MvM Scout : Support-Damage Hybrid

This guide is the version of the Support-Damage Hybrid I use. I am writing this for another player: *=*[}{]creepycheepy[}{]*=, a player that is still rather new to TF2.

This loadout uses the common support (madmilk, fan o'war, cash collection) as well as how to get in some good damage as scout. The downside, is that damage is bought by throwing away resistance upgrades. Though this is not a big downside, which will be talked about in the guide.

This guide will go over the...

• Items Used
  
• General and Conditional Upgrade Paths
  
• Why I use these items and upgrade paths
  
• My objectives when using this loadout
  
• Some talk about prioritization
  
• Some talk about Mobility Usage

I'm not going to "claim" this as my own loadout. I'm probably not the first to think of this. The only reason why I am writing this, is to share the loadout I use with the player mentioned above.

About using this guide in your own stuff, don't bother asking me. Go ahead and take it.

Table of Contents

• Terminology
  
• Items
  
• Upgrade Path
  
  • Conditional Upgrades (Highest Priority)
    
  • General Path
• Item Choice Explained
  
• Upgrade Path Explained
  
  • Conditional Upgrades Explained
    
  • General Upgrade Path Explained
• Playstyle
  
  • Cash Collection
    
    • Red and Green Money
  • Support
    
  • Damage
• Mobility Usage
  
• Prioritization

Terminology

• Tick/Ticks - If you look at your uprades options, most upgrades have 1-4 circles on them. When you buy an upgrade, 1 of those circles fills up with an orange color. Each of those circles is a "tick".
  
• Straggler - A "straggler" (by my personal definition) is essentially someone that leaves the main path, often alone or in a very small group. In MvM Stragglers tend to be either Engineer bots, Snipers, Spies, or bots that for some reason leave the main path and go to the bomb site instead of following the bomb carrier.
  
• My varies ways to say "Engineer" - eny, enies, engy, engies, engineer, engineers. You may see any of these throughout this discussion.

If you do not understand what I mean in any parts of this guide, or have any questions post a comment here or on my profile page. (Be reasonable with this...)

Items

This is just a list of items used. For why I use them, see the "Item Choice Explained" section.

• Primary : The Soda Popper
  
• Secondary : Madmilk
  
• Melee : The Fan O'War
  
• Action : Power Up Canteen

Upgrade Path

This is just a list of upgrades in a specified order. For why I get these upgrades, and at what time, see "Upgrade Path Explained".

Conditional Upgrades (Highest Priority)

If a giant scout is going to spawn on the current wave...

• -35% Speed on Target (Madmilk Upgrade)

If there is more than 1 giant scout spawning

• Refill Clips and Ammo (3 Ticks) (Power Up Canteen Upgrade)

Conditional Upgrades will always take higher priority than the General Path upgrades. If you ever see a giant scout (you can check this with the icons that appear in the top-middle of your screen before a wave starts), get these upgrades. There is no questions asked here.

General Path

1. Movement Speed and Jump Height (Max Out)
   
2. +25% Damage (2 Ticks) (The Soda Popper Upgrade)
   
3. +50% Clip Size (2 Ticks) (The Soda Popper Upgrade)
   
4. +25% Damage (2 Ticks) (The Soda Popper Upgrade)
   
5. +50% Clip Size (2 Ticks) (The Soda Popper Upgrade)
   
6. +2 Health Regen (1 Tick) (Scout Upgrade)
   
7. +25 Health on Kill (1 Tick) (Scout Upgrade)
   
8. Projectile Penetration (1 Tick) (The Soda Popper Upgrade)
   
9. Free-Upgrade Choice (Pick whatever you want from here on out)

Item Choice Explained

Primary (The Soda Popper)

As a Support-Damage hybrid, you need a good primary. However, you also need to be cost efficient.That is why I saw The Soda Popper. Let's take a look at the stats...

