3 Responses

1. midu2 Said,

   Awesome podcast. If you use a 64bit OS, add -32bit to your TF2 startup settings to force 32 bit mode. I saw an increase in FPS after my friend gave me that tip.

   Ok fair enough, the buff banner sounds don’t sound exactly like blueblue and red. They just sound more like that to me, and it actually does help me avoid running into an enemy’s buff banner party.

   I honestly didn’t like melee at first either, but it has grown on me. I didn’t really view it as a viable attack method for quite a while. Medic is my most played class, and keeping some distance with the blutsauger was always a priority in the past. As a side note, the tip to use the ubersaw more now that the syringe gun reigns supreme was exactly the sort of thing that separates this podcast from the rest. My second most played class is demoman, and the bottle really never seemed like a good idea when explosives were available. When I first played TF2, I figured that they included the melee because of the removal of TFC’s grenades perhaps. At first, I really missed the ability to rack up most of my kills by throwing grenades in people’s faces, but the targe demoman has really brought some of that old fashioned nade flinging fun back into my life. Imagine if a targe demo had 2 MIRVs and 4 regular TFC grenades like TFC demomen back in the day; that would truly be insane. To me, the old school TFC demoman with his 4 grenades, 2 powerful MIRV grenades, pipe launchers, and det pack was the epitome of a fanatic, explosives-obsessed demoman. The TF2 demoman felt like a scaled down demoman from the start to me, especially after the big nerf. Scaling his explosives down even more to the pipes does seem sort of anti-demo at first, but the sort of results that I’ve had with aiming pipes has actually renewed my interest in the explosive capability demoman in a way I never counted on. Shooting someone into the air with a low direct shot and finishing them off in the air with another direct shot is strangely satisfying. The sick part about it is that self damage from the pipes is not really a concern, so very close range pipe attacks have really become commonplace for me recently. If someone surprises me after I turn a corner and runs right into me, a quick mouse click often allows me to just ignore them and continue on with whatever I was doing.

   I do see pipes as a good spam weapon, but my experience with improving direct hit skills with the demoman has really been the same as Sigma’s. I really do think my pipe skills are better because of my needle experience. He probably just needed sufficient experience in a short period of time with pipes to unlock his needlepro arc-mastery. Having the explosive dodging skills of an experienced medic, the knowledge of when to get out of dodge gained from being an experienced medic, mastery of the ubersaw, and familiarity with an arcing weapon surely couldn’t hurt any medic moonlighting as a targe demo.

   I feel like I am much more valuable to a team as a regular demoman after having played a lot with the sword & targe because I no longer view the pipes as spam only. I’m also better at taking people out with the bottle when appropriate because I have a better understanding of when easy melee kills will be possible. I can’t help but feel like Mint might have better luck against targe demos if he played nothing but targe demo himself for a week (blasphemy, I know). The main reason I play spy and scout on occasion is to figure out how to avoid them better as medic. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I do think there’s something to that method.

   The point about the sword & targe not making a splash in competitive is right on. The sword & targe are never going to be feared in competitive play. The sticky demo is awesome, and the sword & targe is not nearly as powerful in the hands of a skilled demoman. So regular demoman are only going to run into targe demos on pubs, and regular demoman on pubs can wreak havoc regardless of whether the enemy has targe demos. I really do think that there’s room enough on pubs for a sticky demo and a targe demo to both have fun.

   The pyro’s flamethrower encourages players to w+m1. I think most of us have a problem with pyros who only do that, and the community needs to create the same sort of stigma around sword-only demomen. The community needs to encourage people not to play stupidly; maybe they’ll hear Sigma talking about owning people with nades and spread the word. I get your point about the new melee weapons encouraging people to play poorly, but a lot of weapons in TF2 can be used very poorly. When I first started playing, I was living proof of this fact lol. I feel encouraged sometimes to get easy heads so I have more speed & health to stay alive, but that seems like an intelligent use of the weapons to me. I don’t feel like getting the full crit after a full charge is really that easy. People have more time to get out of your way because you have to charge for a longer distance, and that’s why I believe Valve thought it was ok to reward that with a full crit. If you’re not paying attention to your surroundings, you’re already in danger of dying by any number of alternative means.

   I’ve tried to work on using curves in maps to prevent myself from charging in a straight line towards the enemy. Curving toward someone and landing a full crit does seem more difficult to avoid if done right, but it’s not something I’ve noticed any other targe demos trying. The idea that all charges go in a straight line amuses me; it’s something I avoid under certain circumstances.

