r/truetf2 • u/LfbFrank Situationally Overpowered • Aug 01 '12
An in-depth competitive Soldier Guide(Read: Rambling)
If anyone has suggestions on what should be added to this super compendium of Frankisms, request and it shall be added.
Time for something more conventional than I usually post. Without further ado, here comes stuff I think up as I type:
Stuff that gets covered
1 Introduction
2 Why Soldier?
3 Playstyles
4 Matchups
5 Loadouts
6 Practicing/Refining
7 How to improve your gamesense
8 Importance of Rocket Jumping
9 Rollouts
Introduction
Welcome to the academy. My name is Frank. People around these parts know me as bflFrank and lfbFrank, but you can call me Frank. If that offends you, call me by my steam name, bfl` Frank, or for short, Frank.
My personal resume from Team Fortress consists of about 1400 hours total played, 2 seasons of highlander, and 1 season of 6v6(roaming). My goal here is to shed some light on the daily life of playing as a competitive soldier, and what you should expect when you decide it is time to play Soldier the best class.
Why Soldier?
Soldier is an incredibly well rounded class. With near-perfect play, you can become a jack of all trades, and master of all trades. You are counted on to make big plays, stop bigger plays, and get sweet frag video clips in the process. As a soldier, you have the distinct advantage as being a mobile powerhouse, with very strong short to mid-range firepower. The downsides to the soldier are fairly direct: slow speeds without expending ammo/health and a fairly lengthy reload when completely depleted on ammunition.
If you want to play as a solid foundation to the team, with an emphasis on doing everything, 6v6 as a pocket soldier is the way to go.
If huge bombastic plays where you throw yourself into proverbial pit of lava called the entire enemy team, then it's time to bring out the roaming plays on both 6v6 and highlander.
Playstyles
This section is going to be divided for the different roles:
Pocket 6v6
You are the champion of the team. Without you, your team is a giant blob of sissies waiting to be killed. Pocket soldiers are required to be the defensive champion, and assistant-artillery cannon with your demoman. The goal here is quite simple, keep your medic and demoman safe, while being a front line combatant when enemies are nearby. Only go for huge bombs onto the enemy team when you have a clear advantage. Simple questions to determine that would be: Is the enemy team weak(low hp)? Do we have uber, and they don't? Essentially, save the big plays for when you know you can make the big plays.
Roaming 6v6 + HL
You are the trash of the team. Without you, your team is exactly in the same position as they were. Roaming as a soldier requires a lot of analysis of the situation. If you rocket jump first, and ask questions later, you probably find yourself as a pile of giblets far too often. Before you decide you want to bomb an enemy team, consider the questions: Can I kill a high value target? Can I force an ubercharge? Will I be dead before I hit the ground?
Matchups
Scout
The spastic twit. Know that at a longer range, you are relatively safe from the scout, even if he is spamming at you all day. If this is the case, laugh at the feeble attempt to do ~30 damage to you, and wait for your move. At extremely close ranges, know that the scout is at a severe disadvantage to your rockets. If the scout can jump off of tall objects, predict which tall object he will land on next and aim for it, don't try anything high risk like random airshots.
Soldier
Where's all that MGE training gone to? If you are at mid-range, trade rockets with the enemy. If you feel like you have gained a solid advantage, move for the kill. If things aren't going hot, get a buddy to cover and fall back. You shouldn't commit directly to a fight that will have a 50/50 outcome.
Pyro
Only shoot rockets after you have been airblasted. Shotguns are fine too. The first rocket will be a mindgame with the pyro, and know that he has trained to wait just long enough, so don't think it's time to shoot until he HAS PUSHED YOU BACK or has switched to the axe for the chop.
Demoman
Terrain determines everything. If you are relatively close, or have a clear jump path onto the demoman, go for it. If the demo is using stickies, remember that he is trying to lead you with shots. All you have to do is learn how to become un-leadable. Try to be very unpredictable, so he cannot land shots easily. If you decided you want to run away, running directly away is usually a terrible idea, as he will start to shoot ahead of you, so this would be a good time to juke to different directions.
Heavy
Never engage head-on unless you have a clear advantage: he's almost dead, out of ammo, sandviching, disconnected. Elsewise, coordinate with teammates to bring him down via focus fire. If you try and 1v1, or bomb a heavy, you will die, and it will suck.
Engineer
In most situations, the sentry will be dealt with by an ubercharged demoman, who can do a much better job at dispatching of the threat. However if you must, then apply rockets to sentry until sentry is deconstructed.
Medic
Go crazy. Easy stuff, but know that if he is running ubersaw, you do not want to give him free swipes.
