Random general newbie tips I can think of from what I've seen so far are as follows:

An upgraded teleporter that stays intact close in to the action is probably the single most valuable thing an engineer can provide. A lot of the newbie engies aren't even bothering to build them.

Having four or five engies might seem like a good idea, but once the sentries nests go down the enemy team will push in ridiculously far before the sentries can get rebuilt since there's no frontliners to hold them off.

The objective is to capture the point/push the cart/capture the intel, so don't hold back!

When just shooting at people don't hold back either!

Don't forget to spy-check. Turn around occaisonally, shoot everyone you meet!

If enemy heavy + medic is RUINING EVERYTHING, especially in a small team, don't all change to spy and sniper, change to pyros, soldier, demoman and heavy, sprinkle in one plus medics, and swarm them.

Groups are more effective than running out one by one!

I keep forgetting this one myself: With the basic rocket launcher or the tank buster, shoot the ground at the enemy's feet, not the enemy. You'll catch them in the splash and hit a lot more.

Medic medic medic medic!

Forgive me if some are a bit too obvious.

SEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLL!
 

Yeah, it was a bit dumb.

I guess I needed to get the "Why would you do that?" off my chest.

Ok, well, I am apparently LESS clueless about what to do during Uber if the basic strategy is to topple sentries and anything in the way. I've just had a lot of Uber activated on me with no one around to kill or break, and they expected me to know what the hell to do with it. When I can, I rocket/Minigun Snetries anyway cause I hate them, and Not a moment goes by in a group of people that I don't spycheck like a crazy man as a Pyro.

Does the air burst do damage? I've been lighting up spies and scouts and then hitting them with the air burst, and I can't tell if they explode because the AB does damage or the fire kills them.

You mean the Compression Blast?

It does nothing but bounce back. But if you hit a soldier/demo with their rocket/grenade, you get crits.

Compression blast has a few uses.

You can deflect pipebombs and rockets with it. You can also put out team mates who are on fire. Finally you can use it to knock people around, which is potentially handy for a few things, like pushing them into enviromental hazards (like off cliffs), breaking up an ubercharge pair or just knocking someone briefly airborne so you can axetinguish/point blank flaregun them while they're on fire.

If you are some freak of nature, you can also reflect flares from other pyros, Sandman balls and Huntsman arrows.
Yes, you can get headshots as a Pyro. I've done it once. In about... 40 hours of Pyro play. Yeah.
You can also push around stickies, whether they're already stuck on something or in mid-air. I have yet to get a demo to blow himself up with stickies, though.

If you're not that comfortable with airblasting, use the Backburner. You can still airblast with it (but for 50 ammo rather than 20), but you'll have the 10% extra flame damage and 100% crits from behind.
Degreaser is for air blast fanatics due to the extremely fast weapon change. Quick-Axtinguishing heavies, quick-flare gunning people in mid-air as they burn for the guaranteed 90 damage crit.

One highly rated but underused aspect of the airblast - you can extinguish teammates that are on fire. You even get a point for doing so.


Also, I've just disgraced the forums with 500 crappy posts. Bah.

One thing a lot of medics don't realize is they're meant to charge into the sentry first to draw its fire. Ubers mean both of you are immortal, but only one of you needs a clear line of fire on the thing and getting knocked around by an endless stream of bullets and rockets doesn't help.

Hmmm... So it seems we need a general tips TF2 thread...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1..._hZ5oD-L-2.jpg

*Nods* while Heavy/Medic combos can be very powerful... Pyros who ambush them from behind can be very effective, you either kill the Medic, or you can airblast them apart, or make them waste an Ubercharge.

And remember, that's the entire Spy's job. Take ONE of them out before uber.

Oh, Engies hate them too.

So do snipersdoes Shyria :P

So, the Tomislav got nerfed. Now it's a 40% decrease in rev speed instead of 75%.

better, though personally I'd rather it have a bigger negative then a lower positive. Still valid reasons to make a quick draw heavy especially for KGB users

That's a bummer, since the tomislav made point-blank combat win against anything that wasn't another Heavy or a Sentry.

And I've seen this in my games and I wondered if any of you guys know about this. On Double Cross the enemy will sometimes get an Engineer on the roof of their opponent's base and set up a teleporter. How is this possible since only soldiers, demomen and scouts should be able to get up there?

