Class Description

The scout is an agile offensive class that does his job by skirmishing, ambushing, and using hit-and-run tactics. It is a powerful class in a low numbers game, and loses some potential as the game population increases. This is because of the enemy team having more engineers and more players at bottlenecks in certain maps. The scout loves wide open areas, or at least areas where he has plenty of room to breathe and move around. The scout is fragile, and by having more enemies around, it can quickly lose its resilience while fighting in a mosh-pit inside of an enclosed area. Relatively speaking, the scout is an advanced class, because of its fragility and speed, and because of its reflex-based damage dealing potential.

The scout... 

-Is the fastest and most maneuverable class in the game.

-Counts as two players on capture points, which means they capture them faster.

-Can double jump (in any direction, regardless of trajectory.)
-Is an advanced class, because of the reflexes needed and its fragile nature.

Class Description

The sniper is the far range assassin. Similar to how the spy infiltrates the enemy lines and thins out their numbers from behind at close range, the sniper also assassinates his targets from the front at far ranges. This class is completely driven by skill and reflexes, more so than any other class in the game. Its power lies in a player’s ability to aim fast and murder the enemy through pinpoint accuracy. When the sniper uses his scope, he brings up a red lazer sight to aim his sniper rifle with. While looking through the scope, is vision is narrowed, only because if he’s vision wasn’t narrowed, the sniper class would easily be overpowered in the hands of a good player.

While the scope is up, your next bullet will slowly charge up to full power. So if you end up waiting with your scope up with no target in sight, by the time an enemy appears, your shot will do bonus damage. That extra bonus damage will sometimes kill the enemy even if it doesn’t end up being a direct headshot. Headshots with the sniper rifle with the scope up are automatically critical hits, so once again, it’s all about accuracy. The sniper is weak in close combat for balance purposes, but he still has the machine pistol and a machete to fend for his life at mid and close range.

The Sniper is...
-The best far range damage dealer in the game.
-Able to pick off key targets from very long distances.
-A really skill/reflex dependent class.
-Equipped with an accurate automatic machine pistol and a machete for close combat.

Class Description

The medic is an essentially a healer and a support class that helps build offensive momentum. The medic can heal his teammates while on the front lines and they can also “uber” a teammate after healing long enough by charging his uber charge to 100%. When triggered by pushing the right mouse button, the uber charge makes the medic and his healing target invincible for up to 10 seconds. The medic itself isn’t harmless on his own though. He is stocked with a potent needle gun, which is basically a reincarnation of the Team Fortress nail gun. In TFC, the medic had a more powerful version of the typical nail gun. Along with the needle gun, the medic has his melee bone saw, which some might argue is the best melee weapon in the game, because of its well balanced design and because it has the highest crit rate in the game (Medics gain crit potential from healing their targets while they do damage.)

The medic class also slowly recovers his own health overtime and this is very helpful for when there are no other medics around and he is healing a teammate while they both push further into enemy territory. It’s also worth mentioning that the medic is actually the 2nd fastest class in the game, being slightly faster than average run speed, yet slower than scouts.

The Medic is...

-An infantry support class.

-Able to heal teammates with his healing gun.

-Able to "uber" himself and his healing target after charging up his uber energy, which gives invincibility to them both for up to 10 seconds.

-Equipped with a needle gun and a bonesaw to defend himself.

Class Description

The engineer is the king of defense and the chief support role all rolled into one class. If given some time to set up and build his machinery, an engineer can create a blockade that the enemy will have trouble getting past. From this blockade, the engineer's team can move forwards without fear of being pushed far backwards. He can build sentry guns, which are automatic gun units that will lock onto enemy targets if they come into their sight and firing range. These guns start off as a weak gun turret, then upgrade into a more powerful gun turret with more HP’s, and then they finally upgrade into a gun turret with a mounted rocket launcher that has even more HP’s.

The engineer can also make a dispenser anywhere on the battlefield, allowing his teammates to slowly heal when standing next to it and also supply them with infinite amounts of ammo at a fast pace. Dispensers will also slowly create more “metal” over time, which is the resource that engineers can collect from broken scrap metal, respawn medical cabinets, small/medium/large ammo boxes, and ammo that is dropped by dead players. Finally, the engineer can make a teleporter entrance and a teleporter exit, which when both completed, can teleport the engineer or one of his teammates one way every 10 seconds or so. By making these buildings, the engineer can help create a rock-hard defense. On offense, he can help teleport his teammates up to the front line, resupply those at the front line, and also help reinforce the front line.

The Engineer is...
-Considered by most to be the best defensive class in the game.
-Able to build automatic sentry guns and upgrade them to become more powerful.
-Able to build dispensers that provides infinite ammo to teammates, generates metal for engineers and also heals nearby teammates.
-Able to build teleporter entrances and exit to allow reinforcements to teleport to the front line.
-A class that can create a foothold next to important objectives or out on the front line, if given enough time.

