Xbox 360 Game News, Reviews, and Columns - XboxFocus

Demoman Tips

by Zack Rovinsky July 27th 2008 1:11 PM CDT2 Comments

If you play any Team Fortress 2, I'm sure you've seen them around: the crazed Demoman, running around and dropping more stickies than a fat kid with a hole in his pocket and causing havoc. Believe it or not (I don't care if you don't) I was one of the first people to play Demo that way. While others were still using hit of miss regular 'nades I was using stickies with surgical precision and taking advantage of the larger clip size to dominate games.

Even now I still dominate games. While half of that is still my skills and knack for timing and anticipating people's movements, the other half is a set of tricks the imitators still haven't figured out. I'm going to share them with you, mostly because I couldn't think of anything else to write this week.

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1. Try and box in your opponent - This is especially effective against quicker classes like scouts or medics and more evasive players. Shoot ahead of where they're going and around them from there. This sets up a smaller target to put the remainder of the stickies needed to kill them. It also tends to get the less patient players to give up and just end it all, which is fine by me.


2. Turn stickies into rockets - If you're at a certain distance or hight disadvantage against an opponent, it's not worth it to go for a quick kill by carpeting their area. Just heaving stickies one by one and detonating them quickly in midair evens the fight and gives you what is essentially more powerful than a shotgun and more accurate than a rocket.

3. Shooting around corners to take out anything - In case you didn't notice, because of the way the demoman holds it the sticky launcher fires slightly to the right of the cross-hair on your HUD. You can use this to aim right at a corner and shoot around it, taking out those seemingly impossible sentries that are pointed right down a hallway.

4. Use regular grenades for the right occasion - I usually only go to my grenade launcher in 3 situations: when I don't have time to reload my sticky launcher, when I want to put grenades around a corner or some out of reach place, and when I'm in tight quarters. Mostly I use them to pester an enemy while the stickies do the real damage.

5. Right number of stickies for the job - Your loaded stickies are precious so don't use more than you need for certain jobs. It takes 3 well placed stickies to deal with a level 3 or 2 sentry, 2 each for a level 1, dispenser, entrance, or exit. It takes 2-3 for lower health classes like scouts, snipers, spies, and engineers. 3-4 for medium health classes like other demos, pyros, and medics. 4-5 for Soldiers. And a fuck ton for Heavies.


6. Charging around corners - If you're coming around a corner and suspect you may have a shot to take at someone charge up a shot as you approach the corner to give yourself options for shooting whoever may be there. I once used this strategy to nail a scout running down the straight stairs in 2fort who thought he had outrun me. This also works for flustering snipers if you already know where they are and for mowing down players who are trying to run away from you.

7. Make them chase - The best situation for any demoman is to have the enemy chasing them it gives you boundless opportunities to make them pay for their ignorance. If you have a certain distance to work with just think ahead and put stickies in your wake. If they're right behind you just look straight down and put stickies down as you go. If you don't have time to turn around do the same maneuver but make sure to time it properly. If you detonate right away you'll just blow yourself up. If you're really advanced (like me) you can put stickies where you think an enemy will be attacking from to protect you while you do another job like taking out a sentry.

8. Using cover - If you're facing a slow, hard to kill class (mostly soldiers and heavies) in a tight environment, don't engage head on like you would for weaker classes. Just put as many stickies out as you can as they approach and pop out to put single stickies at their feet before popping back into cover. A few of these should do the trick and save you some health.


9. Nickel And Dime 'em - I mentioned this earlier but I want to expand the idea. Don't feel a need to blow your opponent up all at once. By blowing up each of your bombs at their individual peak of damage potential, you can knock your opponent off balance and force them to consider their mortality, which will curtail their aggressiveness and allow you to move in for a kill. This goes double for critical stickies. If your opponent is anywhere within the blast radius of a crit blow it as fast as you can.

10. Out Of Sight... - There are plenty of rafters, ledges, bridges, posts door frames, and blind corners to plant sticky traps that no one will see coming. While I usually don't condone being a defensive trap-setting pussy of a Demoman, those skills are useful for defending away intelligence in CTF games and when guarding a choke point on Dustbowl. Just put them out of sight, make sure to put up enough to blow up even the healthiest of opponents, and wait for your moment. The best traps are the ones they still can't see even after they've been blown to pieces.

Those are my tips. While they won't make you as good as me, they will allow you to think you might be. Until you actually meet me in battle.