1 word:

Wrangler

Derp, it's so obvious now.

There is also a risky crouch jumping way but Wrangler is much faster.

Yup. One of the only remaining uses for the Det-O-Matic is to rebuild your stuff once you get up there.

...Actually, how can anyone but a Gunslinger Engie actually rebuild his base once he gets up there? The regular Sentry costs over 100, so he can't even make a Dispenser unless he were to go snag some more ammo before doing his Wrangler-jump.

Yeah man first build and level a Sentry
Then do the jump
then Build a dispenser
then build a teleporter

If he throws up a teleporter then he can run back to spawn/die and grab more metal, then he can set up a dispenser and sentry on the roof.

And then there are the other engies that find said teleporter.

thats how it was always done before the stuff was move-able

Yeah, OK. So you do have to go and get metal before doing the jump.

Of course, Gunslinger Engies can drop a Sentry, do a Jump, and build the Dispenser without having to get more metal.

Wait, how do you do the jump as a gunslinger engineer? Don't you need the rockets of your own sentry to do it?

Bullets work. Slightly higher risk of shooting too many and killing yourself, though.

That's how you build on the roof above the first point in Gorge. A level 3 takes too long to set up.

No if you position yourself correctly you can get a boost from the bullets of a mini sentry.

No, but it's easier with a L3 Sentry.

Oh yes, shooting yourself in the ass so you can fly a short distance solves problems.

As does blowing your feet off so you can fly a longer distance.

But yes, Level 3 rockets let you fly more easily and safer. It just takes a long time.

Even longer if you choose to detonate the Level 3 so you can build a new one on the roof.

Well, given the position it would need to be in to get you on the enemy roof in Double Cross, it may be tactically better to leave the turret to cause chaos until it breaks, giving your Frontier Justice some fresh crits in case anyone tries to get up there to disrupt your gig.

Also a viable position.

The roof 'port is more important, anyway.

So, I had a pretty nice run as Spy today. I think I'm getting better as him. Also: The Big Earner is great. I love being able to cloak long enough to find ammo/health or re-disguise after every kill.

I'm discovering how multiple Wrangled sentries changes the dynamic of dustbowl part 3. I just set up my sentry behind the final point, then 2 other engies did the same next to me. Then we spent the rest of the match spamming bullets downrange while crouching behind our sentries to avoid snipers.

BLU team was complaining so badly about that it was hilarious.

I managed to do that right at the start in Badlands with a heavy just last night.

God I love the GRU. Run under central bridge control point, circle back and sneak up on entire enemy team.

I am a heavy ninja.

I figured out how to "Charge jump" onto the sniper's balcony in Diggeroot.

I also Have a strange pipe bomb launcher.

The heavy is actually overpowered as a ninja since most close-range one-on-one encounters result in the heavy winning unless the opponent was a heavy or slow reaction times.

Like Doublecross is fun to be ninja heavy, since all you have to do is go on the lower bridge, murdering any spies/scouts/pyros/etc. that are trying to use it too. Then you can wreak havoc at their spawn (to top that off, I've made several captures on that map as a heavy).

Ah yes. GRU/Sandvich/Tomislav heavies are great for ambushing, even with the spinup nerf.

The only way it could be better would be if GRUSteak still worked.

I found a Refreshing Summer Cooler, which looks like it will be a repeat of the Winter Crate. Is this for a 4th of July event? I hope so since this disappears in 12 days and I WANT WHAT'S IN IT!

Ok... Where do people play?

I usually play on the DI server unless it's empty.

I hang out on the tf.skial servers, those are usually almost full. I think some of the others stick around on the HALOLZ server.

The password to the halolz server is shown on their group page...they are passworded till the Noobs die down a bit.

After a week of not receiving any drops at all, I drop an overdose and a quick-fix in the same day. Great stuff :D

The quick-fix is interesting. I didn't realise the increased healing during uber also applies to the medics own regen rate- you regenerate health at a speed similar to having a medic on you. Might be good for a multi-person rush, though no overhealing hurts it. The movement speed increasing to match your target doesn't mean much other than you can pocket a scout now, but if there's a scout bailing on an incoming rush the little extra boost can help survivability.

DAMN YOU BAHAMUT!

