I doubt this will be a popular guide. The odds are kind of stacked against you when the premise is telling 90% of MvM players that everything they know is wrong.

I am going by the popular usage of "meta" as a noun referring to a dominant strategy used by the majority of players in a game at a given point in time. I apologize to any linguistic purists who disagree with this. Furthermore, based on this definition, my understanding of what the meta actually is is based on the countless people I've met and played with. I understand that a doctrine that is inherently made up of the opinions of thousands of people may be a bit vague and even fluid at times, but I feel like the generalizations I make about what the meta that I'm disagreeing with actually says are fairly accurate. Let me know if you can think of any variations or points I may not know about or have neglected to mention.

When I use the term "meta" in this guide, I will generally be referring to the Two Cities Meta (Scout-Engie-Medic-Soldier-Demo-Heavy) that is currently in vogue with MvM noobs these days and spawning entire serverfuls of cannon fodder players who refuse to start the game without a Medic.

Occasionally, however, I will bring up and make fun of the older metas. In particular, there is the relatively tolerable Mecha Engine Meta (Scout-Engie-Heavy-Soldier-Pyro-Demo). and the Gear Grinder Meta (Scout-Engie-Heavy-Heavy-Demo-Pyro), which I am less fond of.

Sorry about that boring drivel. Now on to the fun stuff.

"Look, I just wanna get this tour done quickly so I can get my loot. Let's not try anything fancy. Somebody just go Medic so we can get this over with."

A lot of players see the meta as tried-and-true and anything else as exotic and unreliable.

Tried? Of course. True? I guess it's better than 6 players with classes, weapons, and upgrades picked out of a hat, but it's nothing special.

Personally, I think the meta is biased toward making the first wave easier. A lot of missions have a "noob filter" - a first wave that is slightly harder than the next few waves due to a lack of upgrades. MvM newbies and noobs will often tend to judge the soundness of a strategy by how easy it makes the first couple of waves rather than the mission as a whole because they rarely make it any further than that.

Let's look the staples of the Two Cities meta. First off: Engineer, Heavy, and Sticky Demo. All of these classes are pretty easy to play and can do a large portion of their maximum DPS with no upgrades whatsoever. Add on top of that the fact that most Scouts waste all their money on Resistances and therefore don't really upgrade, anyway, so as far as they're concerned, Scout's also near his "maximum" power from the getgo. It's hard for me to gauge how much more powerful Medic is with upgrades than without because I don't play the class much, but the Projectile Shield is in itself fairly overpowered on the first wave of certain missions. Soldier, however, can actually be kind of weak with only 400 credits' worth of upgrades. Which is a big part of the reason why a lot of old farts don't allow Soldiers on their teams in Expert.

Speaking of Expert, the Expert meta apparently calls for a Stock Pyro with fully upgraded Airblast Force on Wave 1. This is because airblast can be used as minor crutch to stall on the first wave of Expert Decoy and Expert Mannworks. It's a painful, drawn-out, and not particularly reliable or easy process, but it can be used to get bad teams past Wave 1. However, teams that do this invariably run into trouble later on because airblast is virtually useless most of the time, and Pyros who continue with this playstyle will become a humongous dead weight. Using a crutch to get a bad team past the first level, only to shoot yourself in the foot later on? Seems like a legit strategy. ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY META. Better to fail on Wave 1 so you can get back to Boot Camp faster.

Even those who don't upgrade the stock flamethrower any further and switch to Phlog later on "for the tanks" are 400 credits behind in their upgrade path. Viable, but not worth it, if you ask me.

The psychological effect on new playes of getting past Wave 1 for the first time is often tremendous, and they tend to latch onto this strategy as gospel truth. But there are 3 to 8 waves in every mission. Even with the overpowered Refund Crutch, a little foresight is helpful. You wouldn't drop your Scout for an extra Heavy on Wave 1, now would you? It would make it easier, after all...

There is no single class you absolutely need for any one mission. In fact, there aren't even many classes that are better to have than other classes on any one mission. Valve actually DOES balance this crap to an extent. Class usefulness varies mostly with wave composition, upgrade level, and skill level. There is relatively little variance in how well a class is inherently suited for a particular mission or for MvM in general. And, where that variance actually exists, it's ignored by people trying to impose their cookie-cutter strategy everywhere.

The only class that you always should have is the Engineer, and there are quite a few asterisks after even his name. I'd say Scout gets a very, very distant second place. Ultimately, as long as there's a Teleporter and Dispenser up and humming, class doesn't matter much. It's the players behind the classes.

Is it possible to win without an Engie? It's not even uncommon. A lot of Engies are so bad you're effectively playing without one, anyway. Normally, such games are so frustrating and toxic that everybody ragequits, but if your average MvM street trash can ALMOST do it, I assure you a good team can pull it off.

So... anyway, the meta build always requires one and only one Medic-picker, usually a Demo. The problem is, not all missions even have Uber Medics as a real threat. Metro Malice only has them first wave, and a Demo without upgrades can take them out easily and then change classes. Bavarian Botbash doesn't have them until last wave, when a Soldier can actually take them out more easily them a Demo. Disintegration only has Uber Medics that heal Engineer bots, and Demo isn't particular conducive to hunting those down, anyway.

Meanwhile, most missions have tanks to kill, a role which is largely ignored in the meta build.

What is needed in MvM:
Engie*****
A plan (not necessarily a class) to collect money
A plan (not necessarily a class) to deal with Uber Medics*
A plan (not necessarily a class) to deal with Tanks*
Sufficient capability to kill robots

*where applicable
*****unless you want a challenge or if you have enough upgrades to not need actually need a Teleporter or Dispenser anymore

This sort of ties in to the previous topic. There are only a few essential roles other than raw damage that need to be filled on a mission. There isn't anything inherently wrong with duplicate classes. Two Soldiers or two Demos is great. Some weirdos still think that it's impossible to win Expert without two Heavies. Two Engies is pretty easy and a secondary Engie is actually a pretty good place to dump a player who can't shoot but knows how to operate a Construction PDA. Two Scouts, Pyros, Medics, Snipers, or Spies aren't usually the best idea, but are still quite doable.

In fact, one of the key weaknesses of the meta is a lack of redundancy. Most people think of redundancy as a bad thing, but it's actually a two-sided coin. Redundant things are not 100% efficient, but 100% efficiency is not needed in MvM. They do, however, provide room for error when your first line of defense goes down the tubes.

If you really want to have fun, you don't even need to stop at two of the same class!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWbfGIu63k&ab_channel=AutomotiveGaming

This is even a bigger lie than the duplicate classes thing.

Here we have the doubly wrong assumption that certain classes are necessary to begin with AND that certain other classes are equivalent to them. Different classes have extremely different capabilities. People would know that if they actually played more than just a few.

As we discussed before, there are only a few essential roles that need to be fulfilled in MvM. Therefore,

Number of Players > Number of Roles

The idea that you're "not allowed" to have two classes that can drop Medics. Or two classes that have decent anti-tank DPS. Or two classes that can crush giants. Is completely ludicrous.

Every class is unique and has its own abilities and roles. No class "replaces" another class. But the meta worshipers insist on their strict class balance and see any variations that they actually allow as "substitutions." You'll hear a lot of weird things.

"Spy replaces Demo."

Demo is a crowd-control class. Spy is a giant-killing class. Demo is far better at killing Uber Medics than Spy. If you judge a Spy by his effectiveness gaggle of 15 Uber Medics by himself, you're bound to be disappointed.

If you judge a fish by his ability to climb a tree, YOU probably should be climbing trees in Africa somewhere.

"Sniper replaces Demo."

These two classes DO function somewhat similarly. And they're also a bit overpowered. Why the hell would you not want both?

"Spy replaces Scout." (because he can slow the robots!)

