Poll: Does the spy class take skill to use?

[Billion Backs]

Spies are one of the hardest classes to play if the opposing team is any good.

Spies are incredibly easy to detect, and most are too shitty to act realistic and they simply are obvious. When you see some guy running with full health away from the fight and trying to get behind your back, OF COURSE it's a spy.

Spies are so easy to detect most of the times, it's not even funny.

And if you're a scoped sniper, well, that's why they gave you razorback. Sure, it's not the best cure for the problem, but it's better then nothing.

 

[10zack986]

The key to spying is RUN BACKWARDS! I shit you not, the enemy won't think twice if they see their teammate running backwards because it looks like they were fighting an enemy. The downside is that you may bump into someone.

 

[The Lawn]

I'd say I'm rather good at spy... with over 180 hours under my belt.

It's one of those classes you either do great with, or you do horrible.
And it can change from day to day. Some days I end with a 7 to 1 kill/death ratio, others with a 1 to 3.

Spoiler: Score Board Examples

Good Day

Bad Day

Also, if you use the Cloak and Dagger, you instantly fail as a spy.
If you must have an invisibility watch, use the vanilla one.
Because if you're spotted and low on cloak with the C&D you're pretty much screwed.
With the vanilla watch, pick up some ammo boxes and your good to go for an additional 8 seconds.
So many people who say the spy sucks use the C&D and wonder why their doing bad.
It might also be because they use the Ambassador too.
Which is awefull unless you are a good shot.

A knife, your Pistol, and a Dead Ringer. That's the setup of champions.

Also, learn to act like the class you're disguised as, and don't for the love of gods don't just make a bee line for who you want to kill.
If it looks like someone might spy check you, switch your disguise to a melee weapon (If you don't know how, learn[Switch to your knife and hit the last disguise button]) and run at them.
If you're lucky they'll stop and you'll be able to kill them.

Play mind games with people, having 3 people distracted and looking for you for 30 seconds is 3 less people your team have to deal with.
You don't always have to kill, just make them leave their post, shoot them and run.

And remember, people may look behind them, but they rarely look above.

 

[Siuki]

Spy's probably take the most amount of skill, as well as the Scout. Contrary to most people's beliefs about the Spy, the one-hit kill has a price. A measly HP bar and a gruesome death in return for the slightest error, the Spy class gets harder as people get better.

 

[iLikeHippos]

Spy might just be one of the hardest classes to use.

Because he really just IS difficult to play as people get better.

 

[krimzonkels]

I think it does, you have to know just when to close in for the kill, who to impersonate, and how close you should be to them.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

The Spy is one of the weakest classes in the game. A good team can easily pick out the spies and kill them. A good Spy is able to pick his targets well, disrupt the enemies defenses and be able to kill some of the more important targets. They take as much skill to use as any other.

 

[TheGameXXVII]

it does take skill to sneak around the enemy, especially when they have spy-checkers and engineers in the team, and to be able to get multiple backstabs in a row without getting killed by the people you didn't kill.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I'd say I'm rather good at spy... with over 180 hours under my belt.

It's one of those classes you either do great with, or you do horrible.
And it can change from day to day. Some days I end with a 7 to 1 kill/death ratio, others with a 1 to 3.

Spoiler: Score Board Examples

Good Day

Bad Day

Also, if you use the Cloak and Dagger, you instantly fail as a spy.
If you must have an invisibility watch, use the vanilla one.
Because if you're spotted and low on cloak with the C&D you're pretty much screwed.
With the vanilla watch, pick up some ammo boxes and your good to go for an additional 8 seconds.
So many people who say the spy sucks use the C&D and wonder why their doing bad.
It might also be because they use the Ambassador too.
Which is awefull unless you are a good shot.

A knife, your Pistol, and a Dead Ringer. That's the setup of champions.

Also, learn to act like the class you're disguised as, and don't for the love of gods don't just make a bee line for who you want to kill.
If it looks like someone might spy check you, switch your disguise to a melee weapon (If you don't know how, learn[Switch to your knife and hit the last disguise button]) and run at them.
If you're lucky they'll stop and you'll be able to kill them.

Play mind games with people, having 3 people distracted and looking for you for 30 seconds is 3 less people your team have to deal with.
You don't always have to kill, just make them leave their post, shoot them and run.

And remember, people may look behind them, but they rarely look above.

Off topic I am actually quite good with the Cloak and Dagger....

OT: Yes a Spy does take skill to use as the only thing you can do is backstab. As far as I remember the Spy's knife has the lowest melee or one of the lowest. You also need to get behind someone and back stab and successfully turn invisible. This is harder than it sounds. You have to make yourself a convincing member of the team. You don't just start following people waiting for them to turn around.

(Although we all have yet to see the day where that strategy can outwit the impenetrable w+m1 pyros)

Rocket at the Pyro's feet and then juggle away or blast with shottie. For demo just launch away. Heavy will mince it with minigun. There are others assuming that was not a joke.

 

[Firetaffer]

No skil to use - I killed several people the first time playing spy, was fun and easy.

A lot of skill to master.

 

[BoxCutter]

Yes the Spy takes a certain skill set and play style to play them well. However as a player that plays a sniper 40% of the time I can safely say, FUCK SPYS.

 

[Jackalb]

No. It's the easiest thing there ever could be.

 

[Altorin]

it takes a different sort of skill then the other classes, but it's certainly skill. You can tell it does because there are bad spies and good spies. Good spies never die, are never checked, are hiding in the enemy ranks and they don't even know it.

Bad spies are the opposite. They die all the time, they don't effectively disguise themselves, misuse their cloak, take paths that lead them into clearly "THE SPY IS A SPY!" territory.

The 1-hit kill is the only way the spy would be viable at all. If a spy couldn't kill you in one hit.. It'd hit you, you'd realize it was a spy, and then kill him. They're made of rice cakes for a reason.

 

[Bran Mugen]

Playing Spy is not easy, but it sure as hell looks like it. Try him out a bit on lots of different maps and gameplay modes and you'll find it wasn't that easy to play. If your playing a spy to get kills, your playing him wrong. The Spy is to sabotage, that's why you have a sapper.

 

[AllLagNoFrag]

Phew, yes, I just came out of about 15 straight Payload matches. Best performance was with the heavy at 155 kills, 40 deaths and about 40 assists. The spy takes so much more skill than the heavy, with a few games, my spy only got about 5-6 backstabs(yea, im crap at the spy).

Was happy with the heavy tho, got to shoot so many bullets ^_^

 

[Code Monkey]

Playing the spy needs skill alright, maybe more skill than any other class. The only reason people think it doesn't need any skill is because the good spies, the really good spies, will dominate any game, and make it look easy. That shit takes practice.

 

[Altorin]

You know what a great game would be? Spy Vs Spy.. Everyone plays a spy.. The only appropriate disguise would be spy, but which team? Spy Checking wouldn't be an issue, you'd have to spycheck yourself, as a spy.. Randomly backstabbing people, or paying close attention to the names, or talk in team chat to stay organized.

Might really suck, might be really awesome

Probably would really suck, and also be really awesome.

edit: Nvm, if you disguise as a spy it shows a random class as your disguise, so just look for team-mates the ones that are disguised as something other then spies

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

Spy is one of the hardest to play. He's in one of those "Its underpowered when I use it, but overpowered when somebody else uses it" positions.

If you want easy, go Engineer.

 

[Bran Mugen]

Spy is one of the hardest to play. He's in one of those "Its underpowered when I use it, but overpowered when somebody else uses it" positions.

If you want easy, go Engineer.

Hey, don't mock the engie! That's not cool. Even if I normally play Huntsman Sniper.