[TF2] MvM's Worst Class 

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I have met one good MvM Spy player. Dude was baked out of his mind and cracked even more than that at the game. Everyone knew he was the best player on the team and that's saying something when we had a pretty high tour scout and well traveled medic too.

What I think would make the spy viable is just "sapper spreads to nearby robots" as an upgrade. It would make the long cooldown more bearable since robots infect each other by walking near one another, making giants giant towers of disables for small robots. In alot of your clips, you can see the sapper being placed and not affecting even half of the robots directly in front of you. Also I would add Red Tape Recorder makes the robots walk backwards and take damage, at the cost of not being disabled.

Spy is actually quite useful in MVM, this one time some guy joined and picked Medic which I had already picked and he refused to swap so I switched to Spy and it made him disconnect so I could play Medic.

Having the DeadRinger be basically the only remotely viable option is bad gamedesign, but the explosive backstab could be very good and have spy be the ultimate glass cannon, high-risk, high-reward class. This would be so much more simple is the mvm community was as laid-back as the rest of the tf2 community. 5:33 That's messed up, made me laugh though...

“My favorite class is the Spy.”

I think changing MVM’s Your Eternal Reward disguise on kill feature to be instant could help the survivability and chainstab potential of the class, while it would make dealing with ubermedics and small robot groups easier, it would still take proper movement and skill to kill giants, because it would be the only time you are not disguised

I think a good buff to spy’s tank busting would be an upgrade to the sappers that makes tanks take up to 20% more damage

An upgrade for spy that would make him way more efficient in crowd control is the scrapped ”reprogramer” upgrade that turns sapped robots into Red robots for a period of time as long as they aren’t giants.

Spy gets a fair bit of play in community MvM. When waves have endless streams of giants and lots of shield medics, spy can work better than the usual pick picks (but tbf those waves are kinda designed around making spy work).

This might be a stupid idea, but what about making it so that spy has low aggro against most robots? That way, even without a disguise, a spy can make a difference in crowd control and solidifies his role as a giant killer. Maybe make it so that, idk, Pyro robots keep the high aggro so he’s not completely busted but that way he manages to stay in close without getting focused too hard.

One thing that wasn't brought up when it comes to how Valve treated Spy during MvM's development. The Your Eternal Reward could mitigate many of the issues when it comes to crowd control as you could stab as many as you like without them responding with the instant disguise mechanic. However Valve thought this was too overpowered (Despite other classes doing it far better) and added a disguise delay to the YER, ensuring the bots will shoot you. This delay is actually patched out in Potato.MVM's community events, and with it removed makes Spy signficiantly more viable.

Its like Valve looked at what bases each class covered, thought they had finished, and called it a day Then they realized there was no giant killing specialisation and said "fuck it, lets make the whole fucking class specialised in giant killing" while giving him nothing else.

MvM Spy Mains: Must master advanced movement techniques requiring precise timing while being aware of their surroundings and planning on when to make a strategic withdrawal. Me, a Heavy Main: Hahaha, minigun go brrrrrrr!

13:39 Wow. That health transition is wild.

“I wonder how scout’s mum is doing” made my head explode

It also doesn't help that Spy's cloak/disguises have no upgrades, especially considering Engineer's building upgrades are the key to his upgrade route. Explosive Backstabs doing 40 health would just mean uber medics get popped unless you use a sapper. Maybe give the sapper some sort of aim slow, or make it so that sapped bots can't aim at spies properly? Or just introduce the cut spytrap.

As someone who mains Spy in MVM ~30 tours its all about finding the right loadout for you. Except for cloak. I would say always use the Ringer and LEARN TO AIRSTRAFE. THAT WILL SAVE YOU OVER AND OVER! I swap between knives on diff rounds between Kunai and Earner because a lot of rounds are VERY situational for spies. First round is always a bonebreaker for spies but once you get at least 1 of each res and swing speed, you’ll start sluggin!

Spy is such a strange class in mvm. He's amazing at giant killing but so are demo and sniper (who is the best class in mvm imo) who have the benefit of being able to shred entire crowds and tanks far better. Sappers cooldown means he also can't reliably deal with engineers either as he has to prioritise sentries or teleporters and he has to kill the engie or else its all for nothing. One good thing about spy is that every enemy spy bot focuses him above everything which is great for that tank section on ghost town.

