https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia2kRZ4CfkA

An older video of mine, but I'll post this here to get us started and edit in a diatribe after.

1. When to pop ubers.

You should practically never push in blind, you should know - either by peeking as the pocket - or having somebody else do it - where the other team is. If they've committed to holding far away or kiting you, if your adv. is big enough, dropping you is nbd even. Ideally you shouldn't pre-pop a full adv. uber unless you *know* your team can get 2 kills or the medic. Otherwise dropping you is preferable.

Furthermore, when you have full advantage, you shouldn't be solo pushing - you should have 2-3 buffed players coming through *with* you. Primarily for safety, and for rapid conquest of vital positions.

The after uber fight is all about how many people you shoved in, where they've gone, and what positions you hold - in an ADV situation anyways.

If you find that you need to have a solo uber - have a solo uber. If your demo is too close to you in a defensive situation your med should flash him to save him so he can get the hell away from you. You have more health, so you're more helpful in the front line. If your demo is too close to you in an offensive situation and is forcing your med to flash in a solo situation you need to have him back off.

Pushing with multiple people in advantage pushes is *always* a good idea - it's the right thing to do. Scout based ubers only really work if the other team has made a mistake and has a bunch of people close to you *or* if it's a small map area you're pushing into. A strict demo-uber is almost never preferable because you should seek to zone for your demo, so that he doesn't need uber or heals really. The reason you *have* to zone for your demo is because his class is so weak against scouts, or indeed, anybody who gets close to him. Even against SGss as long as your pocket gets the gun's attention and your demo isn't an idiot, he'll never have to worry about taking dmg from the SG.

So to sum up

1. Look at what you're pushing into
2. In adv situations, focus on taking good positions rapidly and only popping if it's essential (medic is going to die, you're going to lose more than 1 player, you're going to get their medic, you're going to get 2 kills).
3. In uber vs. uber have solo ubers - back up to your demo if it's bad, jump forward and have a scout + demo + others meet your medic if it's good.

THANK YOU

While ubered, don't stay staring into their uber, you have to find killable people to force their medic to divide the uber or to get picks. (there are cases you can do the staring while blocking their passage, like when defending badlands last, so they don't get close to the rest of your team and waste their uber)

Also, in a uber vs uber situation, the lesser teammates you have near the uber, the better (this is not the case when you have a full uber advantage).

If all you can see in a uber vs uber is the other team's ubered combo, you have to think about getting a positional advantage for the after-uber fight before the uber is over.

And don't care too much for the initial damage, this won't matter too much in the after-uber fight because your hp will get healed during the uber.

Demo ubers blow 99% of the time. Its the one class that you can just run the fuck away from with no fear at all, if he wants to chase you he has to sticky jump out of his uber and then you just kill him and keep running.

When pushing with advantage try to scout lead chokes. This means (after you spam all the common sticky spots) they take the corner super wide and see where the enemy is. If they are close then you uber pocket + scout and shit on their faces. If they are far away you bully into the point and force them to sack players on you for your uber. Worst case scenario is you uber and kill a sacking roamer or scout. Often you won't even need to pop because they will be out of position for a sack and thus it will be bad and easily deniable.

In uber vs. uber its really a gamesense call whether to back up or go behind, as those are pretty much your options assuming both teams have equal players up and the ubers aren't tremendously different in pop time. Go behind if you know you can easily get to and kill weak or isolated players (listen to calls from the flank). Go back if the flank fight has reached the point you are defending. These are not hard and fast rules, decisionmaking will come with time and experience.

Shotgun is critical to pocketing. Practice it in DM and MGE a lot; great shotgun aim defines great pocket DM, rockets are in my opinion less important to be great at simply because of the nature of the skill curve on them (but obviously they are not unimportant).

