Getting Those Sweet Trickstabs (Beginner's Guide to Spy)

People ask me all the time, "Misterboy, how are you so good at spy? How do you maneuver so well and adapt to any situation and pull off amazing, impossible trickstabs at the drop of a hat?" Well, actually, no they don't, but I like to think that in order to keep me from being mentally unstable.
Erm, anyways, this guide will (hopefully) help you guys understand how trickstabs work and how to achieve getting that glorious kill that forces every sniper in a 5-mile radius to go phlog pyro.

Introduction

First of all, let me start off by saying that this is my first guide, so it probably won't be the best. Although I only have 150 hours as spy (I actually consider myself more of a soldier main), I do consider myself a pretty decent spy. Am I saying I'm a pro spy who's anywhere near the likes of stabby, MrPaladin, etc? Not even close. This guide is simply to explain the basics of trickstabbing that are required in order to be a decent spy. Note that this guide is aimed more towards beginners, so if you're an advanced spy you probably won't learn much from this guide.

Also, the next three sections include a LOT of talking, so if all you want to know is the different trickstabs, feel free to skip those. However, I do believe the content in said sections is important and can be useful to know before attempting trickstabs.

Get on with it!
Alright, alright!

The Trickstab

What is a trickstab?

In order to fully appreciate a trickstab, we must first understand what a trickstab actually is. First of all, trickstabs are not some miracle moves that come only from luck/lag/etc. They are real moves that require timing, game sense, and *gasp* actual skill. However, there are moments where its just pure dumb luck, in which case admit it was just luck totally own it and say it was planned all along.

A trickstab is basically just a fancy way of getting to someone's back. Knowing how and when to trickstab can mean the difference between life and death. Now that TF2 has been around for so long, people don't fall for disguises as easily. It's also not super common to get the traditional straight-behind-the-player-stab. This means to become better at spy, it is essential that you at least have a basic understanding of how to trickstab. Before I get into the actual nitty gritty of how to perform a trickstab, I need to cover some technical stuff first. If you don't care about all that, feel free to skip these next sections.

Hitboxes and Lag Compensation

What is a hitbox?

Originally posted by Wikipedia:

A hitbox is an invisible shape commonly used in video games for real-time collision detection.

Basically, a hitbox is an invisible box around different segments of a character's body in order to detect hits/collisions.

Why does it matter?

We need to understand how backstabs work. In TF2, the hitbox that accounts for the "back" of a character spans a full 180 degrees.




That is (almost) the exact range for backstabs. It is literally a line halfway through the character's body which also allows you to achieve backstabs when directly above/underneath other players. This plus lag compensation is what gets you those beautiful facestabs that has everybody calling you a hacker.

What is lag compensation?

I won't go over this one too much, being that I don't exactly understand the technicalities of all this. Stabby explains lag comp pretty nicely in this video:

Let's say Player 1 attacks Player 2. In the time it takes the client to send info to the server, Player 2 might have moved a bit. What lag compensation does is, rather than having the info arrive to the server and the server say "Welp, Player 2 is not in the spot where Player 1 shot" because Player 2 has moved, lag comp "rewinds" Player 2 to where he was when the shot was taken and goes "Yep, he was hit". This causes some delay between what is actually going on server-side and what the player sees client-side. If the player is using a higher interp (more lag compensation) he will see everything a bit after it has actually happened, like the heavy in the video.

The combination of the backstab range and lag compensation are why some stabs can be a bit buggy. However, the 180 degree backstab range is what opens up the door to the plethora of trickstabs we can choose from.

MrPaladin sums all this up quite nicely in his video here:

Game Sense

There is one final thing I have to go over before I get into the good stuff. One thing that isn't super necessary but definitely helps in the set-up and execution of trickstabs (or just backstabs in general) is game sense.

I don't think there's a really a exact definition for this, so it's just my interpretation. I believe game sense is the understanding of how the game and characters work and flow. This is something that only comes from experience. Looking at a situation and immediately knowing where to go and how to act will always give you a higher chance of succeeding in said situation. I'll break it down into four segments: mechanics, understanding/adaption, movement, and experience.

Mechanics

The first part of game sense is understanding game mechanics. This includes maps (different spots/paths, where people will be, the location of health/ammo, etc.), characters' stats/health, weapons and their stats, and more technical stuff like hitboxes and lag comp (if only there were a section on that). This is pretty easy to get down as it just gets put into memory. However, this is not the most important aspect.

