Nick's Corner (TF2)

A place to discuss strategies and methods of playing
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Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Tue Jul 07, 2009 1:59 am

Background
I have no idea how much interest people have in guides. A lot of them are useless since they cover techniques or practices that are impossible to describe or mimic accurately from video. Truth be told, the best advice you will ever receive is practice.

I also feel as if How To manuals are worthless. They can offer general tips that attempt to summarize the situation universally. You can play read along and glean some information here and there, but most if it is unlikely to be terribly relevant. The important tips come from questions the person seeking to improve asks, particular areas of interest they are curious about.

So here's this thread.


The Process
This thread aspires to be a TF2 Theory Discussion thread where players can post questions about particular aspects of the game, such as class or map strategies, and receive somewhat experienced answers. It could also serve as a debate room on the side as to the most effective way to approach a certain situation. It's likely an aspiration not to be met.

I will start off posting excerpts from some unfinished guides I have laying around. If it ends with the excerpts, so be it – someone may at sometime find them useful. That's the plan. You're welcome to comment on the excerpts, criticize them, ask questions of them or an unrelated topic – what else comes from this depends on those two of you who have read this far.


The Details
I quasi-retired from TF2 a while back when I decided to start focusing on server seeding and abstract tactics. A lot of the fun I have these days comes from writing elaborate posts on the game. Therefore, I'm more than willing (and quite often elated) to offer my perspective on the game. If you have a question or want me to confuse you with my stance on a particular area, ask. If you have your own theory you want to present or receive comments on, post. No one else is going to!

I am very familiar with TF2 with 1252.6 hrs played as of posting (quite sad, yes).

I am adept at soldier, heavy, medic and sniper.
I am average at demoman and engineer.
I am decent at scout.
I am bad at pyro and spy.

I can still talk about those last three classes, I just don't have the experience to back up my claims.


The first (and future) excerpt(s) will be posted as a reply to this thread.
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Tue Jul 07, 2009 1:59 am

Since there's a lot of talk about medics in the general forums, I'll start with a section from my medic guide on healing. This section, when I wrote it, was intended to cover healing in its entirety. Therefore it contains all the information I believe necessary to be an effective healer.

MEDIC: Healing
A small lecture might be necessary for a few of you before we continue into the most important section of this guide. According to my style, even inexperienced players and out of place classes should receive healing if they are in danger. This means that it's sometimes the case you end up healing random people who are accomplishing very little (but taking damage) over experienced people who are hurt but could accomplish very much. There is nothing inefficient about this style of healing.

It does not matter whether or not someone can aim or protect you (in this case). There are at least two players standing next to you – one of them experienced – so the person you're healing doesn't need to be able to keep you alive. The player in the red also does not need more than one health to protect you. If someone has flanked your position, they're likely going to be someone intending to kill the medic. As long as the experienced player doesn't walk into explosives or flames, they will not receive further damage – all damage will be concentrated on you and the inexperienced player. As such, besides there being no feasible reason for the experienced player to be healed (since they are unlikely to take further damage), there's no actual risk to your safety either – the experienced player can take care of anything with no threat to his actual health.

Of course – this doesn't account for the belief that it would be more efficient for you to heal the other fellow and dominate the world. The following bits, conveniently, do.

Regardless of skill level, all players serve as both a target and a deterrent.

When there are three people, the enemy has to chose which of the three to attack. This means that the damage is spread over all three. If, however, you reduce the number to two, that damage becomes more consolidated and it becomes much easier for someone to die. Therefore, as long as the inexperienced player lives, it's easier to heal since each individual is taking less overall damage and is in less danger of dying. If you keep that random player alive, you have increased the efficiency of your experienced pal by putting up a rather large shield that can take damage for him while he kills everything in sight.

The deterrent part was mentioned a bit earlier. Even if a player is exceptionally bad, the other team does not necessarily know that and will still take caution in approaching them. Earlier when the medic was flanked and the experienced fellow at one health, the inexperienced player was serving as a deterrent. He was holding everyone at a particular choke point at bay and letting the experienced player concentrate on the more important targets. You don't have to hit people to dissuade them from advancing – enough bullets or explosives is enough to accomplish that.

