Team Fortress 2 is a game like no other. It is the pioneer of class based shooters. Ever since its release in 2007 by Valve Corp., this cult classic of a game has grown in quality, game mechanics, and players. In TF2 (Team Fortress’s abbreviation) there are nine classes, the Scout, the Soldier, the Pyro, The Demoman, the Heavy, the Sniper, the Medic, the Engineer, and the Spy. Each of these classes have their own specific skill sets and game mechanics. I will now go over each of them in excruciating detail.

The Scout (133% Speed)
The Scout is a flanker. His whole game design is to get as close to the person he’s fighting as possible, and shoot them as fast as he can. This isn’t a very hard task, due to the Scout’s 33 percent increase in the base movement speed in TF2. The Scout’s most valuable tool, his scattergun, can do a maximum of 102 damage at point blank range. This may not seem like much, but considering most classes in the game have 125 health, the Scout can two-shot most classes. Speaking of 125 health, that’s the amount of health the Scout has. This is the perfect amount for Scout, as having any more health than 125 would render a lot of backlash from the community. The Scout could be considered the weakest class in the game, if not for the Spy, but we’ll get to him later. Scout has multiple side grades that he can unlock to replace his scattergun, such as the Soda Popper, the Force-A-Nature, and the Back Scatter. The Soda Popper is considered to be the most useful of Scout’s scattergun sidegrades, as its faster firing speed and even faster reload time make up for the two-shot clip, as opposed to the scattergun’s normal six-shot clip. The Force-A-Nature is useful for doing some serious trolling, as it applies knockback which varies based on how much damage you’ve done to your target. You can even apply the knockback to yourself to effectively triple jump, as Scout already has the ability to double jump. The Force-A-Nature also has a faster firing speed stat. Both the Soda-Popper and the Force-A-Nature are almost identical, though the Force-A-Nature has slightly more pellets. The Back Scatter is a very simple weapon. You hit people in the back, you do thirty-five percent more damage. Otherwise, it’s a direct downgrade from the stock scattergun, with an accuracy penalty of 20%. Of course, we cannot forget about Scout’s secondary and melees. Because I don’t have nearly as much experience with Scout as some of the other classes, I will only be going over what I believe to be his best weapons in each slot. The Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol (Abbreviated from now on as PBPP) is by FAR the best secondary the Scout has. The PBPP has 3 less shots in the pistol’s normal 12 shot clip size, but it makes up for that monumentally by giving one of the weakest classes in the game 3 health regeneration per hit. This is only aided by the PBPP’s 15% faster firing speed, which makes it have more DPS (Damage Per Second) than the Stock pistol, effectively making it almost a direct upgrade. The Flying Guillotine is my favorite Scout weapon. It may be the goofy concept of throwing a cleaver at your enemies in a first person SHOOTER, or it may be the reliable damage it outputs. The Flying Guillotine is a Scout secondary that has a 6 second recharge time. Unlike the other secondaries, the Guillotine is a projectile. It is a lot more hit-or-miss than the other Scout items, if you miss, you inflict no damage, but if you hit an enemy gamer, you instantly deliver 50 damage straight to his front doorstep along with 40 damage over the next couple of seconds. Scout has two good melees. The Atomizer and the Wrap Assassin. The Wrap Assassin is almost identical to the cleaver, but it is used as a melee weapon instead of a secondary and it does slightly less damage. The Atomizer lets the Scout triple jump like with the Force-A-Nature, but without using one of the precious two shots in the Force-A-Nature’s clip. This comes at a slightly reduced deploy speed penalty and damage penalty.
The Soldier (80% Speed)
The Soldier is a class who has 200 health and is much slower than the scout, walking 20 percent slower than the average movement speed. I will not go into the Soldier with as much detail as the Scout, because I am less experienced playing as a Soldier, but I will go over the basics. The Soldier, as opposed to carrying a hitscan shotgun, carries a rocket launcher that does massive damage instead. The rocket launcher can do up to 112 damage if fired at point blank and the damage varies depending on how far away the Soldier is from his target. Unlike hitscan weapons, like shotguns, the rocket launcher suffers from damage falloff. Due to this mechanic, the Soldier is most powerful at closer ranges and tighter corridors. My secondary of choice for Soldier is the Panic Attack, which is a shotgun. I prefer to have a shotgun secondary in case I whiff all of the rockets in my launcher, plus the shotgun deals no self damage, while if you use a rocket launcher in closer range encounters, you may take self damage when firing at an enemy. The best Soldier melee is the Escape Plan, which boosts the Soldier’s movement speed almost to that of a Scout’s if his health is low enough.
