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By the time your adversary races towards your 'body' to frisk you for cash and pull gold fillings out of your mouth, you'll already be behind him, poised for the killing blow. — Dead Ringer publicity blurb
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The Dead Ringer is an unlockable PDA weapon for the Spy. It is a gold-plated pocket watch with an engraving of a hummingbird on its lid, and a circular Cloak display within.
This weapon's main attribute is to Cloak the owner for 6.5 seconds upon being injured, leaving behind a fake Spy corpse to distract and deceive enemies. If the player is disguised as a friendly class, activation drops a ragdoll corpse of that class. To use this Cloak, the Spy must be holding the watch by pressing secondary fire before taking damage. The Cloak generated is instantaneous, and can generate certain information in the game that will indicate the Spy is dead.
The Dead Ringer blocks 90% of the damage from the activating hit as well as during the first 6.5 seconds of the feign death Cloak. This allows the player to survive fully charged headshots by Snipers or backstabs from enemy Spies, as long as the user has a sufficient amount of Health before the attack was made. Since backstabs have a base damage of 6 times the victim's current health, and the initial hit that activates the Dead Ringer does 10% damage, backstabs will deal 6/10 of the Spy's current health. Additionally, the watch prevents the Cloak from flickering upon impact with enemies or damage.
The Dead Ringer uncloaks with a very loud and distinct sound. The uncloak noise is quite loud up-close, but rapidly fades with distance. The Dead Ringer synergies extremely well with the Saharan Spy item set taking away the major drawback of the loud de-Cloak. Emerging from the Dead Ringer's Cloak before it is fully used will always drain a minimum of 60% of its meter. Like the standard Invisibility Watch, resupply areas, Dispensers, picked up weapons, and ammo can also replenish the Cloak meter. A large ammo box and medium boxes will restore 35% and small boxes 25%. Dispensers in particular recharge a cloaked Spy with this watch differently depending on the building's level. Level 1 will only slow down the time it takes to decloak. Level 3 Dispensers, however, will very slowly recharge the Cloak to full. If a Spy is cloaked for more than 6.5 seconds using the Dead Ringer, through collecting ammo or other sources, it will revert to a standard Cloak, losing the 90% damage reduction and flickering if the player collides with an enemy or gets shot.
Activating the Dead Ringer while already on fire extinguishes it. The player must take evasive action, however, as they can be lit on fire again during Cloak. The Dead Ringer Cloak will activate even if the Spy was previously covered by Jarate – though the increased damage will still be in effect – but will short out if he is hit by Jarate while the Cloak is active. The Tribalman's Shiv, Southern Hospitality, or Boston Basher can inflict bleed which will cause the Spy to drop blood even while cloaked, allowing him to be tracked by sharp-eyed opponents.
The Dead Ringer is automatically given to any player who obtains 17 Spy achievements.
Feign death effects
Feign deaths have certain characteristics that affect the game. Some effects are replicated as if the Spy was killed for real, some effects are faked to aid in the deception, and other effects are not replicated or faked (which allows alert opponents to recognize the death was faked).
| Mechanics replicated
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| Mechanics faked
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| Mechanics not replicated or faked
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Function times
| Function times (in seconds)
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| Effect
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90% damage reduction
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| Cloak maximum duration
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6.5 s
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| Cloak fade time
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Instant
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| Decloak fade time
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Player: 2.2 s
World: 1.8 s
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| Recharge time
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16 s
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| Activation time
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Instant
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| Values are approximate and determined by community testing.
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Crafting
Blueprint
As a crafting ingredient
Related achievements
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Shorn Connery
Decapitate a cloaked Spy.
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Spyalectical Materialism
Kill or assist in killing 10 cloaked Spies.
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Sleeper Agent
Kill an enemy who triggered your feign death in the last 20 seconds.
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Spies Like Us
While cloaked, bump into an enemy cloaked Spy.
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Update history
May 21, 2009 Patch (
Sniper vs. Spy Update)
- The Dead Ringer was added to the game.
May 22, 2009 Patch
- Fixed Spy feign death not being reflected in scoreboard.
May 26, 2009 Patch
- This item now fully drains the Cloak meter, even if the Spy uncloaks early.
May 29, 2009 Patch
- Fixed Spies not being telefragged when standing on an enemy teleporter exit with this item enabled.
June 8, 2009 Patch
- This item can now be activated while carrying the flag.
June 23, 2009 Patch
- This item's Cloak consume rate has been slightly reduced, giving about an extra second of Cloak time on a full meter.
