Thread: TF2 Basic Soldier Guide - Feedback needed

Hi all, this is a basic soldier article I am working on. Before I format and submit, I figured what better way to get feedback and opinions that I might have missed or not been aware of, than to ask all you pros out there.

If you have anything you would like to add and I include it, I'll add your name to the credits.

Thanks,

Redeye

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TF2: The Soldier

The soldier is listed as one of the offensive classes in TF2. Unlike some of the classes, it comfortably fits into its description. The soldier carries a powerful rocket launcher, which deals significant damage, and a regular shotgun for backup. Like other classes he also recieves a melee weapon, the shovel.

Weapons:

The soldiers rocket launcher is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. It's rockets deal a large amount of damage, and also deal splash damage, meaning it does not need to score a direct hit, as long as the intended target is inside its blast radius. Also, the strong explosions from rocket impacts can frequently knock your enemy back, or even high into the air.

The rocket launcher does have its drawbacks. It has a very low clip size, allowing only 4 rockets to be loaded at any one time. You can however reload after each shot, rather than having to completely empty your clip before reloading. Thus with the soldier it is critical that you are reloading your rocket launcher at EVERY given opportunity. Nothing will spoil your attack faster than having a medic click uber on you, or having some sort of great opening, only to have 1 rocket in your launcher and waste that opportunity running and reloading.

Secondly, the rockets from the launcher travel much slower than any othe projectile in the game, with perhaps the exception of the demoman grenades, which are a totally different munition and not very comparable except for the blast radius effect.

To seperate yourself from the soldier riff raff and become a true cold blooded killer, you will have to master the art of leading targets with the slow firing missiles, and learning to aim not AT the enemy, but where the enemy IS, or where they WILL be.

Direct hits with the rockets are rare, and most of the time will not be completely on purpose. Instead, you want to aim for the ground near the enemies feet, or where the enemy will be standing by the time your rocket reaches him. Due to the splash damage done by the rocket, this is by far your best way to deal damage to an enemy, and anyone else around him.

Floors, ceilings, walls, rocks, even other people, can serve as targets for your rockets. Some people find that by jumping in the air while firing, you can increase the angle between you and the ground at your targets feet, making it much easier to put your rockets on target if both you and the bad guy are on
flat, even ground.

Master this art of hitting the environment near your enemies, and you will be blowing people all over the map and straight to hell to boot.

When you become truly advanced you can seal an enemies fate with one rocket. The first blast will launch them into the air. while they are unable to control their movement, you have already put more rockets into the air that will be impacting where your opponent is going to land. Since he is helpless to control himself, all he can do is roll his eyes and flip you off during the 2 seconds of life he has left.
This is a powerful ability and one that, if mastered, will make any soldier a serious threat to the other team.

Keep in mind that anything can serve as a target and deal damage. Often shooting around corners near where a sentry gun is will either kill the engineer if he is repairing, or the gun if he is not. The splash damage makes a soldier ideal for killing that repairing engineer...he can hid behind his gun all day long, and it won't bother the soldier because he is smart and aiming at the wall or ceiling somewhere past the gun, thus negating the cover the engineer gets from his gun. Dead engineer = dead sentry gun.

The second weapon of the soldier, the shotgun, is much more straightforward. Use it only in dire emergencies when your out of rockets, and remember to lead your targets. It is a decent backup weapon, and a decent way to deal with spy detection, since shooting rockets too close to yourself will either damage you or possibly launch you into a less than ideal spot (more on that later). Other than that you should always be focusing on your rockets as much as possible.

Rocket Jumping:

Rocket jumping is one of the soldiers class defining tricks. By aiming directly at his feet and firing a rocket, the soldier can jump and propel himself into areas that are inaccessible to all other classes except the demoman, although achieving these areas with a demo is more difficult.

This ability comes at a price, as the rockets will do damage to you, generally around 50 hit points for a nice succesful jump. Because of this, choose when you jump carefully. On some maps such as well you can jump into areas where there are health boxes nearby, so keep that in mind also. An extremely useful
ability, rocket jumping should not be ignored. Use it to be where the enemy doesn't expect you to go. Rocket jump great distances or over obstacles when carrying the intel back and there is a defender hot on your heels. These are just a few examples of the power of the rocket jump. Any soldier who ignores it
is not playing the class to its full potential.

The Role of the Soldier:

Unlike many classes, the soldier is much better suited to offense than defense. The soldier is still an effective defensive player, but the low clip size of the rocket launcher can be a detriment if you miss / do not equalize the incoming threat with your first few shots.

Offensively though, the soldier brings a lot to the table. One of the highest hit point pools in the game allows the soldier to take a fairly significant amount of damage.

