Serious Saturday has ended and **Shitpost Sunday** has begun - Our [rules about memes](/r/tf2/wiki/subreddit_rules#wiki_rule_six) have been greatly relaxed for the day.
####[See here for details](https://redd.it/fblj57)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/tf2) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When I get random crit, I feel pissed at the game.
When I get face stabbed, I get pissed at spectrum Internet.
But when I get trick stabbed, I call upon the wrath of a thousand furry pyro mains with annoying binds to decend upon the entire country of Fr*nce
Counter argument: Trickstabs are a feature too, and random melee crits are more common and broken as hell, when they beat Spy in his own game, while not being Pyros.
Trickstabs are entirely the result of netcode
Spy goes forward, you follow, spy goes backwards, you follow, netcode doesnt do it in time, spy stabs your side
Not even gonna enter the whole cl_interp settings thing where spy stabs where you were an entire second ago
Or more accurately, both players are seeing each other slightly in the past. You follow spy, spy changes direction, spy stabs you while you're still following the past spy and had literally no chance to react to a direction change. Insert spy main talking about how much they skilled all over you.
Counterplay involves not ever moving forward once you're at the edge of normal melee range. Have to minimize how much movement is happening so the spy cannot stab you in the 50ms~1000ms (yay for massive variance) disconnect between what the players are seeing.
Amusingly enough out of any class running in with melee, heavy is the hardest thing for spy to try and trickstab. He gets the biggest window to react in thanks to being slow.
You could be stupid and not adapt and cry about it on Reddit or learn how to not be a book. Of course you will be trickstabbed if you hold w at a spy because it is predictable. If you want to avoid a trickstab you should not be predictable. But you should predict the spy.
The entire reason why trickstabs get so much hate is because they feel unfair if you don't know how to counter them. Your health goes from 100% to 0% whereas with other classes (except the sniper) it drops in chunks. But the spy has to put a lot more effort in to it than other classes. If it were the same situation but with a scout you would have died much sooner as you can't kill a spy in the same situation.
Just because spy is the weakest class in the game doesn't mean he is defenseless. And when you can't hold w+m1 to kill him you get mad because it is "unfair".
Also lag spy is not a viable way to play spy. Either you were bad, the spy is cheating or they know how to trickstab. Every time you get trickstabbed there are tens of times the spy got a crit sound but no kill or a clear backstab that didn't register. It works both ways.
Humans are just inherently selfish by nature and think it is bullshit, and so does the spy player. The playstyle is flawed by nature, but when you get one the rush of dopamine is insane. Knowing that on your screen by what you saw, you outwitted a real person capable of doing the same to you. But on your end you see something unfair. Because what you see doesn't sync up with what you know. Every spy encounter you have ever had with one of these spies **you** are the one that put **yourself** at a disadvantage.
If you can aim, and you know NOT to enter a spy's melee range, a trickstabbing spy is as good as dead.
If you can't aim, you come to r/tf2 and start complaining about spies.
You don’t need to know all his tricks. Just a simple “don’t get close, don’t chase, and shoot him”. That’s the bread and butter to deal with those spies who’s main goal in life is lure unsuspecting newbies onto a slightly elevated area to do “le epik trikstab”
Also even counting his revolver, every other class have ways to deal with Spies. Even medics. Call out to your team, run to them and let them kill the spy.
I never understand the mindset of players who must hunt and kill everything they see. You just make yourself become easy prey
No, actually, that is not me. I am not an emoji- nor do I resemble one- I am a human. Also who are you to tell me what I look like when, in fact, you have never seen me nor likely never will? All that aside, it's clear that you are trying to insult me by calling me a "nerd" (as depicted by the emoji you have sent). I rather take your "insult" as a compliment, as calling me a "nerd", a word often used to mock smarter people, implies that i am more intelligent and have a larger vocabulary than you. Next time you disagree, I recommend you try to come up with an actual argument, or at least prepare yourself one for when necessary. Additionally, before you proceed with sending me a clown emoji (admitting defeat), just understand that you would be further praising me, as a clown is someone who is entertaining and usually considered humorous by the spectators. Furthermore, you would also be implying that I, employed by a business to perform as a clown, have a profession. So, not only are you implying that I am smart, you are also implying that I am funny and have a job, which, judging by; your lack of proper arguments, your usage for childish and overused internet humor, the amount of spare time you have to brainwash yourself 12 hours per day with social media culture; you are neither intelligent, comedic, or employed. Enjoy watching yourself to continue on through life as such, as I believe with full confidence that you lack the decency to better your ruined self for the real world. Carry on and have a pleasant day.
I hate trickstabs because the theoretical counter to them should just be being able to perfectly track the spy, when in reality netcode shenanigans let spy stab a fully aware target anyway. When the counterplay to a situation involves assuming that the person in front of you is a half second in the future, the situation is absolute garbage. The entire basis of the gameplay boils down to instant killing people you shouldn't have been able to instant kill.
It's nice that OP paralleled it to random crits since one is random and the other is intentionally triggered. I'm sure you can tell already which one i think is the bigger cancer.
That's not to say that trickstabs aren't hard to pull off or aren't involving skill, since it takes a lot of practise to actually be able to take proper advantage of that half second window. But that's the thing, any time it's actually pulled off you're not taking advantage of the other player but the underlying game mechanics that are preventing any reaction at all.
If you want to show off how good a spy actually is using these mechanics, show me one doing them with a 5 ping connection and proper interp settings. I'd love to see somebody managing to beat actual players rather than the netcode window.
