aabicus

I write articles! I also make games, release videos, voice act and lots of other cool things.

Some tips for playing Doomsday

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Picture by Gen. DeGroot.
Picture by Gen. DeGroot.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I have something of a fondness for horrible unbalanced maps. With the right loadouts, you can become the undisputed king of these horrible spamfests, it just requires a significant amount of time playing them with an open mind, and always trying new things.

For example, when I’m flying around this map with my Sticky Jumper, for once my trusty Locomotive Pain Train is no use considering there are no control points. So instead I bust out the Ullapool Caber for this first tip:

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A Comparison of Scout Secondaries

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If you were to ask me what I thought the most versatile weapon slot in TF2 is, I’d say Scout secondary. Unlocks in that section vary from pistols to drinkables, to throwables that either deal damage or leave status effects. (If Valve ever releases the Scout and Medic Grordbort sets, that’ll add a laser weapon to the list). Of all the classes, scout is the one I have the most different loadouts for. Most classes it’s more like “Every so often my Pain Train isn’t needed, so I equip Caber,” or “If I’m using the Quick-Fix, I might as well equip Syringe Gun over crossbow because I’m committed to mediocrity” but with Scout the whole loadout changes with the secondary. Today I’m going to go over the diverse selection of Scout secondaries and what I like to equip with them. (Including cosmetics! I always try to grab cosmetics that match the secondary for scout, mainly because the game has decided that every cosmetic that drops for aabicus must be scout-equippable.)

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Some tips on posting successful trades on TF2 Outpost

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While I wouldn’t consider myself a “hardcore trader”, I certainly do it. Most TF2 players enjoy making at least one of the classes look as cool as they can afford, or grabbing strange versions of weapons they truly enjoy.

This pretty much requires using a significant amount of TF2 Outpost, which can be a great experience if you find a good trader. Unfortunately, the percentage of users who seem interested in making things fast, easy, and simple are vanishing every day. As a frequent buyer, my usual strategy is to search for something, open a bunch of tabs of online people offering a certain item, and then instantly close anyone who breaks the following rules:

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Minuscule asymmetries in official maps that make a difference

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Last time I wrote, I mentioned that the ramps on cp_orange_x3 were unevenly spaced apart from the spawn rooms, allowing BLU team to jump back into spawn from the railing but not RED team.

Well, I’ve since learned about a number of other extremely small differences between sides of supposedly symmetrical maps that favor one team over the other. Let’s go over some.

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Some tough spots to get to (that aren’t that hard!)

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Heights and ledges are a major part of any map. Everybody who isn’t a scout, soldier, or demoman is going to find something that limits their movement, and learning to find a way around that is a part of every learning curve.

Except when it isn’t. Sometimes there is a trick to reaching faraway places. Here’s a few of them.

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Some Other Reasons the Crusader’s Crossbow is my favorite primary

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When I first made this blog, I was planning on having a lot of posts just dedicated to single weapons, like how the first post ever was about the Half-Zatoichi. However this hasn’t really happened, so now I’m going to try to incorporate more of them into our standard rotation. Because Valve has added some very cool weapons with unique stats into TF2.

My favorite is the Crusader’s Crossbow! Unique from the Syringe Gun unlocks in the Medic primary slot, it fires a single bolt (which recently became a bolt and not an arrow during the July 10th Update) that can heal teammates or damage enemies, dealing/healing more the further it flies. If this sounds like a long-range healing tool, you are right. But there are several other uses for it that people don’t give enough credit, and here are my favorite:

Mildly relevant picture made by FeelGoodInc.
Moderately relevant picture made by Nethero.

 

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SPUF vs. Discussions results!

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Two weeks ago we announced SPUF vs. Discussions II: Requiem, where the two Valve TF2 forums pit each other in a 3-map highlander match to determine who was better. The results are in: SPUF won the first round of koth_badlands, but Discussions rallied and won the next two, taking badlands. After that Discussions won cp_granary twice in a row. As that’s two maps out of three to SPUD, they win the tournament. Thanks for joining in everybody! We’re not sure what the next SPUF event is going to be, but stay tuned, there are more coming your way!

Yesterday’s blog post wins WordPress award for quality writing

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Our blog post for September 19, 2013 was certainly a winner, wasn’t it? Probably the best thing I’ve ever written. Not a word of it was anything less than Shakespearicles-quality. Some of you may have thought it was a bit short, clocking out at zero characters (with spaces included), but that’s because we are currently working on migrating the blog over to the SPUF server, hosted graciously by thesupremecmdr, who also hosts the SPUF server for TF2. Like last time, the new site is not perfectly finished yet, so I’ll be updating both with any new posts in the meantime.… [Continue Reading]

The Sticky Jumper has been nerfed

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Valve had a small update on September 16th, where some unimportant stuff happened. When I first scrolled through the sparse update notes, seeing ‘bug fixes’ on item descriptions of cosmetic items, I was already thinking, whatever, it’s another one of those updates, nothing to see here. Then I read: “Updated The Sticky Jumper to only allow 2 active stickybombs at a time” Now, needless to say I’m not the only one saddened by this balance move. This innocuous training weapon has sent SPUF into a whirlwind of protest, defense, and general bewilderment. As one user put it, “Why is half… [Continue Reading]