Bonk v. 2

What the hell.

So, a few months ago I told you how I picked up the Demoman one night, after half a year of going all "oh I'm a terrible Demo, I can't play as Demo, it's so difficult," and finding myself sucking NOT as badly as I thought I would suck, and actually thinking that it's lots of fun.
And Demoman's been my most played class during these couple of months (I've clocked over 30 hours as a Demo since July), and sometimes I think I'm not even half-bad at it. At least I've learned the tips and tricks to it.
And after finally picking up the Demo, there were only two classes that I simply don't play as. Because I suck so bad. And those classes were Spy and Scout.

And you know what?

Tonight the exact same thing that happened with Demo back then, happened with Scout. My team was getting our collective ass handed to us in Gravel Pit, I decided to fuck it and go Scout (which is what I usually do when I get annoyed enough, for some strange masochistic reason).
And despite getting our asses kicked and being in a goddamn horrible team, I was actually having fun. As a Scout. Playing seriously instead of just running around the bat in hand and trying to bat some heads in. And doing what a BLU Scout should do in Gravel Pit: cap.
And I wasn't doing as bad as I usually do as a Scout. I got at least one kill in one life, which is of course bad, but way more than I usually get, and I was there when we capped A and B. I even dominated some poor Spy, and that's definitely something I've NEVER done as a Scout before. And like I told you, our team was kinda bad, and we were losing hard (and if I can accomplish more as a Scout than I did as a Soldier or Demo - and I did play as those before going Scout - no one can possibly say that it was my fault we sucked).

I was surprised, and decided to try playing as Scout on some other map. Which happened to be Gold Rush. And I actually played an entire match in Gold Rush as a Scout. And... well.



Lol at having a Medic.
It definitely could've been worse! Sure it was lots of hanging back, taking potshots at enemies in the distance, and waiting for everyone else to take down sentries, but it was still pretty fun, and I did lots of capping. I even got a new most points record for Scout. It used to be a measly 6, now it's 10! Whoo! And not all of the points were captures!
Later on I tried playing as Scout on Steel as well, because I wanted to try and go to E at the start of the match. I didn't really accomplish much, but at least it works a bit as a distraction while rest of the team tries to cap A or B or whatever.
And still, I had fun. I'm really, really liking Scout's speed.

So, um, I think I might even start playing as a Scout, if it's of any use to my team. Sure I suck ass, but hey, same old song: you can't expect to get better at something if you never actually do it.

And now I'm just waiting when this shit happens with Spy. It would be awesome to be actually able to play ALL the classes.

Last night was also a strange achievement night. I got two Medic achievements (Doctor Assisted Homicide, which I would've gotten ages ago if all of my achievement progress bars hadn't gone back to zero at one point, and Medical Intervention), and three Pyro achievements (Makin' Bacon, Hot Potato and Pyrotechnics). Not that they would even count towards anything since I have all the unlockables already, but I would've finally got the Kritzkrieg if the Medic Milestones were still where they used to be.
And dammit, all I want are some Heavy achievements, I still don't have the Natascha.
And I came close to breaking my Medic point record on Dustbowl's first stage: I had 27 points (hadn't died even once during the round, so it was pretty easy to just check to scoreboard) and then I got headshot. Stupid fucking Snipers. If I had managed to stay alive for the minute and half that was still left of the round, I would've probably gotten at least 30. RRRRAGE.

And in other news, I finally clocked 100 hours as a Soldier. Yeah, damn you, Easy Mode. I was trying to hold back and play more as a Medic, but I just can't seem to quit Soldier.
Also my hours are fucking ridiculous (about 300 altogether?), I probably need a life.

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.

You don't see this every day...

OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK.

You probably remember how I've been fighting with Heavy, how I suck as one, how I can't kill absolutely anyone as Heavy, how I just spend most of my time waiting for respawn while I'm playing as Heavy and so and so on.

WELL TAKE A LOOK AT THIS, SUCKERS:



Okay, yeah, that isn't quite as astounding once I tell you from WHAT that score came from, but that's still one crazyass score. And yes, it's one life (my Heavy stats don't look quite as pathetic anymore! Sixteen is pretty good! You can go check it out if you don't believe me). I didn't die even ONCE. And yeah, we were steamrolling.
But that score? Seven captures, two kills. One assist, but it doesn't count. Damn Gold Rush is crazy, and I was basically hugging the cart the whole time. It's perfect, because the cart moves at the exactly same pace as the Heavy does while spinning Sasha, which makes Heavy a nice mobile cart-defending turret. The kills came from a very lucky crit streak while plowing through the narrow hallway after the first checkpoint. Heh, gotta love those crits.
But anyway, my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when the round ended and I saw I was a goddamn MVP. Number one, no less! (And I robbed a Medic from his First Do No Harm, sorry about that.)
I was an MVP on second stage too, but we didn't blow up the base in the third stage, but I was third on the scoreboard, with 59 points (which breaks down to 13 kills, 8 assists, 4 destructions and 19 captures). And I even dominated someone, WTF.

