Forum

Intro

Aggression in TF2 is a highly contentious topic and many are split into the groups of defensive players who tend to share a bit more of a game sense slant and aggressive players who tend to favor relying on their DM ability. These are of course stereotypes and as such not everyone will fall into either one these descriptions, some may have good DM but favor a passive play style. But generally id like to think that people with good DM like to think that being aggressive isn’t a risk at all as they think they will always win the inevitable DM fight that occurs when they charge into an enemy.

So why talk about this now? Well as you may or may not know I am fairly new to TF2 and all I ever knew about TF2 was passive play like many others who started a year back. This all changed for me at least in my little TF2 world when the Americans stomped the Europeans with their more aggressive scout focused play at i46. This also started little discussions at least with the people I talk with over whether teams should copy the now dominant Americans, or stick with the tried and tested European tactic of hold and wait for an advantage (usually a big one like uber).
Well believe it or not I’m a bit of a defensive player at heart, maybe opportunistic would be a better word but its usually the play style I opt for in games, defensive when I need to be and aggressive when I see an opportunity. Of course I wouldn’t describe my play style as passive now but that’s because I came to realize something, aggression lends itself to the scout play style mechanically.

Now you may be wondering what the fuck that actually means in context. Well in TF2 there is a little mechanic known as damage fall off which I’m sure you all know of, this mechanic for better or for worse was implemented into TF2 to keep the pace of the game moving and constant and in a way to punish a counter strike style of playing involving holding and picking at long ranges promoting stalemates and dull game play. Sound familiar? well it should do because its exactly the kind of game play that Euros stereo-typically have favored.

Damage fall off and ramp up

Now the thing about damage fall off is that it shafts certain classes more than others, for example the demoman is nearly completely immune to the harsh realities of damage fall off and can actually afford to play passively. This is why demomen such as b4nny are famed for their safe but high damage game play, of course being more aggressive in return rewards a demoman with more damage opportunities at a risk of being killed but it’s not nearly as significant of a payoff as for some other classes that I will now get onto.

The solly is also not horrendously affected by damage fall off, rockets still hit for a fairly high amount of damage at long range and especially mid range. Like the demo he can afford to play a bit more passively but not to the same extent. However despite this I feel as if solly’s do reap benefits from playing aggressively. They firstly create space for his team and secondly they draw damage onto themselves which is perfect for the solly with his large amount of health points even more so with the medic on him which allows him to get right into the action. But this doesn’t seem to be too common and many soldiers tend to be damage whores and follow the line of thinking that “if I’m alive more I can do more damage and my k/d ratio looks better”. I don’t agree with this personally but I can understand why a soldier would want to play defensive.

Now onto the meat of the topic, scouts. I feel as if aggression is the single biggest improvement a scout can do to improve their game play.

Let’s look at some damage numbers shall we?
The valve wiki lists the scatterguns damage in these three ranges:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 40 damage
Close range 90 to 105 damage

Wow that’s some pretty significant ramp up there, as you can see the scout does next to no damage at anything other than close range, however I don’t think these damage figures are exactly fair to the scout in my opinion, they would be closer to this in my experience:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 75 damage
Close range 75 to 105 damage

Now of course this is me being subjective here about the ranges but these figures seem a lot closer to what I would see in a game. Its not uncommon to see 40 to 75 damage meat shots at mid range that many a soldier will have complained about at some point uttering the phrase “how the fuck did he hit so much at that distance”.

Theory put into practice

So how should you make use of this new knowledge? Well some scout players will still tell you that staying passive allows you to help the demo and medic, it allows you to stay alive to cap and it allows you to be alive to make more calls and generally be up to make plays. However I don’t think that is exploiting the true potential that the scout has to offer, the amount of single target damage a scout can offer is immense and he should be seen as just as much of a damage generator as the demo or the solly.

Now in terms of creating damage the scout does have some disadvantages compared to the demo and solly, the most obvious one is that his shots are not area of effect and can usually only hit 1 person, the other is that he does actually need a large amount of raw dm ability to hit damage in the area of 9 or 10k damage that other soldiers can hit with ease and the biggest one of all? Its really hard to heal a scout, its well known that a pocket will generally out damage his roamer. This is because he receives more heals and more heals = more opportunities to do damage and less time spent dead or getting health packs retreating. The scout doesn’t have this luxury of having the medic on him 24/7 and it does limit how much damage he can put out in a game to a degree.

But on the plus side he does have some significant advantages, he has more shots than the soldier and in turn has more damage potential. He reloads quite fast in comparison to say the demo and this allows him to duck out of a fight reload, heal up and get straight back into the fight quite quickly. He also has his movement which allows him to make “the big plays” we all know and love on his own that a soldier or a demo might not be able to make so easily.

