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Author Topic: KABOOOOOOOOOOM  (Read 8348 times)

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Doom

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KABOOOOOOOOOOM
« on: March 26, 2009, 07:33:26 AM »

How to play Demoman(By Doom Age 23)

1) Grenades fly slightly faster than Rockets. Practice with leading. Once you get this down, you almost literally cannot lose a one on one providing you don't miss or point blank a heavy/pyro/better demo. Geo might pop in and say something stupid like "Scout is a hard counter to Demoman", but once you get good enough at leading shots you can one-shot them.

2) Use your sticky for everything and just develop an understanding of map flow. I was watching a professional democunt last night who used his sticky jump to reach the center point of Fastlane before enemy scouts did, and as he entered the area he was already charging a long-distance stickie to drop on the control point to detonate on those scouts. He got like three kills...

Before Bal scout'd him and he quit in an absolute butthurt frenzy. We then stopped losing, since this one dedicated demo was apparently responsible for everything wrong in the universe.

3) As the above illustrates, get used to the fact that you're basically a worse person and player.

Demomen have their uses and they are a legitimate part of class balance and they're not that god damn bad usually, but it's that one stupid ungodly fuck who main plays Demoman that makes me think "Yeah, if they just removed Demoman entirely, I'd agree that nothing of value was lost."

Good luck with being a worse person!
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James Edward Smith

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2009, 07:50:23 AM »

1 - What are your best tips for Demoman? I really want to be better with this class. In other games I've been amazing with indirect fire weapons (I used to be KING SHIT with the flak cannon in UT, though that's an easier weapon to use). And the Demoman's design flavour and playstyle (hang back, pick targets, troll people, issue loads of indiscriminate justice) should really mesh with the way I like to play when I'm not going BER-ZER-KER. But all I can seem to manage is utter mediocrity on a good day. I think it's just a matter of practice (he is after all, my third-least played class, after sniper and SPAH), but advice can't hurt.

IMBAMAN IS IMBA, NO NEED FOR ADVICE HERE!

In all seriousness, the ImbaDemoman is a tricky class and I mean that in more ways than one. Your greatest resource as a demo is the general casualness of TF2 and its players. If everyone is on their toes and always weary of a Demoman's tricks, he's not really a very cheap class in most situations.

Direct Combat: The Demoman's Worst Enemy

Direct, one-on-one combat is really where the demo man is most vulnerable. His primary weapon is powerful, but more awkward and less straight forward than any other weapon in the game. A crit-nade will turn many classes into giblets, but missed shots with it are completely wasted as they will bounce and tumble away from their intended target and over the horizon, never to be seen or heard from again. Players who are not wandering around in a dream, can easily spot and avoid bounching grenades before they go off, their detonation time if you miss with them is VERY long and VERY forgiving. Plus, they do way less damage even when they go off that way, rather than from actually hitting someone before any bounces.

Your sticky bomb(I think they should be called clingy charges) launcher can save you in head to head combat, but it is not idiot proof. For starters, you must be able to launch a sticky to a place where the target is going/has to be and then actually detonate it  without it being too close to yourself or before they can get clear. This is not a skill-less task. Your reactions must be just a good as a soldier's plus you have to manually detonate your shot which is a disadvantage in ease and speed, though an advantage tactically sometimes I must admit. It will usually take two bombs to kill most classes if not more due to the new priming-time damage penalty that quickly detonated stickies suffer now. You can still gib a scout though on lucky detonations, if he is close enough to take full damage. I feel that this is the scout's own fool self fault and it is a welcome gift to a demoman who is facing his toughest fight when faced with a scout he didn't see coming. Just remember, You have a lot of stickies in your gun, if some one is after you, don't just back pedal and fire them and the ground, spread them around a little, give them a wider obstacle to contend with. You have to think of what angles they might want to attack you from and then get sticky in the way of each of them. It may take a couple stickies to kill someone, but most people fear them like even just getting clipped by one is going to ruin them for some reason.

Indirect Combat: Being a Huge DickFrequent Round MVP

But enough about the head-to-head situation where the demoman is weak and pretty much at a disadvantage against all other classes due to not having a low-but-steady damage dealer like an automatic weapon, pistol or a shotgun, lets get down to why you are imbalanced and unbeatable. TF2 is not usually fought mano-a-mano, it is a team-based game which translates to a bunch of idiots running around, following arrows and getting forever lost in the interweaving corridors of cp_steel. A demoman who can stay one step ahead of the opposition should never have to fight anyone. Fighting is for the unwashed masses, as a demoman, your job is to anticipate and prey upon the inattention of others. When that doesn't work, you simply rain grenades into a choke and hope you see medics dying. If someone attacks you such that they fire at you before you knew they were coming, you have failed as a demoman. All attackers should be gibbed or at least severely injured with their medic dead before they can ever bring any sort of fire to bare on you.