While I've said enough to make a point, I want to address to the true person at blame for when the experienced player starts harassing you for ignoring him. If a player stands next to me jumping up and down waiting for a bit of healing, they are rather useless to the team. I see no reason to heal someone who is doing nothing and therefore I will heal the inexperienced person who appears to be working towards the goal. If you want me to heal you, be the one on the front taking damage.


Prioritizing Heals
You want to heal the player who is closest to the enemy on the same plane of elevation.

The first part should be easy to understand: a lot of people consider the closest enemy to be the largest threat, so they will shoot them ignoring anyone and everything behind them. If you heal the person furthest out – you will probably be healing the person taking the most overall damage.

The second part is a bit more complicated. People tend to attack players on the same elevation as them – if they exist – before searching for another target. Phrased differently, people do not like to fire up. So if you are attacking the final point on dustbowl, you should heal people shooting from the ground before you heal people shooting from the raised platform.

If you heal the player closet to the enemy who has neither a height advantage (on a platform of some kind) or a height disadvantage (hidden in some ditch), you are almost always healing the right person.

Of course, that's deceptively simple. It will help you significantly on maps such as dustbowl where there are two consolidated fronts but not so much on maps where people are dying everywhere. On those maps, I cannot offer simple advice on who to heal – it's entirely based on your experience with healing. Therefore, the training tip for this section will be to heal exclusively on maps where there are consolidated fronts. These maps are: dustbowl (defense is better), goldrush (defense is better), granary, fastlane and well. If you want to improve your healing – focus on these maps.


Combat Healing
It's rarely the case that a single player stands in front absorbing all the blows while the rest of the team lingers behind. However, it's almost always the case that a single player stands in the front. What often happens during combat is that players will take unconscious turns standing in front. One player might move forward to intimidate the enemy, but they take a lot of damage and quickly fall back into the group. Then the next player pushes in hopes of stirring the team onward. Therefore, the above method may be applied to most every situation.

An important note here is that most players are conscious of their own safety. They will not expose themselves to unnecessary danger if someone else is doing it for them. Therefore, it is not necessary to continue healing someone after they have dropped from the front. If you heal someone who's the front line damage taker and they retreat – even if they are on the verge of death – it is no longer necessary or appropriate for you to continue healing them. They will continue to support the push from the rear while the front rotates to a new individual. As a medic, you should immediately – once your target has escaped the enemy's line of fire – switch to the new target of the enemy. It doesn't matter if the entire team is running about in the red and the single person on the front has full health. You need to heal them and keep the front alive. The other players will not die (unless the enemy flanks).

It's often the case you switch healing targets by the second. If you're in the middle of combat and find yourself healing a single person for an extended period of time, you are likely not being an effective healer. The one case where you may heal a single person for an extended period of time is when it's a heavy and all other combat classes are using him as a shield. Otherwise, heal who the enemy is shooting. And since the enemy changes targets as your teammates change position (and as you change healing targets), you should often be rotating your heals.
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Post by Plinko » Tue Jul 07, 2009 6:29 am

When I go combat medic (and this means actively healing the front line players instead of acting as a faster dispenser that doesn't dole out ammunition), my general plan is to keep people alive because as you say, presenting more than one target to the opposing team is a massive advantage.

I find a group of 2-4 players in a push tend to rotate in and out of the front based on how much damage they've taken. If they're in the red, they tend to fall back. My goal is to first get the red players to above half health so they'll push back to the main group. If everyone is in the half health range or better, my next goal is to find the most aggressive player and get the overhealed to use as a meat shield for the others, who will follow if that players pushes up faster.

Normally I would probably go in a progression of preference for overhealing of heavy/soldier/pyro/demo/scout if I can't tell who will make the best push. However, once I've been playing for a while I think I can figure out who will take the strongest lead on pushes and it often will be someone playing demo, pyro or scout. Following the pryo or scout is obviously dangerous because you need to get very close to the enemy, but sometimes you got to do what you've got to do.

You've mentioned something a lot of players don't think about in terms of evaluating tactical situations, I think it would be interesting to hear more on that for non-medics. People wanting to get a lot better at the game can probably gain a lot more by becoming better students of the game than by improving their 'skills' in a short timeframe.
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:29 am

I didn't have anything prepared like that so I went up and wrote something.