I'm thinking about cloak and sapper. While other classes have an ability to upgrade most of their cooldowns, spy just have to sit and hide when he's out of his tools. So making a way to recharge your sapper or cloak would help a lot. So here some of my concepts. Just keep in mind they're all separate from each other, that means I don't suggest adding all of them at ones. 1. Cloak and sapper recharge rate upgrade. Straight and primitive way to fix the problem. As I said most of the classes have this type of upgrade. Even demoknight has it on his shield, despite it's completely useless. 2. Cloak on damage/kill upgrade. Yes, I know about this upside on some of spy's weapons, but we also have health on kill and kunai with the similar effect, so the player always have choice where they should save money. Same here: do I have extra money to upgrade diamondback or should I pick l'etranger? 3. Sapper refresh upgrade. This idea is kinda weird even to me, but I'll explain it so maybe someone will have a thought on improving it. Kinda same thing as gas passer, but maybe focused on giants, like performing a backstab om giant will refill sapper meter a little, or maybe killing a giant will restore your sapper entirely. This idea came out from refreshing sapper on building destruction because I always felt strange about losing sapper when you're dealing with robot-engineers. You lose your sapper on destroying engi's nest and just have to deal with his teleporter with bare hands, knowing that any second it can spawn binch of new robots. And the situation gets worse when you dealing with swarming engies, where you have to sit and waitafter dealing with the first one, while the others are taking control over the map. But having an entire upgrade just for engies is strange so I decided to combine it with giants. 4. Revolver damage upgrade. This is a completely different idea, that has nothing in common with cloak or sapper but aims on spy's "tankbustingability" and giving reward for risky "up close and personal" gameplay style. The idea is straightforward you store crits with diamondback and now can at least somehow help your team with killing a tank or more reliably fight some robots from the distance, for example one-shot uber-medics without risking of being killed by a giant they're healing.

Rather than a major rework or significant change to one of his mechanics, I think Spy could be made a lot better by a simple change to one upgrade. Armor Penetration, in addition to its regular effects, also adds +25% "butterknife" damage per point. By default you do 40 base butterknife damage, and with this maxed out you would do 80. On the surface, this isn't a big deal, but giving Spy this higher base damage actually affects quite a few things, such as... 1. Doubled Tank DPS. The tank cannot be backstabbed and knives cannot full crit against it at all, so spy's current tank busting can be outdone by just about every class hitting the tank with an un-upgraded stock melee. You won't be melting tanks with this change or anything, but doubling his damage to 80 per swing makes it a lot more respectable. 2. Crits on Kill. Usually ignored since Spy's crits deal 120 which doesn't meet any significant kill threshold, this would make his maxed out crits do 240, one-shotting everything but heavies. While this won't turn Spy into Demoknight it does give him a way to deal with small robots without relying on the sapper. (Worth noting that crit butterknife kills don't give the "On Backstab" effects, so you couldn't go ham with the Kunai). 3. Uber-medics. With maxed out damage, Spy could kill Uber-medics in 2 hits dealing 80 damage a swing, which also happens to avoid the health threshold for Uber-medics to use their Ubers. Additionally a single point of Armor Penetration paired with crits would do 150, just enough to one-shot them.

I main Spy, Pyro and Demo in all modes. And your "copium" speech was quite funny for someone who never saw how spy plays there. I do play him alot on both boot camp and Potato, and sometimes on tours since I rarely play those. All I can say is - teammate Scout who thinks he is supposed to run circles around Giants is your worst enemy. Otherwise it's simple - get in, do according to situation, dead ringer away. Kunai can be easily outpaced by any other knife. You can overheal yourself with any Knife(and even gun!) when using "Health on Kill" upgrade, as soon as you reach the 2nd level of it. I am surprised you didn't know that. And combine that with Crit on kill - and Stock/Big Earner become Spy's best friend.

