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TF2 Halloween 2012/How to kill Merasmus

Sat, 27 Oct 12 22:29:42 +0000

The 2012 TF2 halloween event is here and it's better than last year! The map, Ghost Fort, is a converted version of koth_lakeside and the boss is Merasmus whom you might know from the lore. He's the wizard responsible for the demoman's missing eye and he's also the soldier's roommate. He spawns and runs around killing everyone (like the Horseless Headless Horsemann of 2010).

After killing him, a portal opens to Skull Island and if you make it out of there, you get a hat. Huzzah.

So he's kind of a mix of the Horseless Headless Horseman and Monoculous.

There are also a few other nice additions like the random mutator that gets applied when the control point gets switched. Big heads, small heads, low gravity, super jump, etc. It's very Unreal Tournament, but seeing everyone running around with humongous heads is hilarious.

Gifts return too. The gift mechanics have been reworked - a gift will now spawn for a single random player. Nobody else will be able to see or pick it up. This is a huge improvement over previous years, where people would camp/farm them and sell them. The gifts are various items that can be crafted together to make zombie suits, or spells that apply effects to weapons or equipment. For example the exorcist effect makes little ghosts appear when you kill someone.

Merasmus

As for Merasmus, he's a lot tougher than either the Headless Horsemann or Monoculous and against a disorganised server, he'll win 9 times out of, well, 9. He's only around for 1 minute 30 seconds at a time, and he hides for some of that.

To kill him you'll need two things:

The enemy team to stop shooting you. This can be hard, but some servers will co-operate. There's nothing more beautiful than seeing RED and BLU put their differences aside and focus on a common goal. Unfortunately there are frequently trolls around, but do your best. If you're going to use sentries against him, make sure they're wrangled. Servers tend to organise themselves a bit. If you're in Europe, I can recommend GrimGG's servers, there's currently a dedicated Ghost Fort server (and it has vote-kick enabled!).
Huntsman snipers.

The latter is not negotiable. Merasmus has two states: shielded and unshielded. When he's shielded, your huntsman does about 300 damage against him. When unshielded, you can headshot him for 1080. The brass beast by comparison does about 2 damage per hit when shielded. You don't need a server full of huntsmen, but on a 24 player server, you'll want about 5-6. We had a demoman on our team who claimed he could do a good 10k damage with sticky traps, but I haven't tested that (but I can tell you that my loch and load does a paltry amount of damage). Valve seems to have designed it so that the huntsman is the only weapon (or at least, one of a small subset) that does enough damage to reliably hurt him.

During Merasmus's visit, every once in a while, the bombinomicon will replace your head with a bomb. When this happens, run towards Merasmus. When you get to him, the bomb explodes, you gain an ubercharge, and Merasmus is stunned (and unshielded) for a few seconds.

When you get him down to 50% hit points, he'll hide. Being a magician, that means he turns into an inanimate object. Like a chair or a piano. Or a rock. These spawn across the map. Hit them a few times. When you find the one he's disguised as, he'll spawn back as himself and you can continue.

Merasmus will fight back by hitting you with his staff or throwing bombs at you. Both of these are bad news. He's not quite as terrifying as the Horseless Headless Horsemann because he doesn't seem to move as quickly or roam so unpredictably, but if you get close he will kill you very quickly.

Obviously, as the hat reward is only given if you get to Skull Island, make sure you're going to be alive to get through the portal. The portal opens wherever Merasmus is when he dies, and it only lasts for a few seconds.

Update!

Valve apparently yielded to pressure and re-worked a few things. To try to encourage people to actually kill Merasmus, they made the hat (Skull Island Topper) 'level up' when you defeat Merasmus at a certain level. Merasmus spawns at level 1 and every time he is killed, gains a level. Unfortunately, he goes back to level 1 when he escapes, so levelling your hat past level 2 appears to be pretty much impossible. Killing Merasmus is rare enough, killing him twice in a row? Good luck with that.

If you want to try your luck while the event lasts, Wireplay has a Ghost Fort server which disables player damage while Merasmus is in the game. IP: 94.136.46.57:27025.

Team Fortress 2 - Best medic loadouts/tactics

Tue, 09 Oct 12 20:25:21 +0000

I probably shouldn't be giving advice on medic since I think battle medic is the most fun class in TF2, but nevermind, I play a lot of medic.