So how should you play to “play aggressively”? Well I’m not asking you to just barrel into them holding down w+m1 but try to get closer to the target to deal as much damage as possible while still being in a position to get out alive. This is of course is tricky and will come with time and practice, it will also mean that you will need to develop some movement skills as being closer to the enemy increases the chances people will focus you and the amount of times you die. But this doesn’t matter, the most important thing to remember in a team fight as scout is this, don’t be afraid to die. You’re more useful to your team by putting out 400-500 damage in a team fight and getting a pick than you are by staying behind the pocket and dealing maybe 100 to 200 damage per team fight. Take the game into your own hands for once and just get in and wreck face, its much more useful than standing in choke being smug and pretending to be so much smarter than the other idiot scouts on the enemy team currently ripping apart everyone as you discuss capping tactics.

Potential problems

Now this new play style will inevitably come with its own teething problems, number 1 you will die more. When I first started this play style I jumped from 10 deaths per game to 20 deaths per game. At first I was distraught at this new k/d ratio but then I realized that my damage had leaped from 6k per game to over 8 or 9k damage per game. The first time I reached 10k damage I knew I had found the play style I wanted to stick with, now whether you agree about judging a play style based on damage alone is useful to you well that’s your call to make.

The solution to this is to either A. have a scout orientated medic who will heal you (lel good luck with that in Europe), or health pick ups. I generally average around 50 to 70 health pick ups per game, now that may seem like an absurd amount of health pick ups considering the roamer who does roll outs everywhere will have around 60 pick ups it will help you to stay alive more and release the pressure on your medic to heal you all the time. However if your medic is fine healing you more than the solly’s then by all means play around the medic and don’t go for health pick ups all the time.

The second biggest problem that I see happening is that you may play on a passive team that never engages unless the soldiers jump and sometimes the soldiers wont jump at all and will just spam leaving you to do pot shots from across the map at 10 damage each waiting for something to happen. Now this may seem crazy but I suggest you go in first, as a scout you may have low hp but you also have mobility if you can get in and start doing damage and get out on 30hp to get healed up you can start the team fight for your team. An example of a scout who plays like this is schocky, he initiates for his team first does damage and dies or gets out, and even if he dies he still did damage and is still acting as a distraction for his more passive team.

Third problem is capping, if you die at mid or chase kills then you will have times where there will be no scouts to cap. This is a problem for your heavies as they now have to cap and delay their push and potentially will have to waste uber fighting over second. Ideally you should have a more passive scout at mid who will cap but this isn’t always necessary or possible. Generally just worry about killing the jumping soldiers first, doing damage and getting picks after that you can think about who’s alive to cap. That doesn’t mean its okay to chase kills however, after you win the mid fight if you are the only scout up you should cap. That is unless your team is running a strat where the heavies cap which many teams don’t seem to like doing so odds are you’re gonna be stuck on capping duty.

Well that should be everything, if you have any questions feel free to add me on steam and if you want any scout P.O.V’s to learn from I suggest schocky (European), Ruwin (American), Yz50 (American) and Clockwerk (American). Thanks for reading :>

– Pennyfarming.

(Original) – http://penny2awesome.blogspot.co.uk/

Last edited by Wacko, 11 years ago

An example of a scout who plays like this is schocky, he initiates for his team first does damage and dies or gets out, and even if he dies he still did damage and is still acting as a distraction for his more passive team.

Not rly and not always, you get the roamer doing his stuff then scouts go in.

Quoted from Wacko

Intro

Aggression in TF2 is a highly contentious topic and many are split into the groups of defensive players who tend to share a bit more of a game sense slant and aggressive players who tend to favor relying on their DM ability. These are of course stereotypes and as such not everyone will fall into either one these descriptions, some may have good DM but favor a passive play style. But generally id like to think that people with good DM like to think that being aggressive isn’t a risk at all as they think they will always win the inevitable DM fight that occurs when they charge into an enemy.

So why talk about this now? Well as you may or may not know I am fairly new to TF2 and all I ever knew about TF2 was passive play like many others who started a year back. This all changed for me at least in my little TF2 world when the Americans stomped the Europeans with their more aggressive scout focused play at i46. This also started little discussions at least with the people I talk with over whether teams should copy the now dominant Americans, or stick with the tried and tested European tactic of hold and wait for an advantage (usually a big one like uber).
Well believe it or not I’m a bit of a defensive player at heart, maybe opportunistic would be a better word but its usually the play style I opt for in games, defensive when I need to be and aggressive when I see an opportunity. Of course I wouldn’t describe my play style as passive now but that’s because I came to realize something, aggression lends itself to the scout play style mechanically.

Now you may be wondering what the fuck that actually means in context. Well in TF2 there is a little mechanic known as damage fall off which I’m sure you all know of, this mechanic for better or for worse was implemented into TF2 to keep the pace of the game moving and constant and in a way to punish a counter strike style of playing involving holding and picking at long ranges promoting stalemates and dull game play. Sound familiar? well it should do because its exactly the kind of game play that Euros stereo-typically have favored.

Damage fall off and ramp up

Now the thing about damage fall off is that it shafts certain classes more than others, for example the demoman is nearly completely immune to the harsh realities of damage fall off and can actually afford to play passively. This is why demomen such as b4nny are famed for their safe but high damage game play, of course being more aggressive in return rewards a demoman with more damage opportunities at a risk of being killed but it’s not nearly as significant of a payoff as for some other classes that I will now get onto.

