Spy: A Brief MvM Guide for Beginners

This is a brief guide on how to play Spy in Mann vs Machine. While the title says for beginners, Spy isn't really a beginner class. There are a lot of compromises you have to make in order to be effective. I suggest learning about basic aggro mechanics and how to dodge before you try out Spy. A lot of it is based on the Two Cities tour since that is where most of my experience comes from.

Loadout

Secondary

This is really the only revolver worth mentioning. You won't be using your secondary weapon as your damage tool, so if any of them offer utility, you'll want this instead. The cloak duration it offers can help you escape out of some nasty situations. I've met some people that think the longer cloak duration means it takes longer to get a fully charged cloak meter, but this isn't true.

Melee

The most reliable choice. No health penalty like the other options. Good damage. Just a solid choice.


The speed boost can help if you're also the money collector of the team, often referred to as Money Spy. The health penalty is a bit of an annoyance, but it doesn't make much of a difference once you can afford some resists. You're pretty squishy either way.


This one is very dependent on the player and the wave. You lose nearly half your health, so if you know next to nothing about aggro, don't use this. However, some waves you're able to get backstab kills off frequently, so you'll be running on massive overheal for most of it, often more than Spy's base health. Other waves, you don't want to be getting picks on small bots, and would rather save your cloak/disguise for the Giants. After all, your main role is Giant killing. Just know what you're getting into if you choose to use this.


Avoid this one. You only steal the disguise off of small bots. Even then, most of the time it's not worth it since it'll nerf your speed on most stabs. It takes 3 seconds to take effect off of Giants, which means you can't chain them and they'll turn on you before it happens. It takes a full cloak meter to disguise, which means you can either choose to have a disguise or a Dead Ringer ready, whereas with other knives you have both.


Pretty much a straight downgrade in MvM. Although it makes you immune to afterburn for a while, you'll lose your primary damage weapon for a full 15 seconds. How are you going to get stabs off on Giants if your knife is gone?

Secondary PDA

The Dead Ringer is an absolute necessity for Spy. You are the closest range class, which means you're the most vulnerable. This is practically a get out of jail free card for that. The damage resist and the speed boost allow you to get right out of the battle and put on a new disguise before you jump back in.

Building

Solid choice. The Sapper isn't really the focus of MvM so it doesn't matter much which you use.


Useful if your team is having trouble taking out teleporters. There is a bug where Engineer bots don't bother to take a Red-Tape Recorder's sapper off of them.

Upgrade Path

This is the general order for how your upgrades should be purchased:

1. 4 (Max) Armor Penetration (Melee)
   
2. 4 (Max) Attack Speed (Melee)
   
3. Appropriate Resistances for the wave
   
4. 3 (Max) Movement Speed
   
5. Any amount of Health Regeneration
   
6. Any extra credits can be spent on Jump Height, Sapper Power, or Uber Canteens

Armor Penetration is before Attack Speed because it's more effective DPS on Giants. If the wave/mission is more built of small bots, the 2 upgrades can be flipped in priority.

When you are getting Attack Speed, it's worth noting that the first point makes very little difference. Waiting until you can afford 4 ticks of it would be good.

While Health Regeneration is generally looked down upon, it can be quite useful on Spy. You can manage to stay behind them since you won't have to constantly retreat for health. This can be ignored if you're using the Conniver's Kunai.

If you are the money collector of the team, Movement Speed and Jump Height can be bought before Armor Penetration and Attack Speed since you'll need to be more mobile and capable of switching between areas quickly (Example: Lower and upper levels of Mannhattan).

Movement Speed can be bought before resists if you really want to prioritize circle strafing and are confident in your ability to survive with little resists.

Whereas Health on Kill is very useful on other damage classes, it isn't so much on Spy. This is because he's more of a single target damage dealer and doesn't get a lot of kills. He's better off with Health Regeneration in most situations.

If/when you buy Sapper Power, keep in mind that the 3rd tick doesn't increase its radius, only the duration, which is rather useless. Save your money instead.

How to Play

General

You will often be separated from your team and spend most of your time on the drop side of the robot spawn. Make sure you are always disguised when around robots. Pick a disguise that won't slow you down, those being Scout, Medic, and Spy. If you are lazy like me, you will find the quick disguise feature very useful.

Don't be scared to stab small robots without a sapper attached to them. You have a Dead Ringer and possibly some resistances to survive a few shots. Since the sapper is only useful on robots that are close-knit, use your knife and you can just run after the bots and chainstab some manually. This, of course, requires a quick hand. The robots will start noticing your presence once you have delivered your first backstab, so make sure to get as many in a row as possible.

Keep in mind that you have to constantly redisguise to keep the heat off of you.

In order, your priorities are Giants, crowds, then tanks. Spy is one of the worst crowd controllers and also one of the worst tank busters. If there are any Giants on the map, you should be on them. Do not chase tanks.

