analysis – Page 13 – The Daily SPUF

Gunslingers vs. Highlanders: an analysis

December 4, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, demoknight, engineer, event, Highlander, medic, scout, theory

There was recently something of an upset when the Highlander team swept the Gunslingers in the recent tournament, and it rightly seems to have attracted something of an interest in the SPUF community. (I notice there hasn’t been a single thread arguing the Gunslinger is OP since the event…) Since I’ve participated in two of these events, playing Medic for Season 2 (the first time the Gunslingers won) and the most recent Season 5, I’ve got a pretty good perspective from which to analyze the two teams. On a fundamental level, the first major reason that Highlanders performed so much better… [Continue Reading]

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Ah, Geoff.

November 29, 2014 Medic 0 Comments analysis, glitches, medic, weapon

Ah Geoff, the Medi Gun for the person who hates building Uber and overhealing and wants to make his life needlessly complicated. I’ll be honest, my relationship with Geoff has been veering towards the bad side of things more and more and more. It wasn’t until I completely and utterly fucked up my binds for the Vaccinator (I forgot that I no longer had reload bound to Mouse5) that I realised why no one else was stupid enough to use this thing against hordes of grenade-knights. I wasn’t even meant to play in that match anyway… Anyway, rants and stuff… [Continue Reading]

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An Attempt to Explain Metal

November 25, 2014 DapperApples 0 Comments analysis, economy, trading

Keys risen up to eleven refined metal! Oh Noes! The price of keys relative to metal has risen rather steadily over the past couple of years or so. Apparently every time the price goes up by a refined, someone has to make some sort of thread about it. Honestly, I don’t really care that much, dealing with the traders is too much of a pain for me anyway. Nonetheless, I will make an attempt to theorize what is going on in the market of metal as a currency. In standard macroeconomics there are a couple formulas used to estimate the… [Continue Reading]

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Why Slows Are Horrible

November 10, 2014 Medic 0 Comments analysis, criticism, glitches, heavy, pyro, request, scout

Pew! Off went my purple splat of slowness. I aimed it perfectly, right between the minions, splitting the purple splat at just the right moment to catch the enemy Ryze. The splat landed, Ryze was slowed and my team mate scooped up the kill. “Nice work, Vel’Koz!” my team mate smiled. Now, slows are really common in a lot of games, particularly MOBAs. And Skyrim, since everyone up north has a frost spell or three. But here in Team Fortress 2, the only slows we have are all hated. Scum of the earth. We scream and swear because of them.… [Continue Reading]

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Why Soldier is (Often) the Favorite and Most Balanced Class

November 7, 2014 Megashark42 0 Comments 500th article contest, analysis, contest, soldier, theory

Hello everyone! One of my favorite things about Team Fortress 2 is the idea of having 9 completely different classes work together and intertwine roles to complete objectives. Some classes like the scout are considered the pinnacle of skill to TF2 competitive players while the heavy and the engineer are fairly simple to newcomers to the FPS genre. The demoman is usually credited with having the greatest skill curve but the soldier is considered the ‘best’ and most ‘balanced’ class. Let me explain why many people share this common opinion. 1. Skill Curve The soldier is not the normal cookie cutter class of most FPSs… [Continue Reading]

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There Once Was a Caber from Ullapool

October 28, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, demoknight, demoman, melee

Whose explosion was quite unbelievable With a loud angry bang It’d throw off Sniper’s aim By removing his head from his clavicles Now that Valve has, in their infinite wisdom, removed the ability of the stock bottle to shatter on a critical hit, the Ullapool Caber remains the only TF2 melee that is actually a bottomless supply of identical melee weapons as opposed to a unique item. It’s also a point of contention among the sub genre of TF2 players who enjoy going on SPUf and criticizing the game’s balance. For some reason they aren’t too hot on a melee weapon that deals… [Continue Reading]

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Straight Downgrades? In my TF2?

October 18, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, cosmetics

Weapons that are just worse than their stock counterparts. Not strictly worse like the Big Earner, where the upsides aren’t worth the cost to equip, but literally worse, as in there aren’t any upsides to begin with. Once in a blue moon somebody on SPUF asks for these, and it’s always seen as a bit odd. There are two main flavors to the argument for adding these; the first is that they’d serve as a sort of handicap in situations where a player wants to limit themselves, either for training purposes or when playing with friends who are of a considerably lower… [Continue Reading]

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Straight Upgrades? In my TF2?

October 16, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, medic, melee, pyro

Weapons with literally no downside. I’m not talking weapons like the Wrangler, where the downsides exist but are negligible in comparison to the upsides (indeed, sometimes the only downside is “you don’t have the stock weapon it replaces.”) I’m talking weapons that literally just don’t have downsides and are just better then their stock equivalent. Not counting ones caused by bugs or bad coding, there have only ever been three straight upgrades added to TF2, and one has since been rebalanced. The Amputator on release granted the healing taunt for free before being changed (for the better in my opinion)… [Continue Reading]

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Four Things You Can’t Do With the Syringe Gun

September 29, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, glitches, medic

Recently I wrote an article on Four Things You Can’t do With The Crusader’s Crossbow, because the crossbow is amazing and complicated and lends itself well to causing exploits and that sort of thing. But the design of the Syringe Gun is no slouch in that regard either. Face it; we Medics have a pretty complicated and unique primary with those rapid-fire hitscan projectiles, and that’s caused some trouble for Valve in the past. Here are some things that have been deemed Too Awesome for the poor syringe gun: 1. You can’t boost teammates on a sea of needles. The most… [Continue Reading]

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Guide on… walking out of spawn in TFC

September 21, 2014 eugensiman 0 Comments advice, analysis, comparison, design, guide, TFC

Hello, my name is eugensiman and I’m a passionate newcomer into the world of Team Fortress games (400+ hours overall). I quickly found out that I’m more of a theorist than a practicalist in these shooters. I can acknowledge the importance and strategical advantages of various rocket jumps, however sometimes I can’t even do some of the simplest wall jumps on Badwater. But we’re here not to talk about walls. As I’ve said, I’m a newcomer not only into TF2, but into all the Team Fortress games. That means that I also like to spam some grenades around, make sentries… [Continue Reading]