In Team Fortress 2, each class has a variety of loadouts. This essentially means that it can be played in more than one way. The main things you need to choose each time are your main weapon and secondary weapon. And that choice will determine a lot about your movement, positioning, tactics, etc. Know our TF2 Guide to Chosen Weapons.
How to Choose Your Weapons in TF2
Before you choose your loadout in TF2, you need to determine what class or classes you want to play. Ideally, you should stick to one or two classes and master those.
Once you’ve chosen your class, check what the main options are. The complete class loadout will include your main weapon, secondary weapon, and melee weapon. In most cases, the main weapon is the most important choice, so you should focus on that.
Scout Loadouts
The Scout is a high movement speed class that can be utilized to scout the surroundings without getting killed. Of course, you can still die, but you’re so fast that it’s not easy for enemies to hit you. Snipers will have difficulty landing a headshot, and the heavy-duty classes won’t even come close to you.
Scout loadouts revolve around survivability and speed. The main weapon options are the following:
- Scattergun (default)
- Force-A-Nature
- Shortstop
- Soda Popper
- Baby Face’s Blaster
- Black Scatter
These guns come with key bonuses to some attributes, such as firing speed or reload speed, but they also have penalties such as a smaller clip size or fewer pellets per shot. Experimenting with each weapon is the best way to learn what suits you best.
Baby Face’s Blaster is quite good to become as fast as possible. This gun requires you to accept a small initial debuff but gives you the potential to move at warp speed if you know how to damage your opponents. The more damage you deal, the closer you get to moving at 173% of the normal speed.
Soldier Loadouts
The Soldier is one of the most well-balanced classes, offering players a mix of offensive and defensive capabilities. If you like to get deeply involved in the fight but still can get away if you need to, the Soldier is a perfect choice.
Using the rocket jump mechanic, this class can quickly go from A to B in the most unusual ways. Another significant benefit of the Soldier is his large health pool. He starts with 200 HP but can be overhealed up to 300.
Here are the Soldier’s main weapons:
- Rocket Launcher
- Original
- Direct Hit
- Black Box
- Rocket Jumper
- Liberty Launcher
- Cow Mangler 5000
- Beggar’s Bazooka
- Air Strike
Direct Hit and Rocket Jumper are the two most interesting weapons on this list. Direct Hit will give you fast rockets with enhanced damage, guaranteeing you will hit your targets if you aim correctly.
The Rocket Jumper transforms the Soldier’s main weapon into a mobility item. You no longer deal any damage with it, but you can jump much more easily from place to place without being damaged by it.
Pyro Loadouts
Pyro is a pyromaniac, and you can easily recognize him because he’s always equipped with a flame thrower. This class is excellent at close range and in narrow spaces such as rooms.
Not many people pick Pyro because he’s significantly more challenging to play than other classes. However, if you master the art of getting close to your opponents without getting killed, the Pyro is a monster at close range.
Some classes, such as Sniper, have a hard time against him because of the poor visibility created by his Flame Thrower. Other classes, such as Heavy, struggle against the Pyro because of their low movement speed.
Here are the main weapons that you can use when playing Pyro:
- Flame Thrower
- Nostromo Napalmer
- Backburner
- Degreaser
- Phlogistinator
- Rainblower
- Dragon’s Fury
These weapons give you the ability to burn enemies, extinguish allies, heal yourself, and cause damage over time. You should use Dragon’s Fury if your time uses a double-Pyro strategy. This flame thrower deals +300% damage to burning targets.
Demoman Loadouts
The Demoman is all about AoE damage. This class is very similar to the Sniper class, but instead of focusing on one target, you need to focus on multiple targets.
Playing Demoman is a lot of fun, but it is by no means easy. This class requires excellent accuracy and intuition. You need always to guess where the target is going. If you shoot at a player’s current location, you will often miss because the projectiles you’re shooting are not that fast.
These are the main weapons for this class:
- Grenade Launcher
- Loch-n-Load
- Ali Baba’s Wee Booties
- Loose Cannon
- B.A.S.E. Jumper
- Iron Bomber
The best options here are probably Iron Bomber and Loch-n-Load. The reason is simple: when your projectiles deal more damage or travel faster, the odds of getting kills are higher.
Heavy Loadouts
If you need a serious tank, pick the Heavy Weapons Guy. This class is incredibly hard-to-kill, having 300 HP by default and 450 HP when overhealed by a Medic. Teams often combine the Heavy class with the Medic class, creating a hard-to-kill duo.
It can take several agents to bring down just one Heavy, but the combination of huge size and slow movement speed does make this class an easy target for Snipers, Pyros, and so on.
When playing Heavy, you can pick one of the following main weapons:
- Minigun
- Iron Curtain
- Natascha
- Brass Beast
- Tomislav
- Huo-Long Heater
If you want to play this class as a real Terminator, pick the Brass Beast option. But if you prefer to be a bit speedier in everything you do, select the Tomislav option.
Engineer Loadouts
The Engineer is a support class specializing in creating offensive and defensive structures that aid his team. This is another one of those challenging classes to master, but if you have a good team, you can do amazing things with it.
Your goal should always be slowly taking away space from your opponents and creating traps at every turn. If you’ve done your job correctly, the enemy team will find it challenging to advance, and its movements will be more restrained.
The primary weapon of the Engineer can be one of the following:
- Shotgun
- Frontier Justice
- Widowmaker
- Pomson 6000
- Rescue Ranger
- Panic Attack
All of these guns are quite modest. The Engineer’s specialty is building sentries; his loadout revolves around secondary weapons. Here are the options:
- Pistol
- Lugermorph
- CAPPER
- Wrangler
- Geiger Counter
- Short Circuit
The best is probably the Wrangler because it allows you to manually control your sentry gun.
Medic Loadouts
The Medic class is another support class used often right behind the frontline. If you have a Heavy or two in the team, healing them will greatly prolong their life, giving the other team members excellent cover and a lot of space to maneuver.
Just like in the case of the Engineer, the Medic’s real power comes from his secondary weapon. The options you can choose from are the following:
- Medi Gun (default)
- Kritzkrieg
- Quick-Fix
- Vaccinator
The default is quite good, but you can also experiment with the other options.
Sniper Loadouts
The Sniper is many players’ favorite class because it allows them to get a lot of kills and make a huge difference for their team. However, don’t play this class if you can’t aim properly or don’t know how to relocate after a few kills.
The Sniper’s main weapons include the following:
- Sniper Rifle
- AWPer Hand
- Huntsman
- Fortified Compound
- Sydney Sleeper
- Bazaar Bargain
- Machina
- Shooting Star
- Hitman’s Heatmaker
- Classic
As you can see, there are many options to work with. Apart from the Huntsman, which radically changes your playstyle, all the other rifles offer a slight advantage in one area (such as damage) but come with penalties in others. The best option is probably Bazaar Bargain.
Spy Loadouts
The Spy is the most annoying class to play against. It’s hard to enjoy playing it yourself, but you don’t want your opponents to pick it either. Spies are subtle assassins who usually know how to remain invisible until they get the job done. They’re great against Snipers and other hard-to-reach targets on the battlefield.
The Spy’s most important weapons are his melee ones. Here are the options:
- Knife
- Prinny Machete
- Saxxy
- Golden Frying Pan
- Sharp Dresser
- Black Rose
- Your Eternal Reward
- Wanga Prick
- Conniver’s Kunai
- Big Earner
- Spy-cicle
These are highly peculiar items offering a wide range of buffs and debuffs.