First Strike
I'll start with the excerpt that made me decide on this topic:

Consider: you notice an enemy scout running across the peripheral and... guess that they'll end up flanking your position to take out your medic. A typical response in this situation would be to fire at will and end up missing the scout with all four rockets. I forgot to mention: the map is cp_badlands and you are on the central bridge, which your team owns. Your rockets aren't about to span that distance in time to hit the scout. Also, you've now told him you know that he exists. Of course he's going to run under the bridge! Now he could come from anywhere!

You do not start off impulsive... you need to have restraint.

Consider: same situation. You do not fire on the scout as you do not want to alert him of your presence and introduce an unpredictable element, his response, into the consideration. Instead, you further draw that the scout will take the far ramp on the other side of the bridge since it's the least guarded flanking position. You move slightly closer to the exit of that ramp, wait a while, and then fire a single rocket at the doorway a few moments before the scout arrives. Whereas before your rockets had to travel great distances to hit a moving target in an open area, here your rockets are going several meters into a narrow hall with no room for evasion.

This example shows proper... restraint. You do not disturb the scout until you lure him into a situation where you have the upper hand. You do not pursue the scout and attack recklessly, you prepare an ambush which cannot be countered.

Consider: you spot a scout in your sewers on mach4. A typical response would be to jump down into the sewers and wage open combat, pitting the skills of two players against each other. This method might work if you have very good aim or the scout's inexperienced. However, it's a risk. After you learn [restraint], the ideal response is to ignore the scout for now and let him proceed up the sewer. You know he'll come out of that other end at some point and you know he'll not be expecting you. So you wait and prepare for that single rocket which he'll run right into...

My goal with [these examples] is to express repeatedly the need for restraint in play style. A soldier... will not be chasing every enemy to the corners of the earth or firing rockets upon first sight. They will see the enemy. They will smirk. They will run to their sandbag. And they will entrench. Stay invisible until you have the upper hand.


I'll go through and parse that excerpt now.

When undisturbed, it is possible to predict what a player will do and where they will be based on their class and the map. This is a theory that pads my aim with rockets and something that's beyond the scope of this post. The point it makes is that people are more predictable when you leave them alone. What's nice about predictable players is that they follow a linear course. Therefore the first attack you make against them will be unavoidable: they are not expecting it and will not be able to react. After that first attack, however, they will be aware of your presence and drop their one track mind. They'll start evading and become unpredictable.

First strike means that the first time you engage a target you have the upper hand. After the first strike, you lose the advantage and it becomes a battle that both players are aware of. In the above examples, poorly executed first strikes result in the scout gaining the advantage (disappearing and achieving surprise) or the soldier gaining the disadvantage (confined to a narrow arena). An effective first strike, however, resulted in instant death for the opponent.

It's a theory well known and rarely practiced because it leads to several interesting situations. Sometimes it's a better course of action to let someone flank you since they'll be placing themselves in a more vulnerable position. Sometimes you will let an enemy player pass you and shrug it off since you would be at a disadvantage to follow. And quite often you'll find yourself attacking the enemy through movement rather than weapons: when you notice them coming, you reposition yourself to a superior area of the map and kill them on your own battlefield.


I don't think this post will be helpful if taken at face value. It's a trivial concept which could be explained in far less words. The reason why I stress it is because it's the easiest example of distancing oneself from combat. It explains that superior arms are not always the road to victory and that immediate action can lead quite often to bad situations. And it's something fun to think about.

Do you have a particular class or strategy you want to hear about? I'll see if I can draft something more useful tonight, but tactical situations are quite broad and I'm not sure where I'd go with it yet. At least this post can soften the blow for what may come.
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Wed Jul 08, 2009 1:38 pm

I decided to work with the demoman since it's somewhat of an underplayed class these days.

DEMOMAN: Area Denial
Demomen on public servers suffer from an identity crisis. They are compared against soldiers and then weighed as a combat class that fulfills a similar, destructive role. Since rockets tend to be more reliable, their role is often set as sentry removal and point protection. You won't often think of demomen in other terms unless familiar with the class yourself. Thus demomen are abandoned until a sentry farm crops up or desperate defense is required.

The reason for this perspective is because demomen are specialists in area denial. When servers support a lot of players, there's little incentive to control a small number of them when it's far more effective to kill. So most players forfeit the class' defining role and use him as a makeshift soldier.


Setting a Trap
There are two types of sticky traps: the obvious and the hidden. Obvious traps scatter stickies all over the ground in plain sight whereas hidden traps place them on obscure surfaces that are unlikely to be seen.

