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Picked the game up after ten years and want to enjoy it, have questions
Not sure if the help flair applies, but-
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I've not played this game since maybe 2012, and even then I was playing pretty much only fullcrit servers. Figured I wanted to start playing again, because a lot of the game appeals to me and seems cool.
​
Rather, I picked it up again solely because I wanted to main pyro. Watched guides, read up some, and hopped into a series of casual matches over the past week.
​
And I'm really struggling to have fun. I desperately want to love this game, but every match feels like a meat grinder or I'm just hiding until my team wins the push without me. Each time I land on offence, I find myself in situations that feel impossible. It really feels like the only class I have a chance against are soldiers, whose rockets I might be able to reflect if I get lucky.
I'll go through the classes one by one, then my overall experience.
​
Scouts seem okay, since they need to get in close to deal damage, and generally I find the fights to come down to circumstance (who just finished a fight/has teammates around)
Soldiers are the only class I really get excited to see, since it comes down to the timing mind game of when they'll shoot their rocket (which I usually lose), depending on the launcher they have.
Pyro... confuses me a little bit. The obvious choice is to use the shotgun, but I'm never certain it's more effective than just w+m1. The only exception is flamethrower and critflare, which I've found to be the strategy with the most success.
Demoman is easily the worst offender for pubs (as opposed to 24/7 2fort skial), since it totally feels like pyro should have plenty of options for counter play, but I would genuinely be surprised if I beat the demo more than once every hundred times. The grenade launcher is difficult to aim reflects against, and also deals ridiculous damage to me, while the sticky launcher feels completely useless to attempt an airblast on.
The consensus on Heavy seems to be just to ignore them completely, or pop flares from cover. I'm okay with this being Pyro's counter. Generally. Running into them because I was unaware makes it painfully obvious how little I understand the game, but having a heavy on the enemy team means I stop playing and hide behind cover, basically. Even if I sneak up on him, even if I try to approach with teammates, it doesn't ever work out. Maybe it's my mechanical skill, or I need to be running the axtinguisher in favour of the powerjack. Total fun killer, but I appreciate them more than demos.
Engineer grinds the game to a halt for me. Sentries are completely unapproachable, just like heavies, except there isn't even a player holding the position against me. Reflecting level 3 rockets is fun, but never seems to accomplish anything no matter how many times I do it, since it costs me a good deal of health and I'm forced to back off. Maybe this is just another pyro counter, but it really sucks being totally unable to do anything.
Medics aren't really a source of pain for me, since they're not the ones cutting off my options. If they're healing someone, it just stands to reason I won't kill them, and the best I can ever hope for is for the medic to go down with me to afterburn if I land a critflare.
Snipers one-shot me sometimes, but hey, that's what they do. They're too far away for me to reach, and they don't kill me with frequency enough for me to care about them.
Spies are obviously also not a pain point, and I applaud any who clear the low bar of knowing they have a revolver. Still, getting kills on spies isn't really very rewarding.
On the whole, not the worst now that I look over it. About half the classes I can stomach, but the problem lies with the other half for me.
Casual is a nightmare. I get routinely fewer than ten kills while my deaths climb into the thirties. If there's a demo, I back off. If there's a heavy, I back off. If there's a sentry, I back off. Snipers are too far back for me to do anything but poke with a flare. Medics are untouchable, protected by their team. Scouts exist and clean me up if I don't critflare them.
My experience about 40% of the time is one or two demos rolling everyone, as I get dominated by two or three people on the enemy team as I struggle to even approach them through flanks, head on, with my team. There are other routes, accessible by the detonator, but it really isn't as if the enemy team doesn't know about them. Majority of the time, there's just a different demo man with different stickies. If not a sentry. Or a heavy anywhere nearby.
​
I just don't understand what it is I'm supposed to be doing. Noting at this point that a significant portion of casual seems to take place on dustbowl, it feels like what I'm meant to be doing about 80% of the time is just backing off and twiddling my thumbs in spawn, especially on offence. Unless, of course, as I suspect, what I'm meant to be doing is switching to a different class. Which makes sense, but kind of defeats the purpose. Is pyro really only supposed to be on even ground with all the combat classes when taking them by surprise?
​
I was hoping some of you could tell me what it is I'm missing. Maybe TF2 just isn't for me. Thank you for listening to my whining.
