CommunityFortress

Welcome to the third installment of Breaking and Entering, at this point we have already build our "team". Assuming that your team has been established now and you've begun to scrim now is the time to start shaping your teams mechanics and really Improving your Team.

With that said the general antics of a team revolve around their strengths for pushes and guarding their weaknesses on defense. Some examples of teams strengths would be coL's ability to support solid snakes thundering targe routine and then extract him using scouts and soldiers. Or their ability to rush in with carnage and enigma and provide support for their meatshots. While some examples of many teams weaknesses are keeping the combo far back because they lack the ability to successfully spam, or setting up defensively at choke and not fighting middle because they lack the dm.

Whatever the case the starting grounds for any team in my opinion would be harnessing your teams strengths and establishing right out the gate what your team lacks and building that up.

Just as a humorous juxtaposition I've recently been hearing alot of humourous statements from new teams. One such instance was a new team forming and during a scrim claiming their demoman was too good for their team because he was carrying and never really died. Now from a team to class standpoint the demoman is a fragile class, a "glass cannon" if you will. As such for the demoman to really carry he needs the support of his team to position himself in areas were his fragile class is at risk.

With that in-mind if he stayed alive and maintained the most kills to me that would tell you that he did a good job, because your team did a great job compensating for his aggression and protecting him, thus harnessing that particular demoman's skill, got the class as a whole is the most powerful.

Back onto the subject if you learn that one of the following classes are your strength this is what i'd recommend trying:

Soldier: If your soldiers are top dog on your team, taking aggressive faster routes to middle is an option for your team in doing so you can maintain an aggressive front on your enemy and win over the battlefield momentum.

Demoman: If your demoman is the main man, taking a standard setup, position, and push technique is probably better suited for you, in doing so you not only protect your asset by positioning your entire team before aggressing but you allow your team to rely on the support of your demoman.

Scouts: If your scouts are the cheese, you can outmaneuver, box off, or position your team around or on-top of the enemy team and rely on your weaker heavy classes to provide support for your scouts. Doing so is considered aggressive so you'll want to keep your combo constantly moving towards your scouts to cycle them off for heals.

Now if you should find your teams weaknesses to be any of the following here is how i'd approach them, considering at many different intervals in my team i've come across all of these issues:

Soldier: If you find your soldiers to slow, or to weak in dm, you need to either rely on your scout and demo to set the field for them to get to mid without getting hassled or move to counter at flank. Keep in mind the only way for a team to really operate with worse soldiers is to keep better positioning allowing your soldiers to basically stand as an auxiliary unit, holding down chokes and cutting off the enemy team long enough for your team to focus fire enemies together. How to Improve: Essentially you will want your soldiers to do alot of ammomod, tr_walkway, and then after having warmed up to that each practice night, lobby or scrim with that knowledge to cement it in layers until they are up to snuff.

Demoman: If your demoman is weaker you can supplement him for a soldier at most map mid-fights by having a soldier learn more advanced jumps and keep your demoman closer to your combo. How to Improve: Basically the same approach as any soldier, especially making their own servers and practicing there roll-outs to mid, because the demo is largely what shapes the field in a midfight.

Scouts: Scouts die a lot at mid? Or you tell them to go to the flank and they get burned by another scout combo? Keep them back on support have them get to mid, peck, then move back for heals, as your combo and demo aggress send them after stragglers. How to Improve: I cannot say that ammo-mod helps a scout in fact it hurt my scouting. The best advice i can give is have BOTH scouts lobby together frequently, that way they can learn to communicate amongst one another and eventually improve scouting all together. I've heard Quake is also good for aiming, but to me nothing beats tf2.

Once you've learned what your strengths and weaknesses are you can rely on them to shape how your team plays and find more easy in knowing how to respond to specific situations and what to practice on as a team. Remember finding out that your soldiers, scouts, demoman, or even medic are being outclassed is all a part of moving up the ladder. Freaking out and dropping team members to replace the worse players is a very bad idea, considering you will loose a ton of team dynamic and it will cause the team to be more tense and serious.