Bak's Demo Dish

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Bakuryu
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Bak's Demo Dish

Post by Bakuryu » Mon May 02, 2011 12:10 pm

I have decided to compile my knowledge of the demo, play styles, and general shenenigans into this two-part thread for those folks who wish to know more about how to effectively play the class and contribute to their team. Please bear in mind that this guide is congruent with my play style, which is more aggressive than most other demomen (except for plas, who drinks from that bottle every time he jumps).

Part One: General Play Practices

The demo, I would say more than any other class, has the ability to effectively control most of, if not all of, and entire opposing team's dynamics and actions. In order to do so, we can look at some of the practices that make demos great and when to use these practices.

a) Loadout
If you wish to maximize your benefit to the team, I would suggest using the following loadout: default.
You can swap your melee weapon out for the pan or the caber, but I would not recommend the other weapons for teamplay because they are either detrimental to your health, which is very bad for your survivability, or they slow you down, which can make you pyro food. Some people like the pain train, but I often end up coming under too much sentry/heavy fire to make it worth the risk.

Some people may ask, "But what about the Loch-n-Load, I heard it's really good!" It is a fine weapon, but it cannot match the grenade launcher in utility or scope, which I explain later.

The targe is mostly a for-funsies weapon, though paired with the caber, it can produce delightful kills in the right situation.

As for the scottish resistance...I don't honestly know why it's in the game. I have yet to meet a player that can use it as effectively as the sticky launcher and it tends to promote camping and boring defensive play.


b) Sticky-trapping
Some people LOVE to sticky trap corners, walls, etc. and while it is a useful practice for certain choke points, it can leave you open to spies, and limits the scope of the map that you can patrol, attack, and defend. Control points are generally ok for it, but if you do anything but sit at the control point, you are probably going to be killed, and you will be without your most dangerous weapon.

c) Where to aim your explodey-goodness
For stickies, your best bet for fighting a mob of people is to aim behind them, because more often than not, natural instinct kicks in, and people run away from explosives rather than towards them. Individual classes are very different. For pyros, try to aim for different sides of them, and in high places that can still register splash damage. Scouts are a major pain, but can be dealt with by boxing them in first with a sticky closer to you, then another behind the scout.

Pipes are an entirely different story. There is a school of thought that pushes the loch n load because of its power and destructive ability, and while on close-quartered maps it can be swapped in and effective, I favor the grenade launcher heavily for several reasons:

*Rollers...well they roll and can help you get sentries that might otherwise have been ungettable without dying/taking heavy fire

*Rollers also let you control tight spaces more effectively by firing them at different heights and angles. You can make four different directional launches with the grenade launcher and have them all end up in the same place, much to the chagring of enemy players (especially pyros)

*Pyros eff up your christmas when you use the loch n load. Two reflects and you are reloading and retreating because you are forced to fire accurately at your target (if you aren't dead already). This means that while you can do a butt-ton of damage, you also spend a great deal of time being mad at the pyros who completely negated your efforts and/ or killed you with that powerful grenade.

*Rollers can be effective against pyros not only because you fire more of them, but you can bank them at angles that make it difficult to reflect all four of them, and even if they do, they have probably not sent them back your or your team's face

*Rollers give you personal cover fire for when you need to get more health or need to evade large numbers of angry players. When you run away from a fight you can't handle or past your enemies (and this is generally advisable) you can pop shots off the walls and ceiling in front of you, leaving an explosive trail of death that slows the enemy down not only by damaging them, but bouncing them and changing their momentum

d) Aggression
I cannot stress enough how annoyed I get when demos sit in the back lines and sticky a wall and wait, or lob some shots down a tunnel and wait, or spam without ever advancing. As a demo, you have the power to make an entire team run or focus solely on you, allowing your team to rush out behind you and clean out the people who turned to attack you. I rush enemy lines incessantly because I am an incredibly disruptive player, and it tends to greatly benefit my team.

*People have to run from you when you can kill them with one or two shots, and they tend to scatter and leave more vulnerable players and equipment open to attack.

*Never be afraid to sticky jump over an attacking team to get behind them and sticky the bejebus out of them. Even if you die without getting a single person, chances are, you will have derailed something that they were doing. More often than not, you can at least kill some teleporters and maybe some lighter classes.

*The double sticky jump can be incredibly useful and devastating on very open maps like badwater, goldrush, badlands, and warpath, always use it with some discretion though, as when you land you typically have about 40 health. I favor it for the last point on warpath because you can usually catch a team off guard if they haven't defended it properly. For badlands, you can effectively jump across the middle of the map unseen, and to the fourth point balcony without much incident and flank the enemy team. On the pl maps, it's useful for getting to the cart at the second point and on goldrush, the very last point. Use it to sneak behind enemy lines, but be prepared to die very quickly.

