Specific Class Strategy Thread
Specific Class Strategy Thread
Simple, just discuss your favorite strategies for each class you like to play here. How do you personally like playing the class of your choice? What tips would you give for players who haven't invested that much time into said class? Are there any maps that make you instantly want to switch on/off a certain class? etc...
Re: Specific Class Strategy Thread
As a prolific engineer player I would advocate for a more aggressive playstyle, it makes the class more fun. It has been many years since I have found turtling "fun," sitting behind your buildings waiting for things to happen is how you get your ass bombed.
The goal here is essentially to get your stuff placed down as fast as you can and then roam around with your shotgun (or pomson!) and pistol. Instead of relying on the wrangler to deal with people threatening your sentry, you can just shoot them yourself. If you are good at landing shots you can 1v1 quite a lot of classes surprisingly and sometimes you get picks on important classes like medics. I just can't stand not being able to defend myself, I have to be running a damage primary for killing spies and anyone else trying to ruin my day.
Being proactive instead of reactive is how you maintain a good building setup. If you wait until your buildings have a sapper on them to start looking for and shooting a spy, you are a lot more likely to have your buildings go down. If instead you are roaming around your holding area, spy checking anyone who looks suspicious, you can catch spies a lot earlier and give yourself more chance to remove sappers, or even take out the spies before they get to place one. Similarly, if you're getting harassed by a demo or soldier, if you wait until the rockets and stickies start flying to begin retaliating your gun will be dead by the time you start landing some shots. If you instead are watching your area and you start attacking the soldier or demo before they've started firing, they will either ignore you or your sentry, allowing the other to get the kill in time.
A mindset you have to accept as engineer is that your team will not try to help you. You can influence where they stand to try and get them to help you coincidentally but most players are just interested in their own little world in the game, that's the nature of things. Assume you will be taking on the world alone and getting your shit rocked by an uber will feel less bad.
Another very important playstyle thing with engineer is knowing when to retreat. Most of the time it is better to try and get set up on the next point than try to hopelessly defend the previous point for the last 30 seconds, only to lose it and then the following point in a steamroll due to not having set up on it. Many times if you see an uber coming it makes more sense to just get out and set up further back. On some maps this can be the reason you end up winning the game, for example on something like Mojave it is extremely important for the red engineer (if you have one) to fall back long before the point has even been capped, because it is practically impossible to set up while blue is actively pushing second. Just think how long it takes you during set up time to get ready then give yourself that much buffer time before blue gets to you. In some maps if theres more than two points or it's something like payload and you see your team is just getting slaughtered you might want to skip a point and set up two back to give yourself more time.
Lastly don't sleep on minis, even on defense. I have had some fun times running gunslinger on red on a defensive team. There is a big difference between a mini and a regular sentry as far as game priority goes. A regular sentry is a hard wall, it halts the game and forced people to focus it to proceeed. The mini having vastly less damage means it doesn't do this. But you can use this bit of human psychology to your advantage. If you have a mini on red, blue team isn't going to uber to try and destroy it. In fact if you have an ubered combo on your team, often times enemies will straight up ignore your mini and try to focus your team mates. In some cases this lets your mini get more kills than a sentry would have. The mini is primarily a distraction tool, it divides enemy attention between itself and your team, and if they end up ignoring it to focus on your team, you can run in with a shotgun to combo with your mini for a ton of damage. Minis on defense work best when you have another engineer on your team but I find it also works well even alone. Not having to spend 530 metal on a sentry that just gets melted in an uber, and only having to spend 100 means you dont have to worry about maintaining it as much, you can focus on your teleporter and dispenser instead and just spam minis whenever your existing ones go down. This is especially potent on red team defense because by having a setup already good, you have a metal advantage and with the low cost of a mini + a lv 3 dispenser + metal packs you can place them nearly forever and never run out of metal.
The goal here is essentially to get your stuff placed down as fast as you can and then roam around with your shotgun (or pomson!) and pistol. Instead of relying on the wrangler to deal with people threatening your sentry, you can just shoot them yourself. If you are good at landing shots you can 1v1 quite a lot of classes surprisingly and sometimes you get picks on important classes like medics. I just can't stand not being able to defend myself, I have to be running a damage primary for killing spies and anyone else trying to ruin my day.