• +50% Faster Firing Speed
  
• +25% Faster Reload Time
  
• Reloads entire clip at once
  
• On Hit: Builds Hype
  
• -66% Clip Size
  
• Hype:Gives 7 Extra Mid-Air Jumps

The first 3 stats are the biggest reasons why this weapon is chosen. Your firing and reload speed are completely covered. You might think, but that is only +25% reload speed, however third stat finishes this. You reload all your clip at once, so you don't need +100% reload speed. +25% is more than enough. This is about 1000 dollars worth of upgrades covered before you even get any upgrades.

You now might argue about the -66% Clip size, going from 6 shots to 2. However, you have faster reload speed on top of reloading those all at once. To top this off, you will get clip size upgrades anyways. This negative stat is nothing much.

Finally, the bonus stat - Hype. Hype is extremely useful if you are in a dangerous situation or need to find some missing cash, as you literally become a flying scout. Putting the cash aside for later, if you are ever stuck or need to get out of a group of enemies. Hype gives you a total of 9 jumps. With 9 jumps you can get to just about everywheres.

Secondary (Madmilk)

Madmilk is useful for 2 reasons. First, you give you and your allies health on hit when enemies is covered in this stuff. This is a bonus upgrade though; the main use of Madmilk is for the upgrade "-35% Speed on Target".

This is useful for anything that takes a lot to kill, such as giants, mini-giants and Steel Gauntlet heavies. However, the most important reason to use Madmilk is always on Giant Scouts.

Giant Scouts take a lot more to kill than a normal scout, but they also practically fly away when they get the bomb. The Madmilk with the slow upgrade will completely annihilate their speed, and therefore make them nothing special for your team to kill.

A side note to this however, the health on hit is not massively important for the team, however it can very important for you. Looking at the upgrade path, there is no resistance upgrades, any soldier can easily one-two shot you if you don't have overheal. Using Madmilk to help keep your health up will sometimes be the only way to survive while still doing damage.

Melee (Fan O'War)

Fan O'War is purely for support through damage increase. When you whack an enemy with this, they get the "Mark of Death" debuff, a debuff which makes them take mini-crits. Only 1 enemy can be affected by your Fan O'War a time, so you want to use this on tough or important enemies.

So use this on any giant, steel gauntlet heavy or mini-giant. However becareful when you go in for the hit, as this could get you killed very easily.

Time your hit to be when the bot is reloading or not paying attention to you.

Upgrade Path Explained

Conditional Upgrades Explained

The Madmilk and canteen upgrades are conditional because they aren't really important unless a giant scout is going to appear. The health on hit is still useful in groups or giants, but giants already move slow anyways. Faster classes have less health and are easier to kill. Ultimately, Madmilk isn't even required unless a giant scout appears. However it can be very helpful.

Due to the requirement only being when giant scouts appear, the upgrades for Madmilk are only here as a "Conditional Upgrade", only get it if you need it. You only need it if a Giant Scout appears.

You may ask "why get consumable upgrades instead of Madmilk recharge speed", this is a very good question. Generally getting the permemant upgrades is better, however this is an exception to the case. If you need to Madmilk more than 1 giant scout, then that recharge speed will mean absolutely nothing, as it will be too late.

Generally giant scouts either spawn far away from eachother, or spawn very close/next to eachother. When they spawn far away from eachother, you will usually have Madmilk up, you just need to hit them with it.

When they spawn very close or next to eachother, a lot of times you need to hit both. That won't always work with a single Madmilk. So you might need your canteen to instantly recharge your madmilk.

As a last point, there is also a cost issue. The recharge speed takes a whopping 1000 dollars to full upgrade, and it isn't fully reliable. It is very prone to error and mistakes, in which can't be fixed easily. However, each canteen upgrade only cost 25 dollars each. This is exceedingly cheap, and you won't ever need 1000 dollars worth of these. Just be mindful that you can only carry 3 of them at a time.

