You've just joined, you enter the 'Pick a Class' screen. You view your team's line-up, only disapointed to see four snipers, three engineers and one spy. Is being the fourth engineer or the fifth sniper going to benefit your team? Not likely.

And it's not just pick classes, while it may seem beneficial, being the seventh heavy on your team isn't going to help. The moral of the story is, don't stack classes. Maximum two of each class, three IF you really need them, otherwise two.

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There is nothing more frustrating than to see a pyro who does not extinguish a burning teammate, only for that teammate to burn to death. Not only do you gain 20 health by extinguishing them, you have also benefited the team by allowing that player to contribute rather than have to wait to respawn (respawn timers can exceed 20 seconds at most).

• Did you know...
  To extinguish a teammate, all you have to do is press Mouse 2, that's right, it's air blast. It's that simple. Now you know how to save that burning lime green scout; what do you do? let him die you extinguish him of course.
  
  

Scenario: there's an engineer on your team who is having trouble maintaining his nest; his sentry is being shot at, a spy is sapping his teleporter and his dispenser is level one. You have 200 metal what do you do?

A. Walk on by and start your own nest
B. Repair his sentry
C. Remove the sapper off the teleporter
D. Upgrade his dispenser

If you chose B or C, you've made the right choice. By helping him, for instance, repair his sentry, the engineer could then focus on removing the sapper off the teleporter. Walking on by and starting your own nest is not only going to get his nest destroyed, your nest is going to be weaker (as you have to start from the start), leaving your nest more vulnerable. If you chose C, thats not going to help your fellow engineer, who will still have the problem of saving his teleporter and letting his sentry be destroyed or saving his sentry and letting his teleporter be destroyed. If you help him, he could have both the teleporter and the sentry up.

To summarise, in order of priority:

1. Remove Sappers
2. Repair Friendly Buildings
3. Upgrade Buildings

If you're not sure, here's a quick definition of pocketing:

The act of healing only one player and refusing to heal other teammates

Pretty simple right? Now you might say, well why is this bad? The answer is that you have 12 or so people on your team, pocketing that one God-like soldier is not going to benefit your team as much as it would if you healed everybody.

So don't do it. It's awfully annoying when you're burning or bleeding to death and the medic won't heal you.

You are burning to death, and a large Health Pack is only a few metres away. Unfortunately, a bitch scout who lost 10 health from being shot at by a heavy, takes the Health Pack and runs away. Angrily and frustratingly, you die.

Moral of the story? Don't steal Health Packs.

If you see a burning, bleeding or very low-health teammate, don't take the Health Pack. Of course, take one if there's no one in sight. Most importantly, if your medic is injured, do not take the Health Pack, because that's probably the most dick thing you can do. Why? The medic can heal everyone but cannot heal himself.

This is a messege to all scouts; you are fast enough to walk to Cap or the Cart, you do not need to take the teleporter. The principal problem with taking the teleporter as scout is that, say the teleporter is level one, it has a fairly slow 'reload' before someone else can use it. If you take it and there's a heavy waiting, that heavy has to either wait a long time, or walk all the way to the battlements, heavily damaging the teams effectivity.

Here's a Teleporter Priority List:

1. Engineer
2. Heavy, Medic, Soldier
3. Demoman, Pyro, Spy, Sniper
5. Scout

But of course, if there's no one waiting, or about to respawn, take the teleporter.

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