If you are new or, shall we say, not very good in mvm and you want to start out with a very easy and powerful class, then heavy is your best choice besides Soldier and Pyro.

The reason being is that on a skill tree where the least amount of skill required to play is at the bottom and the most amount of skill required to play is at the top, the heavy comes to being the very bottom of the tree.

The reason for this is mainly because for the majority of the playtime as heavy, all you will be doing in that time is standing next to a dispenser and holding down M1 on any robots there are. There is the occasional raging, tossing down sandvich for x teammate and so on, but the meat of the gameplay is just you holding down the fire button and ripping everything apart.

Once you have read this guide and become pretty good as heavy, move onto pyro and soldier next. Then from there try to master the scout, engineer, demoman and medic. Then you should have mastered the usual team composition of mann up games.

Now with that out of the way, let's begin with the guide.

Stock
Your starting minigun, and already a good and worthy choice. No downsides, and the movement speed while revved up is good with re-positioning yourself better and getting more targets onto view.









The Brass Beast
The other good minigun that is good for MvM. The extra damage can really help chew off hp on giants and other tougher robots. The speed loss won't exactly matter as you will already get into position before the round starts AKA plugging yourself next to the dispenser and the slower spin-up time won't hurt you as enough time is given for you to rev up and start attacking before another batch of robots come.

With the Gun Mettle update in place, the mighty beast now gives you a 20% damage resistance while you are spun up, allowing you to tank damage much better.




Many people claim that the tomislav's slower firing speed can be fixed with upgrades. While that is the case, the slower firing speed itself is the main issue why this weapons sucks. Allow me to explain:


See these 2 images?

The top images show the upgrade menu for the stock/brass beast, while the bottem below shows the tomislav's upgrade menu.

Now lets imagine that the stock minigun does 400 damage. -20% of that is 320, which is the tomislav. 10% of 400 is 40, so:

40 x 0.40 = 160

400 + 160 = 560 (Stock)

320 x 0.40 = 128

320 + 128 = 448 (Tomislav)

This also proves Span's comment saying that maxed out firing speed upgrades on the tomislav only does it 12% faster.

400 x 0.12 = 48

The faster spin-up time is pointless as you can already rev up before robots come into sight and the noise is useless as robots do not care for once in their lives about noise. Don't use this weapon unless you want to get kicked.


While the huo-lo heater can sometimes deter spies away, there is still a chance of you getting backstabbed anyway before the spy-bots leave. The ammo eating downside is bad enough as there will be moments where you will not be next to your dispenser/no dispenser at all.


And the natascha. Oh boy, the natascha........

A lot of you are going to disagree with me, but a guide is a guide and I have to do what I have to do.

The natascha's slowdown will only work well against giant scouts. But:

A) It is barely visible to notice
and B) You have scout's milk/spy's sapper and sniper's jarate to take care of their speed for you, and they slow down the giant scout's speed much better.

Even though the extra ammo is nice, you may not need it at all. And besides, 1 point is cheap enough as it is.

Bad damage penalty is the icing on the cake for this trainwreck. Never use this weapon in MvM, EVER.

The Sandvich
Seeing that you will only use your minigun for combat, you have no need to equip a shotgun and upgrade it because the minigun does a better job.

So instead, get your lunchbox ready and get a sandvich today! With this weapon, you can fully restore your health. Perfect if you are away from your dispenser/a health pack or a group of powerful robots are breaking through and you need to be top notch quickly!

You can also throw your sandvich to other players to restore some of their health. That way you can keep important classes like Engineers and Medics alive to do their job.

A must recommend for MvM heavies everywhere.

The Buffalo steak sandvich (Or the steak, which I like to call it)
Even though when you eat it and then you can only use your melee weapon for a limited amount of time, you can still toss it down and other teammates can pick it up.

If you don't have the sandvich and you have already used your weekly rent, stick with this. Then try to get the sandvich as it is much better.








The klondike Dalokohs bar
With the Gun Mettle update live, our favourite chocolate bar has been changed. You can no longer eat it again immidiatly but now the bonus health given upon consumption as been increased to 400 and you can now share it with fellow mercs. Great for keeping others alive and helping you tank damage.

As I have already said the shotguns aren't any good, as your minigun is your weapon you would want to cause the most trouble with and upgrade.