General Upgrade Path Explained

This loadout is a Support-Damage Hybrid. There is no resistance, as the resistance is being traded for damage. You are a scout, you have a lot more consistant mobility than any other class. In MvM, you also get health from picking up cash. Then you Madmilk and maybe a health on kill tick or two from your primary weapon. Your survival consist of 3 points:

• Mobility (use your movement to dodge damage)
  
• Overheal through cash collection. Collect all the cash to refill and overheal yourself, so you never die.
  
• Use Madmilk and health packs if you are struggling to keep your health up.

In order to deal any good damage in MvM as scout you need to trade your resistance upgrades, but you don't need resistance upgrades if you use the list above.

First step is securing your ability to collect all cash and not die. This starts with getting your movement speed and jump height upgrades to max.The specific order in which you do this is not important (though on first round upgrades I would have a tick or two in both of them).

The added mobility makes it all the easier to collect all the cash and get the A+, which will allow you to quickly get your damage upgrades and immensively help your teammates.

After your mobility is secured, you are going to mostly focus on your damage. Scout is a glass cannon class. 2 point blank shots can kill 8 out of 9 classes in the game. The one class that requires more shots is heavy. Right now, you have firing speed, reload speed and a fair amount of damage. However, the damage is not enough in later waves. With 2 upgrades this changes - the damage and clip size upgrades. You start with damage, because the you already have a good amount of damage. You just need to aim with a fair amount of accuracy.

Once you have 2 ticks of damage upgrades, you will then start to lose some efficiency if you continue with the damage upgrades. At this time you want to get more shots per clip. You shoot really fast, so getting 2 ticks of clip size (doubling the amount of shots) should double your damage output. Keep in mind, you will reload all 4 shots at once.

After the 2 ticks of clip size, you contine on with the path and it is the same until you have both damage and clip size maxed out.

At this point you have damage, mobility and survilability. However, the waves have also become rather dangerous. So we will boost our survilability a little with 1 tick of health regen and health on kill. Health regen will help you out when ever you are not max health, which is good if you had to get out of the danger zone because of low health. Then health on kill to help you survive in the damage zone. Health on kill should not be taken before your damage upgrades, because you need to get the killing blow.

Do not get any more ticks of these right now, as you need to get other upgrades too. This should be more than enough.

The final upgrade is projectile penetration. This allows you to hit multiple bots a lot easier. It is not necessarily required, and can be done without, but it will boost your damage when fighting groups of enemies. Which is your weak point, as you are specific target type of class. You don't have anything to attack multiple enemies at the same time. This upgrade will counteract this weakness a little.

After this, there is no upgrades that are rather important left, so get whatever you want.

Playstyle

Cash Collection

The route of all mvm scout playstyles is cash collection.

Let me make this brutally clear for everyone, and I will explain why this is so right after this brutal statement.

If you do not focus on collecting cash as a MvM Scout, you are doing an absolutely terrible job playing MvM Scout

There is multiple reasons behind this.

1. Collecting cash drops heals and overheals scouts in MvM. This only happens to scouts.
   
2. The range at which scouts pick up cash drops is twice the range of every other class. Effectively making the scout good at picking up many cash drops by simplying running near them.
   
3. Scouts move faster than every other class in the game. Effectively making scouts the best at collecting cash.
   
4. Scouts can naturally double jump, and with the mobility upgrades. You have absolutely insane mobility when using jumps. Effectively making scouts godlike at collecting cash.

Cash collection is always your top priority. You may take a second to madmilk and fan o'war a gaint scout, or finish off a bomb carrier, as you do have time to collect cash. However, even if a giant is about to plant the bomb. Prioritize collecting cash. It is not your job to kill all the bots. You have a team for that reason. You support them, collect the cash, and do a fair amount of damage along the way. Your damage output is always an extra.

If the bomb carrier plants the bomb and makes your team lose, do not feel bad about not taking the chance to kill the bomb carrier. You team is post to kill 90% of the bots, if you have time to go kill the bomb carrier. Go do it. However, if you are going to miss a cash drop if you stay to kill the bomb carrier, then go get the cash drop. Even if it results the mission failing, you're collecting cash drops, madmilking and mark of deathing the required targets. To top this off you are dealing a good amount of overall damage, you are fulfilling your job as a scout to the fullest.

