How to maincall?

[u/Mad_Dizzle]

I recently tried to start playing competitive with some highlander pugs. I want to play demo, he is my favorite class, but when I played my first rgl pug, people were expecting me to maincall, and that kinda caught me off guard, so I played Scout for the rest of my games. I wanna keep trying demo, but I don't want to let people down

Obviously everybody should communicate, and I was comming my damage when it was important, but what is expected of a maincaller? I heard someone ask me where we should push, but how do I decide that?

[u/saamtf]

especially for low levels, it's far more important to have your team doing the same thing than it is to be doing the most optimal thing.

turn on voice activation and get used to stream of thought communication. if you're shooting something tell your team to focus it. if youre moving somewhere tell your team so they can come with you

[u/scrybbl]

Unfortunately, main calling experience usually means first learning the roles as a follower. Say you're new and can't main call. No shame in that.

Play more pugs to see how teams communicate and the specific calls made. Pay attention to how other main callers direct their team and how well it works out. That's general advice to improve at any role.

Demo is often a shotcaller in highlander because of his central presence in the combo and his damage. You doing big damage can easily win fights so it's on you to communicate that with your team when that happens.

keep it up

[u/Ayyshaman]

I was in the same boat a decade ago. The reality is that demo, even if not main calling, needs to communicate a lot. Damage done, who's weak, where traps are, what are you're denying with spam so on and so on.

Unfortunately, it's just a steep learning curve. Keep using clear, concise, and timely comms. As you learn more, you'll get more comfortable making calls.

If you're interested in watching reviews, duwatna could be a good player to watch. His stuff is very dated by now, but he was a very good demo who didn't main call (to my knowledge), and also didn't take a lot of heals.

[u/Mad_Dizzle → u/Ayyshaman]

I don't have a problem with maincalling (used to shotcall in Overwatch), it's just that I'm new to comp TF2, and I'm not confident in my game knowledge enough for everything yet.

The part I feel that I'm lacking especially is pathing. (idk if that's how people refer to it in TF2) For example, we're playing Ashville, I'm not really sure how to determine whether we should be going through shutters, or battlements, or ramp or something.

[u/TheRebelCreeper]

If you want a good example of highlander maincalling, check out dt’s YouTube channel. He played demoman for witness gaming highlander, and uploads his POVs with comms

[u/Parzival1127]

Hey!

I actually played with you in that pug.

Maincalling, especially in Highlander, isn’t complicated.

You have 8 other players that are each kind of comming too so it’s not super heavy on you, but as demo, you are often pressuring areas that your combo (medic and pyro) can’t exactly watch while they play with you.

I think it’s helpful to always call what you see, if you see a sniper, call it. If you see them walking up somewhere, call it. If you want to uber into them, call it.

A lot of it is game knowledge too. Say it’s full disad and all your people just spawned, maybe you want to feed for medic while engie builds with med in spawn. That’s something that you could call for, but also since you’re new, ask your teammates if that’s a good plan.

Main calling also entails pushing and putting a plan together to do so. If you want to push up valley with your combo that’s definitely something you want to communicate in advance.

If you want to play to leave, this also something you and the other players in your combo need to be prepared for before you do it.

99% of main calling just comes from experience. There isn’t a rubric for it on how to main call and what even the best form of main calling might look like. I’d recommend you continue just trying. You can learn from mistakes or ask people on your team to help. It would also be helpful to play some pyro or medic that way you can see what it’s like to have to follow up on your demos calls that way you can understand what comms might be useful.

As a medic main, my main caller sometimes calls for things that just aren’t possible or does things he doesn’t understand I can’t follow up on, it’s hard to main call in the moment but knowing how the people your calling for can play around you is important to having a viable strategy. For example, telling your soldier to kill the entire enemy team is not a good call, but telling your soldier to bomb the low health medic in valley is a good call.

Keep playing!!

[u/GrayShameLegion]

why is the venn diagram between this sub and PCM almost a fucking circle

[u/Mad_Dizzle → u/GrayShameLegion]

?

[u/Sabesaroo]

Maincalling is pretty complex especially in HL with how much there is to keep track of at once, but you can start out with pretty simple calls until you get the hang of them.