Obvious traps are intended for area denial. You don't use them to kill people, you use them to tell people to stay away. If you need to delay the enemy long enough to finish charging an uber or hold a position, scatter stickies in plain sight. The enemy will be distracted by them and start shooting / air blasting / glaring at them wishing they would go away. Since a lot of players like avoiding painful death, until they have dealt with the stickies they will not advance. The end result is obvious traps acting as a distraction: they temporarily shield you from the enemy coming from that direction.

Hidden traps are intended to kill people. They are placed around high-traffic choke points and detonated when the desired target passes through. You can hold them on reserve for a specific player or detonate them on the first person. They're often placed above doors, in corners, around the side of a pillar or on the ceiling. They can also be placed inside of the intel such that the stickies are invisible unless closely inspected.

There's a third variant of traps I'm going to label the Obvious-Hidden traps. These happen when you keep using hidden traps on the same surface or let someone watch you plant the trap. They have the advantage of being harder to remove than an obvious trap while still serving as a reliable deterrent: players will not be able to get through that door unless they first kill you. They have the disadvantage of being harder to detonate, a mistimed detonation against an aware opponent could result in no damage. Sometimes you should go out of your way to make it painfully obvious where hidden stickies are to achieve this blend of the traps. One way to do so is let one of the stickies 'miss' and be visible to the enemy.

Obvious traps will distract teams. You can use them to hold a position or allow another player to sneak behind the enemy and abuse their dulled senses. They buy time and opportunity for other players, but render the demoman who plants them useless. They shouldn't be used unless there's several opponents who need to be stalled.

Hidden traps will kill individual players. You can't rely on more than one death. However, they don't need to be watched and can be abandoned and repositioned with little trouble. They should be planted very near the enemy and shouldn't be attended to for more than several seconds. They lose their purpose if they are kept in one place for an extended period of time, unless of the Obvious-Hidden variety.


Combat Stickies
Since the delayed detonation change, stickies are no longer a viable replacement for the rocket launcher. They are effective against retreating or advancing opponents with a relatively narrow path of movement, such as retreating towards a choke point or advancing along a ledge. Outside of these roles they should not be relied upon for damage during combat.

Instead, stickies provide a valuable support role during combat as a means of restricting the movement of the opponent. They are used to cut off a particular direction to an enemy and direct their movements into a grenade. They might also be used to cut off an opponent or deny them of an advantage.

As an example of cutting off an enemy, consider a medic pair. During combat a sticky can be launched between the medic and their partner to force distance between the two. Against a skilled opponent, the combat class is now on a leash with a certain distance they are permitted to dance around that sticky before losing their medic advantage. Against an unskilled opponent, either the medic may die from the sticky or the combat class breaks the heal beam and is vulnerable. This move would cut off the opponent's advantage or give them an equalizing disadvantage to give the demoman a chance at survival.

As an example of denying an advantage, consider a soldier near a raised platform that can be accessed with a ramp. A sticky placed on the ramp will prevent the soldier from reaching the platform without a rocket jump. While they can still seize the high ground and place the demoman in check, they'll have to hurt themselves to do it – leaving the demoman with greater odds for survival.

Sometimes these advantages might be slight. One area of the map might be more open and therefore more troublesome if a scout manages to reach it. Alternatively, one area might be void of allies while another has a friendly soldier making it more beneficial to fight near the friend. Stickies on even flat terrain can direct the opponent into a disadvantage.

The primary use of combat stickies is then two-fold: to deny the enemy of an advantage, as covered above, and to direct the enemy into a disadvantage, as explained here. The disadvantage depends on the terrain and the location of all players in the game making examples hard and not very useful. However, a key point to remember is that stickies aren't meant to hurt the enemy, they're meant to direct them. If they walk into the stickies, it's an unexpected side effect that will win the battle. But most of the time, they will not walk into the stickies.

An interesting application is the grenade follow through. If you shoot a sticky to one side of an opponent, they will most often react by moving in the opposite direction. If you shoot a sticky to their right, quick change to a grenade launcher, and fire a grenade to their left – most opponents will hit either the sticky or the grenade. This is the easiest application of directing an opponent's movements. The sticky causes them to hesitate and reverse into an easily predictable situation that the grenade deals with. This is also the most effective method for killing scouts.


