You said it right there. The scout must press the point as the demo/soldiers arrive in position. If he's too early then he's getting shut down. The scout is being used as bait - he is not going to force the uber.

What you COULD do if you hear a call that "heavy is in Z!" is to just have the demo come in from left shutter and lay down suppression fire onto Z. The key here - as aporia said earlier - is that SOMETHING needs to be controlling stairs/lunchbox and holding off their spawners from coming through a wide-open flank (they'll all come in right at the end of the engagement).

The original situation - SAAM's post - involved the holding team having a HEAVY and a medic. Heavy's primary cannot "work" the corners like the pocket's. A key question in this situation (6v2, they have 2nd and uber) is WHAT that sixth class really is.

In order for a HEAVY to chase the aggro scout off of point, he has to commit to the fight across two - and that opens him up to sticky fire and rockets from your soldiers. You may drop the scout - but you're going to achieve the REAL objective here - and that's forcing their uber over SECOND so that they can't make an advatangeous push onto last with their spawners. Once they pop to kill one scout, your call should be to have everyone scatter out to last (and you rebuild YOUR uber advantage).

With that said, if the winning team has a demo or pocket up (instead of a heavy), then you absolutely would NOT edge a scout since they'll abuse splash through the point (which as you mentioned earlier, is a chokepoint).

The whole reason behind having a SCOUT pressuring point is because the heavy cannot splash the scout off. The heavy must commit with his uber to stop the cap. If he backs off and waits for spawns, then it will be too late and he loses 2nd.

The weird part about all of this is that "instinct" often takes you into a good position once you've seen enough pushes come and go. The game reduces itself to a series of informed reactions to the goals of each team. When both teams are in a good scrim/match, what I'll naturally do will be to position myself + my pocket in such a way that I achieve success through the denial of the opposing team's objective.

From a medic's POV, what is considered a "safe" or "dangerous" or "stupid" play is not really determined by some thought in a vacuum - but rather the relationship of that position+time within the context of the opposing team's uber.

Let's revisit the OP's question in terms of "enemy objectives triggering informed reactions":

Event: 4-Man Sacrifice forces your uber
- What they want: To buy time for their spawners to come back - and then re-push your last with a full uber advantage.
- How do you take it away: You change the LOCATION of their popped uber. There is a time constraint as it must happen BEFORE those spawners come back.
- Where do you want the NEW location to be: Across the 2nd point - and as cleanly as possible.
- How do you re-frame the enemy uber: You edge the point with a scout and spam the shutter across of you to holy hell and back. This will trigger an early pop as they do NOT want to have to use their uber to RE-capture 2nd point. At this point, kiting is a safe and natural response.

This tactic actually isn't some contrived concept of what could work - but rather an intuitive and quick reaction to a past event. You can't change the past, so instead of shitting yourself all you need to do is to modify what their long-term objective of the event really is... ...if you can.

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I hate thinking - because doing too much of it reminds me of how dumb I really am.

I'm probably not thinking straight, but let's say you throw your flank at them and get a force.

1. You drop two players and force. (your spawns don't come for 20 seconds, their spawns come in 4 seconds).
2. They receive spawns (your spawns don't arrive for 16 seconds) and you kite to last while holding uber.
3. They move the heavy and medic to height advantage for the ensuing push (your spawns don't arrive for 8 seconds).
4. They push a 6v4 (your spawns don't arrive for 7 seconds) from height advantage into last.
5. Your uber is forced in a 4v6 situation (your spawns don't arrive for 5 seconds).
6. Your uber kills 1-2 players, you are now on level ground at worst in terms of overall team health. They have advantage assuming their medic lives (which he should). Your spawns have now arrived by now.
7. You counterpush in a 6v5 situation. Their medic has a nice uber advatange, but you should be able to cut him off with your additional player.

Either my timing is a little generous towards the holding team - or I'm assuming that the pushing team is going to drop a player or two when fighting your uber (when I shouldn't).

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Actually I'm dead wrong. All you'd want to do if you're the PUSHING team would be:

1. Buff all six.
2. Push on the side opposite the stickies.
3. Force the uber and scatter.
4. Allow your heavy and passive scout to trail in and wreck house.

Why waste time establishing height and waffling around, when you can just charge in and preempt the actions of the spawners?

I've already calculated that you'll have about 16 seconds until the defending team spawns, so as long as you force (and multi) them off by the 10-11 second point (which is VERY doable when pushing from lower shutters) it will be GG once the buffed heavy and scout see the post-uber fight.

Thinking along those lines, wouldn't flanking the combo (since they have zero mobility) with a roamer + aggro scout and then death-balling them in a 4v2 end-uber situation work out just fine?

The only thing that could harm you would be their respawns - but they'll actually not a huge consideration if you quickly retaliate against the 4 man sac play. Those respawns won't eat you for breakfast unless you stumble around for 4-5 seconds and fail to commit.

Absolutely not. The over-21 crowd at GXL generally makes the smarter decision to keep most - if not all - alcohol out of the hands of minors. We are law-abiding citizens.

Your concern is most appreciated. See you there! :)

He's a very genuine person to be around. Says what he means and doesn't have any "side objectives" behind his actions.

Bumping. I've had a few early looks at teams. I think I have 1-2 trials planned for next week, but my schedule should have room for a least a few more. If my list is full then just PM me on tftv and I'll make more room.

I rang for these guys this week - they have a very healthy and constructive mumble environment. In my opinion, this is a good place for a player/team to grow.

Good luck in your search, mason.

$100 avg. fee / 4 people per room * 2 nights = $50 a head for the entire weekend. That's easy to save up for if you know you're spending the money ahead of time.

He's really grown up as a person over the last few seasons. I can only recommend him at this point.

He's on solly now because medic is a fucking brutal class to play.

alosec's an enjoyable person to play with.

Bumping. I was supposed to have two tryouts at the start of this week, but both rosters died. I'm available this week starting around 915-930.

radium: y/n - curve fever buy-in tournament at lan
duwatna: yes
duwatna: yes yes yes

$10 buy-in Curve Fever tournament is ON at GXL 2014!

http://curvefever.com/

Very mature individual. Decent player.