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SgtWoodsy

SgtWoodsy

I don't mind the focus on cosmetics much as that means we're not getting weapons like the Wrangler and launch Tomislav all the time. We're still getting entertaining stuff like the Flying Guillotine too.

(Yes MrE I know you don't know why the Wrangler is overpowered but put it in the hands of an Engineer with good backup and good luck moving any further)



It also replaces this pissy little thing. Admittedly the Pistol is good on a Frontier Justice/Gunslinger loadout but you wouldn't use the Wrangler on that loadout anyway and what you DO get instead of a pistol is huge.
 
Layell

Layell

Alas poor Yorick!
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I am hopelessly addicted to jag engy as a good middleman between gunslinger and normal. Since I can get up a fast sentry and dispenser. Too many engy's fail to realize the power of a good dispenser location, and those who fail to realize the teleporter are doomed to fail.
 
Mr.E

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
Pistol rules man, it has infinite ammo you just spam that shit everywhere. Unless you're Scout.

Doesn't the good backup thing apply to any sentry nest? :( If your sentry can be hit from such long range that it can't naturally shoot back and your team isn't doing anything about it, well then something's already gone wrong. The shield can certainly be useful, particularly against ubers, but ultimately you're left pretty wide open whenever you inevitably have to drop the controls to repair/reload. That's the worst part for me. And while the aim assist mostly makes up for having to manually aim, you're still lacking the 360-degree vision and perfect reflexes of the AI-controlled sentry and thus vulnerable to Scouts and jumpers. I feel better just letting the sentry do its job while supplementing it with gun damage and keeping my head on a swivel for flankers and spies.

I'm seeing a lot of bitching about Gunslinger lately too and while combat Engy is pretty fun, it's not exactly anywhere approaching overpowered. The mini-sentry is good because it builds faster and you can throw down two with full metal. It still deals less damage than a level 1 normal sentry.
 
SgtWoodsy

SgtWoodsy

The good backup thing does apply to any sentry nest however since your sentry has a 66% damage reduction shield it's greatly exacerbated.

The thing about the Wrangler that doesn't get brought up that often yet I feel is its strongest asset (apart from the giant damage reduction) is the ability to pick your targets. You don't want to shoot at the Ubered Soldier/Demo/Heavy/Pyro/other class moving towards your sentry, you want to shoot at the people flanking you who will otherwise kill the rest of your team once your sentry goes down, then the rest of your team can kill the combo. It's worth giving up a sentry/your life if you've killed a team push, which is what the Wrangler excels at (which is why I find it really overpowered).
 
Minwu

Minwu

you're also still reducing damage for 3 seconds while you repair, and you can reactivate the wrangler at any time during the "cooldown" and get back to dealing 2x DPS as fast as possible.
 
Mr.E

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
The only decent team I've had thus far had someone needing to leave after we failed on the tanks + spahs part and ended up breaking apart. D: Too bad I don't own a Heater, it'd have been really useful there since I was playing hoovy.
 
Minwu

Minwu

I think Kritz would be the best medigun for MvM just because of the massive amounts of splash damage you will use; Black Box is also my favorite rocket launcher. Be sure to stack defenses if you're Scout. Make sure you have 1 Engi though, he's definitely the most useful supportive class
 
Mr.E

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
ITT distinct lack of anything happening on Fri/Sat

I'm bored and love theorycrafting fucking everything though, so I'll type something up about MvM setups. Pay attention as I keep adding shit, if you're reading this post over the next few hours before I'm done. ;[ ... Okay I'm done now! 8)

The Scout's primary purpose is to collect credits. Their increased collection radius is invaluable for catching 'em all, since otherwise you have to be standing right on top of the things to grab credits. They also gain health for each pickup, helping them survive the run through and making them a great damage soak for allies. Their increased mobility lets them get to expiring credits faster as well. The Scout's other uses are primarily utility including knockback, slowing, and Marking targets for death. A good Scout can also dish out more damage than anyone but Heavy if you concentrate on offensive upgrades with the Soda Popper.

Generally concentrate on resistances and Milk first. If you don't have a Sniper, you'll want to use the Sandman with its Marking upgrade. If you ever get around to it, you can start upgrading a Soda Popper or Shortstop for damage output.

