I usually hear spies uncloak behind if nothing is really going on. I guess it also depends what server you are on, since I pretty much exclusively on 2 servers and neither are overrun by spies (most of the time), or how good your team is. Spies are really only good though if the other team is pretty crap (I know this from playing a spy and being on the receiving end of a spy).

The game got unbalanced when they released the first medic update. It never was, and it never will be an e-sports favored game.

Don't bother if you're after balanced games. ;)

The game is pretty unbalanced, yeah. I've invested about 520 hours into it, I can tell you spy isn't overpowered. Pretty much everyone can spycheck effortlessly. A spy spends a good amount of their time being helplessly being blown up by spam, or going through a passage at just the most inopportune time and running face-first into somebody, which is pretty much a death sentence. There's some luck involved. it's only a matter of time before the heavy has a food item that makes him electrified and kills backstabbing spies instantly...


TF2 gets old, but it can still be fun. A lot of the unlocks can make things more fun, like Axetinguisher, Huntsman, Equalizer, Charge N' Targe, and the jumpers, while too many recently haven't been so great, but that's usually because they're just +XX% vulnerability, bleeding, +-XX% damage, +-XX% speed sort of things, uninspired and boring stat changes.

Snipers unlocks (Most weapons aren't supposed to be "upgrades". Equalizer is a straight upgrade, but most weapons are supposed to be alternatives) are pretty decent. Jarate is excellent if you have teammates that can aim. Razorback is situational, it's good when unskilled spies are rampant and your team is composed of idiots. Use a Sydney Sleeper shot in close proximity and you can ruin an enemy with the SMG.

Huntsman is just fun as hell, especially if you can get a pyro to actually notice you and light your arrows. Most players are stupid, if you behave like you're a spy, you can "trick" moronic pyros into "spychecking" you, heaven forbid they light an arrow for you willingly. >_<


Just so you know, soldier and demoman are probably the most overpowered classes. I play both, demoman is pretty much "press buttons and people die". Scout is beast in the right hands. My personal most-played class is medic, since I usually have to be the one to step up and do it. I'm very good as soldier though (you'd think most TF2 players never played Quake and QWTF...), so when I'm spending most of my time as Medic running for my life while teammates commit suicide and keep running forward when I'm surrounded by three scouts, I'll just pull out the Black Box and say "fuck it, I'll do it myself!".

However, it's a team game and even with my scoreboard-topping skills, I can't do it alone. You need a combination of classes to overcome obstacles.


The key to having fun with this game is finding the right server, which unfortunately is getting a bit difficult! I'll assume you don't play 32 man servers with instant respawn.

Some servers have premium. People pay good money to be able to fly around and be obscenely broken. It's usually pretty easy to tell when a spy is sapping buildings located somewhere totally out of reach for a spy, or when a lone heavy gets shot twice in the head with a huntsman, kills you, and you see that you barely dented his health.

Avoid saigns and lotus like the plague. Hellsgamers and most of the 24/7 servers have spoofed player counts. Not so bad, but you'll enter thinking there's plenty of people playing when there's either nobody there or just a bunch of bots.


As for a normal spy situation, if you've been sapped and he's got backup, run away. A good spy will time sapping with his teammates, having them pop up the moment you're in trouble. Of course, the rest of your team works to prevent this from happening, but sometimes it can't be helped. It's no use dying when saving your buildings is impossible.

If the spy is alone and he's aggressive, switch to your shotgun and kill him. If he's being defensive, going in circles around your buildings so you can't reach him and trying to fake you out by staying in positions that he can escape from at a moment's notice, keep your wrench out and try to hit him with it. When he backs away, just turn your aim so you hit your sentry. If he tries to stop you, he'll get whacked, but if he doesn't, you'll destroy the sapper.

If spies are a major problem for your engineers, consider having the homewrecker on a pyro. You can light them up, airblast them away, and quickly whack the sappers off while he's dying. He'll probably run away, but he might dodge around and shoot with his revolver or come running back to spam the sapper. He's already burning to death. If he's shooting at you, he's not disguised and the sentry will take care of that in a hurry.

If he comes back to sap some more, he's suicidal. Just whack him with the homewrecker, give him a shot or two from the shotgun or flaregun, or light him up a little more, shoot him away with another airblast, and at this point the sappers should be gone, so if he's still alive, he won't be for much longer. A teammate should've helped by now, and the buildings aren't sapped anymore, so just chase after him with your flamethrower or secondary weapon.