The Pyro (100% Speed)
The Pyro is a class that specializes in fire, as the name would suggest. Pyro has 175 health, moves at base movement speed, and wields a flamethrower which does massive damage at close range, low damage at medium range, and no damage at long range. The Pyro has an interesting mechanic called afterburn. Afterburn is applied to the victim of Pyro’s flames for up to ten seconds after they are ignited, depending on how long the flames are focused on the enemy. Pyro’s stock secondary is the shotgun, which I do not prefer to use. Pyro should have no need for a shotgun because the shotgun is the best at close range like the flamethrower, and the flamethrower deals much more damage. I prefer the Flare Gun, which is a secondary for Pyro which deals thirty damage to anyone anywhere across the map. It also inflicts 7 and a half seconds of afterburn. If the flare successfully hits an enemy who is already on fire, it will deal a staggering 90 damage instead of 30. This is HUGE, because all the classes who have 125 health, such as Spy, Scout, Engineer, and Sniper, will very likely die due to the huge burst damage, and the 7.5 seconds of damage overtime the afterburn provides. Lastly, the melee I like to use for Pyro the most is the Axtinguisher. The Axtinguisher is quite complicated. It does extra damage to burning enemies, much like the Flare Gun, but it does significantly less damage to non-burning enemies. You also give up random critical hits with the Axtinguisher, which means your odds of dealing three times the damage 15% of the time is gone. In exchange, you can very easily pick off lighter classes in one puff of your flamethrower and one hit of your ax. For more information on the Axtinguisher, go here The Axtinguisher: The Life of the Party.
Demoman (93% Speed)
Demoman is another 175 health class, but instead of specializing in fire, the demoman specializes in all things explosive. The stock Demoman carries a grenade launcher which can do 100 damage to enemies anywhere on the map, unlike the Soldier’s rocket launcher. The Demoman is seen as one of, if not the best class in the game. With the highest damage capability, if you master your projectile aim, you will easily be able to roll through the enemy team. As LazyPurple (A TF2 Youtuber) once said, the Demoman is blessed with two primary weapons. Your second primary is the stickybomb launcher. Stickybombs are a powerful tool that are very different from the pills fired from the grenade launcher. Stickybombs do not have a detonation timer like their grenade counterparts. They can only be detonated by the Demoman themselves, and eight of them can be laid down at a time. With this amount of leniency, the Demoman is great for offense and defense. The grenade launcher is the most powerful offensive tool in the game, and the stickybomb launcher is the second most powerful defensive tool in the game, second to only the Engineer’s Sentry Gun. The Stickybombs have a .8 second arm time, which means they can only be detonated .8 seconds after they’ve been fired from the launcher

Demoknight is a subclass of Demoman that replaces Demoman’s explosives with a pair of boots, a sword, and a shield. Demoman’s best sword is the Eyelander. The Eyelander reduces the Demoman’s health by 25, which can be nullified by the Boots’ +25 max health on wearer, but it requires you to give up your Grenade Launcher. The Eyelander gives you 15 more max health and more speed for every kill you get with it, which is not very hard due to the unique charge mechanic you get once the sword is paired with a shield. Shields are weapons that take up the slot your Stickybomb Launcher is in. The shield grants you the ability to charge, which gives you a 1.5 second speed boost and, depending on the shield you’re using, a guaranteed critical hit. My choice of shield is the Splendid Screen, which gives you a 20% resistance to any type of explosive weapon and a 20% resistance to any type of the fire-based weapons. It also makes your charge have a much shorter cooldown, which increases your DPS by granting you more critical hits. If you kill five people with the Eyelander equipped, you become faster than a Scout, and you have more health than a Soldier. This makes the Eyelander the ultimate snowballing weapon with a very high skill ceiling. The resistances from the Splendid Screen make you even more powerful, as your effective health against Pyros and Soldiers and even other Demomen becomes 282.
Sniper (Huntsman, 100% Speed)
The Sniper is known for being a long range assassin, being able to deal out 150 damage headshots in 0.2 seconds, leading to one of the highest damage outputs in the game. Now, what would happen if we replaced the Sniper’s one-shotting, ultimate killing machine with a bow and arrow? Well, look no further than the Huntsman. The Huntsman is a bow that fires a fast moving projectile that can headshot people for massive damage. The default damage the Huntsman deals on an uncharged body shot is 50, but this number can be tripled to 150 if the shot in question is a headshot. The Huntsman and Sniper Rifle both share unique charge mechanics (not to be confused with Demoknight’s charge mechanic) which makes it so that the longer you hold down left-click with the Huntsman (or stay scoped in with the Sniper Rifle) the more damage the shot will do. A fully charged body shot with the Huntsman does 120 damage, which may not seem like much, but given the shorter time needed to put out this amount of damage, the Huntsman becomes a much more viable weapon in medium to shorter ranges. It also makes it so that the ragdolls of the players you kill get pinned to various surfaces, such as walls, floors, and ceilings. Overall, it is a unique and fun weapon that changes the way you play Sniper entirely, and that’s why I like it.