Shiva was a better summon anyway!

Haven't had the chance to confirm but I think the Quick Fix also speeds you up with rocket jumping Soldiers/sticky jumping Demos, too.

I think the quick fix is based solely on their base movement but I'm not 100% certain.

I managed to pick one up along with a vita-saw last night. I'm a happy medic.

So speaking of the quick fix and survivability, being the TF2 noob that I am, I picked up this gun and noted the increased healing, lack of overheal, and increased uber generation. After promptly abandoning my regular old medigun in favor of this beauty, I charged up during set-up and let loose as soon as the enemy got close. I figured my lowered graphics settings were to blame for not seeing the invulnerability shield and jumped into the fray alongside my lone partner. Quickest death, ever....of all time.

There's a reason there's no ice-based weapons in TF2 you know! ;)

As luck would have it, I crafted myself a tomislav and the very next drop I got was another tomislav. So, I guess, Tomislav up for trade if anyone wants one.

EDIT: Traded, thanks :D

DIBS! PRETTY PLEASE?!

Yyyyyyeeeeaaaaah.
;)

I sincerely doubt this. The medic is, by default, a faster class than solly and demoman, so that might be what you're seeing, but if a guy rocket jumps, the game isn't going to spend any time trying to calculate his horizontal velocity just so you can keep up with him.

The Quick-Fix isn't actually all that useful, in my opinion. It's awesome if you're trying to keep an entire team healed at once, and there's nothing better for getting to the frontlines if you have a friendly Scout on your team, but the lack of overheal absolutely murders it for me.

I hear it's good for battle medics, which should speak for itself.

The Quick Fix is best used when there is more than one medic on your team. If you're running around keeping the team healed up, the other medic is free to focus on building up and deploying the more powerful ubercharges as well as providing the overheal.

It does help, though. It's the only thing that lets the Medic heal himself as he's healing his partner. 100-odd HP/second isn't invulnerability, but it's nice.

Oh I'm absolutely in love with my Quick Fix, I just didn't know different guns had different ubers at the time. I have improved since that incident ;)

Okay so, I still have yet to really play this—everything I've done so far has just been offline practice stuff.

I'd like to think I'm getting the hang of the Soldier class's basics, but I'm not really sure. Example: Is it good to aim at people's feet when using the rocket launcher, instead of higher up? Also, when it is actually appropriate to switch to the shotgun?

And so on, and so forth.

I really need to kick my recluse behavior and get to playing online.

Yes, aim at feet. Then they get popped into the air and disoriented. If you're a crackshot with it, you can then hit them while they're in midair to finish them off.

Yes, their feet is better than anywhere else. You can worry about juggles later, but you want to at least hit them with splash damage from your regular rocket launcher.

If you have the Direct Hit, though, you may want to work on either airshots or body shots if you can manage.

Shotgun is used mainly after popping someone in the air or someone tries to get away and they're more than half distance away.

-E- Half distance means mid range.

Best to answer these questions by going into online mode, trying it out for yourself and watching others do it to you.

Or we can totally just tell him, which is what happened

It makes more sense once you get a round on the receiving end though (except with snipers and spies).

Right, so I finally manned up and joined a random game. We ended up playing Capture the Flag.

This image of Pinkie Pie accurately displays the emotions I am feeling right now.http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmerndpBvs1qafrh6.gif

I'm terrible, of course, but apparently I was still one of the better players on the server—though the ones who were better than me were better by miles. Kept getting killed by this one guy who played a Scout the entire time.

Scouts are hell on wheels by design. Once you catch them, it's all good, but getting to that point is the hardest thing in the game.

Play Heavy.
Stay behind the pack.
See the Scout coming.
Fire Minigun.
?????
Dead Scout.

EDIT: I mean, yeah. If you get ambushed by one, you're in trouble, unless you've got a teammate behind ya, but otherwise...

my solution is a sentry, all that speed doesn't really help you when I got auto-aim

Against scouts, my solution as a medic is to tell my pocket heavy who is busy trying to hit the sniper on the other side of the map that I'm in trouble, give up trying to get my pocket to be useful and take out my syringe gun, try to run back to safety and get killed, then get shouted at for bailing on my heavy.

...:(

Direct Hit minicrits are also quite entertainingly scout splattering.

