and it looks like people are actually hacking in this game? just ran into an assault that didn't miss any shots with the rifle. legit zero misses. FUN.
and it looks like people are actually hacking in this game? just ran into an assault that didn't miss any shots with the rifle. legit zero misses. FUN.
Gold armor assault will save you from a dagger back-grapple just barely, you can forget about surviving a back grapple with a sword. As always, the best way to survive being grappled by an assassin is to not be grappled by an assassin. Always stay moving, be aware of your surroundings especially if an assassin can sword-dash at you outside of cloak-noise range, and make liberal use of jumpjets.
And, yeah, people are hacking. There are separate ban listing/reporting threads on the UberEnt and Steam forums.
That Support build is pretty standard. You want at least Silver armor to survive face stabs (you will kill a ton of Assassins with a counter-grapple then shotgun blast to the face after they attempt to front grapple you), and Gold RoF is just too good on Support. Skill Regen is the last logical choice, as Support doesn't really benefit from any of the other endorsements.
Other classes tend to have more variety based on playstyle. For example I love to ability spam with Tank and Assault, and for now I'm playing around without Armor on Assault for more hit and run tactics (plus Assault is the easiest class for never getting grappled by an Assassin ever).
It's good to look at some suggestions when new to the classes, but definitely play around and find something that fits your playstyle.
On further reflection, I think people's opinions on the Support's combat viability is influenced by what I'll term the "Bonesaw Effect". Early on in Team Fortress 2's history, the Medic's Bonesaw weapon gained a somewhat mythic stature as a deadly killing tool. People claimed it had a high critical hit rate because of Medic's "high personal momentum" from accruing a lot of points through healing. The reality was that all melee weapons in TF2 have a high critical hit rate, and the Medic's main gun is such garbage that his melee is usually more viable. Plus, everyone remembers the time they got the drop on a Medic and his Bonesaw killed them in one hit-- not the dozen or so times a Scout whittled them down with five bat smacks.
It's the same with the Support. Oh, sure, the all-powerful Shotgun. It's great if the enemy is standing still, unaware of you, and you're deeper in enemy territory than the Support has any business being. And everyone remembers the time the Support killed them in two shots. But at that same range, a Tank could jet-rush him, an Assault could pin him with a charge and throw him out of the arena, an Assassin could launch a grapple (or, better, just kite him), the Gunner has a paralyzing slam and his miniguns... basically, everyone is deadly at the range that the Support needs to be just to hit someone. His firebase requires a decent amount of time to set up, and even if his Airstrike weren't a floaty projectile with a delay after it lands, it can still only be used three times every 45 seconds or so. The Support is decidedly not a combat class.
His greatest strength is protecting the party's investment in the turrets by healing them. Without a Support, the turrets will fall eventually. And they won't be very effective attack tools without a Hack on them, either. That means that the Support is best off tending the base, deflecting bots that get too far in. When a Support is all the way in the enemy base, locking down their bot spawn with a firebase and nuking their turrets with Airstrikes, I'd say it's a symptom of a lopsided game rather than a effective Support strategy for general use. (Naturally, this depends on the map. GrenADEiii Arena has a long walk down both lanes, whereas in Spunky Cola Arena it's basically impossible to be out of range of the enemies.)
Kupi on
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
0
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
His greatest strength is protecting the party's investment in the turrets by healing them. Without a Support, the turrets will fall eventually. And they won't be very effective attack tools without a Hack on them, either. That means that the Support is best off tending the base, deflecting bots that get too far in. When a Support is all the way in the enemy base, locking down their bot spawn with a firebase and nuking their turrets with Airstrikes, I'd say it's a symptom of a lopsided game rather than a effective Support strategy for general use. (Naturally, this depends on the map. GrenADEiii Arena has a long walk down both lanes, whereas in Spunky Cola Arena it's basically impossible to be out of range of the enemies.)
I wish more supports would realize this and stop trying to be so offensive. Keep our investments intact and effective. I don't need you trying to rush their base to toss in airstrikes.
