The Competitive Corner

An e-sport it may never be called, but Team Fortress 2 certainly has its share of competitive players. This column will attempt to broadly cover the events of the competitive TF2 scene, with info about the hottest teams, biggest events, and hottest news. Written by thesupremecommander.

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Killcams and Comp TF2

aabicus 0 Comments , , ,

Killcams are a masterfully-designed element in TF2. As the developer commentary states, killcams were added due to many Team Fortress Classic players having trouble determining who killed them and what they themselves did to get into that lethal situation. By showing you a quick screenshot of your attacker with some subtle “swoosh” effects showing you his rough location, Valve turned every death into a learning experience while simultaneously lessening the chance the killer can keep farming kills from the same location. But I’m wondering if that behavior becomes slightly unbalanced in a competitive setting. When you’ve reached the point that all the… [Continue Reading]

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The Competitive Corner 

Gun Mettle Alchemist

Gamemaster1379 0 Comments , , , , ,

Cross-post from my site at and SteamCommunity Guides – Gun Mettle Alchemist A fair amount of time has passed since the release of Gun Mettle. With it came a series of core mechanical changes that made the Engineer dynamic much different than it was in years past. Many of the changes reflect the modern state of the PvP meta–in which speed and mobility are emphasized above all else. Engineer was not alone in these changes. Speed and mobility based changes were also present for the Spy–namely the Dead Ringer & Big Earner. However, that is another article entirely. For now,… [Continue Reading]

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Competitive Matchmaking Beta is here! Kinda…

Medic 0 Comments , , , , ,

Well well well well, looks like those Teamfortress.tvers have found something interesting. It’s a small version of the Competitive Matchmaking Beta! It’s actually a real thing! Turns out a small update yesterday added a console command that enables you to open the Competitive matchmaking menu. The command, for whoever wants to try it, is OpenMatchmakingLobby ladder Typing this into console brings up a new page. It looks like this: Interestingly, it had a bunch of scores, and a drop down box. The box has a choice of either 6v6 or 9v9, which is unusual since everyone thought they’d just do… [Continue Reading]

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Why ETF2L allowing the Pomson and Short Circuit in Highlander isn’t so insane after all

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With Highlander Season 9 coming around, ETF2L has decided to allow a few new weapons – the Pomson 6000 and the Short Circuit. Now, many people think this is rather strange. These are two weapons that really do shake things up. I’m pretty sure that ETF2L has their reasons and they’ve probably already made them public by now, but I’m a lunatic with his own blog so I’m going to write about my own reasons. Let’s start with the slightly less sane one. Originally, the Short Circuit wasn’t an issue. It was a rather quiet little weapon, hiding away in… [Continue Reading]

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The Loose Cannon – OP or simply in need of tweaks?

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It’s the start of the new UGC competitive season, and we’ve seen some new weapons come and go. The most prominent weapon though is the Loose Cannon, which has now been banned in Highlander and 4v4, but not in 6v6 in UGC. This is incredibly strange, especially since ETF2L has gone the other way in Highlander, allowing both the Pomson and the Short Circuit. ETF2L seem to have lost their mind, but with how Engineers took a pounding during Gun Mettle and what with the Wrangler, Rescue Ranger and Jag all being so good, perhaps the more insane weapons will… [Continue Reading]

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Help me! The importance of knowing where everyone is…

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Let’s face it, I am a spastic twat with all the coordination skills of a donkey wearing ice skates. I’m bad. And in organized play, this is multiplied tenfold in my awfulness. No seriously, poor old Jensen so rarely gets healed because I can’t damn find him. Okay, to seem less cruel to myself, Jensen is a good old Scout who never stands still, which makes even just locking onto him very tricky, but you get what I mean. Knowing where everyone is could be considered the second most important thing in the entire game, the most important thing being… [Continue Reading]

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Confusing Comms: Health Callouts

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An important part of competitive TF2 is communication. Being concise, clear and understandable are vital, especially as the environment you will be speaking in could have anywhere between 3-8 others all speaking at once while each listener is distracted by what is happening onscreen. It is no secret that the SPUF EU 6s and 4s team require improving with their co-op skills, so today I will talk about a simple aspect that is often overlooked: friendly health callouts. Enemy health callouts are well known, and the skills well practised. The term “lit” has entered even the vocabulary of non-competitive TF2… [Continue Reading]

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Froyotech wins i55

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Congratulations to Froyotech, who just beat Nerdrage TF2 3-1 in Insomnia 55. The final scores were 2-3 Sunshine, 3-1 Product, 5-0 Snakewater, 5-0 Process. It was a bit of a shock to Nerdrage, who’d beaten Froyotech in Saturday’s matches. More information is available on teamfortress.tv Also, a big round of applause for everyone involved. i55 was absolutely amazing.

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What the Gun Mettle Contracts Could Mean For Competitive TF2

aabicus 0 Comments , ,

In my recent article about the weapon-dropping mechanic and specifically its affect on Ubercharges, I mentioned that it could be seen as a sign that Valve is attempting to alter the meta of the game, probably for the sake of revitalizing competitive and keeping things fresh. Part of the reason I think this is because a lot of Valve’s recent decisions have been rumored to be competitively-motivated, and ster (also known as Niichts and STAR_) said a lot of interesting things in his July 2nd Twitch broadcast that went on for 8 whole hours. Considering I can’t ask you to go… [Continue Reading]

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4v4 – Fun but not serious, sadly

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Week 8 of the UGC 4v4 season has come to a close, and we all breathe a sigh of relief as we thank some Deity that we don’t need to play against platinum and gold players any more. It was a lot of fun. Team SPUF (Special Party of Underrated Failures) finished the season 3-4, winning 3 rounds by forfeit and getting kinda rolled in the 4 matches we lost. And by kinda, I mean completely. But I can’t blame us for losing. We had to play against genuinely hard teams. Every single team we actually played against was UGC… [Continue Reading]

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