Primary: Anything clip-based, the time saved reloading is too good.

All of them have their uses. Force-a-Nature is a poor weapon, however the extra mobility granted and ability to knockback the bomb carrier even in the middle of planting the bomb where most other knockbacks stop working makes for high utility. Soda Popper is the best raw damage weapon once you can afford to buy offense. Shortstop is a slightly weaker Soda Popper with better mid-range damage and is part of a viable set.

Secondary: Mad Milk

Even if your other options weren't outclassed by the primary weapon, Mad Milk is possibly the single strongest item in MvM on its own merits. If you don't own one, don't even bother playing Scout. The health leech is a unique effect and extremely powerful, required for facetanking a Giant Heavy more than 0.2 seconds. It's also one of the few slowing weapons which is great for crowds or Super Scouts.

Melee: Bat/Holy Mackerel, Fan O'War, Sandman

Fan O'War makes Scout one of the few classes with a persistent Mark for Death effect and is a great team support. However, it does no damage on its own which is a pain when combined with the FaN. Once you can afford the Mark upgrade for Sandman, you should switch; the ability to Mark at range is also useful in addition to it being a real weapon. Stock/Fish are fine if you need a melee weapon that deals damage and either haven't upgraded the Sandman yet or don't need Marking because your team has a Sniper.

The Soldier specializes in crowd control, whether it's via wide-area explosive damage or even the Righteous Bison. (Yeah, Bison is viable. Supposedly. I don't own one. ;-;) They don't really do anything else besides deal damage. Their mobility makes it easier for them to rely on health/ammo pickups than other DPS classes or finding stray credit piles.

For upgrades, a little resists can be useful so you don't get instagibbed by crit robots or Giants but generally your range is safe and you can concentrate heavily on damage. You'll want max Reload Speed and 1-2 Clip upgrades before focusing on Damage and Firing Speed. Blast Resistance will also reduce damage taken from rocket jumping.

Primary: Black Box, Beggar's Bazooka

The extra rocket on the Stock isn't a big deal in MvM. Your clip size can be upgraded and damage is primarily capped by reload and firing speed instead. However, the Black Box's health regain is a big deal. Being able to tank damage at range without having to shuffle away for health constantly is a godsend. The health-on-hit is also much more reliable than the Health-on-kill upgrade, while costing nothing to boot.

I don't like it but some people swear by Beggar's. Rocket jumping on a delay is annoying at best. Not being able to collect ammo from dispensers ranges from being a non-issue to being crippling. However, the random spread isn't a big problem and it is the strongest primary for raw damage. Direct Hit has the damage but its lowered splash radius is killer.

Secondary: Buff Banner, Righteous Bison

Yeah, no real need for a secondary weapon to one of the launchers. Buff Banner is mostly uncontested here. As a rare source of team mini-crits with extremely high uptime (70%+) to boot, the damage you add to your team as a whole can be astronomical.

The Bison actually does make for a pretty good weapon on its own though, especially if you're already getting mini-crits from someone else. (However, Soldier is the only class that does it through buffing allies rather than debuffing enemies. Tanks can't be Marked!) Unlike Scout secondary weapons, the Bison has competitive damage output. It's also safe at close range, doesn't use ammo, and upgrades are very cheap so you can hit the ground running from Wave 1. The only problem? It's not the Buff Banner.

Melee: Disciplinary Action, Escape Plan

Pretty useless slot for Soldier. These are the only two weapons that provide any utility that could be useful.

The Pyro, like Scout, is a primarily utility class that can nonetheless deal high damage when needed. Pyro's main purpose is to babysit the bomb, using airblast to push bots back or into pits to keep the hatch safe. It won't push Giants back much but it will pop them into the air, preventing them from moving (especially Giant Scouts!) and making it difficult for them to return fire. The Flamethrower can only upgrade damage, so it's weaker than other classes maxed out, but the insane base damage allows Pyro to dish it out at minimal cost while focusing on defense and utility. Pyro is a good secondary credit collector since they have to fight up close anyway.