The Gloves of Running Urgently (GRU)
My personal pick when I play heavy. The extra speed can really help in nasty situations as you can get to the action must quicker.

Just remember to un-equip it at the right moment. Taking mini crits is never a nice thing.





The Fists Of Steel (FOS)
Another nice melee to use. This can be helpful for trespassing areas which are hot and getting from point A to B while getting shot at by snipers.










The Killing Gloves of Boxing (KGB)
If you manage to kill a robot with this weapon, you will be able to perform crits for a few seconds. Very helpful for causing lots of damage quickly.

Just a few things:

A) Try to pick on a lone robot so you have more of a chance of getting crits.
B) Try to use this with the stock minigun, as you will have more time when firing the crits away.

The Warrior's spirit
If your team cannot handle tanks well you can always get this out, max out its firing speed and outdamage the minigun.

If that is not the case then you can bypass this situation.




All others are meh at most. They don't do as great as the 4 above listed but overall the melee weapons won't affect you greatly.

However it is nice to get all the usefulness you can get out of these weapons.

Now when it comes to canteen I would always recommend that you do NOT use them.

Canteens can waste a lot of money if you use them, and you will need money to spend on upgrades. A good player can make it through a mission without the help of canteens, this is true because I have done it many times before and many other people I know have done the same.

However, if you are really stuck on a wave and you need assistance, your canteen choice can come in 2 flavours:

Uber canteens
You know your images sucks when you can't find a smaller one with a transparent background and that you don't have enough things to say for it.

Cost: 75 credits

Uber-canteens can be really good help when facing a large group of robots or going toe to toe with giant robots. This can be used to get past a really difficult section of a wave or if you want to rage launch a giant with a bomb back to their spawn (Which we will get to eventually).
















Crit canteens

Cost: 100 credits

Crit canteens can be used to deal lots of damage to tanks and other tougher robots. When using the crit canteens on tanks it would be a good idea to pair them with warrior spirit + maxed out firing speed to you can do somewhere around 500+ damage per second, making you a worthy and great tank buster. But as I said before, then warrior spirit should only be used if tanks are a problem.

For giant medics you can sneak behind them and drain their health really fast down to low health, which then the demo/sniper/spy can finish him off.

Other canteens

Ammo: You already have a dispenser for ammo as well as ammo boxes lying around the map. You will also get ammo upgrades anyways so there is no point for this canteen.

Recall: If super scouts are giving you trouble then it may be ok to use this canteen. But the engineer can use 2-way teleporters to solve this issue as well as scout using slowdown on his milk or spy using his sapper to render the giant scout weak. Overall this canteen can be bypassed if your team know what you are doing.

Here I will go through the upgrades you will need and explain a bit about them.

Health on kill

Every time you kill a robot with your minigun, you will gain +25 points of hp. If you get a kill when with maxed out health, you will overheal.

Ammo capacity

For every point added into this upgrade, your total limit of how much ammo you can carry is increased by 100.


No points



1 point



2 points



3 points (Maxed out)




Knockback Rage

Knockback Rage, or "Rage" which it is called by many people, is an upgrade that allows the heavy to use his bullets to knockback robots for a certain amount of time.

Upon purchasing one, and only one point into this upgrade, this bar will appear at the bottom of this screen:

This is your rage meter. You fill this up by causing damage. More and more points into this upgrade will generate more rage when you cause damage.

Let me make that sentence a lot more clearer. Let's pretend I have 1 point into rage ok? Now, when I cause, let's say, 100 points of damage, the rage meter will only be filled up by a quarter (1/4). But if I put 2 points into rage, cause 100 damage again, my rage meter is now half filled up! Know what I mean?

When the bar is full, pressing the taunt button (G for most people) will make the heavy be able to push back any robot except the tank until the meter runs out. While this is present, your bullets will gain a 50% damage penalty, allowing you to knockback more easily.

Firing speed

Each point into this upgrade will increase the firing speed of your minigun by 10%, going up to a 40% firing speed if this upgrade is maxed on anything except the tomislav.

Destroy projectiles

When shooting at a enemy projectile like a rocket or a pipe, there will be a chance that it will become destroyed. The 2nd point will increase the chance of it happening.

Projectile Penetration

Each point into this upgrade will allow your bullets to pass 1 robot per point.

