As this uber blog I've promised becomes more and more like a running gag (I'll get to it eventually just too much to talk about) I find myself playing more and more Team Fortress 2. As many of you know I enjoy the shenanigans that you can have blowing the crap out of someone on the other team. I was always a fan of the medic since he got the most points and everyone loves you when you heal them. My second favorite was the spy. The spy, for those of you who don't know TF2 or TF:Cla ssic (and the like) is armed with 125 health-- the lowest in the game, a six-shooter that does some pretty decent damage, a "sapper" which drains the health of machinery put up by the engineer, a disguise kit that lets them disguise as anything but a spy of the same color, and a knife (I'll gripe about that in a minute--it's the point of this "uber" blog (HAH! A JOKE!). The spy is also able to go completely invisible for up to ten seconds on a standard charge of their cloaking device where they are completely invisible to the enemy. The catch to the cloak is they are not able to do anything in terms of attacking or defending other than just getting in everyone's way--but it's remarkably useful for moving around incognito. NAO TO THE POINT. Recently, Valve released an update for the scout. It was annoying. Really annoying. As annoying as it would be if you were reading this and I began to ramble on and on and on about how annoying it was. You get the point. In addition to that they nerfed the spy. If you are unfamiliar with the term "nerf"...look it up--it's parent safe so don't worry if you're not "of the age". Essentially, the spy got made waaaaaaaaaaay weaker and harder to use (in a specific way). Before I begin my complaining, I need to explain the mechanics of an attacking spy.

The spy usually attacks from a distance with their revolver unless they are mentally challenged--in which case they use their face and have it promptly removed from their head. The revolver does a medium amont of damage at most ranges and is relatively good. It seems to be the most accurate handgun in the game though that is up for debate--but not with me. I'm too mad to debate with you. The sapper is really self explainitory--you put it on things like you would put syrup on dry pancakes--just keep putting it on--because a smart engineer--and they sure as heck will be after this nerf--note the cunning use of hyphens to show you how excited I am that I am finally voicing my problem somewhere outside of the game itself where 12 year olds seem to dominate the voice com--they will smack you in the face with a cast iron wrench killing you almost instantly. At closer distances, you'd pull your knife out with the awesome flipping animation and swing away for a meager amout of damage. The real awesome power is the backstab. You've all had it done to you if you snipe in TF2 and it scares the crap out of you. Depicted below is the cool animation for when you instakill with a backstab.

Well, it won't work since the TF2 wiki is being testy but take my word for it it is extremely satisfying when you instakill several people in a row.

There were many things that made it slightly more intuitive to play as the spy. The spy used a lag correction on the backstab animation that compensated for any lag--essentially you had a bit of a radius to stab them. The term side stab will be used for the duration of this...voicing of my concern for the spy's awesomeness. The back stab used to have a decent radius behind it--approximately 180 degrees behind the character. This let the spy go to either end of that spectrum and perform a back stab--killing them instantly. This was good. This let the spy kill people. This let the spy go into a group of people and actually have a small chance. Now, my complaint.

Valve made the side stab impossible now. They also removed trick stabs (aka top-down stabs which were the only hope for a spy to take out an entrenched engineer--look that one up if you don't know). The spy now needs to be almost directly behind his target to perform the once reasonably difficult (now just annoyingly hard) backstab that made it one of the least played clas sess in the game; and, yet it was one of the most rewarding and exciting to play. What is bizarre is that now there are no side stabs I'm an amazing spy. I consistently rank in the top 10 percent of matches which, for servers I play on, is really quite good. My first day after the update I got 38 backstabs in 3 rounds with a positive kill-death-ratio. Normally, I play medic but now that the scout update was released I play almost exclusively spy as a sort of revenge thing. It doesn't make much sense but that's what I keep telling myself. I also consistently curse when I kill someone as it makes me feel much better. It's a good time---BUT GIMME BACK MY SIDE STABS. Ahhhhhnnnnng! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEG!

Anyways, thanks for listening...here's a fun picture I hope you enjoy.

_dubel_07