Update: Versão portugues traduzido pelo xpd do Teamfortress.com.br aqui: LINK
So I was playing in a pug the other day on tf2lobby alongside people who were new to this whole idea of "6v6 Fair Fight" format when someone who recognized me asked me essentially what makes the title of this article. I thought I'd take a few paragraphs to properly explain.
From what I've noticed, the status quo says that the Pocket babysits the Medic while the Roamer does his own thing.
What I look like whenever I hear the aforementioned explanation
Allow me to drop an education bomb...
Rather than discuss why the status quo's definition is misleading and should change, I will simply just tell it like it is so that you can see the problems on your own time. But hey! Don't take my word for it — here's how the French teach their newbies:
Source: blog.wefrag.com
"Teams typically roll with a defensive Soldier and an offensive Soldier, where they both either stick to their roles or switch out as necessary. ... "It doesn't really matter what your team decides; just know that the Medic-Soldier combo is the heart of the team"; this is the philosophy of the Americans. However, in Europe, the combo is practically always the Demo + Soldier + Medic. Everyone has their own variations, but the most solid combo is composed of [at least] two heavy classes + their Medic."
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, lets talk about the Soldiers so that you can see the differences in behavior that create the need to give them different names:
By default, the Heavy classes (read: everybody but the Scouts) revolve around the Medic. When an opportunity presents itself, though, such as an isolated Medic who has recently lost his protectors; perhaps a successful push into the Spire area on Badlands, or even if a distraction is needed, it becomes necessary for someone to quickly break away from the combo (usually by rocket jumping away) and give chase, take the objective, or draw the opposing team's attention away from your combo. When the job is done, however, that person comes back and rejoins the group again. We call this person the Roaming Soldier.
On the other hand, however, it sometimes becomes necessary (i.e. during the mid fight) that the Medic has a designated person to constantly look over him when things get crazy. This person is also frequently responsible for building the Medic's uber by damaging himself so that they can get their push off faster and hopefully catch the opposing team off balance. Basically, when the chaos ensues, someone has to carry the responsibility of protecting the most important person on the team. We call this the Pocket Soldier.
What I normally do for my Soldier and Medic mentees here at CommunityFortress is compare it to American football, which in my opinion is exactly where this term comes from. Allow me to illustrate:
... and that's essentially all there is to it. I have no idea how so many people got such weird impressions of this information. Maybe they tried to oversimplify it when they explained it to eachother... who knows?
Comments
The Medic is the quarterback in the sense that the Uber is the ball. The Medic calls the play and decides where the action goes. If the QB gets sacked, your offense is going no where. The pocket is an offensive lineman bececause he's keeping the Medic safe. Roamer would be more of a blocker, like a tight end. He's actively going out there and taking people out so that the Offense can get its job done. Demo man is running back because he is EXPLOSIVE. Aggressive Bombing run pushes by the demo are parrallel to running it up the gut. Scouts are wide recievers because they play in front of the offense or on the flanks, and run attacking/distraction routes…
It's just comparing a TF team to a Football offense, but TF is simultaneously Offense/Defense as opposed to taking turns on the field. I stand by my metaphor!
eXtine that doesn't work on so many levels. I don't even know where to begin
Its the most annoying thing in the world when the roamer decides to rocket jump off somewhere and the combo gets wrecked by the enemy sollies as a result.
As for the misconception, at least some of it can probably be traced to the Ubercharged guide, which says, among other things, that "Because of the great mobility possessed by a skilled roaming soldier, he will be ahead of his team at most, if not all times."
While that doesn't explicitly say that the roamer is always out there doing his own thing, I would certainly read it that way if I didn't know better.
RSS feed for comments to this post.