Class Description

To put it simply, the Heavy is the master of the mid-range. It doesn’t matter what he’s up against, the Heavy will dominate any class at mid range as long as he is able to have them in his sights for a few seconds. I say this, because the Heavy’s main weapon, the Minigun, is a powerful tool that allows him to deal an uninterrupted flow of damage in any direction around him at any time. The Heavy is technically a defensive class. It provides the best cover fire in the game and also adds an amazing amount of standing power to any defense, (especially when paired with an engineer’s dispenser for infinite ammo and gradual regeneration.)

Even though the Heavy is officially labeled as a defensive class, he can also do some serious damage while on offense. He can push himself even further when accompanied by other offensive classes and with a medic backing him up. Even though the Heavy is considered to be a very simple and uncomplicated class to play, player skill can still be applied while playing one in order to multiply the standing power of the Heavy through a display of fast reflexes and TF2 combat experience.

The class itself and its potential damage dealing capabilities is balanced by particular weaknesses and limitations. It’s worth mentioning that even though the Heavy has the highest amount of top HP and potential HP (300 max HP, 450 when being healed) compared to any class in the game, he is also the slowest and least maneuverable class in the game. The Heavy usually can’t switch to his shotgun quickly in most situations, and also the Heavy moves even slower, cannot jump, and cannot swim properly when firing or “warming-up” his minigun.

The Heavy is…
- The master of the mid-range, yet also very powerful at close range.
- A class with the most HP’s, yet the least speed and maneuverability.
- Officially a defensive class, because of his defensive standing power.
- Great when paired with an engineer or a medic.
- The most prepared class on offense when played properly.
- Able to compliment even the most diversified of offenses, by making up for deficiencies of the scout, soldier, pyro and even the demoman.

Class Description

The demoman is the master of explosives and an excellent defensive class that can draw a line in the sand and help a front line crawl forwards with persistence. His slower movement speed and lack of an actual ranged firearm are his weaknesses, but he can use his own bombs to fling himself up into the air at the cost of health to compensate for his speed. He must use his primary grenade launcher and lob them towards enemies, predicting their movements in advance and ultimately nailing them directly for impressive explosive damage. He also must use his “remote” sticky mines by shooting them at the enemy or onto his surroundings (floors, walls, ceilings) in order to ward the enemy away and also to blow them up when the time is right. When desperate, the demoman can use his whiskey bottle to do pretty good melee damage and get other classes out of his face with a few swings.

You can think of the demoman as a crafty defensive class. You can also think of him as an offensive class that backtracks and dances to wall off enemies in order to make them suffer, as opposed to charging forwards in a wild fashion. Out of all of the classes in the game, when you compare the demoman’s arsenal to any other classes' arsenal, the demoman does the most overall damage on average between all of his weapons. The grenade launcher, the sticky launcher and the whiskey bottle are all solid weapons and a professional demoman needs to get used to using all three in order to be successful.

The Demoman is…
- A very powerful defensive class.
- Known to deal the most average overall damage compared to any other class in the game.
- The best at “forming a front line” for his team by walling off nearby enemies with his sticky mines.
- Excellent at destroying clusters of enemies and SG’s as well.
- Able to sticky-jump higher into the air than a solider can rocket jump with his rockets, at the cost of his own health.

Class Description

The pyro is an offensive class that can either spread out his damage in the immediate area, or concentrate it on a specific location to deal amazing damage for a short period of time. This description may seem to be a no brainer when you think about the flamethrower and how it works, but in order to master this class, you must fully understand the pyro's damage dealing capabilities and also understand physique of the class as well. The pyro runs at regular movement speed which is a step down from a scout’s fast speed and also slightly slower than a medic’s run speed. He has above average health (175) and is immune to another pyro’s DoT damage (damage over time) that results from getting hit by the flamethrower and being set on fire. To put things as simply as possible, the pyro is very similar to the scout in playstyle when it comes to killing the enemy team. Flanking the enemy can be crucial, and learning how to maneuver yourself around your prey is even more crucial.

The Pyro is...
- An offensive class that's made to blitz forward with his group and do damage to crowds of people, or ambush others when flying solo.
- The class with the most powerful close-up damage weapon in the game considering its user's movement speed.
- The only class that can do damage over time to many enemies and to many players at once.
- A class that has the above average movement speed along with above average HP's.
- Immune to other pyro's gradual fire damage.
- Great for spy checking.

Class Description

The soldier class is the balanced offensive class. The Soldier is honestly the swiss knife of TF2. It’s the all purpose can-opener for anything the enemy can throw at you. He’s the second slowest class, even though his ability to rocket jump gives him some unique mobility. He has the 2nd highest hp in the game as well, so he can take some damage and works well with a medic. The soldier is a versatile fighter at heart, deadly at all ranges most of the time, especially at close range where his foe can’t dodge his point-blank rockets no matter how hard he tries.