Although getting them is something more of a pain.

Eh, all those triple jumping scoots now make the Direct Hit even more impractical to hit them with.

Best thing I've found is to just get the Liberty Launcher and shoot at the rough area where they land. It's quick enough that they'll get hit by the splash before they jump away again.

Killing them in time is another matter. A good scout will have killed you in 3 hits, and two of those hits will be before even your first rocket.

Scouts are really a pain on maps like double cross if you're trying to be a sniper, and with good reason. Once they triple-jump over then it will only be a few moments before you're dead, especially if they're using the Force-a-nature to send you into space.

But on the other side it's amazing how many kills you can get just by shooting around the battlements (almost all classes that would give you trouble hang out elsewhere.

I just want to say...

I'm in love with the Quick fix.

Also, the Medic is now OP. That is all.

No the hardest thing is being a badass spy with smart players. But when someone yells "how my spies do they have!" and your the only one it's just fantastic.

Not quite, but I'd love for people to think that, and therefore play Medic more.

It, too am in love with the Quick Fix. It emphasizes healing in the front lines and keeping everyone alive, as opposed to just playing remora to a single Heavy.

What 'chu talkin' about? Should always overheal the entire frontline if you have a chance.

Although I would like to give the Quick Fix a shot myself once I get one.

here's a good way to categorize the medic's mediguns:

Uber: overheal the frontlines. Pop uber on a good defense crusher (demoman, heavy, whatever the situation calls for). Can't go wrong with the nice vanilla flavoring. Tends to favor pocketing, which unfortunately there's too many medics who let the team suffer for a personal score boost by doin that.

kritzkrieg: great when paired with another ubermedic to add extra oomph to a push. Falls short in effectiveness when the only medic is a kritz medic.

Quick Fix: the team player. Not really a niche medi-gun. Get your teammates fixed up quick. Damn great for latching onto a scout to get to the frontlines faster. Again, best paired with an ubermedic.

Played long enough to get the Direct Hit via achivements/milestones. I liked it, but crafted a Black Box out of it instead and now that's practically glued to me. Also got an Equalizer and Buff Banner from achivements. The former is now permanently my melee weapon, but I haven't even touched the latter yet due to two encounters with a Pyro.

Brief explanation: Tangled with a Pyro, ate my own rockets twice. Tangled with that same Pyro again, had him on the ropes, then he backed up against a wall and stopped moving. So I switched to my shotgun and finished him off instead. That got a laugh from him—I think he was expecting me to not have learned my lesson there.

Also broke down and spent a bit of money on keys because two of the items I picked up were crates and I really just wanted them out of the way. Got Natascha out of one of them which lead me to playing the Heavy more often.

And then the random drops dried up and I checked into that, only to find out that they won't start coming in again until tomorrow at 2:00 PM. Lame.

Finally, branched out onto servers that played things *other* than Capture the Flag. Specifically, I started trying Payload. I prefer being on the Attacking side, for one reason: Riding the payload is fun as hell, even if it's probably a very bad idea. Sometimes I just can't help myself. =/

Payload is one of those nice modes that works well for Brass Beast Heavies, since if you're attacking there's not much reason to run ahead of the cart. Combine that with the ammo resupply and you can basically do a perma-fire all the way to the goal if you have to.

EDIT: I recently got a Reserve Shooter as a random drop but I can't get myself to use it properly. I know this is supposed to be good for enemies launched by rockets and also enemy Scouts, but I always find it easier just to fire another rocket at my immediate threat. It also annoys me how this basically becomes the frontier justice without the crits if you can't react fast enough (if there was a soldier equivalent of the degreaser then I would probably use it more.)

I think it's more to dissuade a solly from rocket jumping in without uber. If you're on spire, and you see a soldier about to take you on, those mini crits hurt a lot more when he's trying to come and get to you.

I actually have a newfound love for shotgunning as a soldier. It's great for pickin off squirrely bastard scouts that hop around constantly. Hell, anyone that jumps/falls/airblasted/etc. is prey for mini-crits.

Carried over from the Steam thread. I'll start with CTF maps.

