Unbelievable.

Guys, guys, you are not going to believe this. (I had hard time believing it myself last night.)

I have a new favourite class.

For the moment, at least. And you will never guess what it is. Never. Well, I guess you could since there are only nine classes and it's obviously not one of my top four, because, uh, they are my favourite classes already.
I said from the beginning, before I actually started playing Team Fortress 2, that there are two classes that I will probably never play as, because they seem way too... well, difficult. One of them was Engineer, but we all know how that turned out, and the other is this class. And well would you look at how that one turned out:



Well, putting the embarrassing (self-ironic?) screenshot aside, yeah, it's my former least played class, the one I thought I'd never bother to learn to play as because, and I quote, "I'm an absolutely appalling Demo [...] I've always been terrible with grenades, I can never predict trajectories right and my timing simply sucks."
WELL WHADDAYA KNOW.
I already have 3,5 hours as Demo (my playtime as a Demo was about 20 minutes before last night, haha), and, well, turns out that I'm not a completely horrible Demo, and it's so much fun! Yeah, sure, I still don't do trajectories, and I freely admit that most of the time I'm just spamming grenades at where enemies are without thinking about it much more than that (I know some people call Soldier the "Easy Mode," but I beg to differ. To me? Demoman's the ultimate easy mode. Most of my pipe bomb kills are sheer luck, and at least with Soldier you'll have to AIM. As a Demo... dammit, I chuck pipe bombs behind a corner just in case someone's there. And if I can do it, I believe anyone can do it).

Anyway, my sudden demolitions enthusiasm began when I was playing on our (TF2Chan's) Mantrain server. There were only six players, and we were fighting it out on Hall of Death, which, in case you're not familiar with it, is a custom CTF map. Pretty fun, at that, totally crazy and fast-paced, perfect for just fooling around with small teams. So indeed I was fooling around: I got totally sick of being dominated by the enemies, so I went Demo and always started the game by putting stickies underneath the intel, waiting for the enemies to approach and KABOOM! Into giblets (or balloons and stuff, since birthday mode was on) they exploded. Repeat ad nauseum. I dominated the entire enemy team two times over, and then they probably got sick of my sticky strategy and all of them went Pyro, which indeed proved to be my downfall. Fffff damn Pyros.
But at some point I got a new max points record for Demo and everything, and I had a really good time. Maybe even learned a thing or two about stickies and the regular grenades.
So eventually I changed servers and ended up on Badlands. And decided that okay, right, I'm not a very good Demo and sure it's easy to be at least somewhat successful on a small map with a few players and just guarding the intel with stickies, but let's try it out in "real" game (since the Hall of Death skirmish had mostly been fooling around with 3v3 teams), and let's see how it goes from there.

It went pretty well if I do say so myself! Better than I had ever imagined! Mostly I just kept stickying the control points and being a defensive Demo and then chucking pipe bombs at approaching enemies, but at least I was good at that! I got lots of defenses (and now I know that I'm not the only idiot who always just trods over sticky bombs thinking that the Demoman who put them down isn't watching. Oh ha ha ha wow, I'm never going near stickies again, because what kind of Demo isn't looking after his stickies?! I know I'm keeping my eye on them, no matter the situation). I don't know what the hell happened, but apparently all it took was a few more minutes with the Demo and I had the basics down. (Or then all the times I've been spectating Slaverstrike while waiting to respawn and following a Demoman as a Medic paid off and I just did things I've seen them do).

And stickies... oh, how I love stickies. Because of stickies I like being Demo on defense (I played both defensive and offensive Demo last night, and I like defense far far more), because I like taking care of the capture points or the bomb cart. Or intel. It's easy, and important business, and even a newbie Demo like me can do it! On Dustbowl I first covered whichever point it was that we were defending, and then started minding my own business. And it's awesome because all I have to do is check out the indicators on my HUD and if there are people on the point or near the bombcart, I just right click and get a few kills and defenses even if I'm in the other side of the bleeding map.



I totally dig that. In the screenshot I'm just coming from the respawn (got assaulted by a Pyro and had to fall back to heal myself), and well whaddaya know, two kills and a defense, all thanks to careful stickying. And lol at the Spy, I remember he got gibbed by that rocket just as I had pulled out my bottle.