Spy can function similarly to a Scout, although he's dreadful at killing tanks. But I think you're confusing "Scout" with "Mad Milk" and "slowing robots down" with "being super-useful."

"Pyro replaces Soldier/Heavy/Scout/Demo." (lol...there's not much of a consensus on that one).

Soldier because he's seen as "expendable" and a tank-killer. Heavy because a Pyro's also a high-damage, close-range class. Demo because apparently some people think juggling Uber Medics is equivalent to actually killing them. Scout because it's another close-combat class that can collect money and isn't seen by meta noobs as very powerful. They're all wrong. Pyro is Pyro.

Even though this was technically covered in the first section, this gets special attention because so many chuckleheads see Medic as some god-tier class that every team needs.

Guess what, kids? Back in the day, most people had no idea how to even make Medic a playable class in MvM. They beat tours a whole lot harder than Two Cities without one, so it shouldn't be a secret that you don't "need need" a Medic. Let's go even further, though: Medic doesn't help any more than any other class. In fact, the way most people play it, it often hurts more than helps.

First problem: Medic is a support class. If I join a struggling server mid-mission, picking a class that focuses on buffing players worse than me is NOT the best way for me to carry the server. I'm much better off choosing a damage class and mowing down robots myself. Eliminate the middle man. Medic works best if both the Medic AND patient know what they're doing. Which is rarely the case in meta-infested pubs.

Second problem: Tanks. The new meta basically takes the Pyro from the old meta and replaces him with a magic shield. It gives any class that cares to shelter behind it an easier time against things that actually shoot back, but at the expense of raw DPS. A good team with a good Medic can easily make up for this. Most teams just rob themselves of the best tank-killing class in the game.

Third problem: Putting all your eggs in one basket. Rather than two support classes and four damage classes, you now have 3 of each. True, the damage classes are a little more powerful with a Medic, but more is also resting on their shoulders and more will go wrong if one of them sucks. Usually what ends up happening is the Engineer is forced to become more of a damage class due to the other classes not pulling their weight.

Rather than use Medic as a full-time class, he's usually used as a passive Mobile Dispenser until something scary comes along, then he throws up his magic shield. This strategy runs into problems on missions where 6 classes playing full-time are desirable.

I just see a whole bunch of problems the New Medic has introduced into the MvM community. Spies, Snipers, and even Pyros now for some reason are forced to prove their worth as their class of choice because they are non-meta. New players are often coerced into playing the equally optional class of Medic even if they have no idea how to. And then there's the effect on playstyles. All of the new players introduced to MvM via Two Cities now think the only way to not die is to have a shield protecting them. They never learn to dodge, to exploit aggro, to shoot around corners, to buy Health on kill if you need it. Heck, they think the main point of Mad Milk is the slowing upgrade! Players rack up hundreds of tours by beating the mission the same way over and over, but take away their pocket Medic and they can't even outperform a newbie playing the same class. They didn't get good at the game over all of those tours: they just memorized one way to beat a mission without attaining any actual skill that can translate to new situations.

Then you have the Reanimator, theoretically a get-out-of-jail-free card for your f***-ups. But I personally hate it and wish Valve would include an auto-decline option. On average, Medics' attempts to revive are the opposite of helpful. Especially when they revive me in a burning hell of instant death, doing the opposite of what the Reanimator is supposed to do by effectively PROLONGING my respawn time.

Medic is supposed to buff the damage classes beyond what they are by themselves, not be used as an Easy Button for them to perform their basic functions. A lot of Heavy "mains" with hundreds of tours suck balls if you take away their German Butt Plug.

I've actually heard Engineers ask Medics to shield their Sentry from common robots.

"We need a Medic." Is also an extremely common excuse given for wave failures. Usually, said failures are actually the result of spectacularly bad performance on the part of multiple other classes, especially ones like Demo and Engie that should hardly take damage in the first place, with or without a Medic's shield. It's really funny when players want a Medic on missions like Disintegration where there's mostly melee bots, tanks, Scouts, and Pyros. But you obviously need a Medic to heal all that damage you're not taking.

We lost this wave. I should switch to a class I've never played before and whose control scheme I don't even understand because some internet wizard told me that class is more important than skill! Other options, like getting less horrible upgrades, kicking the worst player on the server, or leaving to practice in Boot Camp, are all out of the question.

Um, no.

If you're on a server full of bad players that keeps losing, switching to a class you're even less familiar with than your current one will almost never help. There are a few specific exceptions, mostly having to do with a Class X being overpowered on Wave Y.

Let me clarify:

It's Scout's job to collect about 80% of the money assuming you only have one and only one Scout, but that does not translate to money-collecting being 80% of his job.

If that doesn't make sense to you, you're probably one of those people that assumes a coin flip will land on Heads this time if it landed on Tails last time.

http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=590245077

Only if they're a really bad Scout. Then they might be more useful as Heavy.

This myth comes from the fact that most Scouts waste all of their money on resistances, and then they're basically useless when the last wave rolls around (although you might still suffer from the Scout switching if you were relying too heavily on Mad Milk healing or on Canteen Money). Scout is one of the slower classes when it comes to upgrading, so he's usually just reaching his peak of power at the end of the mission. Last wave is usually full of giants, tanks, and Snipers. Scout is great for killing all of these. In fact, Scout is the best tank killer in the game after Phlog Pyro and Bazooka Soldier.

Switching will not really make things any easier. Quite the opposite, in many cases. I often switch TO Scout last wave because it's fun as hell. And to p*** people off.

Strictly speaking, all classes can contribute their fair share with stock loadouts, so let's rephrase that.

"Buff Banner is the best Secondary for a Soldier."

Eeeehhhh. Not necessarily. The Buff Banner is best for tanks... FOCUSING TANKS AS A TEAM, but Banner minicrits are actually pretty redundant to a lot of the things in the meta and are sometimes overkill.

Beggar's Bazooka/Concheror. Once you try it, you can't go back. You are a freaking one-man army. It's not just the healing effect: the speed boost makes you infinitely better at dodging damage. The survival ability conferred by the combination of the two lets you make full use of the Bazooka's ability to endless spam rockets to level everything in your path.

It's really funny when players think the Banner literally defines the Soldier as a class. In my opinion, the difference between Beggar's and Stock is just as big on most missions as Banner vs. Shotgun, if not bigger.

Very few players use the Beggar's Bazooka in MvM anymore, and even fewer use it correctly. The Beggar's Bazooka has one key advantage over all other rocket launchers: it does not have to reload. As long as you can keep yourself supplied with ammo, your "clip" will never be exhausted. The ability to load multiple rockets is situationally quite useful but not actually important.

Reload Speed and Firing Speed work a little differently with the Beggar's Bazooka than other launchers. Firing Speed helps, but only a little. Suffice it to say, a Beggar's Bazooka with maximum Reload Speed will fire more rockets per minute than any other launcher with any amount of upgrades. In fact, this is possibly the only weapon where the Ammo Capacity upgrade is more important than Damage because you're firing so many dang rockets!

The only real downside is a lack of accuracy. But let's face it: this is not MLG Pro Ultiduo. Accuracy is not that important in MvM. Target are big. Targets are slow. Targets travel in clusters. Worst case scenario: you miss a lot, but you still do as much damage as you would otherwise because you're shooting more.

But what about Dispensers? That's easy. You make Dispenser runs while you're tooting your horn.

So, which would you prefer: 40% more raw DPS with a lower upgrade cost, or the ability to pick off Snipers from across the map? The Beggar's Bazooka isn't the best in ALL situations because it is a little unwieldy, but it's probably the best all-around choice and your Soldier should almost certainly be using it if he's the only real tank-buster you have.

A lot of people see classes like Engie, Scout, Demo, and, increasingly, Medic as "essential," and don't trust newbies to play them. In their eyes, Soldier is an "expendable" class that it's safe to let clueless people play. Unfortunately, the cluelessness doesn't seem too go away.

