Miniguns And Muscles: A Guide to the Heavy's Art of Killing.

[Soldierfan]

Like the Pyro guide, the aim of this guide is to give you some pointers which will hopefully increase your performance.

Loadouts:
Offensive Heavy
-Sasha for medium damage, highest revspeed, and highest walking capability, it won't slow you down like the Brass Beast or take forever to start shooting like Natascha.
-Sandvich for emergency healing for both yourself and your medic. I find the shotgun useless as anything Sasha cannot take down will not be taken down by such a little weapon. Use the shotgun if you get into a lot of retreating situations where you need to put some covering fire while you run away. Otherwise, stay with Sandvich ESPECIALLY if your medic finds you a good healing partner! Dalokohs bar is plain useless, and the steak sandvich, while tasty, isn't much help unless you just want to kamikize blindly-which won't net you many kills.
-Any except maybe Warrior's Spirit due to health loss. The main differences are how many times you get into melee situations. Use GRU if you find many breaks in the battle to charge an uber for the Medic. (Make sure he realizes this though.) Fists of Steel are also good if you need to run away a lot but run with your back to them so they can't see your gun-shield.

Tips: Ambush, the sneakier you are the higher damage output and it's pretty scary to know that there's a deadly Heavy sneaking around your base. Psychological effect is ALWAYS nice.

Defensive Heavy
-Natascha. As a defensive heavy your goal should be to keep them off the cart/point/intelligence/sandvich, not to get kills. Natascha will slow people down so others can get kills, and you'll get assists-also good for scouts running off with the intel, or any other class for that matter. Use Sasha, though, if everyone's murdering you-you're no use dead, after all!
-Sandvich-Again, shotgun is usually useless and you'll be with your team most of the time anyway, so you won't need that much help and you'll have all the help (and health) you need from alt-firing it and getting half of your health instantly!
-Fists because at that range you want to take the attacker down quickly.

Tips: Focus on Scouts, twice the speed/capturing speed and they're fast enough to disorient you if they get close enough and surprise you.

-

General Tips: Sandvich is usually the best secondary you can get. Emergency HP for your medic, yourself, and your team gets anyone back in the fight instantly, while shotgun has a tendency to miss unless you're spot on because it's fired in a box effect. If you aim for the arm, you'll do 3-10 damage, so sandvich is better without insane accuracy.
-Use any advantage you can get. Hide behind the payload cart to dodge bullets or hide, crawl along the tunnel walls in Dustbowl, etc. Cover is good, fear is good, killing is good.
-Stay calm. Unlike maybe Pyro, Soldier, or Demoman, shooting randomly in fear won't net you anything but death. The minigun is inaccurate so you need precise aiming.
-Check your back! Don't get Tunnel Vision. Check at the end of your uber. Check in corridors. Check your back everywhere-you're slow, you're huge, and there might be a medic next to you.
-Pay attention to the medic tooltip. If it disconnects or if he starts taking damage, rev up and look behind you just in case. BUT, don't do this in a fight. He might've gotten hurt by the enemy's bullets or ran away.
-The Medic's life IS more important than yours. If the enemy is pushing in and your medic has ran away by use of a hallway, stand in it to prevent progress temporarily. If that medic has an uber and lives, he can push them out!


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VS Class
Scout - Be careful with this one. He's your polar opposite and one of the three-four banes of your existence. Focus on him before anything, because the closer he is the more disorienting. Keep in mind that you have a lot of health. Stay on your minigun, he's too fast for you to dish out your sandvich and your minigun will cut him down faster anyway. Keep at medium range.

Soldier - Not too hard unless you're far away. Keep in medium range, a test I have done, at a range just out of the Soldier's self-hurt with vanilla weaponry shows that the Soldier will win with 10-40 hitpoints left. Even rockets decay at range but your bullets fire faster, so you'll likely come on top especially if you stay calm and keep your accuracy.

Pyro - Keep at medium-long range. If he has an axtinguisher he'll be very deadly at close range and cannot dish out damage out of close range. Also another reason to check your back, any smart Pyro will flank you.

