Talk:Community Mann vs. Machine strategy

2 or 1 Hazard Area

is there 2 or 1 hazard area in coal town for pyro to airblast? Hecarimz 08:07, 20 August 2012 (PDT)

I've only seen one. dendodge 10:04, 20 August 2012 (PDT)

I've seen, and fallen in, both. One on the left lane, one on the far area of the bomb-site square, too far to airblast easily from the hole itself, though. Sinez 16:49, 21 August 2012 (PDT)

I request Community strategy

Some sections on this page are edited with community tips, could there be a Community Strategy for classes and weapons? TNS 09:12, 23 August 2012 (PDT)

Spy tips

The spy tips say "Whichever disguise you decide to use is largely irrelevant", then goes on to suggest pyro or engy. If disguise doesn't matter, wouldn't scout always be the best option, since it gives a speed boost?

Also, does anybody know if sapped robots give a bonus with the Diamondback? --Itsacon 02:28, 27 August 2012 (PDT)

Scout disguises do NOT give speed boosts; it's actually a way to tell a fake Scout from a real one. As for the Diamondback, I'm not sure. ShadowGlove 05:08, 27 August 2012 (PDT)

I always thought you got a small speed boost, but not the full scout speed. But I just read Disguise again, and you are, obviously, right. We live and learn... --Itsacon 00:07, 29 August 2012 (PDT)

Disguising as a scout works just fine in MvM. I prefer disguising as a scout because I don't know how speed upgrades are affected by your disguise, and scout is the fastest movement option --Ohpleez 03:10, 28 November 2012 (PST)

Diamondback does not give any bonus crits from sapped robots. --Piemanmoo 13:03, 30 August 2012 (PDT)

Upgraded Buff Banner

First Soldier Combinaison : "The upgraded banner enables Mini-Crits for the whole team", I could be wrong, but is it really necessary to upgrade Buff Banner for sharing mini-crits for the whole team ? Brucelian 04:39, 30 August 2012 (PDT)

In my experience, it doesn't actually affect your whole team, instead using its regular radius. ==Fax Celestis _talkcontrib^home 12:04, 30 August 2012 (PDT)

But the only upgrade which exists for the Buff Banner just increase the buff duration.Brucelian 12:43, 30 August 2012 (PDT)

Right. Does that say anything about increased radius? No. ==Fax Celestis _talkcontrib^home 16:28, 30 August 2012 (PDT)

As far as I'm aware, there was at launch an option to upgrade the Banner to affect the whole team, but it was swiftly removed. I could be wrong, but the point is that no such option exists now. This tip should be removed. ==Reginald Cuftbert 11:14, 23 Septemper 2012 (PDT)

Bot Symbols

We need to add the symbols for the different bots next to their titles. I'd do it myself but it's late and I don't know where to find them. Any help either way would be appreciated. Guybrush20X6 16:34, 11 November 2012 (PST)

Scout tips

There are some major flaws in the scout tips:

"consider dumping all your money into resistances and move speed and using a bat or Frying Pan"

Melee is never a good idea in MvM, and a scout who doesn't use the Fan O'War is just a bad scout. Also resistences are pretty expensive in the beginning, milk and speed / jump upgrades are more important and cheaper. You can dodge projectiles, so later you should prefer bullet resistences.

"The Special Delivery item set can be very useful because of the +25 health effect."

A scout not using the Fan O'War for marking is a bad scout, the health bonus is negligible.

"Once upgraded, a hit from the Sandman's ball marks a robot for death like the Fan O'War, meaning the robot will take mini-crits from your friends' weapons."

The upgrade costs 500 credits, which is VERY expensive. And marking with balls doesn't work as reliable as marking with the Fan O'War. The 15 hitpoints less are a major downside. Sandman doesn't stun robots, so it's by far not as useful as in PvP. It's an expensive toy, costing your team the game at least in expert.

"Using Bonk! Atomic Punch can allow you to serve as a distraction for giant bots, as well as grab credits without fear of being blasted to oblivion."

A scout without milk is useless. Slowdown via milking is one of the most important jobs of the scout. Milk upgrades have priority.

"As a Scout, you are usually the only one that can catch up to Scout Robots early in the mission."

If scout robots slip through your defense, your defense is bad and you will fail anyway. The scout doesn't have enough damage output to deal with more than one or two already damaged scout robots.