The Spy (107% Speed)
The Spy is by far my favorite class in the game. All the different things you have to do and all the different game mechanics you encounter made Spy the most fun to play for me. The Spy is a class that has 125 health, 7% more than the base speed, and can one shot anyone with his melee weapon, the Knife, as long as the Spy is within range and the enemy has their back turned to him. The Spy also has a primary weapon called the Revolver, which is great for dealing with players that are facing you and that are far away from you. Spy also comes equipped with a Sapper, which has the sole purpose of disabling and damaging the buildings of the Engineer. The two most crucial things the Spy has (besides his Knife) are the Disguise Kit and the Invisibility Watch. Spy’s disguise kit allows him to disguise as any player on any team, and it is great for fooling your enemies by convincing them you’re their teammate, only to betray their trust the moment they turn their back on you. The Invisibility Watch lets you be invisible for 10 seconds by left-clicking, and its sole purpose is to help get you behind the enemy. Once behind the enemy, you can simply kill them by clicking on their back with your knife out. The victim will let out a loud scream and alert players nearby that their teammate has been stabbed, so the invisibility watch is also a great escape tool for leaving once you’ve been snuffed out. There are ways to get behind your enemy even with them facing you by manipulating their movement in your favor. This is called “trickstabbing”. There are several different methods of trickstabbing, such as stairstabbing, where you jump over your enemy’s head with the end goal of getting to their backside, there’s matadoring, where, like a matador with a bull, you trick your enemy into moving one way by suddenly strafing one way and then strafing the other, which opens up their back hitbox to you, and the most sought after form of trickstabbing, called the surfstab. In a surfstab, you surf off of an enemy’s projectile, such as a grenade or rocket, and propel yourself into another player’s backside. This trickstab is more commonly done with one of Spy’s knife unlocks, the Conniver’s Kunai. The Kunai grants you the health of the player you stabbed. The health caps out at 210 health, giving the Spy more health than a Soldier. This is, as you may imagine, quite good, as being a class that can one shot any enemy regardless of their health while retaining this much health allows you to go on a stabbing spree! Spy also has multiple new revolvers at his disposal, some helping damage wise and some helping to retain cloak. My most used revolver as of late is the Ambassador, which can headshot for 102 damage. The main downside is the damage penalty of 15% when you hit their body instead of their head, but that’s not very bad if you can line up your headshots correctly. Along with fooling players, Spy’s disguises also fool enemy Sentry Guns, so you can disable a sentry using your sapper with no trouble, as long as you’re disguised as an enemy. Spy’s second most used invisibility watch is the Dead Ringer, which gives you a massive 70% damage resistance from all sources when activated. One of the major downsides of the Dead Ringer is that it can only be activated by taking damage. Once activated, though, you will drop a fake corpse based on how you died, whether it be gibbed by explosions or peppered with scattergun shots. It also pairs very well with the Kunai because in order to achieve the Kunai’s full potential, you have to backstab somebody, and that’s pretty hard to do when you start with seventy health, so the Dead Ringer’s huge damage resistances help you bypass the Kunai’s health loss quite well.
The Engineer (100% Speed)
The Engineer is the last of the lighter classes, boasting 125 health to boot. The focus of the Engineer is to not promote his own survivability, but the survivability of his buildings. The Engineer is equipped with a Construction PDA, which he can use to construct up to four buildings.These buildings can be leveled up using metal, which can be collected through dispensers, the resupply cabinet, and ammo boxes. A Sentry Gun, the first of Engineer’s buildings, is a great tool for denying certain areas to the enemy team. A level three sentry’s knockback is enough to deny an Uber push from any class except the Heavy. The only thing that cannot be detected by a Sentry is a Spy’s disguise, so in order to prevent the pesky Frenchman from destroying your sentry, you’ll have to deal with him yourself! The Engineer has a shotgun and a pistol, which are both great weapons for dealing with Spies and other flanking classes, such as Scouts and Soldiers. Dispensers are the second building the Engineer can construct and they are a huge help to him and his teammates alike. Dispensers heal teammates and supply them with ammunition, while Dispensers do the same for you and can help you regenerate metal to repair or upgrade your other buildings, such as Teleporters. Teleporters work exactly as they’re named. Teleporters help your team the most, and upgrading them first is crucial so your teammates can get to the frontlines much quicker.