Conclusion
Stickies are not a weapon in the traditional sense. They do deal damage but they are easily avoided making them a poor choice for killing an opponent. They are instead a shield and a deterrent. Stickies can be placed on the demoman's weak point to grant the demoman an overwhelming advantage. They can be placed on the opponent's strong point to deny them of a tremendous advantage. They can direct the course of their opponent leading them into disadvantageous situations. But they will rarely kill a skilled opponent during equal combat.]


That's all I plan to do with combat classes on tactics. I've had a request to write something on ubers, so I'll work on that next. Unless something else comes up, I'll return to the excerpts after that.
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Post by Gizanked » Wed Jul 08, 2009 2:17 pm

I'm really glad you pointed out the obvious stickies... there are so many people that don't truly understand how much of a deterrant they can be.

* WARNING WARPATH REFERENCE*
For instance... if i can get to the middle of the map at the start of the round and lay down a couple of stickies on the ground at the end of the enemies tunnel before they can get there then it seems like the middle is a sure cap. This works on an above average rate i'd say. IF they aren't deterred then at least i can kill the first couple of attackers that are willing to rush fearlessly into the middle
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:10 pm

The uber section is quite a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. I wrote another combat tip for a break.

Cornering the Enemy
The previous section mentioned using stickies as a means to restrict the movement of your opponent. A large mistake that can come from this is trying to corner the opponent. While it's a concept that can be applied with other classes, stickies are an obvious and relevant example.

You corner an opponent when all their movements lead them to plain death. If you and your opponent are both in a tunnel at opposite ends, and you use a sticky at the mouth of the exit behind them, you've cornered your opponent. Their options are to stand still, run into a sticky or kill you. Quite often they'll try to kill you.

The problem arises when another player enters the picture. You also happen to have a medic on your side of the tunnel. Your opponent is pretty much doomed regardless of what he does at this point. He has no reason to struggle to survive since he's cornered; he can't live through this situation. So he charges your medic.

A regular opponent wouldn't make such a rash move since it would be a gamble, they could die. It, however, isn't a bad move and could very likely result in the death of the medic. But since there are other ways to deal with the medic, most players will be reserved and not risk it. This opponent, however, is cornered. He's already dead. There is no longer a risk associated with that gamble. So he charges the medic.

During combat you attempt to restrict the moves of your opponent. When movements become too restricted, the course of action left is the one players will not often take since it's suicidal. These courses of action are deadly to both players. When one of the players is already dead, a result of being cornered, they are deadly to one.

When you corner an enemy, you place yourself at an immense disadvantage. You have released a fanatic with no concern for personal safety who will be unspeakably aggressive in a manner most players can only conceive. Small children cry, mothers weep and even fathers turn their eyes. When you corner the enemy, you decide to gamble with your life.


You can corner players in unexpected ways. If you use a kritzkrieg near an enemy on an open plain, they've been cornered. If you use an uber near an enemy in a narrow area, they've been cornered. If you charge someone as a pyro, they've been cornered. These scenarios result in players attempting to kill the medic, players attempt to charge past the uber into the support behind and players switching to melee in hope for a decisive crit.

It's often difficult to avoid cornering an enemy. The goal, then, is to either give them hope or kill them so quickly after being cornered that nothing they do will impact the team. If you cut off a player's escape route but leave some terrain open for them to dodge in, they won't feel compelled to charge. If you use surprise attacks or take precautions to prevent their charge, they won't be able to react. If you avoid pressuring an opponent too much when in the presence of a medic, they often won't cause damage.

While cornering an enemy will not often have a visible impact on the game, it can be devastating if done in the presence of a friendly medic. While the concept might be nothing more than an interesting aspect of the game to think on, it's likely best to avoid testing it while being healed.
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by itchy » Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:58 pm

A simple question, that I think has no easy answer: As a Scout, Pyro, or Spy (your 3 least-knowledgable classes!), how much damage/havok in one life do you need to do in order for that life to be a "success?" In what kinds of situations are you an "acceptable loss?"

