Team Fortress 2 Strategy

This is the last of the heavy unlock guides for the foreseeable future, unless Valve decide to bring out any other unlocks for him. The aim of this guide is to give you a better insight into how to use the melee unlocks and when you should use them instead of the heavies fists.

Overview

I am not going to do an overview for the fists as they don’t have any special ability and they are an average melee weapon and as such don’t really need to be explained.

The KGB

The Killer Gloves of Boxing are the alternative to the heavies fists, sporting a clever pun on the Russian Secret Service (also called the KGB) Whilst they appear to be boxing gloves which protect the heavies fists from damage, they actually give the heavy five seconds of crits if he manages to kill someone with them. This ability for a short time increases the amount of damage that the heavy can do. The trade off is that they attack 20% slower than their counterparts the humble fist.

Strategies and Tips For the KGB’s

The trick with the KGB’s is to know roughly how much health the enemy that you are fighting has, if you know this then it will allow you to be able to pull out the KGB’s and get that five seconds of crits. Now there are three things that you can do when you have got those crits, they are: carry on attacking with the gloves, whip out your shotgun or rev up the trusty ol’ minigun and mow the teeny tiny men down.

You should only really carry on attacking with the gloves if there is another enemy nearby who is either, engaged in melee combat with you or badly hurt and not aware of your presence. The reason why you shouldn’t normally continue attacking with the KGB is because as the heavy, you are the slowest class in the game, therefore it is highly unlikely that you will be able to hit anyone with your gloves. It makes a lot more sense just to whip out your shotgun or minigun and just fire away.

If the enemies are quite close to you (within meduim to meatshotting range) you should probably use your shotgun instead of the minigun because at close range the shotgun can do a maximum of 90 damage and you don’t have to rev it up which uses nearly half of your crits. If you have a fully loaded shotgun you should be able to use all of you pellets before the crits are over. Then when you have run out of pellets you can do two things, either retreat whilst reloading your shotgun or whip out your minigun and start firing. If you can’t see any of your teammates nearby and you don’t have a medic the best idea would be to retreat as a lone heavy is a big, easy target. However if you have a few teammates and/or a medic the now is the time to push forwards as the enemy team are down a few men so in theory you should have the advantage.

The only time you should use your minigun when you have the five seconds of crits is when you don’t have your shotgun loaded or if you have the Sandvich equipped. The reason being is that it takes around two seconds to rev up the gun and by that time the remaining enemies have either fled or damaged you heavily. However, if the enemies are fleeing then the minigun is a good bet as the crits bullets don’t have any damage fall off which means that they still do the same damage as if the enemy where right in front of you.