His greatest strength is protecting the party's investment in the turrets by healing them. Without a Support, the turrets will fall eventually. And they won't be very effective attack tools without a Hack on them, either. That means that the Support is best off tending the base, deflecting bots that get too far in. When a Support is all the way in the enemy base, locking down their bot spawn with a firebase and nuking their turrets with Airstrikes, I'd say it's a symptom of a lopsided game rather than a effective Support strategy for general use. (Naturally, this depends on the map. GrenADEiii Arena has a long walk down both lanes, whereas in Spunky Cola Arena it's basically impossible to be out of range of the enemies.)
I wish more supports would realize this and stop trying to be so offensive. Keep our investments intact and effective. I don't need you trying to rush their base to toss in airstrikes.
While I don't think this is entirely untrue, I think it's a vast over simplification. Are their terrible Supports that get blood lust and don't play their part on a team? Sure. But so does every other class. Support is highly situational. Take the beginning of a round for example. Is a Support supposed to just hang back and over charge turrets while everyone else bot farms? That doesn't make any sense. As Support I generally spend the beginning of the round pushing to the middle. Sometimes I stay there, sometimes we get pushed back and I go into turret mode. Sometimes we can push a little and I overcharge pros and farm bots. Besides, for the first half of most rounds, all that's up are the two level 1s anyway. You're basically asking the Support to gimp themselves by making their only income bot scraps.
tl;dr: Support is situational, defaulting to turret overcharge is simplistic.
Oh, I'm with you on that. You have to get money from somewhere, and I'll cop to not having made that more of a point. It's just that, of all the pros, he probably has the least effectiveness against other pros, which is something the "He's not a Medic!" meme might lead one to believe.
Kupi on
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
I don't know Kupi, I disagree pretty strongly with that
I'd say tending to the turrets is only about 1/3 of a Support's job, if that.
Keeping his team overhealed and keeping an area of the map locked down with his firebase, which stops enemy bots and pros while healing your own team and acting like a forward base, are bigger parts of his role than doing anything with the base turrets
And I also disagree on the bonesaw effect. Shotgun isn't only useful if the enemy is standing still and doesn't know what they're doing. Sure a support should rarely go charging into the enemy base (unless they're juiced), but I can pretty confidently take on a number of pros based on the battlefield situations. You don't want to be charging them from a distance with a shotty, but the great part about a third-person shooter is you can see what's coming around the corner. If that something is pretty much anything other than a tank, you have a good chance to kill it in a couple of seconds.
Is the shotgun less effective against bots? I have the damnest time farming as Support, but taking down other Pros doesn't go too badly.
Right-clicking the hurt/heal gun with a gold rate of fire endorsement takes out bots pretty handily.
The shotgun is extremely terrible for taking out bots. The heal/hurt gun isn't bad for slim bots, but definitely isn't mowing down blackjacks. I let my turret do most of the bot farming, unless there's a nice clump of bots and I can throw down an air strike.
Yeah the firebase is the Support's bot money maker
Hurt gun will do okay but is far from efficient
Shotgun grapple will slice through bouncers
Airstrike will take down a wave of bots, but there are classes that can do it much quicker without something that takes forever to recharge, and occasionally it doesn't work as you intend and you don't get the whole group.
All in all Support is the worst at taking out bots
But a well placed firebase can make a decent amount of cash if you keep it up
I don't know why but I can't hit the fucking ground with the shotgun. I think it's because it's a third person game and not first person, if it were an FPS I would probably be tearing people's heads off with the shotty but as it is I just use the hurt gun and my turret and air strikes and shit.
i tend to play a balenced support myself with maybe a trend towards defensive. but then again i try to play a role and not just go kill mans.
SO what is your ideal team makeup?
1. Support
2. Gunner
3. Tank
4. Assassin
I think every squad needs at least one of these , of course assuming the assassin doesn't go around trying to kill tanks and dying
I think the final two spots will vary depending on the stage. While I personally don't really care for the sniper class, i think they play well on certain arenas. I think in most cases i would fill spot 5 with an assault. Spot 6 is the swing spot. I think assaults work best when they hunt in packs but its also useful to have a second support to be more defensive orientated.