For upgrades, you'll probably want to concentrate on resists first and Airblast force. Airblast force isn't strictly necessary but it's useful enough for being only 100 per rank, needed to move giants more than an inch off the ground and shoves small bots much harder. Flamethrower damage can be had if needed, it's mostly useful for tanks since you're otherwise airblasting mostly, and the Flare Gun is surprisingly strong too.

Primary: Flamethrower, Degreaser, Backburner

Of the available primaries, only the Phlogistinator should be avoided because the loss of airblast kinda defeats the purpose of playing Pyro... That said, you can get away with even Phlog if you have two Pyros. Degreaser loses damage output on giants and tanks, however the weapon switch speed can be very useful since Pyro's other weapon slots aren't useless. Backburner deals full damage and can really lay the hurt on some backsides if robots are distracted but the airblast eats up ammo like crazy. Stock is the happy medium.

Secondary: Flare Gun, Detonator, Scorch Shot

The Flare Gun actually makes for a strong weapon in its own right. With cheap as dirt upgrades, automatic crits on burning targets and the afterburn damage itself, it's strong single-target damage usable at extreme ranges. No reason to use Shotgun anyway over your primary. The Detonator and Scorch Shot are not useful for their damage, since the former only mini-crits and the latter... yeah.

As a utility tool when you're mostly just using your primary, any of the three will do, mostly for eliminating Sniper bots at long range or igniting targets at range. Flare Gun more reliably kills Snipers you do hit but is tougher to aim and can't ignite multiple targets. Det/SS jumping isn't useful in MvM. If you're using the Degreaser, use one of these to apply a stronger afterburn to Giants before going back to spamming airblast.

Melee: Axtinguisher, Third Degree

While not generally all that useful, an Axtinguisher is cheap to upgrade and puts out higher damage than Stockthrower if you really need to hack away at a Giant (and it isn't killing you), more reliably collects health-on-kill in crowds and uses no ammo. Mostly you'll only use it to one-shot Uber Medics after a quick puff to ignite them, without triggering their ubercharge. Third Degree similarly is only useful against Giants with multiple medics attached -- pop a crit canteen and you can one-shot all the medics at once by hitting the Giant.

Like the Soldier, Demoman excels at crowd control with his wide-area explosives and doesn't do much else. They have different secondary strengths, however. Where Soldier has team buffs, the Demoman's spike damage with sticky bombs is a good way to eliminate Uber Medics without popping their charge and makes for high initial burst on tank spawns. Demoman is also one of the only two classes (Spy) that gets more than attack speed melee upgrades, making hybrid Demoknight loadouts viable.

Same upgrades as Soldier, focusing mostly on damage with maybe a smidgen of resists just to be safe. If you're looking to Demoknight, you'll want Crit-on-kill early though not necessarily on the first wave (unless it's an Endurance mission). You may be better served with resistance to the bulk of the first wave, or attack speed and health-on-kill with your starting money.

Primary: Grenade Launcher, Ali Baba's Wee Booties

Stick with Stock over LnL here. The higher single-shot burst isn't particularly important in MvM. The larger clip gives Stock better damage over time before you can afford upgrades and keeps it competitive afterward. Not having to direct hit is also useful when firing into crowds as opposed to easy-to-hit giants, since any miss cripples LnL's crowd control capabilities. Booties should only be used if you're upgrading the Sticky Launcher, in which case you'd probably never use your primary anyway and may as well take the 25 free health.

Secondary: Sticky Launcher, Scottish Resistance, Chargin' Targe

Sticky Launcher is better as a dedicated weapon as the faster priming speed and being able to explode a widespread carpet with one click (and without looking) is important when using this as your main weapon. ScoRes is better if you're maining the GL, as you'll mostly only be setting stickies pre-round for spike damage on the first Tank or Giant (14 > 8) and instagibbing Uber Medics.

If you don't need to worry about Uber Medics, then you don't strictly need a sticky launcher. It's perfectly reasonable to rely on primary weapon fire and you can just use the Targe for the charge and substantial free resists. You also need to equip it to access the Damage and Crit-on-kill melee upgrades, though I think you can buy those upgrades and they'll stick even if you switch back to a sticky launcher (even if you can no longer see them).