Demoman - We have a problem here. You're too slow to dodge his stickies and he has the highest damage output in the game. However, they're usually not that smart until you start playing tf2lobby or go competitive. Shoot at him and go side to side at the same time, his projectiles from his primary ARE slow enough for you to dodge if you can predict him-which will come with practice. Most demomen just fling all of their ammo at you immediately, so try zig-zagging. Also, the closer the better if you zig-zag, highest damage output and medium hitpoints means he might just kill himself!

Heavy - Really, it bores down to this: Range, medic, crits, who fired first,which minigun you both have, team awareness (Heavy is a team player), Cover (if I've got 50% cover I'm going to kill a Heavy who spins up before me unless we're at point blank. There's a couple of spots where one can fire from 75% cover, from there I'll go head to head with a heavy/medic combo and win, Escape routes (if you don't over commit then a Heavy can often escape another Heavy),Pre-fight sandvich throwdown 450 health > 300 health.

Engineer - Probably the least dangerous class you can encounter, if you can't take this guy down at full health I will be very sad for you. Medium speed, medium hitpoints, medium damage output versus lowest speed, highest hitpoints, and one of the highest damage outputs as well as attack speed.

Engineer's Sentry - You may think you're tough enough to take on a level three sentry. Surprisingly, you aren't-it's hard to take them down even with a medic, even when ubered! Try to get out of it's range and shoot it from afar-any bullet you hit it with has maximum damage output. If it's impossible, you might have to search for another route or switch classes. Depending on your skill/luck/skill of enemy engineer, this can be the third bane of your existence.

Medic - Like Engineer, not very dangerous. You'll probably take him down.

Battle Medic - I have problems with their Blutsauger. Stay calm and try to keep your crosshair on them at a medium range and you'll probably get them.

Medic's Patient - If they haven't seen you, kill the medic as fast as you can. If you die doing so, you still contributed because they just lost their uber. Heck, you might have just turned the tide of the entire game. If they have seen you, run away or get behind them.

Uber/Kritz Patient - Run away. You can't do anything to them. Or, you could equip a GRU and run in front of them like a nut and keep their attention. This is very risky though, so if it's Arena or if your server/map has a really long respawn time, run away.

Sniper - If he has the Huntsman, jump whenever he tries to hit you. If he aims for the head, he hits your chest. If he aims for the chest, he hits your legs or maybe even misses. If you crouch, he might accidentally hit you in the head. Usually, he's at a really long range. You cannot stop him at long range, so it's best to jump and run unpredictably across the battlefield until you're safe.

Spy - The final bane of your existence, the Spy can take an unprepared Heavy down instantly. Assume that there is always one stalking you and look behind you constantly. I suggest looking back, jumping, and revving up simultaneously. If you can catch him, you will beat him.


I shall see you on battlefield, comrade!

-Soldierfan

[Soldierfan]

Oh no, did TF2strategy die?

[Soldierfan]

RIP tf2strategy

[randomuser]

We haven't died, we are trying to release a guide a week, however, seeing as I'm the only admin who's around at the moment it means that the amount of guides I can write is dependent on my workload (or lack of) and unfortunately I have been struggling to keep up. Two essays and copious amounts of work mean that I haven't really had the time or inclination. What I am trying to do is to make a video, I've had a go at making a random one with an Stv demo I hade, you can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5s9IO1UWnk

It's not brilliant, but it's a start

I'll have a look at your guide later and I'll probably publish it, good work btw Great to see people taking an interest!

[Soldierfan]

Hey, I'll try to help if it's ok It only takes 30-60 minutes to make these guides anyhow, lol. Not good at every class though, pretty much just soldier/heavy/pyro/demoman and a little engineer. So if you need any help, let me know. If you play TF2 on PC, add me. I'll pm you the core name.

[randomuser]

It'd be great to have you helping us If possible could you do one of these guides for each of the classes? I can help with the classes that you aren't so good as, as I'm a jack of all trades (master of none :L)

[Soldierfan]

hehe, I'll try. 2Fort is a surprisingly good map for learning the ropes, so it's not all useless

3 Worst Classes: Medic, Sniper, Spy. I am the BAWBAG of Support...hehe. I think my next guide will be of the demoman, because I'm starting to gain interest in him, he's one of my middle classes. I'll go practice with him on Dustbowl/Granary...but since I blacklisted all of the lotus servers I might not find one :l Off I go!