I'll concede that the Support has an advantage over other Pros if he can get them to walk into his Firebase, which is, overall, his best killing tool. If it's hacked so the range isn't horrible. And you have to get money from somewhere-- that's what hacked Long Shot turrets are for.
The thing that gets me is that any time I see someone laud the Shotgun, it's always got the caveat "if you can get the drop on someone" attached. That's true. The problem is that it applies to just about every class, and often more so than the Support. The bottom line, for me, is that he's aptly named: regardless of where he is on the field, the Support fights by making other things fight better, be they his allied Pros, his allied Bots, his turrets, his Firebase, whatever. Seeking out and shooting things himself is not what he's designed for.
Kupi on
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
I'll concede that the Support has an advantage over other Pros if he can get them to walk into his Firebase, which is, overall, his best killing tool. If it's hacked so the range isn't horrible. And you have to get money from somewhere-- that's what hacked Long Shot turrets are for.
The thing that gets me is that any time I see someone laud the Shotgun, it's always got the caveat "if you can get the drop on someone" attached. That's true. The problem is that it applies to just about every class, and often more so than the Support. The bottom line, for me, is that he's aptly named: regardless of where he is on the field, the Support fights by making other things fight better, be they his allied Pros, his allied Bots, his turrets, his Firebase, whatever. Seeking out and shooting things himself is not what he's designed for.
I get tons of kills with the shotgun even when they get the drop on me. It just does so much damage at close range.
TheGerbil on
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited February 2011
I suck with the shotgun
But I've been killed so many times with the Shotgun, even as a Tank with Gold Armor, that I can't deny its effectiveness
The thing that bothers me about the shotgun is that it's damage doesn't seem to so much drop off with distance as hit a wall. Like, the shotguns in TF2 you can fire at long-range and still do single-digit damage, maybe, but the MNC shotgun seems to have a fixed, extremely short distance beyond which the pellets simply disappear. Or at least if they're doing any damage at all it's not visible. I wish MNC had a setting to have damage numbers pop out like TF2 does...
The thing that bothers me about the shotgun is that it's damage doesn't seem to so much drop off with distance as hit a wall. Like, the shotguns in TF2 you can fire at long-range and still do single-digit damage, maybe, but the MNC shotgun seems to have a fixed, extremely short distance beyond which the pellets simply disappear. Or at least if they're doing any damage at all it's not visible. I wish MNC had a setting to have damage numbers pop out like TF2 does...
This is exactly what happens. I think it's the only bulleted weapon to exhibit this behavior, actually. It's one of the reasons why the accuracy endorsement is particularly laughable for Support. Hurray! Your shotgun is more accurate! ...for the entire five-foot range it has!
---
In other news, I think I've found my niche. Gunner is really starting to click for me. It's the triple mortars more than anything; having a weapon that is most useful when I'm standing back a ways keeps me from doing the usual "dive into the enemies, forget that this is not a multiplayer game, get punished for my stupidity, ragequit" pattern I experience with most other classes.* Plus, I'm starting to get the hang of the Deploy-- the key is not to think of it as a true alternate mode and more of a very quick burst of extra damage. If your mobility isn't going to get you out of a bad situation, nail yourself to the floor and get the kill, then pack up and move on.
*Might explain my opinion on the Support!
Kupi on
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
And, yeah, people are hacking. There are separate ban listing/reporting threads on the UberEnt and Steam forums.
ah damn i should have taken note of the games name, i don't remember it at all now. thanks for the info though, will be good in case i run into any anymore.
Just ran into a tank who did nothing but spam death blossom with gold reload. It was surprisingly effective.
But if he finds himself against a tank with gold rate of fire and a steady hand he might find himself dead in the time it takes him to reload, only having done 250 to 400(assuming silver clip size) damage with a death blossom.
