This is the Spy
He is a Support class with 125 health and 100% speed. A master of espionage, he does it with his 5 tools of choice: the Revolver, the Electro Sapper, his trusty Butterfly Knife, the hidden Invisibility Watch, and the Disguise Kit. Spies get behind enemy lines, disguising, acting, killing, and destroying buildings from the Engineer. Due to being in the enemy lines, the Spy is the most in-danger class, but with the right training, the Spy can be the most dangerous class, and no one will know where he is. Here's the thing, you can be that dangerous Spy. Read on to find out more.

The Disguise Kit is an unchangeable weapon that will let you disguise as your own team or the enemy team. You can use the numbers 1-9 on the top of your QWERTY keyboard to change to the corresponding class numbers shown on the HUD. 1 being Scout, 2 being Soldier, 3 being Pyro, and so on. Pressing the reload key will change teams so you can disguise as your own team, perfect for the other team not knowing there's a Spy on your team. Pressing "B" on the keyboard is a pretty good hotkey to disguise as a random class holding the same weapon catagory that you have out, like if you disguise as a Pyro and you have your Revolver out, the enemy team will see a Pyro with a Flamethrower out, for example. If you are disguised, your team will see you with a mask on, to show that it's a friendly Spy, like this.

While disguised, you can turn invisible and you can place Sappers on enemy buildings. Enemy Sentries will not detect you, unless if you undisguise, which will happen if you attack once. Different disguises will do different things, though. Although you disguise as a class of your choice, you will still have your Spy hitbox. If you don't know what a hitbox is, is the area where if a projectile or bullet hits it, the user will deal damage. Each class has a different hitbox. Scout is good if you are backpedaling or playing very aggresively, but just walking would show a speed difference between Scout and Spy, since you won't gain a speed boost when you disguise as him. Same for the Medic. However, if you disguise as a slower class, you will match that speed. Therefore, the best disguises are Pyro, Engie, Sniper, and Spy, since you won't loose any speed. Also, when you disguise, the enemy team will see a cloud of smoke around you for about 3-4 seconds, whether disguised or cloaked, so be careful. The only instance when you can't disguise is when you have the Your Eternal Reward knife in your loadout. That weapon will let you disguise as the person you killed, so the Disguise Kit will automatically deactivate itself from your loadout. To learn more about the Your Eternal Reward, go to the Melee Weapons section later on in this guide. But, Disguising won't do you ♥♥♥♥ without something that Shakespere knows how to do: acting. I will cover that in the next section.

Yep, acting, ONE of the most important skills you will ever learn as Spy.

Time and time again, I see obvious signs of Disguised Spies, and 95% of the time, they get killed...instantly. There are some dead giveaways of Disguised Spies, and I will list their behaviors here:

• A Scout that travels at 100% speed (The most obvious)
  
• A class in the wrong part of the map (For example, a Sniper on the enemy frontlines)
  
• Following a class's ass to backstab them.
  
• Moving in wierd, awkward positions that normal Friendly teammates wouldn't do.
  
• Constantly checking to see if there are people on "his" team.
  
• Pyro's with an afterburn effect on them

These and more are obvious ways to tell if a Spy is on your team. And you are probably asking yourself, "Well, TomZeBomb, how do I act?" Well, it's super simple, once you know how to do it.

When you are disguised as a certain class, act like the class would normally do. Snipers around battlements with other Snipers, Spy for being within your own frontlines, Engineer for being around Sentry Nests, and others. Disguise to the class that you are going to act like in that part of the map. Obviously, this takes a basic skill of the map and where things are, but once you learn, it's a piece of cake.

But, whatever you do, however much you try, you cannot act like you are capping the objective, whether it be a capture point or payload cart, and for a good reason. The game won't allow any enemies to get on a point while the other team caps, or else the capping progress stops. And what happens if you walk in disguised to help "your" team cap?

The capping progress stops. And who last came in that might be an enemy?

You, that's who. Then, they will kill you.

On Payload carts, the cart won't stop if you get on it, but anyone who knows how to count can easily kill a Spy on the cart if they look at the progress bar on their HUD.

One of the best things to do as Spy sometimes when you are disguised is to backpedal away from your team to make it look like you are running away on the enemy team. This works out great, and as long as you don't bump into anyone, you are fine! Thanks to "Fire 'Kibby' Kirby" for suggesting this! I forgot about this.