Melee: Bottle, Eyelander, Half-Zatoichi

Incidentally, any of these are useful if you're not Demoknighting. You shouldn't be using your melee weapon much anyway, so the HZ has extra upside over Stock that you should consider: HZ is a free health refill with smart use, but if you miss...) While the Eyelander has downside, if you don't die you get a substantial amount of free health and movespeed after picking off a few supports or stray Scouts.

Melee upgrades are useful, however, if you want to invest in them. Melee damage is far cheaper to upgrade and the crit-on-kill will persist through weapon switching, so it's useful even to standard Demomen. The HZ will continually keep you topped off as you kill bots, which is really easy to do once you start critting, but the Eyelander is highly appealing for the mass amount of extra movespeed and health you get once powered up. While its healing is nowhere near that of the HZ, you can combine it with health-on-kill since it does overheal. The value of extra health and movespeed is more than not having to buy health-on-kill, however recollecting heads if you die is a pain.

Heavy's primary duty is single-target damage. He does this far more efficiency than any other class thanks to the relatively absurd base damage of his Minigun. With only 1050 credits of firing speed upgrades to grab damage-wise, his output well exceeds that of even a maxed Soldier, Demoman, or Scout for FAR lower cost. This lets him focus on defense, which is needed since he needs to be relatively close and immobile to pump out maximum damage.

Heavy should, of course, get firing speed early. Grab whatever ammo upgrades you need and health-on-kill so you don't have to leave the frontline as often, since Heavy is slow and takes a long time to go find pickups, and go for resists and movespeed. His rage upgrade is good, as it's the only knockback that substantially affects giants and has high uptime with two or three upgrades. At least one point in bullet penetration greatly helps against swarms of small bots.

Primary: Minigun, Brass Beast, Huo-Long Heater

Brass Beast is generally your choice here for its superior damage. The decreased mobility is obviously not a big concern in MvM, as the enemy is always coming to you. The Heater provides normal mobility if needed, however, while the ring of fire will make up the lower bullet damage and protects against Spies. But man does it eat ammo fast, only use it with a Dispenser! Minigun is a situational choice where you need mobility and can't afford the Heater's ammo consumption, such as standing on tanks to avoid the mass Spies on Wave 666. :P

Secondary: Sandvich

Useless slot period. Sandvich may very rarely prove useful for healing a pocket medic or something.

Melee: Gloves of Running Urgently

Useless slot as weapons. This at least gets you around the map more quickly for whatever purpose you need. Fists of Steel can protect you from Snipers but if you have to wield them instead of using your primary to kill everything, you're probably screwed anyway.

The Engineer is really damn good at defense. Since the entire point of the game mode is defense, great! While the Engineer doesn't have quite the damage output of a well-upgraded other class, like Pyro or Heavy most of his damage is built in. His Sentry Gun's autoaim is good at reliably gunning down swarms of Scout bots and buildings tank damage well for players. His dispenser makes him incredibly important, as scrounging for ammo boxes is the bane of most other classes in MvM. Teleports get dead people back to action very quickly and two-way TPs allows for mid-wave visits to the Upgrade Station.

Upgrades should go primarily into your buildings. Dispenser range is cheap and should be gotten early, making it much more accessible for your allies, and firing speed should be gotten when possible to increase damage. At least one upgrade in building health makes it much harder for robots to instagib your sentry gun with concentrated firepower and at least one upgrade in Metal Capacity lets you drop both a sentry and dispenser at max metal if your buildings get destroyed. Melee Attack Speed pulls double duty, increasing your repair speed as well as melee DPS.

Primary: Frontier Justice, Widowmaker

If you avoid dying, your FJ should basically be in permacrit mode as you can always manually destroy your sentry gun between waves (or between subwaves in Endurance), since building between waves is always instant with no metal cost. Obviously that's pretty damn awesome. Widowmaker doesn't use ammo and never has to reload, so if you can aim and also not die you can provide some reasonable sustained fire alongside your sentry gun. You don't get metal back for shooting a tank, though.