ESSAY BELOW: 1. "Spy is the only class reliant on close range combat" - Well, aside from Pyro (unless he is using Gas or Flare Gun with overclocks, which aren't common), that is true, but I don't see how that's a bad thing. Spy does INSANE damage to giants, and can 1 tap all medium bots (Samurai Demos, Steel gauntlets, Burst Soldiers, Armored Mediums etc.) so it's a fair-trade off for insane Power. Also fun fact, Spy is actually LOWER on the Aggro list, when being healed by a Medic, which leads to some funny interactions. 1A. Yes Dead Ringer is great, but again, if you know how to play Spy, you can easily play without it, but not using it IS a handicap. ( - Video as an example: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_LEdg-Mgm8k.html ). ALSO AGAIN Kunai and Big Earner have drawbacks, but again, just like Spy in general, once you learn how to play him, the strengths are superior and you can easily play around their drawbacks. 2. His Crowd Control sucks sure, but that's not what he is meant to be for, unless there is a group of medium/armored bots he can easily clap. Spy can EASILY top in damage while only going for Giants and Medium/Armored robots, again, due to the sheer powerhouse that he is damage wise. And even then, the damage you do to these is more "valuable" in a sense that you're dealing with a bigger threat (A giant) than something like Engie (who kills lot of the shitty fodder robots) and arguably Soldier. And there is nothing wrong with Spy having to get away while stabbing. A Soldier, Scout or Pyro can't stand in the open while fighting too, they can still get shredded, you still need to dodge as other classes, or know how to skiddadle when need be, that's just a mvm in general thing. And again, you mention how he "can't compete with other 8 classes" when he really can, both in giant and high hp target damaging/elimination. He can be THE BEST at dealing with those, but the fact you can have a Heavy hold M1 behind Med shield (and other classes too) at the FRACTION of the risk, then yeah I can see why you think he isn't great. 2A. Yeah Spy sucks against Tanks. That is true. 2B. Spy being worse at Uber Med takeouts isn't a huge deal either, Since Soldier or Scout also need to risk it (if Soldier doesnt have minicrits/rocket spec that is). Spy however again, isn't meant to take them out if you got a Med Killer anyway (unless he's dead). He can however excell against Vaccinator medics (Where Sniper, Demo or others can suffer) and armored medics, being able to 1 tap them or DPS them down. 2C. The Medium Bot talk: "Heavies aren't that much of a threat" - Sure, in most cases, but they're damage sponges that can buy time to other Robots, or sometimes be an actual pain if they are Steel Gauntlet pushers (50% dmg bonus btw) or crit boosted, or with vacc meds or Big Heal Medics. Being able to blitz them down, is helpful and nothing wrong with doing it, is there? "The Crit Bowmen are better handled by a Demoman" - This is 2 Cities exclusivity issue. And again, Spy can sap them and 1 tap them, or quickly stab them both, or only bowman and then shoot the Med (nothing else around, it will shoot at the Spy and not run away usually). On Community MvM though, or in other cases, they are far too common, or far too deadly (especially if they're spread Bowmen or Homing Arrow Bowmen) to be taken down by Demo's stickies, that will usually be for Meds (and cuz ScotRes on community mvm lacks the strenghts of 2 Cities). "Hard to keep up with G. Scouts" - True, but that's what your team can be for too. You don't need to kill them yourself, you can soften them up (1 backstab removes 900 of their 1200 HP) or finish them off, if they're blocking it. And as a Spy, you should generally stick around near Robot spawn anyway, so you don't have to walk to them too far, or be surprised. 2D. Giant Talk HE IS THE FRONTRUNNER for Giant Damage, and it's not even close. The only reason it's not seen that way by majority of normal players is again... Because of 2 cities. Sticky Demos with krits, Behind Shield BB Heavies and so on, somewhat defeat his purpose, as he DOESNT EVEN NEED to exist while that's the case. But like I mentioned, if you learn how to play Him, you can do just as well as them WITHOUT needing a Medic, or Krits or anything like that. Spy can solo giants for a reason, while a Heavy really cannot, and neither can Demo in most cases. Again, he is considered OP for a reason, borderline anyway. 2Da Your points about his strength #1 SURROUNDING ROBOTS - Yeah that is an issue, and while you can play around it or deal with them yourself if you can, it is a issue. However, I don't agree with the "too much downtime while waiting for stab" thing. Spy again, can 4-5 shot most giants so even if he finishes off a Giant or softens it up, that's still INCREDIBLY HELPFUL, because he can dish out 900 damage minimum depending on how many stabs he gets. #2 MAP GEOMETRY - Nothing to talk about here, because that's just a Map thing, some are better for Spy, some not, that's just the case for all classes too so whatev. #3 KNOCKBACK - Yeah again, fair. Knockbacks fucks you over. Your teammates can make your life HELL but that's honestly only issue with medium bots, as Giants on most missions ESPECIALLY COMMUNITY are not affected by most types of knockback. There is also enemy knockback though and depending on the kind of knockback you can try to surf it to get away or get a better position. Depends on what is knocking you around though. #4 TEAM AGGRO - Yeah, it happens, but this is why in a game called TEAM fortress 2 in a COOP GAMEMODE you usually should talk and coordinate with your Pyro and Scout. Just telling them to not go behind the giant or not rush as often while you're on it, can do wonders. And usually they'll listen so yeah. #5 MUSCLE MEMORY - Depends on everything so can't speak on it much. #6 PING - Yeah, internet and ping can suck. 3. "Why do people put os much effort to play Spy in one thing he isn't dogshit at" - Because he is fun. Same reason you see Vaccinator or Shield Bash Meds, Pipe Demos, or anyone play anything that's not "MUH META" (MvM has no meta btw). Spy is not only strong, but very fun to play when you learn him and can be good at him. I once saw a Spy struggle on a potato.tf mission, so I switched from Soldier to Spy (had like 10-15k dmg at that point max 20 maybe) to show him how to play, and pointed out many tips. Ended up with around 90-100k dmg on top. And also, again, Spy requires more effort to deal with Giants, but he makes up for with the ouput. It's kind of like Ballista vs Cannon from Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. Sure Cannon is overall easier to use and put into your army, as it fires faster and more often, but Ballista, while can be hard to use (as it shoots small useless enemies), when it WORKS it can 1 tap basically everything. For the lower cost and also more efficiently. And also the whole "Spy can be absent and nothing will change" is just, eh, kinda wrong. 4. Before I get to your Spy Buff ideas, if Spy Players, most of which are speedrunners, map makers, mission makers or really REALLY GOOD Spies (Underscore_ for instance) say that he doesn't need buffs, aside from small ones, then I trust them more. They play and make hard missions, usually not designed around SPy anyway, they play in many events, many missions, of various difficulties with different robots and environments. They have more experience than your average 2 Cities MvM-er, and if they say he is fine then I trust them. - MONEY MAGNET like SCOUT - Yeah that is cool, HOWEVER Spy can pick up money immediately due to just walking into it from killing a robot, on top of being able to do it while invisible or disguised. It would be nice and it'd help him but Spy can be a great money collector already, if again, you play your cards right (Overclocks like that exist tho, so some people definitely want it). - EXPLOSIVE BACKSTAB - I mean, I have heard and also played around with Explosive Headshot Ambassador. It has only 2 shots and slower reload, but does 150 dmg like 1st tic on Sniper Rifles. So uh, take that as you will. I personally think it's funnier and better anyway. - BOMB SAPPER - Im pretty sure there is a potato.tf overclock similar to this, or one that makes Sapper more of a DPS tool (it does no damage anyway while used) so eh, MAYBE? - EPILOGUE - In the end it really shows, that it's not only 2 Cities Mentality and exclusivity that can damage the opinion about a class, but also lack of other experiences. Real MvM pros, speedrunners and players, all admit and agree SPy is a powerhouse, borderline OP and in need of a nerf, yet your average MvM player doesn't, but that's nothing new, If more people played community MvM and listened to actual people who play for fun and challenge, rather than loot gamblers (No offense Weezy), then perhaps everyone would get along x1000 better. Before I finish though, I will just post this guide by Underscore_Gaming about Spy: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8uLTixBXTPM.html - He is one of the best (or better anyway) MvM guide makers and Spies around. END OF PEPTALK