Most Soldiers, even high-tour Soldiers, tend to do pathetically in MvM. They exist as little more than a source of minicrits for the Heavy and a mediocre tank buster. Play a tour of Operation Two Cities, and chances are good you'll run into a couple of Soldiers with dozens or even hundreds of tours who fail to be even half as useful as the 0-tour Heavy.

Just to be clear, that's NOT supposed to happen.

I mean, I know a lot of people think Soldier is just a really weak but somehow necessary class in MvM, but I assure you: Soldier is quite the powerhouse and one of my go-to "carry classes." Besides, an experienced player should ALWAYS be contributing more than a starry-eyed greenhorn. Much more.

Kind of? But if your team is half-decent, the Engineer should have less damage than the actual damage classes. The DPS of a Sentry against a horde is rather unimpressive, at least after the first couple of waves. There is no penetration, and very little splash damage. It has very high single-target DPS, but the only other advantage it has is that it can fire constantly and never miss. Thus, if the Engineer has as much damage as the damage classes, it usually means he is shooting more than they are.

That means they're probably dead. Because they suck.

.................................................

Really, Engineer is kind of like Medic, Scout, and Spy... part-damage, part-utility class. They shouldn't usually get top-damage unless their team is bad because of their limitations, although they can and will if they're good enough in comparison to their teammates.

Do I really need to explain?

Pyro is actually a rather easy way to do lots of damage with W+M1. Even the worst Pyros can kill tanks if their upgrades don't suck too bad.

Spy's backstabs positive ravage giants and Steel Gauntlets, and he absorbs tons of fire that would otherwise be directed at his teammates.

Sniper's headshots already do quite a bit of damage in their own right. Plus they cause a massive area-of-effect Bleed Damage blast that can level entire battalions of robots. And stun anything it doesn't kill. Oh, and the money resulting from those kills is collected automatically, but will still give Scouts health if they pick it up. Lol.

If you somehow find yourself among meta nerds who actually allowed you to play Pyro, they will probably *nicely ask* you to airblast something at some point. Imagine their surprise when you tell them you are using the Phlog!

Pyros who use airblast to any significant degree are what we call "Support Pyros." They don't really burn much except Tanks and Spies. Now, airblast can be quite useful in specific instances, and I know some experienced players who play Support Pyro at a high level, at least on certain waves (u can swich wepins beetween wayves, wut?), but let's just ignore Support Pyro and its validity as a class for now and focus on Damage Pyro.

It turns out Pyro is an extremely high-DPS class when holding down the W and the M1. That's right, in Soviet MvM, noob pyros don't know how to M1! In fact, the two best flamethrowers for most MvM missions are the Backburner and the Phlog, based on preference and situation. First, you start off as a squishy but high-DPS ambush class, then once you can afford resistances you can pretty much wade face-first through clusters of crit Bowmen.

Meanwhile, teams that run Support Pyro and Medic and Scout find themselves with only 2 full-time damage classes.

At any rate, you should NOT juggle robots in mid-air with airblast as any kind of Pyro, except maybe for Super Scouts. Pyros seem to feel that they're helping when they juggle because they're slowing the robot's progress. However, they're also slowing their team's progress in killing the robot. Airblast is a big source of lag in TF2. Making a robot bounce around off the ground will make it much harder for Soldiers, Demos, Snipers, and even other classes to hit. Also, any time you're hitting M2, you're not hitting M1. Avoid doing a soft-reset on a bomb and not killing the bomb carrier immediately after. Otherwise, you may have bought your team time, but the robot will come back with friends, all of them buffed. A situation your team is probably not ready to deal with if they were relying on resets in the first place.

Like I said before, a fully-upgraded Scattergun does quite a bit of damage and is one of the best anti-tank weapons in the game. Like the Soldier and Demo Primaries, you can upgrade both its actuation speed and its actual damage. This makes it very different from shotguns or miniguns. A point-blank meatshot does about as much damage as a fully upgraded rocket, just without splash damage. Take clip-reloading weapons like Soda Popper and Shortstop, and you're packing even more firepower.

In addition to killing tanks and gang-banging giants, scatterguns can also be used to drop Uber Medics that certain other classes might've missed. A good Scout is a better Medic picker than a bad Demo.

A lot of players use the excuse that they're "focusing on collecting money" and can't be bothered to fight robots. But by fighting robots, you will almost automatically collect 95% of the money with your money aura, but that last 5% can take some effort to hunt down if your team is bad (aka 99% of the time). A Scout that focuses on damage and gets most of the money is way more helpful than one that gets all of the money but doesn't do squat after that.

Operation Oil Spill

Doe's Doom - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=374177314
Day of Wreckoning - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=345244859
Cave-in - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=347169627
Quarry - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=346831711
Mean Machines - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=347091983
Mannhunt - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=345504756

Operation Steel Trap
Disk Deletion - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=351748201
Data Demolition - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=352091868
Ctrl+Alt+Destruction - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=349393390
CPU Slaughter - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=349365478
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=411175407
Machine Massacre - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=350196368
Mech Mutilation - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=348675937

Operation Two Cities
Empire Escalation - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=377888851
Metro Malice - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=349893606
Hamlet Hostility - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320506028
Bavarian Botbash - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320976591
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=407489556

Operation Mecha Engine
Broken Parts - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=350338858
Bone Shaker - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=381418823
Disintegration - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=351626130

Operation Gear Grinder
Desperation* - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=352443843
Cataclysm - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=392456735
Mannslaughter* - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=632559845

Tourless Missions
Doe's Drill - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=350222213
Crash Course - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=348647042
Mann-euvers - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=350294272
Benign Infiltration - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=349681412
Big Apple Barricade - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=346933832
Village Vanguard - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=346509759
Caliginous Caper - http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=348170080

*Didn't even have top-damage on this server.

The meta says Scouts need resistances to stay alive. The meta also says Scouts should play like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and nurse their overheal. I'm confused here. I play full Damage Scout and I have a very reckless playstyle, but I still manage to keep my deaths to an acceptable level. Your typical meta Scout throws milk and then runs away. Why does he need resistances when I don't?

Your our own mobility is the most important thing for keeping you alive, followed by healing from money. Resistances make staying alive a bit easier, but robots will just chew right through them when the sh*t REALLY hits the fan. Besides, you have fast-respawn as Scout. As long as you have an Engie with a teleporter, there is very little consequence for messing up as Scout.

I've heard resistances described as "training wheels" for new Scouts, but I think that's a misnomer. I'd prefer people just learned to play Scout the right way from the get-go on easier difficulties and then worked their way up.

That's not to say you should never buy Resistances. I shudder at the thought of playing Broken Parts with no resistances. Let's just say "Resistances are not more important for Scout than for any other class."

My motto:
Pacifist Scouts don't need resistances.
Damage Scouts can't afford them.

Because they heal if you get hit.

Actually, if a couple of damage classes focus-fire them, they will die from full health before they can reload. Let them heal all they want. Just so long as you kill them in a timely manner. P***yfooting around trying to not let them heal will probably just make it take longer to kill them.

If you have a Heavy, he can just mow them down by himself in a few seconds. Without crits.

Okay, some of you may know I like to troll Medics when I play Demo by ignoring them when they try to give me pre-round crits. I know, I know, free crits never hurt (as long as you don't have to wait around for the Medic). The problem comes when players attach extreme importance to this ritual that very rarely makes even the slightest difference. They see it as part of the magical set of powers that makes Medic a super-duper impossible-to-win-without class in MvM, so much so that some Demomen will actually buy crit canteens on missions where they don't have a Medic to use for the ritual.

"Demo and Soldier on the tank!"

Killing tanks is just an exercise in brutal efficiency. Good classes. Good weapons. Good upgrades. Usually one of the above is all you need, but people still screw it up.