2fort: Blech. Always has a sniperfest on the balconies, one of which who will usually be good enough to asplode your head if you so much as scout jump across a doorway. Often also has an engineerfest which requires multiple ubers to push through each set of sentries (one set at the doorway covering both access doors to the basement, one set at the intel), and more likely than not the vengeful enemy team will gib you after picking up the intel. And due to the close proximity of the spawn, those L3 sentries will be back up already by the time you get back to where you dropped the intel. Horrible.

Double Cross: Boringineers that dump sentries in the intel room are also boring, but this has a lot of potential access routes, each with their own respective dangers. So I like it, even if quite a lot of people I know hate it. The top bridge usually has the heavy battles and snipers taking potshots from the balconies, but enterprising scouts, soldiers and demomen can jump over to those balconies and simultaneously have a lowtraffic access to the intel. The bottom bridge is frequented more by classes trying to be sneaky, as well as chasm-happy Pyros, but if you get through to the enemy basement, you can set up a good forward engie nest there or make a run to the intel from whichever direction, which usually isn't covered by a sentry.

Sawmill: Can't really offer much opinion on this one as I haven't played it much. Sentries don't seem to be very effective here as you can easily outrange them, while the ones dumped in the intel room are easy to take out with corner explosives/ubercharge. All access routes have fairly high traffic though, so you'll be in for a big fight wherever you go. Like every version of Sawmill, the saws are endless entertainment.

Turbine: Most hated CTF map. And yet just about everybody I know loves it to pieces, and actually pushed for a 24/7 Turbine map on the servers I frequent. Which replaced one of the normal rotation servers. :argh:
This is -always- an engiefest. They'll camp in the intel room and the main access to the intel room, and be tricky to clear out without simultaneous ubers. The other access routes are also impractical - the vent is narrow and often has Huntsman snipers/heavies/demos/pyros, and the other route goes right by the spawn. And none grant a good angle on the usual 2+ sentries in the intel room.
If one team's better than the other, their sentries will be moved up into the middle, leaving the other team stuck in their tunnels with their own sentry spam. Horrible, boring, leads to explosive spamfests. And people derive enjoyment from this. :wtf:

Well: Also haven't played this one in ages. I really can't remember much about it, short of the usual Well scenarios in the team buildings. The second spawn door being one-way only should alleviate any issues with the two doors having too much sentries/spam to muscle through. The intel room and associated sentries shouldn't be too hard to assault if you can group up at the roof access area, or even set up a forward engie nest there. I don't think you can use the waterways to sneak through the middle though, like the CP variant, due to the lack of a middle building.

2fort is great, my only issue is when half of both teams go defensive engie (it gets bad enough when you have 3 sentries on intel, with on that's wrangled so it can randomly spycheck the place.)

But there are many great ways to take advantage of the place (in the water a sentry is hard to spot and harder to avoid) and you get reasonably quick access to the place (I've started to master the rocket jump and boy you can mess up their spawn if you fire a crocket from where they least expect it.)

2fort is TERRIBLE. Part of it's due to the fact that the intel is in the most sentry-campable room this side of Turbine, and part of it's because of the infinite sniper wars taking place at all times.

Seriously, snipers just ruin 2fort. On any given day you'll have at least 25% of your team wasted on a class that will do little aside from neutralizing the same class on the opposite team. But then again, if you don't have enough snipers on your team, then you won't be able to get through because the only route that bypasses the enemy snipers (ie, the tunnels) actually alerts the other team to your presence because the splashes you make can be heard from either spawn.

Turbine is pretty terrible too, I'll admit. I like it a little more than 2fort because at least the "no man's land" area isn't sniper paradise, but it's just as limited in its approaches - you have one obvious tunnel, one vent shaft (that ALWAYS has other players coming through) and one route past the enemy spawn.

I <3 Doublecross though especially now that the scout has the Atomizer. If the intel's unguarded you can cap it in something like 30 seconds flat.

I jumped into playing Medic yesterday since the random drop system gave me two syringe guns. So far it's actually kinda fun, though my mouse is old and busted so I have to click repeatedly to actually heal people sometimes.

This brings the number of classes I've played for any serious amount of time to about five. I've barely touched on Scout, played Sniper for all of twelve seconds, and have yet to even think of trying Engie or Spy. I should rectify that—I started playing Pyro and Medic solely because of random drops favoring them, so why not Spy (I've gotten multiple pistols, one dagger, and a spy watch so far)?