The solly is also not horrendously affected by damage fall off, rockets still hit for a fairly high amount of damage at long range and especially mid range. Like the demo he can afford to play a bit more passively but not to the same extent. However despite this I feel as if solly’s do reap benefits from playing aggressively. They firstly create space for his team and secondly they draw damage onto themselves which is perfect for the solly with his large amount of health points even more so with the medic on him which allows him to get right into the action. But this doesn’t seem to be too common and many soldiers tend to be damage whores and follow the line of thinking that “if I’m alive more I can do more damage and my k/d ratio looks better”. I don’t agree with this personally but I can understand why a soldier would want to play defensive.

Now onto the meat of the topic, scouts. I feel as if aggression is the single biggest improvement a scout can do to improve their game play.

Let’s look at some damage numbers shall we?
The valve wiki lists the scatterguns damage in these three ranges:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 40 damage
Close range 90 to 105 damage

Wow that’s some pretty significant ramp up there, as you can see the scout does next to no damage at anything other than close range, however I don’t think these damage figures are exactly fair to the scout in my opinion, they would be closer to this in my experience:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 75 damage
Close range 75 to 105 damage

Now of course this is me being subjective here about the ranges but these figures seem a lot closer to what I would see in a game. Its not uncommon to see 40 to 75 damage meat shots at mid range that many a soldier will have complained about at some point uttering the phrase “how the fuck did he hit so much at that distance”.

Theory put into practice

So how should you make use of this new knowledge? Well some scout players will still tell you that staying passive allows you to help the demo and medic, it allows you to stay alive to cap and it allows you to be alive to make more calls and generally be up to make plays. However I don’t think that is exploiting the true potential that the scout has to offer, the amount of single target damage a scout can offer is immense and he should be seen as just as much of a damage generator as the demo or the solly.

Now in terms of creating damage the scout does have some disadvantages compared to the demo and solly, the most obvious one is that his shots are not area of effect and can usually only hit 1 person, the other is that he does actually need a large amount of raw dm ability to hit damage in the area of 9 or 10k damage that other soldiers can hit with ease and the biggest one of all? Its really hard to heal a scout, its well known that a pocket will generally out damage his roamer. This is because he receives more heals and more heals = more opportunities to do damage and less time spent dead or getting health packs retreating. The scout doesn’t have this luxury of having the medic on him 24/7 and it does limit how much damage he can put out in a game to a degree.

But on the plus side he does have some significant advantages, he has more shots than the soldier and in turn has more damage potential. He reloads quite fast in comparison to say the demo and this allows him to duck out of a fight reload, heal up and get straight back into the fight quite quickly. He also has his movement which allows him to make “the big plays” we all know and love on his own that a soldier or a demo might not be able to make so easily.

So how should you play to “play aggressively”? Well I’m not asking you to just barrel into them holding down w+m1 but try to get closer to the target to deal as much damage as possible while still being in a position to get out alive. This is of course is tricky and will come with time and practice, it will also mean that you will need to develop some movement skills as being closer to the enemy increases the chances people will focus you and the amount of times you die. But this doesn’t matter, the most important thing to remember in a team fight as scout is this, don’t be afraid to die. You’re more useful to your team by putting out 400-500 damage in a team fight and getting a pick than you are by staying behind the pocket and dealing maybe 100 to 200 damage per team fight. Take the game into your own hands for once and just get in and wreck face, its much more useful than standing in choke being smug and pretending to be so much smarter than the other idiot scouts on the enemy team currently ripping apart everyone as you discuss capping tactics.

Potential problems

Now this new play style will inevitably come with its own teething problems, number 1 you will die more. When I first started this play style I jumped from 10 deaths per game to 20 deaths per game. At first I was distraught at this new k/d ratio but then I realized that my damage had leaped from 6k per game to over 8 or 9k damage per game. The first time I reached 10k damage I knew I had found the play style I wanted to stick with, now whether you agree about judging a play style based on damage alone is useful to you well that’s your call to make.

The solution to this is to either A. have a scout orientated medic who will heal you (lel good luck with that in Europe), or health pick ups. I generally average around 50 to 70 health pick ups per game, now that may seem like an absurd amount of health pick ups considering the roamer who does roll outs everywhere will have around 60 pick ups it will help you to stay alive more and release the pressure on your medic to heal you all the time. However if your medic is fine healing you more than the solly’s then by all means play around the medic and don’t go for health pick ups all the time.

The second biggest problem that I see happening is that you may play on a passive team that never engages unless the soldiers jump and sometimes the soldiers wont jump at all and will just spam leaving you to do pot shots from across the map at 10 damage each waiting for something to happen. Now this may seem crazy but I suggest you go in first, as a scout you may have low hp but you also have mobility if you can get in and start doing damage and get out on 30hp to get healed up you can start the team fight for your team. An example of a scout who plays like this is schocky, he initiates for his team first does damage and dies or gets out, and even if he dies he still did damage and is still acting as a distraction for his more passive team.