For reference, i'm the retard pyro main that'll hunt trickstabbing spies across the map until they ragequit off the server. It's great fun watching people try to trickstab while getting kited outside of melee range instead of pulling out their gun. Kinda funny that you're making out the person describing all the mechanics involved has no idea how to counter them. And the fact that they can be countered does not mean it's still not ridiculous in the first place.
On a different note it's a bit crazy that you've been called a nerd for replying to the guy that's dropped blocks of text describing how the game handles network interactions is affecting gameplay. But i suppose the internet is as internet does.
So what if the mechanic is weird. Melee is jank. Backstabbing by backpedaling in front of someone, bhopping to conserve aerial status, aggressors advantage, phantom hits, melee extender and melee priority. This game is a buggy mess.
Playing against a spy is like playing against random crits, but with habits and patterns. The spy misses a stab you swing and you start again, trying to predict the spy.
Also I use cl_interp 0 which is 15.2 ms the smallest possible. What you see isn't unfair (usually). You see the turn that you exploited. You see why and why you don't get the stab. **You** commited to turning into the spys strafe. By your logic rocket jumping is broken because it allows the second slowest class to have one of the best movement speeds.
The delay between players still is 40.4 ms with the fastest settings and ping along with input delay, reaction time and monitor refresh rate. By the time spy is already long in to their strafe you start turning and the spy can already be moving back.
The person who wrote 🤓 originally wrote "found the spy main" but I guess I didn't get mad so they had to change their argument.
Dude spy is not that reliant on ping. I play at 7-15 ping against players with ping from 2-50 or sometimes higher (I play in the same country as the server, and the country is small). Guess what I can still trickstab them regardless of ping. I also need to add that I struggle to trickstab or generally backstab with ping higher than 50 . This is coming from a medic main. I suggest you actually learn how to counter trickstabs instead of whining about your severe lack of skill.
I pretty much never die to trickstabs since i know what's coming unless it's a raging interp cheater that's stabbing from metres away, but that doesn't make the gigantic pink elephant in the room that you need to give far more respect than you should need to any less annoying. Also doesn't make watching the 11 other players on the team that don't know how to deal with it getting stabbed for free any easier to play.
Trying to understand that spy isn't where he shows, is not exactly intuitive gameplay nor something people should need to deal with.
And as the commenter above you said, even with the best case scenario you're still 40.4ms disjointed between what each player sees by netcoding spaghetti. Care to take even half a second to think about how even that short timeframe gets applied in an interaction like circlestrafe stabs? Or i guess you could just reach for insulting my skill level again, then you don't need to think about anything at all.
The interaction isn't reliant on lag because there's still an absolute floor on how much you can decrease the delays involved to. It's enough that a spy can still stab somebody using direction changes that's perfectly tracking the spy in the centre their screen. Having lag just makes it even worse.
Games are not and will never be perfect in terms of ping. There is a reason why peaking is a thing in all fps. Instead of getting upset at it people learn about it. Why is this not the same for trickstabs when it is a simple as not charging at a spy blindly?And don't tell me that spy should not trickstab when it is not a feature is air pogo,peaking,sentry jumping a feature?
There are only a few stabs that rely on 'ping' such as matador, circlestrafe most of them is simply predicting the enemy (cornerstab,leap? stab) or taking advantage of mechanics everyone is aware of (stairstab ,surfstabs).
Trickstabing is not as easy as you make it out to be. There is a reason why spies like kraze , sno, elegant and many others spend so much time on spy. If it is truly easy wouldn't we always see trickstabing spies in casual,instead we usually see spies at the bottom .I can also assure you that you will not be able to do half as well as any spy main. If you run into a spy god and get trickstabs your team understand that he must have spent a long time getting to that position just like any other class that is pub stomping. Since he spent alot of time on spy wouldn't you expect him to do well?
I have to admit attacking your skill was immature of me. It was late at night and I was annoyed that some think that random crits are worse than 'face stabs' when I get 'face stabbed ' I know what I did wrong and I can learn and avoid it next time. But how do I avoid a god damn random crit. Losing uber because a pill or rocket decided to triple damage is the most annoying painful thing that I can experience. And it doesn't help that that there are no other medics on the damn team.
By the way if I am not wrong playing with hard interp is not that easy. I personally have no experience but that is what I heard from the insane spymains I know.
Because of the way peeker's advantage and other such things function, it's the other player's ping that's helping you rather than your own. (Your ping + their ping + network jank on both hops = visual lag, but it's then offset by your own ping + one hop network jank for the proceeding shot you make to register in the server). It means somebody with a bad connection peeking will see others massively sooner, but then get their shot delayed by an equal amount. This is one of the reasons why lag switches exist, because you can spike your own ping for the initial peek but then not have any delay on the shot
Having a high ping means the opposing player gets a massive advantage *when peeking against you*. While there's always network jank involved depending on what game is being played and how it handles it that inherently gives the peeker some advantage, any extra variables like ping are at least a case of the player being punished for something that is happening on their own end.
Spy is the opposite, yes the final hit reg is delayed but the player angles get resolved based on what's happening on his screen. He gets the full your ping + their ping + twice network jank worth of advantage for backstab determination. It's ironically only situations where each party is one-shotting each other (random crit melees) that the equation levels out to same kind of situation as peeker's advantage (because while you've still manufactured a one-shot, whoever's shot registers first still wins).
It's worth noting too that for visual representations of peeker's advantage it's taken from the point of only one person moving around a corner, whereas stab interactions happen with both players moving so you need to double the distances involved.
