Meet The Dispenser

[Music] ah just no use just no use I'm seeing a point see the point of dispensing health and ammo no one will even filled me in the first place I mean come on I'm for the being built can keep an entire team in the fight when it matters most that's worth something all right all anyone ever wants to build is that stupid show-off - sentry gun I mean just what the kids want these days again I want fancy frags and immediate satisfaction I mean I'm no stranger to being satisfied from time to time but this is just ridiculous you can't just build one thing and not build another and even a few people who do build me it just put me right down behind our crouching buttcrack and keep me all to themselves I'm not a one-man dispenser I got to get out there I want to show my talents to the world it's just no use maybe if someone out there actually cared someone who could show the people what I mean to a successful ground and TS and maybe maybe then I can finally have my time in the spotlight dispensers are important for many different reasons but it should be made clear right here and now that if you don't build a dispenser you're doing a great disservice to yourself and more importantly your team which definitely affects yourself so listen up heeling and Team Fortress 2 is hard to come by health packs only spawn on specific parts of maps and having a medic is not always guarantee especially in casual mode getting your health back after taking damage in this game is more easier said than done so we then look to the third most reliable source appealing engineer to get a good idea of the engineers basic role let's watch the introductory video for one of the game's most beloved characters meet the engineer [Music] now I love this video it's a very cool way of portraying the engineers personality he's calm collect and cool but not someone you should mess around with if he's got a sentry gun by a side but here's my issue with meeting engineer because unlike every other meet the team video in this series it's not a very good way of explaining his role in the game and meet the spy you see the particular character backstabbing faffing shooting his revolver and disguising perfect execution of showing off his personality and his role in the video game meets medic you see a lot of the medics personality in the first half with him obsessively treating this patient more like an experiment than a person and then in the finale you see a very apt demonstration of how his abilities work in game with him healing a wound player back to full health so you can get back out there and fight and then you see him utilizing his uber charge to great effect after he's reached 100% which is very important for new players to understand wait a minute that's a quick fix hey wait a minute quick fix doesn't come back to meet the engineer though like I said great display of Energy's character but look at this he literally only built a sentry gun you built for sentry gun wait a second yeah you can't build more than one set that's not possible and I'm gonna give them a piece in mind but you might be asking why does it matter what people are learning from the Mesa team series those videos are meant to be mainly entertaining not really educational well I personally think that being both entertaining and educational is the best way to teach people just look at my youtube channel I started this thing with the goal of being both entertaining and educational and besides the fact that when you click on a class in the tf2 website it takes you to a page with the corresponding videos embedded if you wanted to do more research on the internet about how each class in the game works as a class you'd be hard-pressed to find a video in the search result set isn't a meet the team video oh okay well I guess everything's going according the plan on that front then but the meet the engineer video is right there and what does it teach new players about the Energy's role build a sentry gun that is all the engineer does build [ __ ] four of them and then go play a guitar but obviously that's not the Energy's only role in tf2 he builds other very important buildings and the dispenser is the one on the dissection table today you know maybe to get new players to actually learn what the dispenser does I'll just clean this video meet the dispenser Oh looks like somebody already use that title alright I think I'm good to go actually so a dispenser cost 100 metal to build from scratch and just as expected the dispenser has three levels that take 200 metal to upgrade to each one has slightly better staffs faster dispensing of healings ammo and metal supply and more help for the dispenser itself I mean this is stuff that you can totally just read on the tf2 wiki so it's probably not that revolutionary to talk a whole lot more about in detail but I'll mention that a newly built dispenser already has 25 metal inside of it which is important to consider when working out ammo costs for other plan buildings and it's also worth noting that while it's obviously better to upgrade your dispenser even a level one can be more than enough to sustain a team a heavy can permanently be firing when near dispenser a pyro can always be spy checking it can save someone from burning to death and really 10 health per second is nothing to scoff at even that can be a difference between holding and losing ground but enough about the stats let's just go right into the most important part of dispensers placement yes the age old prom night question where do I put it well maybe we can solve the mystery of the perfect dispenser spot by looking at a few common ones here we see a few dispensers on Badwater dustbowl viaduct and powerhouse now there are a few things all of these spots have in common and that is they are near a choke point dispensers see the most action where the action is obviously but it shouldn't be up in the carnage it should be just outside of it where people can retreat to it and regain their health ammo and composure without threat of being hit with flying bullets and explosions and then that leads us into the second thing that all these dispenser spots have in common they are behind cover it's very important that while your dispenser is able to be easily accessible by your team as they fight on the front lines of battle it's still not able to be actively attacked by any enemies who are not overextended and most players in tf2 are on a seafood diet when they see food they kill it so try and make sure your dispenser is around the closest safe corner or behind a rock or it will be harder for the enemy to see it and the injured people who are attempting to use and then the third that these dispenser spas have in common is simple they are for the team not just you it's important to realize that just like the teleporter the dispenser is a heavily team-based building it's designed to help your team a lot of newer energies tend to treat it like their very own personal doctor for when they occasionally take Splash Damage from behind their sentry barricade this is the wrong way to be using dispensers but uncoated Ain if people want to use my dispenser why don't they just walk over there and ugh get over yourself look I'm not exactly known to throw out endorsements to the turtle lifestyle but you got to hand it to a lot of these guys they know how to place a sentry gun where it defends the objective but the problem with putting the dispenser back there as well has a couple of issues the first one being that it's usually pretty far out of the way to walk - to even use the dispenser the center gun is usually best behind the frontline of the team so they can easily punish overextending enemies and be a reliable option for extra damage if your teammates need to fall back but a dispenser is the bravest building you own it needs to be the furthest forward of the three it needs to be with to your team if your dispenser is constantly a brisk walk away from the front that ground will be more easily lost over time with how many teammates have to keep running away for hell it's important to move that gear up when the time is right but it's the most important to keep that gear up when it comes to your dispenser in fact placing your dispenser near your other buildings is not a great idea when it comes to both your sentry gun and your teleporter not only for the reason that I mentioned in my video about teleporter etiquette where spies can easily tell a frag