There is an built in tool that is the most useful tool in MvM for scouts.

That is what I call the "Floating Cash Drop Box". This box is a small yellow box with a number in it. It is located in the bottom left corner of the screen, overlapping the green cash box a little.

What this box does, is tells you how much cash is currently sitting around on the map. In otherwords...

If the number in this box is NOT 0, then there is cash for you to collect.

Red and Green Money

In MvM there is two types of money drops. Red Money and Green Money. Green Money is the normal cash drop, if you don't pick this up in time, then it is gone for ever. Any bot that drops cash, will drop this kind of money.

There is one exception to the above statement. When a sniper kills a bot with a headshot, a different kind of money drops, "Red Money". Red Money is pre-collected, the sniper collected the cash on kill. However, Red Money still drops for specific reason: for the scout.

As mentioned above, when a scout picks up cash drops, they get healed by it. Scouts all around would complain if cash drops were missing because a sniper headshot-killed a bot. Therefore, Valve created "Red Money". It provides no extra cash, however it is there to heal the scout.

You can leave "Red Money" to disappear, as you will not lose any cash, however I would take the simplified route. That is pick up all cash drops in existance.

There is a visual difference from Red Money to Green Money, and that is their particle effect. Above cash drop is a small particle effect, if the cash drop is "Red Money" the particle effect will be red.
If the cash drop is "Green Money" the particle effect will be green.

Support

Scouts provide a lot of support. A list of top 3 support classes in a team will often look like the following:

1. Medic
   
2. Scout
   
3. Engineer

There is 3 kinds of support:

• Team Survivability
  
• Bot Damage Resistance Debuff
  
• Bot Speed Debuff

This is rather straight-forward (thank god for how long this is...)

Your Madmilk gives your team health on hit, which allows them to survive easier.

Your Fan O'War makes all non-crits become mini-crits - The bot with the Mark of Death takes more damage.

With the Madmilk upgrade, all bots covered in Madmilk move slower. This is more or less covered in various parts above.

How to use these have been covered above too. To keep it short...

Use Madmilk on groups or on giants for the health bonuses, and to slow them to down with the upgrade. Always prioritize giant scouts when using firing your Madmilk.

The Fan O'War's Mark of Death can only be applied to a single enemy at a time. So only use it on bots that have a lot more health, such as giants. Always prioritize giant scouts, you want giant scouts down immediately, so they don't run off with the bomb.

Damage

Most good scout loadouts do not think about damage at all. However, this is a Support-Damage hybrid. You will never out damage a good soldier or heavy. However, you can make a good impact.

The following is going to be more like a list of advice. I don't see a particularly good way to say this stuff...

The more accurate you are the better, also try to focus on snipers and medics (if you can kill the medics before they pop uber. Always go for 2 solid meatshots).

With your mobility you can easily reach most snipers, and they are rather easy to kill. However, they always aim for bodyshots, so be careful if you don't have any overheal.

The medics are rather obvious, you don't want them to pop ubers and you are a glass cannon. Late game, it isn't unrealistic to be able to 1 shot a medic with a solid meatshot. Always aim for 2 solid meatshots to be safe though.

When dealing with smaller bots, never stop (unless it is a sniper or medic), and keep your mobility high. Don't allow them to rip through your overheal, and aim for meatshots while staying out side of a long melee range.

Damage - Giants

There is 2 situations for giants. The first is when a gaint is not aiming at you. In this situation...

Be behind the giant, and when you have shots stick your primary straight up its behind and shoot. If you are not shooting, then put a little distance and keep a close eye on where it is aiming.

Never do this infront of a gaint, as it often times, it will quickly start to aim at you, because you are body-blocking it.

