Please excuse the spelling errors I typed this up on the spot and didn't do it slowly haha

I main called for my team Soft Served for 2 seasons as demo. As the most damaging class in the game, it is really easy to control the fights. Main calling on top of that gives you complete control, and really every fight focuses around you, your plays, and what you comm.

I didn't realize this until I played in IM this season and no longer main called since everyone on our team is way more experienced than me and understands the game better. For the first two months of scrims I felt really uncomfortable because I couldn't control the flow of the game around me. I'm extremely confident in my DM, but I wasn't confident in my positioning because I couldn't control our team around me.

As a result I started playing like a huge vagina bitch. Rarely top fragged/damaged. I knew I could do better but I couldn't snap out of this phase. Granted it is hard to out frag these fucking cheating scouts on my team, but still I wasn't doing as well I knew I could.

Now that we finally have a steady roster and good playing time together, I am playing much better. I honestly dont expect to out frag our scouts, or out damage our pocket every game because I'm so inexperienced compared to them. It makes sense for our team to have medic main call.

If you are a new open team or equally experienced team, I think demo main callers are great. Like I said, the ability to control a push single handed makes demo a great main caller. Of course, hitting every pipe, reloading stickies, calling damage and focus, while controlling the push is no easy thing to do. I think medics should focus on uber percentages and healing, because they are so important. And pockets while having usually the best uber control, can't really do as much without all the heals.

Whether you do main call or not, the ability to do so is really valuable. You can learn and improve much quicker if you can think about all the disadvantages/advantages, your position, their position, this and that, and being able to make the right play from all of it.

sup

>implying you were the main caller kalkin

demo main callers are fine

it leads, if done correctly, to a more aggressive playstyle and better non-uber pushes, since everything is based on damage

i think we should poll the 4 invite teams going to lan and ask who the main caller is.

have extine ask it in a pre game interview

i dont see it as a 'main caller', sure 1 person can call to push but its more like a collective effort of all the teams comms knowing what their next move is gonna be. i recall especially with x6 the whole team was very vocal and that definitely played a good part on their success, between tlr, kalkin, harb, vhalin etc. same with mixup they all call a lot, b4nny does a lot of calls with LG too but its definitely the whole team, tyrone is really vocal as well as hero

its really important for a teams chemistry to build when everyone gets really into it, makes it a lot easier to play as well when everyone is in the know. if its one thing that irritates me the most is mute players, just barely saying a word...really doesn't help at all. you can be a monster in the dm department but if you don't give a heads up your team can get fucked one way or another

i still think medic maincalling is the best idea because its easier to keep track of everybody when you dont have to aim while still seeing a lot of what the pocket does and being able to most accurately gauge how well the fight is going

that being said the demo sees the fight pretty well and has a good idea of how much damage his team is doing so as far as calling to agress/focus fire i think hes imperative

me me arrows are my favourite me me.

In my meager experience this is generally the best setup, but surely the person in your team with the most experience and or gamesense should main call.

interesting, what class class does your team have main calling?

medics can't peek chokes and stuff and doesn't see as much as a demoman or pocket.

i want to know what the people i mentioned in the thread think about this.

I didn't like main calling as demo because I had to put myself in aggressive positions that I felt the pocket soldier should be putting himself in. i.e. I think the pocket is the most ideal main caller because of the view he has of the overall game (as long as you have reliable people on flank that can update you on what they see/are doing).

The three classes of Demo, Pocket, and Medic all have roughly equal visions of the battlefields, the Medic a little less so since he can't be standing quite close to chokepoints.

The Demoman and Pocket have the highest visibility in terms of direct damage output. As the two classes which deal the most damage, they help with determining pushes once targets have been severely weakened or killed. Inversely though, the Medic has the best knowledge of how healthy the team is. Sure, if you get a few picks you may be tempted to push, but with both Scouts asking for heals as the Demo gets spammed down to 80HP, it's not a good idea to push and the Medic will (of course) relay this information back.

I think of it as a network between these three classes to call for the team. It's TEAM Fortress 2, after all. Pocket / Demo relay damage output, Medic relays uber calculations, and the flank relays flank.

Blaze of the Spacewhales was (still is?) their main caller, right? I'm curious to see how that worked, if it was just basing decisions off what the combo was telling him and determining pushes from there, which would be creative considering he's on the flank and rarely sees what the combo is seeing.

this is KIND of a myth, spacewhales doesn't really have a defined caller, blaze just calls a bit more useful stuff than, say, yz50

By the nature of the game, everyone has partial information. Once everyone on your team has a reasonable amount of experience (a few seasons playing/thinking about the game, watching demos/casts, etc.), your comms can boil down to everyone offering the information they have, and your team reacting accordingly without an explicit "go here, do this" call because the conclusion is obvious. For example:

Medic: our health is good
Pocket: their demo is low
<you push>
*ubers are popped*
Medic: we're in now, they popped
Medic: we have a good uber
<you want to stay in after>
Scout: we lost the flank
<now you gtfo>

If you have to call the conclusions from the data, your comms will be slow and cluttered. When it's not so obvious, ie, your medic says your health is bad at the same time your pocket says their health is bad, you should have a "fight them" or "reset" call, and in the event of conflicting calls, it's nice to have a main caller defined because you can just always follow their call to avoid splitting.