A pyro who is in pieces as he turns a corner can never hurt you, but a pyro running you down with his flamethrower trigger welded in the on position while you desperately try to get two nades to hit him or stickies to go off under him before you are a pile of cinders is no one that any demo wants to deal with. You have no fool-proof garden-hose weapon, so eternal vigilance and cowardice must be your modus operendi.

So, where do you put your stickies? Well for starters, don't just throw them all over the place like they're jacks or something. If you are using them for indirect fire "shelling", firing 3-4 and then detonating them, fine. But by and large the sticky bombs that kill someone, are the ones they don't see. Shelling with them, doesn't really do much unless you are in a crowded choke point like the many ones you find on dustbowl (usually the openning attack postion where the enemy comes out of the gates is a situation like this on Dustbowl). In these situations, there is so much shit flying around and enough immediate threats like heavy-medic combos, kamikaze pyros, and agressive soldiers, people will not register your sticky bombs as enough of a threat to avoid them all the time. They will trust that you aren't paying enough attention, or there aren't enough down, whatever, and charge through them. How do you capitalize? make sure you get enough down to kill someone (like 4 or so) and get the detonation off when it will hurt (a full health soldier, a fleeing medic, a charging pyro, etc). Leaving them on the ground unblown is a risk, because people can kill them now with bullet weapons, but letting them prime makes them cause more damage and waiting until you have at least 4 out pretty much guaranties a kill or two rather than just giving the enemy medics ubercharge ammo. However, when you see that winbomb fly out of your launcher all sparkly and pretty-like, you should pretty much always blow that thing as soon as you can. It's too valuabe to risk it getting disarmed and even with the pre-primed penalty, it's pretty much always enough to gib anything not carrying a sandvich.

As with pretty much any other class, when you attack, you wanna attack from behind or the side whenever you can, never from front on. The difference is, as a demoman, you can often do this preemptively. The cliche, is to place stickies on the backs of door ways, close enough to the openning so that their explosion will hit people coming through the door, but far enough so that the edges of the door hide the mines until its too late. This is an obvious tactic, he even does it once in the meet the demoman trailer for god's sake. No one can see this one coming as long as you keep yourself out of sight enough that they don't put two and two together. Once you've caught someone with it once, move your mines one door way closer to their path to get to you. Their assured rancor will probably net you an other kill. Door ways are not the only place you can do this, the sides of 90 degree blind corners work too. Any wall that you're sure people will hug to avoid fire is a good bet.

Just remember though, you don't have to always place your mines so that they are undectable to be effective. In TF2, people are usally distracted, they are fighting. Pyros, soldiers and heavies are all worrying and scary to people. All you have to do is hide your stickies enough so that they aren't seen as threats until it's too late. Doorways and blind corners are great as they provide full consealment, but partial consealment in the middle of a highly contested area can get you just as many kills. Ramps and stairways, the tops of tall stairways and other such areas can all conseal stickies until it's too late. A soldier is chasing or fleeing a pyro, he doesn't have time to really think about that spikey shape he just saw over top of the next ridge or just under the ledge he is jumping off of. KA-BLOOHEY!

The last thing is, use suprise and flanking when you can. Multiple attack vectors are put in maps for a reason. There's nothing better than happening upon an unaware heavy, demo, or soldier and his medic who are looking down the other attack vector than the one you came from while firing wildly at your teamates. Place a few stickies just behind the medic where he can't see them and wait for your team to push them back a bit or for the non-medic to starting running back for cover or ammo. KA-BOOM, an other two kills for the imba-man!


Just remember to always laugh uncontrollably and wipe away a tear whenever you get a good 4-5 man kill with a detonation, and always, always remember to get that taunt off in time for the kill-cam. I'll see you on top of the score board.
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Doom

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2009, 07:59:09 AM »

Thanks Geo, I forgot that you can just back-pedal while shooting stickies at your feet if you don't think you can nail the grenade shot.

VIP quality description of a class based around never having to risk losing.

(I'd say I'll be over my sound thrashing by a never-misses-in-melee-range-Demo by the end of the day.)
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Mongrel

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2009, 08:19:11 AM »

I stopped using grenades almost entirely because I thought they ALWAYS bounced around. In addition to the various advice, this makes things a bit easier.

 :nyoro~n:
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Doom

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2009, 08:19:49 AM »

First Bounce. Like the Soldier's rocket, the grenade is "perfect" accuracy until the bounce, just in an arc.
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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #5 on: March 26, 2009, 08:22:39 AM »

Nono, I meant that I thought they didn't detonate on first impact, that they always hit something, tumble around, and THEN explode.

