[ENG] The actual Righteous BIson guide in 2021

In 2021 the Righteous Bison is almost forgotten. It is considered as the worst soldier weapon, some people even call it worst weapon in entire game. But, after playing with it for a while, i got used to it and now i think that most people just dont know how to use this weird laser pistol properly. And here i want to give some advices and explain the strange mechanics of the Bison.

The theoretical knowledges.

By it's stats Righteous Bison is very unique, and no other weapon in TF2 have stats and abilities like the Bison. The current stats is:

Base damage: 20 (100%)
Maximum damage at point-blank range: 24 (120%)
Minimal damage at long distance: 11 (53%)
Minicrit: 27-32
Crit: 60
Damage to buildings: 4
Projectile speed: 1200 HPS (almost equal to the rocket speed, just BARELY faster)

All damage numbers stated for ONE hit, and this is very important because this weapon can penetrate players and buildings and also can hit players multiple times while penetrating them. So, for example, you launched projectile, it travels parallel to the ground to somebody at base damage distance and succesfully hit the target in the center of mass. If target will stand still while projectile passes through it, the Bison shot will deal it's damage from 2 to 3 times, depends on what angle was between direction you facing and direction your target was facing. Of course it is only a theoretical ideal sitoation and usually things will be much more chaotic and specific for every shot.

Also keep in mind, that even if Bison deal pitiful 4 damage to buildings, it can penetrate it and deal some damage to an enemies behind those buildings. so if you see engineer sitting behind wrangled sentry, you may try to shoot him with the Bison, he might get scared of unexpected damage and run away to the cover, leaving sentry exposed for your teammates.

Righteous Bison's projectiles also are pretty wide, so you can shoot it to not enemy's center of mass and still deal good damage, but the more centered will your shot be - the more chances you will have to deal maximum amount of hits to enemy.

The observations and specific data

Previous information was very common and, despite it can still be enough to use bison effectively, wasn't quite correct for some specific situations. Here is some observations about Bison's projectile behaviour (i recently updated the statements, the information in statements 1, 2 and 7 were changed, and the statement 3 and 4 were added after that to explain why the changes were made):

1) Amount of hits caused by projectile will depend on what class you are shooting at, because (i am still not quite suse is this 100% accurate, but the practical tests show that this most likely is true) projectile connects with the body hitboxes that are bound to a certain body parts of physical model of enemy.

2) Amount of hits will depend on what horisontal angle was between your facing direction and your target's facing direction. This turned out to be the most wanky and unpredictable part of the weapon mechanics, because the amount of hits depends not only on what angle the entire player was facing, but also what angle his limbs and other parts of body was facing. But yes, angle is still important in general, because if you shoot at enemy at a 45 degree angle, your projectiles will be inside of enemy the longest time, so try to shoot at a 45 degree angles. This still requires some tests, i will update the data, but for now this is all what i know.

3) Amount of hits will depend on how many limbs of an enemy player's body your projectile penetrated. This is because projectile collides with every hitbox of player, and the hitboxes are bound to the physical body, and every limb and body part have its own 1 or more hitboxes, and hitboxes of different body parts also have different size. So, for example, if you will shoot the arm of a player you will deal only 1 hit, maybe 2 if it was a heavy, but that happens rare, but if you will shoot the person who are looking in direction ortogonal to your (angle between your and your enemies facing directions are 90 degrees) you will deal at least 2 hits, and more likely 3, because your projectile will collide with the enemy's both arms hitboxes and with his chest hitbox.

4) Amount of hits will depend on what pose enemy was in when you shot him. For example, the best situation for you is when you are shooting at enemy who is swimming mid water away from you, his body will be in horizontal position, and all the hitboxes will be in a staight line before your projectile, and, because they all are rectangles, their longest parts will be parralel to the projectile, so you will be able to deal up to 132 damage (the most damage i registered when i was playing), and maybe even more.

5) Amount of hits will depend on what vertical angle was between your facing direction and the ground, thats because of player models are much more tall than wide, and the more vertical your shot was the more time it will spend being inside the enemy.

6) Amount of hits will depend on what numbers of ping, FPS or tickrate you playing with and what server you are playing on. I dont know why it is, It just works this way, and if your FPS, ping and tickrate and server's update rate will allign in specific combination, your projectile will ocasionally deal more hits that it should. Dont think about this too much, just dont get upset when you will kill somebody surprisingly fast.

7) Amount of hits will depend on in what direction target moves and with what speed. This is probably one of the most important observation you can make while playing with Bison. When target are moving, your projectile's time inside enemy's body will change, and here is the time when class your enemy play as will affect the calculations again. Each class have it's own speed, and when enemies are running towards you, the slower enemies move, the more times projectile can hit them. According to this statement, if enemies are running from you, the faster enemies move, the more times projectile can hit them. So, if scout will run towards you, you will deal 1-2 hits to him, but if he will run from you, you will be able to hit him 2-3 or even 4 times in a row, so try to catch your enemies when they are running from you, or make them retreat and then shoot the Bison.

