play demo more

work on area denial and positioning, try to understand when you're overextending by positoning yourself relative to your combo. Try to play with other people (either helping people that are fighting 1v1s or physically running around with other players) and learn when to peak and throw damage and the other times when you want to set up a trap and hold. Learn to backout and live because another 100 dmg on the point isn't going to be worth your life.

Call your damage, support your team, be a black man.

Watching a lot of STVs of invite matches, speccing the demo, has helped a little for me. I imagine scrims and demo reviews will get you there the fastest.

What Kapoww said. Also reload stickys not pipes. Sticky aim/ammo conservation is much better than any pipe will do. That said there are times you have to use pipes, so practice them too. But focus on constantly having stickys loaded for when you need them.

Watch b4nny's demos and try to understand in any given situation why he's doing certain things.

fixed

what

I forgot to mention im talking about improving as a competitive demo, not pubs or highlander.

What Joe said is completely true but I sometimes can't make myself switch back to the stickybomb launcher. Also, practicing pipes can help hit that one pipe to discourage scouts from chasing you and/or your medic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=api7dJQ_F7k

sorry I meant sentry demolition and perimeter control

you should be using stickies to knock the scouts buff off/get them under full hp so they have to worry about getting 1 piped, not vice versa.

if you watched platinum cast b4nny, he says that b4nny scares off scouts by hitting them with the last pipe

Well, I didn't say it was the best way to do it. I only meant that practicing pipes can help in those kinds of situations except for when you play against those scouts that trust their DM enough or don't care and will continue to chase you.

There is a difference between a concept and a skill, and IIRC b4nny had no stickies left when platinum said that. A concept is what should happen under general circumstances, and a skill is being able to stray from the circumstances and adapt. I hope that makes sense at all.

The skill in this scenario is being able to hit scouts with his last pill more consistently than just about anyone.

That's very true and sometimes when a scout is about to rush you, you just dont have stickys loaded, and in that situation it's good to use pipes. But if he is at a distance where you can load a sticky or two, i would load the sticks and just leave them on the ground blocking him from your medic and you. It's so hard to hit very good scouts with pipes and its really hit or miss, putting stickys on the ground will definitely buy you and your medic some time to get farther away from that scout, and allow you time to reload.

STICKIES

play pugs till you don't want to play this game anymore

Just keep in mind that you are (or at least should be) the main damage output of your team. You're not exactly there to frag, but help put out damage for your team to clean up. Don't be discouraged if you can't get frags. Overextending is a far too common thing for demos, including myself, and good players will punish you for it. Make sure to stick about where your med and solly combo are. The pocket should be close to you to help you spam chokes and such to push back the other team. This is more of a general tip for everyone, but if your pocket is spamming and taking damage, if you can spam go for it, but avoid taking damage if at all possible. Your medic doesn't want to spread heals. Same thing goes for ubers. Try to play back enough to avoid damage, but close enough to support your team. Like you, there's only one medic on your team, and your roles are very important, so stay alive! ESPECIALLY on the midfight, so practice rollouts and midfights, try to stay alive. You hurt your team when you die at mid, but you also hurt your team sticking so far back at mid that it's like you don't have one. One thing I always had trouble with was ammo. I seemed to always be out of ammo, so be cautious of that, especially before you push up with your team. Don't use pipes too much because unless you can hit like every one, stickies are going to be a better output for damage. Spam pipes into narrow chokes to either hurt the opposing team or help gain ground. On badlands mid, spamming pipes to choke can be very devastating, as well as granary mid, spamming over the crates on the right (assuming you know that's where the medic and soldiers are). Support your team when opposing players take the high ground, soldiers can't shoot feet if your enemies have the high ground, but you can very easily spam stickies up to deny area or hurt opposing players. This is effective on granary, snakewater, and warmfront mid where players often try to get the high ground advantage during the midfight. Be aware of your scouts during the initial part of the midfight, if you see a scout engaged with another scout, help him out by spamming a sticky at the enemy to take away that 40 damage. If your scout cleans up, you will already have the player advantage at mid. That's on the topic of focus fire. Make sure to call out damage, especially at mid. If you hit the demo for 80 at the start of mid, immediately let your scouts know. You will be putting out damage for your team to follow up on, but there will be times where the opposite will be true. I typically try to spam while my roamer is in causing a distraction, and focus down the medic or whoever he's going after. There are typical spots for sticky traps that most soldiers will check. This will delayed the other team, but might not get a kill. Try to be creative with your traps, put them in new, unusual places that are hidden. Putting traps in the same place probably wont work, especially against better teams. Going back to area denial, if you can keep a team from getting position at mid, that might be enough to win the fight. Even if you don't get any kills by doing it, you can still win the point. If you can do this effectively, you wont be wasting stickies. If you accidently place a sticky in a wrong spot, you don't necessarily need to detonate it. Leave it. Aggressive scouts might walk right over it randomly. You never know, and it doesn't hurt to leave it after you already placed it. Knowing when and when not to be aggressive is something you're going to have to learn and depends on your individual skill level. If your team needs you to be more aggressive then do it, but like I said before, try to stay alive as much as possible. Be sure to look around a lot, make sure you're always within range of your medic and pocket soldier. Many times I've been holding too far forward without knowing that my combo had backed out.

So just look around and make sure you know where your team is. Being overextended as a demo typically means death for you, so avoid it. If your medic is close to uber you BETTER not die, or he's gonna get pissed at you and call you bad and cut you from the team, and no one wants that so especially don't do that. Sticky jumping out of a fight you know you're going to lose is perfectly acceptable, don't forget that option. You may want to stay in to fight even though you know you're going to lose, but keep in mind you have a quick way to exit (as long as you still have the health to). Camping spawn might seem like a flawless plan, but it can also keep you from holding a point you should be holding instead, and if you are going to anyway, please do not put it in a frag video. As far as sensitivity, just make sure you're able to turn around easily, and as long as you can aim pipes, you're golden. Interp for projectiles is typically 0 or close to, I believe. I dont know much about rates though. so... yea
<3 Dane (All text is excerpts from Dane's new book "How To Not Be Cut" made in memory of Team Swag Pantalones, Copyright 2012)

Posted this on natf2, thought I might as well repost. Sorry for the wall of text.

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Community_Demoman_strategy

also, sticky traps.

I almost feel like, at a certain level, you kind of have to start bargaining with your life at times and putting yourself into risky positions to do good damage. with good enough dm, team support, and gamesense you can find ways to do that while staying alive.

also, movement is criminally underrated as demoman. be able to dodge hella projectiles.

DM is obviously gonna be important, as is jumping, but I feel like the best demos are the really intelligent ones. Watch demos and streams and try to learn from those.