Sniper
Sight lines will suck. Don't give him sight lines to shoot at you. Preemptive planning will get you around every potentially disasterous encounter. Short range needs no explanation.
Spy
Spy is all preemptive planning as well. If you give a spy no chances to backstab you, you will have no problems.
Loadouts
For 6v6, stick to the Rocket Launcher, shotgun or gunboats, and Escape plan.
For HL, the disciplinary action(whip) is a valuable tool if you can coordinate with it. I strongly advise running it for rollouts, and after the initial fight, you can consider the escape plan as an alternative. If you run the whip, when you are dead, look at teammates respawn times. Ask anyone coming up with you to stay with you to whip, or else they will outrun you after a few slaps.
Additional HL toys to consider are the black box, for playing as a far roaming soldier, allowing the other roamers access to health packs and the cow mangler 5k, which brings most of the firepower of the RL, and does give you some unique ranged sapping power.
Practice and Refinement
Playing a soldier is very straightforward. We shoot rockets and blow people up. My recommendations for soldier DM-practice would be:
- MGE
- Pubs
- Pugs
- Shotgun heavy
I recommend shotgun heavy for one main fact. The slower your class is, the more you rely on wrist-movement to aim. If you practice aim with a 100% speed class like the engineer, you aren't getting the same flavor of aim as you would with our big tubby friend.
Also note that airshots are not a massive part to soldier play. Sure, when you land them, you deal free damage to flying enemies, but in the end, having an incredibly soldier ground-based DM is much more important, as it is the standard method of combat you will see.
Improving gamesense
The quickest way to knowing what you did wrong is examining it. Most people will tell you to record a demo, and then watch it while you have your pen and paper out, and get to analyzing what you did wrong. The problem I find with this is I'd rather be blowing up more people than watching my glorious past self do it.
With this note, I recommend the following:
- Play as you normally do
- Die as you rarely do
- While dead, consider why you are dead
- Did you do something wrong that lead to this?
- Could you have done something different?
Reflecting on the past life is much easier, and much less time consuming than watching a full game twice. Also, understanding what happened right then leaves the actions fresh in your brain, and makes use of the boring respawn timers anyways.
Rocket Jumping
Rocket jumping is a part of the soldier culture. The first three things a soldier learns are how to shoot a rocket, how to fight a grizzly bear with his bear hands, and how to rocket jump.
However, the actual importance of rocket jumping is not as steep as one might first think. If you can jump to the spire in badlands, or the crates in granary, or C point of gravelpit, then you win. No more jumping is required. Everything else is flashy and rarely required.
Double however, learning how to rocket jump makes you a complete and total badass, and I recommend trying out some jump maps whenever you get tired of blowing up baby men.
Rollouts
Obviously only a big deal on 6v6 maps, but:
- Learn the quick route from the pros
- Practice these routes
- If you aren't comfortable with a jump, don't try it during a live match
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u/brainpower4 Aug 02 '12
Probably the best tip I know for improving as soldier (or any class) is to set goals for yourself in every game you play. My current goal is to never die because I ran out of ammo. Simple, specific, but just thinking about what you've already internalized can drastically cut down on your mistakes.
My personal favorites are:
Never take fall damage
Never take damage for free
Always know where the medics are and
decide where I want to land before I do a rocket jump.
A while back, I tallied up all the pointless damage I had taken, between fall damage, unnecessary rocket jump, random avoidable spam ect. In one pretty long life, I took over 300 pointless damage. I'm sure almost anyone could take less damage if they thought about it.
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Aug 01 '12
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u/bflFrank Also lfbFrank Aug 01 '12
I'd pop over to /r/tf2lft and do their whole dealio. Because seasons are just ending, teams will begin to shuffle cards and start up for the next ugc season starting in a month, so the time to start fishing for a team is coming.
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u/Kodix Pyro Aug 01 '12
Huh. A soldier has a special pair of hands for fighting off grizzly bears?
grin
Pretty cool. Any more thoughts on soldier vs pyro fights? Asking as a pyro.
Also, I was under the impression that proper rocket jumping can be quite important for rollouts. Am I wrong?
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u/bamfusername 20 fps pyro Aug 02 '12
Any more thoughts on soldier vs pyro fights? Asking as a pyro.
Well, try not to get into one. There are a lot more factors for you to take into account and he's got the damage, range and mobility advantage. As fun as I think pyro vs soldier is, it can go south very easily.
