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You should be watching the flanks with a scout as roamer, don’t rely too much on your medic, y’know occasional buff or two, as the medic will be needing to heal others

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ABUXVq0NSVY/TUXB1VibN_I/AAAAAAAAB18/xr6R2DU7ShE/s400/Holy%20Wall%20of%20Text.jpg

like snyyppis said, prefire around corners and shit

dont play with admirable

Quoted from Snyyppis

Aight, I’ll be dropping some all-round general knowledge here, so pay attention.

I know everyone says to get better you just need to play more DM/MGE, watch demos from invite/prem players, eat a sandwich before you play (hi monkeh) etc, but it really only gets you so far up the divisions. What good is DM if you lack positioning and gamesense? And will you ever really learn if you are just copying plays from people, instead of adapting to situations around you? And while were at it, that sandwich might give you food poisoning just as easy.

So what can I do instead, you ask? Well, other than just gaining experience, there are in fact a few simple things that you can try to boost yourself up a few divs.

Firstly, get a better pc. Seriously, this can be the difference between stuck in div5 and upcoming talent of the season, just ask Stark. A 120hz monitor and a solid fps on midfights will really change the way you play tf2. So much in fact, that you’ll never want to go back to your shit fps again; not unlike many who went to higher fov and are now shitting their pants stuck with fov 90.

Second, comms. Please, for the love of god, learn to use push to talk while you’re shooting people. I know many scouts find it impossible, but how can your team ever help you, if they don’t know you’re fighting and could use some help? This is essential for any actual cooperation between your scouts and the roamer.

In fact, comms are so important I’ll give more tips on it:

1. Don’t be afraid to call focus if none has been called. Any call is better than no call at all. If your teammates give you a hard time for a bad call just tell them to get their shit together instead.

2. Keep composed when you die. Don’t start cussing and whining; your team might still be fighting and are relying on a clear flow of information, starting with the health of the player that killed your sorry ass.

3. You are not useless when you’re dead. Do you have one of those useless scouts that can’t call when they’re fighting? Well go ahead and do his job for him. Seriously, you can call everything he does and what he sees. Makes everyone’s lives a little easier.

4. You have the power to calm your team down. Having a shit game? Someone raging? Stay calm. Don’t call people out for raging, but instead take a general approach on slowing down the game a bit. Call for regroups and try to keep a positive tone. Compliment every good play, no matter how mundane. Hell, you could even make a joke about racial stereotypes for all I care, just keep the mood light.

Now that you can actually utilize comms to some extent, you’ll want to get good at the game mechanics as well. For starters, look at your scoreboard. Now look at it again. And again. And again. This will help you on keeping track where players are and where they can be expected to be, even without anyone calling it. It will also keep you on the ball when it comes to ubers and number advantages.

Stop assuming things. If the scout flanking you isn’t called, it doesn’t mean he won’t be there. Be constantly aware of your surroundings and prefire, seriously, paranoid is always better than dead (and all you ammo management faggots can go stick a dick up your nostrils).

Pick your fights, you can’t win them all. If you have the possibility to get buffs, do so. Why would you voluntarily give your opponent a health advantage? Learn when your enemy has a positional advantage, and respect it. Even if you think you’re playing against shit players and don’t respect them one bit, if you put yourself in a deep enough disadvantage, you will lose.

Aspire to be the biggest killstealer anyone has ever seen. After all, killstealing is a natural focus call. Shoot targets that are being attacked and they’ll die (and if you get the kill maybe it won’t look like you’re being carried the shit out of on logs.tf).

And finally, learn to receive feedback and use it to get better. Obviously, none of us like getting it, but without it none of us grow. And I might be just an unknown lowprem noob in your eyes, but I’m giving you lifelong lessons here, so try and take this all to heart and you might be a better player for it.

P.S. Flippy’s mom is hot.

Wow alcohol and boredom makes for long posts. And yes, I know this didn’t include any soldier tips, but this is far more important than any class based tip you’ll ever receive… tl;dr l2play nubs

Epic post, almost exactly what I was looking for. Also really helpful and morale-boosting to see that i’m doing most things right, but there are a few things which I can take from it like pre-firing. FPS thing is quite interesting, but I can’t afford any major upgrades just yet. I pride myself on my comms so to see stuff being reinforced is nice, as well as the scoreboard tips. Thanks :D

Second question, i’ve been playing a lot of pure MGE soldier 1v1’s, but will this really help me improve? Should I do more than a few hours a day, should I also go on DM servers as well as MGE, does MGE actually account for anything in a real game?

Also please feel free to add mroe tips, the more the merrier

Quoted from Starkie

[…]

MGE and DM will improve your rockets as long as you dont just spam from a height advantage (i.e. going for the harder shots)

I wait for them to jump before I attack them, so I guess that’s going for the harder airshots

DM will help more than MGE for ingame scenarios.

Another thing I would like to highlight is to really appreciate the value of space and distractions in this game. You can make a jump as soldier and do no damage but still be incredibly effective if you buy space for your team to get a better position, or distract the team and buy time/take focus away from your team. This requires good comms and a clear follow-up from your team, but it’s something that I just didn’t think about enough until recently so I guess others don’t as well. With gunboats especially you can just cause so much distraction to buy your team more heals and space.

Learn to rocketjump properly as well, one of the main differences you can see immediately between lower and higher div players is the quality of their movement. If you can learn to dodge and use your RJing effectively to get out of situations then it will make a huge difference to your game. Again, equalizer and gunboats are a great asset, but just playing RJ maps or jumping around maps until you’re comfortable stringing rocket jumps together and knowing how to get out of a bad situation alive is great.