TF2 Lag Survival Guide, Part 1
We’ve all been there: maybe your internet doesn’t work, maybe something else has gone wrong, or maybe simply the god(s) above don’t like you. But the fact of the matter is, everyone lags once in a while. With a ping of 130 seen as a blessing from my crappy internet, I’ve become an expert on lag. Today, we will deal with how it effects the various classes.
The effect upon classes (in order of least affected to most)
Soldier
When lagging, a soldier is often your best bet. The splash damage of the rockets make precise aim non-important, and the shotgun is also not greatly dependent upon accuracy. Also, his high health will allow you to survive an enemy you may not even be able to see.
Heavy
Sasha and the shotgun are also not dependent upon precise accuracy, and the high health of the heavy is also beneficial.
Engineer
The beautiful thing about the engineer is that once your buildings are up, they will ignore lag and fire upon your enemies. The hard part, is building and repairing them. When your sentry is under fire and there’s a two second delay between wrench strikes, you have a problem.
Demoman
The demoman may not be the best, but he is certainly passable. His stickies should be used over his grenade launcher, and his stickies should be detonated before they need to be, depending upon your amount of lag.
Spy
The spy is, surprisingly, not all that bad during lag. The most difficult part will be timing your cloak; a delay of one second is sufficient to ensure that your cloak has actually deployed. Forget about even attempting to backstab scouts and medics: leave them alone.
Pyro
The pyro marks the beginning of the classes most affected by lag. A lagging pyro will run point blank at someone without incinerating them; your flamethrower will be useless. Your speed and your shotgun will be your only hope.
Medic
A lagging medic will be almost useless; your healing targets will not be exactly where you believe they are, and you will quickly be left alone and vulnerable.
Scout
The scout’s speed is his most reliable asset. During lag, all you will be is a Nascar Driver: very small, very fast, yet ultimately useless. Your scattergun will be of no effect, as will your pistol and your bat.
Sniper
Avoid playing sniper like the plague. Headshots will be impossible, your weak SMG will be useless, and your kukri will be as useful as your sniper rifle. Your low health puts you at risk, and other Snipers and Spies will tear you to shreds.
That’s all for this edition of the TF2 Lag Survival Guide, tune in next time when we compare the various game types and the effect of lag upon them.
Stumble it!
{TF2F} ((Cascade responded on 07 Nov 2008 at 8:39 pm #
Wrong on most counts, sorry!
Soldier: Not a good idea. Rockets don’t have client-side lag compensation, so you will fire every shot more slowly due to your ping.
Demoman: As solider, but worse, because both sticky firing and sticky detonation will be lagged, adding a double-your-ping delay between firing and detonation. Also, pipes are hard enough to lead with 0 ping.
Heavy and Engineer, right on both counts. Worth noting that the Heavy, Scout and Sniper are the only classes whose primary weapons have client-side lag compensation.
Spy: Likewise, except still try and stab medics. They’re your prime targets. Only use flickstabs on scouts.
Pyro: Pretty forgiving. As long as you flank around, your lag is actually an advantage, as you’re pretty hard to hit.
Medic: BEST class for high-pingers. Your main weapon, the medigun, doesn’t need aiming, and your lag is almost 100% an advantage as you glitch around and are tough to hit. Your only disadvantage is that you hvae to deploy your invuln. uber earlier than usual because you don’t know when you might die due to rocekts you never saw.
Scout: Some scouts play very well with lag – it’s a skill worth learning, as a laggy scout can be nigh-on impossible to kill. I’ve survived on the TF2F server as a scout with 150 ping for minutes at an end in the face of players like Snuts and Lancer, with them utterly unable to hurt me, just because I warp around so much.
Sniper: Yeah, it’s tough. If your aim’s good, your weapon is compensated for client-side, but it can be hard to hit choppy players.
General Balls responded on 07 Nov 2008 at 8:46 pm #
Actually Sniper’s my first choice when I hit the ubercharged server. Sure, the hit-detection’s up to crap sometimes, but complaining about that’s half the fun.
SirMax responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 12:32 am #
I do play sniper while lagging because I’m so bad at it it hardly matters anyway, but as grumbles will tell you playing a lag spy gets LOTS of facestabs. =)
This is not my real name responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 1:06 am #
Well…l don’t know…why did you say that a ping of 150 is like a blessing?
150 is more than fine..l ususally have a ping of 200 and absolutely no problem at all.
Once l even played with a ping of 400 without any kind of lag.
On a side note, l once saw a guy with 900 ping.Obviously, he was kicked.
mew4ever23 responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 2:48 am #
It’s a beautiful thng. When I’m lagging and an engineer, I’m glad that the server controls my buildings instead of my computer. You must have a pretty bad internet connection to consider 150 a blessing.
Toxoplasma responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 3:05 am #
Yeah, lagging pyros are severely hard to hit sometimes… Warping around you while you burn slowly.
MrMuffinMan responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 7:56 am #
Lag ruins the Spy completely. Let’s just say, when I got a new, fancy computer, my actual time spent walking while cloaked effectively doubled (it used to be 50% walk, 50% wait for the next frame to appear)… Which made me a considerably better Spy.
mew4ever23 responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 8:30 am #
Oh yeah, lagging spies are useless. When lagging, backstabs don’t register sometimes.
tomfin responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 8:31 am #
Hey all,
I was going to write a massive rebuttal, but ((Cascade beat me to it. Everything he said, only more so. I regularly play medic with a 160 ping, and it’s not difficult to do very well indeed (excepting the precognitive ubers, which need practice).