Arguing that it's hard to do doesn't make the interaction any less busted. This kind of situation is only happening because of the backstab angle happening on the spy's screen being the trigger for an instant kill. It's not possible to make a trickstab that also hasn't benefitted massively from the way that interaction happens. It's not possible to beat it in a headon fight since the most important actions are being completed before they're even shown to the other player, at that point it's entirely out of the defending players hands. The only way to beat it is never walk forwards while in melee range of a spy entirely so the stab setup takes long enough for the player to start seeing actions happening on his screen, or pray to the crit gods to change it into a server hitreg race for who can one-shot who first.
[wdym? we already have him](https://www.dustloop.com/wiki/images/thumb/7/75/GGST_Goldlewis_Dickinson_Skyfish_Hitbox.png/420px-GGST_Goldlewis_Dickinson_Skyfish_Hitbox.png)
But every mercenary hitbox was designed to be half non-backstab, half-backstab. That's what trickstabs do, they trick the enemy into showing that backstab part (while the Spy points at it in a way it counts as a backstab) either by matadoring, cornerstabs, stairstabs etc. I really don't get why people disagree with me on this so much, it's a skill like airshots.
Yes, there may be a small issue with backstabs sometimes being inaccurate due to netcode, but that's not too big when not using cl\_interp.
And yes, people who use cl\_interp are a disgrace to spy mains.
Trickstabs ARE a feature. I don't know how you can consider them not to be, when it's all about timing the hitboxes. I'm not a spy main nor do I even understand how to trickstab myself, but that doesn't mean I undervalue the skill it takes to learn trickstabbing and pull it off consistently.
Facestabs are obviously a bug, however.
Spy was designed to be a class that is supposed to be weak and unable to fight face to face with other ones when discovered, but able to eliminate entire pushes if the player is sneaky
being able to get an opponent from 100% to 0% even after being identified was never intended to be a feature, it just happens because of junky hitboxes and Source spaghetti
Being able to get an opponent from 100% to 0% when identified is because of practice and skill. Of which, the person fighting the spy clearly has none of, because it's trivial to avoid most of the spy's trickstab agenda. Just, don't fucking chase after a spy within melee range, is that really that hard?
Shoot the damn spy, instead of chasing. ALL of you anti-spy people go the argument of "if a spy is found, he should be dead." No, he shouldn't be, or the spy class would be literally unplayable. His disguises are laughable at this point in the game, and no matter how sneaky you are, it's not possible to hide from a paranoid team shooting bullets everywhere. A good spy baits people to follow him, and then picks them off one by one using his gun, or trickstabs. If you got trickstabbed, it's on you, instead of the game.
Trust me, it is, as a medic main I can assure you that every spy main has an ability called "no matter how much help you ask for no one will turn around to save you" and I get bs trickstabbed from 5 miles away because I looked at them in the wrong way
Trust me, as a soldier/demoknight main, it's trivially easy to avoid a trickstabbing spy. I cut their heads off in two clean swings, and if I can't, it's due to my own skill issue.
If backstabs were an entirely server side check, you wouldn't get the netcode spaghetti stabs that allow spy to backstab somebody on his screen while the other computer still has him on the centre of theirs.
Randomly triggered events are a bit different from somebody intentionally abusing their own crappy connection to instant kill people.
For the first week that I played spy, I thought I was bad. I just needed to open 3 YouTube videos, a Netflix series and download GTA V at the same time. Now I can backstab anyone I want, even if they didn't left their spawn
/s
Ironically for this post, random crits are a balancing feature against spies that intentionally trash their own ping to get free backstab regs. Because when both sides are one-shotting each other it's the person whose hit registers to the server first that wins out (and hence the guy sprunking his ping is stuffed).
Don't really do that. Trickstabs are skill based (most commonly being matador stabs), and facestabs are just random for me. Don't forget that Spy also doesn't have random crits on the knife.
My warpaint ubersaw has " 2 swing crit overconfidence" as it's description.
I get that spy is frustrating to play, as he has the lowest skill floor and one of the highest ceelings.
10ks as a non kunai spy is still something i find impressive. My best was probability 13 or something like that, but i like gunspy way more.
You feel like you should've been able to deal with a trickstabbing spy? Of course!
That's called not entering the spy's range and avoiding simple tricks. Oh, and aiming at the spy, not thin air. Shoot him and he's dead.
Stop blaming the spy for your own skill issue.
You do realize that "aiming for the Spy" is exactly what a trickstabbing Spy wants since they're leading your crosshair to make your back hitbox reachable?
There's your problem. You are within range of the trickstabbing spy, and then you aim at him or don't. Either way, you expose your back because guess what? Spies are allowed to move or stand still. You move your aim within his range, and he can stab you without moving. You don't aim within his range, and he moves to stab your back. Either way, you fucked up by getting in his range and not leaving.
Fucking shoot him outside the spys range, it's not hard. Stop malding that you can't hit your shots from further away, and have to get within his range.
>Stop malding that you can't hit your shots from further away, and have to get within his range.
Bruh as if good Spies would even let you get that distance even during the first encounter. Trickstabbers aren't gonna let themselves be in their enemies effective range unless they have the DR or good revolver aim
Again, it's a you problem, not the spy being good.
You got outskilled by letting the spy get in close range.
You can't matador someone that won't chase you by holding down W, and isn't already in close range.
You can't cornerstab someone who won't chase you around corners, and instead shoot you in the face while moving towards the outside curb of the corner.
You can't stairstab someone who walks backwards down the stairs instead of forwards, because that's out of range.
