f13.net

This deserves a new thread.

Teaser trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzc0bsj98bY)

I guess I'll copy what I posted inot the older TF2 thread over here, since it has it's own thread...

That's a cool video :)

Will be interested to see what they do. Engineer has got to be one of the most challenging to balance classes.

There was a blog post (http://tf2.com/post.php?id=3539&p=1) a while back about one of the engy update ideas they had that didn't pan out.  I'm still waiting to see some of the others.  They have to have prototyped some kind of sentry gun mech at some point.   :awesome_for_real:

 :grin:

There's a blueprint in the background of that video - looks like a robot/mech/android sort of a thing.

It'll either be a let-down, or people are gonna shit their pants even more than they do already about the engineer.

The passive-aggressive nature of the Engineer class annoys me greatly.  :oh_i_see:

Epic new comic (http://www.teamfortress.com/loosecanon/) posted today.

'BOUT TIME.

 :drill:

Haha, the comic was great.  I love the back story they're building up around TF2.  Looking forward to annoying people even more with my Eng.

That backstory was fucking awesome.

I am sad to hear we aren't going to see Saxton Hale and Steve Jobs fight to the death.

Fuck the engineer update, I want old timey TF2. NOW.

You suck.  True story.

Are we already to the point where Tf2 prior to the medic update is an "old timey" thing?

C'mon, you'd get to be Tesla. That counts for something!


I don't think you understand what I was asking for.

Also, Abe Lincoln class.

Yeah, I was just going to comment on that.  I want to play Abe Lincoln with a flame thrower.

Somebody needs to make a League of Extraordinary TF2 Players mod now.

I misunderstood what you meant as well Sjofn.  I thought you wanted TF2 before all these fancy shmancy updates.

Aw, no, I wouldn't ever wish that. I didn't even play the game back then.  :grin:

This would be Legendarily Awesome. For Real.  :drill:

Everyone has seen this now, right? http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/

So apart from a slightly better shotgun, what else is New?

Doesn't look like they're done revealing it yet.

Ya, the blog (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4026&p=1) explains how they're rolling the announcements out.


Basically, whenever someone crafts an item there's a chance that they get a golden wrench. There will be a total of 100 golden wrenches given out, and every time 25 wrenches are given out they will release new info on a weapon. So far, 26 have been given out.

What is it with them and crafting.

Its like vehicles in Wrath of the Lich King, a stupid mechanic that they are going to make work come hell or high water.  Unlocks were bad enough, and I've thus far refused to craft on principle.  They really need to just give everything out.  If they MUST leave item finding/unlocking/crafting in, leave it to cosmetic items only.

I am slightly annoyed that once again they're rewarding people who have backpacks full of unused junk.   :awesome_for_real:  I always smelt my weapons ASAP to keep my backpack looking tidy and this makes twice now that I've regretted that policy (the other time being when they changed the blueprints to make smelting cheaper).

Oh hey, day 2 of update up. (http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/)

(http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/images/achievements/SIX-STRING_STINGER.jpg)
 :drill:

The Wrangler provides two things I've wanted for a long time: the ability to tell my sentry to shoot at spies, and the ability to tell my sentry to spam rockets in the general direction of annoying snipers.  The 3-second cooldown is pretty brutal, though, since it means no repairing or restocking your gun in the heat of battle.

You just need one engy repairing all the guns of the 3 guys wrangling their guns.

So far, it looks to me like the shotgun is for offensive engineers and the wrangler for defensive, hypothetically.  I'm interested to see which direction the new wrench leans.

The Wrangler might be a decent offensive tool as well, since the doubled firing rate means a level 1 sentry can be quite a bit more useful.  Still much more useful if you have a buddy to work on repairing and upgrading while you steer the gun.

I suppose, but I don't think it would be nearly as powerful on offense as a level 1 gun + frontier justice.  Remember, you are effectively disabling yourself to use it, and you shouldn't underestimate the power of sentry + shotgun.

OMFG, fuck that wrangler. I expect the shielding effect to get nerfed promptly.

As if certain sentries were not a pain in the ass to kill as it is. I use to be able to get plenty of sentry kills as a sniper, but with a damn shield....ugh.