innocent dispenser customers but it's also because buildings that are clumped together died together it's no secret by now that putting sentry guns next to each other is a recipe for disaster but the same thing applies to your own sentry gun and dispenser but this time you're not only putting your own buildings and life on the line you're putting your team's life on the line sentry guns often are the focus fire of any coordinated push so most of the time you do not want to be near a sentry gun when there's a demo man loading up as stickies underneath it but when you place a dispenser next to your sentry gun you're putting everyone who is currently using it at risk and chances are the people using your dispenser going to be low health in the first place and will be the first to die and to your own poor dispenser placement choices so please if there's anything that you can take away from this video it's that you shouldn't hog your dispenser you should put it with your team needs it the more healthier teammates are the more safe you are from getting your wrench pushed in by one buffed soldier with a full clip and nothing to lose but hang on before we move on from the whole stacking buildings thing I think there's something to be said about stacking dispensers because yes the dispensing benefits do stack when you place multiple dispensers next to each other so wouldn't it be beneficial to always pull all of your team's dispensers in one area for maximum healing well maybe it depends on the map to level three dispensers do heal at a rate higher than even the quick fix and it can heal multiple people at the same time so it's quite the powerful strategy if you pull it off but it certainly is a risk/reward situation because obviously both of these dispensers will go down with only three well-placed stickies and while the phrase if dispenser down push in is more of a tea of two mean than anything it actually can warrant calling to your team if they're using them in such an effective way but other than putting all of your eggs in one basket being risky business it's my personal opinion that in certain situations and on a lot of different Maps it could be more beneficial to actually spread the dispensers out for not only the reasons I just spoke about regarding ease of destruction but more along the line of ease of access for your team Maps in tf2 have health packs spread out into strategically placed areas that allow people to more easily hold certain areas and be forced to retreat in others but dispensers are the closest that you can get to on-the-spot map editing and that you can decide where a source of healing would be beneficial to your team in that specific moment so right away you can probably see that spreading multiple dispensers out can be the savior for individual stories in your team's overall experience for instance if someone fights a pyro somewhere in the flank and although he came out on top he's now burning to death with no health packs in sight would he survive if all of the dispensers are somewhere near the main choke point I'll be at healing people at an impressive rate but still out of reach from the people holding down the side passages nope he died before he could reach the dispenser Convention but say that the same situation is at hand but this time an engineer has decided that the dispenser at choke is doing just fine on its own and that his dispenser would do well near the flank route so that the brave mercenaries holding down that area can have an extra reliable source of healing without having to go too far out of the way I think this beats dispenser stacking nine times out of ten but speaking of health packs the last thing that I wanted to talk about regarding dispenser placement is that while spreading your dispenser out around the map can be pretty effective not everyone is going to automatically know where exactly your dispenser is that at least not unless you tell them every time you relocate all right guys in place my dispensary support of the stairs all right guys I've relocated my dispenser to the cubby all right guys I'm moving my dispenser to behind the rock so instead I think it's always a good idea to put your dispenser near an already existing common retreat area such as the spawn point for a health pack since people already know where the health is on the map their first instinct for when they retreat will probably be to walk to where the nearest health pack is so if you place your dispenser somewhere near it it's more likely that someone will see it and be able to use it putting your dispenser near a health pack is always a great go-to for dispenser spots since packs aren't always there so making it so there's an option for the injured people who are just a little too late is usually going to be very helpful just don't put it directly on top of the health pack because then you won't be able to pick it up and that actually segues nicely into the very last part of this video which is going to be all about a few little nonspecific tips and tricks that you can use to make your dispenser game that much better the first thing to mention is of course the collision rules for dispensers they apply to all buildings but since the dispenser is tall and usually able to be placed in a wider variety of spots you can often use the dispenser as a step stool to get to higher areas more quickly in fact the collision rules can come in handy for more than just boosting yourself up you can often use it to your advantage when you want to keep someone away from you dispenser blocking is a very common strategy that takes advantage of map design that literally prevents enemies from walking up stairs or passing smoothly through tight corridors even though it's pretty easy for these enemies to solve this barricade problem by just destroying it oftentimes then is still the thing that you need to quickly be alert to their presence and defend yourself with the upper hand but enemies aren't the only thing that dispensers collide with believe it or not dispensers can actually block bullets and projectiles including your own this is why it's never a good idea to build a dispenser in their fight line of a sentry guns yours or otherwise sentry guns can often see-through dispensers and target enemies who are standing behind them but the bullets and rocket fire will not pass through a dispenser this can sometimes be taken advantage of by an intelligent enemy who is trying to get close without taking damage from the nearby sentry gun so don't build your dispensers anywhere that this can easily happen related to that trick enemies can do with your own buildings the exact opposite is actually possible with your own teammates this is what is sometimes referred to as dispenser armor crouching inside of a fellow engies dispenser so that any damage directed at you actually hits the dispenser instead all while you're refilling your own health so it can surprisingly be a powerful tactic in fact here's a clip from Danny's twitch stream demonstrating what that looks like are you [ __ ] kidding me and last but not least the most interesting and least used trick that you can do with the dispenser is feeding ammo through walls for some reason a lot of walls and tf2 maps are thin enough for just the ammo dispensing part to pass through this can sometimes come in handy for certain maps we're keeping a heavy or Pyro's ammo refilled is vile to holding ground but sometimes it's dangerous to put the dispenser out in the exposed area where they tend to stand unfortunately you can't get help from a dispenser through these thin walls but sometimes having a constant stream of ammunition can be the difference between an enemy going down or not you know it's a hard-knock life out there for the score classes of the world so building these little vending machines is sometimes all it takes to save your life the lives of your teammates and take a little bit of pressure off of those brave medics who have 11 other people to heal at once and even if you're not playing engineer remember leave that metal pack there if you absolutely don't need it because in 20 seconds that little gesture could become you not burning to death to a random crits layer from across the map I hope this video taught you something about the lonely underrated building that we call the Spencer's happy booting boys and I will talk to you nieces and nephews next time bye bye [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Uncle Dane