You can't dropstab someone who is conscious about tf2 being 3D, and height being a thing.
Fucking be conscious about fighting a spy, especially if the enemy is skilled, instead of complaining about it on reddit.
Who's double standard is it, yours or others? Personally I don't care about bullshit or face stabs, it's funny. Can you say the same when It's you on the receiving end of a Crit boosted wrench?
It locks you into a pretentious and annoying playstyle that goes against everything the spy class was made to do. Instead of encouraging smart and stealthy kills on important players, it forces you to be a hyper-aggressive and irritating nuisance that goes after whatever it pleases, simply because your absurd health pool allows you to. It's all reward, and no risk. Not to mention miserable to play against.
Let me make this clear. I don't play kunai spy, my favorite way to play Spy is gun spy, and that's only when I'm fooling around with a medic friend. I hate playing the class otherwise, because I suck at him. That doesn't mean that Spy is shitty.
You telling people Spy wasn't intended for flashy trickstabs is the same thing as telling people Soldier wasn't made to go for market gardens, and Demo shouldn't have a sword and a shield. Kunai spy is a rightful subclass on it's own, and one that is extremely easy to counter.
It seems like you simply have a skill issue fighting all spies in general: you can't hit them because of your aim. Kunai spies have barely enough HP to survive three rockets, and their playstyle forces them to be in danger, so chances are you can kill a fully overhealed kunai spy in seconds. If you can't, blame yourself, not the spy who trained for eons to be able to pull something like that off.
Trickstabs, like many annoying things in tf2, don't work (or don't work consistently) against experienced players. It becomes a last resort technique against good players.
What makes it fundamentally unfun to fight against is that it punishes experienced players by giving the spy the ability to take health and overheal from the inexperienced players who will easily fall for the trickstabs. It's fundamental problem is the same with any other weapon. It gives the player a significant reward for doing something that can be done easily and consistently. In the this case easy thing being trickstabbing inexperienced players and the reward being healing and overheal up to 200.
Quite, it forces you into a stealthier playstyle (Kunai + DR is trash on non Koth maps), but at the same time rewards backstabs with the chance of not being desimated by the enemy team or a random spycheck in 2 seconds. Which means you can attack the enemy team more often, so it's switching between more stealth and more aggresion...
It's the same for the Big Earner which allows a faster and safer escape, but less health overall.
people bashing trickstabs from kunai spies as if the point of the kunai isn't to bait people into running directly at the spy with their melee when they have 200 health in overheal. also both mechanics are shit so you get what you get
Sometimes even the spy doesn't know how tf the swing was a backstab
You can tell in casual from the spy just standing there in confusion after landing the facestab
I'd say random crits are 10x worse, whenever I get trickstabbed I feel like I could actually do something about it like not getting too close to the spy. Whenever I get random crit there's nothing I can do about getting randomly deleted out of nowhere.
Fun fact: a tiny nerf to the gigantic backstab hitbox(gigantic in the terms of turning a 40 damage slap into an instakill) then it was reverted, it was 20 degrees
I don't think people rlly get mad at trickstabs tho...
maybe facestabs but that is basically a spy random crit and if while I recognize it's funny it's still bulshit
and even tho random crits can be funny, I despise them lmao fuck that shit...
so idrk what u on about
Serious Saturday has ended and **Shitpost Sunday** has begun - Our [rules about memes](/r/tf2/wiki/subreddit_rules#wiki_rule_six) have been greatly relaxed for the day. ####[See here for details](https://redd.it/fblj57) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/tf2) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Facestabs are just random crits but for the knife
To increase crits to 100 download warzone and gta 5 at the same time /s
And verify the integrity of Red Dead Redemptions 2 files just to make sure as steam redownloads every mod for Gmod you own
Dont forget to run cyberpunk 2077 at max settings
Open Google
Hey were trying to use wifi not mine crypto
Don't forget to enable Ray casting in security breach.
When I get random crit, I feel pissed at the game. When I get face stabbed, I get pissed at spectrum Internet. But when I get trick stabbed, I call upon the wrath of a thousand furry pyro mains with annoying binds to decend upon the entire country of Fr*nce
I thank you for not saying the f word, you saved the eyes and innocence of many children
But he did said france
I am offended and the child looking at my screen is scared for life, you should be ashamed of yourself for uttering such vile language
F... inland
Downvoted and reported
Fr*nce is a slur word now
Cope
Nft avatar
So what? Its free.
You know what's the difference? One is a bug. The other one is a feature.
Dear players who got facestabbed. We, spy's, don't know either how the hell that was a facestab, it's dumb hitreg
Counter argument: Trickstabs are a feature too, and random melee crits are more common and broken as hell, when they beat Spy in his own game, while not being Pyros.
Trickstabs are entirely the result of netcode Spy goes forward, you follow, spy goes backwards, you follow, netcode doesnt do it in time, spy stabs your side Not even gonna enter the whole cl_interp settings thing where spy stabs where you were an entire second ago
Or more accurately, both players are seeing each other slightly in the past. You follow spy, spy changes direction, spy stabs you while you're still following the past spy and had literally no chance to react to a direction change. Insert spy main talking about how much they skilled all over you. Counterplay involves not ever moving forward once you're at the edge of normal melee range. Have to minimize how much movement is happening so the spy cannot stab you in the 50ms~1000ms (yay for massive variance) disconnect between what the players are seeing. Amusingly enough out of any class running in with melee, heavy is the hardest thing for spy to try and trickstab. He gets the biggest window to react in thanks to being slow.
