CrazyIsMyName
06-28-2011, 11:09 PM
I didn't see it posted here and this site gets a lot more traffic than the one I found it on. Everything written in this guide was by Vhalin and I take NO credit in it what so ever. This is simply a re-post.
I talk about three things here
1) improvement in general
2) differences between lower level scouts and higher level scouts
3) how to fight each class
Want to improve your aim? Play some DM, MGE, or Quake.
Want to improve your movement and in-game decisions? Well that’s a bit harder. Experience and good attitude are required to improve these two aspects: we learn from experience, and our attitude improves our mental clarity. Let me explain:
Every time you die, instead of complaining on mumble, raging, or getting mad at your teammates, think about what you could have done to avoid that from happening. Maybe you could have communicated to your team that you were in a battle and gotten help. Maybe you could have dodged left instead of right, maybe you could have jumped on the prop that was a double jump away. Maybe you could have not put yourself in that position to begin with. Take every death as a learning experience, think about it, and then change it up. You might not get it the first few times, but eventually you’ll get used to what you need to do, and drill it into your head. Then it becomes easier and easier to learn from your mistakes. Whether its in TF2 or not, having good attitude to make better decisions in the future will always help you improve at whatever you’re doing.
One thing which differentiates a mid+ scout from a low/mid scout is unnecessary deaths. Don’t die at mid early, don’t spend the ENTIRE game trying to think of ways to flank their team, do NOT rush into dangerous situations without a buff, don’t throw your life away before your combo uses their uber. If you avoid unnecessary deaths you’ll be able to support your team much more effectively and get good frags. Also, a big problem that lower level scouts have is taking turns dying. This is when one scout dies, and the other one survives just long enough for the other to spawn and then dies, and the cycle continues. Either you or your scout partner needs to be the “lead scout” and keep both of you on the same page.
Another thing I’d say that separates lower level scouts from upper level scouts is calls. Everything you call, whether its “scout under bridge”, “soldier jumped”, or “demo stickying the door”, every single call you make will put blips on your team’s mental radar and give them a picture of how to support each other. Ever wonder why top invite scouts are so crucial to their teams? Yeah, everyone except me has amazing aim, but if you have listened to the MGE match comms, invite scouts literally never shut up. Listen to how much I talked, I was constantly calling traps, uncovered flanks, and other events, which is EXACTLY how you want to play scout.
A third thing I’d say that separates upper level scouts from lower level scouts is choosing your targets. This means: “If I choose to engage this person in a 1v1 deathmatch will I be more likely to win?”
Think about:
-Am I overhealed? Is he?
-Is he already damaged some?
-Do I have the height advantage or other favorable positional map advantage?
-Does he have teammates nearby that will destroy me, or vice versa?
-Is he more likely to get the health pack or am I?
-Is he even looking at me?
-Do I even have to fight him in the first place, or can I just stay passive and cap the point or watch the flank? Will my team even gain anything if this player goes down, and how much position will my team lose if I go down and everyone else has to adjust?
These questions aren’t just for scout players, either. All classes can benefit from going over this mental Q and A in their head to pick the fights they know they can win.
Finally, here are some specific 1v1 strategies for scout players:
Against other Scouts: you can usually just chill, sit back and out-position most scouts. Back up into a healthpack if he +Forwards you. Now, a question for you: do you think a scout battle is purely hitting your shots or purely the enemy scout missing his? You would think hitting, right? Wrong: it’s both. If you make the other scout miss all his shots, its just as good as you hitting all your shots. The difference between the two is your thought process: there’s no mental planning you can do in your head to have good aim. Aim is reflexes and muscle memory. On the other hand, there ARE thought processes you can make in your mind to have better movement. In short – just think about movement and let your reflexes handle the aim part.