Being proactive instead of reactive is how you maintain a good building setup. If you wait until your buildings have a sapper on them to start looking for and shooting a spy, you are a lot more likely to have your buildings go down. If instead you are roaming around your holding area, spy checking anyone who looks suspicious, you can catch spies a lot earlier and give yourself more chance to remove sappers, or even take out the spies before they get to place one. Similarly, if you're getting harassed by a demo or soldier, if you wait until the rockets and stickies start flying to begin retaliating your gun will be dead by the time you start landing some shots. If you instead are watching your area and you start attacking the soldier or demo before they've started firing, they will either ignore you or your sentry, allowing the other to get the kill in time.
A mindset you have to accept as engineer is that your team will not try to help you. You can influence where they stand to try and get them to help you coincidentally but most players are just interested in their own little world in the game, that's the nature of things. Assume you will be taking on the world alone and getting your shit rocked by an uber will feel less bad.
Another very important playstyle thing with engineer is knowing when to retreat. Most of the time it is better to try and get set up on the next point than try to hopelessly defend the previous point for the last 30 seconds, only to lose it and then the following point in a steamroll due to not having set up on it. Many times if you see an uber coming it makes more sense to just get out and set up further back. On some maps this can be the reason you end up winning the game, for example on something like Mojave it is extremely important for the red engineer (if you have one) to fall back long before the point has even been capped, because it is practically impossible to set up while blue is actively pushing second. Just think how long it takes you during set up time to get ready then give yourself that much buffer time before blue gets to you. In some maps if theres more than two points or it's something like payload and you see your team is just getting slaughtered you might want to skip a point and set up two back to give yourself more time.
Lastly don't sleep on minis, even on defense. I have had some fun times running gunslinger on red on a defensive team. There is a big difference between a mini and a regular sentry as far as game priority goes. A regular sentry is a hard wall, it halts the game and forced people to focus it to proceeed. The mini having vastly less damage means it doesn't do this. But you can use this bit of human psychology to your advantage. If you have a mini on red, blue team isn't going to uber to try and destroy it. In fact if you have an ubered combo on your team, often times enemies will straight up ignore your mini and try to focus your team mates. In some cases this lets your mini get more kills than a sentry would have. The mini is primarily a distraction tool, it divides enemy attention between itself and your team, and if they end up ignoring it to focus on your team, you can run in with a shotgun to combo with your mini for a ton of damage. Minis on defense work best when you have another engineer on your team but I find it also works well even alone. Not having to spend 530 metal on a sentry that just gets melted in an uber, and only having to spend 100 means you dont have to worry about maintaining it as much, you can focus on your teleporter and dispenser instead and just spam minis whenever your existing ones go down. This is especially potent on red team defense because by having a setup already good, you have a metal advantage and with the low cost of a mini + a lv 3 dispenser + metal packs you can place them nearly forever and never run out of metal.
Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.
Re: Specific Class Strategy Thread
There is this funny playstyle using sniper for those who want to play more aggressively but dont have a God-like aim to do so, you can equip the Cleaners Carbine and the Huntsman and go for mini-crit arrows and the charge itself only takes around 100 damage to fill up completely and the mini-crit arrows can one shot light classes and medics.
The huntsman itself is also always fun to use.
The huntsman itself is also always fun to use.
Re: Specific Class Strategy Thread
Spy has always been my favorite class, I wouldn't say "main" but that's probably what most would call it. The most important strategy i'd say players need to get good at is disguise acting. These are a few rules I try to follow:
1. Avoid scout. Under very few circumstances can you make scout work. One is if you disguise but you just back up, then your slower movement might be overlooked. The other is if the scout you disguise as is using the BFB, which can work even better because that weapon encourages scouts to forgo double jumping for the most part.
2. Avoid engineer, unless they're dead. One of your highest priorities is taking down an engineer, and you generally need to be disguised as someone else to do that
3. Sniper is easy, but you have to look active. Using the "spy!" voice command and feigning an SMG reload or swapping to the kukri usually seals the deal for anyone walking by.