I think upgrades for the Disguise Kit PDA (Like the Engi's) could be good for Spy. Things like "Damage Resistance When Disguised" or "Decloak Time" or "Cloak Regen Rate" or even "Faster Disguise Time" can all be beneficial. Tone down the cost of every upgrade for Spy and Spy only as well, so these upgrades could, yknow, be purchased before Wave 5.

Why does Spy not have a money magnet already, especially considering he is Scout's dad? Based on what I see in your clips, I want Giant Robots to have a maximum turning speed, similar to a charging Demoman.

Ok, I didn't know the ammo refill canteen recharges the sapper, but still, I believe it's too high of a cost to just charge something the spy normally has available all the time, unlike the demoman's shields... I would buff the recharge time for the sapper, or at least add an upgrade to improve it, much like the jarate or the mad milk. This would make the spy more viable against big groups without making him overpowered or relying so much on the rest of the team.

How about a disguise drop delay, where upon attacking out of a disguise, you have a three or so second window where you retain the disguise in the eyes of the robots?

Since Spy is the only class that can’t do anything significant to tanks, why not give him something to help deal with them? What if you could also place the Sapper on a tank to temporarily slow it down? Or, something more unique, have the Sapper lower the tank’s defense so the rest of the crew can deal more damage? You would be sacrificing the sapper, and potential group kill on some robots, in exchange for helping your team wear the tank down a bit faster.

I would give Spy a Combo system. The more backstabs or hits you land the more hp you get. Maybe after certain thresholds for add speed or recharge levels. That or money. If you miss a attack or take too long between kills the chain resets.

Ages ago, I mean YEARS, the group I got thrown into had a spy main join for a tour. They were good, but I'm guessing they were experienced player who could of played any character really well. it might have helped we had a high tier medic and demo who really knew their shit.

"if youre playing spy, you are not playing any of the eight other classes."

From what I have seen of good spy's in MVM, the only buffs he needs is the money collection overheal, like scout, and making the sapper effect also increase damage to the robots effected by the sapper, giving him some crowd control. Also, make it so that each upgrade of the sapper effectiveness reduces the cooldown. And, yes, I have seen good Spy players in MVM... 2 of them. But they carried the missions on their back, as the group of us they were carrying, they were the only ones to have mann up.

My biggest problem with spy is that he is ironically the worst class to deal with the robo engineers. The sapper gets consumed on mvm when sapping the sentry. If you sap the engie, you can't backstab it or the sentry will vaporise you the next second unless you dead ringer away. Add this to the fact that a lot of the time you are fighting next to a teleporter aka, an ubered robot spawner and you end up making the scout a better sentry buster.

Spy _needs_ and _SHOULD_ have the same money healing as Scout.

I would suggest a change to his aggro attraction, scout wants to attract robot attention because he has the mobility to avoid the damage, spy does not, having every robot around you suddenly make you their most wanted seems to be the biggest detriment, I would propose that only the robot you are actively damaging target you, this will still retain the challenge with larger robots, but will stop groups of robots turning you into paste after the first stab.

Really, it's simple: spy is a high risk pick class in a gamemode where there are a lot of enemies to kill. Why ever pick him when sniper can do his job, but safer? I feel like Valve needed to give him like a "backstab shield on kill" (where he can tank hits for like 5 seconds), something to allow him to soak damage like a deploy-able decoy, or just give him the x10 mode thing of insanely high HP vamp on the kunai (a 9000 HP spy is quite hard to kill...) to make him viable. Really, as you showed in the video, there are many ways to buff the class, be it in survivability or utility. As it stands, it remains a niche pick for high skill spy mains that even still, yeah, is never as effective as any of the other classes. The issue though still stands that he still does have a niche as the giant killer or medic pick class, so doing any of these might also just make him insanely broken. A hard class to balance.

21:26 this sentence lives rent free in my mind

As an mvm spy main, I vehemently agree with this video.