Though nice effects can be had by killing the engineer in a coordinated attack.

Remember, the engy can't repair the gun while the wrangler is active.  If not for the shield the gun would be gone in two rocket hits.

Yeah, a shield + repair is going to be well nigh invulnerable though unfortunately.  A full compliment of demo stickies might do it in one shot but it'll be close.   Of course, sappers will just be even more key here, as I have to imagine it will disable the shield. (That thinks operational! Spy will get that shield down, we just have to give him more time!)

Plus, the Engy with that Wrangler thing is going to be a sitting duck for snipers and spies.

Yeah, a Wrangler Engineer SG will be MUST easier to kill than a normal SG- stab the engy, sap the gun in the 3 sec window.

I suspect some engineers will just sit in the spawn to control, so that can't happen.  But that allows a free sap anyway.


What will end up happening is two engies in the spawn while one guards the nest and chases out spies. 

Hah.  Everybody on that wrench list has changed his/her name to 'So and So Gold Wrench."

You're assuming it'll work from any distance, it's probably got a range that ensure the engy will be vulnerable. I've got visions of getting backstabbed within 20 seconds of trying to use this. You also forget that it means sentry guns now rely on humans to target them, for the majority of engineers this means they'll probably be nowhere near as accurate.

Judging from the blueprint picture, I assumed you'd have to aim at it.

So, movable sentries.  (http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/engineer_photos/)

If this is legit then this could get very, very interesting. Build up a level 3 sentry outside of spawn and then transport it wherever you want.

I'm betting the tradeoff for a movable sentry is that you can only build it to level 2.  (Note that the sentry in the picture is level 2.)  It will still be incredibly useful for offensive engies who are constantly wanting to push their lines forward.

Looking forward to the cheese that will result from this.  Spawncamping with sentries and that sort of thing.   :awesome_for_real:

I'm actually not all that intrigued by the idea of a moveable sentry.  I do think the use would be bigger on defense than offense though.  If the enemy never knows where its going to be it makes it a little trickier to take down (but not much).  Offensive engineers don't build guns past level 1 generally anyway, so its not that big a deal to just rebuild a million times.   

I view it as a little trick engineers can use to gain a slight upper hand (because lets be realistic, sentry guns are effectively worthless against a player that knows what they are doing).  There are only a handful of gun placements I can think of that even require an uber to kill, and this is just going to keep people on their toes a little bit, which I think is a good thing.  Gimmicks like the sentry gun and spy have the somewhat odd property of becoming less good the longer the game has been out, so they've got to give those classes lots of extras to stay even.  I mean, a soldier with his vanilla weapons is still a beast.  A spy with his normal watch is ok, but there is a reason not many people use it anymore.   Or, think of it another way: Imagine how overpowered the watch that lets you stay invis while not moving would have been at launch.

Anyway, back to Engy, this is just keeping up the jonses for Engineer, and they've needed a buff for quite some time to be viable again (heck without level 3 teleports and dispensers, I feel like engineers would be VASTLY underpowered right now), so hopefully these tweaks will help.

It's out! (http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/)

I am severely underwhelmed by the mini-sentry thing, unless we get to build like five of them at once.  At half the stopping power of a level 1 sentry it seems like a scout could run up and bat it to death.

Very excited for the 3 new payload maps.  They have to be better than Hoodoo, right?

And there's a new wrench(?) called the Southern Comfort about which I have not seen any information other than the name in the patch notes.

The biggest thing for me is 3 new payload maps, yeah, I like payload the best out of all the formats.

EDIT: I think the new wrench is just a reskin?

They almost never just do reskins.  I heard a rumor that it's a bleed weapon like the sniper's shiv.  (Which got a needed nerf this update.)

Could be. I think they said it came out of the community project, do those items typically still have different stats?

Always. Here's the full list (http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Weapons)

Gotcha, I hadn't been playing for a while and I guess I missed most of that stuff going in.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaay new payload maps yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Hmmm, mini sentry is an interesting choice.  Its less likely to get kills, but probably similarly likely to get assists.  Both worth taking into account when using the Frontier justice.  The build time is worth more than the 30 metal in my opinion.    The +25 hp is interesting as well.