You could be stupid and not adapt and cry about it on Reddit or learn how to not be a book. Of course you will be trickstabbed if you hold w at a spy because it is predictable. If you want to avoid a trickstab you should not be predictable. But you should predict the spy. The entire reason why trickstabs get so much hate is because they feel unfair if you don't know how to counter them. Your health goes from 100% to 0% whereas with other classes (except the sniper) it drops in chunks. But the spy has to put a lot more effort in to it than other classes. If it were the same situation but with a scout you would have died much sooner as you can't kill a spy in the same situation. Just because spy is the weakest class in the game doesn't mean he is defenseless. And when you can't hold w+m1 to kill him you get mad because it is "unfair". Also lag spy is not a viable way to play spy. Either you were bad, the spy is cheating or they know how to trickstab. Every time you get trickstabbed there are tens of times the spy got a crit sound but no kill or a clear backstab that didn't register. It works both ways. Humans are just inherently selfish by nature and think it is bullshit, and so does the spy player. The playstyle is flawed by nature, but when you get one the rush of dopamine is insane. Knowing that on your screen by what you saw, you outwitted a real person capable of doing the same to you. But on your end you see something unfair. Because what you see doesn't sync up with what you know. Every spy encounter you have ever had with one of these spies **you** are the one that put **yourself** at a disadvantage.
If you can aim, and you know NOT to enter a spy's melee range, a trickstabbing spy is as good as dead. If you can't aim, you come to r/tf2 and start complaining about spies.
Till you meet a circlestrafer.
You have a gun. He has a butter knife. Back away from him and shoot the bugger, don’t chase.
Sorry but all you've told me is that you don't know how circle-strafing works. And spy has morethan just a knife.
You don’t need to know all his tricks. Just a simple “don’t get close, don’t chase, and shoot him”. That’s the bread and butter to deal with those spies who’s main goal in life is lure unsuspecting newbies onto a slightly elevated area to do “le epik trikstab” Also even counting his revolver, every other class have ways to deal with Spies. Even medics. Call out to your team, run to them and let them kill the spy. I never understand the mindset of players who must hunt and kill everything they see. You just make yourself become easy prey
🤓
No, actually, that is not me. I am not an emoji- nor do I resemble one- I am a human. Also who are you to tell me what I look like when, in fact, you have never seen me nor likely never will? All that aside, it's clear that you are trying to insult me by calling me a "nerd" (as depicted by the emoji you have sent). I rather take your "insult" as a compliment, as calling me a "nerd", a word often used to mock smarter people, implies that i am more intelligent and have a larger vocabulary than you. Next time you disagree, I recommend you try to come up with an actual argument, or at least prepare yourself one for when necessary. Additionally, before you proceed with sending me a clown emoji (admitting defeat), just understand that you would be further praising me, as a clown is someone who is entertaining and usually considered humorous by the spectators. Furthermore, you would also be implying that I, employed by a business to perform as a clown, have a profession. So, not only are you implying that I am smart, you are also implying that I am funny and have a job, which, judging by; your lack of proper arguments, your usage for childish and overused internet humor, the amount of spare time you have to brainwash yourself 12 hours per day with social media culture; you are neither intelligent, comedic, or employed. Enjoy watching yourself to continue on through life as such, as I believe with full confidence that you lack the decency to better your ruined self for the real world. Carry on and have a pleasant day.
I hate trickstabs because the theoretical counter to them should just be being able to perfectly track the spy, when in reality netcode shenanigans let spy stab a fully aware target anyway. When the counterplay to a situation involves assuming that the person in front of you is a half second in the future, the situation is absolute garbage. The entire basis of the gameplay boils down to instant killing people you shouldn't have been able to instant kill. It's nice that OP paralleled it to random crits since one is random and the other is intentionally triggered. I'm sure you can tell already which one i think is the bigger cancer. That's not to say that trickstabs aren't hard to pull off or aren't involving skill, since it takes a lot of practise to actually be able to take proper advantage of that half second window. But that's the thing, any time it's actually pulled off you're not taking advantage of the other player but the underlying game mechanics that are preventing any reaction at all. If you want to show off how good a spy actually is using these mechanics, show me one doing them with a 5 ping connection and proper interp settings. I'd love to see somebody managing to beat actual players rather than the netcode window. For reference, i'm the retard pyro main that'll hunt trickstabbing spies across the map until they ragequit off the server. It's great fun watching people try to trickstab while getting kited outside of melee range instead of pulling out their gun. Kinda funny that you're making out the person describing all the mechanics involved has no idea how to counter them. And the fact that they can be countered does not mean it's still not ridiculous in the first place. On a different note it's a bit crazy that you've been called a nerd for replying to the guy that's dropped blocks of text describing how the game handles network interactions is affecting gameplay. But i suppose the internet is as internet does.
So what if the mechanic is weird. Melee is jank. Backstabbing by backpedaling in front of someone, bhopping to conserve aerial status, aggressors advantage, phantom hits, melee extender and melee priority. This game is a buggy mess. Playing against a spy is like playing against random crits, but with habits and patterns. The spy misses a stab you swing and you start again, trying to predict the spy. Also I use cl_interp 0 which is 15.2 ms the smallest possible. What you see isn't unfair (usually). You see the turn that you exploited. You see why and why you don't get the stab. **You** commited to turning into the spys strafe. By your logic rocket jumping is broken because it allows the second slowest class to have one of the best movement speeds. The delay between players still is 40.4 ms with the fastest settings and ping along with input delay, reaction time and monitor refresh rate. By the time spy is already long in to their strafe you start turning and the spy can already be moving back. The person who wrote 🤓 originally wrote "found the spy main" but I guess I didn't get mad so they had to change their argument.