I feel like when a spy back stabs a giant, it should give the effect of what that knife does, like with Saxton Hale

Since this is valve were talking about, the lowest effort change I could imagine would be simple number changes. With that in mind. I think Armor Pen should go down to 200 instead of 400. Its Spy's CORE damage stat, but unlike EVERY OTHER CLASS it only applies to a single type of robot, not tanks, not small bots, not even mid-size bots, ONLY GIANTS. So it's ludicrous that it's so expensive when spy HAS TO BUY ALL 4 TICKS OF IT, just to be viable. The other change would be to Sapper power. I'm not sure what the perfect price point would be, but I think just reducing it down to 300 would be good, and making the upgrade actually worthwhile in the process. As it stands, theres basically NEVER a good reason to get more than two ticks, and thats only because the base duration of 4 seconds is barely enough to kill half a dozen bots with swing speed maxed, and bots also usually are not literally standing inside of eachother. Once again No clue what the PERFECT balanced size would be. My best guess is to make it so that the sapper acts like it does with 1 tick at 0 ticks, so stuns in a small aoe for 4 seconds, and every tick of sapper power increases the radius by like 100-200 hammer units, and the duration of the effect by 2 seconds. So sapper power in this hypothetical scenario, costs only 900 to max, and stuns robots in a 500-800 hammer unit radius, depending on if you go with 100 or 200 per tick, for 10 seconds. Alternatively, you can keep the cost down to 300, but instead of only buffing the hammer unit size and duration it should also buff the recharge. The Big earner is spy's best MVM knife, no questions asked, the 210 overheal from the kunai is honestly overrated, and the big earners speed boost lets you easily chain a shit ton of stabs together on smaller bots without having fear of missing between stab intervals, and most importantly, as long as you get just 1-2 stabs you can immdiately dead ring and quickly reset to go for more bots. Spy's sapper has a 15 second cooldwon, which doesn't *SOUND* that long, but in the heat of battle and especially during later waves with infinite spawns of support bots, 15 seconds for a 200-250 hammer unit stun, for not even 10 seconds, only on small bots is PITIFUL. I'd say reduce the sappers cooldown by 2.5 seconds per sapper recharge upgrade, so that it's cooldown is halved by the time you hit 3 ticks, and it's uptime goes to 100% so spy's natural downtime is made up for by how often he can sap bots for his own safety. Lastly for the sapper change you could even make it play MORE into the giant killer aspect, probably a pretty hot take but if it made it so giant robots didn't aggro onto spy while sapped, that would make him a hell of a lot easier to use for pretty much everyone. I don't completely agree with this change especially since its even more likely because that would require real coding and not just purely number adjustments but it's an option. TL;DR? Valve is lazy so this is mostly number changes. Spy relies on armor pen, but AP only affects 1 kind of robot, so this should be reflected in it's cost being half of what it is now so can invest more credits early into resistances, movement speed, sapper power etc. Speaking of the sapper, the sappe should probably have it's cost cut by 50, to just 300 because leveling sapper power right now feels awkward as hell always, and buff the sapper in some way. Either make it have a BIG effect with a long cooldown, or have a small effect, with a short cooldown. Sapper power doesn't currently affect the cooldown, which only contributes further to spy's INSANE downtime on dps.

Specifically on the Fists of Steel heavies (Steel Gauntlets), since they're considered "big" robots but not "giants," they are still treated like small robots, meaning no matter the armor penetration, they will go down in one backstab.

I have a pretty funny story, so I was messing around on bootcamp because I don’t have the money for MannUp and decided to try out spy, for some reason another of my teammates decided to go spy as well, on Mannhatan btw, I was obviously skeptical but decided to go with it anyway and somehow we completely the mission really effectively, the rest of our team took out the small bots but with both spies using sappers it made things easy, then when giants came around we’d both position ourselves so that if the giant looked at one of us the other would get free backstabs, safe to say every giant got obliterated, even the soldier boss robot died before even touching the second gate or even getting up to the second floor, weird experience but it was pretty fun

As a spy main I enjoy this gimmicky playstyle. Even I understand that spy is the worst by terms of efficiency, but it's still really fun to queue for boot camp, put a lot of skill and then to achieve 100+k damage at the end of the mission, while the rest of the team gets between 30k and 70k damage. One last thing nobody ever talks about. The Dead Ringer isn't the only and not even the best get out of jail tool at spy's disposal. I'll let figure out yourself what is actually the best tool, since there is one little MVM feature that is completely forgotten by MVM community. No seriously, nobody uses this. Ever.

My silly ideas: Sapper now converts bots to your side for the duration but they do only half damage. Disguise can be upgraded to not break after a certain number of stabs or X seconds. Cloak can have an AoE effect to mask other players nearby (probably too niche to be useful but could be funny). Something with the revolver, maybe headshots will ricochet the bullet into X number of nearby targets? Basically keep spy feeling like a slippery trickster that's more focused on messing with the enemy than just exploding them.

2000 word essay

I actually do play spy in mvm, and one thing I can recommend is getting the crits on kill knife upgrade. Use the stock revolver, big earner, and dead ringer. Go in, get a bunch of stabs, then back off and start blasting. And if we're talking about weapon changes and upgrades to make spy more useful, I say the sapper needs to deal damage to robots like it does to a sentry.

