CommunityFortress

Every week or so, Sigma and I end up discussing new developments in TF2, whether it's a new patch, new strategies, or whatever. We figured that we might as well do a tiny bit of editing and just post it on CommFort. Any format suggestions are encouraged, as any discussion in the comments or on the forums. Oh, and this is all opinion, but it won't always be clear whose opinion it is. :3

New Maps

We need them! Badlands and Granary are such staples that even Granary is getting boring. More on that in the XPL section. Also, where is our goddamn 5-Spire map and our Gpit 5-cp?

This map is a ton of fun for medics that are awake. The map is just riddled with tactical opportunities (even more so since the map is new). There are tons of places for soldiers to jump the medic, but none are great. This boils down to a lot of risk vs reward situations that could go either way, especially if a team forgets to communicate. Obscure takes the idea of chokepoints and says, "Oh hey, I know that you can spam these really easily. Now here's too many to cover. HAVE FUN!" Lots of pushes, lots of flanks, lots of fun.

It's just fighting. All of the time. The action is a lot faster than Badlands. Last point has a ton of paths jumbled together, which means that the attack on the final point can be a surprise, depending on how you play it.

Coldfront-

Not good. It read feedback from competitive players along the lines of "we need height differences" and interpreted that as "gradual slopes all over the place are a good thing." This means that scouts can just crush soldiers on it all day. Mid is like Badlands' mid, but instead of a bridge where soldiers can be useful, it's just the valley. Point 2 is terrible. There are 5 doors between it and mid, and all these pillars and boxes and shit to hide behind, so if there's a scout behind you and one other guy up, you have to go find the scout. No thanks.

Not sold on it, but the problems seemed to stem from a lack of an established push route. You could go a lot of different ways that seem viable, but aren't intrinsically better or worse. That basically translates to: If you happen to pick the side the demo is on, you're screwed. At least on Granary, 3->4 is fine going garage, even if it is trapped. It's superior enough to the other side to be worth it, or to leave the other side as a surprise. Mainline is just... all these basically equal push routes that all suck horribly if the demo is there. Maybe it'll be better now that you can just bonk it.

Bonk

Bonk is in. In the past, setting up a good flank meant great timing with the rest of your team. Now, you have a huge six-second window where you can just go in and dance around, or use it to see where the enemy is as if they were spies. Carnage, Enigma, and Ruwin have all been making good use of that aspect, plus it's another counter to the demoman, which is welcomed.  For those unaware, Bonk's cooldown was nerfed (from 10 seconds to ~24). On the flip side, the speed penalty was gone entirely. While it was possible to mitigate the reduction using strafing, it required your movement to be awkward, which made dodging more difficult. The cooldown isn't a big deal, as you really shouldn't have any reason to spam it. Plus, the pistol is so weak (especially in terms of accuracy) that it's hardly ever worth using, even if you have it equipped. Remember, you can reload 6 scattergun shots while you're invincible.

XPL

In Sigma's words, "actually looking pretty good." Personally, my XPL account is made. There's nothing set in stone yet, but there are some people making noise about boycotting esea and supporting xpl as the premier league. There has been considerable work by sponsors happening, who have been organizing meetings with everyone under the sun to talk about Valve support for the league, etc. There's also talk of server sponsorship (thankfully not from Valve), and TF2Lobby-style stats. Siggy "would die of joy" if we had good servers and relays posted up for matches. Basically, all ESEA has right now is ease of viewing and a LAN finals, which only the latter do they have any monopoly on. If XPL can have a successful first season and get LAN finals for their second, there will no denying that it's the place to be. For those (like myself) who didn't feel like reading the ruleset, it's going to be more Euro-style. 2 maps a week on a 30 minute time limit. Before we get all Revolutionary War up on Hawkeye's ass, we should consider how much more fun scrimming will be when you have one map that sucks and one good map to practice, rather than just one map that sucks. But even if it is, say, Gravel Pit and Coldfront or something like that, at least you can break up the pain of one map with the pain of another. Plus, Turbine might make a comeback! (Oh wait, we're the only two in the NA community that enjoy Turbine...damn.)

Medic Styles

A thing that Jaeger brought up in the first installment of his (hopefully) series is Agron's style of playing medic. For those who don't follow Diggy, he's a lot more aggressive than most medics, and dies as a result. On the other hand, he obviously gets results, as Dignitas was the champion of Euro for the longest time. From Sigma's perspective, you can an deny single-double bombs with smart positioning. However, if they're all just being aggressive though, you give your team a lot of power by dying like Agron, because you have a health advantage for 5 seconds after your medic dies, essentially 150 damage vs 24hp/s. Basically, if the enemy med lives longer than 10 seconds after, it's over. In theory though, aggressive medics can beat out an extensively logical medic, because when health gets low, a strong medic can put the correct health on the correct person. Both teams will want to back out, but if you've aggressive, them retreating can give you the advantage. Also, Ubersaw swipes are huge fun advantages.

Also, what the fuck happened to all of the good medics? eMg ate 2 of the good medics, but a ton just up and vanished. Now, I'm not saying that it's because Viaduct is a popular(?) map, but...?

Engineers: What's holding them back from being viable?

Nothing, according to eMg. They've pulled out an engineer attacking Gravel Pit C and attacking Coldfront last in all their matches so far. Their strategy seems to be, "Fail first push, win because spawns teleport in instantly." And...it seems to work? On Gravel Pit at least. It's the "Russian Strat"- just keep sending wave after wave of guys until they run out of players themselves. eMg's strategy needs work though, mainly because their medic commits during the first wave of the push. I'd like to take this time to apologize to Defy. Sorry for making fun of you when you suggested a Gravel Pit engineer.

Win Calculator-

If anyone is interested in taking the old-ish win calculator and updating it to automatically collect data from TF2Lobby, can you contact me? I have some ideas but I need someone interested in the programming side of things.

Love,

Fish #641