Not to mention decreased DPS against turrets, jackbot, and moneyball.
Yeah Death Blossom spam is nice but I'll take Skill Regen, Armor, and RoF over it any day
Level 3 Tank Charge > Everything, and more product grenade spam is always good
RoF helps with both of the Tank's weapons immensely. Jet gun kinda sucks if you can't do a decent amount of damage with it in a short amount of time due to the shitty range, and it's important to finish off Pros while they're still knocked down from your Charge because chances are they have escape methods. Also faster Railgun is great.
More Armor is just always good, even as a tank. Maybe moreso as a tank, as you are going to be all up in the action if you want to be effective.
So yeah, I suggest Skill Regen, Armor, and RoF. I think you can put those 3 in any combination of ranks and get various pros/cons but still be in good shape.
Is Reload Speed / Deathblossom spam a legitimate tactic that may be effective? Of course. Do I think it's as useful as the above endorsements in most games and especially against good players? Not really.
I wonder if the Speed and Juice endorsements would be any more popular if they were percentage-based rather than flat add-ons? That is, Speed modifies your base speed based on pickups, and Juice increases all your Juice gains by a percentage?
---
Let's say I'm a Gunner with Gold Rate of Fire and Silver Armor. Slam and Gunner Grapple recharge quick enough relative to their situational usefulness, so the typical Skill Regen slot is open. So is that Accuracy to make the Minigun a better pro-killer, Criticals to amplify deploy damage, Reload so that fucking minigun doesn't take a million years to recharge, or Clip Size to delay those reloads a bit farther?
Kupi on
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited February 2011
I usually run Silver Reload on my Tank
But then I'm usually focusing mostly on killing bots, and Death Blossom is far and away better than anything else in the game for clearing out a group of bots.
I've got a couple of guest-passes I probably won't be using. If anyone here, or their friends, are interested feel free to send me a PM with a link to a steam account. I think this game should be a lot more popular than it currently is on the PC, so getting some new people to try it out is a good idea.
Edit: oh didn't realise everyone got a 3-day pass recently. I guess there's no shortage of them right now, but my offer still stands.
Edit2: Some guy claimed my 3-day pass, but I've still got a 1-day pass up for grabs.
It is the most fun I've had with a PC game in a while
By far the most fun I've had with an online game in a very, very long time
Since like, TFC
You need to play more games.
tis fun as hell, but if this is the only game you've had this much fun in since TFC, mang you need to play moar games.
That's the key there. I don't think this game is better than say Mass Effect 2, but I definitely haven't found an online game this fun in many years. I play plenty of games, but most online play in recent years I've found to be pretty crap or fun for only a very short amount of time.
Posts
i run gold armor on my assault, backstabs will still kill you, but if you facestab me then i charge you and kill you
Gold armor assault will save you from a dagger back-grapple just barely, you can forget about surviving a back grapple with a sword. As always, the best way to survive being grappled by an assassin is to not be grappled by an assassin. Always stay moving, be aware of your surroundings especially if an assassin can sword-dash at you outside of cloak-noise range, and make liberal use of jumpjets.
And, yeah, people are hacking. There are separate ban listing/reporting threads on the UberEnt and Steam forums.
Support: Gold RoF, Silver Armor, Bronze Skill Regen
Tank: Gold Skill Regen, Silver Armor, Bronze Reload Speed
Assault: Gold Skill Regen, Silver Accuracy, Bronze RoF
That Support build is pretty standard. You want at least Silver armor to survive face stabs (you will kill a ton of Assassins with a counter-grapple then shotgun blast to the face after they attempt to front grapple you), and Gold RoF is just too good on Support. Skill Regen is the last logical choice, as Support doesn't really benefit from any of the other endorsements.
Other classes tend to have more variety based on playstyle. For example I love to ability spam with Tank and Assault, and for now I'm playing around without Armor on Assault for more hit and run tactics (plus Assault is the easiest class for never getting grappled by an Assassin ever).
It's good to look at some suggestions when new to the classes, but definitely play around and find something that fits your playstyle.