The Two Cities meta calls for Demo and Soldier on the tank. The Soldier is usually using the stock Rocket Launcher, which has far less tank-killing capability than the Beggar's Bazooka, but he's still a decent tank-killing class, and the Buff Banner can help a lot IF THERE ARE ONE OR MORE PLAYERS HELPING HIM KILL THE TANK. A Demoman using Stickybombs is usually that partner, even though either Engie or Heavy is comparable to him as a tank-killer. The only real advantage he has over them is that he can make better use of a Medic's Kritz. But when was the last time you saw a Medic make himself useful when there was a tank on the map? Meanwhile, Scout, arguably the best tank-killer in the Two Cities Meta lineup, is actively discouraged from even looking at the tank. Having Scout land the final blow on a tank prevents the money from getting stuck on roofs and stuff.

Now, EVERYONE knows Pyro is good at killing tanks. But people seem to think he has some kind of inherent god-tier power that makes tanks die instantly. Not really. He has high, sustained DPS even with few upgrades, but ultimately, Soldier, Scout, and even Demoknight can make much better tank killers if he's not using the Phlogistinator. And that's assuming a decent upgrade path. Having your Soldier with crappy upgrades switch to a Stock Pyro with crappy upgrades will NOT make your tank problems magically go away.

Heavy has a 75% damage nerf against tanks. Yes, it's true. More strictly speaking, only 1 out of every 4 bullets he fires is actually counted for net damage against a tank. HOWEVER, this does NOT mean he's bad against tanks. Heavy has extremely high close-range DPS. Tanks are big, slow-moving targets that don't fight back. The 75% nerf is to keep Heavy from being ridiculously overpowered against tanks. His damage against them is still formidable, especially early-game when other classes don't have many upgrades.

Don't underestimate the power of melee against tanks. The damage is appreciable, and the random crit chance is high. Melee is a great way for Engineers, Medics, Heavies, and Snipers to put out more damage against tanks than they would be able to otherwise.

Here, have a chart.


All are numbers based on Hacked Exhale's spreadsheet[docs.google.com] with crit modifiers supplied by the author.

While the Kritzkrieg is certainly the best medigun, it's not required to play Medic. Especially with the pocket-shield playstyle favored by many Medics. Any medigun can make a shield just fine.

Your mom is bad in Mannhattan.

http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=279574861

Soldier is probably a bit better on Empire Escalation except for last wave, but both classes are perfectly fine (see above). However, Metro Malice has large numbers of stand-alone giants rather than clustered targets for Soldier to take advantage of with splash damage, and he will never be able to keep up with the massive DPS of a Backburner Pyro standing behind giants holding M1.

The absence of tanks doesn't mean much except that Spy is extra-awesome. Especially since he can infiltrate past the Engie bots that your doofus teammates allowed set up everywhere.

Any damage class can easily be used to deal the most damage on a server. The Heavy's damage is often skewed because he usually has a fire hoose up his butt in Two Cities and is actually doing damage for two people, but even those damage numbers can be trumped by a good Soldier or Pyro, even if the Medic completely ignores them.

Here's a bunch of screenshots I had lying around:

Soldier: http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=274128714
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=315781701
Haha, I have to keep adding more: http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=340891822
Demo: http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=273538769
Sniper: http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=291424120
Spy: http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=287233950
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=314370023
Scout: http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320506028
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320976591

And you already saw Pyro.

I will add the footnote that Spy is the hardest class other than Scout or Medic to top-damage with because he is so specialized. Very powerful against certain targets, but rubbish at picking up the slack when others aren't doing their "job."

I'm not entirely sure this counts as meta, but enough people do it that its problematic.

Knockback Rage can be situationally useful, but it's seen by the majority of experienced players as a failsafe for bad teams or a way to goof around by shooting robots into the air. Spamming it is rarely a good idea. It gives Demomen, Spies, and Snipers a significantly harder time trying to hit their targets. And some people like to use it on Giant Medics.

The declawed Giant Medics of Mannhattan aren't much of a threat and there shouldn't much of a problem other than Spies and Backburner Pyros being unable to properly attack the Medic that you just pinned to the wall. When you use it against REAL Giant Medics, though, problems arise.

Heavies aren't going to be able to kill Giant Medics without popping them except at close range. Raging them away is counterproductive, especially if one of the classes mentioned above is trying to kill them. Furthermore, separating the Medic from its patient can be very bad if the patient dies first... the Medic can latch on to a new patient. On Bigrock, this new patient could be a Super Scout. In Rottenburg, it will most likely be another Giant Medic. The two will be basically invincible until separated again.

This is a perfectly valid fun strategy, but most people don't use it like that. They consider it a tryhard strategy and will never try anything else. I honestly don't know how hard it is to beat this wave with the meta build. Probably fairly hard, considering the meta build tends to have trouble with just one tank. So teams usually have at least the Scout switch to Pyro (see "Scout Needs to Switch Last Wave") because he doesn't have any upgrades in his Primary.

The problem is, most people don't know how to play Pyro because this is the only wave they ever play Pyro. When teams do this, they often ignore the bomb and then get killed by the buffed bomb carrier. In the long run, they don't beat the wave any faster than they should've with a more balanced team. One or two dedicated tank-killlers is more than enough to kill these puny tanks, and you should've had those all along. But that's our good friend, the Refund, completely eliminating the need for skill and long-run strategy by just allowing you to switch to the most overpowered class for each wave.

If you really want to have a one-class team, Soldiers are probably more reliable. Scouts are really good, too, if a bit squishy. Might want an Engineer to keep the Pyros off their backs.

Another excuse for noobs to rely on the Projectile Shield.

Ways to single-handedly neutralize this horde whether or not there is a competent Medic on the team:
1. Soldier standing off to the side to wipe them out with a few rockets.
2. Pyro waiting underneath the robot spawn to burn their butts. Heavy might be able to do a similar maneuver, but it won't be as fast.
3. A sticky trap.
4. Explosive Headshots.
5. A fully upgraded Sapper.

There you go. At least 5 classes can singlehandedly demolish the entire batallion without any help whatsoever. Oh, look... 3 of the 5 aren't meta classes.

Sometimes, poor class balance can be an issue. But 99% of the time players blame class balance for losses in MvM, that is not the case. If we have one thing to thank the meta for, it's that it's actually fairly rare to see team class choices that are inherently stupid. So, failure usually occurs for other reasons, one of them being skill.

Everyone on a server could have impeccable weaponry with good upgrades and be working together to implement a solid strategy, but still fail miserably. This is a case of Simply Not Being Good Enough. It happens, sad but true. Worse: it stacks. A lack of competence on the part of any one player makes everyone else's job harder. 6 players all doing slightly less than they should really adds up!

Fortunately, robots are not nearly as formidable as humans, so the actual amount of skill required isn't all that much. The skill problem is also a two-edged sword: playing with noobs can make the game more exciting and forces you to actually be good! In fact, the game mode is seemingly balanced around playing with random strangers who aren't that good. If you have experienced players playing with other experienced players, Expert Mode suddenly becomes Too Easy.

Everyone likes scapegoats. I admit I even resort to them sometimes.

A failure is rarely the fault of a single player. Good teams can compensate for the occasional mistake. Bad teams increase their likelihood by making everyone's job harder.

There's never been a rule that says you can't change classes between rounds. Generally, changing classes randomly throughout the mission is a behavior associated with noobs who don't understand the importance of upgrades, but it can also be an advanced technique to make a mission easier. Sometimes, a class just isn't well-suited for a wave, and you can be more useful playing as another class without little to no upgrades. Heavy, Pyro, and Engineer all start off with a rather high percentage of their maximum DPS, and the main advantage upgrades provide to these classes is survivability. Let's look at an example of how this could work by looking at the Expert level Decoy mission.