One more tip for the scattergun, which is the best primary in my opinion: Don't upgrade it unless you've fully upgraded your milk, speed, jumping and perhaps resistences. And because of the big clip size it's the better choice compared to the Force-A-Nature; you will tend to spend some money in your clipsize with the latter, which isn't needed for the scattergun. --Ohpleez 03:28, 28 November 2012 (PST)

Sorry, my bad

I just worked a bit on the page, I got a little hasty, and ignored a warning about overwriting some edits. Sorry about that, to whom it concerns. You'll have to do over. It was nothing personal, and if you were actually working on my edits, thats fine. Check the time stamp -> K-Raider NL 05:17, 13 December 2012 (PST)

Flaw in the engineer example combinations

The gunslinger cannot be under any circumstance a viable weapon in MvM mode. I suggest the removal of the combination which includes this weapon since it can misslead players looking for good strategy advice.

Other example combinations which I also find missleading in a MvM strategy guide are the medic equiping the Quick-Fix and the sniper equiping other weapon than Jarate as secondary. DankeEngineer 08:34, 15 December 2012 (PST)

If you think a loadout has flaws then note on it how it can be flawed in certain situations. The last thing we need is an elitist "only one loadout works" mindset. I personally have used gunslinger loadouts to good effect but I can see how in a lot of situations it'd be less than ideal. Guybrush20X6 02:27, 17 December 2012 (PST)

ROFL, obviously you don't ever play expert or even advanced. Your teammates would kick you instantely, and they would do well so. There are A LOT of loadouts which are simply plain bad and still promoted in the wiki because someone who never really played MvM thought "this must be a great idea!". Only a handful of loadouts and classes is really good, at least on expert. Concerning spies, snipers, medics: You must be a great one to compensate for the lack of plain firepower. Most of the time someone who goes one of theses classes (95%) he will not be credit to team and his teammates would have to compensate for him having fun, which they can't be forced to (so they may kick). And surprisingly you nearly always can tell so in advance, because he has zero or one tours under his belt. Just don't dare to advice people if you never really played the game, only because you "think" about it. Maybe read some SPUF threads about it, with real expert players saying something about it. --Ohpleez 05:57, 19 December 2012 (PST)

You are right Guybrush, I should have reasoned my declarations and I apologise for not doing so. Below I correct my mistake and explain the reasons for my point of view.

Two of the most valuable assets for a team in MvM mode are the abilities of tanking and dealing high amounts of damage per second (DPS). One classical engineer excels on these two abilities, being able to chew up hordes in a few seconds and to absorbe high amounts of damage indefinitely by repairing his sentry. By equiping the gunslinger one misses these two great assets and get the marginal advantage of a low building time which can be obtained by buying cheap build cantines and upgrading the attacking speed of the wrench.

In the case of the medic I must say first that I am not in favour of its inclussion since you miss one member able to dealing damage. It is true that the team members gain in survivality, but this task is more efficiently performed by scout's milk and dispensers which can heal more than one member at once. This said, IMO, the only equipment which could justify its choice is the KritzKrieg, to give back the damage he is denying to the team.

A similar reasoning applies to the SMG as secondary for the sniper. A good sniper with upgraded Jarate is credit to team since it slows the enemies and increases the amount of damage the team deals. On the other side equiping SMG/carbine is a bad decission, basically because you have a sniper rifle which can deal more DPS and has juicier upgrades. DankeEngineer 08:40, 18 December 2012 (PST)

On the modification of the example combinations

Should the example combinations be finally changed? Maybe when MvM was released it had sense in theorizing and proposing possible good loadouts. But now the knowledge about this mode is higher and some of the example combinations (for example many of the scout's or the ones I comented before) have been proved not very efficient if one wants to consistently beat advanced and expert missions. I propose to follow the style of the spy's example combination, that is, propose a "Gold Standard" combination with possible variations on some weapons. An sketch of what I propose for some classes would be:

Scout: FaN (versatility)/Soda (raw DPS)/¿Scatter? + Milk + FoW/¿Sandman? Engie: FJ (crits)/Pomson (ranged damage)/¿Rescue Ranger? + Wrangler + Jag Sniper: Sidney Sleeper/Hitman/¿...? + Jarate + Bushwacka Medic : Overdose/Kritzkrieg/Ubersaw

