Spy is a giant killer. He collects money. He destroys Uber Medics. He can sap little robots. He acts as the most reliable aggro magnet on the team. But primarily, he is a giant killer.

Spy is a controversial class in MvM. Spy has tons of misconceptions about how to play him or how he is played. Clueless players, even "experienced" MvM players don't know how he works. Most players see Spy as a "replacement" to these classes:

• Scout
  
• Demoman
  
• Heavy
  
• Sniper

Players see Spy as a replacement for Scout because he can collect money, Demoman and Sniper because he can take out uber medics, and Heavy because he can kill giants quickly. No class replaces another in MvM. These misconceptions usually lead to players misunderstanding the strengths of all the classes and also leaves players playing poorly for not understanding their true strengths. That type of mindset leaves players thinking that Spy is inferior because he is bad at doing anything else or overestimating Spy's capabilities.

Here's a list of basics to know about Spy:

• Spy excels at destroying giants
  
• Spy is a great money collector (better than Scout in some situations)
  
• Spy's primary weapon is the knife. Use it 95% of the time.
  
• The Sapper when upgraded leaves robots sapped within a radius. When they are sapped you can "backstab" them from any angle. Robots disabled during the Mannhattan gate openings also apply.
  
• Spy is atrocious at destroying tanks and should never be focused on unless it is the only thing left to do.
  
• Spy's disguise kit allows him to walk through a 1,000 robots without being focused on. If you are jarated, burning, or touch robots for a few seconds they'll figure out you're not a robot and concentrate fire on you.
  
• After about 2-4 seconds after coming out of disguise, ALL robots that have a possible sight on Spy from their position will focus on him until he is dead, cloaked, or out of sight.
  
• Robots will forget about you after you've disguised or have hid behind cover. Robots will not Spy check. Robot Spies are an exception and will focus on you even if you're disguised (if they have seen you undisguised once before).
  
• Spy makes cloaked robot Spies visible to your entire team when he is near them. Not mentioned much.

Spy is different to other classes because of robot types and quantities. To an Engineer, a Giant Heavy is more threatening to him than a bunch of tiny Scouts. For Spy, it is the other way around. Spy doesn't really care if a robot is big and strong, it hardly poses a threat to Spy himself. A bunch of little Scouts is more threatening than a Giant Heavy to Spy. Spy isn't afraid of quality, he is afraid of quantity.

Revolvers aren't really a weapon you need to worry about or upgrade in MvM, but they do have little niches. They are used to take out a stray robot from a distance or destroy an annoying razorback sniper. It doesn't really matter which revolver you pick, but I like the Diamondback most since it grants guaranteed criticals after stabs (which you'll be doing a lot of).

The knives are your primary choice of weaponry in MvM and they all have their own little quirks, good and bad.

Stock
The stock knife is always reliable, no upsides or downsides to speak of. It gets the job done.

Big Earner
The Big Earner grants you the ability to regain 30% of your cloak per backstab and a speed boost that allows you to chainstab easier. It drops your low HP pool of 125 to an even lower 100. This knife is great if you can chainstab small robots reliably to get your cloak up quickly and the speed boost allows you to do it even easier. Advisable to have a Medic overheal you when using this knife.

Conniver's Kunai
The Kunai grants a boost of overhealing your Spy for up to 210 HP after a backstab. The downside is that you only start with 70 HP. You are also able to extinguish yourself of afterburn on backstabs. Getting the 1st stab at the beginning of a wave can be a bit dangerous, but if you can keep you HP after the first stab, your survivability is increased.

Spy-cicle
The Spy-cicle allows you to be immune to burning for 1 second after the initial flame hits you and 10 seconds of afterburn immunity. The downside is that you lose your knife for 15 seconds or less (ammo packs reduce to charge time). Since Pyros aren't common in MvM and the fact that you can extinguish yourself by other means makes this weapon a downgrade on Pyro waves. You do get cute little ice statues though.

Your Eternal Reward
This knife sucks. You might think that being able to stab robots without needing to disguise kit is great, but it's almost useless. Since robots almost exclusively focus on undisguised spies, you'll never get the chance to stab them unless by a sap. And even when you do get the disguise, it takes awhile to actually disguise. If you attempt to backstab with this with a disguise, the robots will still sense a stab and look at you. And if you fail to secure a stab, you'll struggle getting a new disguise. Picking up a Heavy disguise is also pretty awful. Never use this knife.