Wave 1: Increased Ammo and Firing Speed make Scottish Resistance Demo a very powerful class against crowds and Uber Medics, even without upgrades. If you really need it, you can get a point of health on kill to keep you alive while perched above the robot spawn and even sell it back before the wave is over.

Wave 2: Killing Scouts? Just go Heavy. No upgrades required.

Wave 3: Phlog Pyro is great against Steel Gauntlets and retains half of his maximum DPS with zero upgrades. Since most of the robots on this wave use melee, Health on Kill and other typical Pyro upgrades are pretty unnecessary. Hopefully your team has a Medic killer after you switched from Demo, but it's not too crucial that the 10 Medics don't pop Uber. If you really want to start upgrading, now would be a good time to go Sniper.

Wave 4: Engineer is great against tanks, and Sentries are immune to crits. A Sentry without upgrades can still do two-thirds of its maximum DPS. Just buy a couple of Instant Upgrade canteens. Phlog Pyro could also work if Spies are too much of a pain.

Wave 5: If you haven't already upgraded Sniper, invest all of your money in Spy. You might want to buy one Uber canteen to take down the first Giant Medic without waiting for the Soldiers to get out of the way.

Wave 6: Stay Spy. Kill Giant Soldiers. You'll also be able to get the Uber Medics early if your team is pushed back.

Wave 7: Refund and switch to Sniper if you don't have one already. Buy a few crit canteens for the tank at the end. Spy's still really good for this wave, but Sniper is better.

There. You've just beaten Expert Decoy and played up to 6 different classes in the process. Without using exploits to get your money back. In fact, you should have a pretty respectable score in spite of the fact you played the first 4 waves without upgrades.

The mark of a decent MvM player is being able to come up with a strategy completely on the basis of theory and it still working better than the Almighty Meta. I actually went and tried something similar to the above without even refunding. I just split my upgrades between Spy and Sniper:
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=311486988

Another strategy I like is to play Sniper for all waves of Mannslaughter except Wave 2.

No, I'm not. But Sniper's even more overpowered than usual on this mission, so don't worry.

While not all classes are equal in terms of difficulty, there isn't as much difference as you might think. If you're truly good enough to play Heavy or Soldier at an Advanced level, then there's no reason for you to not be able to play Sniper at the same level. Heck, I'd say Scout actually has nearly as high of a skill ceiling as Sniper, but underachievers label it as an easy class. Learning every class has huge benefits, and the idea that players should avoid difficult classes only makes sense for complete newbies and has no place on an Advanced mission.

Why do the masses see Spy, Sniper, and Pyro as bad or at least really hard classes? Because most of the people who play them are newbs whose minds are untainted by the meta. Of course they'll do bad. But people operate under the assumption they'll do better as meta classes. Maybe Heavy, but they might even mess that up. The meta forces players to only play and practice certain classes. Of course players skilled in the others are rare...-er. The result is that they are seen as requiring some unobtainable level of skill to play.

Another reason players see certain classes as harder or less useful is the existence of easy missions. Operation Oil Spill is basically 5 people running around like idiots while the Engineer does all the work. Easy missions make it seem like the best classes are the ones that can mow down endless waves of Scout bots. Spy is bad at that, of course, and Sniper isn't worth the trouble.

But somehow Medic gets a free pass as the Moral Support class. Oil Spill Medics do literally nothing, but teams demand them just like in Two Cities.

Sniper IS harder to play in Two Cities compared to other missions because of all the spam and relative lack of good sightlines, but it's still borderline OP objectively speaking.

TL;DR: Bad players are bad. Players seem to notice a bad Spy or Sniper, but rarely complain about a bad Soldier or Heavy. Demos and Engies will still get complaints for missed Medics or missing Dispensers, though.

A pretty common response to the question of "What is Scout's role in MvM?" is something like "To get money and slow down giants." So sad.

1. Getting money is easy. If you're not doing MUCH more than just that, you're a waste of a player.
2. Mad Milk doesn't actually slow down regular giants. Just Super Scouts.

A Scout should the slowing effect upgrade until AT LEAST the first wave that has Super Scouts, since those are the only robots the upgrade is really useful against. The upgrade can also make a Sniper's headshots easier, but he shouldn't need it and can throw his own Jarate if he wants.

People have this weird idea that slowing the robots down is extremely important for some reason, and will often attach this importance to certain classes. The first thing players ask a Sniper that they don't kick outright is if he has Jarate, even though it doesn't really matter. They scream for Spies to waste time sapping giants (which, unlike Mad Milk, DOES slightly slow them), not realizing Spy is a giant killer. Some Heavies will equip the Natascha and insist it's useful even if there's another Heavy on the same server doing twice as much damage. As mentioned above, airblast and Rage are even worse. Wasting a whole player slot on a Pyro who can't do more damage than a half-a** Scout because he spams M2 will always lead to problems. And just watch a giant's health bar stop going down when it's getting knocked back, then come back and tell me Rage is worthwhile.

Kind of. If by "exotic" you mean "all Scouts" or something.

I just played a round on Hamlet Hostility with a friend. We had 2 Scouts, 2 Soldiers, an Engie, and a Sniper. Once it became clear we weren't going to lose miserably like the peons expected, one guy said something along the lines of "I guess you can do stuff like this with experienced players."

Except no. Most of the players were fairly "experienced" in Two Cities (average tours ignoring my friend and me was about 40), but the workload was not equal. My friend did way more damage than everybody else as Soldier, and I came in a distant 2nd as Scout. The 50-tour Sniper didn't do much and the other Scout (also about 50 tours) was Bonking most of the time.

The moral of the story is there are 2 kinds of players: those who are good enough to do pretty much whatever they want, and those who are bad enough that it usually doesn't matter what class they play. Most servers just involve one or two players carrying the rest. Actual teamwork is rare. And overpowered. Competent players using teamwork makes the game stupidly easy, so then you have to play all Scouts and stuff to make it fun.

EDIT: Do you really need a bunch of Experts to use all Scouts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqRMiOu8FvA&ab_channel=UnderscoreGaming

Sniper becomes more important for more difficult missions.

Due to the uselessness of your average Medic, some people also think a Medic has no place in Mecha Engine or Gear Grinder, but that's not true. Ha! I just defended the Medic as a class!

Ooooh, look how much better this 13-tour playing a class that's pretty powerful without any upgrades whatsoever did on Wave 1 compared to the 0-tour who came in not knowing anything and needing everything explained to him. God forbid we let 0-tours play classes where you don't have to aim.

http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=324945618

That B was totally because we had a Pyro, not because we played half the wave with 4 people.

Preface: the Fan O' War is a good weapon. Unlike the Sun-on-a-Stick, it isn't completely useless in MvM. I even equip it on my 0-tour smurf account. However, the idea that it's in any way an essential part of a Scout's loadout or that EVERY giant should be marked with it is really dumb.

Even if you're not an idiot Scout who holds down M1 with the Fan out except when stopping to milk Super Scouts, chances are that you use the Fan too much. Switching weapons to fan a giant is often a waste of time. The Fan is only worth using on giants about to take focus-fire from teammates. The problem is, Scout is a pretty good giant-killer by himself, and most giants under focus fire will not not live more than 2 seconds anyway. The Fan is generally only worth it against bosses with massive health pools or on the first wave or two when your team does not yet have enough upgrades to take down giants quickly.