If the giant ever aims at you, there is two things you might do. If it is a heavy, get out of sight, it will rip you apart. However, any other giant just jump around, and be very hard to hit. Shoot at them from outside of a long melee range, and occasionally jump in for a good meatshot.

Never jump in when the giant is shooting, or has not shot anything for a while. As, this is a sure way to get hit.

As a final point, remember that you are not meant to kill everything. Your top priority is always cash collection, the second to top is support. Then the last priority is damage, your damage is a bonus. Not a necessity, so treat it as such. You deal damage as you collect cash and support your team. You will also use your damage to get rid of of pesky or important bots such as snipers and medics; and finally you may use your mobility and damage to get stragglers.

Mobility Usage

Mobility Usage

As a scout mobility is really important. On most maps, you can go from 1 end to the other within a rough 5 seconds. With upgrades you move exceedingly fast and can jump really really high. Use this to get around.

For example...

Sometimes you can not use your mobility to avoid damage when running straight into bots. When situations like this occur, try to flanking routes to get behind the bots, and then run up to the front lines from behind to collect the cash. The bots in front of you will not focus on you in most cases, and you can jump on the bots heads to pick up a cash drop under them. However, be careful when doing this, as you can easily die if you get stuck.

Here is a common example of this I use on Decoy.

Remember to use the crouch key when jumping, as it raises the lowest part of your hitbox, which is sometimes necessary to reach certain places.

When jumping never fall straight down. Look at some guides for air-strafing if you are not familiar with this. The most important thing about air-strafing is not holding the W key.

Here are a few examples on how to use your jumps effectively.

If you running beside a wall on your left, jump to the right, then air-jump left make sure you don't hit the wall and miss the jump. This will also make it harder to hit you.

When avoiding projectiles jump often, going from left to right. Be sure to keep an eye on the blast damage range, especially with crit rockets.

A final point about jumps is that you have the Soda Popper Hype. I only use Soda Popper hype when I need to find a cash drop that I haven't a clue where it is. It gives a decent birds eye view of the battle field and the ability to quickly get around the map, as such I can find pesky locations that the cash drop might be hiding; or find cash drop that a teammate stupidly left in an odd location on the otherside of the map.

Priorities

Prioritization

A lot of priorities have already been covered, so we will begin with a summary of those.

A list of your objectives:

1. cash collection
   
2. cash collection
   
3. cash collection
   
4. Supporting team mates (madmilk, fan o'war, killing sniper bots)
   
5. Killing enemies

Within the following list about bots, there will be some new stuff...

1. Giant Scouts and Engineer Situation (Excessively important paragraph about this below)
   
2. Engineer Situation (Excessively important paragraph about this below)
   
3. Steel Gauntlet Heavy Bomb Carrier (unique situation)
   
4. The following 3 points have inter-changable importance, and must be decided depending on the situation.
   
   • Medics
     
   • Gaints and Tanks
     
   • Bomb Carriers
5. Sniper Bots
   
6. Everything else

First let's get some of the simple things out of the way...

Steel Gauntlet Heavy Bomb Carriers are very dangerous if left alone. As a bomb carrier holds the bomb they get damage boosts, health regen and damage resistances. Steel Gauntlet heavies are unique because, they have massive damage resistance to non-melee damage. A Steel Gauntlet heavy becomes excessively hard to kill when they get the damage resistance buff, paired with the health regen buff.

They are below giants when they don't have their buffs up, however...

If a Steel Gauntlet Bomb Carrier gets the health regen and damage resistance buff, they become the most important bot on the battleground. Yes, their priority exceeds all giants and giant scouts.

Important Engineer Situations
Bot enies are the bane of MvM scouts. Your job is to collect cash. A level 3 sentry will rip you apart. Whenever a bot eny appears, try to immediately find out where they are. The most notable thing about them is the big blue beam that shines from the sky, indicating where they spawned. If you can get to them and destroy the sentry before it finishes building, do it. Then immediatelly kill the engineer it self. Engineers have the health of a mini-giant and will take many shots to kill.

