Team Fortres 2 - Spy Guide Current as of the Polycount Update

[Forte 0]

Ah, the Spy. One of the most interesting classes in Team Fortress 2, and in fact, one of the most interesting playable classes in any game. The sheer amount of possible methods for playing the Spy are innumerable, with the Spy's class update and recent Polycount Pack items, the amount of ways to play a successful Spy on any given map exceed the amount of ways to play another class successfully, and the Spy is perhaps one of the only classes that can succeed in any hands on any map. - The Basics -A vanilla Spy has five basic weapons.- The Revolver: A common revolver. It does considerable damage and can take out any 125HP class in three shots. It is a very accurate gun, holding ~100% accuracy on its first shot. The time it takes for it to regain ~100% accuracy is about as long as it would take you to reload the gun, so if it's long range gunning you're going for, reloading after each shot is advisable... Though, long range gunning isn't your thing as a Spy. At close range, which is where the Revolver shines, you never have to truly worry about a loss of accuracy. Remember, your Revolver is better than your knife in any situation where your position has been compromised. Don't try to go for luck stabs, just shoot and run.- The Sapper: Perhaps the Spy's most interesting weapon, the Electro-Sapper is placed on any Engineer building. It disables the building's normal function and slowly drains health from it. It can only be removed by an Engineer giving it two hits with a wrench, or a nearby Pyro giving it one hit with the Homewrecker. The Sapper allows for quick, easy Engineer kills, so an unguarded Engineer camp will be easily destroyed using a Sap/Stab or Stab/Sap method. The Sapper also saps both ends of a Teleporter when placed on one end of it. This is very helpful for certain annoyance moves, which will be discussed later. A little known fact is that the Sapper is a building itself, and as such, has a Destruction button just like the Engineer's buildings. In console, type "bind <key> "destroy 3 0"". The bound key will destroy your own sapper once placed on an Engineer building. This seems useless, but in reality, destroying your own sapper can provide you with valuable metal which you can collect from your busted Sapper to refill your cloak. This is especially useful for Dead Ringer spies. This strategy of destroying your own Sapper is also useful for making Engineers feel threatened without giving away your position. - The Knife: A simple butterfly knife. The Knife's base damage is the lowest in the game, sitting around ~30 HP per hit. It has a 100% chance to inflict critical damage on a successful backstab, which thanks to lag compensation, is a debatable term. The "critical" damage on a backstab is not the same as a normal critical hit from the knife, which can only do about 125 damage, and instead inflicts an earth shattering 500% of the victim's current HP. Although somewhat ridiculous, this ensures that no matter what kind of buff an enemy player has, they'll certainly be seeing the spawn room soon. The knife also has the Spy's only taunt kill, which has a related achievement. Like all taunt kills, its killing blow does 500 damage. - The Disguise Kit: A simple cigarette holder? No, the Disguise Kit! This holds all of your available disguises. The instructions are listed inside of it for you. Press the listed key to change teams, press the - key to cancel. By change teams, of course, it means change teams to disguise as. Disguising as your own team can be more useful than you would think. If you pay attention to the disguise process, your HUD changes over to your disguise target and you take a new name. There is also an outline that closes in on your normal character icon. You're not fully disguised until this outline fully closes in on you. Keep that in mind for when disguising on the fly, the last thing you want to do is be noticed. This weapon also has a pretty neat taunt that happens randomly - the Spycrab. Based on the popular fad of walking like a crab using this weapon, Valve added in a taunt that makes the Spy snap his hands like a crab snaps his pincers. - The Invisiwatch: A standard Invisibility watch. It has a slow draining cloak gauge that can be refilled by picking up metal. Ammo boxes, dropped weapons, downed buildings, anything of the sort refills this gauge, but while you're invisible, it constantly drains. The idea behind the Invisiwatch is to get where you're going as quickly as possible. Avoid bumping into people, as this reveals your location for a brief moment. It's always a good idea to stop using it whenever you feel it's safe to pretend to be someone else, or if you're just hiding in an unchecked corner for a while. The gauge recharges by itself, albeit slowly, as long as you're not using the cloak. - The Spy Update -The Sniper and the Spy got their update at the same time, but the Spy's update is most certainly not overlooked. It only provided him with three new weapons, two of which can't really be called "weapons", but all the same, they were much welcomed new items, especially in a world where W+M1ing as a Pyro is almost encouraged. (I'm looking at you, Backburner). Of course, times have changed, and the Pyro's default flamethrower and the new "Degreaser" have certain perks well above the Backburner's meager plus side.