Not again...

Why is my Team Fortress 2 playing always overshadowed with continuous raging?

Although this time it's more of a Steam woe than anything else, but last night I broke a record I had deemed impossible for me to break, based on research done during the 37.5 hours of time played as an Engineer.



I chimed in 16 sentry kills, with one sentry, during one life. Three dominations. 22 points total, with all the assists and teleports and one wrench-whacked Spy, and several minutes of pretty decent defending. Would've gotten more, but apparently half of the enemy team went Spy at that point (I can stand up to Spies myself if they're not very good), and it was kinda impossible trying to keep myself OR my buildings alive when I had Spies coming out of my ass and a Demoman got close enough to blow everything into oblivion while I was busy with sappers.
And I thought it would be impossible to get that many sentry kills in one life, because I always get only twelve. Whenever the counter hits twelve kills, my sentry's goners. Always. And I get twelve kills pretty often, it's very usual on Dustbowl where sentries tend to live longer.
So I was kinda expecting to get twelve kills, and then get backstabbed, but for once it didn't happen.

So where's all the rage? I broke a record, I should be celebrating, not raging, right?

Yeah, sure, if Steam had only registered the new record. My Engineer records remain as they were, max kills 14, max sentry kills 12, max points 18. No sign of the should-be record of max kills 17, max sentry kills 16, max points 22.
So, RAGE. At least I got the screenshot to show you that I indeed got 16 sentry kills.

I also went back to the Soldier like I told you I would, and had some great times last night. Dammit, Easy Mode, I missed your slow-as-hell ass and your ridiculous crit streaks.
It took a while getting used to it again, since I've been playing so much as a Demo lately. But at least Demo has taught me something: as a Soldier I was used to shooting at enemies' feet rather than bothering trying to get straight hits, but with Demo's bombs that's not very effective unless the target is standing still (and I'm still not that good at taking movement into account and calculating trajectories accordingly), so as a Demo I'm trying to actually hit people in the face with the regular bombs. Especially since they explode at contact and with weaker classes that's an instakill. And I'm getting gradually better and better at that (if I hit you in the face with a bomb, most of the time it's indeed because I aimed, not because you just happened to be there. And that's why bad Scouts who run right at me are dead. They are so fast that their movements are very easy to anticipate, if they run in straight line). So now that's seeping through to my Soldier tactics and I'm actually starting to aim rather than always trying to just rely on splash damage and juggling.
Also, I am suddenly the master at rocket jumping, because it took me this long to realise to crouch-jump. Now there isn't a place I can't get to, I kept camping on top of point B on Gravel Pit, and I did couple of pretty impressive defenses by jumping on top of C and raining doom on enemies standing on it. O ho ho.
And I finally learned to sticky jump as a Demoman! Whenever I jumped before, I just went straight up, and I don't know what I do differently now, but I actually go forward as well. I just don't like doing sticky jumps unless I'm backed by a Medic (which never happens because Medics hate me. Except yesterday I was apparently a good-enough Soldier to get a Medic sticking to me. Too bad I'm a horrible Medic buddy and get them killed. Their own fault for not knowing better and following me on my one-man suicide missions!) because they eat up so much health and I'm still not very accurate with them, so I might spring into any given direction and miss my target by a mile.

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.

The Story of Unlikely Comradeship

So, Goldrush, anyone?
I can't WAIT. The map looks awesome and I'm curious as to how the new game mode will work.

The paged pool memory problems are there, and then they're... not. I don't mind, though, I played for five hours yesterday without the game crashing. And now I have an interesting Engineer story to tell.
So, everyone knows that a Pyro is an Engineer's best friend if there's a serious Spy infestation. Have the Pyro stand around and flame everyone who comes close to the sentry. It works wonders.
But yesterday I had the most unlikely Engineer buddy ever.

A Spy.

No, really. I was once again camping it out in enemy sewers on 2fort, because I like it there. I can pull off a pretty solid defense there, and a forward sentry like that really helps with offense. We were pretty much dominating the enemies. And usually the pissed-off enemies start concentrating on trying to take my little base down instead of trying to cap our intel and since I can pretty much pull it off by myself there for some time, our team can concentrate on capping the enemy intel and hello, glorious victory.
But anyway. The enemies were slowly starting to get pretty annoyed at having a sentry in their sewers, so Spies of course kept coming in and trying to take the sentry down. And I was pretty much prepared for them. Silly Spies, don't disguise as an Engineer if I'M the only Engineer in our team (wow, no Engineer infestation on 2fort, this is unheard of! Everyone went Sniper amirite?) and you're about to attack ME. When I see another Engineer running at me, I know it's definitely a Spy and can wrench them in the face before they get to do any sappin'.
So, Spies were coming in in a steady flow and I was getting pretty annoyed at them because I kept losing my dispenser. So, one of our Spies stumbles by and stays to camp by my dispenser. I pay no mind to him really, because, well, why would I?
Then an enemy Spy comes in, all inconspicuous (disguised as me), and starts sappin' mah buildings.
And our Spy just steps out and coldly stabs the disguised enemy Spy in the back while he's busy taking down my buildings.
That was kinda very cool.
So, the friendly Spy stays around, I kinda start wondering why's he camping here, shouldn't he be somewhere capping the intel and backstabbing people, and then another enemy Spy comes in, cue sappin'.
And our Spy once again proceeds to stabbing the enemy Spy in the back.

At that point I went "I love you, Spy."

That is... when you think about it, it WORKS. None of the enemy Spies paid NO MIND whatsoever to the Spy standing there, because they were so bent on getting rid of my sentry and me, and they know that once the sentry's being sapped, I'm too busy trying to save it to attack them (which is not the case, because if the Spy is standing right next to me, I have plenty of time to wrench him in the face and then go save my sentry). They didn't probably even recognise the backstabbing threat.
And because backstab is a one hit kill, the enemy Spy doesn't even have a chance to backstab me in panic.
Surely it probably doesn't work in every situation, but the point is that I don't think anyone's ever thought about having a Spy stand guard on sentries. And yeah, Spies probably have better things to do than stand guard on sentries, but in case they don't... it all depends on situation.

From now on, I want to have my own Spy whenever I'm an Engineer. And to think how much I used to loathe Spies when I play as an Engie...

I also found it kinda cute that when the enemy team FINALLY took my base down and sent me to respawn, I saw the Pyro who had done it declare in chat that "IT'S FINALLY DOWN!" and I went completely awww, glad to be of annoyance. :3 Made my day, really. Nothing's better than being a serious thorn in enemies' side.

And lookie, wrenchan gaems!



It's funny how much melée kills I get as an Engineer. Hee. The Spy managed to sap my sentry, but in return he got wrenched to death. The same destiny awaited the Soldier who rushed in, all giddy about not being torn into shreds by my sentry, and tried to obliterate me. Aww, I'm so sorry, poor Solly, but that's not the way it goes.

Also, I now have Heavy included in Head of the Class, so I'm 8/9 through, and I have NO IDEA which class I'm missing. Le sigh. I have a feeling it's Spy. Well at least that gives me an excuse to force myself to play more as a Spy.
And if it's not Spy, it's Demoman, and that's the worst case scenario.