His first season of scout (S11) he went ham and ended up having the second most scatter frags in the league while being on a high open team. If he plays scout he deserves to be in IM for sure. I can't vouch for his other classes but his charge n targe is pretty good.

Has good pipe aim and uses stickies as an area control tool very well.

Blooming onion and ribeye medium-rare

This is bsc's team, how could you NOT want to play with these guys. Bsc's been my go to person for tf2 tips since a long time ago, I'm sure anyone who joins this team will have fun / learn quickly. Also kpop

bump, pocket plz

bump, we're still looking.

Goddamn good

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION. As breloom will attest, it is the best

Timing plays into all of the above, and the concept of timing is a bit harder to grasp. One classic example I love to use is one aspect of Blaze's performance during the S12 Lan Finals on Snakewater. When his team was defeated on the enemy second, and blaze was up, he'd position himself in sawroom and would drop out of window when he knew that the other team was going to mid through kitchen. He'd time it so that he'd drop right around when the medic was by window. Developing a sense of timing like this takes many hours of playing the game, and knowing how long it usually takes a team to regroup after a fight, and pushed based on your teams condition (if you wipe they'll push faster than if you have 2 or so up). Another aspect of timing is teamwise. During a lengthy engagement, you want to experiment doing multiple jumps or going for key targets that can turn the tide of the battle. Do it too early, and you'll be shutdown right away, while doing it later, for example after the demoman has used most of his stickies and some damage has been exchanged will allow you to get the most out of your jumps.

Hiding places are more useful, in my opinion during enemy transitions (lamp post above granary garage), and can be used to garuntee a kill (provided you are constantly switching up hiding places). Don't always be hiding though, and when you do, make sure to call it out and instruct or request help from your scouts. Getting caught in a hiding place without backup is certain death. Spend some time jumping around maps, interesting hiding spots like the ledges right outside of granary forward 2nd spawn are really rewarding if you use them well (Mangachu). You can find a lot of these from TEchnosex's youtube videos.

I missed a lot of things while writing this, but hopefully this helps. Again, most of this is subjective, as everyone plays roamer differently. If you have time, I'd really recommend watching roamer demos from the top or even mid teams from every level (open IM invite) that you have time for. Every roamer has something that works for them, and hopefully you can incorporate that so that you're prepared in every situation with multiple outs. Best of luck!

Most beginning roamers will be content with just holding flank passively, meaning they'll be around house on badlands, right yard on granary, etc. just watching, calling, and spamming. It's important during these times to hold in positions you know where you can get out and not be trapped. For example, if you're holding in badlands house, you have to make sure you're not too close to the healthpack, or else if they peek both soldiers from the porch door, they'll be able to juggle you and kill you. The proper, safe distance you have to hold will vary from person to person. Some people with better DM can hold closer to a turn or danger zone more confidently, while if you're just starting, you might want to hold further back and just call it out.

As you get more experienced, and you become more familiar with your team, you can begin to extend your boundaries in the course of getting better. Maybe have a scout post up with you from a different angle, or have your pocket support you from an area you may be flanked from as you push up to see what you can do. This part depends more on your team. Some teams have a really playmaker heavy pocket, who'll constantly be rotating and trying to pick someone, which means that you'll most likely be playing a supporting role, either standing next to him or standing on flank. Some teams have a more passive combo, which means that you, as a roamer, should be peeking out safetly from time to time and then following up on your damage, opening holes, etc.

You gain the above from experience: whenever you play, as Taggerung posted in his steam forums Roamer help thread, be thinking about how long the enemy team has been up, who just spawned and whether they've had time to setup a defense, etc. Based on this information, you should call your intentions then peek/jump up, alone or with a scout. When you do peek up, most of the time you'll find the enemy too far away (but even that is something to call, possible slow push / quick flood), but sometimes you'll see the enemy distracted and you can get a clean rocket off on someone. The important thing here is that a good roamer will choose to follow up or back off based on this damage. If you're peeking diagonal on badlands and you get a clean 50+ dmg rocket on a scout and you don't see his scout partner in position to defend, maybe jump up and try to pick him as he runs back to resupply etc. Or maybe you peek porch and you manage to get a 40 dmg rocket on the med. You can call out you're jumping and quickly jump him. Just remember that damage that is not followed up on is relatively useless, but jumping in pointlessly is bad too. Again, experience will teach you to recognize opportunities such as these.

A lot of the roamer game, however, takes place out of hold vs hold situations. As a roamer, you want to always be in position to support your team to the max. During a push, this usually means doing 1 of 3 things: Watching Flank for a bit to catch flankers, pressuring point early (while avoiding inevitable spam), or supplying support fire from an unexpected / different angle (diagonal onto grey bridge while your team is on launchpad). Which one to do usually depends on where your team is on the push and where you are at the initiation. If everyone on your team is going through choke, you might want to watch flank, but if your team is in a really good position and their team is out of position, you might want to pressure point. Again, this is heavily team and situation based. Some teams always run one scout through flank, while others have both scouts pressure point and rely on the roamer to get behind them via flank / support fire from a different angle.

Like Vanilla and Bl4nk brought up, some parts of certain maps really don't require that much jumping, i.e. pushing into granary second from yard, holding granary second from lunchbox, and holding gullywash last. To be honest, though, with the quick shifts in momentum that occur in this game, you'll have to really practice being able to do quick pushouts and healthpack management if you want to be constantly switching between both. I can't tell you the number of times I've pushed granary second with shotgun, used it successfully, only to be faced with pushing quick into Granary last and having to take pipe control with a 30-40 damage jump.

Not only that, it slightly limits your ability to escape from situations that you would normally be able to get out of with gunboats, and during bombs you most likely won't be able to get a second jump out if their medic somehow manages to spot you as you're jumping him and jukes your first rocket.

It also affects the ways you can play flank. Usually with gunboats I feel a lot safer playing a really close corner that the scouts might round because I can rocket jump twice, do 30 damage in total to myself, and completely wreck or destroy the scout that peeked the corner. With shotgun I feel like my finishing power on scouts is a lot higher, but I also have to play more cautiously on flank because if I take a direct rocket or a meatshot, I can only rocket jump once before anyone would be able to chip/30dmg shot me to death.

All that being said though, it really comes down to the map and team you're facing. If your team plays the map where your scout is constantly with you on flank, I don't see why you wouldn't use gunboats. If you're alone, and your job is to watch passively instead of going for the first sign of a transition / distraction, you'll be better off using shotgun. I've seen a great deal of roamers switch depending on map area / terrain, but again, in order to do this you must learn how to push any area with both shotgun and gunboats and be able to support your team quickly, sometimes without heals.

ESEA refunded everyone who was signed up for the ESEA IM, MAIN etc. leagues for CS 1.6 and Source when they removed them this season, so there's always hope that you'll get'em!

the return of the craig_smiths

http://i.imgur.com/vCA3u.jpg

qck+, deathadder, thinkpad, Sennheiser HD 201

You have to be on a team to pay the league fees associated with that team.