Let me elaborate a bit. Let's say, for example, you're a Scout. You flank a group of two enemies, let's say a Medic and a Demoman - you have the drop on them. You can either choose to engage them, or you can fall back undetected. Now let's further break up this example into more specific situations:

Situation A: You're low on life, but you could probably do enough damage to the Medic to make him nervous or seek out a medpack before they manage to kill you.
Situation B: You're at full health, but your opponents are relatively skilled. You would be able to kill the Medic, but would be unable to escape before the Demoman kills you.
Situation C: You're at low health, but the Demoman is at low health. He's being healed, but if you charged in, you could likely kill him with a well-placed shot. If you attack the Medic, you can do some damage, but will likely die without killing either player. If you focus on the Demo you can kill him but will likely die to the Medic.
Situation D: You're at full health, and both of your opponents are at low health. You can kill both.

Now, 90%+ of the time that D comes up, it'd be in your best interest to proceed. But what about the others? Is just softening them up and causing some chaos enough to sacrifice your life? Is killing the Medic? The Demo? Would it benefit you more just to get their attention and run? Does it behoove a Scout/Pyro/Spy at low health to just throw their life away to do some damage or should they take the time to search out a medkit/Medic/Dispenser?

Or is this trying to make things too simple?
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Thu Jul 09, 2009 2:08 pm

A lot of specific examples are hard to comment on. The number of players alive on each team and the positions of each of those players on the map have a strong impact on whether a particular action is useful to the team. It's also important to consider the flow of the game to that point: whether these players have a history of being hard to counter and which team is winning.

The situation can't be evaluated in terms of local benefit either, since the outcome of this small duel will affect the global battle. If the scout's team is down a number of players and he dies, regardless of how much damage he's caused, his team could still be at a significant disadvantage. His very death might have cost the game since he was needed alive on defense.

So the situation is very much simplified.


A.
This is an interested situation. A lot of players restrict TF2 to a game of life and death where you either kill the opponent or are killed yourself. However, time and territory are valuable resources of the game. The team with the most territory has an advantage and the team denied of time has a disadvantage.

This situation attacks a team's time. Medics are central to all pushes and most players are reluctant to advance without them. If you can distract a medic and force them to fall back for health, you've stalled an enemy advance and given your own team more time to attack.

Time is an important concept for a single reason: ubers. The first team to an uber has an immense advantage. Attacking the medic stalls their uber while your own team's is still charging.

So, global conditions permitting, this situation would be a good move by the scout if the uber race is close and your team needs just a little edge in time to have it first. If neither team is close to an uber or the enemy team is likely to win the race regardless, it's not a good move.

B.
This is A with a different ending.

C.
This is a matter of inexperience rather than a tactical question. The scout should kill the demoman and escape alive. If he's incapable of both, then it depends on whether or not his death is a fair trade.

Killing the hurt demoman results in the death of a player and a decrease in uber potential. Since hurt players net more charge faster, retreating for health is allowing the enemy to build uber. Given a good demoman, the scout should go for it. If the medic almost has uber it'll deny him of a good target. If not, it'll deny their team of a good player and a faster charge.

With a weak demoman it depends on the uber race. If he'll help the medic get an uber before your own team, he should be taken out. If the uber race is undecided or the medic already has uber, he can be and possibly should be ignored.


The interesting point here is not the situations but the consideration behind them. Combat has many repercussions. If you hurt someone but are unable to kill them, they might become an uber later on. If you can distract but not kill a medic, you might be stalling an uber that could defeat your team. There is more behind each action than victory over an enemy.

This would be a magnificent lead-in to the uber section if I could ever finish it. It keeps sounding too much like a guide rather than theories behind ubers.
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Post by Guardian » Thu Jul 09, 2009 2:46 pm

Heh Nick are you making an uber guide because you saw me die with a full uber so many times during that 6v9 match?

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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:01 pm

I will confess: this is incomplete and unrefined. However, it's a difficult topic and I was getting tired of trying to cover it adequately. Since I'm dissatisfied with it, you may expect to see more on ubers later in this thread.

MEDIC: Ubers
Ubers serve one of two purposes: making a push or saving a life. The offense often makes the pushes and the defense often saves the lives, though there are instances where the roles may reverse. The Kritzkrieg forfeits the ability to save lives limiting its use to pushes.

Cost of Ubers
When using an uber, there is an associated cost: the team is vulnerable. Unless there are multiple medics on rotation, the team will not be healed during the uber and will receive the full focus of the enemy's attention. The uber in a sense creates a sphere around the medic which enemies will not enter. As this sphere moves around the battlefield, the enemy adjusts their positions to avoid it. If directed in an intelligent manner, the sphere will drive the enemy back and clear an area. Otherwise, the enemy will avoid the sphere and strike the team.

