Kicking a** and taking names in TF2

Last night I was playing some TF2 as a heavy when Genexi showed up and provided support as a medic. In GravelPit, I had an engineer set up a dispenser on the top of the tower where the last control point was after our first two control points had been captured in less than ten minutes, and then I proceeded to stand there with Genexi and the dispenser buffing me, just holding the fire button down and spraying everything for TWENTY MINUTES.

I wish the game kept track of how many bullets you fired.

After about ten minutes of firing nonstop, Genexi was like "How much ammo do you HAVE?!".

I just laughed as my heavy yelled out "What SICK person sends BABIES to fight me?!" :-)


It wasn't all good that night though. The other team had some real monsters on it which seemed to know the ins and outs of the game better than me. For example, when I would play engineer, and set up a turret, even at full strength, they'd just blast it to smithereens in two seconds, even when I'd set it up around a corner. Nobody was getting caught by surprise by it, and I couldn't figure out how they could kill a maxed out turret so fast.

The fastest way I know of to kill a turret is either to find a spot a great distance from it and fire four rockets in a row at it, or to use a demoman to fire six of those sticky bombs all around it and detonate them all simultaneously. That works well if the turret is inside a building, where rockets don't tend to work. But the thing is, I was in a building when what seemed like a single rocket came in through the window and took out my turret in one shot.

I've heard a "zapping" noise and seen little electrical bolts when I fire my rockets sometimes, and I have to wonder if when such a rocket makes a direct hit with a turret if it doesn't do a lot of damage and sap it like a spy at the same time. I don't know how many rockets you need to fire to get that electrified one, but they apparently knew.

They also somehow managed to come out of the base with a medic at full charge, and immediatley ubered their heavy. HOW?! I know you can charge up the medic by charging people who don't need healing but that's slow...

Oh wait! I just remembered... I read about this somewhere.

What you need to do is have your soliders shoot rockets at the ground to damage themselves, and that lets you get uber before you exit the gates.

Only problem with using that strategy though is you need the cooperation of other players who know what they're doing. And most of the players on me and Genexi's team weren't entirely competent. Most of the time the engineers wouldn't build teleporters, and when they did, scouts would use them. And when I'd ask them to build a dispenser for me to fire from they would do things like build them behind a fence where I couldn't hit anything while still remaining in range of the dispenser. And when they did put up the dispenser in the right location and I would get hunkered down and firing constantly with Genexi behind healing me, we'd often get killed by a spy because nobody played pyro to spray all the suspicious people in the base.

At one point at the start of a round on Dustbowl, the engineer built the dispenser in a little building with some windows, and I had to fire from in there. I couldn't spray everything, and within ten seconds of the round start all of a sudden all four of us in the room died from backstabs from one spy, and the control point was immediately forfeited.



So there's a lot of interesting strategies in this game. Have you come up with any winning ones? As I said, the heavy with the dispenser and using a demoman to kill turrets and people holed up inside buildings works great.

Oh, and the demoman also is great at pushing the opposing team back. Because you can keep firing sticky bombs after the first six, you can just keep pressing forward into the enemy base making sure to cover the ground in front of you with sticky bombs and if any enemy approaches you can blow them up, so they tend to keep back. At first I didn't play demoman at all because I didn't think it would be enjoyable since he has no close range combat ability, but if you know how to play him right, you can get as many kills as you would as an engineer.

My record is still something like 13 with the heavy though. Engineer is only 10 I think. After last night my heavy record might be higher though.

I was playing Battlefield 2 last night, maybe I should spend more time on TF2 though, I've already bought it, but not played it that much.

Most CP_ maps can be easily won with more than 50% of your team being Scouts as each Scout counts for 2 when capturing points and you can go some faster routes with that character.
On CTF_2Forts I'm playing the Engineer everytime.

My stats: http://steamcommunity.com/id/f4ktor/stats/TF2

[edit]
Didn't read the original post properly :)
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the fastest way to kill a turret is with a spy. go invisible, get next to it and click your do hicky. then if you have invisible left click that and run.