4. Medic can work, but you need to be doing the same thing as sniper. Pretend like you're using a primary or a melee to catch a spy, because if you're on the medi gun for too long and aren't healing anyone you're gonna be caught quickly
5. When you're side by side disguised with the enemy team, don't look behind you that often, it looks suspicious. Quick glances every few seconds are enough to get the information you need.
6. Don't use the same disguise twice in a row. Alternating between two works, better yet 3 or 4
At any time you're disguised, ignore your hud and viewmodel and fully enter the mindset of the class you're disguised as. "if i were a red pyro, what would i be doing right now?"
I'll probably write about cloaking later, that's the only other major skill you can really write strategy for. As resident ambassador enjoyer, i'll say the only way to improve revolver aim is by actually playing the game. Similarly, there isn't much to say about improving at knife or sapper, the work you put in to use those items effectively is the disguise acting.
1. Avoid scout. Under very few circumstances can you make scout work. One is if you disguise but you just back up, then your slower movement might be overlooked. The other is if the scout you disguise as is using the BFB, which can work even better because that weapon encourages scouts to forgo double jumping for the most part.
2. Avoid engineer, unless they're dead. One of your highest priorities is taking down an engineer, and you generally need to be disguised as someone else to do that
3. Sniper is easy, but you have to look active. Using the "spy!" voice command and feigning an SMG reload or swapping to the kukri usually seals the deal for anyone walking by.
4. Medic can work, but you need to be doing the same thing as sniper. Pretend like you're using a primary or a melee to catch a spy, because if you're on the medi gun for too long and aren't healing anyone you're gonna be caught quickly
5. When you're side by side disguised with the enemy team, don't look behind you that often, it looks suspicious. Quick glances every few seconds are enough to get the information you need.
6. Don't use the same disguise twice in a row. Alternating between two works, better yet 3 or 4
At any time you're disguised, ignore your hud and viewmodel and fully enter the mindset of the class you're disguised as. "if i were a red pyro, what would i be doing right now?"
I'll probably write about cloaking later, that's the only other major skill you can really write strategy for. As resident ambassador enjoyer, i'll say the only way to improve revolver aim is by actually playing the game. Similarly, there isn't much to say about improving at knife or sapper, the work you put in to use those items effectively is the disguise acting.
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Buchou
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Re: Specific Class Strategy Thread
I have never been very good at engineer and consequently I don't have much playtime as him. I also never liked turtling (unless it was with like three other engies defending Dustbowl stage 2 last or something) but I actually have found that the reverts on Castaway make him way more fun for me. The rescue ranger in particular is so much better and useable without the metal penalty they have now.random wrote: Tue Feb 10, 2026 10:54 am ...It has been many years since I have found turtling "fun," sitting behind your buildings waiting for things to happen is how you get your ass bombed...
Of course, you have like 20 times as many hours on him than I do so that's probably why it isn't stale for me yet.
Long live Castaway! Long live Castaway!
Re: Specific Class Strategy Thread
The problem I have with the rescue ranger is that there are a lot of good spies on Castaway. If I was playing in casual (god forbid) I would be unlikely to run up against many good spies, and if I was playing competitive (god forbid) my team would be able to help support me. But in a situation like this where I can't guarantee teamwork but I can guarantee good spy players, not being able to actually kill spies is awful. A single spy can completely ruin your day if all you have to shoot him with is the rescue ranger. If you don't get matched up against a spy who makes it their mission to not allow you to build anything ever then consider yourself lucky. I'm sure there are matches where I could have used the rescue ranger, but using it well encourages people to play spy to kill you I think. It is a weapon that heavily relies on your team being able to cover your personal defensive weakness, if you're solo holding you will get raped.Buchou wrote: Wed Feb 11, 2026 10:47 amI have never been very good at engineer and consequently I don't have much playtime as him. I also never liked turtling (unless it was with like three other engies defending Dustbowl stage 2 last or something) but I actually have found that the reverts on Castaway make him way more fun for me. The rescue ranger in particular is so much better and useable without the metal penalty they have now.random wrote: Tue Feb 10, 2026 10:54 am ...It has been many years since I have found turtling "fun," sitting behind your buildings waiting for things to happen is how you get your ass bombed...