So I, uh, didn't ever bother to try and get better with it. :derp:
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Doom

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #6 on: March 26, 2009, 08:24:17 AM »

Suggestion for Demoman Thread Title: "2 + M1 M1 M1 M1 + M2"

Threads for every class with this theme!
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Brentai

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #7 on: March 26, 2009, 08:30:31 AM »

Demo is basically a tricky Soldier for the most part.  He's more about damaging than actually killing things.  Lay traps for people, and then carpet bomb them with nades from behind a corner or wall or something.  If you're not trying to be Frequent Round MVP then you'll help your team out just by making the area you're pumping full of hot tubes basically impassable.

And, of course, learn to corner on Sentries.  That's your real goddam job anyway.
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MadMAxJr

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #8 on: March 26, 2009, 08:39:35 AM »

Notes about a demo man from an engineer point of view.

If you're going to plant stickies to take out an engy nest, don't fire one at a time and detonate them.  You'll need to plant three or more to get the job done.  An alert engineer will try to whip out his pistol and break the stickies while the lesser engineers are just going to wrench their sentry and pray as their dispenser heals them.

As for the grenade launcher?  Drop all four into the nest and watch the engineer scream across entire worlds, penetrating across dimensions.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2009, 08:39:50 AM »

Quote from: Doom
First Bounce. Like the Soldier's rocket, the grenade is "perfect" accuracy until the bounce, just in an arc.

Yeah, the problem is, an arc is trickier to get a feel for than the straight line of the soldier's rocket. On top of this, a near miss is worthless to you as a demoman where as a near miss with a rocket is an assured kill on your second rocket and forces the enemy into a predictable trajectory. Hell even if you run out of rockets, like your near miss was the last one in your launcher, you can still pull out your shotty and gun the fool down before he can get his bearings in time. The Demoman has no fallback desperation weapon other than his bottle.

Quote from: Doom
Thanks Geo, I forgot that you can just back-pedal while shooting stickies at your feet if you don't think you can nail the grenade shot.

Back pedalling from a pyro and dropping stickies like bread crums is hilarious when the pyro is dumb enough to let you do it, but the second he pulls out his shotgun, you are basically running for your life. He needs to advance for you to blow him up, but no matter what you do he can still plink at you.

Scouts like to whine and bitch about being gibbed by sticky back pedalling, but if you are scout, your extra mobility should allow you to circumvent any stickies placed in that manner. It takes a clever Demo, who thinks of where you will move to dodge his first sticky and gets his next sticky there to kill you.

The Grenade launcher can pop people, yes, and the sticky launcher is a dastardly tool to be sure. But killing people in one on one situations with them when the other person has the jump on you and not you on them is tricky and takes considerable skill. In comparision, the primary or secondary of most other classes is way more forgiving. It's an all or nothing equation where as the flame thrower or shotgun of your opponent WILL kill you eventually regardless of the skill of the user. So if a demoman is annoying you, go ahead, test him. Ambush him, see what he's really made of. I think you'll find that most of the time they will be exposed as the glass cannons they really are.

Quote
Demo is basically a tricky Soldier for the most part.  He's more about damaging than actually killing things.  Lay traps for people, and then carpet bomb them with nades from behind a corner or wall or something.  If you're not trying to be Frequent Round MVP then you'll help your team out just by making the area you're pumping full of hot tubes basically impassable.

Huhuhuh, hot tubes.

I'll agree that any damage is always good, and that area denial is an area that the demoman can excell in. But killing people is just better. Soldiers or heavies, or anyone really who gets away with health and is on a good team is gonna get healed and at that point, all that health they lost is just fueling an ubercharge that breaks one of your sentries. The strength of the demo man is his ability to hit you with up to 8 shots simultaneously with literally no time inbetween them to heal/repair. Now is it always practical to try and get people with all 8 at once? No, not unless you are setting a very premeditated trap and a good demoman will not waste time doing that when he could be setting up more impromptu but none the less devastating traps, clusters and sentry breaking piles up and the front (see my previous advice and stickies only having to be consealed enough).

Quote from: Max
f you're going to plant stickies to take out an engy nest, don't fire one at a time and detonate them.  You'll need to plant three or more to get the job done.  An alert engineer will try to whip out his pistol and break the stickies while the lesser engineers are just going to wrench their sentry and pray as their dispenser heals them.

Yeah see, this I thought was pretty much a no-brainer. Blowing single stickies on a repaired sentry is missing the entire point of the weapon. Burst damage people, burst damage.

But it really just goes back to what I was saying earlier, if you are having a hard time playing demo, you are forgetting one of two things:

1) You are blowing your mines before you have enough out to put anyone over the edge and actually send them to the next dimension

2) You aren't thinking ahead and making accurate guesses as to where the standard opponent is going to go and what they are going to do when they see you running or whatever. The best sticky "traps" are the ones you place in the heat of battle not during setup time.

