Why Scout is Awful and Underpowered

I don’t dislike any of the classes in TF2. You’d think Engineer, but honestly as a Demoman/Medic main, it’s my job to destroy their nests, and without them I’d have significantly less to do at any given moment. Sniper likewise I’ve never really cared about because I can always seem to find routes that let me avoid them. Not to mention that my favorite weapon, the Sticky Jumper, turns them into my favorite prey.

So this article is kinda tough for me to write, because I don’t really hate anyone in TFC either. Pyro, maybe, but he’s too pitiful to hate, and the other eight classes are actually capable of competently doing their job. So maybe that’s why my least favorite has to go to the Scout, because he’s such a flawed class that only counts as “capable of doing his job” through a technicality.

Scout is seriously weaksauce in TFC. Low health, low armor, and the only class with no unique weapons, carrying just the single-barrel shotty, nailgun and crowbar, all of which are pathetically low-damage. So why is Scout used regularly in competitive? His speed. He’s super duper fast and this means that he and Medic (my favorite class) are on flagrunning duty. But in every single category but speed, Scout SUCKS. Medic is strictly better. And that frustrates me on a design level.

You may have noticed I like nude mods, and in TFC I use this one (NSFW) for Scout, because it just makes sense. You feel naked and defenseless. And your big brother Medic is doing the same thing you are but looking like a boss wiping the floor with his better shotgun, better nailgun, better melee, hand grenades and health regeneration. Sure sometimes ‘slightly more speed’ trumps all that other stuff, but that’s not really an intelligently-designed specialization curve. And there’s nothing interesting about him. If you’re a good Scout, you’ll be an even better Medic with a new host of amazing abilities, and the only downside is “the things you used to do as Scout now take a fraction of a second longer to complete”. The fact that that’s still enough to use the guy just annoys me even when I understand the reasoning.