The Razorback is primarily for more sedentary snipers. You're typically behind the rest of your teammates which keeps you out of direct harm's way but makes you an easier target for spies. The lost mid-range capability doesn't matter much, and the shield protects you from the spies who would otherwise find you to be an easy victim.
I find it to be immensely nifty because it allows me to play sniper the way I've never been able to - hanging back out of harm's way, but without having to worry about spies raping me. I find the reduced speed and lack of SMG worth it.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
cloak and dagger spy is my new favourite <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Staying in an area observing people untill they do stupid stuff, then go in and strike (or aid for a more controlled ubercharge attack+sap/dagger)
The occasional pyro just out of range spychecking the crap out of the sentry nest is quite nerve-racking and enjoyable at the same time. A cloaked spy in a good location can rake up a lot of backstabs if played subtle!
I know I've said it ten times if I've said it once, but I don't remember whether I've mentioned it here: The Cloak and Dagger is very fun, but it's also very good at making you feel useful without necessarily being it. It's far too easy standing around for a minute "waiting for the right moment," but in the end that's a minute you've spent doing nothing. Occasionally you'll be able to strike at just the right time and score a huge success, but more often you'll just get a single backstab kill and then have to high-tail it out of there if you don't get killed outright. The Cloak and Dagger is fun and useful, but it easily lulls you into a false sense of usefulness.
X_StickmanNot good enough for a custom title.Join Date: 2003-04-15Member: 15533Members, Constellation
Cloak and Dagger lets you endlessly harass their base in a few ways. If they're on offence you can take out medics as they come out of the spawn, or sap the teleporters as soon as the engineer is gone. If they're on defence you can sap their teleporters and take out all the snipers around their spawn. Stab, run in one direction while cloaking, then when you've fulled cloaked, change and run in another direction. With cloak and dagger you can hide in spots they never check, or even just stand in the middle of open ground and move around people running towards you. Pyros only tend to spycheck corners and other members of their team; they rarely just flame open ground.
But lolf is right. You can get lost in your own game with the C&D. I know, for example, that I've been at the enemy's spawn (or just generally behind their lines) and getting a lot of decent kills (well, "a lot" for a spy), as well as getting the occassional fully charged medic etc, and then notice that their team has won. Or I'll be slowly working my way through their team to get to a decent spot and realise that I haven't actually done anything in about 90 seconds.
On big maps, though, like the last round of goldrush on defence, a spy who does nothing but hide in their spawn and sap the teleporters can be extremely useful, even if he does nothing in the time between sapping them and them getting rebuilt. It's a long way to walk, otherwise, especially if they're on the last point.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2009
High value targets are quite easy to pick of as well (medics with uber, enemy spies and such) infiltrating a base is also much easier and engineers have buddies that come and go. The right moment is the one you choose to kill the sentry nest, requiring perfect timing. Which is now possible with this thing., instead of the OMG! mah cloak is running out (dispenser is easy spot for any good engy and also dangerously close to the and spychecks)
But standing around doing nothing can be good. If your team is charging an uber, you can coordinate with them to destroy the sentry nest(s). Then the waiting is indeed a good thing. But more then I like to see, is a spy just standing near a high priority target while not doing much else, then if the time is right fails to excecute the job (time wasted indeed) or just has no guts to do anything (invisible observers as in spectators that can be killed <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />)
Ah the good ol' debate of situational dependance making the same action good in one situation, but BAAAD in others <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Agreed. A spy standing around waiting for people to do stupid stuff is about as useful as a spy who failed on the attack and is now dead. Unless C&D gives you a gigantic success rate in taking out a medic with 100% uber ready, a success rate that you don't have with the normal watch, I suspect it just gives people the ability to sit back and wait for a safe opportunity to strike when they would really be serving their team more by dying a lot. In my experience, good spies can get their target WITHOUT having to wait around 5 minutes for the perfect time to strike, and in the time they save by not sitting around, they use their revolver to do a bit more damage, or hunt down stragglers, or something like that.
X_StickmanNot good enough for a custom title.Join Date: 2003-04-15Member: 15533Members, Constellation
It just lets you stay in one area longer, basically. Using the regular watch you have to cloak in, disguise, get a few kills and run off again and then come back (or hang around constantly picking up ammo but a decent team will get you for that).
The C&D just gets rid of the "...and run off" part. Cloak in, disguise, get a few kills, re-cloak and hide somewhere for a few seconds until the pyro has run off. Then run back down, get the teleporters/medics or whatever and repeat.
It just tends to lull you into doing nothing, for a variety of reasons. Without the "omg the cloak is running out" feeling, you don't feel like you have to do something right there, so you wait for the "right moment". Or you can just really enjoy hanging around and not being seen. It's funny to be in the other team's base and them not know it.
But once the novelty wears off, it's great. Very useful.
It's fun. That's the important part for me. The Razorback can have the same effect, you just feel safer with it and you end up standing around waiting for the enemy to come to you. Without it you're paranoid, moving from spot to spot and covering more ground, going on the offense, then falling back while harassing the enemy team. An active sniper can be more valuable than one who just sits around waiting for the enemy. On the other hand, Razorback snipers are less easily taken out, so they're not as likely to be dead when the enemy makes their big push.
