Counter Triangle Counter Square

Woo boy, it’s been a long time since I wrote a Team Fortress 2 article, but even though I hardly play any more, there’s something to be said about the unusual balance in TF2. Team Fortress 2 has always been a circle of classes and class counters. This counters that. That counters something else. Really, you have two kinds of counters. The counter triangle and the counter square. It’s all to do with how classes counter each other.

The Counter Square is somewhat obvious and obscure at the same time. You know how a Pyro counters a Spy, right? Well it goes further than that. The Pyro counters the Spy, but the Spy counters the Sniper, by being able to sneak behind enemy lines and take out said Sniper. The Sniper though counters the Heavy, being (generally) the only class capable of taking out a Heavy in one hit from a safe distance. The Heavy though counters the Pyro, being strong enough to kill the Pyro before his flames kill him and generally out-damaging the Pyro. And we’re back to the start again, with the Pyro countering the Spy.

The Counter Triangle is the more… competitive of the two counter systems. It consists of the Demoman, the Engineer and the Scout. The Demoman counters the Engineer, using his high damage, arcing weapons to take out Sentries. The Engineer though counters the Scout, taking advantage of automatic turrets to slow the Scout down. The Scout though counters the Demoman, his high mobility allowing him to jump around a Demoman’s explosives and get close enough to kill him.

Sure, all of these classes do well against other classes as well, and you don’t specifically need a Sniper to take out a Heavy or a Pyro to take out a Spy. You could use a Scout to sneak around and take out a Sniper. You could use a Spy to take out an Engineer’s nest. But the idea is that every class has a counter and every class has a target they can specifically kill. It’s not always obvious, but over the years, aside from the addition of new items, this has been the balance that both the community and Valve have been striving for. Take away all your fancy unlocks and this is what you get. A triangle and a square of counters.

Where do Medic and Soldier fit in? Well, they don’t. You see, EVERYONE counters a Medic. Medics are weak and helpless and their main job is to keep their team alive. They can and should be killed by everyone, regardless of what class you are playing.

Soldier on the other hand, he doesn’t really have a counter. Sure, a Scout can avoid a Soldier’s rockets but a Soldier has a shotgun, or enhanced mobility to take out a Scout. Sure, a Soldier isn’t the best when it comes to sentries but he can use splash damage to get the work done. At the same time though, Soldier doesn’t specifically counter anyone. He’s strong enough to take on every class but it’s not always a guaranteed win.  He’s a jack of all trades, master of none. He’s an option for everyone.

This all goes nicely with the whole picking the right class for the right situation. Sure, Overwatch tries something similar, you’re not going to throw five Tracers into a wall of Bastions, but from what I’ve seen watching Overwatch, there has never been specific counters. There are counters to specific abilities (like Sombra’s hacking) but you don’t have the patterns as you do in Team Fortress 2. You physically can’t balance with everyone having a counter because you’re supposed to choose from a much larger list of characters.

These counter circles also assist in balancing. Or at least, they’re supposed to. When every class has a counter, it’s much easier to see who’s strong and who’s weak, and you can balance two classes at the same time.

There is a problem though. At sufficient skill levels, the counters in the game currently don’t work. I’m not talking about a skilled Spy defeating a bad Pyro, I’m talking professional play. You reach a level where the person with the faster weapon always wins, no matter what class they play as. You end up with Scouts and Snipers always winning out because they are more mobile and have instant damage weaponry. All they have to do is land the shot and damage happens.

Of course, this can also happen in pubs, by stacking numbers. A large number of sentries for example will be impossible to destroy without an insane amount of skill. But that’s why we have class limits.

Unfortunately, as more weapons are added to the game and a desire for more original tools is forever pushed by players, this whole circle of counters has broken many times. A game like Team Fortress 2, with so many variables, needs to be observed, with small tweaks here and there to make sure classes aren’t killing their counters. The whole idea of everyone having a counter does go a long way for balance, but without constant maintenance, it can fall apart quite quickly.