Primary - Crusader's Crossbow

Yes, really, I'm serious. The crossbow. Most people think the crossbow is useless. They're absolutely right it's underpowered and difficult to use, but it's not useless, and certainly not compared to the alternatives, which are underwhelming at best. The crossbow has a very definite feeling to it at long range, whereas the alternatives feel clumsy in any situation.

Note that it's unusual in that damage is inversely proportional to range (most weapons are either constant or suffer drop-off, the crossbow is the opposite). It does a maximum of 75 damage, which isn't much, but it can take down a sniper in two shots. Snipers make fairly easy targets because they'll scope in and stand still while you can jump around like a rabbit with ADD, *and*, because of the very very precise X-axis accuracy, still shoot straight.

The bolt follows an arc so you have to aim above your target, but you get the hang of it easily. The bolt itself is relatively slow moving, so you need to lead your target at range, if they are moving, but again, this isn't too hard.

It actually has extraordinary range. E.g. In Thunder Mountain stage 1, you can easily snipe BLU's snipers at their base exit from the balconies overlooking the ramp. It's also good for finishing off people running away. And for sniping engineers building sentries.

The other factor you need to consider is the huge number of crits a medic gets. Crit chance in TF2 is proportional to how much damage you've recently inflicted, and if you're a medic, you inherit the damage inflicted by your healing target! And a critical bolt is a serious threat to anyone.

And of course, finally, the crossbow heals teammates. Fast, from any range. But unfortunately it doesn't charge your uber.

Medi-guns

I don't think there's too much to discuss about the mediguns. You should default to the stock medigun. You might prefer to take the Kritz if there's another medic on your team (wielding the stock), and if you have complimentary classes to use it on. Whilst heavies make great ubercharge targets with the stock medigun, Kritz charges are generally effective only on demomen with sticky launchers (these are an absolute beast when kritzed!) and soldiers with a 4-shot rocket launcher (a heavy is still _okay_, but not great).

The quick-fix is rarely helpful, in my opinion.

Melee

The melee choices are more open to discussion.

Stock bonesaw (and equivalents)

There's no reason to use this over the amputator. The amputator has identical stats, and does more additionally.

Übersaw

The ubersaw gives you 25% ubercharge on hit, which is great. If you can pair up with another medic, you can literally keep cycling between ubering your friend while he attacks with his ubersaw, and then when yours runs out, he should be able to uber you. Repeat ad infinitum. It's a very effective tactic, until a pyro comes along and airblasts you. But for normal play, I prefer the amputator.

Vita-Saw

The VS retains up to 20% of your ubercharge when you die, but I don't really find it that useful. 20%'s not a huge amount. If you're dying that quickly then that's bad news anyway, maybe the 20% will help a bit, maybe switching to a faster charging medigun will help (although obviously the ubercharge will have a different effect), or maybe you just need to be more careful. It's situational, although I rarely use the VS.

Solemn Vow

The SV lets you see enemy's health. This makes a lot of sense if you're using the crossbow, as you'll know who you have a chance of killing.

Amputator

The amputator is my personal favourite. Coupled with the crossbow, you get a health recharge bonus which gives you great survivability (particularly against pyros, and similar after-effect damage).

It also has a useful taunt (press G), which has an area-heal effect. You can often stand behind a corner and group heal most of your team at once. Sadly this doesn't build your ubercharge, but it's helpful to your team.

TL;DR

Take the stock medigun, crossbow, amputator, and take any good crossbow shots you are presented with.

TF2 Spy Tips!

Sun, 07 Oct 12 15:55:49 +0000

Spy is probably one of the harder TF2 classes; it's hard in that good spies have set the bar already and the enemy team is already on the lookout for you, it's hard in that once you're spotted you have very little chance of surviving, it's hard in that there aren't really any transferable skills from other FPSs and you have to learn it from scratch, and it's hard to use your class to make an actual difference.

But in the hands of a pro, the spy is absolutely the most annoying and effective class in the game. Here are some things I've picked up:

Loadout

The stock load-out is good. Really! Sure, the dead ringer can be really annoying to play against, but experienced players can spot a fake DR death easily, you're still useless against pyros, and the stock Invis Watch gives you cloak-on-demand, which is very useful. Overall I'd say the IW is a lot less forgiving, so it forces you to be careful and it's therefore good to learn with. The other weapons are more simple preference, I think.

TF2's weapon balance system is very good - stock or non-stock weapons are almost never direct upgrades (apart from the medic's melee choices). The IW is more about prevention than cure, and the DR is more about cure than prevention. In highly spammy circumstances, the DR is an advantage, but generally, the IW is fine.