What I hate about stickies, is that sometimes I fire them just... somewhere, and forget about them. And then I start firing more at enemies, maybe trying to take down a sentry or an approaching Heavy or just simply trying to lay a sticky carpet somewhere, and then I back off and detonate them and KABLOOIE! I suicide, because I forgot a stray sticky that I had somewhere. Haha. It's happened so many times it's not even FUNNY. It was funny the first few times, then it started getting a bit annoying. I'm a dementic Demoman.
And yeah, sometimes someone scatters my carefully places sticky carpets and I don't notice until it's too late. I also have a tendency to first lay stickies somewhere close to me, then see an enemy approaching, shoot a sticky at him and detonate. Well, whoops. I guess with time I'll learn not to do that.
What sucks about laying all your stickies at the CP or near the cart, is that I like using stickies way more than the pipe bombs, even in regular face-offs with enemies. It's easier to just chuck some stickies at people, see them land somewhere near them, and detonate them immediately for maximum carnage. And I love detonating them mid-flight right when they're at someone's face. Oh, love.
But I can't do that if I have stickies somewhere else, without losing the defensive hold I have of the point/cart/intel. And I hate going back and putting them down again. Of course it adds a bit to the strategic side of the Demo: to know when to defend the point and when to push forward.

There were also some great moments when I was attacking. Never mind being an MVP as a Heavy, THIS is just absurd:



And taking down sentries is surprisingly easy, even for a Demo noob like me (and now I know for sure that I am never übering anything but Demos for sentry takedowns. They are the best at it, no doubt about it)! There was a round in Dustbowl when I was in BLU and we had fought our way to the third stage. I had a Medic stick to me during the setup and he told me that he's going to über me and we'll take down the sentries.
I was like "D: OH GOD" because, yeah, you probably know how nervous I get when I'm übered (and at that point I hadn't even faced any big sentry farms - like the ones that you usually see on Dustbowl), so I told the Medic that okay, we can try it if you really want to, but I can't promise that it will succeed (I was the highest scoring Demo in our team at that point - no, really, I was - so maybe I WAS the best bet for taking down the sentries... I just wasn't so sure about myself). So we rush out, the Medic übers me, and I actually fucking take down a level one sentry, a level three sentry and its Engineer during the charge, and we cap the point immediately. The Medic was pleased and complimented me, and I had to go all "Wow I actually did it!" and I felt really proud of myself.
Yeah, pretty good from someone who had only been a Demo for about hour and a half.

My scores as a Demoman are still very modest, max kills is 9, max destructions 5, and most points only 11, but I'm still a pretty surprised that I'm actually not a completely godawful Demoman! And I was an MVP on few rounds, which is... pretty awesome. Here, probably my best run last night:



So. I really, REALLY liked being a Demo (...I even forgot about the time and realised what time is it when Slaver told me that he's calling it quits for the night. It was 11:30 pm. Sure, it wouldn't be so bad, if I didn't have to get up at 5:30 am to go to work. Whoops?), and you'll probably see me playing nothing but Demo until I get bored of it. I'm itching to play this very moment! I wanna learn all the tricks to it so that I would become a bit better at it! Now I get slaughtered by anything that gets too close to me (seriously, it doesn't matter which class it is, if it gets close to me, I'm goners. Yeah, I suicide a lot, no surprises there).

And fuck, Demos, I'm sorry. I didn't know that Demomen take full damage from their own stickies and grenades! I foung it out in a pretty gruesome way while trying out sticky jumping and plummeting straight to my death (and damn sticky jumps seem so much more potent than rocketjumping. Too bad that I'm left with measly 80 HP after one, so I probably won't be doing it a whole lot). I thought that Demos too had the damage reduction Soldiers have.

And now I kinda want to get drunk on scotch and play nothing but Demo for the entire evening. For added realism. Ehh. I wish I wasn't such a huge nerd.

Damn the Blutsauger is one sexy weapon. I'm liking it a bit too much right now. It has saved me in situations in which I would've died with the regular syringe gun, Spies don't stand any change against me anymore (the Blutsauger is awesome for spychecking: even when they're in disguise you can leech health from them and SEE IT) and it's just generally the most awesome weapon ever. I even killed a Heavy with it, hee.
And I completely love it when I dominate some poor player (by assists), who then goes Spy and tries to get a revenge on me, just to end up getting killed by me. Again. <3 Honey, if you need to get a revenge on me when I'm Medic, Spy's the one class that can't kill me as unless you know exactly what you're doing (ie. you can't let me see you. At all. A complete surprise is the only way).
And I'm getting closer to Kritzkrieg. I'm hoping I would get it by playing Medic normally, I don't want to start übering Scouts and melée Heavies and disrupting whatever it is that our team is doing. I'm 16/39 through the achievements, so I only need nine.
And I've got Preventive Medicine and Hypocritical Oath since the last I wrote, both by playing just like I would normally play. Hypocritical Oath came as a surprise, it was Goldrush, second stage, last checkpoint, and I was healing everyone in the reigning chaos. Apparently I healed some Spy as well, then heard one of our Engineers exclaiming about a SPAH and I'm apparently really becoming a goddamn Engineer midwife, because I instantly whipped out the Blutsauger and killed the Spy who was trying to sap the buildings. Got the achievement. Didn't even think about it.
So yeah, this far I've got all the achievements by playing Medic like I normally would. Looking forward to getting Big Pharma (I'm positive I can do it in a completely regular game, my assist record is already 19, after all. I'm counting on Slaverstrike), Grand Rounds (already over 100 into that one - damn it, people, now we want you to spam the hell outta E, so why don't you do it?!), Infernal Medicine (about 30 into that), Doctor Assisted Homicide, Intern, maybe Specialist, Second Opinion, Autopsy Report and House Call. Those are the ones I think that I can get by playing normally.