Understanding and Adaption

Being able to understand and adapt to a situation quickly is huge to being a good player and especially a good spy, since a lot can go wrong very quickly. This, in my opinion, is the most important aspect of game sense and it's what seperates the advanced players from the beginner ones.
A situation can be good or bad and can start from the instant you walk out of spawn. As a spy, you want to know where the enemy team is at as soon as possible so you know how to want to approach your goal, whether it be distracting the enemy team or just destroying them. You must always anticipate that the situation, when executed, won't go exactly as planned. When playing spy, you'll notice that more often than not situations will take a turn for the worse. This is where adaption comes into play.
When a situation goes bad, you have to have some sort of backup plan. Until you become very good at pulling off crazy trickstabs, your Plan B should almost always be either your revolver or, if you can get away with it, your cloak. Once all else fails, then you should resort to trickstabbing. Knowing how to adapt to a situation can mean the difference between you dying and getting away will a pile of bodies behind you (or at least, a few dead bodies and half the team paranoid as hell).

Remember that as a spy, your main role is not to be offensive. Your goal is to remain behind the enemy lines, out of sight. If you are constantly charging head-on into packs full of enemies, you are doing it wrong.

Movement

Being able to predict your enemies' movement is also very important for pulling off trickstabs. Knowing how they'll react once they notice you can allow you to slip away unscathed. Additionally, being able to time stabs just right to match the enemies' movements is very helpful for getting stabs such as sidestabs, stairstabs, dropstabs, etc. and is also helpful for blindstabs, which is purely visualizing your enemy's movement.

Experience

At the end of all this, it simply boils down to experience. The more time you spend in the game, the more understanding you'll have of everything listed above. If you're just beginning to learn the ropes of TF2, I don't recommend you start off as spy, since it is, in my opinion, one of the hardest classes to play as it is very mentally demanding, as you have seen above. As much as I hate to say it, the best beginner class would probably be pyro as it doesn't take huge amounts of skill yet allows you to traverse easily in order to effectively study maps and player movements.
As your experience grows, so will your game sense.

Whew. That was a lot. If your still with me, congratulations. Now its time for you to learn the actual thing that made you click on this guide in the first place: trickstabs.

The Sidestab

These trickstabs are listed in order from least to hardest difficulty (at least in my opinion). We'll start off with the easiest trickstab:

The Basic Sidestab

This is one of the easiest stabs that is considered a trickstab. A sidestab occurs when you are walking the opposite direction of an enemy (they are walking straight towards you), yet they are just to your side. Right as they get directly to the side of you, you snap your vision in that direction and stab them.






It's that easy! Keep in mind this isn't the most common trickstab, due to the fact that usually enemies will check you if you are walking straight at them. It is best to pull off this stab when you are behind enemies and they are running back to get health/retreat/etc. This is especially effective against newer scouts, as they usually don't move around too much and instead stick to straight paths.

Variations:

N/A

The Stairstab

The Basic Stairstab

A basic stairstab is when you jump off the top of a staircase and onto someone's head in order to backstab them. This is good for enemies who do not believe your disguise and are chasing you (especially w+m1 pyros, those suckers fall for these all the time). This can be done off stairs, ramps, ledges, or basically any type of elevations (rocks, higher ground, engineer buildings, etc.)
Stairstabs can be broken down into three basic parts:

The Jump

Timing is HUGE for stairstabs. You have to time the jump just right so you land on top of their head. Picture where their head is going to be in the time it takes you to perform the jump (this varies with the different classes). This also changes with the slope of the ramp you are on. If the ramp is steeper, you want to jump sooner. If it's shallow (flatter), you'll jump later.



In this scenario, given the pyro's speed and the incline of the ramp, if said pyro were chasing me, I'd probably jump a bit earlier, right as they arrived at the bottom of the ramp. Remember: I am NOT aiming for their BACK, I AM aiming for their HEAD. Jump where they are going to be, not where they are at currently.

Air Time

For a basic stairstab, all you have to do in the air is turn 180 degrees to get to their back. This is where it gets a bit tricky, as you have to picture them running up the ramp, as stated before. If people start anticipating the stairstab, you may be out of luck, as either you'll have to do a bunch of strafing or just switch to a new plan all together.

The Stab

The stab is pretty simple, however there are two very important things to remember:

• DO NOT AIM FOR THEIR BACK. You always want to aim to land on their head. If you aim to land behind them, I can almost guarantee you will miss, as they will have already moved forward and out of reach. You don't have to necessarily land on their head first, then pause, then stab; it should be one fluid motion.
  