*Whew* That was longer than most general sections. But it is important. Acting is the difference between life and death. Acting and Disguising works like a Computer Moniter and the Computer. One can't work without the other, and vice versa. Now with that out of the way, let's cover one more important aspect of Spy: his cloak.

Spy can act like a crab, and does it well!

The last aspect of Spy is his Cloak. When you right click with any of your weapons out, you will be able to turn invisible, a.k.a. cloaking. You will be able to run around fully cloaked for 9 seconds with the stock Invis Watch. When you run out of cloak, you will become visible to everybody. You can moniter your cloak in the HUD as well as on the viewmodel. You can't shoot, stab or do anything except run, jump, and swim.

There are 2 basic ways to get back your cloak, and here they are: 1) Waiting for the cloak to regenerate, and 2) ammo packs on the ground. There are also weapons that allow you to gain cloak, like the L'Etranger and the Big Earner, and the L'Etranger will extend your cloak for about 40% more. Using the stock watch, you will get around 12 seconds of cloak. You can use cloak to get behind enemy lines or run away from enemies.

However, things like Sniper's Jarate, Scout's Mad Milk, Pyro's flames, water from swimming, and enemies bumping into you will cause you to be shown to the enemy, where they can kill you easily. Now, different watches do different things, and I will go over this in the PDA weapons section. Oh, speaking of weapons...

An example of what a cloaked Spy looks like in First Person

Here, I will list all of Spy's primaries. In this guide, primaries will be revolvers.

Revolver: The stock, the best. It contains 6 bullets in the clip, and is very accurate. If you wait about 1.25 seconds, you will always do the most damage. At point blank it deals 60 damage. Typically the best when it comes to veteran Spies. This is mainly used for retreating and killing people when you fail to backstab them with your knife. With all the revolvers, you can do the same damage to Engie Buildings. This is helpful if the Engie is dead and there are other Engies in the area, where they will not get notified about you damaging the dead Engi's buildings. It will take about 7 shots to destroy a Level 3 Sentry. Thanks to "thuke" for notifiying me about this!


Ambassador: Although less powerful with 15% less damage, 20% lower firing speed, and no random crits, this has the amazing ability to crit on headshot. Bad thing is that you can't scope in like Sniper, and pulling off the headshot will require immense amounts of skill which I don't have. Many pro Spies will use this because they trained with this weapon, A LOT! For usual Spy killing for normal people, don't use this.


L'Etranger: Oddly translating to "The Stranger" in English, the L'Etranger acts like the Blutsauger for the Medic, where it's used for utility purposes. This will extend your cloak duratation 40% longer, which with the stock watch, is about 12 seconds! Also, it will add 15% cloak to your bar, so you can shoot while retreating to gain back your cloak. Now, although it has a 20% damage penalty, it isn't that bad of a weapon. For pure power, it's terrible, but for support, it is amazing.


Enforcer: This revolver is the most overpowered gun in fiction. While disguised, it will give you a 20% damage bonus, while giving you 20% slower firing speed and no random crits. This is the most overpowered weapon in this game. If you want more bang, use this boom stick. This gun is so powerful, it's even banned in some competitive leauges I'm thinking.


Diamondback: Deus Ex seems to get a lot of promotional items into TF2, or it's just that I'm noticing it more. Anyway, the Diamondback is basically the Ambassador with -15% damage and no random crits, but instead of crits on headshot, you gain a stored crit when you successfully buttstab someone or destroy a building with a sapper. You can store up to 35 crits, but if you happen to gain that much, either you have God mode activated or you are just on the training map tr_walkway. This is way better than the Ambassador, and is mainly used for screwing around on pubs. Also, when you die, your crit counter resets, so that is something to take note of.

Now, I will list all of the Secondary Weapons. In this guide, Sappers are secondaries.

Sapper: The most basic, and the best, since there's only 2 Sappers to choose from. This box can be placed on enemy Engie buildings and it will not only disable them, but slowly drain their health. Used with a team push, this is one of the most effective weapons on your team. Sadly, this has downfalls. Engineer's Wrench can destroy a Sapper in 2 hits, and Pyros can equip weapons called the Homewrecker and the Neon Anniliator to destroy your boxes. All in all, this is your standard Sapper, unless...