Play with other loadouts if you want (and when you get comfortable), but you should definitely not dismiss the defaults.

Act Naturally

Plenty of newbie spies are completely obvious even before they do anything.

What you're trying to do is get behind the whole enemy team, as this gives you a safer and more effective attack position. Some enemies are completely happy to let you co-exist with them as long as you don't wander in from the front.
Your basic objective should be to cloak just before the front lines, then to get as far behind them as possible while cloaked (pick up ammo packs along the way to keep your cloak from running out).
People can use bumping into you as a method of spychecking. Therefore it's best to prevent them from getting particularly close to you, and to do so naturally, it means gently evading them as soon as possible, not suddenly changing direction when they get close to you.
If someone does start shooting at you, if they aren't so likely to actually hit you, just keep going. They might be spy-checking, which means they're looking for a reaction of some kind. That means either damaging you or making you do something out of the ordinary. If they aren't too likely to damage you, take the risk and assume they won't. If they miss a few times there's a good chance they won't pursue you, either because they lose interest or they assume that since you didn't break cover that you really are one of them.

Disguising

At the start of the round (during setup time) and when approaching the lines, it's good practice to avoid alerting the enemy team to your presence as a spy. That's what friendly disguises are for (press '-' on the disguise selector). Someone who's just seen a spy approaching will be more likely to spycheck than someone who hasn't
Some classes make for bad disguises. Eg: scout (you're too slow, you'll be noticed) and medic (you can't heal, people will get suspicious). Other classes depend more on situation; e.g. engineer is bad if you're in a situation where you'd be expected to be putting up a sentry, but okay if you want to run around behind their lines without them thinking much about it.
Further to the last point, it's generally a good idea to avoid disguising as any class the other team doesn't have, so keep aware of their class distribution.
B is a shortcut for reapply last disguise. Use it when you've broken cover and need to disappear quickly.

Staying alive

Your main enemy is the pyro, obviously. You also have to watch out for good medics, who should be hyper-alert for you, and you also have to be careful about accidentally taking explosive damage that wasn't intended for you (so don't run in front of a demoman).
Chain-stabs are great, but don't start in the middle. Even if you're tempted by the idea of two quick and easy stabs, don't go for it if there's a soldier behind you. Being a spy is all about discipline, not just taking the first kill that comes to you.
When rumbled, cloak as soon as you can and then run somewhere completely unpredictable. Don't stand in the nearest corner, demomen love this.
Don't be worried to abort an attack if the situation changes and you think it'll go wrong. The spy is extremely vulnerable in the open and you're no use dead.
Engineers and sentry nests make tempting targets, but you have to assess whether they're worth it. If all you manage to do is plant a sapper and die then they'll instantly remove it and you'll have died for nothing. Sometimes a well placed sentry nest is best left to a demoman.
After a while, people will start spychecking everyone no matter how convincingly you're acting. In these situations it becomes more a game of getting behind someone before they can see you, which means being very smart with cloak/decloak and appearing from around corners

Being useful

So okay, you're now not dying too much, but how can you be useful to your team?

The main idea of the spy is to take down difficult targets, not to get tonnes of kills.
Snipers are easy targets for a spy, but hard for the rest of the team so definitely focus on snipers. If they have a razorback, no problem, just wait until they're scoped then shoot them with your revolver.
A sentry nest is a difficult target. Some of these will be out of your ability due to the positioning the engineer sets up, but others can be okay. If you're fast, you can backstab an engineer and set the sapper on his sentry before the sentry targets you. You'll need to practice the weapon switching, though.
Sometimes engineers who set up otherwise well will be vulnerable to telefragging. And if not, using their teleporter can sometimes get you behind them and give you a better attack
Medic/heavy pairs are very important targets. You might be able to chainstab both, but if not, the medic is probably the more sensible target; heavies attract bullets so quickly that they don't live long without a medic, and the medic's ubercharge is always worth resetting. But it's situation dependent - go for whichever one presents the best chances of success.

Advanced stuff

Your knife is immensely powerful, but only from behind. A pretty neat trick is to run up some stairs with an enemy following you and then at the top jump backwards over their head (jump-crouch), and backstab them
When you're feeling confident being disguised and not having to kill everyone, try to get an enemy medic to waste his ubercharge on you. Adopt a combat class disguise (heavy/soldier/demoman, in that order), rush out to the front of their lines and yell 'MEIDC' a few times. When you've got an enemy medic healing you and he has his uber ready, start heading out towards your own lines.