Team Fortress 2 part 1: Classes

Team and class based FPS, pretty good stuff let me tell you.

Standard FPS shooter deal you have a set of weapons and it's your job to kill some other team fools, the thing that mixes it up though is the class selection; each class has thier own set of different weapons and unique abilites that makes it so worth while and they're put into 3 different catergories, since that is my favorite aspect of the game I'll talk about that first, I'll go through each class individually listing strengths and weaknesses and whatnot.

First off: Damage

The Scout

The scout is your standard twitch based speedy class.

The scout is the fastest class in the game moving on average 30% faster than most other classes, sometimes more depending on the class. And he also has the ability to double jump, meaning this is your class to get to hard to reach places quickly as a bonus he caps controls points twice as fast as other classes. As a drawback he also has the one of lowest health of all the classes in the game at a mere 125.

His vanilla equipment is a scattergun (short range, loooads of damage) about two point blank shots from this gun is enough to cap any class just have to be quick enough, you've got six shots per clip, so be sure to reload constantly or you're going to end up out of ammo in your gun and dead as shit.

His secondary is your standard pistol, for heckling enemeys at a longer range or finishing them off if they get away from your scattergun, holds 12 round per clip and does a low damage but can be very useful for some situations, like destroying an unprotected sentry (you'll see later on what I mean, if you don't play that is.)

And finally his melee weapon; a baseball bat.

The bat does slightly less damage than all other melee weapons but you swing it considerably faster than any other class swings thier melee weapon, it's good if your up close and out of ammo, or just feel being a douche and killing someone with a bat.

Next up

The Soldier

The soldier is your standard high damage meaty character, he's a bit slower than other classes but makes up for that by having 200 health, meaning he can dish out and take plenty of damage.

The Soldiers main weapon is a rocket launcher, yeah his main weapon, awesome.

As you would imagine it does a lot of damage and it has a splash radius, meaning you can damage more than one enemy at a time with it, it only has 4 shots per clip before you need to reload, so reloading after every two shots isn't uncommon, a special ability the soldier can utilize with this weapon is a rocket jump, sacrificing some of his health he can jump and shoot a rocket at his feet to propel himself to great heights for some good ol' shock and awe.

Soldiers secondary is a normal shotgun, holds 6 shots, much weaker than the scouts scatter gun, but is a good secondary for finishing off enemys, or preserving rocket ammo.

The soldiers melee is a trench shovel, nothing special, standard attack speed and damage.

Last off the Damage catergory is:

The Pyro

The Pyro is the last of the damage catergory classes having 175 health and a decent damage output makes him something to worry about. As you would imagine he sets people on fire, pretty standard. few things are more satisfying than killing someone with fire.

The main weapon he uses is a homemade flamethrower (seriously look at that thing, propane tank and a jimmyrigged gas-pump and some other crazy shit, take that to the science faire, yo.) sporting 200 amoo count, no reloading, so use it wisely. The flame thrower sets people on fire which does a small amount of damge over time, the fire can be dispelled if the enemy jumps into water or heals up sufficently enough to outlast the afterburn, but it's easy to get caught right in the middle of a direct flame and watch your health drop to nothing in a few seconds, good shit.

It's alt-fire produces a compressed blast of air, which can push enemys away from you or even push back projectiles, like rockets and grenades.

Pyros secondary is a shotgun, see soldier.

Pyros melee weapon is a fire axe (oh the irony) but this weapon gets little use due to the flamethrower being an upclose and personal weapon already, but it's nice for humiliation purposes.

next catergory is defence is

First in our line up of defence is

Demoman

The Demoman is a versatile class, you don't have to use him for defence, but he is very well suited to it.

The Demoman has 175 health so he can take a decent beating and keep on going, donside is, he's not a direct fighter persay.

The demoman's main weapon weapon is a grenade launcher with a rotating cylinder that holds four grenades, so you've got four high damage grenades perclip, each grenade bounces around a few times then explodes when fired, unless ofcourse it hits an enemy player then it explodes on contact, also the grenades do the single higest damge of any weapon, use them wisely.

The Demo's secondary is a sticky grenade launcher, this gun is something to be feared, a total of 8 high damage sticky grenades per clip, once shot these grenades stick to whatever surface they hit first, except a person, and can be detonated with the alt fire at any time, 8 sticky grenades all around when detonated is waaaayyy more than enoguh to kill any class instantly, Demoman can hold positions like no other.

The demoman's melee is a bottle of scrumpy (booze) it's same stats as most other melee weapons but upon a critical hit the bottle breaks, purely visual but it's the little things that are nice.

second for Defense is the trademark character of TF2

The Heavy



The Heavy is undoubtedly the most dangerous up front class in the game, his minigun will tear you to shreds in seconds and you can hit him all you want, he's got 300 health, and can absorb alotta damage. Aka meat shield.

The Heavy's main weapon is his Minigun, holds 200 bullets each one hurts, alot the heavy can rev up his gun so he can start shooting right away rather than waiting for to spin up right as he sees an enemy, it slows him down quite a bit, reducing him to a snail's paceconsidering he's already the slowest class in the game, which doesn't matter a whole lot becasue anything that turns the corner and runs into him while he's revved up is dead.

