BAD MVM Upgrades

This is the text version of the corresponding video by WeezyTF2

Introduction

Hey guys, did you know that some MvM upgrades are really bad? Clearly not, because I still see some of you buying them. Upgrades are like an all-you-can-eat buffet, and for some reason people keep going straight for the plates of liquid ♥♥♥♥.

We're not going to be talking about obvious upgrades to avoid like Pain Train swing speed or stuff like that, because I don't want to make a whole video doing the TF2 equivalent of telling you not to look into the sun. Some things are just blatantly obvious for everybody. So we're only going over upgrades that newer players actually buy.

Noob traps, if you will.

And also as a small YouTuber, I am the algorithm's ♥♥♥♥♥, so if you want to see more MvM content, hit the subscribe button and comment some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ below to help boost this video.

№1 — Health Regen

This is a game mode with

• medics,
  
• dispensers,
  
• Mad Milk,
  
• possibly a Concheror,
  
• drop sandwiches,
  
• and a couple medium med kits readily available almost all the time.

This varies based off of team and weapon composition, obviously, but generally you'll have at least a few of these healing sources, and almost all of them have much, much better healing output than health regen.

But I get it, classes like Soldier, Pyro, and Heavy all want that added survivability, so instead take that 200 credits and buy «Health on kill». You'll get far more health back when you need it most, especially on the earlier waves.

№2 — Unnecessary resistances

There's a saying that goes around the TF2 community, nobody looks up.

Same holds true for newer MvM players, but instead it's up at the top of the screen.

Before and during each individual wave, you get a list of all the robots that will be spawning. You should always check this when buying resistances, and don't forget about the Support bots.



If there are few or no bullet robots, don't buy any bullet res.
If there are few or no explosive robots, don't buy any blast res.
If there's no light blue outline on anything, crit res should be off the table.

You can refund your upgrades every wave and tailor your resistances to better suit what you'll be fighting, so if you want to not die as much, do this.

№3 — Burn damage

Alright, this one is a little bit more straightforward.

The flamethrower has two different damage upgrades, and new players sometimes get confused.

The basic damage upgrade applies to your flamethrower's damage on hit, i.e. your main way of dealing damage. The burn damage upgrade, however, only applies to your afterburn, nothing else.

So the normal damage upgrade, great, but the burn damage upgrade is trash, and you should never, ever buy it.

№4 — Burn time

This one is also a purely afterburn focused upgrade, and it's even more useless than the last one.

Ever since Jungle Inferno changed the mechanics of afterburn, this upgrade now does literally nothing. But even back when it used to work, small robots never lived long enough for even your normal afterburn duration, let alone an increased amount of time.

And the robots that survive longer, the giants, you'll be scorching down with your flamethrower and continuously resetting the afterburn time.

So even if they fix the bug, this upgrade would still be pointless.

№5 — Airblast force

Depending on your experience with MvM, you're either shocked to find this upgrade on the list, or not surprised at all. So let me qualify things a bit.

Airblast can occasionally save points from being captured, or bombs being planted, and can pit giants if your team ever gets pushed back to them. But that only really happens with less experienced teams.

It's almost always better to actually kill the robots instead of pushing them back, and generally groups with higher tour counts tend to do the killing part quite well. But if the average tour count is low, then it's not the worst upgrade to buy as some kind of last resort protection.

However, whatever you do, regardless of team skill:

Do

Not

Spam

Airblast

You want the robots to move closer to you.
You want them to get shredded by max damage ramp up.
You want them to walk into crit sticky piles.

Launching them backwards only serves to be a hindrance in those situations.

So dps'em down instead of playing a game of hot potato.

№6 — Knockback Rage

Very similar story to Airblast with this one.

In a vacuum, it's not terrible as a last resort option, but bad players will spam it even when there's no reason to, preventing your team from enacting the advantageous plays I mentioned earlier.

But moreover, Valve has been hiding crucial information from the player base ever since MvM launched:

• Knockback Rage, despite it saying this nowhere in the tooltip,
  drops your firing speed by 50%.

And also, because you're pushing the robots back, you're suffering damage falloff instead of damage ramp up.



So basically, you're cutting your damage in half.

Twice

They also hide the fact that the second and the third ticks don't increase push force on grounded robots, only ones that find them in the very obscure situation of being airborne. So if negating damage ramp up wasn't a good enough reason to not buy this upgrade, those ones certainly are.

It does look pretty funny though.

№7 — Metal Regen

At first glance, you would think this upgrade is almost identical to Health Regen, but it actually works much, much differently.

