The focus of last week was the great Soldier-Demoman War, a prelude to the next big update which should finally drop some time tonight! Valve updated their developers blog/website late last night: http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part6/index.htm revealing the 3rd weapon for the demoman and the last 2 weapons for the Soldier. The War is extremely close at the moment, so go out there and represent! Well... after reading this article!
Click read more to see analysis on the announced unlocks, and a quick look at action from ESEA-InviteReplacing the trusty shovel is a brand new Pick-Axe, dubbed "the Equalizer". This item was community suggested as Valve points out. Check out the e-mail Jibberish recieved from Valve, which acknowledges that the Equalizer is a straight upgrade, but thats not necessarily a bad thing. The 2nd Soldier Unlock falls into the "fun" category, being a bugle you can rally your troops with once you fill a "rage meter". Sounds like it'll provide some fun moments while pub-stomping, incentive for better players to stick it out.
The final Demoman unlockable sounds very interesting. The Scottish Resistance is an alternative Sticky-launcher with the capability to lay twice as many stick bombs, destroy enemy stickies (through your explosions I guess?), and selectively destroy clusters of sticky traps! The significant downside is a longer priming time on your sticky bombs, meaning mid-air explosions are hampered as is close-range fighting. I'm not a professional demoman, so I don't know what those in the industry think, but this weapon sounds very intriguing, and powerful! Surprisingly there is no alternative to the Grenade Launcher, although I guess there is still hope.
Overall, I'm very excited to try these unlocks out. Valve has seemingly done a great job of providing both fun weapons and weapons useful for those with a higher skill set. It's difficult to balance the demands of competitive players and pub players, but I think Valve is doing an exceptional job with this update. We'll see what more is to come.
In ESEA-Invite this week cp_Follower was the map, and in my opinion the map really shined. Follower is basically an amalgamation of Granary and Badlands, utilizing a mid point similar to Badland's Bridge and last two points structured similar to Granary's.
Complexity had matches against 2 teams that have their eyes on that 4th playoff spot, MoB and i7, but came through in typical Complexity fashion with a 5-1 win over MoB and a 5-2 win over i7. In both matches, Complexity was having a little bit of a problem capturing the middle point in the initial mid fight, with both MoB and i7 being able to win mid a good percentage of the time. This is indicative of MoB and i7 probably spending a solid amount of time working mid-strategies on Follower. While those well practiced strategies paid off, Complexity's defense and counter-attacks proved way too strong.
Carnage was on fire this week, whipping out multiple 3 kill streaks as Sniper and several huge 1 shot soldier kills. The rest of the team certainly held their own with Solid Snake ripping a 4-kill streak in last night's game against i7, Exploit holding it down alongside Carnage, and Jaeg showing the competitve TF2 world a little something about a class called "Heavy". If you're interested in how the Heavy factors into competitive play, check out those two matches and keep an eye on Jaeg.
Other matches actually played this week include EG busting out a 5-1 win over struggling Dynamic and Pandemic overcoming Blight in an extremely tense 4-3 match. The upcoming patch is reportedly going to break Demo playback, which isn't necessarily an indicator of the new system's implementation, so make sure you check these out while you still can!