The Spy has 3 watches to choose from. The Dead Ringer is really the only "good" watch in MvM because it grants instant invisibility, huge damage reduction, and a speed boost. Since you're practically invisible with a disguise kit already, the other watches are redundant. I don't advise using the other watches unless you wanna make MvM a bit more challenging for yourself.

The Sapper disables robots in MvM. Sapper stops small and medium size robots completely and slows down giant Scouts significantly. The sapper acts differently in MvM compared to PvP by having a 15 second cool down before being able to be used again. There are two choices of sappers, although it doesn't matter which you choose (unless fighting Engineer bots).

An Engineer bot's buildings are sapped similarly to PvP and also doesn't reset the sapper recharge. The difference in the sappers is that the stock sapper destroys the buildings where as the Red-Tape Recorder reverses building construction. Since you wanna be destroying as quickly as you can, the stock sapper is better. You cannot sap buildings and robots simultaneously, so be careful to stab the Engineer first then sap.

When using an upgraded Sapper on groups of robots, try to sap the front of the group. Sapping from the back tends to leave you with only 1 robot because the bots are walking away from the radius of the Sapper. Sapping the front has them walk into the Sapper radius.

Sappers do nothing against giants except Giant Scouts. It is better to stab giants than sap.

You can only have one sapper deployed at a time, so be sure you wanna use it when you need it.

Upgrades are pretty simple for Spy.

Knife upgrades

There are 4 different knife upgrades that Spy has: Armor Penetration, Attack Speed, Crits on Kill, and Health on Kill.

Armor Penetration is Spy's most important upgrade to buy as it allows him to do more damage per stab on giant robots. Here are the damage values of each point bought:


Attack Speed is the 2nd most useful knife upgrade after armor penetration. It allows Spy to pull off more stabs quicker and safer. Non-upgraded, you might get two backstabs on a giant. At max upgrades, you'll be able to backstab 3 or maybe even 4 times!

Health on Kill is an important upgrade as it allows you to gain health on a backstab. You can ignore this upgrade however if you are using the Kunai or have a competent Medic to keep you overhealed.

Crit on Kill is a useless upgrade. Since backstabs do guaranteed criticals and max damage already, your knife will not benefit from crits. And since you shouldn't be using your revolver that much, the crits will hardly make any difference. Diamondback also already does this but for free and you can hold on to crits.

Sapper upgrade

The Sapper's radius and disable duration is increased with each upgrade. Pretty handy for small robots, although the Sapper is not an amazing upgrade. Simply put, there are a lot of other things that are better upgraded first. While Sappers help you stab smaller robots, Spy excels much better at stabbing giants. Besides, you should learn to backstab robots without the need of a Sapper. Waiting 15 seconds just to backstab probably 2-4 robots at a time is very slow. I'd say you'd want to use the Sapper for multiple Steel Gauntlet Heavies or other medium-sized robots the most, upgrading the Sapper by one point is good enough, prioritizing the Sapper over other upgrades is usually not a great idea. An exception is upgrading the Sapper on the first wave of Mannslaughter as there are MANY Steel Gauntlet Heavies clumped together.

Body Upgrades

Movement speed is the best body upgrade Spy has. It allows the Spy to do a number of these things better:

• Collect money easier
  
• Chainstab small robots easier
  
• Escape and dodge fire easier
  
• Get your cloak refilled faster
  
• Grab HP faster
  
• Stab Giant Scouts easier
  
• Do everything faster

I can't stress how useful movement speed is. I almost always upgrade it twice on the first wave. Be sure to pick Scout, Medic, or Spy as your disguises so you don't move slower. (Medic disguise alerts you of a teammate death)

Resistances help Spy survive against all the fire he'll be receiving. Don't try to rely on them too much though. Always get crit resist when you need it, but at least fully upgrade armor penetration and attack speed before buying other resistances.

Health regen isn't incredibly useful. It might come in handy if you need your HP to regen while under cloak or are stuck in a nasty position though. Buy if desired.