Third problem is capping, if you die at mid or chase kills then you will have times where there will be no scouts to cap. This is a problem for your heavies as they now have to cap and delay their push and potentially will have to waste uber fighting over second. Ideally you should have a more passive scout at mid who will cap but this isn’t always necessary or possible. Generally just worry about killing the jumping soldiers first, doing damage and getting picks after that you can think about who’s alive to cap. That doesn’t mean its okay to chase kills however, after you win the mid fight if you are the only scout up you should cap. That is unless your team is running a strat where the heavies cap which many teams don’t seem to like doing so odds are you’re gonna be stuck on capping duty.

Well that should be everything, if you have any questions feel free to add me on steam and if you want any scout P.O.V’s to learn from I suggest schocky (European), Ruwin (American), Yz50 (American) and Clockwerk (American). Thanks for reading :>

– Pennyfarming.

(Original) – http://penny2awesome.blogspot.co.uk/

get good or die trying

Quoted from Wacko

Intro

Aggression in TF2 is a highly contentious topic and many are split into the groups of defensive players who tend to share a bit more of a game sense slant and aggressive players who tend to favor relying on their DM ability. These are of course stereotypes and as such not everyone will fall into either one these descriptions, some may have good DM but favor a passive play style. But generally id like to think that people with good DM like to think that being aggressive isn’t a risk at all as they think they will always win the inevitable DM fight that occurs when they charge into an enemy.

So why talk about this now? Well as you may or may not know I am fairly new to TF2 and all I ever knew about TF2 was passive play like many others who started a year back. This all changed for me at least in my little TF2 world when the Americans stomped the Europeans with their more aggressive scout focused play at i46. This also started little discussions at least with the people I talk with over whether teams should copy the now dominant Americans, or stick with the tried and tested European tactic of hold and wait for an advantage (usually a big one like uber).
Well believe it or not I’m a bit of a defensive player at heart, maybe opportunistic would be a better word but its usually the play style I opt for in games, defensive when I need to be and aggressive when I see an opportunity. Of course I wouldn’t describe my play style as passive now but that’s because I came to realize something, aggression lends itself to the scout play style mechanically.

Now you may be wondering what the fuck that actually means in context. Well in TF2 there is a little mechanic known as damage fall off which I’m sure you all know of, this mechanic for better or for worse was implemented into TF2 to keep the pace of the game moving and constant and in a way to punish a counter strike style of playing involving holding and picking at long ranges promoting stalemates and dull game play. Sound familiar? well it should do because its exactly the kind of game play that Euros stereo-typically have favored.

Damage fall off and ramp up

Now the thing about damage fall off is that it shafts certain classes more than others, for example the demoman is nearly completely immune to the harsh realities of damage fall off and can actually afford to play passively. This is why demomen such as b4nny are famed for their safe but high damage game play, of course being more aggressive in return rewards a demoman with more damage opportunities at a risk of being killed but it’s not nearly as significant of a payoff as for some other classes that I will now get onto.

The solly is also not horrendously affected by damage fall off, rockets still hit for a fairly high amount of damage at long range and especially mid range. Like the demo he can afford to play a bit more passively but not to the same extent. However despite this I feel as if solly’s do reap benefits from playing aggressively. They firstly create space for his team and secondly they draw damage onto themselves which is perfect for the solly with his large amount of health points even more so with the medic on him which allows him to get right into the action. But this doesn’t seem to be too common and many soldiers tend to be damage whores and follow the line of thinking that “if I’m alive more I can do more damage and my k/d ratio looks better”. I don’t agree with this personally but I can understand why a soldier would want to play defensive.

Now onto the meat of the topic, scouts. I feel as if aggression is the single biggest improvement a scout can do to improve their game play.

Let’s look at some damage numbers shall we?
The valve wiki lists the scatterguns damage in these three ranges:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 40 damage
Close range 90 to 105 damage

Wow that’s some pretty significant ramp up there, as you can see the scout does next to no damage at anything other than close range, however I don’t think these damage figures are exactly fair to the scout in my opinion, they would be closer to this in my experience:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 75 damage
Close range 75 to 105 damage

Now of course this is me being subjective here about the ranges but these figures seem a lot closer to what I would see in a game. Its not uncommon to see 40 to 75 damage meat shots at mid range that many a soldier will have complained about at some point uttering the phrase “how the fuck did he hit so much at that distance”.

Theory put into practice

So how should you make use of this new knowledge? Well some scout players will still tell you that staying passive allows you to help the demo and medic, it allows you to stay alive to cap and it allows you to be alive to make more calls and generally be up to make plays. However I don’t think that is exploiting the true potential that the scout has to offer, the amount of single target damage a scout can offer is immense and he should be seen as just as much of a damage generator as the demo or the solly.

