Tough Break and its Signs of Things to Come

The Tough Break update rolled out an extremely healthy list of balance changes to Team Fortress 2. Spanning the entirety of its class roster and with a general trend of making each class’ stock role more defined, it provides some very clear insights regarding the direction Valve is hoping to take TF2 in the coming months. SPUF is ablaze right now with questions attempting to make sense of some of the more extreme alterations, and since I’m stuck on a five-hour plane ride without internet I thought I’d take the time to comment on some things I’ve noticed and make… [Continue Reading]

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Some other spots to get to (that aren’t that hard!)

This article’s existence is more of the culmination of a running gag than a legitimate article. It’s the Frankensteinian surgery of two articles that both sat laboriously in my Drafts folder for ages, silently judging me every time I opened up WordPress and viewed my dashboard. The earlier article began its life as “Good Offensive Teleporter Spots on Non-Payload Maps”, intended to be a sequel of sorts to this article. It’s only candidate was the first spot on this list, I added it and then continued playing TF2, confident that more would present themselves to me in time. Now here we are… [Continue Reading]

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Pass Time and other update and community stuff

I’m supposed to be working right now, even though I’m supposed to be on holiday too, but oh well. I want to write articles. Work can go fuck itself. Anyway, there’s a TF2 update that’s appeared out of nowhere. Apparently, Valve have been hanging out with with Bad Robot, who do films and stuff, and working with Escalation Studios (some other gaming company), and they’ve basically made TF2 Rugby. I’d call it Football or Soccer, but they are both lame sports. Rugby is what Saxton Hale would play, after ultimate fighting and hockey. This new Pass Time game mode (who… [Continue Reading]

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How Weapon Dropping Improved My Favorite TF2 Loadout

Let’s ignore the Ubercharge bit for a moment. The weapon-dropping mechanic on its own is surprisingly ineffectual considering what everyone started worrying about when they first heard it was going to become a thing. The weapons aren’t that easy to actually pick up, the presence of nothing but sidegrades and the fact that you have to drop a weapon you actually chose to equip means that in the grand scheme of things it’s just a fun new ability that opens up rare moments of awesome, aids in allowing players to try out skins they otherwise don’t own, and causes relatively… [Continue Reading]

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Assassinating and being hard to kill…

Power in TF2 comes from killing people. You kill your enemies then push forward. But there will always be someone waiting in the shadows to push against you. An Engineer. A Medic with Uber. A Sniper. A camping Heavy. A Demoman and his stickies. You need to take them out, but can’t afford to split up your team and waste men. How? Assassins. Alternatively, you need to quickly take out that Carry? Kill them nice and fast before they ace your team? There’s an answer for that too. Assassins. Ass-ass-ins, if you are that way inclined. What is an assassin?… [Continue Reading]

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Saxton Hale – The Tenth Class

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]

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Why the New Loch and Load is Pure Evil

The Loch ‘n’ Load. SPUF has always had a love-hate relationship with this weapon. It was loved for being able to kill sentries and how it was less spammy than its default brother, but at the same time hated because it could kill light classes with a single shot, while still being somewhat worse than stock in most situations. This weapon was changed in the Demoman update of Smissmas 2014, where the Loch ‘n’ Load was changed and has remained this way ever since. The Loch ‘n’ Load was a weapon which traded half of the stock grenade launcher’s four barrel clip size and rollers in… [Continue Reading]

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The Sword is lovelier than the Sandvich

So a German told people to write articles about what classes they love and hate in honor of valentine’s day. I think many SPUF regulars should already know what my favorite “class” is, and the strangest part is it’s not even its own class. The Demoknight is my current favorite class in TF2, or at least was before it was over nerfed into oblivion. Anyway Demoknight is more than strapping on any old shield, and to be honest I don’t even consider the Charge ‘n’ Targe actual Demoknight, mainly because while the Tide Turner encouraged getting in for awesome sword… [Continue Reading]

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On Trimping

Trimping is what separates the demoknights from the demoknaves. iReima has a great series where he turns a sword and shield into deadly instruments of ballet that let him put to shame anyone who considers the demoknight an underpowered subclass. Personally I can’t trimp to save my life. It’ll happen on accident a lot, and I mastered the minor ability to land on slopes and negate fall damage, but I use that in my sticky-jumping instead. I don’t think it’s much of a secret that when I want to play an advanced mobility class, I bust out the Sticky Jumper… [Continue Reading]

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Demoknight classification revisited

Ever since the War! update there have been Demomen who decided to equip a shield instead of their trusty Stickybomb Launcher. Over the years new shields were added, as well as new secondaries and melees designed to be used with shields. New playstyles have developed and some people use shields on a day-to-day basis. Since the addition of shields I’ve seen many Demomen using a shield, often in very different ways. In this article I’ll attempt to provide a classification of shield-using Demomen. The Grenade Knight First of all there’s the Grenade Knight. This is a Demoman who uses their… [Continue Reading]

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