TF2 Loadouts I was Wrong About

despite having 6,000 hours in TF2 there are still some things that I've yet to learn my opinions and habits have solidified a long time ago and because of that certain weapons have long since been overlooked or unfairly judged for a less than Stellar first impression however as my YouTube channels force me to use about every weapon in the game for the videos that I make every once in a while those opinions will shift and I'll really come to like something that I previously didn't care to use last year I made a video talking about some weapons that fit this criteria but this time I wanted to focus more on full loadouts I found that a lot of weapons that I wasn't the biggest fan of before really shine with a secondary or melee that complements their play style this really opened the doors to experimentation as of recent which in the last few months has led to me finding three brand new loadouts that I've really turned my opinion around on so I want to discuss them more more specifically why I didn't care for them before and what got me to eventually change my mind as with the previous video I want to note that everything I'm about to talk about is 100% for my own personal experience there may be some things that I discuss that are obvious to the Avid users of these loadouts however I'm effectively experiencing them for the first time this is just my way to talk about a game that I usually enjoy playing not to make any broader points outside of a recommendation to try the weapons out for yourself so with that in mind let's discuss the loadout that I was wrong about a weapon I've changed my mind on dramatically recently is the black box in my eyes 20 healing never Justified sacrificing an entire rocket in your clip for and because of that the blackbox was a weapon that I never really gave the proper time a day however due to a couple videos that I had to get footage for recently I began to give the blackbox a fair shake for the first time in about 5 years and I have to say that I severely underestimated the power of long-term sustain since if you play it right it is ridiculously hard to die with this thing equipped in a vacuum sure a single instance of 20 health is not that much but 10 to 20 Health nearly every time you fire can add up very quickly and if you look at the health you're getting back you'll see that you often get more than your max Health back from healing over the course of a life and obviously that extra long-term sustain is amazing but when you consider the context in which you're probably getting the healing directly it becomes significantly better if you're fighting an enemy every hit you land on them is more damage they have to deal in order to win the fight not only can this disrupt certain damage thresholds for instance a single rocket requires demo to land an extra pipe in order to kill you but it's also much better at dealing with large numbers of enemies than I first gave at credit for as long as you're willing to play slow and that extra long-term sustain is something that I've really come to appreciate since I've seen a lot more 10 to 20 kill streaks of the black boox than I have with really any other launcher but this is a video about loadouts which brings me to the other more subtle thing about the blackbox that I've really come to appreciate normally I'd be running the gun boats as my secondary like any other self-respecting Soldier player so I could preserve a fair amount of Health while rocket jumping however I found that with the black box this really isn't as necessary as it is with the other launchers although this thing doesn't directly reduce self damage it does let you heal back the damage you take from jumping meaning that if you're willing to put more consideration of when you're doing it instead of just doing it whenever you can you actually never have to worry about health this led me to really experiment with my secondary and through that I've really come to enjoy what the banners have to offer like the black box the Banners are weapons that I've surprisingly not used to Great extent until pretty recently I've always known in my head that they were good and if our team was in a sticky situation I'd usually throw one on to help support or deny pushes however the Black Box got me to try them with the more solo play style I naturally tend to gravitate toward and wow if the Black Box makes you a tank pairing it with a banner makes you an entire Fortified Compound wait no not that one the buff Banner more than compensates for your missing rocket letting you dumpster groups of enemies you run into with absolute ease it's not as reliable to charge considering the missing rocket but it's a lot more feasible to run with the blackbox considering losing the sustain from the other banners isn't as impactful as is the intent with the item set the battalion's backup makes you a brick wall able to heal off any damage you take and reliably break through defensive setups now obviously this is the whole point of the item set but with item sets overall being completely irrelevant nowadays I'm always surprised when I encounter one that still synergizes perfectly and yes I will shamefully admit that I do have fun with the dreaded blackbox and conch play style every once in a great while if I get stuck with a team who I can't rely on for the most basic of tasks having Overkill amount of self sustain can help me have fun during a losing game overall though I still prefer to stick with the Min crits because destroying groups of enemies is very satisfying now is the blackbox on par with powerhouses like the Direct Hit and stock debatable but I would personally say no a single Rockets both a lot of damage and a lot of mobility and because of that you're relegated to a more passive play style to really make the blackbox work and I feel like that's what turns off most Soldier players from doing it considering how popular the RoR play style is similarly I've always considered the Banners To also be a more defensive item that forces you to play Slowly which previously I wasn't the biggest fan of however perhaps ironically pairing them with the most defensive primary lets you roam the map a lot more reliably since the lack of a gunboats is a lot less punishing overall though I know I don't play much Soldier but I can't believe I didn't think to pick these weapons up sooner I'm usually someone who plays for killstreaks over playing for Clips which means that these sorts of loadouts are perfectly suited for my preferred play style another combo of weapons that I've really come to enjoy recently is the thermal Thruster and the back burner now I play a lot of pyro so it's almost strange putting his weapons on this list at all since you think by now I'd have a solidified opinion on all of them but when I picked pyro I almost exclusively used combo play styles with stuff like the Degreaser and extinguisher the thing about combo pyro and what's made me avoid these two weapons specifically is that you really need the faster switch speed from the Degreaser and some sort of damaging secondary to make him work optimally you can try to work in the jetpack or back burner but the lack of range and expensive Air Blast really hampers an important aspect to your gameplay so naturally I prefer to avoid using either of these weapons individually since they never really offer me anything that I want however when you pair them together you get an extremely fun and mobile play style that I've never tried to Great extent until fairly recently the core concept behind it is as straightforward as it gets you jetp pack in burn everyone to a crisp and then if you manage to survive jetpack out but even beyond