It's the same with the Support. Oh, sure, the all-powerful Shotgun. It's great if the enemy is standing still, unaware of you, and you're deeper in enemy territory than the Support has any business being. And everyone remembers the time the Support killed them in two shots. But at that same range, a Tank could jet-rush him, an Assault could pin him with a charge and throw him out of the arena, an Assassin could launch a grapple (or, better, just kite him), the Gunner has a paralyzing slam and his miniguns... basically, everyone is deadly at the range that the Support needs to be just to hit someone. His firebase requires a decent amount of time to set up, and even if his Airstrike weren't a floaty projectile with a delay after it lands, it can still only be used three times every 45 seconds or so. The Support is decidedly not a combat class.
His greatest strength is protecting the party's investment in the turrets by healing them. Without a Support, the turrets will fall eventually. And they won't be very effective attack tools without a Hack on them, either. That means that the Support is best off tending the base, deflecting bots that get too far in. When a Support is all the way in the enemy base, locking down their bot spawn with a firebase and nuking their turrets with Airstrikes, I'd say it's a symptom of a lopsided game rather than a effective Support strategy for general use. (Naturally, this depends on the map. GrenADEiii Arena has a long walk down both lanes, whereas in Spunky Cola Arena it's basically impossible to be out of range of the enemies.)
I wish more supports would realize this and stop trying to be so offensive. Keep our investments intact and effective. I don't need you trying to rush their base to toss in airstrikes.
Xbox Live / Steam
While I don't think this is entirely untrue, I think it's a vast over simplification. Are their terrible Supports that get blood lust and don't play their part on a team? Sure. But so does every other class. Support is highly situational. Take the beginning of a round for example. Is a Support supposed to just hang back and over charge turrets while everyone else bot farms? That doesn't make any sense. As Support I generally spend the beginning of the round pushing to the middle. Sometimes I stay there, sometimes we get pushed back and I go into turret mode. Sometimes we can push a little and I overcharge pros and farm bots. Besides, for the first half of most rounds, all that's up are the two level 1s anyway. You're basically asking the Support to gimp themselves by making their only income bot scraps.
tl;dr: Support is situational, defaulting to turret overcharge is simplistic.
I'd say tending to the turrets is only about 1/3 of a Support's job, if that.
Keeping his team overhealed and keeping an area of the map locked down with his firebase, which stops enemy bots and pros while healing your own team and acting like a forward base, are bigger parts of his role than doing anything with the base turrets
And I also disagree on the bonesaw effect. Shotgun isn't only useful if the enemy is standing still and doesn't know what they're doing. Sure a support should rarely go charging into the enemy base (unless they're juiced), but I can pretty confidently take on a number of pros based on the battlefield situations. You don't want to be charging them from a distance with a shotty, but the great part about a third-person shooter is you can see what's coming around the corner. If that something is pretty much anything other than a tank, you have a good chance to kill it in a couple of seconds.
Right-clicking the hurt/heal gun with a gold rate of fire endorsement takes out bots pretty handily.
The shotgun is extremely terrible for taking out bots. The heal/hurt gun isn't bad for slim bots, but definitely isn't mowing down blackjacks. I let my turret do most of the bot farming, unless there's a nice clump of bots and I can throw down an air strike.
Hurt gun will do okay but is far from efficient
Shotgun grapple will slice through bouncers
Airstrike will take down a wave of bots, but there are classes that can do it much quicker without something that takes forever to recharge, and occasionally it doesn't work as you intend and you don't get the whole group.
All in all Support is the worst at taking out bots
But a well placed firebase can make a decent amount of cash if you keep it up
Now people are saying, "Support's offense is overrated, prioritize healing and turret maintenance."
The first group of people are correct
The second are dumb
Tonight I got two separate people (both playing Assassins) to bitch in-game about my use of the shotgun
SO what is your ideal team makeup?
