It became the norm that using stickies in DM/MGE is frowned upon for a long time now. Same with using shotgun as soldier. I never agreed with it, because yeah, it can be important to practice your pill / air rockets, but that doesn't mean that stickies and shotguns aren't important / don't require practice.

All weapons have very practical purposes in a lot of situations. Just because one person is going for air rockets while the other guy is using a shotgun for anti-air doesn't mean you have the right to demand it to be played your way. Unless you want to play against a Demoman in DM / MGE in a very impractical scenario where he is using pills 100% of the time, then I would imagine that you would want to put yourself in the position where you need to beat him as if it was a scrim / match (ie: he is using stickies and pills).

Stickies can be frustrating to play against, but I think lower-level players just think the "stickies are op so you're not really good" card is an easy card to play. If you would like to think about it this way: a better player would beat you, even if you are using stickies.

I use stickies in mge/DM. Yes, I get the occasional flak for it, however I'm there for the same reason as the other players. To improve. Stickies are a very important part of Demoman and they definitely deserve some more respect as a weapon. The best demos will consistently do more damage per sticky, whether it's hitting multiple targets or hitting high damage on a single one.

Your practice time is for you alone, work on what you need too.

i never play demo outside of dm/mge and i only use stickies.

people in mge are spineless pussies

IMO, it depends how you use stickies in DM. Using them to kill an opponent is fine, however, I feel they become "wrong" when you use them to lock down an entire area. While this does happen in matches, shooting stickies for a trap isn't something that really should need practice.

stickies are the best weapon in the game, get as good as you can with them. when i started playing demo i always read on the forums that stickies took no skill so i only practiced pipes, now i have awful sticky aim and great pipe aim so im shit at demo.

idk man have you seen br0nze play? his scout vs sticky dm is pretty good

it's legendary

imo stickies have both a pretty low skill floor and a very high skill cieling

short: No.
long:
The things that imply it's poorly skill-indexed are a matter of misunderstanding.

People don't like stickies in DM because of the mechanics of the sticky launcher, not how powerful it is.

People get upset about sticky spam in pubs because it's the intended counter for so many things that are popular in pubs (heavymedic, sentry nests, playing with high skill but out of position, etc).

People think it's overpowered because its skill ceiling is so high and people can be so good with it.

But no, it's not poorly skill indexed. People who are downright bad at FPSs can hardly use it the way people who are can, unlike the rocket launcher or hitscan weapons. Where the skill curves other weapons in the game start plateauing somewhere above average, the sticky launcher doesn't. In that way, I wouldn't say that it's not poorly skill indexed, but it's *too* skill indexed. People who are great at games can do great with it, but that's a lot harder with most weapons in the game.

stickies are gay and anyone who uses them is gay

phrakture NO, BAD

.

you can't really practice demo in mge since there is virtually never a time where you are in a 1 v 1 with 8 sticky's and 4 pipes loaded. playing pubs is better practice for demo honestly

http://i.imgur.com/45D5NmJ.jpg

I always thought mge was about mechanics. Even if you're mgeing 1v1 as demo with fully loaded weapons, which is rare, the point is just to improve your aim to the point where you don't need all 8 stickies or all 4 pipes.

Playing pubs is a decent way to practice demo because you'll have to manage ammo and everything, but you deal with a lot of crap in pubs that you will never deal with in 6s, the number one thing being bad movement. Except in, like, entry-level 6s, your enemies will undoubtedly have better movement than a bunch of pubbers, or heavies, or turtling engies. You don't need to practice hitting people moving in straight lines, or enemies moving slowly, or enemies who are literally not moving at all - you need to practice hitting targets that move with purpose. Soldier and demo really strike me as the two classes that ultimately hurt your play if you play them more in pubs than you do competitively because you let predicting poor movement become muscle memory.

sticky spawns to improve reaction time and reflexes, as well as hiding / survival ability.

idk if it was you but someone was camping spawns in dm with sticky traps and it really pissed me off

advice: stop caring what people in mge say about your strats

People focus on pipes because they're flashy but they really aren't important. You'll use pipes for about 20-30% of your kills depending on your style, but everyone practices pipes 90% of the time. It's an utter waste of your time. The truth is simply this: if you have good stickies combined with good movement you can be god awful at hitting direct pipes and still be an invite caliber demo. You won't be a b4nny or platinum level demo but you will be able to compete with them.

It's the most underestimated but one of the most integral things about being a good demoman. If you've ever played against or watched some of the best demomen the lowest common denominator is that they are impossible to approach and impossible to hit despite the classes weaknesses. A good demo can combine his movement and positioning with solid sticky placement to control where your enemies can go and completely screw anyone from being able to get in any half-decent position to hit them.

pipes are so satisfying though ~