Well, 90% of the zappers planted on my stuff I destroy in less than 2 seconds right before I kill the spy...

dmaz:
That only works if the other teams engineers are dumb and leave their turrets unguarded. If they have an engineer there then he's gonna shoot you as soon as you zap the turret, and then repair it. And if you backstab him first, then the turret kills you. Also a competent team will have heavies in with the engineers and turrets spraying everyone who approaches. It was very hard for the enemy team to get a spy up onto that tower I was on to destroy the turret for example. But it was fairly easy for a solider to do it because the heavies bullets spread out a lot over a long distance so they could stay alive if they were careful even with me firing constantly. I kept the dispenser behind me though so that they couldn't kill that with the rockets. But if I didn't have Genexi there healing me at the same time as the dispenser was healing me, then those rocket blasts would have killed me easily.

It's all about the teamwork. :-)


Now if you had a couple spies working at the same time on the enginers with one sapping the sentry and the other knifing the guy in the back, then you could take turrets down more easily, but you'd still have the guy spraying you with bullets to contend with.

That's why I like the demoman for that. I can fire from quite a long ways away like the solider. But unlike the solider, I don't have to have a direct line of sight to the turret. And I don't have to stand in one spot and make a sitting duck of myself while I fire four rockets at once to kill a turret which is being repaired. As a demoman, I can fire one sticky bomb, then hide, then pop out of somewhere else and fire another... and another... until I've got enough on the turret to blow it and the engineer and his little dispenser up in one shot.

The only danger when doing this is from people who rush me and engage me at close range. If I don't have any support from someone who's good with close range fighting then I'll get my ass kicked.

Another good demoman tactic is to get behind the enemy, and then fire your sticky bombs from behind them around their feet. They'll fail to notice that they're there and you can blow them up at your leisure. It amazes me that even after I blow up the bombs three or four times they still don't realise I'm standing right behind them. I usually get picked off by a solider or sniper or someone who's observing from a distance when doing this.

I've only seen Granary done fast via Scout Rush, all the others seem to have the points closer together to allow both teams to confront each other at the same time. Makes me wish Vavle would apply more force to the Pyro's flamethrower so it doesn't have such a crappy short distance if you're running with it, near impossible to catch a Scout with a brain.


Man, Sswift, that one round where our entire team was preparing to raid point A, just to get completely demolished from the start due to one demo's set of stickies right at the entry gate still has me rolling....

Anyways, if anyone hasn't tried it yet, 32-man servers are a friggen' riot if your PC/connection can handle them. Map gets a little packed, but the amount of class combinations you can come up with are insane......I had a team hold-off a final point for 24 whole minutes by medic/heavy'ing up while slowly pushing back with engineer sentry assistance, good times.


[EDIT] Should mention that Orange-box owners are able to pre-load Portal/Episode2 now if they haven't started that yet.

I love this game. Play as the spy and see how long you can last with no-one sussing you out. It's amazing how paranoid everyone is getting. I'm going to try and see how many backstabs I can get in a row before being killed. I saw one guy get 5 people in a row (including myself) the other day.

You know it's getting bad when you command your team's engineers to keep meleeing with their wrench to show they're not a spy....

Heck, at one point in that aforementioned 32-player server I was at, it turned into a "shoot everything that moves" match because it was getting that bad. @.@

Least Pyro's got buffed recently, as they're the best class for ratting out spies since they light up like christmas trees......


[EDIT] I have to say, I love when I get these kind of death-cams :


That engineer didn't see him coming.

Damm...I need to get this game...

It's a great and fun game and you should get it

the fastest way actually to kill a turrent is a sniper ... his bullet is multiple times as powerfull as a rocket ...
only demoman can take it out that fast.

TF2 is a great game.. i was woried it would not feel like TF (Half-life) but its better in almost all ways, the new medics are great, I never played medic in old TF but I love to be a medic healing a heavy who moves through bad guys.. pop my uber and pew pew. great sense of teamwork.

My only grip is with Scout +50% cap rate.. leads to scout rushes on granary and well, maybe lower it to 25%.

If you see SUPERTINO in your game dont kill me.. im a fellow blitzer.

Scouts are fine as-is, without the +50% cap-rate, they'd be useless for near everything except CTF, the thing that needs to be fixed it mass-Scout runs, which I guess they can implement a "diminishing results" system perhaps?


Shame there's only the one map I've played where turrets are out of range, but clearly in view to snipe safely.

Regardless, the game is still really damned balanced as-is (aside from scout-rush), typically when a game is in beta, people find a way to exploit game/map mechanics, and then hammer that to keep on winning. Cleanest beta product I've ever experienced.
(and scout-rush will likely be fixed in some way before retail)

How do you guys get servers to show in TF2? Within TF2, the servers never show for me after I refresh all.

