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Team Fortress 2 Tips and Tricks

Team Fortress 2 Tips and Tricks: Advanced Techniques

Knowing the basics gets you through most Team Fortress 2 matches. Knowing these tips and tricks puts you ahead of players with twice your hours. TF2 hides an enormous amount of depth beneath its cartoonish surface: movement techniques, hidden mechanics, timing tricks, and class-specific skills that separate good players from great ones. Here are the techniques worth learning.

Table of Contents

Rocket Jumping

Rocket jumping transforms Soldier from a slow ground class into the most mobile class in the game. The basic technique: jump, crouch, and fire a rocket at the ground simultaneously. The explosion launches you forward and upward.

Here is the step-by-step sequence:

  1. Look at the ground behind you at a 45-degree angle
  2. Press jump
  3. Immediately press crouch (and hold it)
  4. Fire your rocket at the ground

Timing matters. Crouching during the blast increases your launch height significantly because the crouch tucks your hitbox closer to the explosion point. Hold crouch through the entire flight for maximum distance.

Speedshot (pogo): Fire a rocket straight down while already airborne to chain jumps without losing speed. This keeps your momentum going across multiple hops. Competitive Soldiers pogo across entire maps.

Wall jump: Fire a rocket at a wall while airborne to change direction mid-flight. This lets you round corners in the air and approach from unexpected angles.

Equip the Gunboats to reduce rocket jump self-damage from 27-46 HP down to 8-14 HP. Without Gunboats, three rocket jumps eat half your health. With them, you can jump five or six times before needing a health pack. Our builds guide covers when Gunboats outperform the Shotgun.

Practice on jump maps. Search "jump_" in the community server browser. Maps like jump_beef, jump_academy, and jump_jurf teach you the fundamentals progressively.

Sticky Jumping and Trimping

Demoman has his own explosive movement. Place a stickybomb on the ground, stand on it, jump, crouch, and detonate. Sticky jumps launch you farther and faster than rocket jumps, but they cost more health (40-60+ HP).

Trimping is a Demoknight-specific technique. With the Chargin' Targe equipped, charge toward a ramp or inclined surface. When you hit the slope at the right angle, you launch into the air while maintaining charge speed. A skilled Demoknight can fly across the map and one-shot targets with a critical melee hit at the end of a full charge.

Trimping requires specific map geometry. Upward, Badwater, and many KOTH maps have natural ramp spots. Learning these spots turns Demoknight from a meme playstyle into a genuine threat.

Surfing

When an explosion hits you, you can surf the knockback by air-strafing in the direction you are pushed. Instead of taking a rocket to the face and dying, you ride the blast to safety. This works with rockets, stickybombs, Sentry Gun knockback, and even Pyro's airblast.

To surf damage: when you see an incoming projectile, jump just before it hits and strafe in the direction of the blast. You trade taking damage for gaining distance and repositioning. Scouts and Medics benefit the most from surfing because their low health makes avoiding follow-up shots critical.

Spy-Checking Techniques

Spies disguise as your teammates, but disguises have tells. Learn to spot them:

  • Bump test: Walk into teammates. You pass through real allies but collide with disguised Spies. If you bump into a "teammate," shoot them.
  • Class behavior: A Medic not healing, a Sniper in the wrong position, or an Engineer away from his buildings is suspicious. Shoot anyone acting wrong.
  • Name check: Spy disguises copy a real teammate's name. If you see two players with the same name, one is a Spy.
  • Fire: Pyro solves Spy problems. Flame Thrower reveals Spies instantly and sets them on fire, breaking their cloak trail. Sweep common Spy routes regularly.
  • Jarate and Mad Milk: Both reveal cloaked Spies and outline disguised ones. Throw them at chokepoints where Spies pass through.

As any class, shoot teammates once when passing them. It costs you nothing and catches lazy Spies. Make this a habit.

Uber Tracking

In competitive and high-level casual play, tracking the enemy Medic's UberCharge percentage wins fights before they start. Uber builds at a rate of 2.5% per second when healing an injured target and 1.25% per second on a fully healed target.

A Medic healing a damaged patient from spawn reaches full Uber at roughly 40 seconds with the stock Medi Gun. The Kritzkrieg charges 25% faster, hitting full charge around 32 seconds.

Track the timer from when you last killed the enemy Medic. If it has been 40 seconds or more, assume they have Uber and play accordingly. Do not push into a team with Uber advantage. Force them to pop it defensively, then push during the 8-second window after it expires.

Communicate Uber status to your team. "Their Medic has Uber" changes how everyone plays. See our overview page for more on how UberCharge shapes matches.

Market Gardening

The Market Gardener is a Soldier melee weapon that deals critical hits while rocket jumping. A single crit swing does 195 damage, killing every class below 200 HP instantly.

The technique: rocket jump toward a target, switch to the Market Gardener mid-flight, and swing just before landing on them. The crit activates only while you are in the blast jump arc. Touching the ground or a surface cancels the crit window.

Market Gardening is difficult and inconsistent but incredibly satisfying. Combine it with the Mantreads (which deal landing damage based on fall speed) for even more style points. This loadout sacrifices Soldier's consistency for highlight-reel plays.

Rollouts

A rollout is the optimized movement sequence from spawn to the mid point at the start of a competitive round. Every second matters because the team that arrives at mid first with more health wins the initial fight.

Standard Soldier rollout on most 5CP maps:

  1. Leave spawn, rocket jump off the ground toward the second point
  2. Pogo off the ground to maintain speed
  3. Use a third jump to reach mid

Good rollouts arrive at mid with 200+ HP (using Gunboats) and beat slower classes by several seconds. Scout rollouts use double jumps and optimal pathing rather than explosive jumps.

Demoman rollouts use a single sticky jump from spawn, which covers massive distance but costs significant health. The Medic then heals the Demo back up during the walk to mid.

Practice rollouts on empty servers. Load the map, type mp_tournament 1 in console, and run the route repeatedly until muscle memory takes over. Our tier list explains why getting to mid first matters so much in competitive.

Hidden Mechanics Most Players Miss

TF2 has mechanics that the game never explains:

  • Random crits scale with recent damage. The more damage you dealt in the last 20 seconds, the higher your crit chance (up to 12% for melee, 2-10% for ranged). High-damage classes like Demoman crit more often.
  • Healing ramp-up: Medic's heal rate increases the longer a patient has not taken damage. After 10 seconds without damage, heal rate doubles from 24 HP/s to 72 HP/s. This is why Medic pairs with overhealed targets move so fast.
  • Sentry knockback pushes targets away proportionally to damage dealt. At long range, knockback is minimal. At close range, it pins you in place. Circle around Sentries rather than running straight at them.
  • Teleporter priority: When multiple players stand on a Teleporter entrance, the player who stood on it first gets teleported. Stop crowding the Teleporter.
  • Payload cart healing: The cart heals BLU players at a rate of 10 HP/s per nearby player, up to three players. It also dispenses ammo. Use it as a mobile Dispenser.
  • Overheal decay: Overhealed HP drains at a rate that scales with the amount of overheal. A fully overhealed Heavy (450 HP) loses extra health faster than a slightly overhealed Scout.

Every one of these mechanics affects decision-making. The more you understand about how TF2 actually works under the hood, the better your instincts become. For loadout optimization based on these mechanics, check our builds page. New players should start with our beginner's guide before tackling these advanced techniques.