Now in terms of creating damage the scout does have some disadvantages compared to the demo and solly, the most obvious one is that his shots are not area of effect and can usually only hit 1 person, the other is that he does actually need a large amount of raw dm ability to hit damage in the area of 9 or 10k damage that other soldiers can hit with ease and the biggest one of all? Its really hard to heal a scout, its well known that a pocket will generally out damage his roamer. This is because he receives more heals and more heals = more opportunities to do damage and less time spent dead or getting health packs retreating. The scout doesn’t have this luxury of having the medic on him 24/7 and it does limit how much damage he can put out in a game to a degree.

But on the plus side he does have some significant advantages, he has more shots than the soldier and in turn has more damage potential. He reloads quite fast in comparison to say the demo and this allows him to duck out of a fight reload, heal up and get straight back into the fight quite quickly. He also has his movement which allows him to make “the big plays” we all know and love on his own that a soldier or a demo might not be able to make so easily.

So how should you play to “play aggressively”? Well I’m not asking you to just barrel into them holding down w+m1 but try to get closer to the target to deal as much damage as possible while still being in a position to get out alive. This is of course is tricky and will come with time and practice, it will also mean that you will need to develop some movement skills as being closer to the enemy increases the chances people will focus you and the amount of times you die. But this doesn’t matter, the most important thing to remember in a team fight as scout is this, don’t be afraid to die. You’re more useful to your team by putting out 400-500 damage in a team fight and getting a pick than you are by staying behind the pocket and dealing maybe 100 to 200 damage per team fight. Take the game into your own hands for once and just get in and wreck face, its much more useful than standing in choke being smug and pretending to be so much smarter than the other idiot scouts on the enemy team currently ripping apart everyone as you discuss capping tactics.

Potential problems

Now this new play style will inevitably come with its own teething problems, number 1 you will die more. When I first started this play style I jumped from 10 deaths per game to 20 deaths per game. At first I was distraught at this new k/d ratio but then I realized that my damage had leaped from 6k per game to over 8 or 9k damage per game. The first time I reached 10k damage I knew I had found the play style I wanted to stick with, now whether you agree about judging a play style based on damage alone is useful to you well that’s your call to make.

The solution to this is to either A. have a scout orientated medic who will heal you (lel good luck with that in Europe), or health pick ups. I generally average around 50 to 70 health pick ups per game, now that may seem like an absurd amount of health pick ups considering the roamer who does roll outs everywhere will have around 60 pick ups it will help you to stay alive more and release the pressure on your medic to heal you all the time. However if your medic is fine healing you more than the solly’s then by all means play around the medic and don’t go for health pick ups all the time.

The second biggest problem that I see happening is that you may play on a passive team that never engages unless the soldiers jump and sometimes the soldiers wont jump at all and will just spam leaving you to do pot shots from across the map at 10 damage each waiting for something to happen. Now this may seem crazy but I suggest you go in first, as a scout you may have low hp but you also have mobility if you can get in and start doing damage and get out on 30hp to get healed up you can start the team fight for your team. An example of a scout who plays like this is schocky, he initiates for his team first does damage and dies or gets out, and even if he dies he still did damage and is still acting as a distraction for his more passive team.

Third problem is capping, if you die at mid or chase kills then you will have times where there will be no scouts to cap. This is a problem for your heavies as they now have to cap and delay their push and potentially will have to waste uber fighting over second. Ideally you should have a more passive scout at mid who will cap but this isn’t always necessary or possible. Generally just worry about killing the jumping soldiers first, doing damage and getting picks after that you can think about who’s alive to cap. That doesn’t mean its okay to chase kills however, after you win the mid fight if you are the only scout up you should cap. That is unless your team is running a strat where the heavies cap which many teams don’t seem to like doing so odds are you’re gonna be stuck on capping duty.

Well that should be everything, if you have any questions feel free to add me on steam and if you want any scout P.O.V’s to learn from I suggest schocky (European), Ruwin (American), Yz50 (American) and Clockwerk (American). Thanks for reading :>

– Pennyfarming.

(Original) – http://penny2awesome.blogspot.co.uk/

“23:07 – shelikesitrough: I’m just tight”

Quoted from Wacko

Intro

Aggression in TF2 is a highly contentious topic and many are split into the groups of defensive players who tend to share a bit more of a game sense slant and aggressive players who tend to favor relying on their DM ability. These are of course stereotypes and as such not everyone will fall into either one these descriptions, some may have good DM but favor a passive play style. But generally id like to think that people with good DM like to think that being aggressive isn’t a risk at all as they think they will always win the inevitable DM fight that occurs when they charge into an enemy.

So why talk about this now? Well as you may or may not know I am fairly new to TF2 and all I ever knew about TF2 was passive play like many others who started a year back. This all changed for me at least in my little TF2 world when the Americans stomped the Europeans with their more aggressive scout focused play at i46. This also started little discussions at least with the people I talk with over whether teams should copy the now dominant Americans, or stick with the tried and tested European tactic of hold and wait for an advantage (usually a big one like uber).
Well believe it or not I’m a bit of a defensive player at heart, maybe opportunistic would be a better word but its usually the play style I opt for in games, defensive when I need to be and aggressive when I see an opportunity. Of course I wouldn’t describe my play style as passive now but that’s because I came to realize something, aggression lends itself to the scout play style mechanically.

