Vitals
Health: 125
Speed: 100%
Type: Support
Weapons: Revolver, Electrosapper, Butterfly Knife, Spytron 2007
Weapons:
Ammo: 6/24
Damage: 54-60 (180)
Best range: Medium
Information:
The spy’s raging bull revolver holds the standard 6 rounds and is quite accurate, causing significant damage up to medium range. It is a weapon that should not be ignored – if your cover is blown, a few well-placed revolver bullets can be the difference between life and death as you retreat. All too often I have spies run away from me as I gun them down, sometimes on fire, without returning a single shot. I could be on 10 hp for all they know, and I already know they’re a spy, so it makes perfect sense (unless there are a lot of enemies nearby, not many of them have spotted you yet, AND you think you can get to cover before dying) to return fire.
Functionally the revolver is quite similar to the pistol, but with a slower fire rate, half the clip, a slower reload and higher damage. At around 50 damage, you can bring down most enemies in a handful of shots if your aim is true, so don’t neglect it. Remember, a scout/engineer/heavy/pyro would kill to have that gun instead of their pistol/shotgun.
Advantages: Very respectable damage for a pistol, good accuracy up to around medium range.
Disadvantages: Small clip, ordinary rate of fire and reload speed, firing removes spy’s disguise.
Ammo: N/A
Damage: N/A
Information:
The electrosapper is placed on enemy engineer buildings by pressing primary fire (while fully uncloaked, disguised or otherwise), and so long as it remains on the building it slowly drains the building’s health and disables it. Electrosappers can be removed from buildings with 2 hits from an engineer’s wrench, but they can also be placed instantly with no reloading, so repeatedly clicking (or simply holding down primary fire) on an enemy building will replace the electrosapper between the engineer’s 2nd and 3rd hit with the wrench giving him no time to repair the previous damage. In this contest the spy will win, so the engineer must deal with spy.
While you can still shoot a building that you sapped, the December 20th 2007 update means that you now do less damage to a building you sapped than normal. Still, sapping an important building (usually sentry gun or teleport exit) before shooting it as much as you can results in a quicker destruction, which may just be the difference between destroying the building and having the engineer save it at the last minute. It’s a very circumstantial choice, but bear it in mind.
The best course of action in a field of engineer buildings is usually to run around and sap each and every building. The engineers will be most protective of their sentry guns, so while they’re distracted you can be sapping everything else. They’ll knock a lot of the electrosappers off, but you can stick them straight back on. Chaos will ensure, and you’ll probably die, but done correctly you can destroy a lot of stuff.
Advantages: Not only damages buildings but disables them too, infinite ammo and immediate placement, can be placed while disguised.
Disadvantages: Damages buildings quite slowly, reveals the presence of a spy and usually results in death as enemies hunt you down, short range, sapper has low health and can be removed easily by an aware engineer.
Ammo: N/A
Damage: 43-87 (195)
Information:
This weapon is the spy’s primary means of attack. It is very weak attacking a target head-on, but a backstab is an instant kill. Backstabs are, simply, when you attack an enemy from behind. However more correctly, a backstab can come from the 180o arc behind the target, as well as from above (and probably below). The instant you attack, your disguise will be lost, so try to attack the backmost player in a line of enemies first, then make your way through the rest. Of course if there’s a heavy/medic combination anywhere, do whatever you can to take it out. A lot of the strategy relates to the spy, not the knife itself, so I’ll leave that for the strategy section of this guide.
Advantages: One hit kill from hits to enemies’ backs, fast rate of fire.
Disadvantages: Removes spy’s disguise, weaker than normal melee weapons if not backstabbing.