This might be insane, but what if Spy could pick up the bomb and carry it backwards? It would probably need to be a Disguise Kit upgrade, but it would certainly be a unique one! Another insane idea might be letting the Spy hack a robot with his sapper, somehow, or perhaps even a whole wave. Consider a potential upgrade: >Hacking Mode: "Consume a full sapper charge to permanently hack all robots currently effected by your sapper." You would need to limit the number of of times it could be used in a wave, and combine this with an Ammo canteen (otherwise your sapper's effect will have run out before the bar recharges), but I think those are fair trade-offs for adding a bunch of new team members.

"my favourite class is Dota 2" -Gabeicus Newillicus the 3rd.

It’s a bizarre state of affairs. I don’t understand why they were perfectly fine with giving classes like sniper and pyro to an extent the kinds of tools that alleviate their classes from niche usage to terrifyingly effectiveness in MvM (explosive headshot, gas passer) but then there’s spy who not only doesn’t get anything of that level of boost but is actively restricted It’s almost like Valve would rather can’t select Spy at all but they didn’t want people outraged with a class ban so they instead essentially made him be the game mode’s impossible difficulty setting.

That souts mom line was EVIL

they should have made a mechanic where spy can stop big guys from moving by zapping and then kill them by stabbing them in the back, not just stabbing but by basically latching onto their backs and playing a small short mini game where spy moves around his knife inside them and if he wins the game he either gains control of the guy for a short amount of time or it just drops dead (depending on things like his own health, the guys health, maybe a new resource meter that gets used up everytime he latches onto a big guy and can be recharged by killing normal guys or a specific class of guys)

Dude, your music picks for these vids are always fantastic. I love Freedom Planet and hearing its OST made me smile.

I remember a time where me and a couple of randos were struggling on a mission on Bigrock with a group of giant medics and soldiers. So, as the gamers we are all switched to spy and took turns sapping and stabbing the bots and it worked. We weren't even on a call, I believe that was the most coordination a MvM team will ever have.

One thing that i always wanted in mvm spy was to be able to upgrade your knife to have other knife's habilities, for example the Kunai's health on kill or Big Earner's cloak and boost for the YER or Spy-cicle. And maybe an upgrade that makes him less targetable by robots or even a dodge upgrade that gives him invincibility when he is low health to give him a chance at actually surviving, remember playing as spy in mvm is already risky since you could be way more useful as any other class (specially against tanks since you basically have no DPS)

One thing I would like to note, YER would have been very good in mvm if it wasnt for the fact that valve nerfed it by giving the disguise kill a delay...

I think one viable upgrade would be a mini sapper for his knife, so with each backstab 3 robots in the small area of that killed robot would be sapped for a chain reaction to start, so it keeps the risk and reward thing going

21:07 This B-roll footage was so unbelievably clutch, you have no idea.

Playing off the idea of adding in additional utility as opposed to must pick classes, what about a ammo drop feature? Each backstab on a small bot has a 10% chance to drop an ammo kit that is magnetically attracted to you, or to the closest ally if your ammo is full.

I think a very small tweak would go a long way for Spy. Lower his aggro. I think him getting 2-3 stabs off without aggro would make sense, and you've ever played a pub, you know people aren't likely to turn around in this game, so it's not that farfetched as a translation between MvM and regular TF2. Plus, with lowered aggro, we might see a lot of use for the YER, which would help Spy along in his massive chainstabs, without changing everything that goes into giant killing.

There could be some potential upgrades that could be beneficial, I would imagine giving the guns an explosive crits upgrade, for example could work on some of the guns as a “get out of jail” trump card. As for the zapper I don’t think it would be that much work as by itself the concept works fine, but IMO something like a slight recharge per bot killed while zapped could work for potential chainzaps, or something like a “virus” like passing the zapper through multiple targets could work, although to be honest it would obsolete if the literal upgrade of spy carrying more than 1 zapper gets implemented. For the knifes it also is a finicky process to tinker with, as many of the knifes offer drastically different playstyles, but one thing I could put on spy on all knifes is “resistance up” literally giving you an incentive for going with the backstabs, it offers temporary resistance to all damage without putting spy on a easy situation 24/7 considering that spy literally is *THE* agro guy Also I think that the watches should have their own upgrade stuff, even if minimal upgrades they could still help… But yeah, poor spy lol

I've also found spy quite useful on the waves with multiple engi-bots. They can shut down both the sentries & teleporters. It works especially well with the YER to take out the engies first.

My fix . Add to all knives ( except Kunai , it gets more over heal upgrade instead) anew upgrade called "hack the system" : stay disguise for x seconds after a successful backstab kill. I don't know the exact number of seconds that would be balanced .

I put this video off for a good while because I figured it'd be 20 minutes of saying "he's a melee class" But this was really well researched and exemplified. I figured it'd be a big part of his problems, but I didn't know there were so many small but impactful technical issues holding him back.

The money magnet for spy is also cool bc of the lore reasons too. Maybe give his sapper a mark for death, or maybe give him cloak/ disguises upgrades. Like stay disguised for more backstabs, and the robots do not notice you.