Obviously I'm simplifying things a lot here, as in the example, you might stay on a "great" uber when your flank is low but you wouldn't stay on a "good" uber, and if both teams are low, you might fight in blands yard if your scouts have health and your heavies don't (but not vice versa), and you might fight on gran 2 if your demo is buffed and your scouts are lit (assuming in both these cases that their team is similarly screwed up so that it's actually worth fighting). Furthermore, you might have a fuzzy definition of a main caller -- I might main call 80% of the time on medic, let's say, but if I say to back out (without much conviction -- something like "we should back" rather than "get out get out") and my pocket says that we need to go in (very strongly -- "get on them now all so low omg" vs "push in") it's probably better to take his call. That said, it may be better to give 100% control to the main caller regardless of what they say to reduce the risk of splitting up (at least at lower levels of experience).

I saved a post from commft where I talk about some details of comms: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dSDb86Hg0gLP0y5L9Id6r5J8PEkS3PN05WgXm0kYm8g/edit
I think this may be somewhat lacking in the sense that I write it under the assumption that the combo is always initiating fights -- but if you have someone initiating on the flank because they got in unseen behind, or just have a good position to do it, etc, then they need to call that timing "going in 3" etc.

Basically what I'm saying is that everyone should call about the game state "they are lit" "demo overextended" etc. and your team should act accordingly. Only when the decision is non-obvious (you have some data that says push, some that says back up) should someone make a "go in"/"back up" type call, and the only useful definition of a main caller is in the event of conflicting calls here. That said, all of this goes out the window when you have varying experience levels -- a much more experienced player will almost always make better decisions than a worse one even with less information.

One point I haven't really addressed here is calls in transitions -- here a main caller becomes more useful because they can spend the time laying out how the next fight will go while there isn't any damage to call. Even if most of this is reiterating obvious detail, you may as well do it since you're not blocking any data, and you can fine-tune what you're doing to what you've observed in the game. No matter how experienced you get, having one person's strategy laid out for the other 6 to make adaptations on top of will be better than each person adapting individually in possibly-divergent ways. To somewhat bring this back to the OP -- picking the main caller as the most experienced player is probably best, with my personal preference lending some bias to medic > pocket > demo > others.

tl;dr -- neeeerrrd

And always remember: stickies do not pop. Stickies det. Ubers pop. Valve delays hl3 by another month every time someone says "they popped" wrt sticks.

Haha, I don't think I've heard anyone say the 'stickies popped' before.

enemy stickies >> blown
our stickies >> det

SaltySally, our pocket, Frozen, is our "main caller." We all build off each other's comms, but Frozen calls when to push and stay back - just to clarify.

oh perhaps i misunderstood from what i can see whitepowerjesus makes most of the decisions, i listened to your comms one day and i noticed he makes up the majority of the comms my mistake

stickies blow
ubers use

As long as they don't try to micromanage every other player on their team.

That could be said for anyone.

b4nny o damnnnnn

The main calling should revolve around the combo it depends if the demoman is a heal heavy demo or not. The game is played around ubers not sticky traps. Plat is an exception and i'm pretty sure tyrone main calls for LG. Demomen can surely have great supporting comms but as a whole it should come from the medic or pocket. But at high levels everyone is calling something that's what open players don't understand. If you have an advantage on the flank, then your flank calls. If there's an uber advantage then your medic calls. If there's a position where your fragging classes out number theres, or your damage is better then your pocket/demo can call. All depends.

b4nny took over main calling from tyrone a couple seasons ago. it is pretty clear he is the main caller for lg if you ever listen to their comms. as for us i'd say we don't have a main caller. we do about what sigma said. we have people comm what they see and most of us just know what we should be doing. honestly at open or even im level your main caller should just be whoever is the smartest and most confident player on the team, regardless of class. you can't have someone who isn't confident in their calls as main caller.

My team has our medic main call, though I'd be all for a pocket main caller since he consistently sees more than our medic does. I could understand a demo main calling if your demo was willing to play a lot more aggressive and can get away with doing it, but I think our demo likes to play not really passive but not aggressive enough.

just listening to platinum's stream i can tell that platinum has an air of confidence unmatched by anyone other then ruwin and pyyyour, i'd say you don't have a main caller but you definitely have an in-game leader and platinum does it well :)

yeah i definitely agree with you, a demo that aggressively peeks chokes and shoots the probing stickies is something i've seen great players like b4nny do and i think you can gain alot of knowledge from them, more then a pocket can see and ton's more then a medic...(IM NOT BEING A DICK) rex does damage enough from what i can see but he would do alot more if he thought about where things may be pre-push and put some stickies there instead of losing health and precious spamming opportunity or maybe even jump through chokes and skip the flank spots idk im not very good at this either.

Each player has responsibilities at high levels. The pocket is looking for openings, the medics maintaining uber advantages and calling out support comms, the demo creates openings or defends disadvantages etc. If your scouts are in a position to flank then they can call a push to sandwich them etc. It's situational but for most teams there's always one main caller who calls things like rollouts etc. As for pushing it's pretty obvious after a while when you're going to be pushing and usually it's the medic or pocket calling that.