No points: Only able to hit 1 robot at a time

1 Point: 2 robots

2 Points: 3 robots

3 Points (Maxed out): 4 robots

When it comes to upgrades as heavy, what you would want to do is to juggle between resistances and your minigun. A heavy with no resistances is weak and a heavy with barely any minigun upgrades won't be effective enough for the later waves.

But why an upgrade strategy like this for heavy and no-one else?

Allow me to explain. Every other class in the game minus the pyro has the speed and ability to dodge attacks.

Heavy and pyro on the other hand, don't. Both are close range combatants because pyro has to ambush and get up-close to make his flamethrower work while with heavy you go groups of robots coming straight towards you, ready to feed you their robo-train of death PLEASE, someone make an artwork of what I just said here!. Pyro has decent mobility but medium health while heavy has high health but very low mobility, also not forgetting that heavy has to plug himself next to the dispenser most of the time.

Back to the topic. For example, if there are tons of heavies and 1-2 giant heavies, it would be a nice idea to invest 1-2 points into bullet resistances so you can stand a chance. Think before upgrading and balance between the 2 sections of upgrades using the money you got.

For upgrading the minigun:

1: Firing speed and health on kill
+
Since there is no damage upgrades for the minigun, you're better off doing damage as fast as possible. If you start off with $400, put 1 point into firing speed. Then on the next wave put 1 point into health on kill, and max out firing speed from there.

If you start off with more, put 1 point into health on kill and max out firing speed as soon as you can.

2: Ammo capacity

There will be that moment where you won't have your dispenser when you need it. Only put 1-2 points into this upgrade, you won't need the 3rd point as you will be fine enough with what you got.

If you do feel that your ammo will be fine then you can just bypass it and get it later when you are swimming in cash.

3: Projectile penetration + 2nd point of health on kill
+
After maxing out your firing speed and deciding on your ammo, you can then place a 2nd point into health on kill, to help with surviving the tougher waves.

By now you should be in the tougher section of the mission and you will need to crowd control better to get past the next few waves. Projectile penetration will allow you to dish damage to more than 1 robot. This upgrade will make handling crowds much easier.

Other upgrades

Destroy projectiles: It's only good to get this upgrade when dealing with rapid fire soldiers. And when you do get this upgrade, it's always a good idea to get both levels instead of just one. This is because 1 point into this upgrade is worse than the same upgrade before the 2 cities update. The maxed out upgrade is the best version and you will notice quickly when you use it.

Knockback rage: I would never recommend rage to any heavy unless for any of these reasons:

• Your team is bad
  
• Your demo/sniper/spy is bad If they are bad anyways just vote them off
  
• Mecha Engine bosses
  
• Struggling on a wave

If your team is good and can handle the waves easy, buying rage is a waste of valuable cash. You're better off getting upgrades and resistances for yourself.

While you can hold M1 and contribute easily, you can still make more of your weapons, partners, upgrades and other things.

Let's go over them.

When spending most of your time playing heavy in MvM, you need to make good use of the dispenser whenever you need to. That way you won't have to share ammo and health packs among the rest of your team.

Besides your dispenser, your minigun is incredibly lethal at close range. Abuse this. Try to use a corner, hide behind it and shoot anything that peeps around the corner. The robots will have little time to react before you gun them down in a matter of seconds.

However, that isn't always helpful. Sometimes you need to kill a giant before it breaks through for example. Decide whenever it may be a good idea to do this or not.

Bodyblocking is also a helpful tactic when playing as heavy. It is when you are getting infront of a giant and stopping it's progress towards the hatch. This is great for dealing with the likes of super scouts and a few bosses. Know where to stand and create a blockade!

Lunchtime never got so much more fun....

Your sandvich can become very helpful in very instances if used right. If a player is hurt badly, you can equip the sandvich and press m2 to throw it. That way they can heal right up and get back into the action. This is great for the likes of engineers, medic and demomen/snipers/spies, as they need to repair buildings and dodge sentry busters, live to heal everyone and use their ubercharge and survive to kill medics and wreck havoc.

Generally it's a good idea to prioritize medics with the sandvich, as they too can heal other people and revive them.

When you yourself is hurt, you can eat it to regain all your hp. Very handy when you need to share packs of ammo/health or in a tight situation.

Engineers
Engineers need to know their stuff in order to contribute well. Many things include upgrades, building placement, sharing metal and ammo and so on. We will go through all of this one by one.