I had to assume it would be an offensive choice, though I think whether or not its truly better than a normal level 1 sentry I'm not sure.  The total package is enticing though.   

One current wild card: can the mechanical hands thing repair other people's equipment?

If the gunslinger can't repair or upgrade across the board, the lack of upgradable dispenser and teleporter makes it a complete joke.  I'll try to reserve judgement on the mini-sentry but I can't fathom it being that useful.

Ugh, what a miserable fucking night, I had forgotten how much I hate release days for this stupid class updates.  I always get excited until I realize I have to do all this stupid bullshit to unlock things.

Movable sentries may be the best thing ever.

I'm a little shocked, none of those unlocks are batshit retarded.

I can see most engineers carrying the wrangler, but only activating it to cover long range attacks or spy nonsense. Maybe a wrangler/gunslinger combo will be worthwhile for the fire rate increase.

But these unlocks all appear both balanced and class relevant. Wtf is going on?

Well, they DID playtest this for a very long time. It's good to see outright positive changes.

I barely even looked at the achievements, played engy "normally" (as normally as one can on a team of six engies), and got the first milestone in about an hour.  Plus the new wrench as a random drop about five minutes after I logged in.  I would have all the weapons by now if I hadn't taken a break from engy to have fun blowing shit up instead of having fun building it.

Whenever someone whinges about how tedious it is to unlock the new weapons any more, I can only come to the conclusion that they just really hate playing as that class.   :why_so_serious:

What... what happened to movable level 2 sentries? :(

Played a bit last night. I have never seen more than 3 engies on a team, had six on the team last night. Played as pyro/soldier/sniper before logging. Teleports were no problem.  :awesome_for_real: Shit there were sentries EVERYWHERE.

I will say that Payload Thunder Mountain is a fucking awesome map, especially the last stage with the twists and turns up to the final column. I expect once the engy craze has died down, this will be a spy and sniper wet dream map.

My record was 9 engineers and 3 misc. It's especially frustrating for how infrequently I run across genuinely good engineers while playing normally. Where were all those 9 assholes last month when our team needed an extra teleporter?

You can move them Bhodi. Heck, I was running around with a level 3 in my pocket for a bit last night.

They were playing spies, ganking heavies on the cart for top score of course.

I'm looking forward to a return to sensible class balance.  I was having more fun playing offensive engineer BEFORE the patch.

The mini sentries seem.. lame. I could stand and duke it out with one on a scout using a pistol pretty easily.

All the payload maps with 10 engies per side, however, is both hilarious and depressing. Watching people PUSH KART while laying down a suppression team of level 1 sentries is hilarious.

The find mini sentries incredibly easy to deal with so far, because most people don't seem to know how to play offensive engineer.  Free kills!

You can move ANY building now.  Automatically.  Walk up to one of your buildings, right-click, and it goes into a box in your hands.  You're then in the "placing a building" mode with the blueprint/wireframe.  When you place it, it takes about the normal amount of time to build, but when it finishes rebuilding has whatever attributes it had when you picked it up (level, kill counts, ammo amount, times used, whatever).  Carrying a built building slows you down a bit.  You can teleport while carrying a building.

It's pretty awesome.  As I suspected, it makes pushing an offensive (or defensive) line up MUCH easier.  I didn't even really notice the new weapons last night because the movable building thing on its own is such an engy game-changer.

It also allows you to build your sentry up to level three right by your spawn, and then deploy it on the front line all ready to go.

Yeah, I see a lot of people doing that, but I don't think it's quite as useful.  Having a level 1 sentry now and a level 3 sentry later is better than just having a level 3 sentry later.  But that's assuming you have a good supply of metal and decent protection at the front line -- on maps with a scarcity of metal at the front lines the "build at spawn" trick is pretty handy.  

What I did a couple of times on those maps was drop an entrance, sentry, and dispenser at spawn, run out, drop an exit just behind the front lines, run back, upgrade the sentry and dispenser, and then teleport to the front lines with them.  Pretty nice little pipeline since as each piece is building I'm out putting the next piece in place.

