March 2014 – Page 2 – The Daily SPUF

In Defense of Nucleus

March 23, 2014 anchor chum 0 Comments defense, maps

I frequently play on KotH servers that rotate the stock maps, and I have found that the least popular KotH map that comes up is Nucleus. It seems everyone loves Harvest and Lakeside, find Sawmill and Viaduct tolerable, but they seem to hate Nucleus. I personally cannot figure out why! So why is Nucleus a good map? Lack of Spammability on the Central Point One thing that Viaduct and Sawmill, and to a lesser extent, Harvest, suffer from is the ever-present spam around the final point. Soldiers and Demomen lob rockets, grenades, and stickies onto the point as if they… [Continue Reading]

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Medi Guns VS Machine

March 22, 2014 Medic 1 Comment medic, MvM, weapon

The Stock Medi Gun is considered one of the most powerful weapons in the game, despite the fact that it doesn’t do anything damage-wise. After a nice 40 or so seconds, you get invulnerability for eight seconds, which can only be ruined by knock back and things like that. It’s a force to be reckoned with, a force that can only be countered by sheer power. Unless that power happens to be hordes of robots. It seems as though the Medi Gun is actually the weakest Medi Gun to use in Mann VS Machine! The Kritzkrieg is considered the be-all… [Continue Reading]

Questions to the Editors

Cross-Updating Announcements: An Apology

March 21, 2014 aabicus 1 Comment

A reader and writer of our blog, Sn❽wman, just informed me that because I didn’t update the 10v10 Mirrored Maps blog announcement like I did the SPUF announcement, he had no idea signups had come and gone. I feel really bad about that, I just didn’t know we had readers who weren’t also SPUFers. In the future I will make sure to update both announcements with up-to-date information as to the status of signups and other aspects of events like these. (Note that its unlikely I will ever have people sign up through the blog; you will probably need to… [Continue Reading]

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The Three Halloween Bosses And… You?

March 21, 2014 WhatIsHandle 0 Comments cosmetics, halloween

As my favourite holiday being Halloween (Christmas is my second favourite.) I’ve decided why not make an article about TF2’s Halloween Bosses: The Horseless Headless Horsemann, Monoculus (Latin for One Eye) And Merasmus (Latin for Decaying). So why not start with the first boss added in 2010: The Horsemann. His base health is 3,000 with an additional 200 per player (His official Minimum is 5,000 while is Official Maximum is 7,500.) His speed is 400 Hammer Units (That of a scout.) attack range is 200 units. His Scare Radius is 500 units. He’s easily taken down to half-health with… [Continue Reading]

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A Survey of the Pocket Pets

March 20, 2014 anchor chum 0 Comments comparison, cosmetics, loadout

In the last few years, there have been an awful lot of cosmetic items added to TF2 that are generally referred to as “pocket pets.” These cosmetics have proved extremely popular, and therefore more are added each year. As of the writing of this article (March 2014 by most calendars), there are a total of 16 cosmetics that I would classify as a Pocket Pet. I didn’t include items that hover above your shoulder such as the Robro 3000, Balloonicorn, etc, since they aren’t really a “pocket” pet if they aren’t physically attached to your body. Similarly, I didn’t include… [Continue Reading]

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Why the Heavy Failed

March 19, 2014 Xcam901 0 Comments analysis, balance, heavy, theory

The Heavy arguably represents the most argued aspect of TF2, perhaps only next to the mutilated pile of animal bones that may have once been the random critical horse. From Xxx360tommy420 to ESEA invite players, Heavy has been called overpowered, boring, painful to fight against, painful to play, and many more terms that may not pass the pink hearts filter. So why is heavy so, for the lack of better terms, broken? At the stock level, Heavy appears to be a kind of anti-scout. Sustained rather than burst damage, cripplingly slow speed rather than mobility, track rather than twitch, the… [Continue Reading]

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Phishing in Sawmill

March 18, 2014 Medic 4 Comments advice, economy, trading

So, lately, it seems that Team Fortress 2’s trading system has been full of ups and downs. But while no one can predict when the item servers are going to die or when the trading system will go down for the umpteenth time, there IS something you can protect yourself from. Today, we’ll discuss the recent phishing spree. What’s phishing then? Well, according to Wikipedia, it is: Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. In Team Fortress 2, it’s… [Continue Reading]

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Mod Showcase: Death Run

March 18, 2014 brickinator 0 Comments death, DR, gauntlet, mod, oooooh, run, scary, showcase, sprint

Welcome to another thrilling instalment of Mod Showcase. Brickinator here and I’m gonna chat about Death Run. Contrary to its name Death Run is not an 80’s action movie and is instead a frantic gamemode in which one team must navigate through an obstacle course of deadly traps. The traps usually kill instantly and you don’t respawn for the rest of the match; it’s basically a Japanese gameshow but without the remorse. All but one player are put on the RED team, known as the ‘runners’. The BLU team consists of that one guy left over- usually whoever won last round. He’s… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements

10v10 “Mirrored Maps” Tournament

March 18, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments announcement, demoknight, event, Highlander

===============IMPORTANT INFO========== Where: The SPUF Server When: Saturday March 22 at 6pm GMT Rotation: pl_retawdab, cp_tiplevarg, cp_lwobtsud ======================================= It’s been a while since we had a SPUF server event, so for this one, we’re keeping it simple. 10v10 Highlander on these mind-bending takes of your favorite maps! Best out of three wins, but even if one team wins the first two we’re doing the third, because half the fun is trying these maps out! Rules: -damage spread and random crits disabled -It’s highlander+bootieknight 10th player. Bootieknight player must equip a shield and booties (Why are we having him? So two… [Continue Reading]

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Extending Southern Hospitality for Crate Justice

March 17, 2014 Tarrynot 0 Comments engineer, weapon

It’s a curious fact that the Strange Southern Hospitality, alone of all the Engineer’s wrenches, ranks up on its owner’s melee kill count rather than sentry kill count. The March 5, 2014 update added sentry kill tracking to it, ruling the former melee-only counter a mistake, but if fans of Southern Hospitality think they’re going to be spattering their spiky wrenches with gore anytime soon, they’ve got another think coming — the newly added sentry kill counter is secondary and doesn’t affect Strange rank. Players all over have been protesting this, of course. They cite the difficulty not only of… [Continue Reading]