Demoman

TF2Wiki

A black Scottish cyclops, demoman's play is as eccentric as his nature. The role you play is fluid depending on the player, but there are enough constants and skills to focus on for a blogger such as myself to write on, which is what I am doing here.

GENERAL STRATEGY

You've got three weapons: a grenade launcher, a sticky launcher, and a bottle. Knowing when to use each weapon is what turns a bad demoman into one who is sitting here discussing it with you. Knowing the general strengths and weaknesses of each weapon allows you apply each to every situation, often on the fly. However, there are a few constants.

Based on the fact that you have relatively fast-moving explosive rounds (compared to the soldier), you're the preferred enemy of sentries. You can take them out long range if you're on a map with a lot of vertical space by simply arching your gun up (This, too, takes a lot of skill to figure out). What weapon you use depends on the situation. If you can't get a long range shot on it, roll around a corner, fire a sticky, go back, fire another, etc. When you have 2-3 near the sentry, blow it up. You should even be able to take out an engineer or nearby buildings with the blast as well, so a nice nest of stickies should blow open enemy defenses. However, at long range, stickies become less efficient. You can hold down Mouse 1 to have them shoot further, but that takes longer. It's simpler to arc grenades, which too have a blast radius large enough to take out a sentry nest.

Your defensive capabilities are also top notch. If you have 2 or 3 demomen on your team, you can essentially grind any offensive to a halt on a chokepoint (a tunnel, narrow corner, etc). Doing this requires a nest of stickies on the chokepoint, with constant spamming of nades. Demo spam is the TF2 version of suppressive fire (and, to a lesser extent, Heavy fire), and having 4 nades roll back towards an enemy offensive is enough to have them either a) killed or b)run away, let alone having 8 or 12.

However, you have a few weaknesses. First, the clip size and the amount of ammo you have for the grenade launcher are tiny. The gun decieves you with having six slots, as you can only fire four. Also, you carry a total of 20 grenades. Simply put, you will run out of ammo early and often. This means you should have a general awareness of where the metal is nearby, or go out and pick up enemy weapons after wiping out a wave. Moreover, you have very little mid-to-short range combat capability. You ahve a bottle, but that suffers from the same problems of any melee weapon, that is, you have to be right next to them for it to work.

Your main defensive strength, however, is laying traps. Stickies around a door, on a capture point, near the cart, etc. can stop either a scout trying to backcap or an entire round of offensive players. Don't get caught up in defending these traps, however. Although stickies can be knocked back, very few classes can do this, and if you see that a point is being taken, immediately right click to stop it.

It's difficult to write up individual class matchups due to the aforementioned mid-to-short range lack of capability, as that is where one-on-one matchups take place, but general strategy applies there. Stickies are easier to aim for stationary enemies, but grenades have a larger blast radius for faster ones. Overall, it's easiest to ask for a more combat-oriented class to help you out, as you can't kill anyone who comes near you.