Spies wont risk getting razorback equipped snipers, what? With the ambassador (which all spies use nowadays) you can just wait for him to scope in (like they can do anything else) and take a easy as pie HS and then second body shot or a single knife slash. It's not quite as fast as a backstab but still relatively swift.
I know, right? And yet, with one exception*, I can count the number of times spies have attacked me since I got the Razorback on two hands, and the number of times they have succeeded on one.
* That exception was one game where a particular spy INSISTED on killing me. Probably because I kept killing him after he got dominated. He wasn't even a total nubcaek, he had actually played decently up until that point. But the moment he got that fixation, he declined into ridiculousness. He'd get blown up by rockets or sentries, hacked to pieces with my kukri, even backstabbed by our spies (it got so bad that one or our spies started disguising as me to bait him - and it WORKED), all in his futile attempts to kill me. He even got close once. Then a medic übersawed him (filling up the rest of his übercharge), then went on a killing spree with a pyro. I don't know how it's possible to taste rage over the internet, but taste his rage I did. And it was delicious.
X_StickmanNot good enough for a custom title.Join Date: 2003-04-15Member: 15533Members, Constellation
Heh. If any of my steam friends are on the other team, I'll go out of my way to kill them, even if it means me getting pwnt shortly after. It's worth it.
I actually go to the trouble of spy checking footsteps (since I cant run an mp3 player and the game at the same time) when I'm sniping, so my backstab count isnt that high. I was quite keen to get the consolation prize though so I didn't worry about it too much <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> Think I got it around 700 kills, sniper rifle unscoped is useful at any range simply because it's a hit-scan weapon I find in 1v1 combat the delay on the huntsman can be a real pain in the ass. If I can get a sneak shot in then its game over but otherwise very tricky in that mid range.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1708774:date=May 31 2009, 10:12 AM:name=Align)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Align @ May 31 2009, 10:12 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1708774"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->the trick to using the huntsman is to spam arrows, not aim<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The core element of TF2? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Comments
I find it to be immensely nifty because it allows me to play sniper the way I've never been able to - hanging back out of harm's way, but without having to worry about spies raping me. I find the reduced speed and lack of SMG worth it.
Staying in an area observing people untill they do stupid stuff, then go in and strike (or aid for a more controlled ubercharge attack+sap/dagger)
The occasional pyro just out of range spychecking the crap out of the sentry nest is quite nerve-racking and enjoyable at the same time. A cloaked spy in a good location can rake up a lot of backstabs if played subtle!
The Cloak and Dagger is fun and useful, but it easily lulls you into a false sense of usefulness.
But lolf is right. You can get lost in your own game with the C&D. I know, for example, that I've been at the enemy's spawn (or just generally behind their lines) and getting a lot of decent kills (well, "a lot" for a spy), as well as getting the occassional fully charged medic etc, and then notice that their team has won. Or I'll be slowly working my way through their team to get to a decent spot and realise that I haven't actually done anything in about 90 seconds.
On big maps, though, like the last round of goldrush on defence, a spy who does nothing but hide in their spawn and sap the teleporters can be extremely useful, even if he does nothing in the time between sapping them and them getting rebuilt. It's a long way to walk, otherwise, especially if they're on the last point.
But standing around doing nothing can be good. If your team is charging an uber, you can coordinate with them to destroy the sentry nest(s). Then the waiting is indeed a good thing. But more then I like to see, is a spy just standing near a high priority target while not doing much else, then if the time is right fails to excecute the job (time wasted indeed) or just has no guts to do anything (invisible observers as in spectators that can be killed <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />)
Ah the good ol' debate of situational dependance making the same action good in one situation, but BAAAD in others <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
edit: agreed with lolf, I mean.
The C&D just gets rid of the "...and run off" part. Cloak in, disguise, get a few kills, re-cloak and hide somewhere for a few seconds until the pyro has run off. Then run back down, get the teleporters/medics or whatever and repeat.
It just tends to lull you into doing nothing, for a variety of reasons. Without the "omg the cloak is running out" feeling, you don't feel like you have to do something right there, so you wait for the "right moment". Or you can just really enjoy hanging around and not being seen. It's funny to be in the other team's base and them not know it.
But once the novelty wears off, it's great. Very useful.
* That exception was one game where a particular spy INSISTED on killing me. Probably because I kept killing him after he got dominated. He wasn't even a total nubcaek, he had actually played decently up until that point. But the moment he got that fixation, he declined into ridiculousness. He'd get blown up by rockets or sentries, hacked to pieces with my kukri, even backstabbed by our spies (it got so bad that one or our spies started disguising as me to bait him - and it WORKED), all in his futile attempts to kill me. He even got close once. Then a medic übersawed him (filling up the rest of his übercharge), then went on a killing spree with a pyro. I don't know how it's possible to taste rage over the internet, but taste his rage I did. And it was delicious.
The core element of TF2? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />