Flame the Love

Our control over fire is what separates us from the animals. Well, that and our thumbs, the ability to stand upright, our giant brains and our adaptability. And all that stuff. Fire is also what separates enemies. Set them on fire and watch them panic and run around like headless chickens. It’s a dangerous, unknown, primordial power, only used to its full potential by the most demonic of beings. So yes, Pyro. Everyone’s favourite, genderless monster. And he really is a monster. You’ve seen Meet the Pyro, right? Ignore all the frilly dancing around Pyrovison bits, that’s the sign of… [Continue Reading]

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Passive abilities

TF2 doesn’t feel like a game with a lot of passive abilities. There are few obvious ones, such as the scout’s double-jump and the Pyro’s afterburn immunity, but when you look into things, it turns out that almost every class has at least one. First of all, its debatable whether “more than 125 health” counts as a passive ability. Even though its pretty clearly the baseline for TF2, some people might consider speed and health a form of statistics instead of abilities. It’s also debatable whether any ability that requires equipping a weapon would count, like “can remove sappers” or… [Continue Reading]

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What if Pyro could Double Jump?

Pyro was always supposed to be the ambush class. He/she/it was supposed to sneak around, much like the Spy, then burn anyone he/she/it comes across, while a Spy aims for high priority targets like Medics and Snipers. That’s fine and all that, but Pyro lacks in multiple departments and often finds him/her/itself being nothing more than an Uber Stopper. Why? Because Pyro lacks mobility and a good, reliable way of getting around. So, what if Pyro could double jump? Why Pyro of all people? Surely Spy could do with a double jump? Well, I’d love to give Spy some form… [Continue Reading]

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What was up with those Alien Promos?

Valve did a pretty weird thing with the Alien: Isolation promos, what with those stat-changing qualifiers that relied on Halloween-restricted cosmetics. It was certainly a cool idea, I guess, not that I really got the chance to try them out. I didn’t pre-order the game and they didn’t become tradeable until people had long stopped wearing them. I’m honestly not even sure if it was fair of Valve to release them as promos. They were stat-changing promos, and Valve traditionally doesn’t do that since people (like me) who actually want to try the things out would appreciate a realistic chance of… [Continue Reading]

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A Pyro Story

He admired their tenacity. They were all down there, planning an attack on the newly recaptured Foundry. Again. They were gathered around the table, pointing at a map, drawing lines and suggesting ideas. All nine of them. Their Spy had gathered the intelligence. Stolen it from under the noses of his own team. He’d seemed to have recovered well from being shot in the face by his team mates. Pyro knew though that deep down, the silly little Frenchman was bitter. And why shouldn’t he be bitter? After all, he was ever so cruelly tricked. The information had been pieced… [Continue Reading]

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Flaring Up

Poor Pyro can’t seem to catch a break. Ever since his Team Fortress Classic days people have derided him as underpowered, unbalanced, gimmicky, over-reliant on newb opponents…the insults are as varied as the tools Valve has bestowed upon the poor unintelligible merc. Plenty of people have written opinions on why Pyro is underpowered (here’s mine) and even more people have written theories on how to fix that problem. Before I go into that, I want to try and sum up some fundamentals that are often brought up. Firstly, Pyro’s short-range emphasis is seen as one of his major problems since… [Continue Reading]

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Straight Upgrades In Your TF2

So let’s face it: there are weapons that, in TF2 are just better than their stock counterparts for a multitude of reasons. As aabicus mentioned in his article, there are only a handful of weapons that are objectively better than their associated stock weapons. However, we’re here to talk about ones that, while they are not objectively better, are better in almost every conceivable scenario. So let’s get right into it. 1.  Me Petite Chou Fleur. The Ambassador has been in the game for a very long time, and is basically the staple of upper-level/competitive Spy play. Knives are (usually) variable, but most… [Continue Reading]

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Why Slows Are Horrible

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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Straight Upgrades? In my TF2?

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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Feminism and Team Fortress 2

I can hear you all screaming. I can hear the thundering footsteps of tumblr-based feminists stampeding towards us. We’re all doomed. Or at least you are, since I technically don’t exist. Alright, I’m kidding, you’re safe here (although maybe not for long). But since someone suggested this topic, something that hasn’t really been covered before, I thought, why not? My stance on the whole thing is rather, well, unique… If you just look at Team Fortress 2 at face value, you’d probably deem it as ‘propaganda for the patriarchy’ or something like that. Nine men of various sizes, shapes and… [Continue Reading]

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