​
P.S I was considering not posting this far-too-long write-up and just uninstalling, but I do love the discussions and mechanics of the game, so here it is
Author: SmolPotet
http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/vm01h5/picked_the_game_up_after_ten_years_and_want_to/
Not sure if the help flair applies, but-
​
I've not played this game since maybe 2012, and even then I was playing pretty much only fullcrit servers. Figured I wanted to start playing again, because a lot of the game appeals to me and seems cool.
​
Rather, I picked it up again solely because I wanted to main pyro. Watched guides, read up some, and hopped into a series of casual matches over the past week.
​
And I'm really struggling to have fun. I desperately want to love this game, but every match feels like a meat grinder or I'm just hiding until my team wins the push without me. Each time I land on offence, I find myself in situations that feel impossible. It really feels like the only class I have a chance against are soldiers, whose rockets I might be able to reflect if I get lucky.
I'll go through the classes one by one, then my overall experience.
​
Scouts seem okay, since they need to get in close to deal damage, and generally I find the fights to come down to circumstance (who just finished a fight/has teammates around)
Soldiers are the only class I really get excited to see, since it comes down to the timing mind game of when they'll shoot their rocket (which I usually lose), depending on the launcher they have.
Pyro... confuses me a little bit. The obvious choice is to use the shotgun, but I'm never certain it's more effective than just w+m1. The only exception is flamethrower and critflare, which I've found to be the strategy with the most success.
Demoman is easily the worst offender for pubs (as opposed to 24/7 2fort skial), since it totally feels like pyro should have plenty of options for counter play, but I would genuinely be surprised if I beat the demo more than once every hundred times. The grenade launcher is difficult to aim reflects against, and also deals ridiculous damage to me, while the sticky launcher feels completely useless to attempt an airblast on.
The consensus on Heavy seems to be just to ignore them completely, or pop flares from cover. I'm okay with this being Pyro's counter. Generally. Running into them because I was unaware makes it painfully obvious how little I understand the game, but having a heavy on the enemy team means I stop playing and hide behind cover, basically. Even if I sneak up on him, even if I try to approach with teammates, it doesn't ever work out. Maybe it's my mechanical skill, or I need to be running the axtinguisher in favour of the powerjack. Total fun killer, but I appreciate them more than demos.
Engineer grinds the game to a halt for me. Sentries are completely unapproachable, just like heavies, except there isn't even a player holding the position against me. Reflecting level 3 rockets is fun, but never seems to accomplish anything no matter how many times I do it, since it costs me a good deal of health and I'm forced to back off. Maybe this is just another pyro counter, but it really sucks being totally unable to do anything.
Medics aren't really a source of pain for me, since they're not the ones cutting off my options. If they're healing someone, it just stands to reason I won't kill them, and the best I can ever hope for is for the medic to go down with me to afterburn if I land a critflare.
Snipers one-shot me sometimes, but hey, that's what they do. They're too far away for me to reach, and they don't kill me with frequency enough for me to care about them.
Spies are obviously also not a pain point, and I applaud any who clear the low bar of knowing they have a revolver. Still, getting kills on spies isn't really very rewarding.
On the whole, not the worst now that I look over it. About half the classes I can stomach, but the problem lies with the other half for me.
Casual is a nightmare. I get routinely fewer than ten kills while my deaths climb into the thirties. If there's a demo, I back off. If there's a heavy, I back off. If there's a sentry, I back off. Snipers are too far back for me to do anything but poke with a flare. Medics are untouchable, protected by their team. Scouts exist and clean me up if I don't critflare them.
My experience about 40% of the time is one or two demos rolling everyone, as I get dominated by two or three people on the enemy team as I struggle to even approach them through flanks, head on, with my team. There are other routes, accessible by the detonator, but it really isn't as if the enemy team doesn't know about them. Majority of the time, there's just a different demo man with different stickies. If not a sentry. Or a heavy anywhere nearby.
​
I just don't understand what it is I'm supposed to be doing. Noting at this point that a significant portion of casual seems to take place on dustbowl, it feels like what I'm meant to be doing about 80% of the time is just backing off and twiddling my thumbs in spawn, especially on offence. Unless, of course, as I suspect, what I'm meant to be doing is switching to a different class. Which makes sense, but kind of defeats the purpose. Is pyro really only supposed to be on even ground with all the combat classes when taking them by surprise?
​
I was hoping some of you could tell me what it is I'm missing. Maybe TF2 just isn't for me. Thank you for listening to my whining.
​
P.S I was considering not posting this far-too-long write-up and just uninstalling, but I do love the discussions and mechanics of the game, so here it is
Author: SmolPotet
http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/vm01h5/picked_the_game_up_after_ten_years_and_want_to/