Secondary: Wrangler

Your primary will out-do the Pistol if you feel like upgrading a gun. The Short Circuit is pretty useless since if your stuff is taking damage faster than you can repair it, chances are there's too many incoming projectiles to destroy and protect it anyway. Like the Mad Milk, Wrangler is both Engy's only useful secondary by default yet also quite good on its own. This lets you build your sentry back for safety and crowd control while still contributing frontline damage far more than your piddly Pistol would. It's also useful for tanking focused damage with the shield, sniping snipers, focusing targets in a crowd, avoid accidentally triggering Uber Medic charges... Sometimes it's better to let the Sentry do its own thing, though.

Melee: Wrench

Since Attack Speed is useful for repairing, you'll probably be buying it. When you do, your melee attack becomes a better source of long-term damage than an unupgraded FJ since you don't have to reload. Against tanks, where DPS matters, you'll maximize your damage output by leaving your Sentry on auto and meleeing it a lot. Southern Hospitality can't randomly crit, so it's weaker against tanks with no real upside. Bleeds Spies, big deal. Jag deals less damage too. Eureka Effect removes your ability to haul buildings, so you can't deke Sentry Busters. :/ Just stick with Stock.

Anyone who uses the Gunslinger in MvM should be strangled. You probably shouldn't buy the disposable sentry either, though to be fair it does build up FJ crits mid-wave.

The Medic fills the same role in MvM as he does in PvP, minus the part where everyone's always gunning for you, as a healing specialist. While his healing is not necessary, between health-on-kill upgrades and a well-placed Dispenser, it is still appreciated. With max Uber Duration and Charge Rate on a Kritzkrieg, the damage he contributes to the team is not that much lower than the first six classes with the upside that he keeps all your close-range fighters alive much better.

Upgrades should, of course, focus on healing. Uber Duration and Charge Rate with Kritzkrieg is the only meaningful way for Medic to contribute damage to the team. Healing Rate and Max Overheal are obviously needed for maximum safety. (I think Overheal Duration is still bugged and makes overheal decay faster, regardless you probably wouldn't need it anyway.) Canteen sharing is very important so you can provide both Uber and Kritz to you and your healing buddy. If you get around to it, you can grab resists so you don't die yourself while healing others up front.

Primary: Crusader's Crossbow, Overdose

You're not shooting it anyway. Take your pick between the Medieval Medic set bonus or the Overdose's extra movespeed. Crossbow can also heal at long range but I don't imagine that coming into play very often.

Secondary: Kritzkrieg

While your job isn't dealing damage, you can't just not contribute ANY damage to the team by using another Medigun. :P Kritz has 50% uptime with max Charge Rate and Duration, so you can add a pretty reasonable amount of damage to the team with it. If you need invulnerability, use Uber canteens: Kritz charges faster than Stock and Uber canteens are cheaper than Crit canteens.

Melee: Ubersaw, Amputator

While you're not the damage dealer, Ubersaw does work normally on robots and is a quick way to build Ubers if you can safely use it. Sentry Busters and Spies are easy targets but you can sometimes hit a distracted Giant or stragglers too, or pop a Uber canteen to quickly Ubersaw yourself up a Kritz charge. Amputator pairs with Crossbow for extra regen.

The Sniper specializes in assassinating Medics and blasting Giants to smithereens. He can reliably one-shot Uber Medics to avoid triggering them. With his safe attack range he can invest into pure damage and he's one of the few sources of team mini-crits, so a Sniper helps take Giants down in record time. With Explosive Headshots and Jarate, he can provide reasonable if inconsistent crowd control. However, his Tank damage is poor and he can be vulnerable to Spies.

Primary: Sniper Rifle, Sydney Sleeper, The Machina, Hitman's Heatmaker

The Machina has built-in penetration and doesn't penalize you for bodyshots, giving you maximum Medic-killing power at base level and keeps you relevant if you don't have great aim for headshots. The inability to noscope makes your already poor Tank damage nonexistent, however, since you can't headshot them and scoping really slows your firing rate. The Heatmaker gives you insane DPS while in Focus, however the bodyshot penalty requires superior aim and again hurts your Tank DPS. Sleeper gives you constant Jarate and doesn't penalize for bodyshots, however it can't headshot; you have to charge substantially to kill Medics and can't utilize Explosive Headshots. Stock is just the well-balanced choice.