1. Support
2. Gunner
3. Tank
4. Assassin
I think every squad needs at least one of these , of course assuming the assassin doesn't go around trying to kill tanks and dying
I think the final two spots will vary depending on the stage. While I personally don't really care for the sniper class, i think they play well on certain arenas. I think in most cases i would fill spot 5 with an assault. Spot 6 is the swing spot. I think assaults work best when they hunt in packs but its also useful to have a second support to be more defensive orientated.
The thing that gets me is that any time I see someone laud the Shotgun, it's always got the caveat "if you can get the drop on someone" attached. That's true. The problem is that it applies to just about every class, and often more so than the Support. The bottom line, for me, is that he's aptly named: regardless of where he is on the field, the Support fights by making other things fight better, be they his allied Pros, his allied Bots, his turrets, his Firebase, whatever. Seeking out and shooting things himself is not what he's designed for.
I get tons of kills with the shotgun even when they get the drop on me. It just does so much damage at close range.
But I've been killed so many times with the Shotgun, even as a Tank with Gold Armor, that I can't deny its effectiveness
This is exactly what happens. I think it's the only bulleted weapon to exhibit this behavior, actually. It's one of the reasons why the accuracy endorsement is particularly laughable for Support. Hurray! Your shotgun is more accurate! ...for the entire five-foot range it has!
---
In other news, I think I've found my niche. Gunner is really starting to click for me. It's the triple mortars more than anything; having a weapon that is most useful when I'm standing back a ways keeps me from doing the usual "dive into the enemies, forget that this is not a multiplayer game, get punished for my stupidity, ragequit" pattern I experience with most other classes.* Plus, I'm starting to get the hang of the Deploy-- the key is not to think of it as a true alternate mode and more of a very quick burst of extra damage. If your mobility isn't going to get you out of a bad situation, nail yourself to the floor and get the kill, then pack up and move on.
*Might explain my opinion on the Support!
But if he finds himself against a tank with gold rate of fire and a steady hand he might find himself dead in the time it takes him to reload, only having done 250 to 400(assuming silver clip size) damage with a death blossom.
Not to mention decreased DPS against turrets, jackbot, and moneyball.
:?
Death Blossom for crazy damage.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
That makes it even worse than I thought.
Level 3 Tank Charge > Everything, and more product grenade spam is always good
RoF helps with both of the Tank's weapons immensely. Jet gun kinda sucks if you can't do a decent amount of damage with it in a short amount of time due to the shitty range, and it's important to finish off Pros while they're still knocked down from your Charge because chances are they have escape methods. Also faster Railgun is great.
More Armor is just always good, even as a tank. Maybe moreso as a tank, as you are going to be all up in the action if you want to be effective.
So yeah, I suggest Skill Regen, Armor, and RoF. I think you can put those 3 in any combination of ranks and get various pros/cons but still be in good shape.
Is Reload Speed / Deathblossom spam a legitimate tactic that may be effective? Of course. Do I think it's as useful as the above endorsements in most games and especially against good players? Not really.
---
Let's say I'm a Gunner with Gold Rate of Fire and Silver Armor. Slam and Gunner Grapple recharge quick enough relative to their situational usefulness, so the typical Skill Regen slot is open. So is that Accuracy to make the Minigun a better pro-killer, Criticals to amplify deploy damage, Reload so that fucking minigun doesn't take a million years to recharge, or Clip Size to delay those reloads a bit farther?
But then I'm usually focusing mostly on killing bots, and Death Blossom is far and away better than anything else in the game for clearing out a group of bots.
Edit: oh didn't realise everyone got a 3-day pass recently. I guess there's no shortage of them right now, but my offer still stands.
Edit2: Some guy claimed my 3-day pass, but I've still got a 1-day pass up for grabs.
This right here
It is the most fun I've had with a PC game in a while
By far the most fun I've had with an online game in a very, very long time
Since like, TFC
That's the key there. I don't think this game is better than say Mass Effect 2, but I definitely haven't found an online game this fun in many years. I play plenty of games, but most online play in recent years I've found to be pretty crap or fun for only a very short amount of time.