For those who don't know, this is a somewhat gimmicky, and I'll try to keep the explanation as to why somewhat brief. The Degreaser is a flamethrower that does less direct damage and less burn damage to opponents who are burning, but allows a 65% quicker weapon switch. The Reserve Shooter is a shotgun with half the normal magazine size, but allows critical hits on airborne targets three seconds after being drawn, and allows a 15% quicker weapon switch. The Axtinguisher, a fire axe wrapped with barbed wire, does critical damage to players on fire, while doing pathetic damage to those that aren't.
The set basically allows you to puff someone to set them on fire, and in the next half second deal a 150 damage critical hit from the axtinguisher. This is in a game where majority of classes have a maximum health of 150 or less, and the highest unbuffed health or a class is 300. This setup is UNBELIEVABLE in melee combat, cutting swathes through your foes, and being able to suppress most melee combatants with little trouble.
Being mostly melee and a little mean-spirited, I spent most of my time slapping around the lower health classes, only hitting the mid to high health ones while they were distracted. All was going good, as I was running away between fights to heal and would rack up around 2-3 kills per life if i was able to get over to RED base. While this sounds pretty sweet, in all honesty I wasn't doing much, only annoying the enemy team due to my classes' innate inability to fight a sentry gun farm. All that was getting accomplished was thinning out enemy numbers when big fights would go down. That's when the streak started happening.
When you kill or assist in killing someone four times in a row, without them killing you back, you get a Domination on that player. Aside from being negative reinforcement to kill the person dominating you (in increasingly cruel ways), and that person becoming an active Nemesis in meta-game, you receive bonus points for getting a Revenge kill on the Nemesis. During a particularly good push on the RED team, I was able to get around three dominations, with one particular victim being a sniper. This story is where the inherent cruelty of the Domination system shows its colors, and infuriates players, driving them into a downward spiral.
While the other two players were able to kill me and drop those dominations, this poor sniper had no such luck. When I wasn't poking my head in at him while he was already hurt and harassing him that way, I was killing him in the halls with a quick puff of flames followed by an axe to the face. The sheer amount of rage was palpable through the internet, his advances and tactics becoming more and more desperate. He would join in a large group of teammates just to see me either flee, be killed by someone else at the last second and rob him of his victory, or be specifically singled out and bludgeoned by my dull axe. It came to the point where on seeing me, he wouldn't even try to attack and only flee, ignoring any chance of revenge or fun in the slaughter.
One of the reasons I was able to get to him was he was playing with The Huntsman, a mid range bow and arrow, and had a more melee oriented set. He must have dearly loved this set, as he had plenty of times he could have switched his load-out to something with a much farther a range early in the brawl. He could have just blow my head off and been done with it. There must have been some deep seated obligation to redeem himself with that set, some gut-clenching feeling of "It has to work this time, he can't kill me every time!", some misplaced hope that his tenacity and persistence would pay off just once. Much like his skull, his self confidence, and his kill to death ratio, this hope would be burnt to cinders.
This cruel act, which I well aware of, was just something I could not stop even if I had wanted to. It was such a weird phenomenon, with it actually slowly effecting his game play, where I would actively seek him out in areas he would otherwise be safe in, and terrorize the sniper with just my presence. It was both intriguing and somehow therapeutic to slowly twist and morph what should have been a simple Capture The Flag map into something much more sinister. The meta-game encompassed this sniper's normal game, making him focused on the kill of just one individual.Just one kill.It went around from being player cruelty to becoming inspirational, seeing him clip me down a bit more each fight, learning how to combat this horrific gas-masked menace, and actually hoping he would come through finally.
This meta-game lasted most of the map, carrying through to the last few minutes of the game. At one point, he had finally realized that he should just switch his load-out, and was successful in keeping me at a range. Not only could I not go outside for fear of a head-shot and letting this game end, but I was unable to pierce his team's heavy defenses as they were on the losing side of this map and turtling. During a particular lull in the fighting, I started to stand around in one of the front doors, dodging the snipers' shots from the enemy battlements, being a living testament to my sniper rival's inability to end the fight, beyond a last minute stalemate.
This sparked something in him. Be it one final display of defiance, one last hope for redemption, one last chance at revenge, I don't know, and probably never will. But this had no doubt sparked something in him. As I was trying to check how much longer until BLU victory, I stood still just inside doorway looking at the tab menu. All of a sudden I realized I was in third person mode. In the last few moments before the maps end, the sniper had switched back to his Huntsman load-out, ran across the hell that was outside, ducked in, and started to taunt kill me.
In Team Fortress 2, all weapons have the ability to be taunted with, but a few will actually be able to inflict instant kills. The Huntsman is one of these, where the sniper spins his arrow behind him, stabs his enemy to stun them, then pulls the arrow out and the enemy dies. Keep that in mind that first hit stuns, and it's the second hit that kills. While I was standing around, the sniper I had so cruelly taunted, harassed, and killed numerous times had been proactive and was attempting to right all wrongs in one glorious moment of impalement and revenge.
The instant I had noticed the sniper had finally gained his revenge,finallycould move on, I felt proud of him. In that very instant I had summed up the entire struggle, the hardship he had faced, the fact that he wasfinallyfinished and could move on with playing the game the way it was suppose to be. It was beautiful. Just as I had felt his rage through the internet, I could feel his relief. The fight was over, and though his team lost, he had won his conflict.
And then he burnt to death.
Yes, really. He burnt to death. As quickly as that cathartic moment had came, it had passed. Apparently in his haste to finish, his desire not just to kill me with an unceremonious arrow to the head, but to taunt kill me and say "Here I am, we are done.", he had failed to notice one of my teammates lurking behind us. This teammate specifically was another pyro. On crossing the bridge, he had apparently taken quite a bit of damage, and was lucky just to get inside the doorway. On starting his taunt kill, my teammate saw me about to die, and decided he would end the map with a bang, and promptly burnt the sniper to death right before he could pull the arrow from my gut and finish the job.
At this point I was amazed. Not only that the map had contained such an epic feud, such incredible hardship, and such a wonderful ending, but that ending had just been pissed all over in one of the greatest anti-climaxes imaginable. And apparently the piss was gasoline, being followed closely by a lit match. I couldn't help but laugh, and taunt along with my friend, as the sniper was no doubt spitting every death curse imaginable at me. At the end of the map, I looked high and low for the sniper's name, unable to find it, and noticing I had lost a current domination.Our team had broken that player's spirit so much he disconnected.Nothing was said from him, no notification, not even a peep. He had just gone.
Although I have long forgotten that poor sniper's name, I will never forget what he had done, what he had shown me, and how horribly I had pissed him off. If you liked this story, I'll be posting a couple more today to make up for the days I have missed due to running around preparing for a trip I had gone on this weekend.
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