Now you may be wondering what the fuck that actually means in context. Well in TF2 there is a little mechanic known as damage fall off which I’m sure you all know of, this mechanic for better or for worse was implemented into TF2 to keep the pace of the game moving and constant and in a way to punish a counter strike style of playing involving holding and picking at long ranges promoting stalemates and dull game play. Sound familiar? well it should do because its exactly the kind of game play that Euros stereo-typically have favored.

Damage fall off and ramp up

Now the thing about damage fall off is that it shafts certain classes more than others, for example the demoman is nearly completely immune to the harsh realities of damage fall off and can actually afford to play passively. This is why demomen such as b4nny are famed for their safe but high damage game play, of course being more aggressive in return rewards a demoman with more damage opportunities at a risk of being killed but it’s not nearly as significant of a payoff as for some other classes that I will now get onto.

The solly is also not horrendously affected by damage fall off, rockets still hit for a fairly high amount of damage at long range and especially mid range. Like the demo he can afford to play a bit more passively but not to the same extent. However despite this I feel as if solly’s do reap benefits from playing aggressively. They firstly create space for his team and secondly they draw damage onto themselves which is perfect for the solly with his large amount of health points even more so with the medic on him which allows him to get right into the action. But this doesn’t seem to be too common and many soldiers tend to be damage whores and follow the line of thinking that “if I’m alive more I can do more damage and my k/d ratio looks better”. I don’t agree with this personally but I can understand why a soldier would want to play defensive.

Now onto the meat of the topic, scouts. I feel as if aggression is the single biggest improvement a scout can do to improve their game play.

Let’s look at some damage numbers shall we?
The valve wiki lists the scatterguns damage in these three ranges:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 40 damage
Close range 90 to 105 damage

Wow that’s some pretty significant ramp up there, as you can see the scout does next to no damage at anything other than close range, however I don’t think these damage figures are exactly fair to the scout in my opinion, they would be closer to this in my experience:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 75 damage
Close range 75 to 105 damage

Now of course this is me being subjective here about the ranges but these figures seem a lot closer to what I would see in a game. Its not uncommon to see 40 to 75 damage meat shots at mid range that many a soldier will have complained about at some point uttering the phrase “how the fuck did he hit so much at that distance”.

Theory put into practice

So how should you make use of this new knowledge? Well some scout players will still tell you that staying passive allows you to help the demo and medic, it allows you to stay alive to cap and it allows you to be alive to make more calls and generally be up to make plays. However I don’t think that is exploiting the true potential that the scout has to offer, the amount of single target damage a scout can offer is immense and he should be seen as just as much of a damage generator as the demo or the solly.

Now in terms of creating damage the scout does have some disadvantages compared to the demo and solly, the most obvious one is that his shots are not area of effect and can usually only hit 1 person, the other is that he does actually need a large amount of raw dm ability to hit damage in the area of 9 or 10k damage that other soldiers can hit with ease and the biggest one of all? Its really hard to heal a scout, its well known that a pocket will generally out damage his roamer. This is because he receives more heals and more heals = more opportunities to do damage and less time spent dead or getting health packs retreating. The scout doesn’t have this luxury of having the medic on him 24/7 and it does limit how much damage he can put out in a game to a degree.

But on the plus side he does have some significant advantages, he has more shots than the soldier and in turn has more damage potential. He reloads quite fast in comparison to say the demo and this allows him to duck out of a fight reload, heal up and get straight back into the fight quite quickly. He also has his movement which allows him to make “the big plays” we all know and love on his own that a soldier or a demo might not be able to make so easily.

So how should you play to “play aggressively”? Well I’m not asking you to just barrel into them holding down w+m1 but try to get closer to the target to deal as much damage as possible while still being in a position to get out alive. This is of course is tricky and will come with time and practice, it will also mean that you will need to develop some movement skills as being closer to the enemy increases the chances people will focus you and the amount of times you die. But this doesn’t matter, the most important thing to remember in a team fight as scout is this, don’t be afraid to die. You’re more useful to your team by putting out 400-500 damage in a team fight and getting a pick than you are by staying behind the pocket and dealing maybe 100 to 200 damage per team fight. Take the game into your own hands for once and just get in and wreck face, its much more useful than standing in choke being smug and pretending to be so much smarter than the other idiot scouts on the enemy team currently ripping apart everyone as you discuss capping tactics.

Potential problems

Now this new play style will inevitably come with its own teething problems, number 1 you will die more. When I first started this play style I jumped from 10 deaths per game to 20 deaths per game. At first I was distraught at this new k/d ratio but then I realized that my damage had leaped from 6k per game to over 8 or 9k damage per game. The first time I reached 10k damage I knew I had found the play style I wanted to stick with, now whether you agree about judging a play style based on damage alone is useful to you well that’s your call to make.

