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Whoo doggie, the Engineer. If people are not playing rock paper scissors over who between him and the Heavy has the lowest skill floor, they’re having arguments over his weapons so bad that they make [insert appropriate argumentative body here] look like a teen romance! How can one guy cause such a fuss that has SPUF so evenly divided that it could be the motivation for a community made WAR update? Well, if I was to answer it in a reasonably sized sentence (which as an academic, should be impossible) I’d say it’s because the Engineer is, in many ways,… [Continue Reading]
Yes, E is for Medic. Okay, fair enough, it’s also for Engineer and everything else beginning with E, but I’m not talking about what words start with. I’m talking about the default key that the Medic! call is bound to. Some people bind the Medic! call to other buttons, but most people I have spoken to leave it as E. It’s close, it’s handy, it’s easy to spam.
It’s also the bane of all Medics.
*And other healing-centric loadouts
The Two Cities update has vastly improved the medic’s abilities in MvM. Gone is the “kritz machine” of old, now you can do exactly what the medic should be doing in the first place, and be an integral part of the team. And it’s just as fun as anything else.
For reference, there are two major abilities the medic received in this update that attribute to this: revives and the shield.
As the devs of a seven year-old game, the Team Fortress 2 team has had a long time to come up with ideas for our beloved shooter. Obviously not all of them can make the final cut, but a good amount of them have been added in unfinished and relatively inaccessible states. Luckily the community has its ways of discovering this unused content, and here are some I feel a slight pang when I think of because they probably will never see the light of day.
1. “That Dispenser is a Spy!”
Valve is routinely adding new addconds to TF2. For those who don’t know, addcond, or “add condition” is a console command that changes the status of the player. For example, when a Medigun Ubercharges a teammate, the game initiates “addcond 5” which adds Ubercharge textures, negates all damage, and plays the appropriate noses and voice lines. “addcond 11” bestows the player’s weapons with guaranteed crits and the critglow effect, “addcond 32” is how the Disciplinary Action bestows a speed boost and the motion lines in the air, etc. You can get the full list here.
Well, many addconds aren’t tied to any weapons or in-game events, so you can’t use them. But we can see what they do, and there are some gems. To quote the Team Fortress Wiki:
addcond 49: Crouching causes the player to appear to be a Dispenser of the enemy team to enemy players. As a side effect, forces the player’s speed to 450 Hammer Units/second (diagonal movement is at 520 HU/s). Swapping weapons while in this state will cause the player to temporarily stop moving, then return to 450 HU/s.
You heard that last one right. At one point, Valve was toying with a weapon that disguised a spy as an enemy dispenser if he crouched. That has got to be one of the most hilarious, horrifying, and puzzling ideas. Imagine players routinely spychecking your dispenser. Imagine having no engineers on your team, but dispensers are everywhere. The situations are endless, and every one is hilarious. It’s probably for the better Valve didn’t follow up with this one, but I can dream.
Oh, you thought I meant this Hatless Update? Haha, no, that is so 2011. I’m talking about the November 21, 2013 update, known as the Two Cities Update, though I believe the main feature of this update is the fact that it contains no new hats. If I’m not wrong, this is the only content update this year to not add any hats to the game. Isn’t that interesting? In all seriousness, I’m loving this update. It added so many new amazing things, adding a whole new role for the Medic in MvM, two new maps and added our much-loved Snakewater to… [Continue Reading]
As an Engineer main, the Ranger is by far one of my favorite weapons. While it takes some skill to use well, the payoff is ridiculous and is overall a fun weapon to use. Also, 120 damage crits at any range is a godsend for a shotgun. I’ve jarateed off many friends with a lolcrit smashing them in the face.
The Rescue Ranger is a weak weapon in combat, shooting repair claws that do 60 damage at close range and 20 at long range, with a base damage of 40. But then again, the Engineer was never meant for shooting people to death. Instead, he has 128 DPS aimbots that fight for him. The fact that it has the lowest DPS of all Engineer primaries, it’s hitbox is not the size of a truck and it isn’t the Frontier Justice means it’s rather uncommon to be seen used by most players. Don’t let that put you off though because the Ranger has two amazing practical uses(other than being a Ninjaneer): sentry transportation and supporting other engineers from your own nest’s safety.
Salutations, SPUFers, TF2 players and old people who are lost on the internet. Let me guess what you’re thinking: it’s either “Why do the nurses keep stealing from me?” or “I’m sick of the default TF2 gamemodes!” CTF, filled with Snipers. Payload, filled with Engineers. Arena, filled with… uh… nobody.
Well, you’re in luck today Gramps, because Team Fortress fan and sex panther Brickinator is here to tell you all about some mod gamemodes to preoccupy your feeble brain. Take your pills now lest you forget it all by the end.
With the world of Team Fortress 2 being such a huge universe with so many different aspects, it’s difficult to cover all of them at once with a single article featured a day. In addition, we’ve been unable to try some new ideas we’ve had since we don’t want to disrupt the many articles that we have just waiting to be published. Thus, The Daily SPUF is announcing a new initiative: columns. We’re inviting you, the loyal readers and contributors, to think of something interesting to cover within the world of TF2 and write for us regularly about that topic. Interested… [Continue Reading]
In general, you can take what you’ve learned from playing Team Fortress 2 and translate it to Team Fortress Classic. They are the same 9 classes after all, and they have mostly the same loadouts, just with more shotguns. Some things will throw you for curveballs (I wrote a pretty extensive guide here) but in general you can guess what each class is about.
Except one.
TF2 will not prepare you in any way to start playing the TFC Combat Medic. Especially if you’ve played the TF2 Medic. Playing the combat medic like this will instantly label you as a TF2 immigrant who has never touched the game before. I was one of those once, but I persevered and now I consider myself a proficient TFC medic. Note that anyone who played TFC in its heyday could educate you better then me, but here’s what I’ve learned:
Halloween’s over now, and its passing takes with it the 102 cosmetic items, the Halloween paints and spells, transmogrifiers, spooky crates and event keys. But there’s one item in particular that we’re all going to miss. Okay, maybe not everyone, but most people. Fine, not most people, but most Medics. Alright! Some Medics. Some Medics will miss this item.
I’m talking about the Second Opinion.
Yes, he is…
Oh no.