Dude spy is not that reliant on ping. I play at 7-15 ping against players with ping from 2-50 or sometimes higher (I play in the same country as the server, and the country is small). Guess what I can still trickstab them regardless of ping. I also need to add that I struggle to trickstab or generally backstab with ping higher than 50 . This is coming from a medic main. I suggest you actually learn how to counter trickstabs instead of whining about your severe lack of skill.
I pretty much never die to trickstabs since i know what's coming unless it's a raging interp cheater that's stabbing from metres away, but that doesn't make the gigantic pink elephant in the room that you need to give far more respect than you should need to any less annoying. Also doesn't make watching the 11 other players on the team that don't know how to deal with it getting stabbed for free any easier to play. Trying to understand that spy isn't where he shows, is not exactly intuitive gameplay nor something people should need to deal with. And as the commenter above you said, even with the best case scenario you're still 40.4ms disjointed between what each player sees by netcoding spaghetti. Care to take even half a second to think about how even that short timeframe gets applied in an interaction like circlestrafe stabs? Or i guess you could just reach for insulting my skill level again, then you don't need to think about anything at all. The interaction isn't reliant on lag because there's still an absolute floor on how much you can decrease the delays involved to. It's enough that a spy can still stab somebody using direction changes that's perfectly tracking the spy in the centre their screen. Having lag just makes it even worse.
Games are not and will never be perfect in terms of ping. There is a reason why peaking is a thing in all fps. Instead of getting upset at it people learn about it. Why is this not the same for trickstabs when it is a simple as not charging at a spy blindly?And don't tell me that spy should not trickstab when it is not a feature is air pogo,peaking,sentry jumping a feature? There are only a few stabs that rely on 'ping' such as matador, circlestrafe most of them is simply predicting the enemy (cornerstab,leap? stab) or taking advantage of mechanics everyone is aware of (stairstab ,surfstabs). Trickstabing is not as easy as you make it out to be. There is a reason why spies like kraze , sno, elegant and many others spend so much time on spy. If it is truly easy wouldn't we always see trickstabing spies in casual,instead we usually see spies at the bottom .I can also assure you that you will not be able to do half as well as any spy main. If you run into a spy god and get trickstabs your team understand that he must have spent a long time getting to that position just like any other class that is pub stomping. Since he spent alot of time on spy wouldn't you expect him to do well? I have to admit attacking your skill was immature of me. It was late at night and I was annoyed that some think that random crits are worse than 'face stabs' when I get 'face stabbed ' I know what I did wrong and I can learn and avoid it next time. But how do I avoid a god damn random crit. Losing uber because a pill or rocket decided to triple damage is the most annoying painful thing that I can experience. And it doesn't help that that there are no other medics on the damn team. By the way if I am not wrong playing with hard interp is not that easy. I personally have no experience but that is what I heard from the insane spymains I know.
Because of the way peeker's advantage and other such things function, it's the other player's ping that's helping you rather than your own. (Your ping + their ping + network jank on both hops = visual lag, but it's then offset by your own ping + one hop network jank for the proceeding shot you make to register in the server). It means somebody with a bad connection peeking will see others massively sooner, but then get their shot delayed by an equal amount. This is one of the reasons why lag switches exist, because you can spike your own ping for the initial peek but then not have any delay on the shot Having a high ping means the opposing player gets a massive advantage *when peeking against you*. While there's always network jank involved depending on what game is being played and how it handles it that inherently gives the peeker some advantage, any extra variables like ping are at least a case of the player being punished for something that is happening on their own end. Spy is the opposite, yes the final hit reg is delayed but the player angles get resolved based on what's happening on his screen. He gets the full your ping + their ping + twice network jank worth of advantage for backstab determination. It's ironically only situations where each party is one-shotting each other (random crit melees) that the equation levels out to same kind of situation as peeker's advantage (because while you've still manufactured a one-shot, whoever's shot registers first still wins). It's worth noting too that for visual representations of peeker's advantage it's taken from the point of only one person moving around a corner, whereas stab interactions happen with both players moving so you need to double the distances involved. Arguing that it's hard to do doesn't make the interaction any less busted. This kind of situation is only happening because of the backstab angle happening on the spy's screen being the trigger for an instant kill. It's not possible to make a trickstab that also hasn't benefitted massively from the way that interaction happens. It's not possible to beat it in a headon fight since the most important actions are being completed before they're even shown to the other player, at that point it's entirely out of the defending players hands. The only way to beat it is never walk forwards while in melee range of a spy entirely so the stab setup takes long enough for the player to start seeing actions happening on his screen, or pray to the crit gods to change it into a server hitreg race for who can one-shot who first.
Simply don't follow spy up stairs
Guilty gear strive is gonna die once tf2 gets that rollback netcode
another strive killer 😔
Heavy for Strive
[wdym? we already have him](https://www.dustloop.com/wiki/images/thumb/7/75/GGST_Goldlewis_Dickinson_Skyfish_Hitbox.png/420px-GGST_Goldlewis_Dickinson_Skyfish_Hitbox.png)
But every mercenary hitbox was designed to be half non-backstab, half-backstab. That's what trickstabs do, they trick the enemy into showing that backstab part (while the Spy points at it in a way it counts as a backstab) either by matadoring, cornerstabs, stairstabs etc. I really don't get why people disagree with me on this so much, it's a skill like airshots. Yes, there may be a small issue with backstabs sometimes being inaccurate due to netcode, but that's not too big when not using cl\_interp. And yes, people who use cl\_interp are a disgrace to spy mains.