13:27 "Spy is easiwy the front runner in giant shredding" :)

I think the only good wave spy can be used for is that one in two cities when the three giant soldier banners are released battalions doesn’t cancel backstab

As someone who regularly plays mvm spy, you put my troubles with the class in mvm perfectly. Giant busting is really fun and its hilarious to out-DPS other classes as the funny frenchman, but spy really feels underdeveloped in MVM. The fact that you cant upgrade such obvious things like cloak drain and sapper cooldown is baffling to me.

this is like playing on impossible mode, complete a full tour with spy, ive watched a video of 5 engis and 1 spy on 2 cities mannhatten mission and the strategy they made is through the roof. spy is just underrated as a class and its sometimes not noob friendly or vets favourite class but if vets want a real challenge, try playing spy, the hardest class to master

An idea: “Target Scrambler” (name pending) 200 Credits: Spy’s disguise stays on for an additional two seconds after being revealed (Can be upgraded 2-3 more times). Bad idea? Good idea?

I bet the cut canteen that changed the color of a bot was a spy exclusive canteen... That would have made him into something more interessting.

As an MvM Spy specialist i feel personally attacked by the title alone

the only thing that spy needs is that sapped robots ignore undisguised spy

The only time I've ever seen an MvM Spy was when I visited an infinite-money community server back in 2019.

Man rambles about French person for 15 mins then starts talking about Singapore and weapon reskins because they always seemed like a strange case to him

Idea: Disguise Persistence upgrade. 0.5 second of your disguise staying active after doing something that would drop it. Can be taken 3 times so each tick is 0.5 second of keeping your mask on, for a max of 1.5 seconds. 350 credits per tick, seeing as it's a dramatic improvement to Spy's capacity to stay alive after getting stabs. May also make the YER more usable.

2 fixes for spy to make him viable, reduce cooldown of sapper a bit, make sapped robots ignore him

reduce armour pen to 250, crit on kill to 300, sapper power to 250 and add a recharge cooldown upgrade for 150 credits (max 3 each reducing it by 15%), give a sapper toss upgrade for 300 where right clicking will throw it with the same range as jarate/milk give a mini version of scouts money aoe

I just wish the YER worked in MVM, that's all I want for Christmas

The best time I've had with spy was on these potato-mvm missions where it's like 2 or 3 really long huge missions and spy just wrecks all the giants after the team gets pushed back. Similar cases on some Big Rock missions.

I think the way to go for spy’s balance would be to nerf his giant killing potential a touch (yeah great start) and massively buff his utility elsewhere, give him scouts money collecting, lower the money cost of his armor penetration to give him more room for resistance and speed, and buff the sapper to more reliably shut down crowds possibly by cutting its cooldown substantially, I think after these changes he would have a place as an alternative to scout, spy’s ability to absolutely annihilate giants is frankly overpowered and the only reason it’s even remotely ok is the fact that he’s complete dogshit at pretty much everything else and if we make him not shit at everything else he might be too good

The easiest thing to give the sapper a cheap emp bomb upgrade, similar to the gas passer but it stuns a GROUP of robots in place and takes away some health from them aswell. I'd work as an escape tool

One change to Spy I'd like to see implemented would be that armour penetration could increase the backstab hitbox for giants, to further emphasise his role, or a backstab upgrade similar to explosive headshot, but rather than damage it's a progressively longer AOE stun Give him some more upgrades, and a passive benefit to automatically gather money from backstabs like sniper does from headshots and it's golden

What Spy needs is new weaponry like a Sapper you could throw like Engineer in Zombie infection mode. He needs new guns that are accurate but have more ammo than a 6 shooter revolver.

They could add a sapper upgrade to share some damage between targets on backstab, kind of like the third degree. Would function similarly to the gaspasser but with extra steps and no lingering effect.

i'm surprised they didnt gave him the scout money overheal and collecting radius. I think it would work well on him, obviously you would need to tweak the overheal but idk. Could also give damage to sapper so that they dont only stops robots for a while (could have different upgrades for red tape) . It would be op but temporary invis for like 1s or something so that he doesnt need to constantly run dead ringer but also dont explode on a stab kill? you could keep the bots trying to look at the spy so that chain stab arent completely free. Or you could put a simple damage resist on stab kill as well. Just throwing ideas really, idk which would be the best for the class kinda sad how much he has to work against

Wonder Prick... The weapon that instantly makes you disguise as the player you just stabbed. Just use that to remove any robot agro.

17:17 Wait, those lag spikes aren't my terrible budget laptop from when I went to college's fault, well that's even more upsetting.

Considering spy pulls so much aggro and needs to get into tickle distance to do anything, it would be rather easy to make the class viable when focusing on that. here is my idea: - Make spy have very high resistance from enemies that are very close - Make spy debuff enemies that are very close. I'm thinking about a resistance reduction. - The more enemies are close by, the bigger the effect. That way spy would use the aggro to pull a lot of enemies together, increasing his survivability when surrounded, and help the team by making tight robot groups that are easy to hit with aoe. What I'm also seeing money magnet (since spy is already close to the enemy) and a zapper that jumps target (for crowd control)

This might be a terrible suggestion, but adding a speed buff akin to the Big Earner and receiving overheal on a backstab like the Kunai alongside using the Eternal Reward (given that the bots don't target you after taking the place of the bot you backstab) might be pretty neat in addition to the money magnet that Scout has.

how to MvM spy: >upgrade sapper, stun whole groups for your team to take out >backstab random bot for critz, unload 12 to 18 revolver shots into giant/tank >pick up money >backstab giants once before running away to stop them from focusing on your team >take on engies Armor Prenetation is no0b bait. If you backstab giants 4 times in a row you are a no0b

You know you're in for a bad video when the person writing the script doesn't want to listen to criticism. Edit: Oh lmao, he just nuked everyone on his discord pointing this out.

