article, imo.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Practice makes perfect…
I’ve had about 6 hours with Pyro and I’m seeing improvement after reading the above.
July 25th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
I think all those who are actually somewhat good at playing Spy would love for everyone else to stop playing it… having 2 noob spies on your team only serves to make the other team paranoid and spycheck-happy. Being the only one on the team makes it so much easier for those of us who can actually use the class.
Sniper and Spy are generally over-used though, I think it’s the allure of the one-hit kill backstabs and headshots. And so we end up with the situation in the screenshot at the top of this article… seriously, play some other class, your team will love you for it. I’ve been on a team before with 5 snipers when we were about to attack Dustbowl stage 1, absolute madness. Far better to start out with something easier to pick up like the soldier or the engi (between them, the backbone of the team) then go on to either master the “easy” class - any class played superbly is a force to be reckoned with or go for something harder
I took that route, used to be completely unable to play demoman, spy, sniper or scout. Still can’t snipe for love nor money, but demoman and spy are 2 of my top 3 most played now. Hitting a scout out of mid-air with grenades, or blowing the floor out from under anyone with a wellplaced sticky… best thing ever.
July 26th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
I totally agree this. Also, bad spies make it impossible for good spies to play. A bad spy will only alert the other team to the presence of spies, making much harder for the good spy to take out that sentry or heavy/medic combo. One or two (depends on game size) GOOD spies who know what the priorities are is all you need.
August 15th, 2008 at 10:59 am
You stressed that medics heal!! God bless you!
Playing medic is good and all, but you cannot play it with the mind of a soldier. LOOK AROUND. If you see a heavy with 20Hp and take out your bonesaw to slay the guy that did this to him…you are not helping!! I cannot count the number of times medics just completely ignored me for the sake of adding to a sentry’s kill count. If you decide to abandon your attempts at aggro rushing, good for you! Now, stop healing the useless sniper that got 1 kill in 5 rounds. What is the point of an uber if you give it to a completely useless sniper. The only thing worse than that is giving it to an engie or an enemy spy. Another nice tip is that when you DO have an uber…warn the person. Unless you are both competent players and are sure of success.