While not as good as Scout, Spy can make a pretty good money collector. This is because he's a close range class already near the money and the cloak helps him collect it while taking minimal amounts of damage. If you feel like breaking the meta and not running a Scout, this is probably the next best thing.

Killing Giants

This is Spy's main role. You focus on the giants that drop down and save your team the effort of rapidly shooting it. Something to note here is that the Spy relies a lot on his team. The ideal way of getting the Giants is to have your team distract them. Once you notice that the Giant is directly looking at your fellow teammates and possibly even shooting at them, your time has come to deliver some powerful backstabs.

Depending on the giant, you either kill it with a few backstabs or it will have a small chunk of health left to turn around and finish you off. This is the situation where you want to play it safe and use your Dead Ringer to make a brief escape. Keep in mind that the Dead Ringer doesn't actually make you invisible to the robots. They are merely programmed to lose interest when a player is cloaked and hasn't taken damage from them for a short time. So don't just sit there hoping that the Dead Ringer tricked your enemies. They will continue shooting at you until there is no hit registration. This video, made by sigsegv, shows this off quite well. He's the best at finding out how and why things happen in MvM. Big thanks to him.

https://youtu.be/cuIuKsrhRHE

There is an advanced technique you can use called "circle strafing". Circle strafing is when you run around the Giant quick enough to keep up with the hitbox of his back. While this mechanic isn't always reliable, it has a rather high success rate and it surely does pay off. If the Giants are distracted by your team before you initiate the stabs, it will work like this: You stab the Giant from behind as usual. After the 2nd backstab you want to start running around him. The 3rd backstab should be a sidestab, and the 4th will be where he was initially looking, and the 5th should be where you started stabbing him. As long as the Giant isn't close enough to catch up with your movement, this is worth continuing. Otherwise just use the Dead Ringer to get out of it and go for his back again. I should probably mention that Movement Speed upgrades make this a lot easier as well.

https://youtu.be/8i7GuS8WPs0

Conclusion

Good at killing Giants. Can be a decent money collector if necessary. Generally don't focus crowds or tanks. Remember you are a flank class. This guide is generalized for the most part, so don't go saying in the comments "you forgot this," as I probably didn't forget it, but rather left it out on purpose because I decided it was too specific. However, if you truly feel I did, I may change parts to fit whatever fix you may have in mind. Cheers.

[beamyskink]

not here to advertise my guide but i think the one i wrote can have some good additional add ons to this guide

[beamyskink]

I would like to add that the giants and almost every mvm bot will target you once you're not disguised I'm not entirely sure why it may be because your backstabs do a ton of damage so valve made them like but in some severe cases when your team is dying to a giant and you can't find any other way to be useful undisguised Infront of the bot and hide behind a corner the bot won't pay much attention to the rest of your team

[Beta]

Worth mentioning that Spy is usually the highest target priority, only being superseded by a Medic that is currently healing the Spy. If a Medic is healing you, giants will completely ignore you, letting you get many, many more stabs off than what would normally be possible. This does not apply to many small robots, so be warned.

[Cirno]

Pretty helpful..

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡]

The kid named "trick" is scammer kid with a 12yr steam badge and 10k hours on tf2 begs for mann up mode tickets on mann up mode. in hopes of someone being stupidly kind enough to give this nasty scammer one.

Even called it "pocket change" after stating the worth of them is literally 30ref.

Report and block this actual sad person trying to scam random kids for profit.

[i am ded, not beeg soup rice]

the big earner is the best knife in my opinion, you're able to chainstab more efficiently and have more of a chance of escaping without using the dead ringer

[Zattani]

im necroing this to ask you to make a guide on how to not get kicked for playing spy

[Pocky]

Spycicle actually is not that bad, if you abuse a little something-something. Then again, I'd rather not this information get public. Just curious if you knew.|

Also, even if your team has trouble taking out teles, I still prefer to use stock as where you forgot to mention they come back after sapping a building when the sapper is removed or building is destroyed. Therefore, the stock sapper comes back MUCH faster, and you could just stab and sap the sentry and shoot down its measly 216 hp and then sap the tele and run off. It will most likely come back by the next time you need to use it, if ever.

Even on pure DPS scale, after your third point of AP, you should go for 2 swing speed instead, then the 4th AP. The difference between 3AP2SS and 4AP in terms of only that is miniscule, but it's nice to have extra swing speed to bring out DR faster + stab more commons if the situation calls for it.

[Burrito Fingas!]

Can I use some part of your guides to make an adaptation for basic-advanced guides for all the classes I'm making in spanish? I'll out yours on the credits, of course.
Cheers xx

[Softshine798]

@mark bork
you should be focusing on your knife to deal massive giant DPS

only use diamondback has is for slightly more tank damage (which spy is the worst class at period) and picking off weak commons, which isn't spy's role

l'tranger is best because its one of the only two ways to regenerate dead ringer cloak in mvm, and the increased cloak duration is a nice QoL