Also, I'm now trying to get the hang of playing the Heavy. I like being a Heavy, it's just that I suck as one. I have my good moments, today I played a couple of minutes without sucking at all! Didn't waste an über, destroyed some buildings, killed a couple of people, and then got wrenched to death by an Engineer, because my Medic had fucked off somewhere. That bitch. Medics hate me when I'm Heavy. Sadness.
And that's what I need: I just need a patient, persistent Medic who will stick to my sorry ass even when I don't get that much kills. It's pretty hard trying to learn to play as Heavy when I can't even stay alive, because people are firing at me from five different directions and the goddamn fatty is so slow that I can't drag my ass to safety before I'm Swiss cheese.
And then I'm trying to be more careful, which just ends in me being a) backstabbed, b) headshot, c) meléed to death by someone who had easily sneaked behind me or d) crouched behind some corner spinning Sasha and being useless because I'm just waiting someone to come to me instead of me going to them.

But Heavy's going to be my next "I'm Learning To Play This Class!" project. Hey, it took me four hours to not suck completely as Soldier, and almost twenty to be any good as one, so I think I'll just have to endure being a horrible, noobish fatty who's hated by Medics. I have to get the hang of it eventually. Right? Right?
And I need more classes to play as, seriously. I only have four: Medic's starting to be my career class because it's the only class I actually feel I'm good at, no matter the situation, and Soldier's my feelgood class (complete love/hate relationship, btw: as Soldier I just CAN'T BE GOOD, whatever it is that I do. I can top the scoreboard and still feel like I suck, and it bothers me SO MUCH. Did that make any sense? No? Love/hate relationship. I wish I knew how to quit you, Soldier, damn you). Engineer's my "there are no Engineers so I'll be one" class. And I've never been a good Pyro on any other map but Hydro. I gave up on Sniper after four hours of playing, because goddamn I hate Snipers. I don't like being a Sniper, because I know how goddamn useless I am when I'm one.
And I'm still chickening out of playing as Spy, I'm an absolutely appalling Scout and a Demo (and I don't think I'll ever bother to learn to play as either of them, I just can't use Scout's abilities to my advantage and I've always been terrible with grenades, I can never predict trajectories right and my timing simply sucks), and Heavy... yeah.
But no, I wasn't good at any class from the get-go, I shouldn't give up on playing a class after an hour of playtime. Of course I'm a relatively good Medic, I have fifty-four hours as Medic. Of course I at least know how to handle the Soldier with the insane sixty-three hours of playtime as one. I've had my fair share of successful Engineering and Spy-owning in thirty hours. I've played as Heavy for an hour and a half, I shouldn't be so surprised that I still suck as one. Same with Spy: I think Spy has the highest learning curve out of all nine classes, and I have one hour of playtime as Spy. Of course I suck as a Spy!
I just hate screwing up our teamwork by being useless.

I'm also starting to love Demomen when I'm Medic. I'm finding myself sticking to them far more often than I stick to Soldiers, for example. Nothing beats good fatties, but damn, good Demomen are serious harbingers of doom. Today was the fourth time within few days that I've been primarily sticking to a Demoman. And if the Demo knows what he's doing when I über him... the destruction! The carnage! Pipe bombs! Gibs! Sentry parts! Everywhere! It's beautiful. Yeah I admit I'm a total assist whore (but just for the record: I get most of my points from healing, not from assists. I've been on top of the scoreboard with over 20 000 healing and less than 15 assists), but I'm starting to notice that good Demomen get any job done way better than good Soldiers do. The only downside is that Demos are pretty much screwed if enemy gets close enough (laying stickies to their feet does kill the enemies, but they often suicide as well by doing that), and if enemy gets close to my healing target, they usually get close to me too, which makes me screwed as well. Except that with the Blutsauger I now have a tiny little chance of making it out alive, but it's still something I'd rather not go through.
But yeah. I love them Scottish cyclops.