You can push off of ANY advantage. Being distracted is a disadvantage, having less health than your enemy is a disadvantage, not having uber when the other team does is a disadvantage, being in a worse position than your opponent is a disadvantage, having less players alive / spawning than your opponent is a disadvantage, having worse spawns is a disadvantage, not being ready for an enemy push is a disadvantage, and there are many more.

Basically the game is shifting away from uber advantages and shifting more towards damage, positioning, and numbers.

different teams play differently.

emg/quantic/lg always turtled up and waited for picks. seemed to work out for them.

I have never understood the European style of TF2. Way before I started playing TF2, back when I was only a spectator, the differences between European and North American teams were obvious and difficult to comprehend. Why they actually consider using their uber to pop an enemies uber a good trade I do not know.

TF2 has this perfect balance between teams, and slow games happen when both teams are afraid to upset the balance. Theoretically, a single point in damage qualifies as an advantage. But the things you're talking about? Superior heals, roamer distraction? As far as I'm concerned those are even better than a simple player advantage. Yea, a player advantage is a reliable and quantifiable advantage, but those other two are grounds for a team wipe. Everyone has seen muscle milk and moolians right? The first frag they're pushing off the fact that the enemy team is clumped up, and acting as a distraction for the roamer. And they wiped the entire team.

Euros push only on a player advantage. So their pushes are actually literal pushes. Push the enemy team out, instead of killing them all. Because the offensive team didn't do any crippling damage to the defensive one, they just set up again and it's business as usual.

NA games go faster because teams usually take more risks. They push off smaller advantages and try bigger plays. The better those plays and pushes suit your team's strengths the better results you're going to have. It's the difference between gaining one point and winning the round. Preferably in less than 25 minutes...

^I think that EU TF2 is kinda crippled since we play until 30 minutes (or until one team leads by 5). It pays off to play like massive vaginas if you're up a round. I think the ruleset is a major part of why many EU teams can't push off small advantages.

I'll even have my team push on advantage of reloading. If we see them unload everything on the roamer and he gets out, we'll soft push and see if we can take another choke point or map section without wasting uber.

Avoided Gaming Style

You CAN push off damage, but I wouldn't suggest it when both teams have the same numbers. Sure pushing off good damage is an advantage for you, but you are pushing into a defended position which gives the other team an advantage, plus they have sticks up somewhere which you need to deal with so that's another advantage for them. If you have über advantage or more players up you could push on good damage, but in those situations you already have a big advantage and would be pushing anyway.

You don't need to sit around all day waiting for a pick to push, but It's the smart play IMO

Push when your dick is biggest for best results

I really don't see how this is the reason
It's just the playstyle that has developed. I never notice a difference in how a team plays if there's 25 minutes or only 10 minutes left (apart from any team with Greg on). Europeans have just usually been more passive

That's only one way..and that won't always work if your push is sloppy.

Absolutely - watch just about any match blaze/harb (or any smart roamer). The distraction method is one of the best. Not only does it occupy certain members of the other team, if you can get behind them and piss around, it completely set's the opposite team's goal of now not getting picked, or an early pop. If you can get in the other team's head and mess up the organization of their hold/push, that's just as big if not bigger than a pick.

push after your roamer jumps around picking up all their health packs

100% pack advantage

The only time you get screwed on a push is when you begin to bleed players or lose your medic without winning the fight. You can push in on what appears to be no advantage, and if you do this fast and with proper buffs, you may very well catch them building uber slowly/not buffing properly. Even if it was actually even, you have the liberty to roll the dice in terms of DM once on their point, then if you lose the fight, as long as your combo gets out and you don't slowly drop players one at a time, you can back up behind your point and meet with your spawns for another 6v6 before they cap it.

http://teamfortress.tv/articles/view/33-momentum-in-tf2-a-push-guide

http://i51.tinypic.com/102ku46.png

Does anyone have any working invite demos that aren't on viaduct? I really want to understand what counts as an advantage.

The main reason I think most players are nervous about the european uber recycle is that it's a very risky maneuver to execute.

What you *have* to accomplish is pop your uber, get them to pop (which is not in their own best interest - either by way of getting kills or forcing their uber, and since you can't risk pulling much of your team into this operation it's hard to do). Then you have to get your pocket and medic out, and repush with your team. This can work if it pulls the other team out of position and you can maintain relatively good heals on the people who weren't in the uber (the other 4 guys on the team). The problem is if you fail, you can't push, and if you fail really badly (which could come down to an unlucky trap det or roller spam etc), they can push out on you pretty easily and you've managed to go from pushing their last to defending mid.

It's much safer to just suicide the one player have him come up as something silly and try and do it that way to finegle a health/positional advantage (heavy) or a numerical/uber advantage (spy/sniper)

The bright side, if you get really good at it you just recycle 2-3 times and you've got a solid uber advantage lol.

but europe has no roamers

srsly even after they got gunboats, many still run shotgun and are afraid to jump in

This season we'll see change in the EU game. They are allowing the weapon unlocks that we play with in ESEA (at least the most popular ones) so I think we'll see their strategies and tendencies to more closely mirror ours'.

That's why I'm wanting to get an advantage by studying demos... which no longer work.

Euro pushes tend not to be actual pushes. If you're considering a push the act of forcibly routing the enemy team out of the point or area, American style of pushing uber vs. uber without player advantages is more of a push than a pick advantage. A pick advantage leads to the team with the lost player conceding the point. Sure, they might suicide another player or two to get a force or kill, but for the most part the defending team will be running away and trying to salvage whatever they still have. That's more like pulling away, rather than the offensive team pushing.

well said.