Store Page
Team Fortress 2
All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos Workshop News Guides Reviews

Team Fortress 2

Store Page
Team Fortress 2 > Guides > Dom's Guides
Not enough ratings
A [VIDEO] Guide to the Revolver vs the Enforcer (OUTDATED!)
By Dom
A VIDEO guide to the spy's revolver versus the spy's Enforcer unlock.
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Created by
Dom
Offline
Category: Classes, Gameplay Basics, Loot, Multiplayer, Weapons
Languages: English
Class: Spy
Posted
Updated
6 Feb, 2015 @ 4:01pm
10 Jul, 2015 @ 4:20pm
1,182 Unique Visitors
6 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Enjoy 
Would Rather Read Than Watch a Video? 
More Guides by Dom 
Comments
Enjoy
Would Rather Read Than Watch a Video?
Note: This is the video's script and may not be formatted well for reading.


Hey everyone, Dom here. Today I’d like to talk briefly about 2 item in Team Fortress 2. The Spy’s default Revolver versus the Enforcer.

Let’s start by looking at the stats of the Enforcer, mainly because the stock revolver doesn’t have stats.

The Enforcer deals 20% more damage but also fires 20% slower. It has no random crits and deals less damage for its first shoot if the spy was disguised.

Starting from the top, mathematically the 20% increased damage is nullified by the 20% slower firing rate. You see in terms of DPS or damage-per-second these 2 guns match up equally. If the 2 guns deal the same damage in the long run but the Enforcer has 2 and a half extra downsides isn’t it a downgrade? Well not really. There are a lot of factors at play.

Firstly, the DPS applies to the perfect situation where both guns are continually fired. In actual gameplay players will normally fire, reposition, fire, reposition. There are still SOME cases where players continually fire, such as when taking out a stationary target like a engineer building from afar. These cases are rare. Usually players don’t continually fire and thus aren’t burden’s by the Enforcer’s fire rate downside to the maximum degree.

One thing the Enforcer excels at is picking of damaged fleeing enemies. The greater damage makes the gun better at this task. It has higher burst-damage. If a situation comes up where an enemy might get away and only one shot can be landed on them, the Enforcer wins versus the revolver.

What’s bad about the Enforcer is that it’s less forgiving than the revolver. If a spy misses a single shot with the revolver that’s some lost potential damage, if the spy misses a shot with the Enforcer that’s a greater loss. In terms of user-friendliness and reliability the revolver wins. Moving on.

The no-random crits stat on the Enforcer is really bad. More-so then the average player might think. Random crits aren’t 100% random. To an extent they’re based off of the damage the player dealt in the last 20 seconds. When a player deals damage, their sentry gun deals damage or their heal target deals damage the player’s crit chance goes up. The base crit chance of most weapons is 2%. This percent can be boosted up to 12% by dealing damage. If a player deals 800 damage in the last 20 seconds they get the max crit chance. Looking at the spy class, whenever they backstab an opponent they deal double the victim’s current health times 3 (because backstabs are always crits). This number can easily exceed 800. Therefore after backstabbing a player the spy will almost always have maximum crit-chance on their revolver. The high critical hit chance of the spy is completely wasted with the Enforcer.

One misconception with the Enforcer is that it’s more accurate. There’s a mechanic in Team Fortress 2 is called spread recovery. Basically a lot of weapons including these 2 guns fire completely straight bullets. However, after firing a weapon for a few seconds any following shots will be slightly inaccurate. If the player doesn’t fire the weapon in this period of time the weapon will recover and the next shot will be perfect once again. The misconception is: people think since the Enforcer fires slower that the time between shots is enough to trigger the bullet spread to recover. This is incorrect.

Annnd that’s all I have to say about the Revolver versus the Enforcer. Over-all the 2 weapons are well balanced versus each other. It really come down to gameplay preference and taste as to what weapon to use. A player who backstabs and fires while disguised more frequently will benefit from the revolver more while a player who takes a more head-on approach to playing spy will benefit from the enforcer more.

Thanks for watching, like if you enjoyed or learned something new and subscribe for more videos like this one. Au revoir.

Thanks for reading. Don't forget to like/fav if you did. Subscribe to me on YouTube.
2 Comments
< >
Mashpit 18 Feb, 2015 @ 8:23am 
You forgot the fact that while the revolver requires 3 shots to hit the 125 damage threshhold (60 damage max per shot at max rampup), the Enforcer can do so in 2 shots (72 dmg per shot at max rampup). The Enforcer actually does have the upper hand in accuracy (it has the same spread reset time as the Ambassador, which means perfect accuracy every .95 seconds instead of 1.25 seconds)
In practice, this means you can just take on just about any 125hp class (including Scout and Engi, who should usually have an advantage in equal health combat), Medics if you get the first hit, Demomen and Pyros if you're at a decent distance and even Soldiers if you have the upper ground - without even having to disguise, cloak, backstab, or do any of the things that make Spy a SPY.
Enforcer needs either a huge clip size reduction or be incredibly inaccurate in order to not be an upgrade. It matches the DPS of the stock, but it hits important breakpoints much faster.
Vallinek 6 Feb, 2015 @ 4:44pm 
A new series of guides? Woot!
Those seem to be very interesting topics, definitely more so for your usual TF2 player than the custom mods.
Keep up the good work.