Now, in my last Demoman vs. Demoknights post, I neglected to mention my personal favorite of the two demoman playstyles. Do I prefer demolitons man, or demoknight, or maybe even hybrid?
None. My favorite demoman loadout revolves around the Sticky Jumper.
Picture by FeelGoodInc.
The Sticky Jumper is addicting. Unlike the Rocket Jumper, it requires zero skill to use effectively (as opposed to a little skill) and it lets you keep your powerful Grenade Launcher and melee of your choice. This means you are perfectly capable of filling a viable role on your team; you have the absolute best mobility of any class in the game, bar none. You can start capping the next point within seconds of the previous being capped. You can zip ahead, find the right spot, and rain explosive death down on the upcoming sentry nest. When all else fails you can fly over everyone’s heads, locate the enemy medic, and finish him off with an Ullapool Caber from nowhere.
How can I prove the Sticky Jumper is that good? Well, it’s the focal weapon of the only loadout I’ve found that makes it reliably possible to win cp_orange_x3.
Do you all remember the Demoknights vs. Demomen event back in February? Where the demoknights won in a landslide? Sure you do!
We’ll its happening again! And this time, we’re adjusting the way people can enter the event; there will be no prior sign-ups. An hour or later before the event, add me on Steam if you’d like to join and talk to me. I’ll give the server password to the first 18 people in this fashion, meaning until then anybody has a chance of playing. This is to fix the recurring problem where people sign up a week before the event, forget, and then nobody is available when the event actually happens.
Medieval Mode. You’ve heard of it. Sounds awesome. The Wiki page makes it look awesome. But is it awesome?
Picture by FeelGoodInc.
…
YES!
Ignore the haters, this mode is great. I can have a barrel of fun on cp_degrootkeep (and a lot of custom Medieval maps, but those are way harder to find people playing.) As almost any class.
Medieval Mode gets a lot of flak from most because it’s considered a “melee spamfest”, “void of all strategy” and “a horrific cluster♥♥♥♥ of arrows and demoknights.” And they may all have a point. But there are ways to play the game mode strategically and aid your team in winning the round on a consistent basis.
There are two very distinct types of demomen: good ones and dead ones demoknights and demolitions men. Players have to choose between the two types early on, as it’s laughably easy to get your Chargin’ Targe with 5 demoman achievements, and odds are good that your next demoman weapon drop will be a sword. Lord knows pubs can’t seem to stop spitting them out on both teams, so even if you never play the class you’ll be intimately familiar with hearing the least subtle melee class on the battlefield, whose Tarzan-like cry usually precipitates a critical blade beheading you or one of you teammates in the blink of an eye (and there can be only one eye.)
Picture by FeelGoodInc.
If you’ve visited SPUF, you’ve probably heard the poor demoknight trashed as the weakest possible way to play a TF2 class, that he’s a mediocre midrange picker bested by anyone in any situation, that Valve for some reason continues buffing and releasing unlocks for him despite nobody considering him a valid class. Those people have a lot of clout and their stance is not unreasonable.
You’ve also probably heard SPUF proclaim the demoman as one of (if not the) most powerful and versatile class in TF2, capable of doling out hundreds of DPS, setting lethal traps, rapidly switching from offense to defense, and in general being a golden class that is rightly limited to one per team in any competitive setting. Again, this stance is not unreasonable.
So, when SPUF user “The Pyro King” announced (and later flaked on, forcing myself and thesupremecmdr to pick up his slack) the Demoman Vs. Demoknights fight, everybody on SPUF was quick to predict the event would be an incredibly easy win in favor of the team composed entirely of explosive weapons and bottles. The demoman team filled up almost immediately (including myself initially), and the demoknights became anyone who showed up late and didn’t mind getting curb-stomped if it meant getting to be a part of the event. Anyone who wasn’t in the event loudly questioned why such a one-sided event need bother occur, and there was a large movement demanding that demoknights be allowed to use grenade launchers to give them a fighting chance.
But I stuck to The Pyro King’s original wishes (wherever he disappeared to) and when the first round started (best out of three on badwater), demoknights were restricted to booties, shield, sword/axe.
The end result of Badwater? The demoknights won. Handily. Offense and defense. When round two started (Yukon) the demomen refused to keep playing and the event fizzled out. But it was quite interesting to me why that had happened. (Of course, everyone on SPUF started posting that they knew this was going to happen, and X reason was totally unfair in favor of the demoknights, blah blah blah.) I’d like to spend this post detailing the main reasons why I think the most powerful class in TF2 lost to the least powerful subclass.
Let’s get this blog off on the right foot; complaining about weapon unlocks! The Half-Zatoichi is a sword for Demoman and Soldier that behaves identically to the stock bottle except for 3 things: (1) killing someone with it heals you to full health, (2) not killing someone with it makes you unable to switch back to your other weapons, and (3) people wielding the weapon can OHKO each other. First. Let’s deal with the ‘honorbound’ downside. It makes this sword very annoying to use. The number of reasons you might not get the kill is staggering; perhaps a teammate steals… [Continue Reading]