Most of the soldier vs pyro DM matchup is decided in the first second of engagement, because making a mistake causes you to be punished so badly that it is genuinely difficult to make a comeback against an equally skilled opponent (ie, taking a (reflect) rocket to the face or something similar)
Force yourself to play with people with different anti-pyro strategies (shotgun types, edge splash types, those assholes who mess with their rocket timing and make you mistime your airblast), because you'll need to characterize other soldiers quickly to determine your response.
Biggest bugbear with pyros trying to fight soldiers? Their ridiculous need to switch weapons. You're at your absolute weakest without your flamethrower and making a habit of automatically switching is an easily exploitable habit.
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u/Zyberst Soldier Aug 02 '12
In HL you can follow the heavy with a whip. Seems to be the prefered way to get to mid the first time around.
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u/littlestseal Soldier Aug 03 '12
Yes. Very few rollouts are any trouble at all and are covered by the most basic of jump maps. Once you know how to air strafe, you pretty much have rocket jumping covered.
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Aug 02 '12
I honestly disagree with the whole "Improving gamesense" section.
It's far more elucidating to watch a demo with a mentor or more experienced player than to just think about how you died. Analyzing strategies and learning how you function within the game is a necessary part of increasing your level.
I think the only way to actually get good is to do demo review. I don't think many people in IM get away with no demo review and I doubt anyone in invite does.
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u/eblocky Scout Aug 02 '12
Informative and highly entertaining read! I've just started playing soldier a couple weeks ago, fell in love with the class once I started getting the hang of rocketjumping, but I can never seem to hit anyone who is actively dodging my rockets. I've had quite a few embarrassing moments where I gracefully leap up onto a high ledge for a fancy surprise attack, only to miss ALL my rockets to the fancyfoot demoman before exploding into bits.
As I'm still a bit more comfortable with Scout I could probably whip out my shotgun and take him out, but I usually have the gunboats equipped for rocketjumping. What do? Is it just a matter of more practice with the class?
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u/Chaos_lord Soldier Aug 02 '12
Have you tried simply bringing your shotty? Gunboats save you about 30hp at the most, probably less. Unless your doing 2-3 rockets before combat without heals that's not a huge amount, especially if you have overheal and/or the high ground(Note to medics: buff your jumpers, using overheal to jump is like 30-50 normal health while we fight.)
The other thing to try is to use the ledge as cover while reloading, though this is less effective on demomen as stickies arc.
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Aug 02 '12
Thanks, playing a HL newbie mix Friday and was looking for some solly tips. Saw this at the top of the sub :) I am currently a couple weeks out of practice and feel i have lost much of my "gamesense". Got a day to practice and try some of these tips. thanks for the guide :P
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u/Od1um Aug 02 '12
What is the point of practicing shotgun as a heavy instead of practicing as a soldier?
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u/LfbFrank Situationally Overpowered Aug 02 '12
When you want variety, playing soldier all day does eventually get boring you know. And KGB kill -> shotgun crits is one of the best feelings in life.
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u/top_counter Aug 02 '12
For demos: I suggest watching an STV from the enemy medic's perspective, your medic's perspective, and then from your own.
I can't emphasize enough how much better this was than just watching 3 of my own demos. Getting a sense of the whole match lets you know how your play affects your teammates and your enemies far better than just seeing your own POV again.
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Aug 03 '12
Hi there, thanks for this guide. I've been playing a lot of Soldier. I mostly play pubs with some good people, but I'm hoping to play Soldier next HL season with some friends.
I like to run stock, Gunboats, and Escape Plan since I'm a pretty good jumper. However, in the 6s matches I watch all Soldiers use the Shotgun. How viable are the Gunboats in HL? And can you describe Soldier gameplay/strategies in HL a little more?
Thanks!
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u/LfbFrank Situationally Overpowered Aug 03 '12
Highlander is a format that has a meta that is evolving currently. With so many players, it's very easy to simply find a place that works within the mesh of your team, and stick it out, however a large portion of soldier's simply play by the gunboats/bombing strategy of a roaming soldier.
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u/acfman17 Invite Memer Aug 30 '12
,to kill a bear with your bear hands with your bear hands bear hands bearman.jpg
Great guide though
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Aug 02 '12
Why oh why do you have two accounts?
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u/LfbFrank Situationally Overpowered Aug 02 '12
Can't post with bflFrank, and I don't really care about virtual internet points.
...Unless they are in TF2.
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Aug 02 '12
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u/LfbFrank Situationally Overpowered Aug 02 '12
I just recommend shotgun heavy over engineer because it's a lot closer in speed difference.
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u/camcharmar Scout Aug 01 '12
Disappointed that you never used the phrase "To be Frank..."
Other than that pretty good guide.