The practice

All this information make Righteous Bison to look very unreliable and unpredictable, and... yes, it actually is, but that doesn't mean that you can not control what damage you will deal to your enemies. Here is some techniques you should try to improve reliability of the Bison:

1) Try to shoot it in the enemy center of mass. No, not aim in the center of mass before shooting, try to predict where enemy body's center will be and try to prefire it and hit enemy right in the heart!

2) Instead of trying to hit enemy with projectile, make enemy himself run into your shot. This is not like rockets or any other projectiles in the game, it wont deal all it's damage in exact moment of connection with target, so you need to make projectile stay inside enemy as long as possible... Or make enemy stay inside projectile as long as possible? Try to shoot projectiles in the point enemy want to go, and he will ocasionally find himself inside of projectile he wanted to avoid. We will get back to this incredibly impotrant statement in next chapter.

3) Try to shoot at enemies crutch or ass when you are at point blank range. Even if enemy are standing still or running at you, you will be able to deal 3 hits instead of 2. There is even more useful strategy - jump and when you will be at the apex of your jump - shoot the bison. This will make projectile travel even more vertical and will increase the chances of hitting enemy 3 times instead of 2. Combining this 2 strategies will let you 2-shot all light classes in right circumstances, so try to practice it!

4) Fighting with Righteous Bison is not only your typical in-game fight, it is also a very, VERY intense mental fight where you are trying to force enemy to move like you want him to move, not like he want. Instead of adapting to your enemy's playstyle, make him adapt to yours! Hit him with melee one time and make him retreat and then shooth him, or even more, let him hit you once and when he will start dodging your melee counter attack whip out the Bison and shoot the retreating target! There is a lot of ways to thrill the enemies and force them to do what you want, so experiment more!

5) Previous statement was more for offensive gameplay, but Bison is very nice weapon on defence too! Try to find nice choke point and spam the hell out of anybody who want to go through it. Also try to distract enemies with visible map objective, such as Intelligence or control point, they usually will go for capping it and then you can strike and catch them off guard. It works on CTF better than anywhere, because those flashy scouts will always try to catch the intel and get away with it in a shortest way possible, usually without taking some time for checking intel's surrounding, while you can shoot them in back or from upside, which would deal your precious 3 hits in most scenarios.

6) If you are trolldier enjoyer, just like myself, then equipping the Bison will actually make you even more trolldierish than mantreads would, because main trolldier meaning of life is to do some stupid and funny stuff and get away with it! Rocket jumper will save your life so often you will be surprised, and being able to finish off the heavy after succesful market garden with Bison is also very nice!
Also your enemies will be even more confused by your gamestyle and will pay more respect for you.

7) if you are not the trolldier kind of player and usually stick with some serious firepower in primary slot, use bison as a secondary weapon to finish off targets when you dont want to shoot rockets. This may sound obvious, but hear me out: a lot of soldiers use their shotgun-styled secondary weapons as an independent weapon to fight with. And they aren't wrong here - shotgun was designed as a half-secondary and a half-primary weapon, because it is use by engineer as primary and any primary should be powerful enough to save their user from at least some treats.
The bison, on the other side, was designed as a secondary weapon from the beginning to the end, and it is, in fact, an "ok" secondary: it can shoot on long ranges, it can deal damage for multiple people simultaneously, it can kill somebody who was healthy enought to survive even 2 or 3 rockets. but it is NOT a primary weapon - so dont compare it with shotgun so much, they are in different weight categories!

8) Just have some fun with it! Dont try to be super tryhard man with bison, this thing is too unreliable for that, just try to use it when you think it will have a good use, and keep in mind that this is still just a meme weapon from the start, so dont be sad if some stock-armored soldier or scout will delete you from living every time you meet them - just either avoid them or outsmart them, dont try to brute force the fight, you aren't suited for it.

The truth

I barely mentioned this very important fact before, in "The practice" chapter, but i think it deserves more attention here. The fact that Bison's projectiles are so slow makes it very hard to aim with it, but what if you don't actually need to aim with it? See, most of TF2 players (at least those who aren't look like super pro gamers and aren't destroying evrything what moves to their line of sight) are able to get very hard tunnel vision and focus on one task they really want to complete, even if this will make them dead afterwards. They might want to focus one specific target, refill their weapons, fix their buildings, escape and etc. This situations are very common, you just have to learn to see when this situations happen.

For example:

• If somebody was walking out of the base and suddelny saw a Heavy-Medic combo rawing up right in front of him, he will most likely want to immediately go back to cover.
  
• If Sniper saw a Spy he will most likely go after him and will give him a greatest priority, because he knows that Spy can easily kill him if he would switch the targets.
  
• If Medic was hurt while having more than 30-35% of Ubercharge he will most likely seek the nearest health source and will go to it, and if Medic was caught off guard without any teammates he will most likely just run, often in a straight line, maybe also will start shooting enemy with crossbow or syringes.
  
• If Heavy suddely figured out that his minigun stopped shooting and making weird clicking noises he will most likely whip out shotgun of melee and will run to nearest ammo source.