And having a Medic makes such a difference, I completely owned the enemy team at the start of the match once the teams changed and it was my team's time to defend, and the Medic who had been sticking to me went all "lol, nice one, Chrome." To which I replied that I'm actually a really horrible Heavy, but somehow I'm suddenly doing pretty good. Have a wild guess did he stick to me after that? Haha. Way to shoot yourself in the leg there, missy. But I didn't want him to stick to me too much, I would've probably wasted many of his übers.
But yeah, we weren't steamrolling anymore, so I was standing on a more even ground as a Heavy, plus I couldn't mooch all my points out of captures anymore, so I was quite sure I'd end up spending all my time in respawn, as usual. Also my deaths would skyrocket, while my killcount would stay ridiculously small.
Well I'm glad I was wrong: I was actually doing pretty good! Got a new kills record (five!), dominated some other guy, got the most awesome crit streak EVER after sneaking behind the enemy team in the hallways after the first checkpoint on stage two and MOWED THEM DOWN WITHOUT MERCY. Kept chuckling to myself as I emerged from the hallways, only a few hitpoints left and screaming for Medic.
And here's a screenshot of the final scoreboard, so you can see that I'm not making this shit up:



It's really not that great, I have just barely more kills than deaths (but thirty kills it pretty good! For me! That's like... more kills than I've got as a Heavy before this! No, seriously) and most of my points did come from those captures, but still I'm GODDAMN PROUD of myself! I'm glad I didn't give into my fear of sucking and being a drag to my team.
And with this successful Gold Rush match in mind I think I might have the guts to actually play more as the Heavy. I definitely will find myself going Heavy on Gold Rush from now on, it was so much fun - especially when attacking (besides, I was already getting really bored of playing Soldier on Gold Rush). Damn that cart is awesome.

No new Medic achievements, I haven't been really playing as Medic (except last night, uh, I was once again going on a killing spree with an awesome Demoman. We were steamrolling, just the two of us, it was kinda amusing to look at the scoreboard at the end of the match when we were there on the top, sporting twice as much points as the rest of our team. Our team was the sorriest excuse for a team ever, though, and I suppose the enemy team was too).

I've been Engineering on Dustbowl a lot, for a change. Almost broke my sentry kills record. AND got killed TWICE by my sentry today, so apparently that happens even when I'm sober. Damn newbie Spies uncloaking behind my goddamn back and then getting shot by my sentry THROUGH MY BODY.
And I know I'm being a horrible thorn in enemy team's side when half of the team goes Spy to either a) get a revenge on me after getting dominated, or b) finally take me down after having wasted several übers and failed gloriously every single time. Tee hee.
I love it.

And I love noobish Spies, they're so CUTE when they freeze completely. Seriously, I find myself going "aww" at them and not wanting to kill them when they're so adorably clueless. Today I watched this Spy just STAND next to me for god knows how long. I saw him uncloak as I turned to repair my dispenser, so I proceeded to shotgun him in the face. And then I stopped because I was kinda curious to see what he would do. I mean, a good Spy would've got the hell outta there when I saw him uncloak, but this little newbie Spy didn't even MOVE while I shot him: he just stood there, disguised as a Demo. So he stood there for a while, staring, and then he cloaked and ran away. Poor scared little Spy.
I think he actually went to sap my teleporter entrance after that (this was Dustbowl Stage two, I was defending). Yeah, newbie Spy, those were the easy points to get. I should've probably killed you, but damn, you kinda melted my cold Spy-loathing Engineer heart back there.
I killed him the next time I saw him, though.
And I don't remember if it was the same Spy (or some other newbie, damn the server was full of those tonight) who just STOOD STILL while trying to sap my things a little bit later. Needless to say, he got so wrenched. Aww.
Or the one who sapped my sentry and desperately tried to stab me in the face (I was back against a wall) while I just calmly whacked the sapper off. Awww.
I really didn't see any good Spies today, I dominated all the ones that tried to bring me down. Good Spies... I don't exactly know what makes a good Spy (because bad Spies do the exact same things the good Spies do, it's just that... they're not as good at it. I'd probably know the difference if I played more as a Spy), but a good Spy makes me want to ragequit. A good Spy makes it sure that I don't see him coming. A good Spy makes it sure that while I'm alive, I do nothing but beat sappers off of my buildings. A good Spy makes it sure that I spend most of my time in respawn, watching as my buildings get sapped. I don't understand what they do different from bad Spies: sometimes I see a Spy coming, and sometimes I don't.
Okay, yeah, good Spies backstab me first and then sap my stuff, and goddamn I hate it when they do that. With a third level sentry that requires some insane weapon-changing skill, I believe.

Those pesky newbie Spies did get a bit unnerving later on stage three, because there were at least two of them, and my team was full of equally as noobish Medics (there were at least four running around) healing EVERYONE in the vicinity, and I always watched with growing dread as one of the very inconspicuous Spies (I don't know what it is with bad Spies and being able to tell they're Spies from miles away - except that these ones liked to disguise as Engineers, which meant that they were either me, or the team's other Engie who was tanking his sentries on the other side, or waiting for respawn. For some reason he succumbed to the Spies and their sapping antics quite often) beelined straight towards me and my little nest with three spastic Medics in tow. OH GOD THE HORROR.
I should probably use the mic in those situations, but I didn't have my headset plugged in. Plus I'm still afraid to use it, I always get so nervous that I start stammering when I try to say something.
But yeah, I had to tell the Medics to be a bit more careful after I lost my buildings once (go ahead and try to kill a Spy with two Medics glued to his disguised ass!), but yeah, considering how chaotic and spammy that first point area gets... it's no wonder we lost.