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 EnemyDirect, 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 MVPBut 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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Topic: KABOOOOOOOOOOM (Read 8348 times)