Yeah, I think the moving buildings is probably the biggest change so far.  My favorite thing so far: Uh oh, uber incoming, pick up my sentry, run away, come back 10 seconds later, redeploy.

The Wrangler seems pretty bad so far, I think it'll end up being good for those who are willing to spend the time getting good at shooting it, but its hard to aim, and I don't think its more effective for a single engineer than gun + shotgun if doing max damage is really your concern.  Toss in a second engy to repair/resupply it, and its starting to be pretty scary, but thats literally 1/6 of your team devoted to just that.

The Frontier Justice is good, but I'm not sold on it, having 1/2 the clip size is a pretty big deal.  I think it could do with a 4 shot clip instead of 3.  I haven't had a chance to really test on the offensive engineer combo on a 5 point capture map though, which is where it should excel, so I'll reserve judgement on the FJ/mini sentry until I can give it a good shot.

I haven't gotten to use the Wrangler yet, but being on the receiving end of it has been absolutely terrifying.  It might be less so once there aren't four of them all spelling each other with at least two of them spamming the fuck out of my spawn door (from across the map, mind you) at any given time.

This actually will make a huge difference on maps where there's a warm-up prior to the start of the map... Not only now will teams burst out of the spawn with an uber, but also a fully built sentry that then becomes mobile.

On most "offense vs defense" maps the blue team's spawn is a no-build zone, so it won't be an issue there.  Could make for some interesting shenanigans on maps like cp_well, though.

How do you people find servers?  I seem to have poor luck when I go looking for one.

I think a lot of the engie changes were focused on tag team engineering. It seems like they want to make it as viable to have two engies as it is to have two soldiers.

The Wrangler is vicious for area denial. The amount of firepower it can deliver is awe-inspiring. There's a reason there is a red laser of death attached, and it's not just for aiming the thing.

First I check my favorites to see if any are not full and not empty.

If that fails, I use the server browser, filter out tags that correspond to things I dislike (anything with "crit", "spawn", "dmg", or "custom" is usually no good since I like vanilla), filter out empty or full servers, and sort by latency. 

Then I start trying servers. 

If I find one that was pretty good I add it to my favorites for next time.

Alternately you could friend Samwise on Steam and then just stalk him from server to server.

I play wherever I have friends playing as long as the server doesn't have a dumb ruleset. It generally works well for me.

I'd only recommend that option if you're on the west coast.   :awesome_for_real:

I usually play on The Druken Brawl 1 or 2 (2 is my preference, as it has no crits and only has the competitive maps installed).  If I'm feeling more casual I play on the Furry Fortress.  Yeah, the furry's have a good TF2 community apparently, so sue me.  :pedobear:

Edit: Feel free to follow me into any of my games, im in the f13 steam group, name is SnuggleZhenya

Dude the Wrangler combined with the Mini Sentry is a deadly combo.  It might even be OP.  It's like a sniper with a shield that allows you to hide behind a corner and still kill people.  It's not instant death or anything, but fuck.  I think it will just take me some getting used to offensive Engineers.

Just... don't look at the sprays.


The update has been a lot of fun so far - that's what I would be saying if this update didn't turn my game's performance from Okay to Pure Shit.

It just so happens I -am- on the west coast!   :awesome_for_real:

I'm absolutely loving movable buildings


I'm in the same boat as Soulflame and looking for a good server (midwest preferred). Is Schild the only one with invite privs to that or can someone else invite? I put my name in the Steam community thread but I saw a post with him saying he was really busy which is why I ask.


Edit: Also, I'm guessing it's just because it's patch day (I normally don't play for a few days on patch day) but is anyone else lagging really badly when starting matches or when control points are captured?

I'll probably be playing more TF2 starting this weekend as a palette cleanser between ME2 and other games. I, too, have posted in the steam thread. Just 'sickrubik' on zee steams. well, right now I think its [SLAP] sickrubik or some such.

... Yes.

Spoilered for bloodworthiness:

That?  Right there?  Goddamn hilarious.

