Going Against the Grain – Warframe Builds Without Min-Maxing

In Warframe, it’s common to min-max a build. By that, I mean that many people build a weapon or character to excel in one specific aspect. For example, a person playing Titania might build her to maximize her Razorwing ability, while letting other abilities fall by the wayside. Or perhaps a Saryn player might put her entire kit into spreading spores as much as possible. Trinity is a good example of min-maxing, as you either put as much duration on as possible for Blessing, or you have as little duration on as possible so you can spam Energy Vampire. If… [Continue Reading]

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How to Git Gud at Lucioball

The Summer Games are here, and with them Blizzard has brought back the best seasonal game mode Overwatch has ever had: Lucioball! A hybrid of Rocket League and Jet Set Radio, Lucioball takes my favorite character in Overwatch and builds an entire sport around him, and I cannot possibly be having more fun. I managed to place into high Diamond in the new competitive Copa Lucioball, and here are some tips for bringing your game to the next level: 1. Set yourself up for the cross. This is the single most important tip in this guide. When the ball is on… [Continue Reading]

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Overwatch – Advanced Lucio Tips

After 300 hours of Lucio and 200GB of recorded footage, I’ve finally finished my compilation of highlights from my Lucio career, and I can’t be more excited it’s finally published and out for everyone to see. I’ve come an extremely long way from when I wrote this article, and I feel prepared to bring you four new tips for improving your Lucio play. These are more advanced than the ones I gave before, and are intended for those who already know Lucio’s fundamentals. 1. Bunnyhopping. Due to Lucio’s skates, Blizzard gave him different acceleration/deceleration values from the other heroes, and… [Continue Reading]

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Tactical Advantages You Can Gain with Weapon Skins

In the spirit of my old series where I cover all sorts of tiny aspects of Team Fortress 2 and the ways you can gain tactical advantages from them, I think the time is ripe to cover one of the more controversial cosmetic elements added to our favorite shooter. Cosmetic weapon skins have slowly spread across the Steam FPS industry like a plague, with Counter-Strike Global Offensive being patient zero, and for the most part their only function is to make an otherwise respectable weapon look garish or possibly badass. But is there a way to use them to your advantage? Of course… [Continue Reading]

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Somewhat basic heavy guide

We all know the general image of TF2’s heavy: He is fat, slow, easy to kill, requires no skill, loves his sandvich and above all, loves to say “pootis” while at the same time feeding the enemies you’re trying to kill. It’s no big suprise Heavy has this image because most people don’t know how to play him. But behold, for I am going to teach you the very basics of playing Heavy! And maybe one day, you will start loving that Russian guy, just as happened to me.   The skill in Heavy Before I say anything else, it… [Continue Reading]

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Practical Advantages You Can Gain With Taunts

Taunts are a silly yet fun addition to TF2 that have have grown more and more pernicious as time goes on. Nowadays they’re hard to avoid with very attention-drawing musical jingles, unusual effects, and contagious dances. But like everything other seemingly-pointless just-for-fun game mechanic, I’m here to nitpick the hell out of the entire concept, wringing out every possible competitive advantage. 1. Generic all-purpose third person. The first and most obvious, taunts give you an ability to look around corners and get a more broad screenshot of the map around you, with the only downside being the few seconds of… [Continue Reading]

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4 Even MORE Reasons to Bind a Key to Suicide

When I wrote “4 Reasons to Bind a Key to Suicide“, I was certainly expecting that to be a one-off article. When I surprised myself by finding 4 more, I once again figured that had to be it. How many different competitive advantages could TF2 possibly have for dropping dead on the spot? Well, as my recent video shows, the new weapon-pickup mechanic has introduced a whole host of new ways a player can have fun with their loadout slots by granting themselves multiple copies of weapons to pick up. As its preceding article noted, two major exploits involve the Demoman… [Continue Reading]

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Why the Tomislav is good

Whenever I see people using the Tomislav I ask myself, “why are they using it?” I’m not asking this in a demeaning way, but honestly just want to know which of its “many” upsides they are utilizing. I ask myself this even more in MvM but we’ll cover that later.   Some people actually use the silent killer attribute, I guess. Honestly in all my time being the pocket medic to a heavy that uses almost exclusively the Tomislav, we’ve only ever used the Silent attribute once or twice. He might use it while playing by himself but I doubt… [Continue Reading]

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Gun Mettle Alchemist

Cross-post from my site at and SteamCommunity Guides – Gun Mettle Alchemist A fair amount of time has passed since the release of Gun Mettle. With it came a series of core mechanical changes that made the Engineer dynamic much different than it was in years past. Many of the changes reflect the modern state of the PvP meta–in which speed and mobility are emphasized above all else. Engineer was not alone in these changes. Speed and mobility based changes were also present for the Spy–namely the Dead Ringer & Big Earner. However, that is another article entirely. For now,… [Continue Reading]

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The Benefits of Sharking

Sharking is an old but solid technique that shows up a lot in Valve games. Anyone can do it, and it can really give you a legup in some unprofitable situations. Originating from the original GoldSrc engine and surviving even to today, ‘sharking’ involves keeping the jump button (probably space bar) held down while landing in or entering deep water. The character will ‘surf’ along the top of the water maintaining their momentum, instead of sinking and blimping along underwater. Great for avoiding the dreaded slowdown of swimming. As an avid sticky-jumper I love sharking, its one of my favorite mechanics… [Continue Reading]

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