The heavy's second dary is a shotgun (see all other classes that have this) it is funny though becasue it's absolutely tiny in his giant bear hands, he pumps with gun with his thumb and forefinger.

The heavy's melee weapon are his fists, nothing special, cept you can alternate fists with coresponding mouse clicks.

Finally in the defence catergory is the engineer, one of the most interesting classes in the game in my opinion.

The Engineer

At first glance the engineer seems kinda lame, 125 a shotgun (haven't seen that before) a pistol (that too, cept you have 200 round of ammo for that fucker, no kidding, 200 rounds, that is alot.) and a wrench for melee, fun times, but wait what is this, there is more?

oh yes, the engineer can build sentry turrets among other things.

These sentries stay in one place buy you can move them around if you want later on, and auto-target anything that gets close to it, you can only have one at a time but it's all you'll need, a level 1 sentry is a hig calibur gun that is semi-automatic, it can do alot of damge but should be upgraded asap, the engineer can upgrade his stuff with metal, via smacking it with his wrench, metal is collected from fallen weapons and ammo crates.

A level two sentry upgrades to two miniguns, more damage and now it's fully automatic, this thing'll screw you up real fast, but wait there's more, a level three sentry adds a rocket launcher that shoots four rockets at one, on shot from that will kill any class, ultimate defence yo.

The Engineer can also build a dispenser which will restore health and ammo to team mates, the rate it restores health and ammo goes with upgrade level, it will also produce metal for the engineer to use.

The third thing an Engineer can build is a teleport, you build an entrance your team mates stand on this bad boy, and where ever you put the exit they'll pop out of, the level determines how fast it charges inbetween teleports. Good for getting slow team mates to the front line quickly.

One last class section remaining, support, these are the backbone of any good team; so read on.

The first of the support classes is

The Medic

The Medic isn't really a damage based class, clearly sporting 150 health he's kind unique in that way. The medic also regenerates 3 health per second when damaged. 

His main weapon is a gun that shoots syringes, they don't do much damage and they arc down pretty fast but they shoot really pretty damn fast.

His secondary is the medigun it shoots this lasery stream whenever it's aimed at a team-mate and heals them fairly quickly and reachers around corners, leaving you out of harms way, also this "gun" can overheal teammates for %150 of the normal health, which slowly fades over time. but the best part of this gun is when you've done enough healing, and the little bar on the lower right hand corner is full, you can use it one a team mate to give them 8 seconds of garunteed invincibility, this is often nessacary to rush points and destroy large groups of enemies.

The medics melee weapon is a bonesaw, it crits slighty more often than other melee weapons supposedly, but is otherwise nothing special.

Second up in support is

The Sniper

The sniper is exactly what you think, a sniper. he has low health at only 125 and moves at a normal pace, but instant kills are his forte.

The sniper's main weapon is ofcourse a sniper rifle, but the interesting thing about it is, the longer you're looking through the scope the more damage your shot is going to do, it only takes a few second for it to reach maximum charge, you'll be sniping in no time, and of course, a headshot with full charge is pretty much a garunteed kill, be sure to aim real good.

The Snipers secondary is a SMG, it's fairly weak and has a low ammo count and piss poor range, but it's good to use when you have no sniper ammo left or the enemy is too clsoe to snipe.

The snipers melee is a kukri, it's like a machaete but cooler, not much special.

And last but not least is

Le Spy

The spy is by far the most interesting class in the game, he's got tonsof sneaky tricks to make you so dead so fast, he's only got 125 health and moves normal, but what could make him so special?

The spy's main weapon is a revolver, 6 shots and decent damage, and he reloads it like it's his job in life, you won't use this a whole lot but it's good for retreating.

The spy's secondary is a sapper, you can place it on an enemy building (Sentry, teleport, dispenser) and it will disable it and eventually destroy it, unless the engineer whacks it with his wrench enough.

The spys melee weapon is your best friend, a butterfly knife, it doesn't do much damage and is kinda slow, but if you're behind the enemy you perform a backstab, which kills them instantly, no matter what (save for if they are ubercharged and invunerable.) you must be sneaky to use it, but slow enemys are easy targets.

The spy at any time may turn invisible for 9 seconds by right clicking and bringing up his fancy cloaking watch, this turn him completely invisible, he can only be seen if an enemy bumps into him or his cloack runs out, fortunately you can refill the cloak meter by picking up fallen weapons and ammo boxes which can be vital. turning invisible is grand and all but it's nothing unless the enemy thinks you're on their team,

check this crazy shit

The spy can disguise himself as an class at anytime, it will randomly choose which person you are disgused as, but the enemy team sees you as that person, you can switch weapons and pretend to realod your false weapon while disguised, and it is only cancelled upon attacking, disguising creates a big plume of smoke when you do it, so be sure to be hidden, but with cloaking and invisibilty, you can easily get behind enemy lines and backstab some fools before they know what happened.

There is alooottt more to this game but that'll be in a follow up blog post, most likely tomorrow, for now enjoy the classes of TF2.