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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A Medi Gun for every situation

When you play Medic, everyone’s relying on you. In the competitive scene, people rely on you even more. They scrutinize you, right down to your weapon choice. What Medi Gun you take will make or break a game. Assuming they’re allowed, since both the Quick Fix and the Vaccinator are currently unfavourable for numerous reasons. Not because they’re both bad… But anyway, that’s beside the point. With any normal Medi Gun, you’re stuck with it until you die. If you pick the wrong Medi Gun for the situation, you screw up everything. So what if there was a Medi Gun… [Continue Reading]

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Why the Rocket Jumper is Bad for Tf2

Yes I know we have all seen Star_ and other Youtube celebrities stomp upon the lowest of pubs with this weapon, but those tend to be highlight clips. The Rocket Jumper is a weapon that completely removes your ability to deal ranged explosive damage as a Soldier, you can no longer take out sentries, you can’t properly defend a Medic, and overall you cannot do anything to support your team. But at least you can jump around to your heart’s content while the rest of your team actually gets work done. Why does this weapon even exist you may ask?… [Continue Reading]

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Soldier is overpowered and we don’t care…

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]

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The Art of the Backcap

The backcap is an under-appreciated skill these days. It seems like nobody ever sends a brave lone gunman to scout ahead and take the next point milliseconds after you finish capping this one. And while this loss of a fundamental strategy is sad for the state of TF2’s metagame, it can be quite fun if you’re willing to be the team’s backcapper. Backcapping, as the name implies, involves racing ahead to the next control point once determining (or just hoping to God) that your team can take this one alone. The two most popular classes to backcap are scout and… [Continue Reading]

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Regenerating Health and not a Medic

I have a thing about regenerating health. I like it. If I’m falling back, I can heal some of that damage I just took before I am even close to a health kit. Regenerating health though is sparse, because it counters all forms of damage over time and generally punishes people for not finishing you off. It always used to be that Medics were the only people with regenerating health, but now we have two more sources of this small but appreciated ability. When it comes to regenerating health, it’s been a bumpy ride. The Blutsauger was the original weapon… [Continue Reading]

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The Spoils of WAR!

Ever since Demoman lost the WAR! under some pretty spotty rationale regarding a propaganda contest, many people have asked that Valve migrate the Gunboats over to the Demoman, either through a wholesale migration, release of a Demoman-only reskin (the ginboats?) or a reworking of the Wee Booties. Sometimes this wish extends also to the other weapon tailored to explosive-jumping, the Market Gardener. After all, Soldier and Demoman already share the BASE Jumper and orange-painted Jumper weapons, why not go all the way? As a Demoman main, I’d adore them on a basic level. A Dapper Apple found the concept super powerful when… [Continue Reading]

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

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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Beggin’

The Beggar’s Bazooka baffles me to this very day. Why? I’ll get to that. But the other night, I did something strange and loaded up TF2 and started actually playing. Yeah, seriously. After a while, I ended up in a glitched Mann VS Machine mission, someone had put Wave 666 on Decoy and it just bugged out the whole thing. There was a never-ending stream of Scouts, Soldiers and Demomen, with the occasional random Spy or Sniper. The round never actually ended, so I decided to practice my rocket launcher aim. After enough time, someone did a restart and we tried… [Continue Reading]

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How to Attract Medics and Influence People

As a Medic main, I’ve had a lot of experience with people who want me to heal and Uber them, and people who I want to heal/Uber but they don’t seem to notice. In this day and age of loadout versatility, it’s no longer enough to be playing the correct class in a situation; you need to have the correct weapons equipped before Medics are going to start considering you a viable Uber target. Here are some tips for those wishing Medics would consider Ubering them more often. These are listed by class, and only cover classes that are considered regular… [Continue Reading]

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