Jump height isn't that expensive and it can get you to elevated quicker, but not an essential upgrade. It's cheap though, buy if desired.

Canteens aren't incredibly helpful on a Spy, but certainly have their uses.

Crit canteen is the worst of the canteens on Spy. You get a few seconds of crits to shoot out of your revolver, but the revolver isn't of much use. And again, Diamondback exists.

Uber canteen is really only useful if you're team is heavily overrun and you need to backstab a Giant Medic around tons of robots or sentries. I see many players inexperienced with Spy use uber canteens when they want to backstab something. It's very redundant to do with all your escape options, so don't waste money on these canteens for this purpose.

Ammo Refill canteen is situational, but can be used to refill your Sapper if you need to sap immediately after using your Sapper. Don't spam this like uber canteens.

Teleport to Spawn canteen is also situational. It can be used if your team lets a Giant Scout with the bomb run for the hatch, to get to spawn quickly if you want to upgrade mid-wave, or to get out of a nasty situation you can't get out of otherwise. It also provides a speed boost, so that's nice!

Aggro is a mechanic used in AI to target and prioritize targets above others. For Scout, Pyro, and Spy to be successful, they need to understand aggro. For Spy, robots do not aggro onto Spy until they see him without a disguise. Due to robots prioritizing an undisguised Spy above all other teammates 99% of the time, Spy can easily draw fire away from his teammates after he has stabbed a few robots. One extreme example of aggro is when you and your team are fighting a boss robot. The boss will prioritize a Spy if he is undisguised 1,000 ft away in sight and completely ignore a Heavy point blank using crits.

Giant robots will typically aggro after 2-3 stabs after coming out of disguise. When fighting bosses, stab then use this time you have aggro to redisguise and draw fire away from your teammates. After you have disguised and lost aggro, you can repeat the process until the boss is destroyed. Giant Medics never turn around when you stab them though, as long as they are healing a patient.

Small robots AI is a bit unpredictable at times. They'll usually turn around on you after 3-5 stabs, but sometimes they don't. Also, heavies sometimes never turn around, even after chainstabbing 10 of them.

When there are no teammates around for robots to focus onto, Spy will aggro robots instantly when coming out of his disguise.

When you sap a robot but stay disguised, robots will look in your direction but not shoot at you. Use this if you know you cannot stab them, but help other teammates like Pyros take them out.

Spy is a class which you need to prioritize robots depending on the circumstance. This with make the difference between a good Spy and an okay Spy.

Giant Robots
Giant Robots are typically your best targets. Since your knife does a lot of damage over a short period of time, they'll be 70-80% of your total damage.

Blocking, sapping, and stabbing Giant Scouts is a good way to handle or aid their destruction.

A maxed out knife does 938 damage per stab and will almost always stab at least 3 times.


There are no Giant Engineers, Snipers, or Spies.


Uber Medics
Uber Medics are a robot of high priority when they are present. It is better to ignore them and stab the giant they are healing if you have a dedicated Medic Killer to take them out (usually Demoman or Sniper). Taking out Uber Medics connected to small robots (especially Engineer bots) is advisable no matter what though.


Medium-sized robots
Medium-sized Robots are good targets for Spy to handle. Since they are killed in one backstab like small robots and can be sapped like them, he excels at taking out groups of them. Typically they will be Steel Gauntlet Heavies. Samurai Demo are also extremely annoying to take out playing as other classes, so they are great targets to keep off your team.


Slow or immobile small robots

Stabbing small robots like these definitely thins the horde of robots.
• Soldier - Slow movement speed, predictable
  
• Demoman - Slow movement speed, predictable
  
• Heavy - Slow movement speed, predictable
  
• Engineer - Poses threats of sentries and teleporters, immobile once set down
  
• Sniper - Immobile and annoying to the team
  
• Remember that you can still stab other classes

Spy
Robot Spies are little pesky bugs for the team. You can aid teammates by sapping and stabbing them and revealing their location by standing by them. I'd recommend not going out of your way to kill Robot Spies though if you have other tasks.


Tanks
Spy is absolutely awful at dealing with tanks. Since they have no back to stab, you'll be doing little pokes with your knife. Not recommended to focus on tanks unless in utter emergency or they are your only targets.