I get that problem. I think it's to do with the firewall because all the programs are hl2.exe. If you go in to the firewall settings and manually add the TF2 hl2.exe to the exceptions it should work (well it did for me).

Check the advanced filters. Maybe something is set funny there.

Otherwise, I think Steam itself has a server browser which works for all games. You can filter for specific games there.

Swift give me some more tips and strategies ;)

also give me your nick, I'd like to play against you ;)

My nick is The Pen is Mightier, without one of those spaces. Guess which one! :-)


More tips and strategies? Hm...


On Gravelpit, when defending, at the start of the round, run to the enemy base exit at capture point A and listen to see if you can hear the enemies yelling their taunts. If you can then you can get a rough idea of how many are going to be rushing that capture point. If you don't hear any, or hear only one or two, then you might want to run to the other capture point to guard it instead.

And when attacking on Gravelpit, B is much easier to capture than A. For this reason you may want to rush A at the start, and try to cap it first, because if you cap B first all the enemies will run to A and it will be nearly impossible to get. Since the enemies probably won't know which cap point you're going to rush, they might split up their forces, so an early rush on A might make it quite a bit easier to capture.

Also when attacking on Gravelpit, if it looks like your team is just about to cap B, switch to scout and rush C via A, jumping over the shed, and running up the tower going around it clockwise to avoid being seen by turrets that may be guarding the doors to B and people running to make one last ditch effort to defend B. When you get to the top, hide in the corner and wait for B to be captured. This only works against a team that doesn't have engineers which anticipate this move though. If they have a turret on top of the tower at this point, the scout rush won't work. Best bet in that case is to go in as a spy, zap the sentry, and knife the engineer. But the spy can't cap as fast so I try with the scout first.


On the map with the trains, when the round starts, go solider, and then stand well back from the entry gates, duck, and fire rockets under the leading edge of the stationary train to blow up people who are waiting by the gate on the other side. Make sure you're not near the corner of the building when doing this though because snipers can fire through the crack between the train and the wall. And I've never tried it, but Demomen might be able to fire over these trains with the sticky bombs or under them with the bouncing grenades. They can be kinda useful in keeping enemies off the capture point too.


And everyone should know this tactic by now, but if you're an engineer and defending, build a teleporter when leaving the base, run back in and refill, then build a dispenser at your destination where you can stand between it and the enemy, and while that's building grab some more ammo, and then stand in front of that dispenser and build your sentry, so it's DISPENSER->YOU->SENTRY->ENEMY, and then just keep whacking that sentry with your wrench and the dispenser will keep ammoing and healthing you up and you will keep the sentry gun from being destroyed.

But watch out for spies, spies will easily get out of their base unscathed at the start and then zap your stuff and knife you before you know what hit you. If you can, get a heavy to stand next to that dispenser as well and fire on the enemy base, and having a pyro stand nearby and flame everyone that approaches helps keep the spies at bay.


I've been playing demoman a lot lately. Demoman sucks for up close combat but if you have a sentry gun or a bunch of people in a place which is hard to get a clear shot at with any other class, the demoman excels at destorying those. A lot of people use demomen to try to defend the capture point, but I think that's a poor strategy because you're just sitting back and waiting for people to come to you, instead of actively pushing the enemy back. Using a demoman to defend a capture point should be a last ditch effort when the enemy is about to overrun your base and you need to keep them off the cap point. As soon as that immeidate damger has passed and your teammates are alive again, I'd move off the point and use the demoman to try to push the enemy back towards their base. How do you push them back? Use the sticky bombs. Just keep moving forward, firing the stickies in front of you in groups, and when and enemy tries to rush you, detonate them. This works great in tunnels, because few people are willing to commit suicide to clear the way for their comrades, and running through a bunch of stickybombs is most certainly suicide. In open areas this tactic doesn't really work since they can just run around the bombs. But on Granary, the central capture point is in an open area, and there is a catwalk above it. If you run up there at the start of the round (watch out for snipers!) then you can fire your stickies into the crowd below and kick some serious ass in realtive safety. But you gotta watch for those snipers, cause they love hanging around on those catwalks too.

but if you are shooting sticky bombs in front of you all the time and move foward you can't detonate those boms because you will get hurt, how would you make sure that you don't get hurt when you activate the bombs??? :)

On Well (the one with the trains) a Soldier can rocket jump onto the blocking train carriage and then shoot down onto the awaiting team (A demoman should be able to sticky bomb jump to the same place).