[Jermy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z93E6zJeErQ
This is the authority as far as sentry kills go. you may want to take a look at it about heavy vs. sentry.

[randomuser]

I think that this is ever so slightly biased in favour of the Sandvich, I am old fashioned in a sense because I still run vanilla heavy most of the time (sometimes I run the G.R.U) I find that the shotgun allows me to:

1. Chase down fleeing enemies, if you didn't manage to finish them off with the minigun then a few shotgun rounds can kill them quickly.

2. It is a good weapon when you are moving around, if a shout attacks you then you can kill them with the shotgun rather than waiting to spin up your minigun.

3. It is great for when you get ubered, I firmly believer that an uber isn't effective if you don't have the shotgun, if you only have the minigun then you can't do much if the enemy run away.

4. I find that it allows me to pusher quicker and further than I'd be able to with the minigun, mainly because you don't have to rev up the minigun everytime you need to go round a corner. Also, you won't get left behind by the medic (that is assuming that there are other people pushing with you)

Of course, the shotgun is only effective if you have reasonable aim with it, it also depends on why you play the heavy; if you play him because you can't aim then the shotgun isn't very useful, however I would encourage all heavy players to improve their shotgun skills, I use the shotgun just as much, if not more than the minigun. Admittedly I have reasonable aim with it.

[Soldierfan]

Yeah, I have tried the shotgun before and yes, this does support the sandvich not only because it is delicious and has ham but because I find no use for the shotgun. I guess I'll try it again whenever I start playing TF2 and maybe put a video down with a shotgun-only gameplay-it might be just because I suck. Also, I am suffering mass-addiction takeover and don't want to play anything but World of Warcraft. :L

[randomuser]

You don't have to play with shotgun only, or play with the shotgun at all, I was just pointing out the slight bias; I'm more than happy to write a shotgun section for the guide.

[Jermy]

My opinions on the Heavy's secondaries:

The Shotgun
+moving and firing
+a real weapon in case your minigun runs out of ammo
+Good if ambushed while holding GRU
+Perfect accuracy down crosshair for first shot
-No health regen
-Weaker than minigun
-Spin-up time decrease weakens its effectiveness
The Sandvich
+full health with eating
+can give to burning medic/teammates
+can be replenished with any healthkit
-highly vulnerable while eating
-lack of shotgun makes ambushes harder to survive
The Chocolate Bar (I have no clue how to spell it)
+Health Buff upon eating
-Only 60 HP healed
-Unable to be dropped
-Everything I said about the Sandvich
The Steak
+Increased movespeed (upon eating)
+grants minicrits for 15 secs (upon eating)
+Can heal if dropped w/secondary fire
-Does not heal when eaten w/primary fire
-Recive minicrits for 15 secs (upon eating)
-Melee only for 15 secs (upon eating)
-GRU+steak does not grant scout speed anymore

[Soldierfan]

Okay, I sat my heavily-muscled bottom down, shut off Overlord II, and played it with the shotgun. I played on 2fort, a surprisingly good map for learning the basics of items. My conclusions:
-Use it with a medic who won't get himself killed. The medic will replace your sandvich, and if he won't hurt himself all the time you won't need to help him.
-Actually kinda good for getting people who ran away/softening them up around a corner.

[randomuser]

It all depends on play style and what you want to do, even though I advocate the use of the shotgun I'm not adverse to using the sandvich. Although I only use it on very specific occasions, for example;

In a competitive match and I'm playing scout/roaming soldier, my team is about to push out of last point on badlands and I'm left to guard the point, at this point - assuming that I'm playing as the heavy - I would have the sandvich equipped because the medic is around and I am vulnerable to scouts (even one). Also I can't go away from the point to get any health as the point caps in 4 or 5 seconds.

[frat57]

Well, tryouts are over, so I'm back on track.

Nice guide there randomuser. I don't think the the sandvich is very useful. Yes, you get the free health, but you are loud, still, and vulnerable. The same scout can easily kill you while you are eating. Generally, I think there are enough health packs scattered around the map that I think the shotgun or Dalokoh's bar would be superior. Some spots where there are no health packs nearby, the sandvich would be helpful, but otherwise, I would not take it.