the obvious brain dead play style of landing on people's heads the thermal Thruster and back burner have incredible Synergy in general much more than I gave him credit for for years the back burner is a very positionally dependent weapon if you want to make the most use out of its upsides with most other secondaries though your options of getting into the optimal position are fairly limited you can try to flank with something like the Detonator but on top of not covering much long-term horizontal distance the totet takes on your health is rather strenuous this is part of the reason that I never cared to use the back burner your options to actually get the crits reliably were either hide in a corner or just a run and hope nobody sees you neither of which I consider to be very fun with a thermal Thruster though you can cover huge distances nearly instantly meaning that getting behind the enemy is much faster and more reliable than with any other secondary not to mention the thermal Thruster lets you remove one of the biggest weaknesses of flamethrower Centric loadouts of closing the gap between you and the enemy and it does this absolutely effortlessly with a little bit of luck you can decimate people before they even have the chance to react to what's happening now will you flawlessly pull off Ambush plays like this every single time I mean no sometimes their god tier sniper Direct Hit Soldier Will Destroy you as you're trying to do something cool and other times the enemy team will be aware enough to take care of you before you have a chance to become a problem even if you do get into position but when the stars align this load out lets you become a flanking machine mowing everyone down with back burner crits and flying away from the scene of the crime like it never happened however out of everything these weapons have to offer I would say the thing that I was wrong about most is how fun the thermal Thruster actually is I've always been under the impression that it was more of a gimmick for newer players since on top of being incredibly easy to use compared to blast jumping it completely conines your damage to WM oneing and while I'd still generally rather combo than just rely on Flames being able to move around fluidly as pyro is much more fun than I ever gave it credit for and honestly The holster animation isn't as bad as I initially thought it's still not ideal but if you make wider jumps you can very easily buffer a weapon switch and have your flamethrower out by the time you land overall I would consider it one of the few truly underrated weapons this game has to offer and I can't wait to try it out in a wider variety of loadouts at the end of the day I still do prefer playing combo pyro as the insane stuff you can pull off means that a skilled pyro will get a lot more value out of it in general however I can't deny that landing on random groups of people and getting getting five free kills is a fun way to play the game if I don't particularly feel like trying rather ironic that the bird YouTuber just now discovering how fun flying and dive bombing can be the final combo of weapons that I've had a ton of fun experimenting with recently is the Widowmaker and Eureka Effect I know engineering is not exactly a new play style but somehow this one slipped out of the radar for me for years I recently got around the trying it and oh my God this play style is so stupid it's amazing so first of all the Widowmaker the reason I never used the Widowmaker in the past is because I've always preferred the mental flexibility the stock shotgun offers beef a shot or deci side attack back on some chip damage with stock no sweat you got 35 more shells that reload pretty quickly do that with the Widow Maker though and you've just wasted 15% of your most valuable resource that was one of the hardest parts of using the Widowmaker at first actually having Trigger Discipline instead of just shooting whatever I want but with good aim and Metal Management I've really come to enjoy the insane combat capability this thing has to offer dealing with multiple enemies is a breeze thanks to not having to reload and even if you don't play perfectly you're always guaranteed half your metal back if you're able to secure the kill the real star of the show here though and the reason that I started using the Widowmaker is the Eureka Effect being being able to put down a beacon that you can teleport to whenever you want is hilariously stupid if you're smart with it in fact you don't even have to put it Behind Enemy Lines or do anything cheesy to get insane use out of it just having a teleporter that both the engineer and his teammates can use at the same time is massive for getting people back to the fight faster that being said though the cheesy Stuff does exist and good God if you play your cards right this thing has the potential to derail the entire game so there are two pretty broken things that I found about the ureka effect while messing around with it number one as long as your teleporter exists this thing lets you effectively have infinite healing and metal this is obvious iously welln for nest with multiple roll out tutorials existing that show you how to get the most use out of your setup time however even in the middle of combat with a moderate amount of safety and about 3 seconds to spare you can get a quick resupply off while you're Behind Enemy Lines this means that on top of being able to repeatedly flank you never have to worry about health or ammo as long as you can occasionally spare the 3 seconds it takes to go through the animation and number two by far the most stupid thing about this wrench for some reason nearly everything about the Eureka Effect is tailor made for stealth and an active teleporter is hard to spot and completely silent and the engineer's teleporting animation only shows the particles and noise where you teleport from and not on the exit basically unless you directly come across the hidden teleporter which is surprisingly hard to do there are almost no other context clues of where you've hidden it or when the engineer is taking it why they made the weapon like this one can only guess but it is hilarious how often this thing lets you get away with downright stupid plays and on top of all of that TF2 lets dead Engineers spectate their teleporter exits meaning that on top of having a free camera within Enemy Lines you'll immediately know if someone's trying to Camp it other than that though I think the benefits of this combo are pretty self-explanatory place a teleporter somewhere stupid warp to it while no one's looking and clear out the entire back line This is among the strategies that I consider to be unreasonably effective in most lobbies why people rarely turn around as Beyond me but frankly that makes it all the more fun so anyway those were loadouts that I've recently had my opinion completely shift on as I start to get burnout from casual and potentially even TF2 as a whole it's very nice to have some new toys to play around with every once in a while novelty is a great way to renew my interest in the game and having fun strategies like this really amps it up if you know of any other weapons you think I should give another go feel free to let me know what it is and why you like using it who knows maybe your unique perspective will be the one to get me to dust off an item I've not touched in years and perhaps even enjoy myself what I'm hoping you enjoyed was this video in which case your like is appreciated then most importantly have a good [Music] one n

Channel: Great Blue

Views: 142,147

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Id: SPYxZIVIcG8

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2024