Setting up an equation to calculate exactly when fanning is worth it requires a lot of assumptions, but, basically, Scout can do about 310-400 base damage per second to giants by approximately mid mission, depending on weapon choice. It takes AT LEAST 1.83 seconds to mark a giant and switch back to a useful weapon (unless you're the idiot Scout running around with the upgraded Fan). The Fan O' War only increases damage by 35%, so you need to make sure that the total damage increase from you marking that giant is bigger than the 570-735 damage you're missing out on by switching to the weapon. So, the robot needs to take 1625-2100 damage in the next 8 seconds that is not already boosted by Buff Banner, Kritzkrieg, Canteens, Phlog Taunt, or random crits, or done in an inherently critical way like Backstab, Headshot or Backburner crits, in order for you to break even when using the Fan. Additionally, there can't be any Battalion's Backup Soldiers nearby negating your mark (I have literally seen a 105-tour Scout attempting to mark Backup Soldiers.). And that's not taking into account the fact that running up and tagging a giant with melee is more clumsy and more likely to get you killed than just strafing and shooting. AND that's assuming you're even standing close enough to the giant to attack it in a timely enough manner that the robot isn't already half-dead by the time you mark it. AND it's assuming there aren't clustered robots causing each of Scout's shots to do 2-3 times as much damage. And that the Scout isn't under the influence of Crit-a-Cola.

Let's take a look at how much health non-boss giants tend to have:

Scout: usually 1200, sometimes 1600 or 3000
Soldier: 3800-4200
Pyro: 3000
Demo: 3300 or less
Heavy: 5000
Medic: 4500

Most giants need to still have half-health or more under these conditions for a mark to be worth it. They need to be taking enough damage that the damage increase caused by the mark is appreciable, but they also need to be taking little enough that they're not almost dead by the time the Scout whacks them. Marking Super Scouts is pretty much never worth it because they have so little health and because they're actually hard to hit with melee on a laggy MvM server.

Even if a Scout is using the BFB (worst weapon) with no upgrades and the Fan isn't redundant to some other boosting effect, the Fan can never provide more than 1600 extra damage per non-boss giant. And a Scout can do 1600 damage in about 4 seconds.

My point isn't that the Fan isn't good. It's just that it's not good under every single circumstance, and the actual benefits it provides are rather small even under ideal conditions. Now stop making servers wait 10 minutes for your stupid trade to go through because your Scout 'needs' a Fan.

If you think about it, the meta is a lot like Communism. It preordains "roles" for everybody "for the greater good." Also like Communism, it grossly overestimates the capacity of human beings to work together in a meaningful way and disincentivizes hard work. Why spend 4 years to get an engineering degree if you'd get the same pay as a garbage man? Why get good when you can blame someone else for not doing "their" job?

The role we're going to talk about here is: Medic Picking! Here's how Medic-picking works, according to the meta:

Dawn finds the veteran Demonstrations Man perched high above a field of blackened robot husks, patiently waiting for his quarry. Suddenly, the sharp senses of the able Scotsman pick up the sound of a twig snapping over the din, and he knows his wait has come to an end. Down below, his comrades simultaneously cease their firing, also picking up on the sound. They stand dutifully waiting for the master to perform his work. Eight little spheres sail through the morning air and land with soft "plops" in a neat pattern on the ground. There is a flash of light: the sun glinting off the helm of a gigantic robotic warrior, flanked by an entourage of wheeled assistants. Slowly, the behemoth treads overs the little spiked balls. Suddenly, a loud report brings the brief stillness to an end. The monster's followers drop lifeless the ground, and the waiting mercenaries spring to life as a single being to snuff the life from the larger foe with brutal efficiency. It is over. The battle is won. Lord Gaben comes gliding into their midst on a winged steed, bearing gifts of Australium and headgear. Embracing the victors, he assures each of them that 70 girl gamers await in paradise when their mortal lives draw to a close many years hence. Remounting and taking to the skies, he waves farewell and flies off to parts unknown. The noble warriors sit and watch in wonder, gazing off at the horizon long after their lord has departed.

Here's a more typical scenario:

The super-awesome Demoman who just happens to be cursed with horrible teammates on every server he joins rushes to the front from spawn, hastening to get into position before the next group of enemies arrive after one of the many but all-too-short lulls in the urban warfare. Fortunately, he sill has time to have the Medic zap him with the happy-beam before he goes to work, laying his sparkling payload out in the exact same place a wise old Demoman of 3 tours once taught him. He hears the tramp of the oncoming robots, and... But wait. What's this? Out of the corner of his eye he notices some money that has been sitting on the ground for a whole 5 seconds without the lazy Scout picking it up! The Demo dives at the cash and retrieves it gleefully. Several small robots run up to him and nearly whack him to death with baseball bats, and only the loving caress of the happy-beam saves him from bludgeoning. Looking up, he notices that the robots are standing over his trap. He also notices the speeding streak of a blue rocket, which kills him instantly. Thanks to the lazy Scout, Helen hasn't given him any bonus money yet, and he has only been able to afford the bare essentials like Jump Height and Health Regen, thriftily forgoing luxuries like Crit Resistance and Reload Speed. Fortunately, the Medic uses the happy-beam to jolt his charred corpse back to life. Disoriented, he gradually becomes aware that his teammates are looking at him expectantly. The robots! There is still time. Mechanically, he deploys his bombs once more, but in his haste forgets that Gaben is angry with the Demo people, and has reduced the power of their bombs. The sloppily aimed charges are not enough to level the Robot Medics, but merely turn some of them a brilliant blue, while completely missing others. The Demoman's teammates, waiting dutifully all this time, are slaughtered without a fight, and the evil robots begin a triumphant march to the bomb hatch. But there is hope yet. The Engineer rallies the respawned mercenaries at a fallback point. They all wait nervously for the Demoman to perform his duty. The great warrior expends the last of his ammo, setting his trap one last time. The moment nears. The robots move into place. And their hapless enemy is smitten through the heart with a bolt of lag from Gaben in his high heaven. The robots push on unmolested. The red-clothed humans are butchered like pigs without resisting. Staggering from the smoking ruins of the razed Mann Co. facility, the unhappy Scotsman tears his clothes and curses the incompetent Medic for letting him die when the Medics first appeared.

Dropping each and every Medic bot is a nice ideal, and many Demomen can do it in calm, controlled situations. But MvM pubs are rarely calm or controlled, and your average Demoman will miss Medics even then.

Popping Medics early is almost as good as dropping them outright. More importantly, it's way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY better than popping them late. Very often in pubs, players dutifully wait for a Demoman to drop Medics and refuse to shoot. The Demo, due to any number of reasons, proves unequal to the task, and the robot Medics are popped later rather than sooner. Rather than their Uber being wasted far downrange, it is used quite effectively right on top of the defenders' position, with predictable results.

Now, I'm not saying to ignore your pick class and pop Medics religiously the second they drop (at least not until said pick class has repeatedly demonstrated that you should), but the SECOND you suspect that those Meds aren't going down, do your best to drop and/or pop them yourself, depending on what class you're playing. The consequences of popping prematurely when you didn't need to are far less than allowing Medics to push forward with full charge. The Demo with a sticky trap way back behind the Dispenser may assure you he has everything under control and that you should stop popping Medics, but don't listen to him.

Okay, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here. This really doesn't have to do with the meta, but it's part of the same mindset.

Heck, even most noobs know this. The problem is, they tend to only think this applies to people who disagree with them.

In a "Well, the experts who AGREE with me say..." kind of way. It's basically a type of confirmation bias. In politics or other areas of contention, people ignore information that doesn't confirm their personal beliefs or interpret information in a way that DOES confirm them. In the same way, low-tour MvM players assume people with hundreds of tours are good UNLESS they do something the low-tours disagree with. Then they're all "I don't care how many tours you have, you suck," without any grounds for their accusations other than their own prejudices. Somehow it never occurs to them that maybe that maybe, just maybe, there are people out there that know things that they don't. And people with hundreds of tours are pretty likely candidates.

C'mon. We all thought our parents were stupid when we were 5 because they couldn't understand how buying candy was more important than paying the electric bill. It's the same thing.

/tangent

But part of the reason these players jump to this conclusion when their prejudices are challenged is that high-tour players can and often DO suck. So, the question is not IF, but WHY?