The rocket launchers ability to take out hard targets such as sentry guns is second to none due to being able to so easily use splash damage to kill repairing engineers. Some think Heavies are the best class for these situations, but a clever engineer will gain enough cover from hiding behind his gun and using his dispenser to keep himself and his sentry gun alive, that the uber charge will wear off before he dies. That isn't always the outcome, but its frequent enough to lead me to believe that a soldier is most effective in that situation (most of the time, this game is too fluid for any hard and fast rules here, situations and mileage will vary).

Being able to kill enemies quicky and soak up damage makes the soldier, along with the heavy, the ideal front line troop. When breaking in to an objective, soldiers should be leading the way. Other offensively oriented classes, such as pyros, should use soldiers and heavies for cover. Once they are engaged and
the enemy occupied, pyros can surge forward from the second rank and quickly cause so much chaos that even the best defenses will crumbe, losing cohesion for just long enough to make the attack a success.

Soldiers, like all classes, work best in tandem with other people, notably medics. Even if no medic is available, no class does well in this game on its own.

If you spawn in by yourself, and reach enemy territory by yourself, pause and think. Don't rush in just to feed the monster. Hang back and deny an advance to enemy players, and give your team time to catch up and regroup. Or simply fall back and defend the most forward objective until the rest of your offense
spawns back in. Even with a soldiers power, he is no match for 2 or more prepared enemy players who are working together. Therefore don't be fooled by your strengths, instead remember your weaknesses.

This is only a rough guide to one of the dominant offensive classes. I have a few examples of specific situations listed above, but there is no real way to describe them all. Instead, understand the tools the soldier has, and constantly be on the lookout to apply them in different ways.

I hope this helps some of the newer players. Soldiers can be one of the easiest classes to play, but just like the rest of them, requires skill to master.

Don't be deterred by people that call soldiers 'the noob choice'. They are just upset that they haven't figured out how to counter a well played soldier. In fact, they probably need more practice, so load up those rockets and go dance on some corpses.

][5th][ Redeye7

not bad. It needs some grammatical editing before being submitted, but nothing major.

I would probably add more emphasis to making each rocket count. Not just clicking as fast as you can. Especially when you talk about "punting" people with a second rocket. Thinking about WHERE the enemy is going is good, but knowing WHEN he will get there is critical.

Maybe add some info about rocket jumping not just being for vertical travel?

ooh, and blowing yourself to bits in the beginning of a map to get a medic's uber up.

Damn, good catch Manse.

How the hell I forgot about charging uber is beyond me considering I spend 60 seconds blowing the shit out of myself on most maps...

I'll add in more specific examples of horizontal movement with the rocket jump and add also making each rocket count.

Thanks for the tips. You'll get credit for that in the final, and I appreciate you taking the time to read all that

I know the grammar and probably some spelling is off, but thats really just a semi-rough draft I'll have it cleaned for the final one.

I think you should add something regarding the Soldiers slower move speed and how that allows enemy spy's to sneak up on him easier so he should keep a keen eye on his tail and how he should choose his routes to the frontlines well cause it takes him longer to reach the objective. As well that his shovel is one of the slower melee weapons in the game and only does mediocre damage compared to say the scouts fast baseball bat or the pyro's slow but powerful Axe.

I'm not sure if you want to include this cause Steam may fix this little bug, but the soldier can jump over items before the round started to reach the enemy. I.E. on Well when he can rocket jump over the rail car to disrupt the enemy encampment, perhaps take down the enemy engineer setup before it is ready. Or even identify what disguise a spy is wearing.

Noted Silas, thanks for the tips. I'll work on adding that information.

Soldier as "the noob class" makes me laugh. Being a soldier is like playing Quake against a bunch of ill-equipped pansies that aren't smart enough to grab their own rocket launcher, or run the fuck away.

Snipers are obvious counters to soldiers. Scouts are great against soldiers too, using their mobility to both avoid the soldier's fire and get in close for some good shots.

I'll share one of my tactics here as well. It's not easy and probably not something most think to do(or may be able to do well) while in the heat of combat. You need to be fairly skilled at rocket jumping, and more horizontally than vertically. I primarily use this against other soldiers, but I'll use it to close the gap on other classes as well.

Most soldier vs. soldier battles I see involve both guys spamming rockets and trying to avoid the incoming rockets. One of the best ways to start this battle is to rocket jump to directly above the other soldier, and rain rockets down on him. I normally wait till they fire first and thus dodge one or two rockets they spammed at me, leaving them just a couple shots to use while you're on the way to them.

Assuming you can close the gap with your rocket jump this will put a world of hurt on a puny sniper too.

Good work Redeye.

The trick with soldier is to lead your opponent into your rpg and also to do "splits" on them.

OGL Open 1v1 soldier champ for 3 years in TFC =)