Team Fortress 2 Tips - How to Effectively Use Sticky Bombs as a Demoman

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The Basics

Relive the glory of smiting your pals with remote mines in Goldeneye! Your sticky bomb launcher has a clip of eight sticky bombs with a max of 16 more in your pockets. Holding primary fire will charge your launcher, allowing you to fire further. Secondary fire will detonate your sticky bombs. The blast from two bombs is usually enough to kill any class, and the explosion will send the unlucky target flying with incredible force, often enough to kill them from falling damage or break the connection from an ubercharging Medic. Only eight sticky bombs can be placed at a time; if a ninth is fired, the first sticky will explode. Stickies will stick on to just about every surface. The enemy can knock them off with attacks, but cannot destroy the stickies outright. Amazingly enough, Scouts can bat away mid-air stickies, but this is more of a freak detail than an actual tactic.

Defense

Whereas the Engineer applies area denial via cold, soulless machinery, the Demoman spreads area denial with a living brain and massive explosions. The sticky is easily hideable, incredibly powerful, and most importantly, can’t be sapped. Just the sight of a couple of stickies is enough to cause the opposition to look for another path. Carpeting the capture point or intelligence room with sticky bombs will ensure a final and definite defense. Just wait for the “enemy team is grabbing your stuff” announcement and pull the remote trigger to save your team’s bacon. Sticking around and babysitting your bombs is not advised, as the fastest way for the enemy to clear the stickies is to kill you, so make yourself scarce and help your buddies on the front line. Without a responsible Demoman to murder, the enemy’s only choice is to slowly and laboriously shoot the stickies away. To counter this, make sure to hide a couple of stickies in unexpected places, like behind the desk and the niche to the left of the desk in 2Fort’s intel room. If your remote trigger reflex is fast enough, you’ll still scatter his limbs about the room. Defensive Demomen are vital to the new Gold Rush map, as the cart’s progress can be easily shut down by peppering it with plenty of stickies.

Offense

Spies can only do so much against sentries. If enemy Engineers know he’s coming, a Spy’s job is almost impossible. The other classes need either undisturbed cover or an ubercharge to topple the beeping bottleneck. Thank god for the Demoman. Lobbing a couple of stickies from general safety and firing will clear the sentry and its attending Engineer, leaving your teammates to carry you to the capture point in a tickertape parade. This is especially vital in areas like the rear of Dustbowl’s second stage, where sentries can be placed in hard-to-reach locations. Just peek and fire around the corner a couple of times from upstairs and scrap the entire camp of sentries below.

Sticky Bomb Jumping

It’s going to take a lot of practice to get it right, but you can travel to impossible-to-reach areas by detonating a sticky bomb underneath you. The principle is much like the Soldier’s rocket jump, but on a grander scale. The main trick is to crouch-jump right as you detonate. With one sticky, a skilled player can jump from battlement to battlement on 2Fort. The catch is, of course, that while the bigger blast will throw you further, it’s also going to do more damage to you. One sticky will usually knock off about 100 points of health. Two stickies can throw you just about anywhere you can imagine, but will leave you with a meager sliver of health. Three or more stickies will almost always gib you if you don’t have Medic supervision. Multiple stickes will also alter your trajectory by their placement; the closer your stickies are bunched, the higher you will go. Spread them apart and you’ll go further.