I think there are a lot of possible reason why people can still suck after dozens or hundreds of tours. Here are a few:

Complacency

The robots aren't getting any tougher, so why should you? If it worked before, it'll work again. And if it doesn't, you can always blame your teammates.

Personally, I'm like "Wouldn't it be cool if I could do more than everyone else COMBINED????"

Most people be like: "I will hold myself to the same standard I did 100 tours ago. And I will hold all of these people with a fraction of the the experience I have to the basically the same standard."

Playing With Friends

Let's face it: killing bots is not that hard.

Let's face it: the randoms you meet on public servers are not that good.

So... playing with a group of reliable friends of even mediocre ability makes the missions like a whole order of magnitude easier. Pubbing makes you strong. Some players who play with friends learn to be very good. And some take their teammates' competency for granted and can't function in pubs where not everybody is doing exactly 1/6th of the workload.

Repetition

Kind of goes with playing with friends. Players who beat missions the same way over and over again lack adaptability. Not only can THEY not enact new strategies themselves, but they can't adapt to teammates who use different classes, different loadouts, or just different tactics than they're used to. A good MvM player can excel even in completely unfamiliar situations. These people, on the other hand, can't even function at a basic level if you take away their same-ness. They memorized a series of button presses and clicks they didn't learn to play a game.

One time I met a guy on a server who was actually cognizant enough to realize "Wow, I forgot those robots existed. I usually play with a great Demo and Medic who kill them so fast nobody notices. It's so different from playing with friends." A lot of high tours would just die a lot and blame everybody else instead.

Remember: memorizing the missions always helps, but actually knowing the game mechanics will get you a LOT further. Nothing is more satisfying than doing something most people assume to be impossible. On your first try. Completely unrehearsed. Just because you know how to play the f***ing game.

It's a game, not a stage play. Heck, in stage plays, actors will sometimes ad lib. The fun police won't have that in MvM!

Heavy Mains

Let's face it. If you've done hundreds of tours and you're not bored out of your mind with Heavy, you're... special.

Seriously, there seems to be a NEGATIVE correlation between tours and skill when it comes to Heavies.

Hackers
MvM hackers DO exist. Heavy and Sniper are the most popular choices. Sometimes these people will offer their "services" to loot farmers. A lot of players knowingly or unknowingly have ill-gotten tours. If you see a Heavy effortlessly moving down bots from really far away, not caring how well his teammates do as long as they kill tanks and keep Spies off his back, kick him and report him. Please.

Persistence

Like I said: killing bots is easy. If you just keep joining servers and do what you're told, you will eventually find servers willing to carry you. This is how most people get their first few tours. And that's okay. That's how you learn. But Two Cities is, unfortunately, easier than Gear Grinder or Mecha Engine and gives better loot, so persistence is MUCH more effective and popular than it ever has been. Anyone with a functioning nervous system can rack up Two Cities tours if they can afford the tickets. Two Cities is designed to be a cash cow for Valve: now, ANYONE can be a farmer! No skill necessary!

General Rule of Thumb:
High tours who don't follow the meta are usually good. You don't get lots of tours by ticking people off AND being bad. It's the people who FOLLOW the meta that could go either way. You can get pretty far by keeping your head down and pretending to be useful. Here, have a song.

http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/firstlor.htm

Well, they kind of do. Pyro is generally the hardest class to stay alive as. However, Pyro has massive DPS to make up for it. He's a glass cannon. And tanks don't fight back, so that's why a tank-busting 0-tour Pyro with Phlog is often more useful than a high-tour underachiever.

So yes, Pyros die "a lot." But look at the scoreboard before you kick one. Doesn't matter how many times you die, as long as you win. I've seen many "0-tour noob Pyros" get kicked by people they were actually doing better than.

Also, it's infinitely harder for a Pyro to stay alive when his team sucks because he needs to be close in to fight robots, which is hard to do if all his teammates are dead or hiding in corners and all robots are focused entirely on him. So, if your Pyro is "dying too much," he might be a noob Gibusvision who rushes in facefirst and dies. Or it might be reflecting back on you and your other teammates.

So, basically, dying a lot doesn't necessarily mean someone is being useless. It often just means they're standing alone against the robots while their teammates hide behind the sentry and make Engie do all the work.

Dead Ringer is without a doubt 100% the BEST Spy watch for MvM period you can take the to the bank robots are dumb hallelujah. HOWEVER, there are NO "necessary" weapons for any class in MvM. A Spy is not completely useless without the godly Dead Ringer, and in some missions he can still be downright good. You just need to play more carefully.

http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=353839971

It's nice to top off everyone when you can, but you can't be everywhere at once, and some classes are just better Uber targets than others. And some players are more worth your time than others. When I see bad players dying and blaming a Medic for pocketing the Heavy, I roll my eyes. In a lot of situations, pocketing is quite effective, and no amount of Medicking is going to fix some of the stupid you see out there.

So it's debatable.

Except you should never, ever heal the Soldier with 2 health swinging at a Tank with an Equalizer.

Dummies.

Please undo the Equalizer nerf, Valve.

"You don't want a Medic in Gear Grinder or Mecha Engine because you need more damage output."

No. With the exception of Broken Parts, all Gear Grinder and Mecha Engie missions require LESS damage output than the Two Cities missions. The reason Expert is harder is because most of the robots in Two Cities are just lower-level AI cannon fodder for you to effortlessly rack up kills against.

So... easier mission with larger numbers of pathetic robots? Skip out on a damage class to run a healing/protecting/buffing class! Harder mission with fewer numbers of tougher robots? Run as many damage classes as possible (read: "four")! Makes sense, right?

You see, what they SHOULD be saying is that there is less room for useless players in Expert, and Medic is one of those classes that players are historically bad at in MvM, even after Valve made it more noob-friendly in the Two Cities update. The Gear Grinder meta already includes 2 Heavies, whose lives will become much easier with even a bad Medic. There's no reason you can't have a Medic in Expert. In fact, a few waves become stupidly easy because they weren't balanced around the existence of the Projectile Shield.

It's a shame most Expert teams waste their "useless player" slots on "Scout that doesn't do anything except Milk 'n Mark" and "Pyro that doesn't do anything except kill tanks."

This kind-of-not-meta strategy has become almost meta in that many meta-followers have adopted it for Bavarian Botbash. And they have perverted it accordingly. They claim that this ONLY works for Botbash. That it is better than other strategies for Botbash. That the Soldier count needs to be 4 or 1. Not 2. Not 3. Not 5 or 6.

4 or 1.

I don't know how they manage to say that with a straight face.

News Flash: Soldier is the most well-rounded class in MvM, and he is relatively simple to play if you don't let metards (meta + retard... Don't blame me, I didn't coin the phrase) teach you. 4 Soldiers will work just swimmingly on pretty much any mission. Airblast Pyros and Deflector Heavies can be a bit of a problem, but if you're having trouble switch one of your Soldiers for a Sniper or something else that doesn't shoot rockets.

Bavarian Botbash is pretty much THE mission where class balance does not matter, period. The robots aren't very tough. You get tons of upgrade money. There are no Uber Medics to speak of. The tanks aren't too impressive. The robots have a long way to walk to the hatch. A single competent Soldier can output nearly half the damage needed to win the mission. Almost ANY strategy short of 6 Spies works for Botbash.

TL;DR: Idiots try very general strategy on mission that requires no strategy. It works. They think they've discovered America. Which they proceed to cover with the flags of countries with inbred monarchs.

Speaking of which...

OMFG YOU COULD ALL EQUIP THE GUNBOATS AND IT SHOULD BARELY MAKE A DIFFERENCE. YOUR SECONDARY WEAPON CHOICE ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT. ANYONE WHO THINKS PLAYING SOLDIER MEANS STANDING NEXT TO A BETTER PLAYER WHILE TOOTING A HORN NEEDS TO SERIOUSLY FIND A NEW HOBBY.