Secondary: Jarate

Basically the Sniper's Mad Milk. Don't have it? Don't play Sniper, please. While its effects aren't unique, it's both one of the few sources of slow and one of the few sources of team mini-crits with 100% uptime at max Recharge Rate. It should be self-explanatory why none of the other secondary weapons are useful anyway.

Melee: Kukri, Bushwacka

The only time you're going to use your melee weapon is to kill Spies or attack a Tank if you're using The Machina. Both work equally well against Tanks and while the Bushwacka will one-shot Spies after a Jarate, you can just as easily noscope or Kukri them. Who knows when the fire vulnerability will matter? There's totally like two missions where Flare Pyros even show up, maybe a random Pyro slips through the rest of your team on occasion and finds his way to you.

Largely fills a similar role to Sniper in that he exists mainly to kick Medic ass and chunk Giants, he just has different secondary roles. Spy deals with groups of Medics better but Sniper more safely destroys Giants. Sniper provides mini-crits to the team, the Spy is a great secondary cash collector since he can safely wade through hordes of bots in disguise without being attacked. Blah blah blah. One unique perk of the Spy is that they're far more adept at dealing with Steel Gauntlet Heavy bots than any other class -- Backstabs one-shot 'em as well as they do all other regular bots.

Upgrades should focus on movespeed and resists for moving in and out of cover while redisguising, catching up to Medics, and collecting cash while not-dying. Revolver is cheap to upgrade if you need to contribute to Tank damage, melee Attack Speed improves your ability to consecutively backstab and decreases the recovery time so you can put up Dead Ringer sooner, health-on-kill is particularly important since bots will quickly respond to your backstabbing and start focusing you. Sapper upgrades aren't required since, unlike Mad Milk or Jarate, the upgrade doesn't increase recharge speed but it does give you power against large crowds. Stock and Red-Tape Recorder act identically.

Primary: Revolver, Ambassador

Gun isn't your main weapon, so choose according to what utility you need out of it. Stock gives you reasonable tank damage, especially with a few cheap upgrades. It's better than Enforcer since the DPS is about the same but Stock randomly crits. Ambassador lets you pick off Snipers at a distance and deals okay damage to Giants before you can afford enough Armor Pen and Attack Speed to really chunk them with the Knife.

Melee: The Big Earner

Typical Spy strategy: Backstab what you can, all the bots turn around and shoot at you, Dead Ringer to shed aggro, redisguise and repeat. However, the Dead Ringer automatically drains to 40% maximum cloak charge and it takes a while before it recharges and you can safely go on another backstabbing spree. The Big Earner gets you back in the game a lot quicker, since you can immediately start backstabbing after uncloaking and the knife will quickly top your cloak off.

While Conniver's Kunai basically gives you super-health-on-kill and is a considerable moneysaver in that regard, your base health drops so low with it that even with resists you're liable to get gibbed from incidental fire while positioning or collecting credits.

Watch: The Dead Ringer

Backstabbing robots will quickly cause every other bot still living to turn around and kill your ass in short order. With 125 base health (100 with Big Earner) at close range, your ass is grass pretty quickly even with resistances and redisguising doesn't fool the bots if they see you do it. Disguises otherwise fool bots 100%, so there's no reason to cloak except to redisguise. Dead Ringer cloaks you faster than the other watches and also provides you a damage shield so you don't get instagibbed by 20 rockets anyway or whatever.
 
Arch

Arch

Honestly when I play Spy, I just stick with the Spycicle or Stock knife in MvM. There are plenty of places to restock your cloak and a good spy can switch between utilizing the sapper and dead ringer to form a good cycle. 100 HP just isn't enough for me.
 

Altair

just who is the coon?
yeah invite roster shakeups are gonna be pretty big with no more LG, it'll be interesting to see who the lan contenders are next season. atm b4nny's team and LAAAAAAAAASER BEAMS (if brad plays demo) are probably gonna be at the top, maybe tyrone's too if they play seriously.

and of course #stevecgames
 
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