Against the Roaming Soldier: One of the easiest 1v1s to win, granted you don’t fight him in close or confined quarters like in badlands house. One thing to remember is that a soldier can’t really escape from this fight, but a scout can. Get hit by a rocket and have 20 health left? Use your ability to jump in the air to ride the explosion damage to somewhere safe. Soldiers don’t really have this luxury of having a getaway plan without taking self-damage, and even if the roaming soldier does decide to jump away, you can get some damage off on him while he’s in the air. You’ll either get the kill, make him crater, or he’ll get away with such little health that the enemy team is as good as having 1 man down. The idea here is you want to stay at a safe distance and chip away at him while dodging his rockets until its safe for you to commit and +forward. “Safe” is when he uses all his loaded rockets or just simply takes too much damage from your previous chipping or another teammate deals some damage to help you out. Keep in mind that your movement should be different based on whether he uses his rocket launcher (projectile) or shotgun (hitscan) since they have different aiming mechanics.
Against the Pocket Soldier: The only time you should ever go fight a pocket soldier is if you’re distracting for your team to make a move in exchange for whatever damage you put on him before he kills you. For instance, if you’re pushing with numbers advantage, grab the pocket soldier’s attention so your heavies can do damage or get kills while you’ve got the pocket’s attention. Keep in mind a scout, given the right opportunity, can also be the best tank in the game. Most people think of scouts as a fragile class with low hp. Anyone who’s played any game with “tanks” in it knows there are two types of tanks: “Meatshields” with high hp, and “evade” tanks with the ability to dodge all the incoming damage. Scouts are evade tanks. As a scout with a full overheal, plus his movement, you can literally run into entire teams and stay alive for quite a while. You should note that your lifespan when doing this will be much longer against less-skilled players, and that it will be the opposite against better players.
Against the Demo: This is pretty straight forward, not really much to say besides that this is the best kill to go for in terms of risk vs reward. Demos are easier to kill than medics since they have lower movement speed, have no effective close range weapon (the only close range weapon they have being the bottle), and don’t have pocket soldiers hovering over them. This is a good kill to go for in the middle of huge battles since its often too chaotic for most teams to really see that the +forwarding scout on their demo is a bigger threat than the uber exchange going off.
Against the Medic: I see lots of mid level scouts just constantly go for Medic picks. Try not to do this. Only go for the Medic if the opportunity presents itself.
Last thing I wanna say is to not be hard on yourself or get angry if you’re doing poorly. If you notice yourself beefing it pretty hard in the k:d department, all you have to do is just slow down. Take a deep breath, stretch your arms and take it one life at a time, and pick your battles more carefully. It really helps.
I talk about three things here
1) improvement in general
2) differences between lower level scouts and higher level scouts
3) how to fight each class
Want to improve your aim? Play some DM, MGE, or Quake.
Want to improve your movement and in-game decisions? Well that’s a bit harder. Experience and good attitude are required to improve these two aspects: we learn from experience, and our attitude improves our mental clarity. Let me explain:
Every time you die, instead of complaining on mumble, raging, or getting mad at your teammates, think about what you could have done to avoid that from happening. Maybe you could have communicated to your team that you were in a battle and gotten help. Maybe you could have dodged left instead of right, maybe you could have jumped on the prop that was a double jump away. Maybe you could have not put yourself in that position to begin with. Take every death as a learning experience, think about it, and then change it up. You might not get it the first few times, but eventually you’ll get used to what you need to do, and drill it into your head. Then it becomes easier and easier to learn from your mistakes. Whether its in TF2 or not, having good attitude to make better decisions in the future will always help you improve at whatever you’re doing.
One thing which differentiates a mid+ scout from a low/mid scout is unnecessary deaths. Don’t die at mid early, don’t spend the ENTIRE game trying to think of ways to flank their team, do NOT rush into dangerous situations without a buff, don’t throw your life away before your combo uses their uber. If you avoid unnecessary deaths you’ll be able to support your team much more effectively and get good frags. Also, a big problem that lower level scouts have is taking turns dying. This is when one scout dies, and the other one survives just long enough for the other to spawn and then dies, and the cycle continues. Either you or your scout partner needs to be the “lead scout” and keep both of you on the same page.
Another thing I’d say that separates lower level scouts from upper level scouts is calls. Everything you call, whether its “scout under bridge”, “soldier jumped”, or “demo stickying the door”, every single call you make will put blips on your team’s mental radar and give them a picture of how to support each other. Ever wonder why top invite scouts are so crucial to their teams? Yeah, everyone except me has amazing aim, but if you have listened to the MGE match comms, invite scouts literally never shut up. Listen to how much I talked, I was constantly calling traps, uncovered flanks, and other events, which is EXACTLY how you want to play scout.