And the list can go on and go on.
All of this situations have one common thing: these players got some troubles, if not say horrible catastrophic distresses, and they will do anything to solve their problems as soon as possible. And this is our biggest mental weapon against them!

For many players a soldier with the Righteous Bison in hands is not looks like a threat. He is definalely dangerous, but not exactly something you should prioritize when you have some serious job like picking up medkits or ammp packs to do. And this is the mistake which can lead them to grave spawn! Using these occasional situations you can get a huge advantage over your enemy and significantly increase your chances of victory. When enemies are doing something important, they are ususally moving in the way that will allow them to do this something as soon as possible, right? Why don't we just calculate in which moment enemy will be at the location he want to be and just shoot this exact location in the calculated moment, instead of calculating in which location he will be when your projectile will cross his trajectory? While trajectory of enemy can change many times in a matter of seconds, the places they would want to go to wont change at all. And more than that, their movement speed most likely won't change too! So by using this method you are reducing your job at aiming from rapidly calculating the target's trajectory along with the possibile changes of this trajectory to just calculating the time of your target's arrival to the destination point. From two rapidly changing parameters to one completely static parameter. In other words, you do not have to predict WHERE target will be in next seconds, but you have to predict WHEN the target will be in the place it want to go.

This may sound complicated, and shooting a moving target requires at least some skill in landing projectiles in general, even if target moving in a straight line or fixed trajectory, but believe me, it is SO MUCH EASIER than just trying to predict the enemy movements and shoot him, even at close range, that you will be speachless when you'll see how well that could work. If you dont have to calculate where to shoot, your enemies suddelny lose their entire arsenal of dodging moves. The only way for them to evade your projectile is to delay or increase time in which they will be at they destination point. And in vast majority of situations players either simply dont even think about delaying the moment they pick up their precious medkit or ammo pack or refuse to change their usual behavior just for one Bison soldier, if they are too self-confident.

Oh, and i forgot to mention something. You are a Soldier. The class with one of the best primariy weapons in game and with 200 HP. If you are not playing trolldier, you can easily force enemies to escape by yourself. Just whip out the rocket launcher and shoot one or two times at the enemy. If he survives, and if he is not Soldier or Heavy, he will probably try to get the hell away from you. And here we go - a perfect self-made opportunity for using a Bison! Oh, and yes, if you are reloading your rocket launcher or being at low healtj, or even retreating in a first place, you still look kind of scary and threatening, so many players will automatically try to get away from any soldier they see, effectively giving you a free chances of shooting them down with Righteous Bison. Also, if you are retreating, you are considered as an "easy kill" by enemy players. And therefore, they will try to chase you as fast as possible to secure a kill, and this will make them surprisingly easy targets. Just remember that being chased while retreating is not a good thing in a fitst place, as it might get you killed.

This is the definition of the Righteous Bison from the beginning to the end - shoot retreating or moving predictably targets. This is what this weapon was made for. And despite it still being kind of weak in comparising with other soldier's "secondaries", it surely can get it's job done - if you doing your job in the right way.

Of course it may sound obviously for someone more expirienced, and of course this way of aiming is actual not only for the Righteous Bison but also for any other projectile in the game, however any other projectiles in game (aside from Pomson 6000) dont need this, This way of aiming is only usable when players are not actively engaging the fight with you and currently are trying to do something more important for him, and almost all other projectiles just too easy to aim without all this crazy dancing. You definately will be better with pipes or rockets if you will aim your shots normally than if you will be waiting for the perfect opportunity to shoot. It is too slow and restricting for such powerful weapons, but for Bison (and Pomson) this stragegy is not restricting at all, due to how slow and hard to aim these laser projectiles usually are. Also if your enemy will see a soldier with rocket launcher or demo with grenade laucher or a pyro with flare gun or a sniper with huntsman or basically anyone who can shoot somewhat deadly projectiles they will immediately pay as much attention to this threats as they currently can. For Bison it will be much easier to utilise this strategy because of it's status of a "bad" weapon. A little pigeons can carry great messages, you know. After all, this is a fricking alien pistol from other universe, of course it has to be used differently from other weapons!

The end

This is that typical paragraph where i will tell that it is my first guide ever, dont kill me for mistakes, blah blah blah, I just hope somebody will learn something new from my guide, Let me know what kind of additions i should make and what info are wrong and have to be deleted.

Also, PLEASE share it with the friends, not because i want more attention but because i want Righteous Bison to have more attention, may be a few more people will try to use Bison after reading it, and this legendary meme pistol will once again be seen on the battlefields!

Thats all i wanted to say, so have fun shooting lasers, guys!

[exxon]

save the bison valve it could be so much more

[Jumping Hunter]

Bison sweeping? Never heard of that. What is it?

[noobking007(not greg)]

that is cool and all but u didnt talk about bison sweeping witch is very importaint
do better

[gooze]

thanks :)

[Jumping Hunter]

I lost my guide virginity right here. Hope you will get at least 12 killstreak with bison just as i did before i wrote the guide, man!

[gooze]

Get this man a drink