Know what you will be shooting before the uber is popped. Sometimes the calls will be off on player positioning and advantage, but that is really just an issue with the comms rather than the uber choice. If your ad is small (15%) take two soldiers and focus the medic first. This is all circumstantial, just be very active about calling targets especially in advantage ubers (where you won't be fearing a counter pop).

if you have advantage: take the choke/point/whatever without popping because they're backing up (deal with whoever suicides for the force) or pop into them because they're holding too far forward. flashing players during an uber where you have advantage is a wise move, length of uber isnt really important as long as you kill their med, plus it keeps everyone healthy for post uber when they have no med and yours is alive.

if players keep needing flashes: you're clustering up too much. when you call you're pushing choke, that shouldn't mean "lets push 4 people through choke and eat a shitload of spam." work on the positioning of your teammates during ubers, and if someone should need a flash make sure they use it to do something (go behind, go attack un ubered things, etc).

demo ubers: pretty good on clustered lasts like blands & gully, or against teams that are running an engi. all depends on how good your demo is though, as EU has shown us always ubering your demo is pretty legit if they're amazing.

what to do during ubers: if you're even and in an uber exchange, try and go for un ubered players. force flashes. after you force their pop, depending on how long it took and if you've already popped, you can try and jump to flank side and help your scout(s)+roamer clean up their flank.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: sometimes your uber is gonna be poop. you'll do nothing other than get a pop (worst case scenario not even that). accept this, and dont cause your team to wipe trying to be a hero. back out, keep your med alive, and if they haven't popped try to force them with spam as they push through choke. if they popped way after you did, have your team back up and leave 1-2 players as necessary to distract them and keep them from running down your med. can't win em all.

Stream vods of my pocket soldier "tutorial" ahould be up at http://www.twitch.tv/yookstah . Check the latest videos. My gfx card decides to crash halfway through so thats a bummer.

Will edit post with points that more or less echo thoughts in my vid

EDIT: OKAY, here we go. Apologies if I echo other people's posts/thoughts - I just want to get as much stuff out as I can before I forget it.

There are two very important things that you have to remember when talking about ubers. There are some other things, obviously, but these are two of the most important that I can think of. The first thing: Make sure you don't try and do too much with the uber. You'll notice in just about any game that the pocket on either side of the team will try and do too much with the uber, or will seem frustrated he didn't get some instant frags and will jump off and die, leaving his medic stranded, then the uber fight and post uber fight is screwed. Have a general plan for the uber and don't try and kill everything. Obviously, things can change on the fly, so try and dictate the uber to the best of your ability to your team "We've ubered around choke, they're multi'ing alot, I've done a lot of damage, their ubers out, come around choke now, they're retreating grey bridge". Dictating the fight is probably the most important thing, especially in uber because it's such a short time and so much can happen in that 8 or less seconds (depending on flashes, mind you). Remember it is okay to just take positioning with the uber and play spread out to make sure that, if they still have uber then you can escape with minimal losses - and have hopefully forced their uber in a poopy position for them.

The second thing to remember is, expanding on my previous point, the uber isn't everything. If you'll notice in a few of our games, I didn't always do A LOT with the uber. A good portion of the time, I would just simply force the opposing teams uber, call to my team that's all I'm doing and for them to play passive (maybe sheep kills 10 people on the flank in the process if lucky), and play for the post uber. If I have forced flashes and their team to waste uber; if no one else on my team has taken (much) damage, then our post uber is stronger than theirs - we have a demo with 8 stickies loaded coming around with 150% hp, scout coming in as well, roamer and scout (presumably) pressuring the flank, and I'm spamming from somewhere I cannot really be attacked. Expanding on this, you don't always have to have wait for uber. Have confidence in your team and their abilities and punish teams for being complacent thinking you are just going to wait for uber. This can be hard to do on some maps, especially depending on the utilities the other team is running (mostly on last points), but you still have room to do some aggressive stuff to catch the other team off guard. Assuming you don't lose too many people, if you at least trade, you have the previous control point to back up to. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Something to keep in mind during ubers is that you don't really want to tunnel the combo players. One of the things I do the most in a lot of ubers is just helping out my team on the flank/elsewhere. A soldier on 300 hp with pretty much full ammo and an uber tick landing into a 1v1 heavily skews the fight in your favour (who would have thought?) It's not necessarily about getting picks; it's more about keeping your teammates alive for the post uber/next fight. This is especially easy to do on viaduct as pocket; the distance between 'the fight' and the flank is only a rocketjump away (generally), so there is a lot of opportunity to help the rest of your team in fights. Remember it is not all about how 'good' your uber is (i.e. forcing multi ubers is cool and all), it's all about how your team is at the end of the uber, making sure you have enough people alive/in fighting shape for the post uber fight, which is where the real magic happens.

