Brand new video game articles, every day!
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, lend me your hats! I am about to share with you the best Pyro melee weapon in existence!
Is it the Axetinguisher?
The Powerjack?
Perhaps the Back Scratcher?
Nope. It is none other than the Homewrecker.
“WHAT!” You may exclaim, “The Homewrecker is the most broken Pyro unlock in history. It’s a pain to Spies, and completely worthless otherwise.”
Yep.
And that’s why it’s a perfect side grade.
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.)
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.
Note: This applies less to playing the spy in small-sided competitive games, as there are different mechanics in play all together, this is a piece on the spy in regular format TF2 play.
Battle is not a concrete, straightforward thing. Many people believe that winning games is all about numbers; kills, deaths. Victory is not merely a body count. In TF2 you can fight battles all day long, and slay hundreds of enemy combatants, and unless that’s your explicit goal (such as in arena mode), they will always return to fight that same battle over the same point or the same target in the next wave of attack. Stalemate. Surely you’ve seen it, where one team is holed up in a defensible position, and the same situation repeats itself, übers are pushed away, advances mowed down by sentry fire, and enemies hammered by critical explosives, all to no avail. This is where the game needs to be changed. This is where we find our friend, the Spy. He doesn’t take the most names, he takes the right ones.
This is not strategy guide on the Spy’s gear, or the finite points of aim or twitch reflexes, but rather a series of observations and treatise on the thinking side of the spy, much of which is done subconsciously while you’re playing, and not really thought over save for what makes sense or what seems to be the best idea at the time, regardless of big-picture strategic value. Let’s explore the mind of a cold blooded killer.
The Team Fortress classes are often listed as “Generalists” or “Specialists”. Generalists, as their name would suggest, are useful in almost any situation, are infinitely adaptable, and are cornerstones of team play. Scout is frequently listed as a generalist, along with Soldier, Medic and Demoman. But after thinking about it, I’m not so sure that’s accurate.
Again, a “Generalist” is supposed to be useful in most situations. That includes offense, defense, different game modes, etc. No matter what’s happening on the field, there is usually a role for a generalist class to play. Then why can I think of several extremely common scenarios where a scout is not welcome on the team?
As I covered a few days ago, Valve recently added “strange cosmetics” to TF2. Fair enough, Valve is doing weird things all the time with their TF2. But I’m curious as to why they chose the method, style, and selection they did, and today I plan to write about my theories regarding this recent update.
Welcome to this, where I take a couple of community-suggested changes and discuss about how they could either slightly unbalance a weapon, completely break a weapon or even ruin a weapon.