I've only gotten the shotty upgrade so far, but I've been having the time of my life as a spy. It seems to be a general consensus that when a spy is sapping your buildings, it's best just to try and repair them instead of killing said spy  :awesome_for_real: I've killed 7 teleporters at once in front of their spawn, it's quite easy to blend in with 6 engineers running around in the same space.

The only way I play the new maps is on a server with class limitations. Payload maps with both teams that are 80% engineers is a turtle of epic proportions.

Okay, I have to eat my words on those mini-sentries.  They're pretty awesome.  Being able to just drop one right in someone's face and have it start shooting him is  :awesome_for_real:.

I think part of the problem at the moment is that a lot of defensive engineers are still using them because "ooh its new" when its clearly inferior when you intend the enemy to be walking into it.   I think the Normal Shotgun/Pistol/Gunslinger is the best offensive engineer combo though.  Its intended to make you into a death matching class, as you've noticed.  Just toss out that mini sentry and get to fighting.  I just don't think most people have figured out that playstyle yet.  A mini sentry should be treated as a strictly disposable distraction/light damage dealer to support your shotty.   The quick build time ensures that an enemy has to deal with it, even if you lay it down in battle, which is great, as you noted. 

The 3 shots in the Frontier Justice is just not enough, crits or no, in my opinion.   Without the crits, you are in big trouble, and win the crits it means you have just lost your sentry to begin with.  If you are playing defensive engineer, it might be worth it though, because if you just lost your gun, suddenly those crits look real good.  Kind of the opposite of what I was expecting in terms of that weapon.

Got my Wrangler.  Sweet Jesus is that thing fun, although I think it's only really useful in limited situations.

Also, finally got Sap Auteur, which was my last spy achievement, and got Division of Labor (my last heavy achievement) on engy update day.   :drill:

Yeah, thats how I feel about the Wrangler as well.  I mostly gimmicky, but it is fun.  Also, there are a few real cheesy spots where you can shoot at people from a LONG way away, especially on custom maps

I've only played with it on pl_hightower so far, since I just got it.  Set up sentry on the middle tower, hope they don't kill it before it finishes building, and then spray them with bullets as they come out of their building.  The I'M KING OF THE WORLD feeling only lasts until they get someone to rocket or snipe you from the angle you aren't looking at.  It is, however, a fantastic distraction if the rest of your team takes advantage of it.

I love payload maps, but I hate payload race maps so fucking much. They burn me like elven rope.

The new payload race map is the fucking devil.  I've seen a grand total of ONE completed.  All the rest either had a map timer and ended after a fucking hour, or I logged out after screaming at God.  There is no fucking way anybody completes that on a pub if the other team has at least two engineers.   

Huh, I don't think I've seen a stalemate on it yet.  Eventually one team or the other manages to lock down the area long enough for the elevator to go up.  My main problem with that map is that the entire "race" comes down to that point; getting the cart that far is trivial and might as well just be skipped.

Except for the one match that finished, I've never seen the cart make it through the long shed near the opposition spawn.  It always gets near the cliff side and stops right at the entrance of the shed, because the other team turtles the shed.  

The issue is the class balance right now. An uber and nobody blocking it properly can clear every engine out of the shed. As long as you have enough backup to try and exploit the opening, it works out. Sadly right now it's hard to get more than 3 people to stop sniping or building turrets and actually assault that hill. I'd actually rate backburner pyros as the leading cause of perma stalemates, since they can singlehandedly reset that cart down the hill if they get a lucky spawn.

I've heard a rumor that this "uber" does exist, and is initiated because of a class called "medic."  If this class does indeed exist, your solution may work.

Hey, we have all these engineers now because there was an engineer update, right?  They should, like, do a medic update, and then we'd be up to our eyeballs in medics.

Medic was the first class updated, when that update happened; pubs were just as unplayable as they are now... Actually, it was worse back then because the achievements were mind shatteringly retarded: IE: "Bonesaw 50 people".

(http://wackyiraqi.com/wtf/sarchasm.jpg)

The worst part of the medic update wasn't just the retarded achievements, but the fact that you were supposed to get ALL of them to unlock the weapons.

The new payload race map is a bit stalematey, yes. The matches I played on it did all *eventually* end though. I think I actually like it a little better than that long skinny 5 stage one - hightower? That one feels a little imbalanced on the side of the defender to me, although it is hard to know for sure with the overpopulation of engineers at the moment.