Red-Tape Recorder: For the people out there that want to be a-holes, here you go. Instead of destroying the building, it will quickly downgrade it if the building is leveled up. Typically VERY devestating, this sapper can quickly downgrade a building. Before long, it will start to deconstruct itself and turn into a toolbox for metal. There are bad things about this, though. Like I said, it doesn't deal damage, and the undoing process takes a thousand years. This can render Mini-Sentries useless, since Engies can't destroy RTR sapped buildings. The one cool thing is that if you slow down the noise from the RTR to about 80% of the original speed, there's a guy that says, "Let's make some noise." Nice little touch.

Now, for the MAIN EVENT! THE MEAT AND TATERS! SPY'S KNIVES!

Knife: This is the stock, and one of the stocks you should still use, this knife is pitiful when compared to the other melee weapons. It only deals about 40 damage, which is called by the community as "butter-knifing". But, when used in the back, Spy can do his trademark BackStab!™ (see what I did there). On hit, the backstab deals 6 times the total health the class has. Sometimes, backstabs may only do 128 damage, but an overhealed Heavy will recieve 2700 damage on a backstab! HOLY SHEEEEEEEEEET! Backstabs will always insta-kill an enemy, unless if it's invulnerable. Now, this has some downsides. Like I said before, this only deals 40 damage unless if you do a BackStab!™, and that there's a weapon for Snipers called "The Razorback" which will render a backstab useless and leave you so SHOCKED (goin' for double!), it leaves you defenseless. In this case, use a gun.


Your Eternal Reward: This is one of the best knives out there, and it endorses a compleatly different playstyle than the other knives. Like I said earlier in the Disguise part of this guide, the Y.E.R. de-equips the Disguise Kit, and you can only disguise who you kill. This makes playing with this knife a little trickier, and it forces you to be sneaky. Not only can you disguise as your kill, you make no noise at all when you backstab someone, and doesn't leave a corpse behind. The best part is that it is a Silent Killer weapon. No notification will show up in the killfeed of your accomplishment, so you can be even more sneaky. You can compleatly wipe out everyone on the cart in Payload coming from the back to the front. Bad thing is that when you attack, you compleatly loose all of your work to get that disguise, but oh well. Also usefull for taking out Sentry Nests backstabing people. Although obivious, this knife looks really badass, and some people say that this is a reference to Disney's Aladin.


Conniver's Kunai: The Kunai can instanly make you your own Pocket Medic, overhealing you up to 210 health after a successful backstab. Sadly, you are left at 70 health to start off with. With 1 melee hit, you lose most of your blood anyway. Very vulnerable, but the backstab makes it worth it. For people ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about no one healing them, give them this knife.


Big Earner: Once one of the stupidest weapons in the game, The Big Earner will give you cloak upon a backstab, whilst giving you only 100 health to play around with. Not only that, but the redeeming quality of this weapon is you get a 3 second speed gain. If it wasn't for this speed, you would leave this weapon alone due to easier ways to gaining cloak. But if you are willing to sacrifice 25 health for speed on a backstab, this is a weapon worth trying out.


Spy-cycle: As a Spy, Pyros are your biggest enemy. One puff of their hot-ass fire and you are reveled to him, and you are about as good as dead. With this weapon, when you come in contact with any fire, you are blocked for 1 seconds, but at the cost of losing your knife for a little bit, which forces you to use your gun for a while. Now, if you can't wait to get your knife back, you can pick up ammo boxes to get your ice back. The downside is that you leave behind frozen corpses of your enemies, and when you come in contact with a Pyro before you get your knife back, you are totaly screwed. Paired with the Dead Ringer, which I will talk about in the next section, you get 2 ways to escape Pyros. By itself, this weapon is okay to use, but don't get all happy going to get a backstab kill, because a Pyro might trail your ass.

Here, I will talk about Spy's watches.

Invis Watch: This is the stock watch you get, and this is best for large-medium sized maps. You can gain cloak back by picking up weapons or ammo boxes on the ground. I already talked about everything with this watch in the Cloak section of this guide, so I don't need to say everything again.


Cloak and Dagger: Best for small maps, the Cloak and Dagger is best for waiting to kill someone, because if you stand still, you will never run out of cloak. When you move, you drain your cloak way faster than the stock watch. You also now can gain your cloak back from ammo boxes, but not as much as the stock Invis Watch. It is perfect though if you are wanting to troll an Engineer or Sniper by staying there until they come, and then kill them. Also, when you run out of cloak, you will become partially visible to everyone, and not like the other watches where they turn off when they run out of cloak.