- Emerging from this item's Cloak now drains up to 40% of the Cloak meter instead of 100%. This drain only happens if the meter is at least 60% full.
- This item's Cloak meter can now be regenerated from ammo sources.
- This item's "extra" Cloak powers (damage reduction and no-flicker) are not extended by obtaining ammo.
- Being attacked while taunting with this item out no longer triggers a Spy's Cloak, but instead keeps the damage reduction for the remaining duration of the taunt.
June 25, 2009 Patch
- Fixed this item's damage reduction exploit involving Spy taunting.
July 14, 2009 Patch
- [Undocumented] This item's recharge time was shortened from 18.5 seconds to 16.5 seconds.
January 6, 2010 Patch
- This item now reduces Cloak to 40% when uncloaking early.
- Made a 35% cap on the amount of Cloak it can gain from an ammo pack.
- It now has a quieter de-Cloak sound.
January 13, 2010 Patch
- Feigning death can now play custom death animations like a normal death (head loss, Sniper shot, backstab, etc).
- Feigning death due to explosive damage now has a chance to gib, like a normal death.
- Corpses from a feign death now use the correct wearable behavior (hats stay on, or fall off as they should).
- The weapons dropped by feign death corpses now have appropriate physics and collision for their type.
- Fixed Spies that feign death while disguised as enemy Spies dropping fake ragdolls wearing a mask.
- Fixed a couple of physics issues on ragdolls created by feign death.
May 20, 2010 Patch
September 30, 2010 Patch (Mann-Conomy Update)
Bugs
- The Cloak meter displayed on the watch does not properly correspond to the actual amount of Cloak available.
- If the Spy takes any damage – with the exception of taunt kills that stun the enemy like the Gunslinger – while taunting with the Dead Ringer activated, the Spy does not feign death and a fake watch is created. However, only the first hit will have reduced damage. Each hit after that takes full damage. The player can right click again to activate the actual Dead Ringer.
- Feigning death on circumstances that should trigger an unique death scream will issue a normal death scream.
- On some community servers when an autobalance is about to be initiated, activating the Dead Ringer may result in being autobalanced. In some cases just activating the Dead Ringer results in an instant respawn.
- The damage reduction from the Dead Ringer applies to drowning damage as well. However, the Spy will recover the full amount of health that would have been lost without the Dead Ringer, allowing players to heal themselves by intentionally drowning.
- Pulling out the Dead Ringer while disguised as a Demoman with the Chargin' Targe will cause the Demoman's charging voice clip to play.
- Activating the watch upon round start will sometimes cause the Spy not to hold up the watch. This can only be fixed by dying.
- The Dead Ringer cannot be used to wash off Jarate, yet the tips provided on the loading screen state otherwise.
- There is an occasional bug that occurs with the Dead Ringer where, once activated, the watch will report that the Spy's killer "got revenge" on him, even if they were not dominated or don't exist. When the Spy is killed by environmental hazards or fall damage, "ERRORNAME" will get revenge on the Spy. These messages are only broadcast to the other team, just like all faked mechanics of the Dead Ringer.
- The Sleeper Agent achievement does not check if activation and kill are in the same round, so if the Dead Ringer is activated one round, the Spy could kill the activator in the next round if they manage to get them in twenty seconds since activation.
- If vaporized by the Cow Mangler 5000 or Righteous Bison, feigning death will sometimes drop two corpses: one vaporized and the other a ragdoll/gibs.
- If you use the default Revolver you can see three hands by reloading the Revolver whilst quickly activating the Dead Ringer.
Trivia
- When ping and network transmission are not an issue, a Spy can bring up the Dead Ringer and be protected in less than 1/100th of a second. In the average online match this margin is greater, but the times serve to show that the Dead Ringer was designed with no real activation delay.
- Dead Ringer is a phrase used to describe an exact duplicate of something or someone else; for example, "He's a Dead Ringer for that BLU Spy we shot earlier!". The "ringer" part of the phrase refers to a replacement or impostor, especially in sporting events, making the fake corpse an actual "dead ringer".
- The ability to feign death was present in Team Fortress Classic, and the Dead Ringer's function was likely inspired by that ability. However, in Team Fortress Classic, feigning death was limited to being rendered immobile and having to hope that the enemy would have already passed by when you uncloaked.
- On the third day of the Sniper vs. Spy Update where the Razorback was introduced, the Dead Ringer can be seen in the "dead" Spy's hand, despite the fact that it wouldn't be officially announced until the next day.[1]
Gallery
See also
References
Pyro
Demoman
Heavy
Engineer
Sniper
Spy