• You must crouch in order for this to work. Because of how hitboxes work, if you don't crouch it will not give you the option to backstab and it won't even hit them at all. Once you crouch, then it will give you the ability to backstab them.

Without crouching:


With crouching:


A great way to practice this is by downloading tr_walkway[tf2.gamebanana.com] and practicing on the ramp.

Variations:

There are a few different variations of this, including:

• The backwards stairstab - Almost the same as a regular stairstab, but instead of facing your enemy in the beginning, you keep your back to them the whole time and jump backwards. This can be more believable but is significantly harder than a normal stairstab and requires lots of timing.
  
• The blind stairstab - A blind stairstab is basically the combination of a stairstab and a corner stab. This occurs mostly on staircases that turn and go around corners. These stabs are most effective when the enemy believes your disguise/doesn't even notice you. Blind stairstabs are also good because, when timed right, the enemy won't even be able to see you in the air; at least not until it's too late.

The stairstab can be fairly easy to pull off over time. However, it does require a good amount of practice and takes quite some time to master.

The Cornerstab

Ah, yes, the beautiful cornerstab. This is one of the most satisfying stabs and when mastered can be very deadly. This stab occurs a lot and it is fairly straight forward once you get the hang of it.

The Basic Cornerstab

A cornerstab usually occurs when an enemy does not believe your disguise and is chasing you. You go around a corner, giving the impression you are running away. Then, you turn back, strafe around then and BAM! They're dead. There is a lot going on in a cornerstab so I'll break it down step-by-step.



Say a pyro just walked out of spawn and saw you backstab a teammate. He chases you in all his w+m1 glory. The good thing about pyros that make them a bit easier to cornerstab is the length of their flames. As you can see, I can see the pyro's coming long before he's in range to hurt me. Right now I am looking at the corner but I am still strafing to the right.



Once the pyro comes around the corner (or maybe even a bit before), you want to reverse your direction. If you were strafing right, strafe left and vice versa. You should still be looking at the corner. You then need to turn in the direction that they are facing, otherwise you won't get to their back and they probably will move out of the way.



Usually they won't have time to react, so by the time you strafe the opposite direction towards them and turn, they won't have time to react and will keep looking where you were. This is why you must face where they are facing. As soon as they get to your side, you stab.



Not big sooprise

In this video I explain how I set up and execute a cornerstab against a scout:

Variations

• Reverse corner - This is good when being healed by an enemy medic. You walk around a corner but stop and back up, letting the medic cut the corner and go ahead of you. You then kill him and laugh at his foolishness.

Remember as a spy you want to trick the enemy into believing things that aren't true. The whole point of a cornerstab is to take advantage of the fact that the enemy believes you are trying to get away from them.

The Understab/Dropstab

I'm grouping these together because they are sort of similar and not too intricate.

The understab is pretty rare since it only really occurs on maps that have high bridges/ledges. However, it can catch people off guard due to its rarity. It isn't super tricky but it's definitely different from the other stabs.

The Basic Understab

Basically, an understab is stabbing someone who is coming off a ledge that you are walking towards. The idea is you appear to be walking towards the ledge without noticing someones on top. When they jump down, you can either stab their feet and get a backstab or stop and back up slightly so they land in front of you (hopefully facing the opposite direction) which also allows you to kill them.



In this case, I am walking towards a ledge with a pyro on top of it. The pyro will try to hop down when i am almost underneath the ledge. If this happens, you have two choices:



You can let them land of your head, in which case, you'd aim to stab them at their feet like so.



You can also stop and back up so they land in front of you (I prefer this method as it's a bit safer and easier).

This stab is also good for getting away from enemies. If someone is in pursuit and you go off a ledge, they will most likely try to follow you. In which case, just give 'em the 'ol razzle dazzle.

Variations

N/A

The Basic Dropstab

Dropstabs are also pretty rare, as they also require high ledges. A dropstab is kind of like taking an understab and reversing the roles. This time, you are on top. This only works if the enemy either does not see you or believes your disguise. It can work either way: they are running away from you or they are running towards you.

If they are running towards you, just treat it as if it were a stairstab (remember you're on top of them, looking down).

If they are running away from you, try to time it so you land just behind them. This will give you a higher chance of not missing. I also prefer to crouch at the last second just in case I land on their head accidentally.

Variations

N/A

The Matador

Here we are. The trickstab of all trickstabs. If this trickstab were a person, it'd probably be me because I'm awesome (rekt).
All jokes aside, this trickstab is the hardest trickstab to perform. It occurs the most often and is essential to learn. However, mastering this can take months and being able to do this at almost any time can seperate the beginner/intermediate spies from the advanced ones. This is the ultimate lifesaver, the miracle stab, the facestab, the stab that leaves everyone on the server wanting to kick you. This is the matador.

