I know this isn’t common in my account, but I love Team Fortress 2. It’s a game that I played and studied the hardest on than my own classes in school. I know most of the ins and outs of the game and there’s one thing I want to talk about that no one wants to. If you know what a heavy character is in a multiplayer match, you know he’s the man getting all the attention and dealing a decent amount of damage to get it. The character in Team Fortress 2, obviously named The Heavy, is a character people like to ignore for strange reasons. Although their reasons for doing so are reasonable, they don’t understand the point of his character and playstyle. Hello and welcome to this break down of The Heavy.
When you play as a Heavy, you fall in one of the two categories: a Bullet Sponge or a Dangerous Tank. A lot of people tend to fall into the Bullet Sponge category, but there’s no wrong there. He’s meant for a distraction and carry most of the damage dealt for the team. He may not do as much damage as many other classes in the game, but he sure does take the most, having people go to him instead of taking the Rocket-Jumping Soldier about to carpet bomb them. I know that’s a strange spot to be when you're supposed to defend and you play as the walking bullet magnet, but since the Heavy Stature is mostly brawn, it takes most of the attention and intimidates the players running into him.
It’s basically an illusion for the player playing as him, having people try to kill this hulk throwing thousands of bullets at me instead of the guy that does a hundred damage in one, direct shot. I mean he does a good amount of damage, dealing about 10 to 15 damage, can kill a Scout in a few seconds if he stays in direct line of sight and walking in a straight line. Heavy just let every other team member get their shot as he just takes all of their attention, making him seem more like death than a Force-A-Nature Scout would. The only downfall of his character is how unfun he can be. I mean, he does a good amount of damage as I said before, but you would have to have the tracking speed of a computer to be able to kill a skilled Scout or anything to be exact, and he doesn’t have any good drop-off damage either, having the damage go from 2 to 5 damage from mid-range. He may have some good sounding weapons on his hands, but they only do it for you when they feel like it. I’d say the only good weapons would be Natasha and the Brass Beast. Look them up if you don’t understand.
Another thing people don’t like about him is how he doesn’t have a good second option, having nothing, but a joke of a shotgun to call a backup. I know many people may argue that the shotgun is good, but there are specific classes to utilize that weapon, classes that have the great ability called strafing. Scouts can do it and even Soldier has the god-sent ability to. The Heavy is too slow to be able to properly strafe and actually dodge projectiles as much as other classes. At least give him something close to a speed boosting shotgun or a quick getaway for him to properly succeed in this ability everyone else seems to utilize. I know a lot of you veterans are telling me there’s the Gloves of Running Urgently, but those drain your health to make it fair for the players opposing this running Heavy. I want a shotgun to make this character more likable to new coming players in the community, but that’s another problem for another post for me. The point I’m trying to make is that he’s not as appealing to people.
To those of you that played with me, I like playing as the Heavy in Attacking Situation despite him being in a Defense Category. Why would I do that? Because he’s intimidating to other players. He makes Soldiers backup and Demos treating him like a sentry. He’s something that pushes the team instead of attracts them. Although he does barely enough damage, there is a class that counteracts that: the Medic. If the right Medic has the Kritzkrieg, then you have a show to put on that will amazing your team. Once a large group of Scouts, Demos and Soldiers comes in and sees a Medic pocket a Heavy, they like to back off while still trying to suppress them. No matter how far they are though, there is no drop-off damage, dealing a 25 damage for each shot. You can take down an entire team with those thirty seconds of Kritzkrieg Ubering. The only problem with this situation is if the one member of the team is willing to give up fun and be Medic. I’m not saying Medics aren’t fun to play as, he’s my secondary main, he’s just not a class that you can exchange play flows with. He has a different playstyle and doesn’t act like the rest of the roster of characters, but that’s beside the point.
Every other character in the game has a specific playstyle that can appeal to a lot of people, having a lot of ways to play as them and still have fun, but the Heavy has only two jobs: Protect and Intimidate. Those two are broadly spread to many players’ appeals, it’s only for a specific player and he leans more in the support class than anything.
The rest of the characters in the game have weapons that completely change their playstyle and help make them more appealing for players to enjoy, making a defensive class into an offensive class, but the Heavy has barely any to change his playstyle, only every making him the natural Heavy he is. He isn’t appealing and he hasn’t changed because of it. I mean most of the change was to create an alternative to enemy classes like the Huo-Long Heater was made to prevent Spies to backstab you.
If you ask me, he needs a lot more changes than you think. He has a great kind of playstyle that sadly instead fun to play as, being the Sponge and all. I think there should be an entire update to him, making him more appealing to players in the community, giving him new weapons that change his gameplay and secondaries to make a better backup than a sandvich you're supposed to run away to properly use. And maybe some new maps to accommodate his character and his mysteriously funny backstory. I don’t think this should have happened, I want this to happen.
I mean, it has to work and many people have to care, right? Right? I mean, we don’t have to vote for it, right? It won’t have to be a demand kind of thing, right? It doesn’t have to be next to the most broken and hated character in the game, right…? Right? Right!? I saw this when the Meet Your Match update came along and happily voted for Heavy, hoping it would make a difference in his lacking character appeal. Seems people wanted to make Pyro more playable than a class that might be fun to play and fight, like the Scout or Soldier… Or Engi… Or Demo… Or everyone else in the game besides these two characters people have a hate/love relationship with. At least we got another Sandvich with it… It’s the only good thing that came out of it the Jungle Inferno update...
Well, I hope you enjoyed this post and understood most of what I said, seeing not a lot of people play this game in this community. Funny since I came to this site hoping there were active players of that game. I still hope you enjoyed this and give me what you think of my statements and all, and ‘til next time…
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