TF2: Spy Psychology - How to Disguise

It's insane to think that for an old game like TF2, fundamental guides like this are almost always recent uploads

I found a niche use of a heavy disguise while playing yesterday. If you see a wounded enemy try to approach them while switching disguised weapon to your secondary. Since 99 percent of heavies carry some sort of a food item it will look like you want to throw it and heal them. A pretty good chance that they will also stand still, giving you and opportunity to easily finish them off with a revolver. I successfully did it twice and honestly feels awesome to bamboozle someone this way

For everyone watching, here's another tip that'll hopefully help: Whatever you do, don't always choose the SAME class to disguise as. Scout might be good for the hitbox displacement and slightly faster move speed, for example, but the enemy team will eventually try to always spycheck a scout if all they see are enemy spies disguised as one. Variety is the spice of life, and it might just save yours if you're lucky!

For those who don’t know: medics with the right settings get an autocall ping if you disguise while not at full HP. And when they medibeam you they’ll see your actual HP. As a medic main who sometimes plays spy, it’s painful how much tech medics have against spies.

This reminds me of the time I disguised as pyro, and somehow I forgot I was playing spy. So I genuinely convinced myself I was a BLU pyro, so I went to attack my team. Which caused my disguise to fall and I died instantly

I was super taken aback by how amazing this video was! As much as I like the more cloak-reliant, "only decloak when you're gonna get a stab" playstyle, there's nothing quite as rewarding as actually fooling someone, and this provides some really good information to getting that down. It really is the subtle things that make you convincing. Excellent video! Might play some more spy now lol

I just had to comment that the TF2 Spy moment that has lived in my brain rent free for years now has been the moment I willingly avoided spychecking an engineer because he had the toolbox equipped like he was hauling gear, and thinking "spies can't use that in disguises so he's not a spy" and immediately getting stabbed by him afterwards. It broke me and of all the moments in TF2 i've ever had, that one moment has stuck with me forever. Disguises work.

11:03 One thing I don't think gets enough credit is the transitions to the other classes. It's really impactful and the sudden music change makes it feel like this is "their" video now. It's great.

Being someone who plays the adaptive playstyle, it's easy to mimic the movements of a class. This video is awsome, and it really helped me up my spy game, making me alot more of an asset to my team.(i personally am a horrible spy, but I can pull off the acting gig preatty good.)

I am a terrible spy, but I loved the concept of disguising so much growing up that I just instinctively learned to act like my disguise. I usually did a pretty terrible job but the first thing I realized was, looking at my team is the most unsuspecting thing you can do as a spy.

I feel like the art of disguising has been overshadowed by the lobotomizing play-style of the trickstabbing kunai spy, but these kinds of videos give me hope for spy mains. I'm always impressed when I'm completely fooled by a good disguise.

bro missed an opportunity to call it spychology

Spy as a whole is just so odd, I've never seen another class in another first person shooter even remotely as unique as him. The skill sealing is massive, there's always something to learn and improve on even if you're the best Spy player.

3:45 Also kind of small detail but I like disguising as friendly scout when pushing a cart or doing objective due to the head hitbox displacement, unsure if it ever saved me from headshot but there's a chance Also props to spy mains like you, I always preferred the "actors" over "trickstab kunai" which treat disguise as just a "fool a sentry gun" tool

I don’t play Spy often, but one time I distinctly remember is when I was able to fool a pretty good Pyro by pretending to be in a Sniper duel. Somehow, he didn’t notice the fact that I wasn’t actually firing.

I thought the intros were cool so here are all of them. 11:07-Scout 11:44-Soldier 12:00-Pyro 12:30-Demoman 12:51-Heavy 13:13-Engineer 13:36-Medic 14:02-Sniper 14:43-Spy

Just saying, this is an amazingly edited video! Looking forward to seeing more.

I always like disguises because making them work is a test of how well you know all 8 other classes. Whenever you disguise as someone, unless you don't care for subtlety, you have to think back to when you played the class, realize what and where is natural, and act while keeping tabs on everything. It's a great test of your skill at every class, because if you play the class bad, the enemies wil likely see the heavy they KNOW is more skilled than that standing at a really bad spot. But if you do know the class? You can act very smoothly sometimes

14:53 you missed a rather important point about the Spy disguise; the disguise mask of your disguise is randomly chosen from the 9 classes which is another thing that can instantly give you away as a heavy/soldier/demo disguised spy moving at his regular 107% is extremely easy to spot. great video, lots of advice for newer spies to work with!

Jontohil: “I assure you, if you caught them, they are nothing like me.”