As quite often ubers are the front before a major push, they must be used to support the team's advance rather than as an independent tool to achieve victory. If the uber charges the point, the team will be pushed back and the uber will be isolated. Both the uber and the team lose their respected battles. Success depends on the uber shielding the team and the team working to ensure the medic's safety once the uber falls. The uber then drives a wedge into the enemy line and the medic survives to help the team break through.


Offensive Ubers
An effective offensive uber has several prerequisites.

It must have a clear purpose. Ubers can be used to advance the team, weaken the front or annihilate the enemy.
The class used must be able to fulfill the purpose with minimal effort.
The route used to approach the enemy should suit the class and purpose.
The uber should be well-timed. This is the prerequisite that must be trained.

Medics should not overextend ubers and attempt to win the battle through their use alone. An effective uber will require team support. Ubers are moves that throw the enemy off balance and make them vulnerable to defeat; the team that follows is what kills. An offensive uber should not be used when only a single player is available.

Advancing the team means causing an enemy to flee an area and preventing their access the area while the team moves in and accomplishes the objective. You drive the enemy back so the team can reach the objective and hold off reinforcements until its captured and secure. These ubers should never pursue the enemy to seek complete victory since it will leave the medic isolated and at risk. They should advance to a choke point beyond the objective and hold the ground until the team is ready to move forward.

Weakening the front means focusing on sentries or a large number of defensive players. These ubers will not gain ground but will devastate an area which was serving as a large obstacle in the advance. They should not move far from the team and should fall back when the uber has ended. If the obstacle has been sufficiently diminished, the team will then advance with the medic and take the area.

Annihilation is rare. It should rarely be considered except on A/D maps.

Offensive ubers are not meant to defeat the enemy. They support the team and its advance by allowing access to protected areas and making the enemy consider retreat. Use them as a utility rather than a sword and they will be effective.


Defensive Ubers
Ubers on defense are often held unless someone important is about to die. There is no incentive to defeat the opposition since the defense just needs to survive. Total victory may even be an inferior strategy since a weakened opponent separated from his team is less effective than a fresh respawn working beside others.

There are, however, incentives to weaken the offensive front or annihilate the enemy. They should more often than not be resisted since an offensive uber without a counter will crush the defense and the cost of ubers is greatest on defense. Without a medic healing the defenders and without an uber to hold the line, the defense risks much sending an uber against the enemy. If such a push is to be made, there must be two medics.


Timing Ubers
Ubers cannot be considered in isolation since it's not an advantage restricted to one team. If the other team has an uber as well, a defensive stance should be adopted since an offensive push will be easily mitigated and countered. During these situations, the medics become kings who must be protected. The team who ubers first will find themselves at a great disadvantage – so both are reserved and attempt to coerce the other into acting first.

If an uber becomes available several seconds before the enemy, it should not be held but used immediately. The first team to uber can often win since they will be able to kill the enemy uber before it is used and charge a second before that medic can respawn. The longer an exclusive uber is held, the more likely it will suddenly see itself mitigated.


Kritzkrieg
The Kritzkrieg has one advantage and two immense disadvantages.

It can neither save a life nor counter another uber. These disadvantages are severe. If a Kritzkrieg is charged but the enemy has a regular uber, it's fully mitigated. This means that for a Kritzkrieg to be useful, it must be charged and deployed before a regular uber becomes available.

The advantage is that it charges faster. This allows the Kritzkrieg to be charged first, though deployment depends on the map. Some maps are too open or have setup times which make it impossible for the kritzkrieg to be deployed before the uber. On these maps, using a kritzkrieg is forfeiting the middle point since the kritz must be reserved until the uber is used as it will otherwise be mitigated.

There are two major and one minor situation in which the Kritz is effective:
During a map without a setup timer when it can be deployed before an uber.
During a desperate attack or defense where there is insufficient time to charge a full uber.
During a public game when a large number of players have gathered around a choke point.

This means the Kritzkrieg is solely an offensive or desperation weapon. You use it to quickly crush the enemy before they have time to react or to have at least a kritz charged where an uber would be impossible. This also means the Kritz is a situational weapon which should not be used full time. I must repeat this point: the Kritz should be used significantly less than the regular medigun and never for an extended period of time.