Views: 3,199,298

Keywords: team fortress 2, tf2, engineer, gameplay, guide, tutorial, tips, first person shooter, uncle dane, professional, pro, free to play, free, steam, sale, deal, items, crafting

Id: vBbVrcaM1Wg

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/oxydaans]

This was good.

[u/Cowser_the_Koopahog]

TL;DW:

NEED A DISPENSER HERE

[u/Nasapigs]

The age old prom question of where do I put it

Gave me a good laugh.

[u/LayeredTheDank]

Thanks for crediting Engineer.tf in the description, of course when people joined the discord link they all thought Dane was gonna be talking to people but in reality there were a lot higher level Engineers willing to talk, and thus everyone left.

[u/and_yet_he_complains]

The Eric Andre reference caught me off guard.

I love it.

[u/NotMyFaultYouDied]

ankle dan is a verly goud dizpenzer man

[u/Fuelled_By_Coffee]

That ammo through the walls thing sounds like a bug. I can understand why some people may like it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Valve eventually changed that behaviour.

[u/duck74UK]

Dane beat me to it T_T

GG Dane, you more efficient video-maker-guy

[u/Black_Mesa_Dagda]

This is what I've been saying for years. I hate it when people in games say "Where is your sentry engie" and i say "Im working on a dispenser for you" and then i get kicked