The heavy is the opposite of the scout. Just as you rarely jump as a scout, you often jump as a heavy. The Source engine has a limitation when it comes to momentum. You won’t lose speed while spinning up if you’re flying through the air, which lets you get around corners very quickly while still being able to spin up before revealing yourself. If you do it slowly, you’ll probably eat a bunch of pipes or a bullet to the brain.
As a heavy, you are not invincible.
Also, before you go around dangerous corners jump and start spinning your gun. He does not lose any momentum while in the air for spinning his gun. So as soon as you land, your gun is spinning and you’re facing the direction of the new hallway or open space without having lost any momentum.
How do you jump the highest with the soldier? Is it jump + crouch + rocket or is it supposed to be done in another order? Does crouching help?
I’ve noticed that particularly good games tend to give me more random drops. I did a game where I got 5 dominations and must have had a k/d ratio of more than 5/1 and at the end of it, I got the liberty launcher, the detonator and another drop. Is this true or just confirmation bias?
Crouching definitely helps, as does running backwards if you want to add some horizontal distance to the rocket jump.
Just confirmation bias, I think. The only factor towards getting drops is playtime, which is capped at 10 hours a week. I’ve had some bugged drops where I’ve been notified that I’ve gotten multiple weapons in one shot, but they didn’t actually show up in the backpack - that might be a possibility.
If you plan on sticking with pyro, I’d greatly recommend switching to the axetinguisher (and degreaser for the synergy). All the other pyro melee weapons have very limited use, outside the degroot keep map. If used correctly, the axtinguisher is a better primary weapon than the flamethrower is.
Go with the flaregun for his secondary weapon as well. It makes it so it doesn’t matter which you switch to (melee or secondary) after setting them ablaze to finish them off. Both Axetinguisher and a flare gun shot while on fire will do plenty of damage.
Question: I’m playing on one of the public servers when I see a teammate fighting an enemy Demo. I lay into him with the torch, he’s on fire and he runs into it and kills me. The window that shows who killed you has him at full health.
Later, I see him again, “spawn camping” at the blue base doors (this was on the Lakeside map), torch him and he’s wedged into a corner for a few seconds so I figure he’s done for. He turns, kills me and runs off… at full health.
I assume he was cheating but don’t know if there’s some other explanation for it. I just dropped the server and joined a different game since it was leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
He might have been equipped with the “Persian Persuader”, which turns all ammo drops (including the ammo dropped when you kill someone) into heath pickups.
I can accept that. We didn’t have any health packs where we were fighting but there may have been ammo boxes and, as you said, ammo dropped from kills.
My money is on the Half-Zatoichi, which restores full health on a successful kill.
A dropped weapon gives 100 ammo, does the Persian Persuader give a 1:1 ratio of ammo points/ health points? If so, and he’s only just been set on fire when he kills you it’s highly likely that your dropped weapon from dying has given him enough health to show as “full” when the killcam shot is taken.
Tricky Demomen 
Either way, I feel better knowing it was on the up and up. I’m glad I chose to just move along when I wasn’t sure instead of saying something stupid and making an ass of myself.
Persian persuader gives IIRC 80 health for a dropped enemy weapon, 40 health for one of the big 200 ammo crates, 20 for the medium 100 ammo crates, and 10 for the small 40 ammo crates.
To be honest, Valve are pretty hardcore about disallowing bots and cheaters. Sure, it doesn’t stop them from slipping through the net, but I’ve yet to see an actual situation where someone who’s been accused of cheating has actually been botting or cheating.
Again, it’s not to say it doesn’t happen. Just from my experience, the VAC system is pretty good at keeping them out.
I almost never encounter anyone in TF2 that I think is probably hacking. And I’ve never once seen it when it was conclusive - mostly just suspicions about really good snipers and such.
What are some of the more suspicious snipers you’ve seen?
Well Mekhazzio hacks like crazy of course, but otherwise just random pubbers who were just really really good.
Edit: Mostly kidding! He probably doesn’t hack and is just really good.
Probably.
I’ve found a lot of people who whine about snipers haxxing (not you, in PUB games) tend to completely ignore the effect of latency on the game. So in 2Fort you’ve got someone running across the battlements from the secondary spawn to the main spawn when suddenly they start yelping about being sniped through a wall after having passed the edge of the battlements and crying “WALLHAX”. To a man their ping is usually up around or plus 100 when that happens, but it’s not a latency issue, oh no. It’s hax. HAX DAMN YOU!
This evening I saw the first really blatant example of hacking I’ve come across-- a heavy running two or three times faster than a scout. He was quite a blur running across the map. How do you report hackers in this game, anyway?
That’s… misguided, since TF2 doesn’t feature penetration of materials anyway. Typically accusations of “wallhacks” mean someone is using a modified video driver (or other modification) that shows objects in wireframe so they can see behind them.. or… they can see an icon pointing out where someone is behind a wall… there’s different ways it can work I think.