When Team Fortress 2 unveiled the Spy/Sniper update, there was some controversy, with one of the Sniper updated weapons being the Huntsman, a bow and arrow projectile weapon. While there were some good arguments on the anti-Huntsman side, let me assure you, they are all completely wrong. The Huntsman is by far my favorite weapon in TF2 right now. But I will admit, it is very different from the hitscan sniper rifle, but provides for much better gameplay as a sniper than sitting back and scoping in on targets.

The Huntsman operates by charging shots, holding down the left mouse button draws back the bow string, and charges the shot. Releasing the button releases the bowstring and predictably fires an arrow. The arrow, fully charged, hits hard, causing 350 damage with a headshot, taking down anyone except a Demo with many heads collected, or an overhealed Heavy. You also get the bonus joy of pinning the corpse of your victim to the wall, and you can collect a fairly impresive gallery of art if you hold a chokepoint like the tunnel to the middle area in Warpath. Be careful, though, holding a charged shot for too long will cause your hand to get tired, shaky, and your accuracy goes straight to hell.

It takes a few seconds to fully charge, however, and in that time your movement rate slows. Snap shots do less damage, and have a shorter range, but are good for close quarters, tunnels, caves, and for shooting targets outside of your line-of-sight (more on this later). There are also times when it’s unavoidable, coming around a corner and being surprised by an opponent. That snap shot and a quick change to kukri or SMG can save your life and a good 20 second respawn. But when fully charged, the arrow is a formidable weapon, and your team’s second-best-friend. (#1? Jarate.)

The most important thing to learn about using the Huntsman is the arc. You must learn the arc, and be able to predict it accurately. The rifle is straight-line hitscan, but the arrow is a more elegant weapon, from a more enlightened age, and requires a little more thought put into each shot, especially since your quiver only holds 12 arrows. The best way to learn the arc is to take a large, wide-open area (I used the bridge in Warpath), and a good spray to aim at. I used a headshot of Keanu Reeves, but choose whatever works best for you. Put the spray on the wall at one end of the area, and go as far away from it as you can, and start firing charged shots at your spray. Start with your aiming reticle right where you want the arrow to go, and then adjust upward accordingly until you hit that original spot.

Once you get the arc down, move up to a few yards away from the spray, run back and forth in front of it, strafing, and releasing uncharged snap shots at a spot on your spray. In my case, I used Keanu’s right eye. Try this from different distances, until you are relatively accurate.

Once you get a good feel for the arc, join a server and practice leading your target. Aim for the body, and lead some moving targets, again like passing a football to a moving receiver. The hardest thing for me to get a good feel for is the movement speeds of the different classes, and being able to quickly judge the lead needed. To this day, I have trouble accurately judging soldiers, being the mid-range speed between medics and heavies. You will miss a lot, and people will yell at you for sucking, but that’s why you do this on a random pubbie you plan to never play on again. But get a feel for aiming ahead of the target and move on to my favorite activity with a huntsman, guerrilla sniping.

By far the biggest advantage the bow has over the rifle is a lack of zoom. While this might not seem to be a real advantage, what it provides is a flexibility and a lack of reliance on, what is in my eyes, a handicap. Not having the scope allows for on-the-fly aiming, and a better environment for “popping out” and releasing a shot at a target. Since the map was called 2fort_5 in the Quake-based Team Fortress, snipers have crept out from behind obstructions, rifles to their eyes, ready to ventilate the frontal lobes of anyone in their sights. And for most long-distance sniping, the rifle is still the best for that. But the Huntsman allows for quick shots popping out from behind a barrier/corner and shooting as you hop back behind the barrier.

This is particularly useful when accompanying a push against a defense, popping out and firing arrows at the defenders, behind the frontline players. This technique is also good against entrenched enemy rifle snipers at choke points. More often than not, they will have the advantage over you, as they do not need to move, and can maintain their aim on a point right where you will pop out to fire an arrow. Sometimes you can get them, but more often they will have given you a third eye socket before you can fire the bow. So take a couple of shots if you can. If you hit him, great. If not, you can at least get a good read on his location via deathcam.

Then, lie in wait, until a heavy or a soldier arrive to go around that same corner. There isn’t a rifle sniper alive who will not immediately follow that target for the headshot, and even if he gets the kill right away, the reload time is more than enough for you to pop around the corner and pin him to the wall. If it’s a soldier or heavy though, with a medic, your odds of a kill without losing a teammate goes up, as there is a split-second minimum decision-making time where they have to decide on the easy target, or the harder-to-hit but higher-value-target medic. Even if you miss the kill and get in a body shot, it gets the sniper’s attention, and often will send him looking for first aid, since a charged shot does a lot of damage to the 150-health-laden sniper.

Diversions are the best way to take down enemy rifle snipers, but trying to find an angle that you can see him outside of his scope’s view is a close second, but by far the most satisfying is anticipation. Take a map like Badwater Basin, with BLU pushing the cart toward the second point. Red snipers love to pop out from behind the building, behind the Jersey Barriers, looking back up the tracks towards BLU’s approach. There’s a rhythm to effective sniping there, getting the shot off, and hopping behind the building for the reload and recharging of the scope. Then easing back out and repeating the process. As a bow sniper, you should watch for the pattern/rhythm, and anticipate when the sniper is going to ease back out, and try to deliver an arrow to that point as he comes out from behind the wall. The advantage here is you can fire the arrow, and while it is in flight, you can be ducking back behind the rocks or a wall, and be safely out of the scope’s sights in case the arrow misses or hits the body.

Pyros, on behalf of bowsnipers everywhere, thank you for lighting our arrows on fire.

The other reason to be on the frontlines as a bowsniper is Jarate. There have been many times on a payload map I have topped the leaderboard almost exclusively on kill assists obtained by throwing a jar of urine on a group pushing the cart, and letting a heavy or pyro clean house. Each of those kills are points in your tally, and all you had to do is perform a natural biological function you would have done anyhow, just in a jar and throwing the jar at someone. Medics will also love you if you jarate them after an unfortunate encounter with a pyro.

There are times to not carry a Jarate though. Like when you are playing a map that favors your arch-nemesis, the Scout. The only way to effectively defend against a Scout as a bowsniper is to pull out your SMG and empty a clip at him. Once they are within effective scattergun range, it is extremely difficult to shoot them with the bow, so you will want the SMG and kukri combination. The other classes, though, are all vulnerable to the bow/jarate combination, and the usefulness of Jarate far outweighs the lack of machine gun.

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Tags:   huntsman · sniper · suck it rifles · TF@3 Comments