If an engineer gets their level 3 sentry up, any cash within the sentry's range is probably a lost cause, unless your team mates can atleast destroy the sentry.

You can get around the statement above if you use a uber canteen or the scout secondary "Bonk! Atomic Punch". Note however, the uber canteen will often require going to spawn, and you can not change items during the middle of a round.

As to my knowledge, Engineers always spawn as a support bot. On waves without any Giant Scouts, you might consider equiping the Bonk! Atomic Punch secondary. On waves with Giant Scouts, you may consider not having refill canteens, but instead use uber canteens. Note uber canteens are costly at 75 dollars per canteen.

For our sake, I hope the team can handle the sentries, as it is far too costly for a scout use these round-abouts, and Engineer bots are way too dangerous to be left alone; as they provide a teleporter for their bot friends.

When you have a Giant Scout and an Engineer... (Using Madmilk with refill canteens)

This is a very sticky situation. My personal reaction would probably be to madmilk the giant scout and if you get a fan o'war hit within the next 2 seconds, do it. Once the gaint scout is Madmilked, go find the engineer and follow the above situation (Important Engineer Situations).

If the Giant Scout can not be handled by your teammates alone (with or without the Madmilk), then prioritize the Giant Scout. However, be warned that engineer bots also spawn a teleporter for the bots.

Note on Tanks...
As a scout, you can deal a fair amount of damage to a tank, however it is time-costly. Always be aware of any cash drops waiting to be picked up.

[Muromasa]

That's true. If your team is prepared, a giant scout or two is not likely to be a problem. The ammo canteens are just a backup - What if something goes wrong? It works well since they are so cheap :)

[nuK3]

Excellent guide, don't listen to people like Lan, they obviously have no clue of what there are talking about.
Also ammo canteens shouldn't be needed, at least if you have half a decent team.
Cheers

[[Xanny]Codein kun]

i love this

[Jet]

If the dude is gonna pick the money for you, then let him waste his own money however he wants.
He's already willing to kill bots for you. People would kill to have a pro scout in Highlander, so why not this scenario.
50 credits hurt no one.

[Nanyayoksay]

there is a slight point, to convince him to remove the part orf the guild saying that for the scout

[MannsOverMeta]

This entire argument is pointless.
If it's a lone Giant Scout, take it out. If it's multiple, your team can do it for you.
No slowdown or canteens needed.

[Nanyayoksay]

You didn't answer my qustion you went around it, what first three waves of ANY mvm mission spawns more then one giant scout within a 15 second time??? And why would any scout still want to buy ammo canteen?.. and even during later waves it should not matter because if you did your job as scout to get as much cash as you can get , then your team should be upgraded and down the scout even faster.. to still waste money on canteens just means your team is falling behind on damage or is trying to stall, to try to stop a threat. There are very very few missions that require it. So? Care to explain why ever use ammo canteen for scout? The money can be used for PERMANENT upgrades. Yee c:

[Muromasa]

Harmless is completely correct. Also Lan, all snipers hate any sudden knockbacks or knock ups.... (Click for a headshot, and boom - headshot misses because of that knockback/knockup)


@Manns, I actually go entire missions (including advanced missions) without any resistance upgrades at all, and I still ensure all cash is collected.

[Muromasa]

@Nan

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=802473928

There is the 2 giant scouts. Wave 7 of Advanced Decoy

The first 3 waves does not matter, most pub players don't properly prepare against giant scouts. Unless they are a scout or a sniper (with Madmilk or Jarate).

The ammo canteen only cost 25 dollars, you are unlikely to spend even 100 dollars.

Not all heavies use natasha. Not all teams have a heavy in the first place...

Also I don't have a "t" in my name....


You making a big deal over a canteen that you will likely use less than 100 dollars on in most cases.

[Schizoman]

After you get picking up money down as scout it gets boring. People forget that a properly upgraded scout can demolish giants and tanks. (He is a single target high DPS guy)