Some reasons why you should be the fourth Soldier

Everyone complains when there’s too many of one class, particularly if said class is a Sniper or a Spy, but what if every slot is taken and there’s an abundance of classes? What do you do then? My advice? Go Soldier. And here’s why.

Spies and Snipers, they’re designed to do one job: assassinate targets. That means they work best when there’s a couple of them hiding in the shadows doing their nasty business. Because their job is rather precise, generally killing high priority targets like Medics or picking off weakened players, above a certain thresh hold, they lose their power. Another issue, particularly with Spies, is that people become more and more aware of a class when there’s more of them. You may be the best Spy ever, but if there’s 3 other spies running around, at some point they will blow your cover. The same does apply to Snipers in a lesser way, as Snipers pick people off, they can’t directly assault people unless they’re some sort of godly powerhouse who carries even the lowest of noobs to victory.

The assassination classes thus need heavier classes in order to excel at their job. When there’s four Snipers or five Spies, it drains the rest of the team, which needs to work twice as hard to pick up the slack. You need that Heavy to defend the point. You need that Demoman to push forward.

The same can be said about Pyros, Scouts and even Medics. Scouts may be able to dodge anything and Pyros may be able to cause panic, but they need a heavier class to back them up when facing multiple enemies. Scouts in particular rely on hit-and-run tactics and distractions from team mates to pick people off, and they can’t do that alone in a more-than-1v1 environment. Yes, Scouts are the masters of death matching and capturing points, but on defense or when pushing, their frail bodies are easily shaken by stray explosions. And Medics? They, often considered force multipliers, are wholly reliant on heavy classes to get stuff done. They don’t multiply themselves, they multiply the power of who they are healing.

So, if every class is filled, why play Soldier? Of course, you can always play Heavy or Demoman if you want to win, but Soldier is the all-rounder. Although a team of Medics paired with Demomen or Heavies are considered nigh unstoppable, they don’t have the same freedom as a Soldier has.

Soldier, as we all know, is the jack of all trades. If you’re the fifth Soldier, you have the freedom to do pretty much anything you want, because you can do pretty much anything, from roaming and assassinating to buffing your team to having a Medic Uber you so you can storm the base. And no matter how many Soldiers you have on a team, you don’t mind having one more because you know they’re going to, at the bare minimum, be more useful than that damned fifth Sniper.