*You always want to be attacking the enemy at the front line, and always want them to respect that at any second, a terrible rain of explosives and death could be upon them. I do this because it gives my team a chance to push the cart/build ubers to get flags/cap points and often results in gibby satisfaction. As with any offensive, putting pressure on your opponent and going to them is always better than waiting for them to come to you and push back. When you are playing defense, this is also true, but remember to not overextend yourself or your teammates and leave a base or point vulnerable to attack

e) Survival
It's hard to live long as a demoman, especially the way I play it, but surviving is key. Know where every health pack/source of health is and use that knowledge to maximize your survivability. Reload often, as you burn through ammo and the sticky launcher has a longish load time. Attack the enemy from places where health is within jumping distance and keep track of certain types of enemy players. Snipers and scouts will always be your biggest concerns, they they can either wreck you from a distance without you effectively responding, or in the case of the scout, force you to take damage while you try to either kill or evade them.

Part Two: Killin those immobile death machines
The greatest gift a demo can give to his team is to take out a sentry without the use of an uber . It allows your team to use it on a class that can effectively force a team into retreat (heavy/pyro) and makes life a lot easier. So how do we do this?

a) If you would build a sentry there, chances are, one will be there. Always test fire at spots where you think or know a sentry is positioned. Use 3-4 stickies or 2 grenades to check for buildings. If you get a dispenser, there's probably a gun there too. Also, remember that sentry guns and players make sounds, so listen for an engineer's voice, the sound of a teleporter, or the beeping of a sentry gun. Use cover and corners to your advantage, and if you start taking fire, note the position of the gun and try to approach it from a different angle, if possible.

b) I see a sentry, but it's kinda far for stickies... That's what your grenades are for! Aim very high, as they arc a ton, and try your best to hit the gun directly. It the gun is placed in a corner, instead aim for a little beyond it so that the splash damage will knock the engy away from the gun or kill him. Remember also that you can bank rollers from any angle, and that stickies can still do damage if they are attached above a gun just as well as though they were right next to it.

c) Courage under fire - simply put, you will be getting shot at...a lot. Learn the paths certain projectiles take and remember that you can dodge almost anything. Never forget that you have a crouch key, and if you are looking to avoid a sniper, serpentine just a little bit while randomly crouching and jump crouching. It might seem ridiculous, but it makes your head a difficult and moving target as long as you don't do it with a regular pattern.

d) When a medic ubers you a few things should happen. The medic should run in front of you to take the knockback of any sentries. If they aren't doing it, it isnt a huge deal, but it makes life a lot easier. Your team should also focus fire any pyros that they see that might interrupt your advance. Should a pyro get to you, you have two options. If it's early in the uber, just sticky at your feet and knock him away and continue. If it's late, focus as much fire on the gun as you can, laying stickies first and then switching to pipes and detonating your stickies as soon as the charge runs out. Remember that regardless of what weapon you have out, right clocking will always detonate your stickies. Make it your business to know gun positions and communicate with your team so that they know when sentries are down, and you know where to fire immediately.

e) Sentries have reverse T-Rex vision. That is to say, movement really messes them up, so if you get caught near one, remember to let it track you and almost lock before strafing in a different direction. As it is based entirely on motion tracking, you can often sticky a sentry before it kills you simply by outsmarting the tracker and changing directions. This tactic is extremely effective for pyros as well.

f) If the gun isn't going down right away, go for the engineer first. A no-brainer really, but good engies will shotgun your stickies (unless they are using the frontier justice, which is a dream for demomen) and repair his gun before you get all of the damage done you need. This is doubly true for wrangled sentries. If you kill the engineer wrangling it, there is a 2-3 second downtime for the gun while the shield is still up before it goes back to motion seeking mode. Use this to your advantage and kill the gun during that downtime. Engineers that wrangle their guns also tend to have less than stellar aim and rely on you approaching in a beeline to get you, so strafe while you advance and strafe often and randomly in order to make his job much more difficult.
I will find you...and I will kill you

Pain in the @&^% TF'er since 2000.

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Re: Bak's Demo Dish

Post by YoullNeverWalkAlone » Fri Sep 09, 2011 9:15 pm

Thanks, the sentry and uber ideas are very helpful
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Re: Bak's Demo Dish

Post by One_Medic_Army » Sat Sep 10, 2011 12:00 am

As someone who's been on the engineer end of the demo vs engineer matchup, I can add some additional advice:
If the engineer is hitting your stickies with a shotgun it's effective to just start mashing right click so they're on the ground as little as possible, for the following reasons:
You have 8 shots, he has 6, it takes 3 stickies to kill a lvl 3 gun.
He must aim far better than you, and he also must hit your sticky while it is on the ground but before it explodes.
He can't repair without switching off shotgun, which takes up valuable time.
You stand a good chance of blowing the engineer up as well, or at least blowing him away from the gun.
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