Of course, you have like 20 times as many hours on him than I do so that's probably why it isn't stale for me yet.
It's one of the things I like about community servers a lot. I know all the names of the spy players who bug me the most often and for each one of them I have a general rhythm on how they play and I learn to play around it, and I'm sure they do the same for me. And I know a lot of them recognize when I am not playing a damage weapon like the Pomson or Shotgun and they use that to be more aggressive. So maybe I'd have success elsewhere where a spy doesn't know my playstyle and couldn't just immedaitely decide to abuse my lack of defense
Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.
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Buchou
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Re: Specific Class Strategy Thread
Since I still don't see many people use it, now's a pretty good opportunity to shill the Vita-saw, I guess. In my opinion, the Vita-saw greatly outclasses the Übersaw in most situations. The Vita-saw carries a -10 health penalty but in exchange you get to keep up to 20% Über after death. This is a huge boon to most Medics, and in my opinion is a much more useful upside than the Übersaw's.
Unless you are some kind of 10k hour Medic main god who surfs every rocket and jukes every pipe, you are going to die as Medic. Everyone wants to kill you, and more often than not, your team either doesn't care if you die or is incapable of protecting you.
I find that with the Übersaw, you can very occasionally get 2 or even 4 hits in on a Spy who failed to backstab you, but that doesn't happen every game, and certainly not every life. Many times, you actually die immediately after or waste that Über to save your life. The upside of the Vita-saw comes into play every single life, and you don't even have to pull it out. Having 20% Über basically every time you respawn means your mediguns will effectively charge 20% faster and you'll be much more likely to actually get 100% Über instead of dying before you can get there. Having an effective 20% faster charge speed alleviates the hidden downside of the stock medigun, by the way. Every other medigun has some kind of buff to charge speed so in comparison stock can sometimes feel painfully slow.
As for the downside, 10 health is really not that much on Medic. Medic heals passively meaning you don't feel the effects of a lower health pool as much as you do on Sandman Scout or Big Earner Spy, for example. Also, 140 health doesn't put you under any significant damage thresholds like those other weapons do.
You will STILL die to:
- 2 scattergun meatshots
- 2 rockets
- 2 pipes
- 2 melee swings (or 1 random crit)
- 1 caber swing (as you SHOULD)
- non-quickscope headshots
- backstabs (obviously)
You are mostly more vulnerable to fire/Pyro combos and miniguns, but if you let that happen you were going to die anyway, no matter what melee you used. And again, dying with the Vita-saw is not nearly as punishing as with the Übersaw (or any other melee).
What primary should you use? The Vita-saw has good synergy with both the Crossbow and the Overdose. (Everything works great with the Crossbow, of course.) The Overdose buffs your movement speed based on how much Über you have charged, meaning if you have 20% Über saved up (which you almost certainly will) and need to make a getaway from a FUBAR team fight, you can pull out the Overdose and escape faster than you would be able to otherwise.
In other words, with this loadout you can take advantage of the upsides of your primary AND melee more often.
The Blutsauger has the least synergy because the nerf to your health regen makes you feel the downside just a little bit more. (In my opinion it was already the worst unlock in the primary slot.)
I don't know how many people on Castaway main Medic, (I think Pasta does?) but if you do, tell me what you think of the Vita-saw.
Unless you are some kind of 10k hour Medic main god who surfs every rocket and jukes every pipe, you are going to die as Medic. Everyone wants to kill you, and more often than not, your team either doesn't care if you die or is incapable of protecting you.
I find that with the Übersaw, you can very occasionally get 2 or even 4 hits in on a Spy who failed to backstab you, but that doesn't happen every game, and certainly not every life. Many times, you actually die immediately after or waste that Über to save your life. The upside of the Vita-saw comes into play every single life, and you don't even have to pull it out. Having 20% Über basically every time you respawn means your mediguns will effectively charge 20% faster and you'll be much more likely to actually get 100% Über instead of dying before you can get there. Having an effective 20% faster charge speed alleviates the hidden downside of the stock medigun, by the way. Every other medigun has some kind of buff to charge speed so in comparison stock can sometimes feel painfully slow.