Upgrades
The very first thing before anything else that they need to max out is dispenser range. Without it, you will struggle to hold the line, as you need to be filled up on health and ammo and that his dispenser needs to be safe.

To get around this problem, check is he has maxed out dispenser range. If he has, yay. If not, urge him to. If he refuses, introduce him to the votekick.

Building placement
Building placement is key for the engineer. Some spots are better than others, which in return maximizes his effectiveness on the field.

Instead of boring you to death with details on where to build, check out sections 9-14 on where he has to build here: http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=202746899

Ammo and metal
So you and your engineer have lost the front lines along with his nest and you have to set up another position. If hard-hat wants a nest, he needs metal. By allowing him to grab a nearby ammo pack, he can get the metal he needs to create a sentry and a dispenser as well.

While he's doing that, cover him! Robots will be heading your way and will not hesitate to mann-slaughter you lel le funny pun. Cover him while he recovers and you should make the wave an easier time.

Keep an eye out for spies as well. They will happily tear the nest apart if the engineer isn't paying attention.


Medics
Medics LOVE you for your minigun and bulkiness, and will see you as a priority for their ubercharge. This however may not be a good idea for you when it comes to tanks.

Because of the 75% minigun resistance the tank has, heavy isn't a great class when it comes to dealing with them. However, medics will still try to ubercharge you with their kritzkrieg when one is on the field. Do not let them do this! Make sure to inform them that heavy is weak against tanks and that you should ubercharge the solider/pyro/instead, as they are better tank busters.

Medics need to stay alive in order to do well. If they are on low health, pass them a sandvich to keep their spirits up. They also need to have the shield upgrade on them. If they don't, urge them to buy it. It comes in real handy for the mission.

Before the wave starts, it maybe wise to tell the medic to ubercharge the demoman with the kritzkrieg so he can lay a crit sticky tap before the wave begins.

Tanks sport high hp and it requires a lot of damage to bring them down before they reach the hatch.

So then, because of the minigun resistance the tank has, you are not a reliable class to go after it. Instead, allow the soldier/pyro and medic to go after it, while you, the scout, engi and x medic picker defend the bomb.

If the tank is getting close to the hatch and has a fair amount of hp to reach it in time and plant the bomb, stop what you are doing right now and kill it before you fail!

If your team is struggling, you can always equip the warrior spirit, max out its firing speed and do more damage than your minigun.

Other than that, don't worry too hard about them.

If used correctly, rage can be a lifesaver and the ticket to the next wave. In order to do that, I will create a list of when and when not to use rage.

To rage:

• Bomb carriers that are next to pits: Buying more time is nice, so when there is a robot with a bomb walking by a pit, rage him into it.
  
• Giant robots deploying the bomb: Pyro's airblast cannot affect a giant while he is busy deploying the bomb into the hatch. However, your rage can interfere with that. Use rage and save the day!
  
• Super scouts: Even a few rage bullets will cut this rodent's annoyance down a notch. This just might save you some time.

Not to rage:

• Tanks: Rage does nothing to tanks, only decrease damage. Do you want things to go worse for yourself?
  
• Every single robot you see: You're better off killing them. No benefits are earned from just raging a group of scout bots.
  
• When crit boosted by a Kritzkrieg medic: Want to waste that triple damage ubercharge that your medic has worked for? No? Ok then.

Giant launching
This is the tactic of getting a giant into mid-air, and then using rage to fly him back to spawn. There are many ways of doing this, but I would recommend a pyro with airblast to make things easier for you.

If you want to get the hang on this yourself, use this guide and do the following:http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=216218022

1: Load up expert decoy and go to wave 5
2: Enable god
3: Use the credit cheat and get what you need
4: Kill the first giant heavy+medic pair and then kill all the soldiers

Then you can practice your giant launching on the other 3 pairs

Some videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbm7v7xUFKk
By Nefos
His youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9I6YT7kcyY
Skip to 2:00, 2:49 and 4:30 for a few examples
By Hacked Exhale
His youtube

So now you have learnt what it means to become a true botslaying maniac. With everything you have discovered here, you should be ready to make the higher difficulties feel like easy mode.

Good luck, and I wish you the best of luck with the new decoration of bot heads!

Thanks for reading.