Top level scouts tend to do large single jumps until they bait a rocket, then double jump whilst strafing to a safer area. They use the first single jump to go from a high ground towards the soldier (to increase damage) and then back off with the second or jump again whilst shooting. The important components are taking height and baiting rockets, you'll find the most effective way of moving if you keep those two in mind.

In addition when there is no height you can often abuse the fact that soldiers take a lot of self damage (60+) and will be expecting you to dodge rather than pasta-brain straight into you. Often faking a dodge and then bum-rushing a soldier will net you the frag though you'll take damage. Of course for this you have to have good aim though, whereas the method of trying to dodge from a medium range works better with worse aim.

its all about baiting out rockets via forwards backward jumps, longer strafes or using obstacles/high ground

Thanks sideshow, really helps :)

what about the other way around? how would a soldier be able to kill a scout baiting rockets, forward/backward jumping etc

Look for any sort of visible patters, attempt to close the gap, prevent scout from taking high ground, take fights that give you positional advantage. The reality of the scout class is that unless you have the ability to time travel/predict the future every once in a while they are just gonna fuck your shit up. That said you wanna do as much as you can to make that a pain to do for the scout.

thanks dancenumber

prespam highgrounds scouts usually want to get to, aim your rockets carefully and dont just hold down mouse 1 and panic or if all of that fails become mike and direct them

Are there any videos showing these or could someone make one?

Just watch some demos of scouts at the top level. There have been historically scouts with great movement but if you want something recent you can watch Reason's scouts, Froyo's or Ascent's. Probably the best 3 sets of scout pairs in the game atm and they all have good movement.

or if you ever see a wild dolphin rider running around. that guys movement is magical

Historic people include schocky, smzi, cookye, enigma if you want to search for those too.

if you want movement advice watch schocky and enigma if you want positioning cookye and my stuff i guess

re: becoming mike and directing them
This will become easier as you start to figure out patterns and movement paths. Naturally, this comes a lot from your DM capabilities, but there are certain times (e.g. when you're on badlands mid and the scout is standing next to the train/crates) when you can vaguely predict what they're going to do once they see you. In this example in badlands mid, it would be natural for a scout to jump on top of train and fight you with height advantage, if they can. Knowing that, you could then briefly prefire his path towards the top of the crate, for a chance of directing him.

This is, of course, highly situational. You want to always fight under health/positional advantage – but being able to predict paths and direct scouts could get you out of various sticky situations.

Shrugger and b4nny both have pretty fluid movement

Keep in mind that it can also depend some on sensitivities, b4nny has a pretty high one and does a lot of jumping around and gets pretty close while strafing like a madman. Someone with a slightly lower sensitivity like clockwork would track a lit more and play a smoother mid range fight.

It's also important to remember that as scout your movement should be helping your aim, never prioritize doing dumb movement over being able to hit your shots cause in 6s a huge part of scout is being able to consistently deal damage, never sacrifice your aim for retard movement. In general you'l win more fights by 2/3 shotting your opponents as opposed to chip shotting and dodging. Retard movement only really gets better than maximizing dps when you're in a 1v1 that didn't start at close range.

Pray

one of the hardest parts about aiming rockets is shooting them at the right distance so make sure to be constantly changing how far away you are from the soldier.

When you're playing scout against soldier, it's important that you don't let yourself fall into auto-pilot mode.

You have to be very conscious and in the moment about your movement, otherwise you are going to be predictable and have poor engagements that you won't be able to win. Also, on a larger scale, be aware of your positioning. Don't overextend for a kill unless it is going to benefit your team. A lot of times, you really just have to get in, and then get out, or, in other words, throw out some damage, and then immediately go support a teammate that needs help.

Also, on a smaller note, in lower level matches, when soldiers abandon their medic at mid to gain height advantage, you can usually land an easy pick on the med because newbie scouts will often rush in prematurely, abandoning their medic.

*edited for clarity

Abandoning their medic at mid is a really common strat for soldiers no matter what their skill level is. most teams will leave a scout or two and a demo with the medic while the soldiers jump and do damage. at lower levels its pretty likely they wont pull this off perfectly but its important to remember that its not just soldiers who protect the medic.

I'm aware of that, but I guess my post wasn't clear enough. At lower levels it's common for the medic to be completely alone around the same time that the soldiers jump for height advantage. Newbie scouts on the other team frequently rush in too early when they see their friendly soldiers advancing, so I wanted to point that out.

Or me if you need name advice Kappa