class

Beings who would be great friends with the Medic

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It must get boring being the Medic sometimes. Especially during times of peace. You’re stuck there with 8 other men, many of whom are often sweaty, stupid or both. It’s not fun. You could be at home with your wife. Instead you have to babysit a bunch of morons because Engineer’s working for the Administrator and Spy’s a prissy little bitch who you want to punch repeatedly. What can you do? Not much, really. You’ve got to stick around because no one else is going to hire you. Well, apart from the Team Fortress Classic team, but that’s beside the point.… [Continue Reading]

On Tentacles and Lasers

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I am shit at RTS MOBA games. There’s simply too much to learn. Too much effort for too little gain. That hasn’t stopped me attempting to play Dota 2 and dicking around in League of Legends though. Weirdly though, I understand a lot of the mechanics, but my dumb fingers can’t react in time. Hence I end up playing support. I’ve always been a supporting person. In League of Legends (or League of Leg-Ends, as it says on my desktop), there’s three types of support: Healing helping people like Sona, Tank-All-The-Damage-And-Start-Fights people like Leona and Initiate-With-Some-Sort-Of-Assistance people like Thresh and… [Continue Reading]

Saxton Hale – The Tenth Class

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Preface You know, after all this time, I would have thought someone would have been able to come up with a legitimate class description for the one and only Saxton Hale.  I’ve searched the SPUF archives,  and while there are some interesting ideas for non–core TF2, as far as I know, there is no actual proposal for Saxton Hale to join the Nine on the battlefield! This cannot continue.  Every day I ask myself: “What Would Saxton Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-(breath)-Aaaaaaaaaale Do? (WWSHaaaaaD?)” and while the answer is usually “Grow a Moustache, you hippy!” today the answer to that question is “Try to Make Saxton Hale a Balanced Class in Team Fortress… [Continue Reading]

The Unbalanced Infinite-Hitscan-Range-Man

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Walking along Frontier, trying to actually do the objective, and then bam. Sniper headshots you from across the map, and proceeds to taunt, because “Snipin’ gud job m8.” I’m sure everybody who has ever played TF2 has experienced this pain at least once. My opinion has always been that the Australian Camper Van Man has been unbalanced, and some people could argue that he isn’t unbalanced because his weakness is close range, well heads up, the Jaratewacka combo exists. OK, enough talk, let’s get into why he’s unbalanced. 1. Sniper effectively counters everybody Really the only class that moves fast enough on the ground to… [Continue Reading]

Grappling Hooks would be balanced in Medieval Mode

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Grappling hooks would be balanced in Medieval Mode. Seriously. Alright, why are we discussing this? Why bother considering balance in a stupid game mode? Why bother discussing Medieval Mode at all? Because 1. it’s fun and 2. it’s currently a very one-sided game mode because the only classes with mobility are Scout and Demoman, and the only classes with range are Medic and Sniper. Of course, Medieval Mode’s one single official map doesn’t help. It has giant walls. Really high walls. The RED team are locked up safe inside until they venture outside, and once they do, there’s no way… [Continue Reading]

A Different Gamechanger

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Dedicated healers in games generally get the short end of the stick. Whether it’s having to rely on the skill of your team mates or your inability to keep up, being a healer is generally a thankless job, hence why many games go with the Combat Medic, someone who can heal but can also look after themselves, capable of surviving in a one on one fight just like anyone else. Turning back to the Team Fortress 2 Medic, he seems a tad out of line. A designer at Riot, the company behind League of Legends, once argued that it’s no… [Continue Reading]

Soldier is overpowered and we don’t care…

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In any class-based video game, you generally have some form of balance. Agile classes come with a lack of health, while power classes exchange speed for pure power, with other classes scattered between them. So the idea of a mobile, strong ace of all trade class appears to spit in the face of all this. In any other game, people would say that Soldier is overpowered. What few consider is that he may actually be so. If you look at his base stats, Soldier does seem rather mundane. High health, low walking speed, high damage weaponry with average reload times.… [Continue Reading]

Phlogisticast Episode 5

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Hey look! A SPUF-related pod cast that has lasted more than a couple of episodes! Yes, really. Seriously. Anyway, the Phlogisticast has got its 5th episode out. In it, Dekky, Thunder and I talk about goodness knows what, mostly Pyro stuff. There’s also some really awful French accents, a chat with a real life Pyro and discussions about the normal Pyro stuff. On top of that, there are plenty of tips for playing Pyro. And on top of ALL of that, we discuss Black Mesa. Yay! You want to listen? Click here! Please excuse the fact that Dekky believed the… [Continue Reading]

Remember those bots?

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Most people hate the AI-controlled bots, that were based off the AI for the Left 4 Dead AI survivors and infected. It’s not hard to see why, as many servers rely on bots to entertain the few people in the server during quieter times of the day. They’ve become the pawns of those who run servers only to make a profit. Everyone’s favourite teacher of TF2 tricks, AngrySockPuppet, even made a video about how the abuse of bots is making life a misery for people who just want to play a game of Team Fortress 2. These bots came in… [Continue Reading]