Fire Resistance is certainly the overall least useful resistance in the game, but there ARE situations where there are enough Robot Pyros and/or you have enough money to blow that buying Fire Resistance is not only acceptable, but a good idea for close-combat classes. Caliginous Caper, Wave 6 of Broken Parts, and the final wave of Hamlet Hostility all come to mind.

Fire Resistance gets so much hate from the meta that even players who've barely learned what their Toggle Ready button is can quote the proverb "...and don't waste money on Fire Resistance," but nobody seems to care when players get the 3 popular resistances in an order that doesn't make a lick of sense for whatever mission they're playing.

(Hint: Crit Resistance is a cheaper and more effective way to protect yourself from Crit Soldiers than Blast Resistance is.)

Go ahead if you want, but if you really want to be a sweaty tryhard, that's probably the opposite of what you want to do.

Scout has plenty of time to respawn and take a tele before money burns up. And if a Scout died, it means he doesn't have overheal. Scouts like overheal, and it's quite nice to respawn to a big pile of money that will give you that overheal. OCD Teams that scoop up every spare dollar in sight when their Scout is dead are ensuring he won't have overheal when the next subwave arrives. The money that's actually in danger of burning up is probably in a dangerous spot they can't reach easily, anyway.

I mean, you don't NEED overheal, and I'm not going to be one of those people that whines out loud about it, but this is pretty much the MvM equivalent of taking large healths packs to heal 3 damage. Anyone who goes out of their way to do this has no right to complain if I pop Medics that the "pick" class(es) were taking too long to kill.

I don't care too much about money rank to begin with, since the objective of winning comes first. But usually the Scout "misses" money because it's in an obscure place or because there are a ton of robots guarding it but no teammates to help kill them. Picking up piles of money sitting out in the open before a Scout can get to them might make your OCD brain feel good, but how much is it actually helping?

Not really meta, but a popular myth nonetheless. So many Boot Campers brag about that one time they beat Nightmare Mode (probably on a heavily modded server with 10-players, infinite money, Roll the Dice, and class limits that nerf any subwave involving Spies or Medics).

Nightmare Mode is weird because you start with soooooooo much money and there are soooooooo many tanks. It's very different game from any other MvM mission. It's hard to compare apples to oranges, but in terms of overall difficulty it's generally regarded as the equivalent of low-tier Advanced.

You're here, aren't you? Hehe.

Seriously, though. This kind of bugs me. Tons of experienced players tell newbies to "read a guide first," and tons of newbies offer the fact that they're "read tons of guides" as evidence of their competence. There are a few problems with this.

Most guides are bad, and even the best ones are usually pretty mediocre. This one seems to be considered one of the best out there, and it doesn't actually tell you what TO DO, but what not to. Plus, it's pretty darn disorganized. If there WERE some super-all-knowing-perfect-Jesus guide, then it would be ridiculously long and tedious. No actual newbie would get anything from it, and experienced players might not want to put in the time. Maybe a better alternative would be a SERIES of guides, that build upon one another. But really, the written word is best for transferring knowledge for people who already have a background to understand the material. It's a horrible way for newbies to learn.

Besides, THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ACTUAL EXPERIENCE. This applies to all things, not just MvM. Even the most intellectual pursuits require experience to back up Book Larnin'. However, MvM is a videogame. There are motor skills and game sense involved. Expecting guides to teach you to play is kind of like expecting to be able to ride a bike simply because you've read a book about it.

FINALLY, though, is my biggest gripe: many players EXPECT their teammates to read guides before playing (as if newbies are even aware of the guides section). It's a quirk of TF2 culture, just like a lot of us look down on players with less than 2000 hours rather than admitting we ourselves need to go try out some new games. IN OTHER VIDEO GAMES, GUIDES AND WALKTHROUGHS ARE USUALLY CONSIDERED KIND OF NOOBISH OR, AT BEST, FOR FINDING THOSE SECRET ITEMS AND ROOMS YOU'D NEVER BE ABLE TO FIND YOURSELF. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF PLAYING A GAME IF YOU WANT SOMEONE ELSE TO BEAT IT FOR YOU???

What is with this expectation for newbies to know how to play the game right off the bat? Why is there this double standard where newbies are expected to know arbitrary stuff about the meta by veterans who have beaten a mission hundreds of times but only bothered to learn 4 of the 9 classes? I mean, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of newbies who are just plain stupid and will never be able to learn with any amount of experience, but I see plenty of 0-tours who do just fine as Sniper, Spy, and Pyro (OMG, EXPERT-ONLY CLASSES!) considering their level of experience, but they still get flack from some 200-tour Heavy main. Who isn't playing much better.

But CAR_, it's mainly noobs coming to Advanced and Expert that we complain about! They should stay in Oil Spill and Boot Camp, get experience there, and read guides. Then they'll be fine!

While I can't do much about Gibusvisions wandering into Gear Grinder except to say that it takes more than one bad player to sink a server, the "Advanced" argument is nonsense. "Advanced" means nothing. The Intermediate and Normal missions are braindead easy except for two poorly balanced waves. You won't learn anything playing them, and I'm sure a lot of these people have just moved up from there ready for some semblance of actual challenge. However, "Advanced" can mean anything from barely-harder-than-Oil-Spill to the noob-crushing machine that is Broken Parts. "Advanced" is basically Regular Difficulty. Saying players aren't ready for Advanced means nothing.

Well, looks like something new has been added to the meta thanks to Valve legitimizing the Infinite Refund exploit. Turns out, having semi-difficult levels in a game mode where Valve only gets paid when people are winning is not good for business. Although the game mode hasn't been TRULY updated in a long while (as of 6/6/2016), Valve has been sneaking in little changes to make things easier for noobs willing to buy tickets but unwilling to use their brains.

Planning your class choice(s) and upgrade path has always been a key part of MvM strategy (yes, it's possible to switch class without the Refund). The Infinite Refund Exploit completely scraps this aspect of the game. You can switch to any class with any upgrade set at any time to tailor-make your team setup for each and every wave in the game. Granted, most players (including many high-tours!) are too ignorant to fully abuse this new "feature" because they barely understand how classes and upgrades even work, but there are still many opportunities for noobs to dumb down mission difficulty by making sure their team always has the most overpowered class for every wave.

The most obvious example of this is players switching to Spy for Wave 5 of Expert Decoy and Wave 6 of Expert Coaltown in Gear Grinder. They are were common waves for teams to get hung up and ragequit, but Spy is extremely powerful on these waves, and he can single-handedly dumb them down to Advanced difficulty or lower. That far into the missions, players will generally have enough money that even bad upgrade-ers will have purchased most of the key upgrades just because there are only so many bad choices you can make before there are only good ones left. Spy is so OP that most bad players will still be more useful as Spy than as a class they're better at, so the Infinite Refund allows them to switch to Spy for One Wave Only without learning the class well enough to carry their weight as Spy the rest of the mission.

Other common switches are for Weak Pathetic Meta Scouts to switch to Soldier for the last wave of the mission, and for players to switch to Pyro for tank waves because even meta dorks are good enough at Pyro to stand in front of a tank and hold M1.

It is becoming meta to use tricks like this to reduce the difficulty of mission. Now, I guess if you're one of those weirdos that likes grinding for digital weapons to trade for digital hats and digital money, then I guess it makes sense that you want things to be as easy boring as possible. But I play video games for fun and challenge, and Valve missions are already easy enough as it is. Just to be clear: You can't say you're an Expert at MvM if you need to abuse this legitimatized exploit to actually beat an Expert mission by ensuring your team always has the most overpowered classes/weapons/upgrades for every single wave.

Maybe. We'll see what other silly notions people have.

I guarantee they're better than all the ones basically telling you that Scout should collect money in MvM.

http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=261322707
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=265347252
http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=269131530