DankeEngineer 04:12, 22 December 2012 (PST)

 Agree I reckon you're right, some of these combinations are perhaps outdated. Might be an idea to make an example page somewhere else first, let a few people have a look at it, and then paste it in here when everyone's happy. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 04:36, 22 December 2012 (PST)

 Agree We also need to remove all the reskins too. It's making the examples cluttered. Guybrush20X6 05:42, 22 December 2012 (PST)

I'm a bit wary of limiting to one "gold standard" per class - while there may be one choice that's the strongest for a given class, there will often be alternatives that are stronger because they make up for weaknesses in the overall group composition or group strategy. Shadowssinging 18:08, 18 January 2013 (PST)

I agree with you. There are a lot of situations when the choice of the strongest weapon is not clear at all and may vary with the playing style of each player and the composition of the rest of the team (thats why in my comment I also said that there should be room for variations). Good examples of this could be the Scout's shotgun or the Soldier's RL. But on the other hand, from my experience I strongly believe that most classes have at least one weapon slot where one choice is obviously strongest than the others under any situation. For example, for the Sniper I cannot imagine any situation where a machine gun or a shield would provide more benefits to the team than the Jarate. And I think that the same would apply to other weapons like Mad Milk, Buff Banner or Dead Ringer. DankeEngineer 05:45, 19 January 2013 (PST)

What about something like this for the Scout combos? Basically I extended the first combination of the list including the Soda Popper and the Fan O'War on the weapon list. Feel free to coment what would you change and make changes on it if you want.

Example Combinations
Combo			Usage
or or Soda Popper or Force-A-Nature or Scattergun	Mad Milk	or Fan O'War or Sandman	A loadout for a support Scout in Mann vs. Machine mode. For raw damage consider using the Soda Popper as it deals the more damage per second (DPS) among the Scout's primaries in a full shoot-reload cycle of the Scattergun. The Force-A-Nature trades DPS for more versatility: it can knockback the bomb-carrier into a bottomless pit (Coal Town) or keep it from deploying the bomb in the hatch; and also you can force jump to fastly get money in high ground (some waves in Decoy where robots spawn on the wood platform) or to take alternative routes to flank the robots and take the money dropped behind the horde or mark enemies with the Fan O'War. On maps with more cover and opportunities to flank the robots (Mannworks and Bigrock), the Scattergun can be useful for strong surprise attacks, getting covered to reload for the next attack. Over all the secondaries, Mad Milk is the prefered choice. Its ability to heal on damage greatly increases the survivability of your teammates, specially against giants, when teammates cannot benefit from the health-on-kill upgrades of their weapons. Also upgraded Mad Milk slows down the robots, which is very useful to deal with Giant Scouts. Pistols are not a good coice since primary weapons are normally better options to deal damage, being the advantage of shooting targets at long range marginal compared to the benefits of the Milk. The cans are neither recomended since they make you lose some precious seconds when you drink them and their benefits are more efficiently achieved by other means without having to renounce the Milk (Uber canteens for Bonk! Atomic Punch; and Soda Popper, Fan O'War and speed upgrades for Crit-A-Cola) With the Fan O'War you can mark for death high priority targets. Using both Mad Milk and the Fan O'War on a giant or Sentry Buster immediately makes it easier for your team finish them off. In the final waves, if you have some spare credits you may want to switch to the Sandman and get the upgrade of mark for death to be able to mark the robots from a safer distance. Another option to safely mark objectives would be to keep the Fan O'War equiped and spend the money in Uber cantines instead of in Sandman upgrades. Recomended upgrades: Movement Speed, Slow milk, resistances (depending on the map), Milk recharge rate, Jump height (just 1 point might be fine). If spare on credits, upgrades on shotgun damage (to one shoot Über Medics) and reload speed (if you are using the Scattergun) might be good choices.

DankeEngineer 05:29, 26 December 2012 (PST)

WIP: Group Composition

This is a section being written for the general strategy section that I'm working on here first to get comments - Shadowssinging 06:18, 19 January 2013 (PST).

MvM increases the emphasis on class specialization over standard player vs player (PvP) game modes, with each class filling a unique niche. Each of the various types of robots effectively takes advantage of the weaknesses of a particular class. As all classes are highly dependent on purchased upgrades, and there are no refunds after the first wave has begun, it becomes critical to have a balanced group from the beginning, and for players joining in mid-mission to pay close attention to what the weaknesses of the current group are.