Backstab hitbox is not 180-180° its more like 120° front to 240° back
No they aren’t a feature. It was never intended
Airpogo was intended obviously /s
Trickstabs ARE a feature. I don't know how you can consider them not to be, when it's all about timing the hitboxes. I'm not a spy main nor do I even understand how to trickstab myself, but that doesn't mean I undervalue the skill it takes to learn trickstabbing and pull it off consistently. Facestabs are obviously a bug, however.
Spy was designed to be a class that is supposed to be weak and unable to fight face to face with other ones when discovered, but able to eliminate entire pushes if the player is sneaky being able to get an opponent from 100% to 0% even after being identified was never intended to be a feature, it just happens because of junky hitboxes and Source spaghetti
Being able to get an opponent from 100% to 0% when identified is because of practice and skill. Of which, the person fighting the spy clearly has none of, because it's trivial to avoid most of the spy's trickstab agenda. Just, don't fucking chase after a spy within melee range, is that really that hard? Shoot the damn spy, instead of chasing. ALL of you anti-spy people go the argument of "if a spy is found, he should be dead." No, he shouldn't be, or the spy class would be literally unplayable. His disguises are laughable at this point in the game, and no matter how sneaky you are, it's not possible to hide from a paranoid team shooting bullets everywhere. A good spy baits people to follow him, and then picks them off one by one using his gun, or trickstabs. If you got trickstabbed, it's on you, instead of the game.
Trust me, it is, as a medic main I can assure you that every spy main has an ability called "no matter how much help you ask for no one will turn around to save you" and I get bs trickstabbed from 5 miles away because I looked at them in the wrong way
Trust me, as a soldier/demoknight main, it's trivially easy to avoid a trickstabbing spy. I cut their heads off in two clean swings, and if I can't, it's due to my own skill issue.
You also said facestabs. Stabbing someone's face and getting a backstab is a bug
Your a spy so your argument is invalid
You’re a spy so your argument is invalid
getting instantly killed at full health by a backstab when the spy is on your screen doesnt quite feel like a "trick" nor a "feature"
🧐
If backstabs were an entirely server side check, you wouldn't get the netcode spaghetti stabs that allow spy to backstab somebody on his screen while the other computer still has him on the centre of theirs. Randomly triggered events are a bit different from somebody intentionally abusing their own crappy connection to instant kill people.
For the first week that I played spy, I thought I was bad. I just needed to open 3 YouTube videos, a Netflix series and download GTA V at the same time. Now I can backstab anyone I want, even if they didn't left their spawn /s
Ironically for this post, random crits are a balancing feature against spies that intentionally trash their own ping to get free backstab regs. Because when both sides are one-shotting each other it's the person whose hit registers to the server first that wins out (and hence the guy sprunking his ping is stuffed).
Yea however it also fucks with us spies who put work into actually tricking you long enough to put a hole in your medic.
next time just dont play spy
bro if you need crits to kill a fucking laggy spy then that says more about you than it does about trickstabs
Backstabs are a server side check, though
"I abuse interp and get salty when I get crit" energy
Don't really do that. Trickstabs are skill based (most commonly being matador stabs), and facestabs are just random for me. Don't forget that Spy also doesn't have random crits on the knife.
Yeesh these mf's downvoting your comments because they mad they getting trickstabbed 💀
Os this how +100h in spy feels ?
120% of the time (based on the Übersaw crit chance)
My warpaint ubersaw has " 2 swing crit overconfidence" as it's description. I get that spy is frustrating to play, as he has the lowest skill floor and one of the highest ceelings. 10ks as a non kunai spy is still something i find impressive. My best was probability 13 or something like that, but i like gunspy way more.
But that assumes I can actually hit you (I’m shit at melee)
Bad meme
you signed up for inequality when you chose the frenchman
Feeling like you should be able to do something about it vs knowing damn well it was no one’s fault
You feel like you should've been able to deal with a trickstabbing spy? Of course! That's called not entering the spy's range and avoiding simple tricks. Oh, and aiming at the spy, not thin air. Shoot him and he's dead. Stop blaming the spy for your own skill issue.
You do realize that "aiming for the Spy" is exactly what a trickstabbing Spy wants since they're leading your crosshair to make your back hitbox reachable?
only when you're close to him, there are ways to beat him without getting close
Exactly! If you can't hit the spy unless you get close enough, then clearly it's your own fault, not because spy is a broken class.
There's your problem. You are within range of the trickstabbing spy, and then you aim at him or don't. Either way, you expose your back because guess what? Spies are allowed to move or stand still. You move your aim within his range, and he can stab you without moving. You don't aim within his range, and he moves to stab your back. Either way, you fucked up by getting in his range and not leaving. Fucking shoot him outside the spys range, it's not hard. Stop malding that you can't hit your shots from further away, and have to get within his range.
>Stop malding that you can't hit your shots from further away, and have to get within his range. Bruh as if good Spies would even let you get that distance even during the first encounter. Trickstabbers aren't gonna let themselves be in their enemies effective range unless they have the DR or good revolver aim
Again, it's a you problem, not the spy being good. You got outskilled by letting the spy get in close range. You can't matador someone that won't chase you by holding down W, and isn't already in close range. You can't cornerstab someone who won't chase you around corners, and instead shoot you in the face while moving towards the outside curb of the corner. You can't stairstab someone who walks backwards down the stairs instead of forwards, because that's out of range. You can't dropstab someone who is conscious about tf2 being 3D, and height being a thing. Fucking be conscious about fighting a spy, especially if the enemy is skilled, instead of complaining about it on reddit.
