Evolution of Team Fortress 2

OVERVIEW

Team Fortress 2 has the most numerous, flexible and varied offensive units, which when they are working together smoothly, create massive problems for your adversary. Although lacking traditional scrolls, with weapon upgrades that cost only an action point ("AP") (i.e. a move) via the engineer, and the possibility of linking to a medic for a 50% stacking damage boost (or two medics for a 125% boost in damage) their high end damage, when you can set it up just so, can be staggering. Jarate is a powerful tool for assassinating or hobbling two of your enemies most powerful and upgraded units. Although lacking a ranged stomp, TF2's team bonus -- the ability to stomp without consuming an action point -- more or less gives every unit the ability to stomp at range 2 (4 for the scout). In short, their offensive firepower is without equal.

TF2 has more units than any other team -- TF2 gets 18 (2 of each of the 9 types, scout, engineer, soldier, spy, heavy, demoman, flame thrower, sniper, healer) whereas Council, Dwarves, DE and Shaolin get 13 and Tribe gets 14. Moreover, with the respawn tokens, team fortress 2 summoners can potentially deploy up to 20 total units in a game. The numerical difference is very real even after you account for the limited or situational offensive value of certain TF2 units (primarily healer, scout, and engineer) as all other teams also have units of limited/situational offensive value as well. However, TF2 has no armor and no super-unit, and no single TF2 unit can approach the devastating power coupled with solid defense that the best units of other teams can have. TF2 can occasionally meet or exceed the offensive power of other team's best units, but can't match the toughness of other team's upgraded units.

TF2's wealth of offense means that no single unit is indispensable, and that it can be hard for an opponent to figure out what is worth using a special item such as a scroll to kill. This is fortunate for TF2, because TF2 has great difficulty protecting units that an opponent is determined to kill.

With no gear and almost no resists, TF2's defense comes mostly from its varied and consistent offense. With the ability to create multiple simultaneous threats and the lack of a single ultra-high value target to focus on via a scroll or Drill, it can be hard to know how to attack TF2.

TF2 is designed as a unit killing team, and they are perhaps the best team at winning by eliminating all enemy units. With their numbers, they can win a trading war provided they can deal with the enemies high value targets (such as tripple upgraded enemy units). Because they are not particularly good at holding boost tiles, evicting units from boost tiles and lack special items such as drills or fireballs that can do substantial damage to crystals, they are not a crystal kill team per se. Nonetheless, their powerful offense makes crystal kills a possibility.

 UNITS

All of that said, player preferences tend to break down in three areas:

(a) Spy:

The massive damage via backstab greatly limits your opponents deployments. Without question a very valuable unit, but my personal belief is the Spy is still a situational unit, and there are situations where he is clearly not your MVP and shouldn't be respawned -- for example, in a TF2 v TF2 match where your opponent has 2 pyros out and no snipers deployed.

(b) Heavy:

Heavy is a little situational offensively as well, requiring the right situations to truly shine, but has the virtue of being potentially devastating and somewhat harder to kill than other TF2 units. Many save their scrolls to kill Heavies. Not to beat a broken record, but I feel that you have to look deeper, as depending on the situation, other TF2 units may be more threatening. This is particularly true for the Tribe, which after 1.4.2 can now 3 shot a heavy with a garden variety axethrower.

(c) Demoman:

As TF2's most flexible and easiest to use AOE unit -- one that can devastate when upgraded and with the medic link -- the Demoman is often my MVP. I am very, very concerned about deploying/losing Demomen early, because you never know when AOE will be needed. This is particularly true on maps which encourage clutter (such as the Tribe map) or against teams that are more likely than average to have clutter issues (such as TF2 itself). Even as to Demomen, I feel you have to analyze the situation, but I tend to place Demomen above the spy and heavy in the abstract.

(d) Others:

Pyros and soldiers are great, but its relatively hard to make a case for them as the general MVP of the team in the abstract. But Hero Academy is not played in the abstract, and if you are short on offense, using the respawn token on a soldier or pyro might make sense. Similarly, if a forward pyro is causing bad threads, why not scroll kill him? Because all of TF2's core offensive units are good, and their strength varies with the situation, you should feel free to make your call based on what the board actually looks like, not some abstract ranking of the units. All of that said, I have never used a respawn token on an engineer, scout or sniper, and if it is situationally appropriate to do so, it would be in some extremely rare situation, such as an endgame with little else left.

General TF2 Strategy

The best defense is your offense. Getting a diversified team out there that creates multiple threats on offense, and makes it hard for your opponent to penetrate deep with a high value unit is important. Engineer upgrades of your core offensive units are important to achieve this, although somewhat less so in a TF2 v. TF2 mirror match. It is often particularly important to deploy, upgrade and medic link your demomen when your opponent is cluttered or may become cluttered, but done too early, your demoman may be biting on air. On the teleport and movement boost map, watch the sword tiles closely, and look for chances to get a Demoman or Heavy planted onto one.

 While TF2 can win via a crystal kill, going into a match thinking that will be your approach is usually a mistake, as team fortress 2 champions doesn't necessarily do well without a diversified o ffense out to provide multiple threats. In other words, you should generally set-up and see what happens.

 While there are times when early aggression is appropriate of course, be cautious about spending a ton of AP just to do a little crystal damage and some unit damage that can be healed in an AP or two. For instant, the early attack with a demoman on a crystal with 3 ap, plus 1 to go and 1 to retreat, will often be a mistake (especially) without a boost tile. The other side whips out the healer, heals the offensive unit that was splashed once, and uses the time to complete their deployment. If you don't end up seriously pursuing or threatening a crystal win, you may have wasted time for nothing.

 Because TF2 has so many offensive options its tough to give much more specific guidance. More so than any other team, you’re maneuvering and set-up is chess like and deep -- where you put what when matters a great deal, and its very common to see a hidden better deployment the more time you spend looking at a position.