Another point I can mention is health and ammo before/during/after ubers. I feel that this is one of my strongest points as pocket and why a lot of my ubers are generally effective, or that my post ubers are strong, too. A lot of the time, I call an early uber pop if I just want to get in there and get stuff done. [timestamp from vod pending] a good example is this where in our game against HRG on snakewater, I believe we have even players and ubers, their combo is towards saw and they have a scout and some other players near the point. I call for an early uber from the right side ramp in lobby, jump the point, kill the scout and get another pick (?). Doing this I have blocked the point, got some picks, and have lost no players in the midst of it, and have full health after and during the uber. If there is some reason where someone needs a flash in the middle of the uber, it is much safer to do when your team has ubered early as, if you're on 300HP you have that buffer - if you try and milk the uber too much and your med lets you drop low on hp, they need to use most of the uber keeping you alive and healing you, allowing you to do less during the uber and being more tethered to your medic, and keeping your team alert to not require a flash.

Going on the ammo point, you don't really want to waste too much ammo during an uber. As I keep harping on about, the post uber tends to be the more important fight, so make sure you have enough ammo in reserve/loaded ready to go for that fight. On the note of ammo during uber: don't be afraid to reload rockets in the midst of it. Obviously you generally want to have your full ammo loaded BEFORE you uber, but if you use a decent amount during the uber don't be afraid to reload a rocket or two to juggle the other team instead of flailing around with your shotgun. Manipulation of movement of the other team can be more important than just going for that TLR shotgun frag. Make your rockets count in the uber (read: try not to miss, unless it's chasing airshots!!), and go for the easy yet effective shots where possible.

A demoman can actually very easily get out of the fight in a lot of cases if he has an uber flash; he can sticky jump away. However, failing this presence of mind by the demoman, your life a lot of the time is forfeit moreso than theirs. This is due to the obvious reason of the defensive power of the demoman, giving you stickies to fall back on if the fight turns out poorly for you and falling back to the second point if need be. This is especially true on a map like badlands where it is stupidly easy to spam the spire if you have fallen back from attacking last.

It is okay to take most of the ubers as pocket, because it is very easy for you to do the initial part of the uber, paving way for the rest of your team, and having them full health/ammo for the post uber fight. In post uber fights you are typically on a spam angle being a pest, or landing in their face while your demo and scout(s) come in behind you as you have paved the way for them with your initial uber. Taking other classes like scouts and demo is good depending on what you want to do. A good example would be attacking badlands last with uber advantage: you can push top left with demo/scout, other team is either forced onto floor/into resup, demo stickies top left + point, scout baits point, win game.

Das an awesome video Marxist.

In addition to what's already been said, I'd also add that knowing how you want the uber to go is important too. When I'm main calling I'll usually specify the classes I want in each uber, where we're ubering from, and who we're focusing (if necessary). Those decisions are based on what I know about the enemy team, my team, and the map, and sometimes they're completely wrong. But 6 players following a bad call is better than 3 players following a good one.

Other than that I'd also say relax. Generally good ubers aren't fast and frantic. Good positioning and calling should have you in the place you need to be, and if the enemy team seems to melt away all around you it's probably gonna be a shitty uber.

post cont.

I have been tending to mix it up a bit and letting our demo take more ubers, even in even uber situations, but it is very risky if he overextends and gets caught out during the uber, we are left without a demoman and, if we did not get a good amount of picks, we are very hard pressed to defend the previous control point.

I hope my wall of text has helped you, and sorry to those whose thoughts I have just repeated (I wanted to get all of this down as text before I forgot).

Remember that all of this will come with time and practice; discuss with your team your ubers and post uber fights, give examples of your "ideal" uber/post uber - this doesn't have to be what always happens (duh), but it gives your team an idea of what you would like to happen in an ideal world/situation.

As I mentioned earlier, don't forget to watch the pocket soldier video(s) that I did for the fundraiser stretch goals for i49 last year (<3 u all) http://www.twitch.tv/yookstah/b/538643484 , http://www.twitch.tv/yookstah/b/538660087 . These more or less echo my points and I review one of my own i49 LAN demos at the end, showing general thought process, especially during ubers.