Dead Ringer: After an update, the Dead Ringer is heavily nerfed from what it was before. Basically, when you whip it out, you won't cloak right away, until you take damage, either from fall damage or enemy damage. When you whip it out, when you deal damage, you only take like 5 damage from the enemy, and the cloak turns on, faking your death. After feigning your death, you lose half of your cloak, but you get a slight speed boost for a bit, similar to the Big Earner. You will get an 50% faster cloak regen rate, and the cloaking time is less than the stock watch, but more than the Cloak and Dagger. Another bad thing for you is now, you can't regain cloak when you are invisible. When you decloak, not only will you be unable to cloak again until you refill your meter, but you are louder than the Indy 500 when you decloak, making you obivious to the other team. While you are cloaked, you will have a 50% damage reduction, which is pretty good for getting away. Best used on tight maps where the people are all tight togeather and you have no way to escape.

Now, there are cetain weapons that work togeather, and I will show you them here. Unlike some of my other lists, my prefered loadout is all stock, so my prefered loadout won't be shown here.

Saharan Spy

• L'Etranger
  
• Sapper
  
• Your Eternal Reward
  
• Dead Ringer
  
• Familar Fez, for looking super smexy

This loadout speaks for itself. A bunch of weapons that pretty much change how you play. If you have the whole loadout, that includes the hat, when you taunt, you turn into a dust devil. That is the icing on the cake.


Pyro's Worst Enemy (aka The Overpowered Loadout)

• Enforcer
  
• Sapper of choice
  
• Spy-cicle
  
• Dead Ringer

One of the most overpowered loadouts in the game, this makes Pyros fear you. You not only have 1 way to escape them, but you now have 2. For shiz and giggles, I thew in the Enforcer, because it is overpowered, just like the other weapons in this loadout.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

• Festive Revolver
  
• Festive Sapper
  
• Festive Knife
  
• Watch of choice
  
• Festive hat of choice

Nothing says "Ho, Ho, Ho" like a gift from Santa Clause: instant death.


Have your own loadout you want to share? Put it in the comments below. I will not add it to the guide though so don't whine if I won't allow it to make it on here.

Spies can partake in the old past time of Spycrabing. It's where you take your Disguise Kit out, crouch, and look in the air, and walk. While you do this, you look like a crab walking, hence the name "Spycrab". There's also a taunt that allows you to be a Spycrab, but there's a 20% chance of getting that taunt. Activating the Spycrab taunt has also sparked Spycrab Gambling. Whoever Spycrabs to a certain number get a certain amount of items.

The Familiar Fez is a reference to Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged me, where Mustafa is shown wearing this hat. Austin then says, "I don't recall your name, but your Fez looks Familiar."


Spy has also sparked the "Gentlemen" meme where when the Spy says Gentlemen, he puts a cig in his mouth. It started out as a Garry's Mod picture, then it quickly turned into a characture.

After this, the meme exploded, and now, there are different versions featuring other TF2 characters, video game characters, and people from movies and TV shows.

Holy fawk guys, 15,000 visits? Thanks for the support! This is my most popular guide so far!

That is all folks! After this guide is posted, this is my last guide on How to not be Noob: Classes, since I already made them! Thanks to the people that supported my guides, the amazing community, and Valve themselves had made a game so amazing, it still lives on 8 years after it's release. I highly recommend you check out my other guides by clicking here. Also, if you like me a bit, you can join my group centered around TF2: SMG Army! Click here to go to it. If you send me a friend request, I will block you, since I don't want my friends list to fill up with people I don't know. If there is any changes to Spy's weapons, weather its a buff/nerf, or if any new weapons come in, I will add them. If you think I made a mistake in something, put it in the comments below. Rate this, thumb it up or down, and leave a nice comment. All credit for the pictures go to their respective owners, and the Offical Team Fortress 2 Wiki for weapon stats and other things. I hope you have a nice day, and until we meet in a server, or in another guide, see yah later!
~TomZeBomb

January 10th, 2015: Creation of guide.
July 3rd, 2015: Updated guide to fit changes in Gun Mettle update.
October 31st, 2015: Fixed minor spelling and gramatical errors I have missed.
December 22nd, 2015: Updated guide to fit changes in Tough Break update.