Oh god, don't remind me.  The jackass that I am stayed up literally all night grinding out every last one of theme.

This is exactly where our games stalemated, every time. The server I was playing didn't have a timer on it, so eventually one team or the other would basically let the other team win to make the hurting stop. I finally just stopped playing (because it ALSO wasn't switching maps until 4 more completions of the fucking thing) and wept.


EDIT: Later on in the day I played on a team where NO ONE was playing an engineer. I thought about switching but was afraid it was a trap.  :ye_gods:

So THAT'S where on the doll the achievements touched you.   :ye_gods:  My sympathies.

Yeah, my problem is that I like to have all the options available to me, even if Im not going to play with them right away, so I force myself to grind out all the unlocks as soon as I can.    I don't even care about the achievements themselves.

I just used achievementunlocker.exe.

And I still got the halo because I was an early adopter of cheating and did it before they started tracking it.

I had to switch my medigun to the level 1 version, so I could uber heavies.  I was sad.  :(

Yeah, finding a medic on servers now is impossible. I actually switched to medic the other night because our team was getting its ass handed to it, and we won because of it. Not that anyone noticed of course, they were too busy building and assaulting turrets.  :awesome_for_real:

I did finally get to play as an engie with this. Moving buildings is fucking awesome. I'm still unsure where to place the sentries, but it does make the class more fun when assaulting. The two new payload maps are fan-fucking-tastic.

Prospero and I did some serious heavy/medic and demo/medic-ing the first day of the engy update, which is how I got Division of Labor and Tam O'Shatter in one night.  We were a two-man wrecking crew.

I was playing a medic some, but I hate being the only one, because inevitably everyone starts screaming for a medic AND CAN'T HEAL YOU ALL OH GOD.  :cry2:

Pyro was a good time, even though my average lifespan as one is about 2 seconds. I really, really love setting spies on fire, and there were so many engineer nests to camp!

There is no greater glee than setting one of those fucking Dead Ringer spies on fire as he tries to escape, and staying right on his ass until his invulnerability wears off.  And then hoisting your flamethrower triumphantly over his charred (real) corpse.

This is so true, man I hate the dead ringer.

My pyro lives tend to be short, bright, and take a lot of people with me.

edit: last night's hightower map also showed me that Pyros are bullshit with airblast.

Basically, that evil shed/tunnel of doom? Two pyros spamming airblast on anyone who comes around the corner, knocking them off the cliff instantly. Such bullshit.

Yeah, that seemed to be the problem more than the engineers, honestly. I'd uber someone to go clear out the tunnel and immediately one or both of us would be knocked off the cliff. And then when I switched to pyro, I totally did it myself.  :oh_i_see:

It seemed to work best when we went in from the top with exploding stuff and then the heavy/medic people came around the bottom side while the pyros were distracted by the hail of grenades and rockets.

Why let him run? Just airblast him into a corner and wait for it to wear off.

Malakili has seen how truly awful I am at soldier now.  :why_so_serious:

Do you always play on 32 player instant respawn servers.  My god I had forgotten what its like and why I stopped playing on them. Utterly destroys game balance.  :ye_gods:

I pretty much play where ever my sister (the [SLAP] Shield person, who is WAY better at the game than me) picks. Then she makes a point to kill me with her goddamn flare gun or shovel or wrench or whatever.  :grin:

Ah.  Well, fair enough.  Just so nearly impossible for offense to win with instant respawn that it really just turns into a screw around/death match fest, which is ok sometimes, but not really my cup of tea.

Yeah, I prefer servers that aren't instant respawn (although I don't care at all about the number of people), but I'm not very picky. I have seen those maps get won by offense on that server, just not very often.

The new payload race is less painful today, I don't know why. Probably because people are figuring out how to play it?

I've actually only played it twice, though I didn't find it that problematic to begin with.  One stage is definitely the way to go for PLR maps, which I think they figured out after that pipeline map flopped big time.   A soldier or two applying pressure to the top of the enemy ramp is usually more than enough to counter whatever they've cooked up to defend it.  Then again, the direct hit is just too darn good against buildings, and there are a LOT of buildings going around right now.