The solution to this is to either A. have a scout orientated medic who will heal you (lel good luck with that in Europe), or health pick ups. I generally average around 50 to 70 health pick ups per game, now that may seem like an absurd amount of health pick ups considering the roamer who does roll outs everywhere will have around 60 pick ups it will help you to stay alive more and release the pressure on your medic to heal you all the time. However if your medic is fine healing you more than the solly’s then by all means play around the medic and don’t go for health pick ups all the time.

The second biggest problem that I see happening is that you may play on a passive team that never engages unless the soldiers jump and sometimes the soldiers wont jump at all and will just spam leaving you to do pot shots from across the map at 10 damage each waiting for something to happen. Now this may seem crazy but I suggest you go in first, as a scout you may have low hp but you also have mobility if you can get in and start doing damage and get out on 30hp to get healed up you can start the team fight for your team. An example of a scout who plays like this is schocky, he initiates for his team first does damage and dies or gets out, and even if he dies he still did damage and is still acting as a distraction for his more passive team.

Third problem is capping, if you die at mid or chase kills then you will have times where there will be no scouts to cap. This is a problem for your heavies as they now have to cap and delay their push and potentially will have to waste uber fighting over second. Ideally you should have a more passive scout at mid who will cap but this isn’t always necessary or possible. Generally just worry about killing the jumping soldiers first, doing damage and getting picks after that you can think about who’s alive to cap. That doesn’t mean its okay to chase kills however, after you win the mid fight if you are the only scout up you should cap. That is unless your team is running a strat where the heavies cap which many teams don’t seem to like doing so odds are you’re gonna be stuck on capping duty.

Well that should be everything, if you have any questions feel free to add me on steam and if you want any scout P.O.V’s to learn from I suggest schocky (European), Ruwin (American), Yz50 (American) and Clockwerk (American). Thanks for reading :>

– Pennyfarming.

(Original) – http://penny2awesome.blogspot.co.uk/

#Pennyfarming E-Sports

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/4745909/wai-nod-o.gif

Quoted from Wacko

Intro

Aggression in TF2 is a highly contentious topic and many are split into the groups of defensive players who tend to share a bit more of a game sense slant and aggressive players who tend to favor relying on their DM ability. These are of course stereotypes and as such not everyone will fall into either one these descriptions, some may have good DM but favor a passive play style. But generally id like to think that people with good DM like to think that being aggressive isn’t a risk at all as they think they will always win the inevitable DM fight that occurs when they charge into an enemy.

So why talk about this now? Well as you may or may not know I am fairly new to TF2 and all I ever knew about TF2 was passive play like many others who started a year back. This all changed for me at least in my little TF2 world when the Americans stomped the Europeans with their more aggressive scout focused play at i46. This also started little discussions at least with the people I talk with over whether teams should copy the now dominant Americans, or stick with the tried and tested European tactic of hold and wait for an advantage (usually a big one like uber).
Well believe it or not I’m a bit of a defensive player at heart, maybe opportunistic would be a better word but its usually the play style I opt for in games, defensive when I need to be and aggressive when I see an opportunity. Of course I wouldn’t describe my play style as passive now but that’s because I came to realize something, aggression lends itself to the scout play style mechanically.

Now you may be wondering what the fuck that actually means in context. Well in TF2 there is a little mechanic known as damage fall off which I’m sure you all know of, this mechanic for better or for worse was implemented into TF2 to keep the pace of the game moving and constant and in a way to punish a counter strike style of playing involving holding and picking at long ranges promoting stalemates and dull game play. Sound familiar? well it should do because its exactly the kind of game play that Euros stereo-typically have favored.

Damage fall off and ramp up

Now the thing about damage fall off is that it shafts certain classes more than others, for example the demoman is nearly completely immune to the harsh realities of damage fall off and can actually afford to play passively. This is why demomen such as b4nny are famed for their safe but high damage game play, of course being more aggressive in return rewards a demoman with more damage opportunities at a risk of being killed but it’s not nearly as significant of a payoff as for some other classes that I will now get onto.

The solly is also not horrendously affected by damage fall off, rockets still hit for a fairly high amount of damage at long range and especially mid range. Like the demo he can afford to play a bit more passively but not to the same extent. However despite this I feel as if solly’s do reap benefits from playing aggressively. They firstly create space for his team and secondly they draw damage onto themselves which is perfect for the solly with his large amount of health points even more so with the medic on him which allows him to get right into the action. But this doesn’t seem to be too common and many soldiers tend to be damage whores and follow the line of thinking that “if I’m alive more I can do more damage and my k/d ratio looks better”. I don’t agree with this personally but I can understand why a soldier would want to play defensive.

Now onto the meat of the topic, scouts. I feel as if aggression is the single biggest improvement a scout can do to improve their game play.