That covers all the pending requests. Unless something else comes up, I'll continue tomorrow with the excerpts.
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by itchy » Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:21 pm

Regarding your healing target choices: While I don't disagree that the majority of the time you should be focusing on the person taking the majority of the damage (the person in front), I think that it's important to take some time to heal the others as well. As you said, there should be a naturally shifting front-runner; as people take damage they shift out of the front and someone else takes their place while the others heal up. But in many situations, not healing those people falling back seems to mean that you would essentially be pinning your hope on the fact that one person can survive in that front spot for long periods of time.

As you said yourself, the more targets there are for the enemy, the less likely any one person will be to die. But if you're not keeping more than the front-runner adequately healed then the speed at which your team is rotating the front will be significantly diminished (down to the speed at which people can get healed from medkits, dispensers, and lockers). In a many-player match, that's not really a big deal - there will be tons of people to swap them places and no shortage of time or places for people to get healed from. In a lower-player match, it seems much more important that you heal multiple people. If you've got a team of people in the red waiting on a single medkit and one person in front that you're focusing all of your heals on, then you're preventing that natural rotation from happening, or at least slowing it down greatly. Splash damage and fire damage may not be very severe, but you can't assume that only 1-2 players will ever be severely hurt.
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Re: Nick's Corner (TF2)

Post by Nick Mame » Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:25 pm

That presumes constant action. There are plenty of breaks in combat which allow the team to get overhealed. I'm not sure I've ever had to maintain a rotation for longer than a few seconds before.

Actual players won't retreat for health either with a medic next to them. They'll fall behind the person taking damage and reload. There are enough people on that front to support the guy taking damage and kill off a few of his damage sources.

They won't retreat when they're in red, either. What happens is they step forward and take about one second of damage before cowering behind the wall again. The first time they lose overheal. The second time they near red. The third time they're critical. One person can serve as the front multiple times.

What happens is you place a gamble on your combat classes being competent enough to kill the enemy faster than their combined health is depleted. The entire team will slowly lose health until everyone is on the verge of death, but no actual deaths have occurred. Following this healing style, the players are hopefully able to slowly pick off the enemy and force a lull in combat. At which point some players have been out of combat for so long they get the fast heals and the team is easy to bring to full.

There might be merit to dispersing heals. However, second distractions in healing will get the front class killed. Once he dies, the rest of the team is in trouble as the person you are healing is not necessarily the first one who'll take damage. I'd rather take a less efficient - still effective - style over one that's much more intensive. I'd say reliability is greater than better, riskier results.
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Post by Thorn » Sat Jul 11, 2009 6:21 am

I will be honest and say that I did not read each post in their entirety, but gleaned through some pretty good stuff.

The problem with alot of the things I have been reading is that everything is SO situational. Its almost impossible to generalize what the correct move should be, like nick stated at the beginning of the post as a disclaimer to all this.

Being able to rely on your teammates is a big one. Your class composition for your team is big. Knowing whether or not you have teleporters up is a big one. Knowing whether or not the other team has teleporters up is important too. The opposing team composition, Spawn time (vanilla? insa spawn?), they all effect your decision making in game (or at least they should!).

The annoying part about many of the classes in the game, is that it is really difficult to gauge whether or not your actions are indeed contributing to the team. It is just one of those things you have to logically deduce, rather than relying on statistics, like K/D ratio. Things like sapping teleporters, or harassing the team to buy time, or controlling areas with sticky bombs. These are all very effective tactics, but its hard to see their impacts on the game as a whole while you are playing, you just have to trust that its working.
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Post by Dirty Dan » Sat Jul 11, 2009 8:03 pm

That's a lot to read but I started with demo, and I can't say I agree with your analysis of stickies. You said that they aren't really a good weapon for direct combat and person to person fragging. Really good demomen can positively tear people to shreds in direct combat from my experience.

As far as the strategies you laid out for using demoman, protecting medics, area denial, ect, those are all totally useful, but stickies can own in a traditional weapon sense from what I've seen. I'm not very good at it, but I see some players positively dominating.

Interested to hear what others think about it. I'd actually like to watch a demo of some of the better demomen on this server to see what they're doing that allows them to frag so well as that class. The strategies that Nick talked about I use pretty effectively, but fragging is hard for me as a demo.
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