He has no other real class nemesis and is well rounded to take out every class 1v1 and it’s pretty damn good against beating small stacked odds as well. The only situation where a soldier will find himself lacking is when he’s in an open area with multiple targets around him at once. If it’s him and few others (or even just him solo) versus a large number of enemy teammates, the teammates can work together and render the lone soldier useless. Any damage he deals will be healed or dodged, and he will be overpowered because of his slow speed.

The Soldier is...
- The second slowest class in the game with the 2nd highest hp (200)
- Able to rocket jump
- The staple in any good offense.
- Great with a medic.

Class Description

The spy class excels at thinning out the enemies numbers from behind the front line before they even expect it. By using his ability to instantly kill players with backstab attacks and by using his sapper device to disable engineer equipment, the spy can become one of the most useful support classes for increasing the effectiveness of his team’s offense. They are able to do this by disguising themselves as the enemy or as one of their own teammates. They can also do this by cloaking through a dangerous area and by traveling via alternate routes. I consider the spy to be one of the “S classes” (scout, sniper, pyro), because they require a lot of skill to play to their fullest potential. It's also worth mentioning that the spy can be the best class to "solo" with. Considering they have the means to escape and avoid damage, they can been seen as that class that's the least dependent on medics to heal them.

Having good reflexes and or precise accuracy aren’t the only traits a good spy player needs, in fact, they both make up a lesser portion of the pie. The player’s intelligence, common sense and them being able to adapt to situations very quickly make up the biggest portion of that pie. Unlike every other class in TF2, the spy has a very awkward learning curve. There aren’t really any other classes or roles in other shooter games that come close to what the spy is in TF2, and the TF2 spy is different than its previous incarnation in TFC as well. When it comes to learning and mastering the spy class, many new players will feel like they are hitting a brick wall. They feel as though they are unable to understand how to “make the spy work” when first trying it out. Learning the spy class can be like learning certain real life occupations, in a sense that something has to “click” in order for all of it to make sense. Once that light switch in your head flips on, you will say “Oh! So that’s how you do it!”

In order to make this happen for new spy players, you need to appeal to their strongest learning style. Setting all of my nonsense aside, I would say the best way for any FPS gamer to understand this class is to go to the one place on the internet where everybody goes to waste their time… Youtube!

Evil Daedalus’ Spy Tutorial –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIISxhYRYE&NR=1

Zarcath’s Spy Gameplay Videos-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2sau7D1byE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=353uPtu87o4

This tutorial from Daedalus and these early gameplay videos from Zarcath of FoH will cover all you need to know about how pro spies do their business. Just by watching these videos, something might “click” for you, and you can start playing the spy class on your own without any more help and become better at it with time and practice. If I didn’t go out of my way to write 8 other TF2 Class guides already, then I probably would have just linked these Youtubes and I would have called it a day. Lol. :) But since I already put this much time into these guides, I might as well be stubborn and finish this spy guide properly!

On a side note, Daedalus has a more passive style when it comes to playing a spy. He plays the spy similar to how he plays the pyro and he’s a big fan of “Tag and Shoot” and his own “Blazing” technique (the act of spreading out the flamethrower’s damage.) As I mentioned in my pyro guide (before it got crapped on by nonsensical pyro haters, lol,) Daedalus plays on the primary strengths of the pyro by setting the enemy on fire and quickly retreating while his enemies take some damage over time. He stays true to his own playing style while playing the spy, by making smart stabs while ignoring his misses, all before he continues to retreat while dodging counter-attack damage. After retreating, he  changes his gameplan to prepare for another rapid approach, passing through that same group of enemies a second time.

Zarcath plays a spy very well, just like Daedalus. This guy is known for being the old school spy lover, but he also played every other class as well during the beta phase. He protested in favor of fixing a few “problems” with the spy class and even got his account hacked once, probably because of his own popularity. He tends to make an extra effort to try and eliminate an enemy group the first time around by not ignoring his misses and not risk making another rapid attack afterwards. By doing this and strafing constantly to make his backstabs happen, he plays more aggressively so that the enemy will be dead the first time around and not even be given the chance to be extra cautious of a second spy attack.

I mention these player’s styles early on in the guide to show you that the spy class can be complex and also slightly driven by a player’s preference. You can make small-scale attacks in rapid succession while remaining the most evasive. You can also stay in the general area, being able to harass an enemy offensive or defense force more often while putting yourself at more risk, thus giving your team more changes to attack while the enemy team is weakened. I’ll be going over some of the concepts I’ve already mentioned over the course of this guide.

The Spy is...
-A stealth-driven class that thins out the enemy numbers by attacking them from behind.
-A class with an awkward learning curve and a very unique playstyle.
-Able to instantly kill enemies with one backstab from his knife and also carries a formidible revolver pistol.
-Able to disguise himself as one of his teammates or as one of his enemies.
-Able to sap enemy engineer buildings (disable them and damage them over time) with his sapper device while remaining disguised.
-Able to cloak.
-A class that can either assassinate key targets or greatly weaken an enemy's defensive force for his offensive teammates.