- The Ambassador: A stylish new revolver with a lovely engraving of the Scout's mother (a play on the Meet the Spy video which was released shortly after the Spy's update). This gun sacrifices 15% of the Revolver's damage output and a hefty bit of its rate of fire for critical hits on accurate headshots. This is not to say that the Spy needs to become another Sniper, and should only be taken advantage of in situations where your presence is relatively unknown. Proficiency with the Ambassador requires careful aim and planning, as the Ambassador has a cooldown time after each shot, during which you cannot, no matter how close you are, make a headshot. The overall theme of the weapon almost relies on a forfeiture of the knife, since you're doing your quick killing from a longer range. The Ambassador also has a very loud and distinct firing sound, so make sure to make your shots count and make yourself scarce after your kill. - The Cloak and Dagger: Playfully called the "Cloak and Spectate" or "Cloak and Camp" by many, this replacement for the Invisiwatch provides permanent cloak for a non-moving Spy. The tradeoff for this obvious advantage over the normal Invisiwatch is that you cannot pick up metal to supply yourself with more cloak meter, and the cloak meter drains at an astonishing rate while moving. The cloak drain is a function of your move speed, so crouching makes it drain slower, but at the same time, you're moving slower, so you cover the same ground invisibly in the same amount of time. Falling/jumping also makes your cloak drain, so try not to fall. The Cloak and Dagger has the same downside to touching people as the normal watch, so avoid that at all costs. - The Dead Ringer: Perhaps a throwback to the days of Team Fortress Classic, the Dead Ringer provides the Spy with a feign death type cloak instead of the normal instant invisibility. There is, to my dismay, no way to force a feign death on yourself, so your invisibility is completely reliant on your enemies. On the plus side, the Dead Ringer has an instant activation upon clicking your activate cloak button, so the second you press it, you'll be armed and ready to take any hit (as long as you still have 10% of the HP that the normal hit would do to you). As a general rule of thumb, 10 HP will allow you to survive almost anything after arming the Dead Ringer. Upon feigning your death, you instantly turn invisible, drop a ragdoll, a kill icon is displayed to everyone on the enemy team, including your killer, and Valve went so far as to make the Dead Ringer even give out REAL achievements to anyone who earns them by "killing" you. Technically speaking, the Dead Ringer provides a perfect death for everyone on the enemy team to believe actually happened. After turning invisible, you have eight seconds of cloak, which can be refilled by picking up metal. During the initial 8.0 seconds, anyone touching you will not reveal your location aside from you being an obstacle, and you will take 80% less damage from any attack. If, through picking up metal, you cause the Dead Ringer's invisibility to last longer than 8.0 seconds, you will lose the aforementioned benefits, take normal damage, and your location will be revealed upon someone touching you. The Dead Ringer, for all of its perks, has a pretty obvious downside - it sounds like a f*cking electrical storm upon uncloaking. This is, without a doubt, very noticeable. Your best course of action is to dive underwater or find a place that on one is nearby. As mentioned earlier, disguising as one of your own teammates with the Dead Ringer is extremely useful, as you'll drop the ragdoll of whoever you were disguised as.- The Polycount Update -The Polycount pack, TF2's most recent update, included a Spy pack, introducing two new weapons and a "set bonus" for having the hat that came with the set. - L'Etranger: I can only assume that its name means "The Stranger", it is another new Revolver. It sacrifices 20% of its punch for giving you back a small amount of cloak on each successful hit. It has no other downsides or upsides, so it, as most weapons are, is nothing more than a sidegrade and depends completely upon the user's preferences. - Your Eternal Reward: A very intriguing and beautifully crafted knife that strips you of your trusted disguise kit in exchange for becoming a silent killer, with the added benefit of instantly disguising you after successfully killing someone with a backstab. The damage output of the knife has not changed. As you can imagine, it is very hard to use this knife with the Dead Ringer, so it's almost required that you use the Cloak and Dagger or the normal Invisiwatch. Of important note is the "silent killer" part, which does a rather interesting maneuver, cloaking your victim's body and not displaying a kill message to the enemy team. Of extra note is how instant "instantly" disguising is: If your victim was being healed by a medic before you stabbed him, you will turn into him so quickly the Medigun will not stop healing you as long as the Medic keeps his finger on the trigger. - Set Bonus: The Saharan Spy: An addition to the Polycount update is the "Set Bonuses" given to anyone wearing each part of the particular set the items belong to. For the spy, this is the: Familiar Fez, L'Etranger, and Your Eternal Reward. The downside to this, aside from being forced to wear the rather ridiculous looking Familiar Fez and using both of the new weapons, either or both of which you may dislike, is that anyone who touches you while cloaked will cause cloak interruption for significantly longer than normal. The plus side to this is that your decloak sound, even on the Dead Ringer, becomes almost completely unnoticeable, perfect for those Snipers who're wearing their headphones and have the volume up to max, or the very cautious Engineers.

[Illustrious 0]

I love spies! Especially the disguise kit. I use it to camp outside the enemy base and assassinate enemies one by one.Lol, I was running around as a sniper in this custom map with a bow and arrow shooting at random things. I was playing around and accidentally shot and killed an invisible spy out of nowhere. Anyways, I thought it was pretty funny and ever since, I would shoot at nothing hoping to kill a spy. I was blamed for hacking.