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #10 on: March 26, 2009, 10:17:09 AM »

The best sticky "traps" are the ones you place in the heat of battle not during setup time.

Those retard demomen who sticky the spawn gates during set up always make me laugh. The funniest was the guy who was blown up by his own poofed stickies.
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Bal

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #11 on: March 26, 2009, 10:36:52 AM »

The Demoman has a tricky learning curve, beyond which lies a land of vast riches, and damn near invincibility. Most Demomen do not come close to this, but that rare Demo who masters both weapons is damn near unstoppable by anything short of an instant kill.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #12 on: March 26, 2009, 11:28:39 AM »

Those retard demomen who sticky the spawn gates during set up always make me laugh. The funniest was the guy who was blown up by his own poofed stickies.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I sticky up the spawn gates when I'm on RED too. There's really no reason not to. Non retards will anticipate and avoid them but how many retards do you usually play with? Hell, I know on a bad day I get caught by them sometimes. People are complacent. They don't work great on maps where the gates are the chain link ones, cause people can see out and so you have to be really sneaky and place them without a lot of people noticing what you are doing by firing them from angles where people can't see them being placed and not letting people see you as much as possible.

A better map to do it on is Gravel pit where the gates are solid metal garage doors that people can't see out of and where the front line doesn't really get pushed back until both A and B are secured. On gravel pit you can actually continually re-sticky the spawn door if one of the two first points is not seeing a big attack for whatever reason.

The big thing is, you just have to be not retarded about it. You have to get your stickies on so they can't be seen from the other side of the door, and then you have to get away so that you still have sight of the doorway and can detonate at the right time, but be far away enough that there's no way you can be poofer-busted or sniped in the case of chainlink doors.

Personally though, I prefer to sticky the next bottle neck out from the spawn door. Like, I'm sure I'm not giving a lot away by saying that I love to sticky mine the rear side of the little half wall and rock that the bomb-kart squeezes past before entering the tunnel in Badwater Basin. BLU attackers coming out of the other two doors can see them clear as day, but they rarely seem to bother shooting them up as normally they are more concerned with daring RED pyros and soldiers, snipers and grenading demos standing over top of the tunnel. I can usually get at least one medic/whatever combo doing this cause their setup Uber usually goes down before the kart gets pushed much past that wall.

But like I said before, always mix it up. People are dumb, most of the time and not thinking. They wanna see an enemy before the enemy sees them and then blast them. They don't try to think ahead, they wait for the moment. As a Demoman you have to take advantage of this. There's a really prevalent mentality in fast respawn FPSs that when someone cheap shots you with a stationary trap, you now know where they are, and they are going to be too dumb to move and re-setup the trap. People always think this, and in a lot of cases they are right because their cheap shotting opponents aren't usually that bright either. So, what do they do, they run back to where the cheap shotter is from a different angle and they feed it to him because he doesn't have the jump on them anymore. As a smart demo you can prey on their rush to get to where you were when you killed them the first time and teach you a lesson. Place your trap up sooner than they anticipate and you'll catch them with their pants down 9 times out of 10.

I used to do this all the time in DoD as a machinegunner, always change your position, keep them guessing.
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Bongo Bill

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #13 on: March 26, 2009, 11:42:21 AM »

In exactly what universe does it take three or four stickies to kill a Medic? I want to live there.
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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #14 on: March 26, 2009, 11:46:48 AM »

The same universe where it takes at least two to reliably kill anything and my sticky bombs don't magically leap at people and stick to them like attack dogs after I fire them? You know, the world we play TF2 in, the source engine.

People move, Bongo and stickies are believe it or not, not a hit-scan weapon. But by all means, stick to just firing two mines out in indirect fire situations and then blowing them and I'll be hanging out over here in positive kill ratio-land.

Here, here's a simple diagram.
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Bongo Bill

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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #15 on: March 26, 2009, 12:10:57 PM »

I only say it because I seem to keep dying to just one, often apparently in midair. Maybe I am just not noticing the other(s)?
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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #16 on: March 26, 2009, 12:20:10 PM »

Reading Geo's posts makes me want to play more Demoman, of all things.
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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #17 on: March 26, 2009, 12:31:19 PM »

All posts from now on need to be venn diagrams.
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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #18 on: March 26, 2009, 01:01:26 PM »

Sticky grenades deal more damage if the Demoman is closer to the target, but only for a few seconds. That's why melee stickies are more deadly than the same number of planted stickies.
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Re: M1+M2
« Reply #19 on: March 26, 2009, 02:18:58 PM »

Sticky grenades deal more damage if the Demoman is closer to the target, but only for a few seconds. That's why melee stickies are more deadly than the same number of planted stickies.
Aha. That explains it, then!
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