The matches I was on with Sjofn the reason it didn't suck was 1-2 engies/team. I rarely ran into turret nests, but I DID constantly run into the 3 pyro bullshit brigade.

I hate your sister, Sjofn. But I did laugh quite a bit at the whole "mom liked me more" bit <3

I'm glad someone besides her laughed at that! But god, she is so annoying. And she's like that no matter what she plays. And she is a COLD BLOODED KILLER. She killed her best friend with a shovel and laughed about it.

I dread when the engineer glut finally ends and she starts playing that again, the frontier justice is going to kill me ten thousand times, I just know it.

I love the shovel killing story! It's one of my favorite.  :drillf:

Should I make sure to tell her she's my favorite of your siblings?  Would that afford some protection?

No, she'll still stab you. She'll just stab you lovingly.

You should make nice with Sjofn, she tends to medic and follow heavies or lacking that, anyone she recognizes who may wind up not completely sucking.

Or failing that, my fail solider.

I've been trying to do this, but I just can't get it to work. I think the interface is kind of getting in the way. I wish they would implement the mini-sentry as a kind of constant alt-fire like the demoman's stickies. Just right click and it drops where you're standing. The lag time of having to open the build tool, select the gun, drop it, then go back to shooting someone just confounds me. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Should only 3 keystrokes, 4,1,click.  Maybe 1 extra keystroke if you don't do fast weapon switching.  Shouldn't take too much time.

You can also write a little macro for it too, I should think.  I'll mess with it tonight.

I do agree that dropping a mini-sentry should be an alt-fire action, though, for how much more often you do that than plant any other building.  Either on the gunslinger or globally (the only other alt-fire actions the engy has are only available when placing a building or wrangling a level 3 sentry).  I wouldn't be surprised at all if that were in an upcoming patch.

Your soldier is fine! I have to uber you earlier than I would like sometimes to get you to move towards the scary engineer nest I was saving my uber for, but whatevs! Better than Random Pyro #87 who charges AWAY from the giant group of flammable enemies when I uber them.  :cry2:

But yeah, nothing really keeps you safe from my sister except being on her team. She hungers for blood.


You know, I totally assumed it WAS an alt-fire thing. How silly that it isn't!

Sometimes this game makes me rage so hard, like every time I'm on a team full of people who get totally stymied because they don't understand how to take out sentry nests.  I can only do so much myself and when I'm working my ASS off and the rest of the team is circle jerking around our own sentries because they are afraid to die it makes me want to punch a hole straight through my wall.  :angryfist:

Ooo, I'm the exact opposite of that! I run screaming into the teeth of the enemy every time! FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

I really suck at this game and just have fun blowing stuff up as a demoman.

I downright suck at this game, but I still have fun with it.  Most of the time.

I either latch onto someone who seems to know what they're doing and heal them to victory, or I run screaming at the enemy with a flamethrower.

Sometimes the latter is way more fun.

I'm usually the same, Soulflame, although lately I've decided to suck total ass at being a soldier instead.

I feel like I come in at the lower edge of mediocre. Sometimes I finish on top of the list for a stage but it is almost always when I play a heavy and just push leetle cart to victory.

You contribute to your team winning and get points for it, genius valve!

Seriously though, I think this is one of the things TF2 does better than a lot of games, you really do get points for playing your class well and completing objectives.  I think the scout probably gets a little shafted on points as compared to the others, but thats about the only class that I think is as such.

Yeah, if I want to get points, I heal my way to the top of the chart.  :grin:

Pyro could use some points for popping an uber back. Like maybe .5 for each push of an uber; but other then that I think everything is fine for the most part. Thankfully, they recently gave pyro a bone by giving him points for extinguishing flaming teammates.

Yeah, pyro is the other one I was considering mentioning, but considering how much more viable it is in terms of points than it was at release, I decided not to.   I think the pyros biggest problems are map related though, instead of scoring related.  He is an ambush class at heart, even with the air blast addition of the pyro update (when was that even? Probably a long time ago now), which makes him pretty useless on offense in any offense/defense or payload map.