Also, mini-turrets are fun. Don't use the wrangler with it, you'll want to fight alongside it. Try to hide it across from you, like under some stairs. You want to be opposite of it so that the opponent has to choose whether to attack you or the sentry. They'll probably choose you, so make sure you can get to cover while keeping him in range of the sentry. If he changes his focus, peek out and attack him again.

These sentries are highly disposable, you can build two of them without collecting more ammo, and they build quickly, so when one is destroyed you'll have another to cover you. It also leaves enough ammo to start a dispenser, which more often than not is the most useful thing an engineer can build, especially a lone engineer trying to sneak a teleporter behind enemy lines.


That's another thing worth noting. Every class benefits from being stealthy. Hide in a position where you can get behind and ambush somebody walking past you. You have a major advantage when you can avoid frontal assaults. The demoman's stickybombs are highly versatile, but were made for the purpose of blocking off doorways. Hide the stickies around the doorframe so they can't see that it's been trapped, and blow them up, preferably while taunting with the grenade launcher or bottle. Scottish Resistance now has a very rapid deploy rate and can trap multiple areas. It's not as good for spamming in direct combat and quickly neutralizing a threat, but for more cunning players it's a heck of a lot of fun! :D

Don't just sit defensively, though. You can use this trap as a barrier. Just shoot grenades at passersby, most people will be naive enough to follow you once you retreat back to safety. If you're using the ScoRes, you can even be prepared when somebody else immediately follows the last guy you blew up, all while setting up the stickybombs you detonated. Just make sure you know when it's time to switch things up a bit and go somewhere else. If the whole team finds you've been a nuisance for a while, they'll coordinate and deal with you, or they'll simply ignore your location. Your traps aren't useful unless you're surprising people with them, after all.


Make sure to read the official TF2 wiki, watch gameplay videos, and practice. Try to be good at every class. Countering an opponent is much harder if you don't have a hardwired understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

...and please, remember that the Medic's new crossbow is very fun. It's not a strong weapon, so these medics have to play very defensively, but if you keep dodging when there's nothing to dodge, they won't be able to shoot you with it! It heals a good deal of health, from a safe distance, very quickly, so it can be the boost you need to take down a heavy. Having one medic heal a player while the other one has a crossbow shot ready for when health starts dwindling can be highly effective if you have the coordination to do it.

Think of it like a sandvich that you have a near-endless supply of, but you have to aim it instead of dropping it. Most people still haven't quite caught on to how to use this weapon very effectively yet...

As a scout I really can't agree with this and still sort of laugh a bit thinking about your one-shot kill comment of the scout killing you in the OP.

If I run into a soldier with my scout on 2Forts I'm almost as good as dead, and more often than not all they have to do is shoot near me against anything to already one shot kill me, and if I'm lucky enough to survive one hit the other is usually close by, and else I'm too damaged to do anything before I'm healed up.

Conversely, with my Force a Nature, I can do a crit to the face and still have a soldier with +50% health left in front of me, and the second shot will barely do damage because he flies away after the first. (wouldn't give up the fan for anything on that map due to mobility)

Play a scout on 2forts for a while if you want to feel better about Soldiers :)

Aim helps, but soldiers pretty much can just fire and forget. The Black Box is very good. Since medics usually ignore the fact that I exist (and I never make the assumption that they might consider healing me), I don't mind having one less rocket since I probably won't get a kritz or uber. I don't know why they like sticking to heavies with tunnel vision, or why they like to use their charge seconds before the heavy's minigun clicks from being out of ammo, and then just run away instead of giving somebody else the rest of the kritz.

As for crates, don't worry. Nobody opens crates. I have four pages of them, I'll probably have to get rid of them soon. It sure would be nice if they let you do something with them, since they give you a million of them, and nobody in their right mind would spend $2.50 on a key, much less the money it would cost to open four pages of crates.

Stop trying to convince me, I will NEVER play scout. EVER :P If I'm not good at it I'm not going to play it.

And yet, I've been killed with a single crit scattergun shot by random scouts OVER AND OVER AND OVER for the past year, using any class other than fat bastard - I mean Heavy.