It’s worth noting there’s a big difference between “high ping” and “packet loss”. A higher ping will make for infinitesimally delayed reactions; packet loss makes for large degrees of glitching, warping and general unplayability.
A lot of what you need to know is here:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Lag_Compensation
It’s a little technical, but written in a cheerily wacky Valve style that’s easy to read.
Cheers,
Tom
madlep responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 11:04 am #
Playing from Australia on the ubercharged server, I will sponsor the Heavy as the greatest lag class of all time.
Arsenal IV responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 2:24 pm #
I’d have to say spamming with the Pyro is the best
Dragonman777 responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 3:52 pm #
Yeah, 160 ping is a rarity…usually I’m between 250 and 300. But on bad days (which is what this article is sort of leaning towards) it can get up to 600. I think 800 is my record…
Devenger responded on 08 Nov 2008 at 10:04 pm #
Mmmm, all the classes using bullet-based weaponry are fine. Lag compensation means you can fire directly at where you see enemies as being and hit them (sadly leading to the anomaly that you can be it by a lagging player a whole half a second after getting behind cover). As long as your connection is consistent, Scout is the best class choice in my opinion – all your weapons (including the bat!) have lag compensation meaning you’re not really at any more disadvantage than they are.
If your connection isn’t consistent enough, then it’s time forou to find a new server, a new connection, or a new game. It’s not fair on the rest of us who keep our ping under 100, and are penalised becuse you can’t fix your internet or you’re playing in entirely the wrong region.
n00bie51 responded on 09 Nov 2008 at 12:41 am #
Head shots are far from impossible with significant latency. In fact, I find it quite amusing to have my target die a full second after I fire the shot.
(JF) Dingo responded on 09 Nov 2008 at 9:19 am #
((Cascade is the King of Ping.
The being said, lagmedic isn’t so bad. you’re nigh impossible to backstab and trust me, few things are scarier than an angry medic on the attack who’s teleporting too badly to actually kill.
And there is absolutly nothing in the game that is more satisfying than being able to walk right up to a sniper who knows you’re there and pop him one because he coulden’t resist trying to get a headshot on your pingy ass.
imran_maq responded on 09 Nov 2008 at 9:45 am #
Well I lag whenever I play on a US server, around 130, using this command in the console will sync the hitboxes no matter if you’re lagging or not:
cl_lagcompensation1
type that in and see if it makes a difference…
Claine responded on 09 Nov 2008 at 6:24 pm #
Wrong. I’m Australian, and I play on a US server frequently to play with my friends. This list is -incredibly- wrong.
Medic, Engie and Demo are your best bets.
With Engie you can sit in defence and let the gun do the shooting for you. When the shit hits the fan you might find that the extra action around the choke point will send your lag through the roof and you’ll lag around when you’re team needs you to repair that gun. In normal circumstances you should be able to pull off everything a normal Engie can.
As Demo you can lay mines around and let the enemies run straight into them. A little stick-spam is a sure win for any noob or laggy player. Pipe bombs aren’t horrible either because they bounce around and may come in contact with enemies anyway.
Medic is my favourite however you don’t even have to shoot at all. In especially laggy situations, you may find that your partner outruns you. Watch out for this when you Uber someone because if they run off while you get lag spiked, it’s pretty horrible all around. Make sure you let them know beforehand.
Scouts I find are a bit hit and miss. A laggy friend of mine becomes near invincible when he picks scout, but ping-shield doesn’t seem to come into effect when I play him. Maybe I just suck
Avoid Soldier, Sniper and Spy. You’ll never hit anything with Soldier or Sniper – splash damage or no. Rocket jumping becomes impossible. Spy is hard enough to play without lag. Backstabs tend to be even more hit and miss.
Dragonman777 responded on 09 Nov 2008 at 8:04 pm #
Yeah, Clain, but lag will place a delay on mine detonation, making it difficult to time. For engie, you mad it sound like lagging when you need to repair your gun is a good idea; it is not in any way. That’s actually when you need it most is during those brutal pushes. A lagging Medic will make targeting difficult and defense without your teammate impossible with the uselessy lagging syringe gun and ubersaw.
taipoh responded on 10 Nov 2008 at 11:10 pm #
I’ve played on servers with at least a ping of 300-400 as a medic and I don’t do too well because the beam connects late and so your teammate dies before you can even heal him. I prefer to play scout when my ping is high.
Global notice- the sale of stickies has been restricted because of too much camping (clean the streets kill a black man) responded on 13 Nov 2008 at 11:04 am #
Try playing spy with 500 ping it’s awesome…
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Lagger responded on 01 Oct 2009 at 10:48 am #
Just as a side note, lag isn’t always caused by your internet, you could just have a poor graphics card (like me). I usually have a ping of less than 100, however my screen is still jumpy when there are more than 7-8 people in my screen. But since i have a good ping, my character does not warp around on other people’s screen, so i do not get the advantages of disappearing scouts or pyros. So the first thing I suggest is to find out the reason for your lag before you run off as scout thinking your lag will make you a hard target.