As for the downside, 10 health is really not that much on Medic. Medic heals passively meaning you don't feel the effects of a lower health pool as much as you do on Sandman Scout or Big Earner Spy, for example. Also, 140 health doesn't put you under any significant damage thresholds like those other weapons do.
You will STILL die to:
- 2 scattergun meatshots
- 2 rockets
- 2 pipes
- 2 melee swings (or 1 random crit)
- 1 caber swing (as you SHOULD)
- non-quickscope headshots
- backstabs (obviously)
You are mostly more vulnerable to fire/Pyro combos and miniguns, but if you let that happen you were going to die anyway, no matter what melee you used. And again, dying with the Vita-saw is not nearly as punishing as with the Übersaw (or any other melee).
What primary should you use? The Vita-saw has good synergy with both the Crossbow and the Overdose. (Everything works great with the Crossbow, of course.) The Overdose buffs your movement speed based on how much Über you have charged, meaning if you have 20% Über saved up (which you almost certainly will) and need to make a getaway from a FUBAR team fight, you can pull out the Overdose and escape faster than you would be able to otherwise.
In other words, with this loadout you can take advantage of the upsides of your primary AND melee more often.
The Blutsauger has the least synergy because the nerf to your health regen makes you feel the downside just a little bit more. (In my opinion it was already the worst unlock in the primary slot.)
I don't know how many people on Castaway main Medic, (I think Pasta does?) but if you do, tell me what you think of the Vita-saw.
Long live Castaway! Long live Castaway!
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Buchou
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Re: Specific Class Strategy Thread
Just use your wrench on them and your ears. I played Engineer on that Fastlane game we played last night, if you recall. I was being harassed pretty regularly by spies and every time I saw them I just hit them once or twice with my Jag and they went down. Plus, if they sapped my sentry it only took two swings to remove it thanks to the Jag revert.random wrote: Wed Feb 11, 2026 10:50 amThe problem I have with the rescue ranger is that there are a lot of good spies on Castaway. If I was playing in casual (god forbid) I would be unlikely to run up against many good spies, and if I was playing competitive (god forbid) my team would be able to help support me. But in a situation like this where I can't guarantee teamwork but I can guarantee good spy players, not being able to actually kill spies is awful. A single spy can completely ruin your day if all you have to shoot him with is the rescue ranger. If you don't get matched up against a spy who makes it their mission to not allow you to build anything ever then consider yourself lucky. I'm sure there are matches where I could have used the rescue ranger, but using it well encourages people to play spy to kill you I think. It is a weapon that heavily relies on your team being able to cover your personal defensive weakness, if you're solo holding you will get raped.Buchou wrote: Wed Feb 11, 2026 10:47 am
I have never been very good at engineer and consequently I don't have much playtime as him. I also never liked turtling (unless it was with like three other engies defending Dustbowl stage 2 last or something) but I actually have found that the reverts on Castaway make him way more fun for me. The rescue ranger in particular is so much better and useable without the metal penalty they have now.
Of course, you have like 20 times as many hours on him than I do so that's probably why it isn't stale for me yet.
It's one of the things I like about community servers a lot. I know all the names of the spy players who bug me the most often and for each one of them I have a general rhythm on how they play and I learn to play around it, and I'm sure they do the same for me. And I know a lot of them recognize when I am not playing a damage weapon like the Pomson or Shotgun and they use that to be more aggressive. So maybe I'd have success elsewhere where a spy doesn't know my playstyle and couldn't just immedaitely decide to abuse my lack of defense
Also, for some reason a lot of our spies like to cloak on top of dispensers and wait for an opening so something I've noticed personally is if you occasionally shoot or melee the space on top of a dispenser, you'll catch a spy.
And I absolutely love that about Castaway, too. Being familiar with everyone on any given session and more often than not having 3 or 4 Steam friends on the server makes the whole thing feel so much more fun, and ironically, -- casual.
Long live Castaway! Long live Castaway!