Because the effectiveness of a group highly depends on synergies between the classes, there is a diminishing return when "stacking" multiples of the same class. A heavily stacked group amplifies weaknesses of each class to a particular type of robot unit, usually resulting in one or more waves that are disproportionately difficult, and the other waves going relatively smoothly. Players should generally negotiate before the first wave to insure that they are not too heavily loaded on any particular class to avoid a painful and possibly contentious mission restart scenario in later waves. Note however, that viable, but less than optimal groups are sometimes possible - certain stacked compositions such as 6 engineers are known to succeed often enough with competent players and good strategy that some players will swear by them.

A good starting point for a solid group is below. This is not the only viable or necessarily the absolute most optimal, but it permits reasonably competent players good opportunities for their classes to complement one another.

1. Cash Collector - ideally a scout, but alternatively, a spy, particularly with movement and resistance upgrades.
2. Engineer - Engineers are arguably the strongest part of a MVM group, with a sentry to hold enemies at choke points, dispenser to give other damage dealers virtually infinite ammunition, and teleporter to shorten the run from spawn.
3. Pyro - A pyro can to close to medium range damage aross a wide area, mowing down groups of weaker robots, and weakening stronger ones with ongoing burn to be dealt with by teammates later.More importantly, the pyro has an overwhelmingly powerful knockback with the airburst and its upgrades, providing the only strong possibility of moving the bomb back away from the bombhole.
4. Heavy - Versatile medium to long range damage that can either be focused on a single, strong enemy, or spread out across a group of enemies to mow down the weak, and weaken the strong.
5. 2 support or damage dealers. A demoman or soldier will increase area DPS, a sniper can help with shutting down giant robots from a distance as well as provide the jarate debuff, and a spy can slow down groups of robots since the sapper is an AoE effect in MvM, and can help by doing high single target damage to giants. A medic becomes essential at higher difficulties, but is seen as lost DPS at lower levels. A second engineer, pyro, or heavy are also viable options

-

Good work so far but there should be more about the Medic and maybe mention that other classes have knockback weapons that can worrk in a pinch when the Pyro isn't around Guybrush20X6 07:39, 19 January 2013 (PST)

Have robot spies gotten better at pretending to be players?

'Robots rarely, if ever, jump. Maps are designed so most places can be reached without jumping. If you need to evade pursuing robots, look for something to jump on or over.

If there are Spies on the field, you can also quickly show teammates that you are not a disguised enemy Spy by hopping.'

I just played a wave where I saw two spies decloak, Mad Milk'd them, blew one of them away, shot the other one, and even as I was reloading and finishing him off, he stopped moving, looked straight at me, and jumped up and down repeatedly in place. I don't know if this was a weird fluke, or if Valve has programmed the robo-spies to read this wiki :-)

Anyway if someone else can confirm or if I see it happen again clearly, I'll update the wiki.

TitaniumCarbide 18:48, 23 March 2013 (PDT)

 Nope.avi All bot (except puppet bot) programmed to jump when stuck at somethings. Example like Giant bot jump over my sentry in Bigrock because sentry blocked its way. Rikka Takanashi (talk) • (contributions) 19:29, 23 March 2013 (PDT)

Expanding Community Strategy

I personally think that this is too much data for just one page. Much how each class has a 4 subset strategies for multiplayer (Basic, Community, Anti and Vs), I propose something similar for Mann vs machine strategy, since it is just as important as Multiplayer. All this information here just seems a bit too... cluttered. (Edit, reworked the title, sounded odd, won't need to sign again) Dwarf Ninjas (talk) 19:10, 26 August 2013 (PDT)

ÜberCharge vs Übercharge

Both ÜberCharge and Help:Style guide/A-Z capitalize the C. However, (perhaps a unique case) the MvM Upgrade menu and the Power Up Canteen page use the lower case c. So far, in exception to the present style guide, I am using little c in context of the canteen and big C everywhere else. If this is important to straighten out, (e.g., big C for the proper noun and little c for verb and adjective forms), it could be discussed at Help talk:Style guide/A-Z. Mikado282 (talk) 08:37, 15 June 2014 (PDT)