On Gravel Pit I think it is. If you are defending and the other team is behind the mesh gates waiting to get out. The single mesh gate to the left has a small crack to the left of it. If you are a demoman you can fire sticky bombs into the crack. They wont go in but if anyone comes to taunt you, you can explode the bombs and it usually kills them. You can also fire flames through there if you are a pyro.

Another thing is if an apposing team sticks a load of sticky bombs on the bottom of gate you are waiting to get though, you can put your own bombs there and then detonate them when there is about 2 seconds to go before the start of the round. This should move the opponents bombs away at least enough to give you some getting out distance.

Maximo:
That's why I said fire clusters of them. It's not perfect, you can't just keep marching forward and always have the bombs there for you.

Let's say you have a hallway with a bunch of enemies in it. Your guys are firing, the enemy is firing. The enemy is around a corner and has some turrets too, so it's a bit of a stalemate.

If you go up there as a demoman you can fire those sticky bombs and get them in a bug cluster as close to the enemy as possible, and detonate them, and maybe you'll take out some of the enemy, but if not, they've probably moved back some to get away from them, so you can move in a bit closer and try again, pop around the corner, fire a few into the hall before you get torn to bits by the turret, and then try again. At this point someone might try to rush you, so you gotta be careful about that. But those sticky bombs you got up in the hall will keep the less brave at bay and when you get enough of those up there you can blow them to blow up the turrets. Then you move forward some more and repeat the process.

Using this method on the last section of dutbowl when attacking makes it easy to march your way up that hall to the capture point. Doesn't help with getting across that bridge to the capture point though. For that you need heavies and medics, and a spy or two.

Of course if someone tries to bring heavies across that bridge and I'm defending, good luck! I have an engineer build a dispenser and a turret and I just stand in front of that dispenser and cover that bridge in a hail of constant fire, and NOBODY gets by. Well almost nobody. A spy might sneak by on occasion, but since they have to run across the hall I'm firing into, or come up the stairs to the side of the bridge, usually I hit them a couple times which makes them visible.

Of course, if the enemy was smart, they could defeat that tactic. But they can't just try to rush the bridge with heavies. Even uber'd heavies can't march forward when they're being shot by turrets. And they probably can't when being shot by other heavies either. They need spies to zap the turrets perferably. But they at least have to try coming from the door above and to the left of the bridge. If they do that I can't shoot them all at the same time. They had a scout shooting me from there with a shotgun and he took forever to kill because he wouldn't come out when I just held my gun on the door, or near the door, and I had to keep the other heavies from getting across the bridge. I eventually killed him, but if they'd put a heavy up there while they were also attacking me from across the bridge I think they might have gotten me.

I think they eventually won though by having a spy knife me in the back, after about 20 minutes of constant shooting. :-) But that's why this is a team based game. You need to rely on your teammates to cover you, or you need to cover your teammates or your team will lose no matter how good your individual tactics are.

I'll have to try that. :-)





I don't know the crack you speak of, but if you are a pyro, you can always fire through the grates. Normally if you try to fire when you're up against the grate, it won't work, but if you back up and move forward continually while clicking the fire button, the flame thrower will fire in spurts, and some of those will make it through the grate and catch people on the other side on fire. It doesn't really do much damage though, so it's more of an annoyance than anything. :-)






I didn't know sticky bombs could move sticky bombs. :-) I was wondering about whether there was any way to counter sticky bombs. I think in the old TF you could blow them up with grenades, but in this game so far it seemed like the only way to get rid of them was to run through them. I guess rockets must move them as well? That's useful to know. Though moving them isn't as useful as detonating them...

Speaking of which, I think I saw a spy zap some once, but I haven't seen it again or tried it myself to be sure. That's sort of useful if that's the case, but there's still a good chance the demoman will know it's a spy.

I'd be playing this if I could. I hate you all. >_<

Soon though I shall have a new PC, and soon I shall shoot you all in the head.

Should be noted on Gravelpit that demoman can be lethal at Station Point B if he blows himself upwards to the second floor and camps there, stickying the point itself while waiting for victims.

I shall have to try that. :-)