The Heavy (77% Speed)
Heavy is the poster child of TF2, being featured in all of the game’s different cover art throughout the years. The Heavy has 300 health, and is by far the tankiest class. This comes at the cost of movement speed, as the Heavy is the slowest class in the game. Heavy’s primary, the Minigun, is great for single target elimination, as it fires so many bullets in such a short amount of time that anyone who even comes close to the Heavy (except for Spy) will find themselves back in the spawn room in less than a second. Heavy’s stock secondary, the Shotgun, is almost useless due to Heavy’s already massive effectiveness at shorter range. Instead, the Sandvich is the most used Heavy secondary. Some people say the Sandvich rivals the Wrangler in weapon efficiency. The only difference between them is that you don’t aim the Sandvich or eat the Wrangler. The Sandvich can heal the Heavy from 1 health to 300 in a matter of four seconds. Heavy can also drop the Sandvich to heal his teammates for 50% of their health. The two main downsides of the Sandvich are its consumption time, which locks you into a taunt of Heavy enjoying his delicious meal, and its recharge time, which takes thirty seconds. (Fun Fact, the reason the Sandvich recharges is because there’s a little Scout in Heavy’s pocket that makes it for him). Though Heavy has a high damage output, he is easily countered by Sniper and Spy. He is countered by Sniper because Heavy’s movement speed is already slow, let alone when his gun is revved up (27% Speed!). This makes it much easier for Snipers to hit headshots from far distances where the Heavy’s minigun cannot reach him. Spy counters Heavy because Spy can kill anyone regardless of their health. Even if the Heavy is fully overhealed by a Medic, Spy can still kill the Heavy in one fell swoop. Even though Heavy is a powerhouse, he is nowhere near the support a Medic can provide for a team!
Medic (107% Speed)
The Medic takes on the most supportive role in TF2, as his sole purpose is to heal the team and make offensive or defensive pushes with his Ubercharge. The Medic has 150 health and is equipped with a Syringe Gun, a Medi-Gun, and a Bonesaw. The Syringe Gun is completely overshadowed by the Crusader’s Crossbow, however. See, the Medi-Gun has limited range and cannot heal teammates outside of a certain distance, but the Crusader’s Crossbow can. In fact, it encourages you to heal them at longer distances because they get healed more if you do so! Coupled with the fact that it also deals damage to enemies makes the Crusader’s Crossbow the perfect primary for Medic! Another disposable item in Medic’s arsenal is the Bonesaw. The Bonesaw is said to be the worst melee in the game, aside from Pyro’s Fire Axe. The reason for this is because a weapon called the Ubersaw exists. The Ubersaw is a melee weapon which grants the Medic 25% Ubercharge on hit. The only penalty for this is a 20% slower swinging speed. This is a HUGE upside as an Ubercharge can flip the course of an entire game. Now, you may find yourself asking, “Well, I’ve heard so much about this Ubercharge, what’s so great about it?” The reason Ubercharge is so great is because it’s essentially a powerup that you can apply to yourself and one teammate of your choosing. The stock Medi-Gun grants you and your patient eight seconds of full invincibility. The only downside of this is that you cannot capture points while invulnerable, which is something some other Medi-Guns can do. The Kritzkrieg, as its name suggests, grants 100% guaranteed critical hits on your patient. With the added benefit of building Ubercharge 25% faster, you may be able to kill the other Medic before he can use an Ubercharge of his own! The Quick-Fix increases your heal rate by 40% but reduces the amount of overheal on your healing target. During its Ubercharge, you take no knockback from any sources and your healing rate is buffed to 300%! The Vaccinator takes a while to master, but once you get the hang of it, you can make it the best weapon in the game. The Vaccinator applies a 10% damage resistance to one of three types, fire, explosive, and bullet damage. You can cycle through these damage types by pressing R, and you get four Ubercharges instead of one. These individual Ubercharges reduce damage taken from the selected damage types by 75%, and in the 2.5 second duration of each Ubercharge, you can select all three damage types (by pressing r) for maximum efficiency!
TF2 Vocab
Critical Hits - 3x damage attacks that can be random or earned by certain weapons
Melee - A non-ranged handheld weapon
Overheal - A buff a Medic can give to their patient that depletes over time - can go up to 50% over their base health
Metal - Can be used to upgrade and repair buildings