• Health Regen ticks every second.
  
• Metal Regen, on the other hand, ticks every 5 seconds.

This makes the entire upgrade obsolete. By the time it takes for this upgrade to tick twice, you can very easily run to your dispenser or an ammo pack, and you'd end up getting more metal by buying an upgrade with the same credit investment, metal capacity.

This increases your total metal pool, and by proxy, increases the amount netted from ammo boxes.

So don't ever buy Metal Regen, buy capacity instead.

№8 — Disposable Sentry

The mini sentry isn't terrible on late and even some middling waves, but the big problem is that you'll often see newer engineers buy it right from the start.

Don't do this.



It's very expensive, it gets destroyed way too often for your metal to keep up, it doesn't do much damage, and it doesn't even stack with any of Engie's other upgrades:

• Max out dispenser range,
  
• get a two-way teleporter going,
  
• and buy some combination of
  
  • Building Health,
    
  • Wrench Swing Speed,
    
  • Metal Capacity,
    
  • and Sentry Firing Speed.

№9 — Sentry Firing Speed

wait what?

Yeah, that's right, this upgrade just doesn't work.

It's been broken for almost a decade, and in typical Valve fashion, they've done ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to fix it.

There have been a few theories as to why this happens, but a YouTuber by the name of sigsegv did a bunch of research and concluded it related to server ticks. I'm not going to pretend I know what any of this means, but considering his credentials of being a lab rat, I'll take his word for it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=579435024

But for the sake of the video, the first tick is usually worth buying, the second tick can be sometimes decent late game with the Wrangler, but the third tick, never ever buy it under any circumstance.

№10 — the second tick of Heavy Firing Speed

Yep, this one is broken too.

Again, this is something sigsegv goes over in his six-year-old write-up, so I'll spare you the details.

All you need to know is that the second tick doesn't increase your minigun's firing speed at all.

I didn't learn about this one until I had a few dozen tours under my belt, so this one will probably come as a surprise to a fair bit of you.

№11 — Mad Milk Recharge

Okay, now this one isn't actually too bad, but I'm putting it on the list to make a point that Scout isn't a pure support class.

You should ideally be intertwining resistances and mobility upgrades with increasing your scattergun's damage output, not going whole hog into just one of the two. Maxing out your milk, especially early on, is a product of the former.



You only really want milk for giants or large amounts of small robots that your team can't effectively burst down, and usually a 20 second cooldown is enough to suffice for that.

On teams without many good players or an absent medic, I guess it's okay, but in most other cases that 1,000 credits will be better served with your Scattergun or any other survivability-based upgrades.

№12 — Rocket Specialist

No, not the whole upgrade

The first tick of Rocket Specialist is insanely useful and should always be bought as early as possible. It removes damage falloff, it stuns robots in place for a brief moment after hitting them, increases projectile speed, and gives a slightly bigger blast radius.

But every tick after the first point only increases the projectile speed and the blast radius on direct hit.



The former not really mattering at all, and the latter, while useful, is nowhere near worth that 300 credit investment.

Sure, turning the direct hit into a pseudo hitscan weapon is fun, but for practicality's sake it's really not worth using.

№13 — Mad Milk Syringes

On paper, this upgrade seems pretty good.

I mean, it's very cheap to upgrade and mad milk is always a good thing, right?



And yeah, but when you have your syringe gun out, you're not healing your main target being attacked. You're not giving teammates overheal, you're not building uber, you're not generating your shield, and you can't share canteens.

You're taking the time to apply an effect that scout can already provide without it infringing on any aspect of his core gameplay.

I know it looks enticing, but I promise you guys that any good medic will almost never, ever use them.

Conclusion

And yeah, that's about it for the bad MvM upgrades.

If you disagree with any of my picks or think I missed some commonly bought upgrades, let me know in the comments below.

That's all I got guys, thank you all for watching the video.

See ya.

[Mendys]

Dude never played properly Medic in MVM. Milk syringes are lifesavers
and if teammate heals from it, you get % to Uber.

[Greg Jr.]

:letsroll:

[Greg Jr.]

mucho texto
not reading allat

[Hansov]

I've seen a lot of people call Mad Milk syringes a useless upgrade, but it's been a lifesaver when I've found myself alone or when I'm making my way to the front lines.

[!✔Mikasinka | Type: Vasya Vee]

mad milk syringes is op vs bosses

[van]

Thank you for making this, I could never figure out which upgrade was good or not when I first got the game.