I think Spy could be really fun if the designers stick to these principles 1. Robots hate Spies but they're really stupid and Spy can lead them on wild goosechases. 2. Your Sapper is your primary means of dealing with robots while your knife picks off smallbots and your revolver can let you deal some good chip at range or while retreating. 3. Spy can turn the tides of battle by acting at the right moment. To these ends, I present the following changes: 1. Sappers deal damage to robots, and the sap strength upgrade increases this damage significantly. 2.Add a "Super Sapper" upgrade on a cooldown that allows you to throw a Sapper that stuns robots in its radius. 3. Reduce the effectiveness of the Knife against Giants in exchange for reducing the cost of AP 4. Buff health on kill to health on backstab, where you get a little more if you kill. This can overheal you to up to 150% of your health, stackign with health from the Kunai. 5. Make the Revolver stronger with minimal investment but cap out somewhat low. Maybe a "double damage headshots" upgrade. 6. Upgrades for your watches that make your cloak more effective in terms of protecting you from aggressive robots. Spy offers support to his teammates by hindering enemy robots and draining their HP, drawing aggro and then avoiding the consequences, picking off some enemies with his revolver and knife, and occassionally using his Super Sapper to make a big play. He's a proper support class under this design, and an actually good one at that.

Having the on backstab stuff trigger on, well, any backstab instead of just on kills would help a lot, this alongside dropping some credit requirements (id honestly say cut it by a third at least) and while i dont really play him enough to know off the top of my head, having upgrades that really upgrade the revolver would be good. Im more guessing they dont actually do anything as you just didnt mention any of them, as i was immediately thinking an upgraded a diamondback here would solve a lot of the down time issues. Small damage, firing speed, reload and or clip size boosts that were cheaper than normal, along with having 30 something crits you could fire off fairly quickly is silly, and would also allow for at least passable contribution to tank busting.

"give him some rare high moments in the realm of CC" Crits on backstab upgrade and Relover attack speed "am i a joke to you?" seriously has NO ONE in the 500++ tours and waves of MvM EVER tryed out crit revolver spy?

Maybe there could be a happy medium between the explosive backstab idea and the sapper time bomb idea, where backstabbing sapped robots deals AoE damage?

It's amazing that a single passive boost for Scout - gain an infinite amount of overheal for every piece of cash you collect - turns him from a fragile piece of wet paper with a hundred robots locked onto him to a tank tankier than the Heavy who can fly around loading shell after shell into the enemies backs. Inversely, it's more amazing they couldn't do anything with Spy to transform his similarly fragile playstyle. It really seems like the main thing that separates Spy from the other classes is the fact that he hasn't actually got a specific buff for MvM to help a single-target priority class deal with 100x the enemies. Give him perma-disguise until he kills a giant, or limited time disguises after he gets a backstab and let his disguises give him buffs based on class (Scout: Increased move speed, Soldier: Increased explosive resistance, Heavy: Increased resistance to all but slower move speed, Medic: Passive healing). He'd need to cycle through disguises as they're discovered to stop one class being picked excessively while also keeping with his themes, and require learning waves to pick the right disguises at the right times.

Some things I would propose: - the resistance upgrades giving a bonus to their respective resistance after a backstab, improving his survivability and softening the effects of knockback - replenish either cloak or sapper power on kill, I am leaning towards sapper because it can help Spy in crowd control and make him less of a savant, he can sap a group and kill them all, on kill and not on backstab because you can exploit it on giants otherwise. It can be applied to - REDUCE THE COST OF ARMOR PENETRATION, it makes no sense for Spy's bread and butter upgrade to be what eats every single credit until either mid or endgame. Glass cannon does not adequately describe Spy in MvM, he's more of a toilet paper pistol. So yeah, lower the cost so that he can actually sink those extra credits into resistances and fall into Spy syndrome every 5 minutes.

Something that could and would make spy better in mvm would be like an explosive headshot mechanic but for backstabs just so spy can actually do stuff in the frontlines if there are no giants. But knowing gaben we will never see this happen

Just off the top of my head as someone who has barely touched MvM, hasn't played TF2 in probably nearly a decade, and Spy was my least played class by far when I did play: A. Auto-backstab on sapped robots regardless of facing (ultimately minor but come on, they're literally bent over at the waist) B. Replace same-team disguises with (possibly placeable) decoys to lure/distract/redirect/draw aggro/whatever/etc C. Chain effect on sappers D. Sap effect on backstabs E. Refill cloak on backstabs

I’ve seen a MVM spy he had over 2000 Tours didn’t say a word and completely decimated all of us in terms of damage like we had a maxed out heavy who had 158,000 damage and he was struggling to keep up and he had 60 tours