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Dear Laddies and Lassies,
Me butler Samson has shown me the arts and crafts ye all have made for me pipes, and I’m astounded by the high quality of the submissions! Though I’m a wee bit sad that not every Pipe will go to a new home, the others will remain with me for the time being! Now, I have to go strangle a Leviathan to death!
-Sir Donald Demoman
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:
Sprays are fun player-chosen pictures you can post in TF2. As it would suggest, the character “sprays” them on the wall like they’re graffiti, and to a lot of people they’re treated not much better. You can deactivate them in the TF2 Options menu, OR you can make them work for you! How?
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.)
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:
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.
For everyone who plays Team Fortress 2 and is at least not a potato, it’s clear as day why Battle Medics are never a good idea. Although Medics have that little speed boost and regenerating health, their weaponry simply isn’t built for fighting. This, on top of a lack of heavy-class health and no true, reliable advanced mobility, is a recipe for disaster. Plus, it annoys your team mates, who are probably on fire right now.
But just how bad is a Medic’s weaponry when it comes to fighting? Let’s start with the basics. We’ll concentrate on primary weapons, because Medi Guns obviously can’t do damage, and melee weapons are, well, melee weapons. Only Demoknights and Pyros can really pull off melee-only combat, and even then, that’s due to unlocks. We’ll look at this by pitting an imaginary Battle Medic against the average Scout.
Most Medics I know run with the Ubersaw. That’s understandable, it’s a nice weapon. It looks good. It’s useful. It’s balanced. It’s fun to use. And if you see a dumb Spy or an AFK Sniper, you’ve just got yourself free Uber. The Ubersaw also has a fancy kill taunt. A while ago, it used to be silent, so you could hide around corners and catch people unaware with it, just like the Stab Stab Stab taunt.
Some other Medics use the Amputator. When the Medieval Medic set was around, it was a great weapon, but to be fair, no one really used it for the taunt heals. They just used it alongside the everglorious Crusader’s Crossbow to get that lovely regenerating health. These days, it’s about as useful as the Bone Saw.
Lame Medics though use the Vita-Saw. Most Medics seem to agree that the Vita-Saw isn’t exactly balanced, since it rewards Medics who die a lot, and it messes with the eternal question of who has Uber advantage. And it’s got a silly downside.
So some of you may know me as an admin for the SPUFserver. It’s a job that comes with a lot of pain because running a server is very hard work. However, it’s a job that can be quite a bit of fun, knowing that you are the god of the little TF2 universe stuck within that server.
One of the interesting things I get to do is pop up on SPUF and offer to host events that are being floated around. I like doing this because events are a fun thing for the community to enjoy, but there’s a lot of work that goes into running them, and I thought I might share a little bit with those of you that might possibly be coming up with (and then proposing to my admin staff) events in the future.
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.