As I said in the How is Spy different from other classes? section, the quantity of robots is more threatening to Spy than their quality. But there are some classes I'd be very careful with when dealing with them.

Scouts
Scouts alone aren't much of a threat to Spy and can be easily exposed of by your teammates. Clusters of Scouts can easily overwhelm you if you come out of disguise at the wrong time or location though.

Pyros
Pyros can ignite the Spy in MvM just like in PvP. When burning, you are detected as a Spy and you will attract aggro and keep it until you are extinguished. Their AI isn't exactly smart though, so they can be chainstabbed pretty easily.

Demoknights
Demoknights are easily the most dangerous robots to Spy in MvM. Since you will be in melee range of them and there is no melee resistance, you're in danger of losing at least 65 HP per hit without your Dead Ringer. Their AI also seems to concentrate on Spy even after disguising 4 or 5 seconds before sometimes. Beware.

Lucksman Bowman
Bowman usually travel in packs and tend to react quickly to a Spy. They can be a bit difficult or threatening to backstab by how their waist turns and by how potent they are. Highly recommend sapping and stabbing them.

Spies
As all Spies can backstab for an instant kill, you are also prone to this. Robot spies are hard to shake off once they've gotten one sight of you and will chase you around the map. Definitely sap Spies chasing you since hit detection can be a bit wonky trying to backstab them yourself.

Both cover and the Dead Ringer are fundamental and equally important when playing Spy. They both allow you to live longer and stay closer to the front. After obtaining aggro, don't use your Dead Ringer if you can easily get behind cover where bots won't see you. Using cover will not only keep you alive, but it also keeps your Dead Ringer charge for when you really need it. Only use your Dead Ringer when you know you'll die without it. A dead Spy is a useless Spy.

Collecting money as a Spy and without a Scout might sound hard, but it is actually quite easily. Since Spy has his Dead Ringer and disguises, he can easily be in places where a Scout can be without much trouble collecting. Also, since Spy will usually be around Uber Medics and Giant Robots when they are destroyed, he'll pretty much always pick up the large sums of cash they drop. So collecting money as a Spy is not difficult at all. Just a little slower than Scout. There is an advantage to Spy over Scout when collecting money. For example, let's say your team lost the front. With a Scout trying to collect money around tons of robots by himself, it might be hard to collect all of the money, nearly impossible with Heavies around. Since a Spy collects money using disguises and thus not drawing aggro, he can easily walk around picking up money. The Dead Ringer speed boost is great for collecting money.

To dolts that love to take teles to the front with no teammates around to kill one robot and not pick up the money that are stonewalled out of: Don't complain about missing that $5 that you lost there. And $5 is $5, it's not the end of the world losing it.

The synergy between Scout and Spy can be absolutely amazing or awful. Since both classes run around the map, they may draw fire towards each other. Not many players play Scout or Spy that well, so you'd probably run into problems with this combo. But if both players play the classes well, they can cooperate well at taking out giants (if you didn't know Scout does fanastic and easy damage against giants and tanks). Since Spy is absolutely awful against Tanks, Scout can get on the tank while Spy stays up front being the primary money collector until Scout returns. Spy can collect hard-to-reach money for Scout easily when he is blocked off from money.

Great synergy if both play well with each other.

Soldier takes out groups of small robots easily, where Spy struggles. Spy destroys or severely weakens giant robots easily, where Soldier will struggle, at least early in a game. Both classes never really get in each other's way. Soldier also is a great tank killer.

Great Synergy!

Spy and Pyro can get a bit in each other's way. Since the best flamethrower: Backburner is gonna be used, you can see both classes struggling with each other. Pyro does extremely well against tanks and crowds of robots though, so it helps the Spy's weakness to them.

Alright Synergy.

Demoman is great at crowd control and can kill Uber Medics. After Uber Medics are taken out, Spy can stab the giant the Medics were attached to. Demoman can inflict pretty damage to tanks too with a well-upgraded grenade launcher. The stickybomb launcher can do a lot too, but not as consistently.

Great Synergy!