Let’s look at some damage numbers shall we?
The valve wiki lists the scatterguns damage in these three ranges:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 40 damage
Close range 90 to 105 damage

Wow that’s some pretty significant ramp up there, as you can see the scout does next to no damage at anything other than close range, however I don’t think these damage figures are exactly fair to the scout in my opinion, they would be closer to this in my experience:

Long range 3 to 10 damage
Medium range 10 to 75 damage
Close range 75 to 105 damage

Now of course this is me being subjective here about the ranges but these figures seem a lot closer to what I would see in a game. Its not uncommon to see 40 to 75 damage meat shots at mid range that many a soldier will have complained about at some point uttering the phrase “how the fuck did he hit so much at that distance”.

Theory put into practice

So how should you make use of this new knowledge? Well some scout players will still tell you that staying passive allows you to help the demo and medic, it allows you to stay alive to cap and it allows you to be alive to make more calls and generally be up to make plays. However I don’t think that is exploiting the true potential that the scout has to offer, the amount of single target damage a scout can offer is immense and he should be seen as just as much of a damage generator as the demo or the solly.

Now in terms of creating damage the scout does have some disadvantages compared to the demo and solly, the most obvious one is that his shots are not area of effect and can usually only hit 1 person, the other is that he does actually need a large amount of raw dm ability to hit damage in the area of 9 or 10k damage that other soldiers can hit with ease and the biggest one of all? Its really hard to heal a scout, its well known that a pocket will generally out damage his roamer. This is because he receives more heals and more heals = more opportunities to do damage and less time spent dead or getting health packs retreating. The scout doesn’t have this luxury of having the medic on him 24/7 and it does limit how much damage he can put out in a game to a degree.

But on the plus side he does have some significant advantages, he has more shots than the soldier and in turn has more damage potential. He reloads quite fast in comparison to say the demo and this allows him to duck out of a fight reload, heal up and get straight back into the fight quite quickly. He also has his movement which allows him to make “the big plays” we all know and love on his own that a soldier or a demo might not be able to make so easily.

So how should you play to “play aggressively”? Well I’m not asking you to just barrel into them holding down w+m1 but try to get closer to the target to deal as much damage as possible while still being in a position to get out alive. This is of course is tricky and will come with time and practice, it will also mean that you will need to develop some movement skills as being closer to the enemy increases the chances people will focus you and the amount of times you die. But this doesn’t matter, the most important thing to remember in a team fight as scout is this, don’t be afraid to die. You’re more useful to your team by putting out 400-500 damage in a team fight and getting a pick than you are by staying behind the pocket and dealing maybe 100 to 200 damage per team fight. Take the game into your own hands for once and just get in and wreck face, its much more useful than standing in choke being smug and pretending to be so much smarter than the other idiot scouts on the enemy team currently ripping apart everyone as you discuss capping tactics.

Potential problems

Now this new play style will inevitably come with its own teething problems, number 1 you will die more. When I first started this play style I jumped from 10 deaths per game to 20 deaths per game. At first I was distraught at this new k/d ratio but then I realized that my damage had leaped from 6k per game to over 8 or 9k damage per game. The first time I reached 10k damage I knew I had found the play style I wanted to stick with, now whether you agree about judging a play style based on damage alone is useful to you well that’s your call to make.

The solution to this is to either A. have a scout orientated medic who will heal you (lel good luck with that in Europe), or health pick ups. I generally average around 50 to 70 health pick ups per game, now that may seem like an absurd amount of health pick ups considering the roamer who does roll outs everywhere will have around 60 pick ups it will help you to stay alive more and release the pressure on your medic to heal you all the time. However if your medic is fine healing you more than the solly’s then by all means play around the medic and don’t go for health pick ups all the time.

The second biggest problem that I see happening is that you may play on a passive team that never engages unless the soldiers jump and sometimes the soldiers wont jump at all and will just spam leaving you to do pot shots from across the map at 10 damage each waiting for something to happen. Now this may seem crazy but I suggest you go in first, as a scout you may have low hp but you also have mobility if you can get in and start doing damage and get out on 30hp to get healed up you can start the team fight for your team. An example of a scout who plays like this is schocky, he initiates for his team first does damage and dies or gets out, and even if he dies he still did damage and is still acting as a distraction for his more passive team.

Third problem is capping, if you die at mid or chase kills then you will have times where there will be no scouts to cap. This is a problem for your heavies as they now have to cap and delay their push and potentially will have to waste uber fighting over second. Ideally you should have a more passive scout at mid who will cap but this isn’t always necessary or possible. Generally just worry about killing the jumping soldiers first, doing damage and getting picks after that you can think about who’s alive to cap. That doesn’t mean its okay to chase kills however, after you win the mid fight if you are the only scout up you should cap. That is unless your team is running a strat where the heavies cap which many teams don’t seem to like doing so odds are you’re gonna be stuck on capping duty.

Well that should be everything, if you have any questions feel free to add me on steam and if you want any scout P.O.V’s to learn from I suggest schocky (European), Ruwin (American), Yz50 (American) and Clockwerk (American). Thanks for reading :>

– Pennyfarming.

(Original) – http://penny2awesome.blogspot.co.uk/

No

did not read lol