A third thing I’d say that separates upper level scouts from lower level scouts is choosing your targets. This means: “If I choose to engage this person in a 1v1 deathmatch will I be more likely to win?”
Think about:
-Am I overhealed? Is he?
-Is he already damaged some?
-Do I have the height advantage or other favorable positional map advantage?
-Does he have teammates nearby that will destroy me, or vice versa?
-Is he more likely to get the health pack or am I?
-Is he even looking at me?
-Do I even have to fight him in the first place, or can I just stay passive and cap the point or watch the flank? Will my team even gain anything if this player goes down, and how much position will my team lose if I go down and everyone else has to adjust?
These questions aren’t just for scout players, either. All classes can benefit from going over this mental Q and A in their head to pick the fights they know they can win.
Finally, here are some specific 1v1 strategies for scout players:
Against other Scouts: you can usually just chill, sit back and out-position most scouts. Back up into a healthpack if he +Forwards you. Now, a question for you: do you think a scout battle is purely hitting your shots or purely the enemy scout missing his? You would think hitting, right? Wrong: it’s both. If you make the other scout miss all his shots, its just as good as you hitting all your shots. The difference between the two is your thought process: there’s no mental planning you can do in your head to have good aim. Aim is reflexes and muscle memory. On the other hand, there ARE thought processes you can make in your mind to have better movement. In short – just think about movement and let your reflexes handle the aim part.
Against the Roaming Soldier: One of the easiest 1v1s to win, granted you don’t fight him in close or confined quarters like in badlands house. One thing to remember is that a soldier can’t really escape from this fight, but a scout can. Get hit by a rocket and have 20 health left? Use your ability to jump in the air to ride the explosion damage to somewhere safe. Soldiers don’t really have this luxury of having a getaway plan without taking self-damage, and even if the roaming soldier does decide to jump away, you can get some damage off on him while he’s in the air. You’ll either get the kill, make him crater, or he’ll get away with such little health that the enemy team is as good as having 1 man down. The idea here is you want to stay at a safe distance and chip away at him while dodging his rockets until its safe for you to commit and +forward. “Safe” is when he uses all his loaded rockets or just simply takes too much damage from your previous chipping or another teammate deals some damage to help you out. Keep in mind that your movement should be different based on whether he uses his rocket launcher (projectile) or shotgun (hitscan) since they have different aiming mechanics.
Against the Pocket Soldier: The only time you should ever go fight a pocket soldier is if you’re distracting for your team to make a move in exchange for whatever damage you put on him before he kills you. For instance, if you’re pushing with numbers advantage, grab the pocket soldier’s attention so your heavies can do damage or get kills while you’ve got the pocket’s attention. Keep in mind a scout, given the right opportunity, can also be the best tank in the game. Most people think of scouts as a fragile class with low hp. Anyone who’s played any game with “tanks” in it knows there are two types of tanks: “Meatshields” with high hp, and “evade” tanks with the ability to dodge all the incoming damage. Scouts are evade tanks. As a scout with a full overheal, plus his movement, you can literally run into entire teams and stay alive for quite a while. You should note that your lifespan when doing this will be much longer against less-skilled players, and that it will be the opposite against better players.
Against the Demo: This is pretty straight forward, not really much to say besides that this is the best kill to go for in terms of risk vs reward. Demos are easier to kill than medics since they have lower movement speed, have no effective close range weapon (the only close range weapon they have being the bottle), and don’t have pocket soldiers hovering over them. This is a good kill to go for in the middle of huge battles since its often too chaotic for most teams to really see that the +forwarding scout on their demo is a bigger threat than the uber exchange going off.
Against the Medic: I see lots of mid level scouts just constantly go for Medic picks. Try not to do this. Only go for the Medic if the opportunity presents itself.
Last thing I wanna say is to not be hard on yourself or get angry if you’re doing poorly. If you notice yourself beefing it pretty hard in the k:d department, all you have to do is just slow down. Take a deep breath, stretch your arms and take it one life at a time, and pick your battles more carefully. It really helps.