Demoknight? Yep, Demoknight works in MvM. Anyways, Demoknight can kill little Scouts easier than Spy can. He can even kill Uber Medics easily with the crits he gets from Crit on Kill, allowing Spy to backstab giants. Demoknight can easily assist with money collecting and is fantastic at destroying tanks. Both might draw fire towards each other, but nothing bad.

Great Synergy!

Spy and Heavy focus on doing high damage to single targets, in other words giants! Heavy isn't amazing at crowd control, but he can certainly help Spy in this weakness. Both aren't that great against tanks.

Good Synergy!

Any class works better with an Engineer. Sentry gun helps take out crowds, Dispenser helps refill cloak, Teleporter brings Spy to the front (or to base) faster. Spy takes out giants and Uber Medics easily which Engineer isn't great at.

Great Synergy!

Spy doesn't really benefit from Medic unless Medic is his primary source of healing (not using health on kill or Kunai). Medic does benefit from Spy quite a lot though. Spy draws fire away from Medic and the team. Very helpful when Medic needs to shield, but doesn't have it ready yet. Both also aren't great at tanks.

There is one thing that does make this combo quite strong though, very situational though.
When facing boss giants or groups of giants, Medic can ubercharge the Spy and allow him to endlessly backstab until uber runs out. The giants must focus on Medic first usually before attempting to backstab. Typically Spy can only backstab a giant 3 or 4 times, but with this combo, you can destroy boss giants faster than a Heavy with crits. Captain Punch takes double damage against backstabs (1,875 damage per stab). Using the Stock ubercharge on Captain Punch is recommended because his punches will hit too hard and fast for healing. Uber Canteens act like regular uber too. Quick-Fix is usually the best medi gun for this trick if you don't want any knockback pushing the Medic or Spy away.

Okay to situationally great Synergy.

Spy is great at destroying giants. Sniper is great at crowd control. Since both are on opposite sides of a map from each other, they'll never interfere. Sniper drops red money, so Spy doesn't need to watch over money as much. Spy can backstab robot Snipers if the player Sniper is struggling to take them out. Both are pretty awful at tanks.

Great Synergy!

This Synergy is a lot like the Scout one, but without being able to destroy tanks. 2 or more Spies can destroy giants even faster, but crowd control and tank killing is pretty awful with multiple Spies. Both can draw fire towards each other pretty easily. So unless both Spies are coordinated with each other, it'll be a bit difficult playing with two Spies.

There is also a glitch that occurs with the sapper when using multiple Spies. When one Spy aggros robots with a sapper, the robots will "focus" on the Spy closest to the sapper, not the one who placed it. (Thanks to Jess for mentioning this to me)

Okay to bad Synergy.

You should always be aware of where your teammates are at, where they'll be, or what they'll do. If you play Spy competently, you're more likely to get killed by your teammates luring fire in your direction than robots targeting you. Always keep this in mind when your teammates get near you or change a robot's aggro. Especially watch Scout, Pyro, Demoknight, or Spy if you have them also playing with you.

Obviously, you will be told by people who worship the meta that "SPY SUX", "DONT USE HIM", "WAH WAH WAH".

Tell these people that Valve didn't make MvM to only be played by 6 classes. It should be played and explored with all 9 of them. Besides, MvM isn't some major league super competitve gamemode. You destroy bots, you buy upgrades etc. It's not very hard. Don't look to blame a Spy for the reason a wave fails when he is doing more damage than all or most other players. Or noticing Giant Medics disappearing out of thin air. When you play with an open mind, everyone can enjoy the game. Don't think of MvM in a mindset where you think you need said classes, think of it like this:

We need a way of collecting money (not necessarily a Scout)
We need a way of killing tanks (not necessarily a Pyro)
We need a way of destroying robots (many class combinations work)
We need a way to destroy Uber Medics (not necessarily a Demoman)
We need a way of destroying giants (not necessarily a Heavy)
We NEED an Engineer

With that mindset, you'll achieve the same goal, just with different methods. You can screw up a lot in MvM and still be fine.

I hope you enjoyed reading this guide and got anything out of it. I appreciate any criticism with guide regarding to grammar, missing any tips or strategies, or changing my wording. Also, link any metards to this guide if they wanna say Spy is bad or useless. Adios!

Author of this guide's thumbnail: biggreenpepper[biggreenpepper.deviantart.com]