The Basic Matador

The idea of the matador is almost the same as a corner (I like to call it the cornerstab without a corner). This stab requires that the enemy knows that you are a spy (or at least has suspicions). A matador is when you are facing an enemy and they are chasing you. While facing them, you strafe to one side (let's say the right) and then immediately change directions and go back to the left. At the same time, when going back to the left, you want to move your mouse to the right. This makes it possible for you to hit their back hitbox and a lot of the time winds up looking like a facestab (I'll talk more about that later)

Here I demonstrate a matador against another spy:

As you can see, as soon as I realize the spy is walking towards me, I strafe to the right, causing the spy to look and attack in that direction. I then strafe back to the left and adjust my crosshair so I am just across the 180 degree threshold. All it takes is for them to look in a direction just a bit for you to be considered at their back. This is very hard to pull off effectively because it requires you to be aggresive and have quick thinking. However, it is also a very versatile trickstab as it can be performed in almost any location, even in spots such as doorways, staircases, tight tunnels, etc.

Variations

There are many different forms and derivatives of the matador. However, most of them follow the basic concept of the matador and really its just situational.
Note: Matadors do not have to be left and right. They can be forward and backwards as well, similar to a reverse corner.

The Facestab

There are a few factors that go into a "facestab"

• The stab itself - A lot of times, matadors will wind up looking like facestabs due to their very nature.
  
• The animation - The death/backstab animation usually plays from the front, so even though you stabbed them when they were facing to the side, the animation will play facing you.
  
• Hitboxes - Due to the crazy 180-degree back hitbox, you don't have to be anywhere near straight behind them for backstabs to work. In the video I posted earlier by stabby, he says "For a backstab to register, the spy must be >50% behind the target and be facing more in the direction of his victim than not."
  
• Lag compensation - I've explained how lag comp can make backstabs seem pretty funky at some times, especially at high speeds.

Facestabs aren't actually a thing. They are just a product of semi-crappy hit registration and fast-paced action.

The matador stab is by far the hardest trickstab to master. I recommend watching some of stabby's videos, as he is crazily good at these.

Giving Up and Going W+M1 Pyro

Don't.

Conclusion

Hopefully I explained each stab thoroughly and gave you enough insight to begin your journey in spydom. Remember that this is my first guide so I know it isn't perfect. Also, I am always open to constructive criticism, so drop some comments about how I did and what I missed.

Additionally, I think that making this guide was really fun and maybe I'll consider making other spy guides, whether it be loadouts/revolvers/knives/disguising/etc. Who knows?

Lastly, I'd like to thank you guys for taking the time to check out my guide. I really appreciate it :D

Credits/Sources

• =(eGO)= Jade for being my dummy model and for letting me kill her in 1v1s for my own personal amusement and to make me feel better about myself because the truth is im badandneedtobattlepeoplewhoneverplayspyinordertokillanyoneafjas;jafj;lkajdsfashfashelpme.
  
• MrPaladin for being super helpful and informative in his videos. Seriously, I wouldn't be nearly as good or have nearly the same amount of spy knowledge as I do without him.
  
• Stabby for being amazing at spy. Again, his videos have really helped me out and gave me inspiration to take spy seriously
  
• Real brains.
  
• Jesus himself.

[@₾₮-₮0Ʀ©3-₼∆Ĵ3uƦ3]

awesome guide, instructions strangely clear.....

[Is dr. mario a real doctor?]

You know how a lot people say that you can be a good spy without tricksabs? That's true. But you can be a heck of a lot better with them.

[Axolotl]

Boxstabs? Backstabbing while in a box? It's happened

[Minty]

Nice guide! I won't be using it to play SPY, per sé (I refuse to turn on/toggle viewmodels)... But I DO appreciate knowing why the hell you keep killing me and the mechanics thereof. :3

[Twizz_]

Coming from a Pyro main trick-stabs are obvious to me due to the fact that most spies will try and set you up for it. all i do is keep the spy on my screen at all times. If you lose track of the spy you are most likely dead. also air-blasting is a great counter, light the spy on fire, air-blast, flare, crit, dead. But hey been playing this game for years I'm just used to dealing with spy mains. Still a great guide for new players.

[Anotha One]

rip me.

But srsly tho, awesome tutorial/guide. Thank you for teach me, MB. :)

[Beef]

rip jade