   The equalizer encourages stupid play more in my opinion. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen soldiers on pubs go on pointless suicide missions into the heart of the enemy. I just shake my head, most of all after begging them to let me heal them so they would not burn to death. My friend who plays soldier gets a big kick out of the grenade taunt, which breaks my heal beam at the start of a round while I’m charging uber. Some players still don’t realize that they cannot be healed while it is equipped, which is beyond frustrating. I think that the speed buff part of the equalizer is enough to make it on par with the shovel, the extra damage at suicidal health rates drives me crazy because it really misleads people into thinking that suicide runs are a good idea. I don’t think they’re good for a team in most cases unless the soldier is out of ammo; rockets do plenty of damage. Playing medic, I want my soldiers alive, picking up ammo whenever possible, and overhealed as much as possible. Watching them charge away from my heal beam with little health and full ammo is nothing short of infuriating. I think the equalizer obviously is better than the shovel, but it annoys medics way more than the targe demo. I certainly can see how Mint is more annoyed with the targe because he plays sticky demo mostly; someone find him a shotgun lol.

   Posted on January 14th, 2010 at 2:34 am

2. Darzaire Said,

   Mint, you’ve probably seen me running around as regular demo most of the time we’re playing together, but I guess you haven’t seen how I deal with those accursed demoknights. They’re really not overly difficult to deal with, if you can aim fast enough. You can stop their charge immediately (and even knock them back a bit) if you pipe them in the legs. Assuming they’ll have some heads, they’ll still be faster than you, but if you’re able to aim your pipes fast enough to stop them, then you should have plenty of time to pipe them to death (usually….they could have an advantage due to the environment, but let’s ignore that).

   As for anyone else reading this, I really believe that the best way to practice piping is to play demoknight….Jestr is right on it, it really does improve your piping skills fast and effectively.

   If you really want to humiliate one, and the situation is right, you can juggle them with stickies because of their explosion resistance. I don’t mean juggle them vertically upward, but rather keep them moving in a certain direction (preferably away from you) without letting them touch the ground. Pretty hard, but it can be done.

   Posted on January 15th, 2010 at 4:07 am

3. midu2 Said,

   Please comment on whether you still feel that the targe demo is a difficult sticky demo counter. I am not happy about the nerf because they didn’t add anything to make up for it, so it’s even less of a viable alternative for a demoman who wants to add as much to his team as possible. I feel like I can still rock the targe demo on a pub, but there were no 34 head/40+ kill streaks lol. If 2 soldiers storm my defensive perimeter, I feel myself wishing I had my stickies more than I did before.

   I believe we all agree that the targe was UP for competitive play before the recent nerf to explosive resistance, and this is obviously even more the case now. The challenge for Valve now is to figure out a way to turn the targe into a sidegrade that would be acceptable to comp players and pub players. I thought about this for a while, and the solution may be to simply increase his nade count. I think he should carry 6 nades in the launcher and have a higher total number of nades (old pre-nerf level would be fine). I believe that this could help to counterbalance the fact that Valve has encouraged the targe demo to use melee a lot; it would give clueless targe demos the idea that maybe their primary weapon isn’t so bad after all. I think the downside would be increased spam, but no stickies balances out that issue in my opinion.

   Also, I found an amazing piece of advice at a recent post on the Steam forum yesterday: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1093560

   Apparently, most antivirus software takes up a lot of CPU cycles by checking out certain TF2 files that are regularly generated while you play. I gain 10-20 FPS in certain situations, which is amazing. I also added -high to my launch options to run TF2 as a high priority process, but that doesn’t seem to give nearly the benefit that tweaking my Nod32 exclusion list did. I think that the antivirus tweak may be the best protip ever for people with certain setups, so you’ll probably want to put a link in your show notes.

   I think this is the podcast where you mentioned once that it’s a good idea to regularly find “placebos” to convince yourself that you’re a better player with a new setup. After you said that, I got a rocketfish mouse pad with a speed & control side from BestBuy for my G5; that really did the trick for a bit. I’m worried that I will run out of things to try eventually, so please keep the “placebo” tricks coming whenever you find more. After tweaking my antivirus, I airshotted a rocket jumping soldier with a huntsman arrow & pinned him to wall on Double Cross. Then I got another airshot a minute later, and people commented on both shots. You certainly can’t go wrong with some extra confidence.

   Posted on January 16th, 2010 at 6:50 pm