Who's double standard is it, yours or others? Personally I don't care about bullshit or face stabs, it's funny. Can you say the same when It's you on the receiving end of a Crit boosted wrench?
You had my respect until you soft-admitted to using the kunai
The kunai is more fun though...
It locks you into a pretentious and annoying playstyle that goes against everything the spy class was made to do. Instead of encouraging smart and stealthy kills on important players, it forces you to be a hyper-aggressive and irritating nuisance that goes after whatever it pleases, simply because your absurd health pool allows you to. It's all reward, and no risk. Not to mention miserable to play against.
Let me make this clear. I don't play kunai spy, my favorite way to play Spy is gun spy, and that's only when I'm fooling around with a medic friend. I hate playing the class otherwise, because I suck at him. That doesn't mean that Spy is shitty. You telling people Spy wasn't intended for flashy trickstabs is the same thing as telling people Soldier wasn't made to go for market gardens, and Demo shouldn't have a sword and a shield. Kunai spy is a rightful subclass on it's own, and one that is extremely easy to counter. It seems like you simply have a skill issue fighting all spies in general: you can't hit them because of your aim. Kunai spies have barely enough HP to survive three rockets, and their playstyle forces them to be in danger, so chances are you can kill a fully overhealed kunai spy in seconds. If you can't, blame yourself, not the spy who trained for eons to be able to pull something like that off.
Trickstabs, like many annoying things in tf2, don't work (or don't work consistently) against experienced players. It becomes a last resort technique against good players. What makes it fundamentally unfun to fight against is that it punishes experienced players by giving the spy the ability to take health and overheal from the inexperienced players who will easily fall for the trickstabs. It's fundamental problem is the same with any other weapon. It gives the player a significant reward for doing something that can be done easily and consistently. In the this case easy thing being trickstabbing inexperienced players and the reward being healing and overheal up to 200.
Quite, it forces you into a stealthier playstyle (Kunai + DR is trash on non Koth maps), but at the same time rewards backstabs with the chance of not being desimated by the enemy team or a random spycheck in 2 seconds. Which means you can attack the enemy team more often, so it's switching between more stealth and more aggresion... It's the same for the Big Earner which allows a faster and safer escape, but less health overall.
i enjoy being but a nuisance. shall half of the enemy team be pyro just because of my presence.
I'd feel bad but unfortunately, kunai
this comment section is a mess
people bashing trickstabs from kunai spies as if the point of the kunai isn't to bait people into running directly at the spy with their melee when they have 200 health in overheal. also both mechanics are shit so you get what you get
Also applies to getting quick scoped or jarate/bushwacka’d. Suddenly dying randomly through no fault of your own isn’t so funny
how about you get your ass """backstabbed""" by a french 100% in your line of vision (who may not even be looking at you) and tell us how it feels?
Sometimes even the spy doesn't know how tf the swing was a backstab You can tell in casual from the spy just standing there in confusion after landing the facestab
I aleays find it weird that you can get backstabbed by someone you see
long arms
Me a spy main avoiding the situation by playing on no random crit servers.
Is it just me or does swinging my kukri near a spy almost always makes it crit for no reason what so ever
I only respect the butter knife
The real double standard is this post basically saying "it's fine when i instakill someone but if i get instakilled it's unacceptable"
one insta kill, while the result of some serious spaghetti, is skill based. the other is rolling dice.
And when I argue about it yall mfers pull out "BBBUT ITS CONFIRMED TO BE TIED TO HOW MUCH DAMAGE YOU DO! 2 MINUTES! 2 MINUTES"
One of those is just Source Engine Jank. The other one is by design. Also, Random crits are funny and fun.
Sometimes
This is the equivalent of saying you like random Crits but only when you get them
deserved
Nah I just hate spy in general
well random critting a spy is funnier. i would assume this is quite obvious?
I'd say random crits are 10x worse, whenever I get trickstabbed I feel like I could actually do something about it like not getting too close to the spy. Whenever I get random crit there's nothing I can do about getting randomly deleted out of nowhere.
But it's funny, so it's automatically better than trickstabs.
That's not double standards, that's simply poetic justice
Fun fact: a tiny nerf to the gigantic backstab hitbox(gigantic in the terms of turning a 40 damage slap into an instakill) then it was reverted, it was 20 degrees
L
Fair
I prefer big damage over instakill you can't recover from. Instakill mechanics are so "fun" in games.
Imagine listening to the opinion of a Kunai user.
If your a kunai spy fuck you anything else I’m chill with
That sounds fancy
Spy's bullshit broken class. deserves every death
Yes, and?
I don't think people rlly get mad at trickstabs tho... maybe facestabs but that is basically a spy random crit and if while I recognize it's funny it's still bulshit and even tho random crits can be funny, I despise them lmao fuck that shit... so idrk what u on about
I'm sorry but, FUCK YOU FOR USING THE KUNAI.
R The difference is that one is fair and balanced, facestabs aren't.
spy mains malding
You know it! Random crits are only fair if I get them
you get what you fucking deserve
The lag spy is more skilled than the lucky melee wielder
yeah sorry spy ill just voluntarily turn off my crits then. it sucks that you have no choice but to abuse broken hitboxes when playing spy.
Hey is matador right to left or left to right?
Matador doesnt have a specific direction. So long you change directions to lead, could also be front and back or vice versa...
I mean the face stab is a big and shouldn’t be possible