I love the pyro, I just wish there was more too him; like... Mobility. Airblasting rockets to perform your own rocket jumps is an impressive trick; but not really practical.

I love playing a pyro on offense on a payload map, because spies LOVE to backstab everyone pushing the little cart. I kill almost as many of them cart pushin' as I do when there are 500 engineer turrets they're trying to sap.

They used to get 1/2 a point for an extinguish, now it's a full point.

The number of engies has stayed really high since the update and it drives me absolutely nuts.  Tf2 has turned into pop the sentry.  Its nearly impossible to break the defenses on any final point in an A/D or Payload map now unless you can manage to talk your team into actually building multiple ubers with the 4-5 sentries you see. 

My love hate with the game continues though.  Sometimes really fun, sometimes supremely frustrating.

Yeah I keep feeling like I should learn spy with all the engineers that are around now, but the initial time-to-live for a newbie spy is so low that it is really frustrating to get started and I always just end up switching back to something I know.

A single uber with a helpful spy hitting at the same time can take out pretty much any defense.

The problem is most pub players have no patience and get all offended ("don't tell me how to play") if you do so much as make a suggestion about what we should do as a team.  When I play on higher quality servers (more competitive players) the number of engineers drops dramatically because they become effectively useless if the enemy team is competent.

Thats always been one of my least favorite parts about TF2 actually, the competitive game and pub game so drastically different.  I also forget when I'm playing that most people HAVE NOT played competitive games, so they don't see whats happening in the same context as I do and I get frustrated when players make obvious bad choices.  I shouldn't blame them though :)

To be fair, any good fps is going to suffer from that. Remember air strips in BF1942? On pubs it was camped by planetards who were being camped by snipetards. As a pilot in my clan, it was so odd playing on pubs because I was always used to running to MY PLANE, that was always there unless the opposition stole it. I usually didn't bother flying on pubs, even though it was hilarious the body count you could rack up without any serious opposition...if you could get in the air.

That's actually one thing that bugs me about TF2, I know that in this game I'm only marginally effective for my team and it's probably bothering anyone who knows what they're doing. Ah, well.

Yeah, whenever I play I'm one of the total pubtards who walks into sentries repeatedly. I still have no idea how to destroy the things, and demo is one of my more played classes. What amazes me is that a lot of the time half the people who are below me in points are people who have been playing just as long as I have. I must conclude that at any point in time, most TF2 pubs have like two guys with KDRs in the eleventy billion range and if you're not one of them, anything above 1:1 is pretty awesome.

It's how I sleep at night.

Whenever I start to feel down about how I suck at TF2, I set a couple of spies on fire and feel better. Setting spies on fire makes everything better.

Launching spies off cliffs is even better...er...

I wouldn't be surprised if that was true.  I am most often in the 5:1 range if I am playing with no support, if I have a pocket medic I can easily get to 10:1.  Thats just shameless though, so I'll get to the point now:

Regarding sentries, you need 3 stickies at the base of the sentry to kill a level 3 sentry.  2 will do otherwise, though 3 is still nice on a level 2 in case your aim is a bit off.  ABUSE LINE OF SIGHT, demos can do this so well because their projectiles arc, thats really the key to taking out a ton of guns.  Also, use corners to your advantage you can pop out and shoot a sticky and strafe back behind and only take a hit or 2 from a sentry (or none at all if you are fast) and then get easy kills.  For guns being controlled with the wrangler, kill the engineer first, then the gun while it is in its 3 second deactivation,.

One sticky or normal grenade will kill a mini sentry.

The hardest part will come when the other team has 3+ sentries, as they can all cover each others' weak poitns and then you really just straight up REQUIRE an uber to take them out.

Especially if you set them on fire first!

The best part about the new maps has been all the new places you can airblast people off the map.  It's really fun for those damn dead ringer spies.  Or ubered heavies.

Part of me wonders if it was a conscious decision to make pyros more viable, or if they were just interested in general vertical gameplay.  Either way is fine with me, and I'm glad Pyros have a bit of a foothold, w + m1 is effective, but not particularly nuanced gameplay.