December 2015 – Page 2 – The Daily SPUF

TF2 and Competition

December 24, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments comparison, loadout, overwatch, tf2 is ded

The title’s a double entendre; I plan to discuss two different aspects of Competition in TF2. The first is competition as a league. We had a very interesting conversation on SPUF recently where we discussed the definition of an e-sport and whether TF2 even qualifies. Fundamental aspects like random crits need to be turned off, classes and maps and weapons need to be restricted, even certain cosmetics and sprays need to be blocked in order to balance the playing field. Can TF2 really count as a competitive game when it needs to be so heavily adjusted that it’s almost a different game?… [Continue Reading]

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Pyro has been reduced to a W+M1 machine

December 23, 2015 Night 0 Comments balance, buff, nerf, phlogistinator, pyro, w+m1

When news of Tough Break broke (mind the pun) I expressed how excited I was. That was mostly due to the plethora of balance changes, some of which many of us have been whining about for years and years (Half-Zatoichi crits, for one.) On first glance it really did seem like a nearly perfect update. In practice, though, you’ll find pubs flooded with Phlog Pyros. That’s because this update destroyed Pyro as we know it. All-Class – Base weapon switch speed changed from 0.67 seconds to 0.5 seconds … Pyro – Pyros like to collect rainbows! Extinguishing a teammate will… [Continue Reading]

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Medic buffs – Good or Bad?

December 22, 2015 Medic 0 Comments balance, buffs, medic, tough break

The Medic is the big game changer of TF2. It’s rare that a pure support class has that position in any video game, but that’s one of TF2’s strong points. Of course, being a game changing person means that making tweaks, changes, buffs, nerfs, anything, can be a huge problem for not just the individual but the entire game. So I was rather surprised when I saw rather unusual changes for Medics in the Tough Break update. But are they good or are they bad? Honestly? Medic didn’t really need anything at all. All of the class’s problems lay within… [Continue Reading]

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Tough Break and its Signs of Things to Come

December 21, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, competitive, demoknight, matchmaking, medic, pyro, tough break, update

The Tough Break update rolled out an extremely healthy list of balance changes to Team Fortress 2. Spanning the entirety of its class roster and with a general trend of making each class’ stock role more defined, it provides some very clear insights regarding the direction Valve is hoping to take TF2 in the coming months. SPUF is ablaze right now with questions attempting to make sense of some of the more extreme alterations, and since I’m stuck on a five-hour plane ride without internet I thought I’d take the time to comment on some things I’ve noticed and make… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements Featured

A Very Festive SPUF Event 2

December 20, 2015 Medic 0 Comments event, not festive enough, smissmas

Well, the Very Festive SPUF event, the sequel at least, has been and gone. It involved a bunch of maps, a bunch of changes, me not playing MvM like I wanted and a bunch of other bits and pieces. A random bunch of maps were played, including none of the maps we originally picked out. Apart from Coldfront and Viaduct. I originally wanted to do a Highlander match like the last Festive SPUF event, but I knew we simply didn’t have the numbers. I considered doing MvM but people didn’t like that idea. So we all kinda ended up just… [Continue Reading]

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Persian Persuader’s Not Looking too Peachy…

December 19, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, demoman, melee, nerf, persian, weapon

The Tough Break update was amazing. I love almost all of the balance changes, especially because pretty much every class was buffed in cool ways. Especially my Medic! Holy crap! Ubercharge on Crossbow and Amputator? I’m so excited, except that part of me that fears a complimentary nerf now that those wholly-unneeded buffs were added. Thank god for the alt-fire addition to the Amputator, by the way, now I don’t have to juggle stupidly around with the taunt menus to use my AoE heals. But this article isn’t about Medic. As great as the majority of changes were, the only… [Continue Reading]

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The Tough Break Smissmas Update

December 18, 2015 Night 2 Comments excitement, smissmas, update

Editor’s note: Yes, I know we published an article on this yesterday, but Night’s article is better than mine. And more factually correct. This Smissmas is looking damn good. I can’t remember the last time I was really excited about an update. Gun Mettle was fun, I liked the contracts. koth_probed was fun on Invasion. Other than those two I haven’t paid attention to any major TF2 updates since mid-2014. The Tough Break Update, however, has my attention. This update brings the Tough Break Campaign Pass, available for US$5.99. The campaign will be spread over three months, just like Gun… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements Featured

The Tough Break Update – New TF2 Update – 17/12/15

December 17, 2015 Medic 0 Comments buffs, demoman, medic, pyro, update

A new TF2 update has been released. I assume this is the winter update we’ve all been expecting, although there is a distinct lack of genuine wintery things apart from the end of the article. Anyway, here’s the Tough Break Update. As of publishing, it hasn’t been released yet, but that ain’t stopping me from giving you a vague lowdown of all this stuff. Looks like standard stuff at first. It’s a new contract thing, just like Gun Mettle, costing $5.99 and introducing 26 new contracts, which I hope have been integrated with the old ones so we’ve got some… [Continue Reading]

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Mind of a Very Mad Man (And an Analysis of Learning)

December 17, 2015 Night 0 Comments analysis, sniper

In the last twenty minutes or so I’ve ragequit four separate servers, died a grand total of four times and, to top it all off, closed TF2 once (thus far.) It’s probably apparent that I do not deal well with anger, even more so without an outlet. It’s probably why each death resulted in a ragequit, culminating in closing the game, while the last fifteen minutes during which I’ve written about three sentences of this draft have been me running 11 headshots to 6 deaths on Borneo defense, which while mediocre at best by most standards (especially for a Valve… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Why the Tomislav is good

December 16, 2015 General_B 0 Comments balance, heavy, loadout, strategy, weapons

Whenever I see people using the Tomislav I ask myself, “why are they using it?” I’m not asking this in a demeaning way, but honestly just want to know which of its “many” upsides they are utilizing. I ask myself this even more in MvM but we’ll cover that later. Some people actually use the silent killer attribute, I guess. Honestly in all my time being the pocket medic to a heavy that uses almost exclusively the Tomislav, we’ve only ever used the Silent attribute once or twice. He might use it while playing by himself but I doubt… [Continue Reading]