Super Special Spy Tactics!

Well, it's time for me to spit the beans on how to play spy, or least on how I do it.
First things first, you'll need the proper equipment. Ambassador, Cloak and Dagger and your knife will do the trick.

Now, what I always tend to do is to annoy the snipers. I like to cloak myself, stand next to them and spam my spray everywhere while cloaked. They'll get freaked out (especially new players) and they will be to busy hitting air with their kukri that they wont have the time to snipe anyone.
Now this is just one thing I like to do. What I enjoy the most is annoying Gibbo by doing a lot of voice commands while standing next to him (cloaked). There's nothing more terrifying for a sniper than suddenly hearing 'Gentlemen.' out of nowhere. This is also a lot of fun with the other snipers. They'll start trowing their jars of piss everywhere, hitting air and sniping into thin air.
Now, as they are annoyed I like to let them cool down and backstab/headshot them (depending on them wearing a razorback or not) for ultimate pleassure.

As for playing serious: cloak, get behind enemy lines, disguise as one of them (one who just died when not to close to spawn) and backstab them. Low HP? Call for a medic and kill him afterwards. That or commit suicide by trowing yourselves from the tower. (always fun to do cloaked as from nowhere there will be your dead body).

So, what are your spy tactics?

LOL like your spray/talk irritate tactics Pepper .

Of course another common spy tactic is to go up the tower, stand there cloaked and wait for someone to pass on ground level, let yourself fall behind them and backstab immediately. I still have to practice this but others are very good at it. It's allways a good plan to turn around after you walk into the tower (spycheck).

I'm more into ambassador abuse then backstabbing. I get a lot of backstab animations, but no backstab which is quite annoying (guess it has something to do with timing and my 110~150ping). I do like to get to the top of the tower and just headshot people. Before they realize where I am I've usually allready finished them.
The real thing with being a spy? You can pop in out of nowhere, use, no, abuse it and get a lot of suprise kills (it also comes in handy with those annoying spawnkillers).

As long as spy has higher ground they are basically unstoppable. Trust me i've had experience.

I think the spy is useless without the C&D. Or dead ringer.

When using the Cloak and Dagger, ignore everything people say about crouch-walking being n00bish. It saves your cloak, and usually your ass; when crouched, snipers for some reason fail to hit you with their smg. They aim too high, yet can't seem to get a headshot with the rifle. Due to my unluckiness, I usually get hit by a random jarate aimed at someone else.

When using the Dead Ringer, don't have it out all the time. If the first shot someone gets on you kills, (unless it's a headshot) they're gonna know it's a Dead Ringer, and go apeshit with x-2. So take a few hits, toss a few back, then pull up your watch and watch them taunt. If you see a pyro, run backwards and shoot. when you kill it or are low on health, pull up the Dead Ringer. You can also use it to reduce fall damage.

In my opinion, the Ambassador isn't very good at all. I can't seem to get a headshot with it, so I just stick with the trusty old revolver; it does a significantly higher amount of damage than the Ambassador, and has random crits.

The ambassador delivers a critical headshot on the first shot you fire. You can see the crosshair getting bigger with the shots after the first one which means it gets less accurate. I have been headshot so many times from a great distance by spies on which i got killed instantly so i can say the ambassador is much better when used in the right way.

The ambassador is mostly just a sniper rifle without a scope due to it's 100% accurancy. One headshot does 105hp damage which is enough to finish off those who were just attacked or instantly kill a sandman scout.
I often kill heavy's (even those with a medicbuddy) by just popping three bullets in his head from a distance. He'll try to minigun me even though I'm behind a wall on the other side of the map (yeah, some think they can kill or even hit me from there...)

Anyway, playing spy with an ambassador is different then playing spy with a revolver. Ambassador is more stealth like and revolver more attack (altough with some practise you can do both with ambassador). It all depends on what you prefer

I personally dislike the ambass especially on our server considering my 300 ping and all. on payload maps i use the normal cloak as being able to pickup metal fr cloak is really useful but on orange its kinda pointless ON ORANGE USE C&D.

now im going to discuss Disguises

Pyro: a good disguise a bit well known these days also overused as a disguise and underused as a class.

Demoman: a great disguise as it is a common class and doesnt have many Demoman specific class areas (it tends be go all over the place) its only dis advantage is it runs slightly slower then the sniper engy pyro and spy.

Scout: a decent disguise as people rarely notice fact the you are runnig slower and the totally awesome side effect of being a scout is your HITBOX IS SMALLER! even when your cloaked.

Spy: Not bad disguise as it gives a reason to suddenly appear and disappear also means if the enemies hear the discloak sound they wont be supprised when they see one of their spies pop out. just make sure they dont see you uncloak.

Sniper: a good disguise as it gives you a reason to be at a certain part of the map. only useful if votesniper isnt set to 0

They are my personal disguise preferences and i dont use the others much, thanks if you read the whole thing

When you are in the tower you can use medic because players will not be alarmed when you appear and don't heal them right away whereas in the open field they will get suspicious in a few seconds. Also when you disguise as another spy and cloak a player who looks careful will still see the color of the opposing team when you cloak so this is a giveaway.

I mostly take sniper as disuise or pyro. Engie can be useful around buildings and i agree that demo is useful too.

Also read this topic: http://forum.pulpfortress.com/playing-tactics-f6/most-awesome-spy-evaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-t362.htm

hen you are in the tower you can use medic because players will not be alarmed when you appear and don't heal them right away whereas in the open field they will get suspicious in a few seconds.

This works a lot more often than you would think. Some how a medic is not a suspect, which is great for my stabbin arm. I find pyro, sniper, medic, and spy work best as disguises. Also, you guys have to try the swan dive off the tower with a backstab; I've been rocking this for a few days now and it is both EPIC and hilarious.

I'm surprised noone has mentioned this since I assume most people already know this. But when you disguise as a character consider what weapon they more than likely would be using at that point. You can change to it by pressing "b" when you are on the same weapon loadout slot as that weapon on the other class. For example if you are going to disguise as a heavy you may not want to run around with your sandvich out running into a mess of enemies. Also as a pyro you don't want to run around with your axtinguisher out in most instances. So change your spy to the weapon slot you want it to change to and press "b".

b also disguises you automatically as the last disguise you were when not disguised. I love b ! I don't have time to deal with costume selection shit! You gotta react quick and kill before you're noticed.

Also, if you know the enemy team is full up or has a lot of one class, be a completely opposite class, otherwise, you could get caught.

Example: Enemy team has 3 Engineers, Disguise as a medic, and make it look like you are going behind them to heal them, and BLAMMO, back stabbed.

Also, it might work to your advantage to disguise as the class that is heavy on the amount of people. so if the opposing team has 3 engineers, disguise as one


thats my 2 cents

I also think some people don't know about the - key which allow you to disguise as a member of your own team.

Eraserhead wrote:I also think some people don't know about the - key which allow you to disguise as a member of your own team.

This is useless with invisi-watch / cloak and dagger

This is useful with dead ringer.

Not that useless. While capping you could disguise as a heavy so weaker classes dont even think about going in for you.
Also, the hitboxes stay the same while disguised. So when someone goes for a headshot they can miss you. See this image and page on the tf2wiki:
image with the hitboxes
Part about the hitboxes