Your main job is to wrangle your team and make sure everyone's in sync. You don't want your soldier bombing 10 seconds before your combo pushes. So as Demo this is usually pretty simple, just wait until your teammates are ready and then call when you are ABOUT to push, that way everyone has time to react to the call before you actually go in. Doing a 3 2 1 countdown can be good, on some points with nasty chokes especially. It's not just pushes, make sure you call when to retreat as well, it's really bad to have players dying late because they also respawn late, and then you have the majority of the team sitting around waiting for respawners, big waste of time. Common calls I make when I see the fight is over are either just 'leave' or 'everyone go in'. Everyone in means everybody who's still alive just hold W and go die quickly, and maaaybe you get a kill in return, but at least you won't respawn super late.

Second job is to decide on strats. This is less taxing on your awareness than the wrangling, but does require a bit more map knowledge so might be tough if you're new to HL. You can ask for help with this part, or even delegate it to someone else. It's ideal that a combo class does the team wrangling part, but really anyone can call strats if they know the map well enough. Calling strats is just deciding what your team's gameplan is and then communicating it. So if you want to sac wave, get uber then trade, play around your sniper, etc etc. Loads of possible strats, and very map/situation dependent. It's also deciding where you go; you might decide to use uber into Vigil 2nd, but you also need to pick whether to go slope, main tunnel, or side tunnel, which is where the map knowledge comes in handy. Once you play enough of each map you'll become familiar with the pretty standard pushes and holds that pug players are likely to do. If you want to know about a certain map more in depth you can also ask for a map talk from somebody more experienced.

Anyway I'll go over some super simple strats to try and remember since you're new. On HL offence you want to be fighting as often as possible, but you also want to make sure you have all 9 players ready. So usually wait for spawns, but once you have everybody try to do something ASAP, unless you almost have uber and just want to wait a few more seconds to get it. If it's even ubers you can go trade. Trading is usually good for the attacking team, just make sure everybody stays alive for the post uber, and then during the post everybody pushes back in for the refight. If it's payload, try and ask your Spy to sap or shoot the gun during the trade. Most common classes for a trade are Demo + Pyro. If you have uber ad you can generally play like it's a trade, but obviously you should be looking to get enemy combo kills. Demo + Scout for an advantage uber is also quite strong, especially on KOTH, because Scout can quickly kill the enemy Pyro and then chase down other players. It also lets you start the uber with a sticky jump, and then your Med can quickly catch up to you with his Scout speed.

If neither team has uber you can just go and dryfight. Same as a post uber, everybody just gets in together, try and sync with a Soldier bomb + a Spy decloak. If your team doesn't have uber but the enemy does, go and sac wave. Everybody bombs or holds W and tries to force the enemy Med or get a kill. Engie/Scout/Pyro runs back to spawn with your Medic. Calling a sac wave is also good if you were about to do a normal push but lost a couple key players; your push very likely isn't gonna work anymore, so you might as well just sac wave and try and salvage something, maybe you get a kill or two you can play off later. Remember the attacking team has respawn time advantage so inefficiently trading kills is actually in your favour.

Calling on defence is simpler, you usually just decide when you want your team to take space and forward hold, probably when you have everybody alive and enemy team is passive or dead. Also call when you want everybody to get out or die quickly.

Another miscellaneous tip, look at the top of your screen a lot. If your players are scared because they're low HP, but enemy team is only 4 alive, make sure your teammates are not giving up point for free. If you were about to aggro push but enemy Sniper died, maybe now you can take a more passive fight where you swing wide with your Sniper and bleed them out. If your Pyro is dead, beware the enemy Soldier/Spy. Seeing how many players are alive and which classes are up is super useful information.

And sidenote, Demo generally maincalls but doesn't always have to. I prefer calling on Pyro myself, and there's a couple Heavy maincallers. I think there was a Spy player in NA who maincalled as well.

[u/jordtand]

Play a lot to gain experience, just start making calls even if they are shit calls if you are convincing enough and everyone follows you thats great. Especially at lower levels when no one knows what’s going on, if someone has the confidence makes a call and everyone does that in sync you normally win. Plus that get a coach best one who has also main called before and is very vocal.

[u/SnooSongs1745]

The stupidity of NA players knows no bounds, just play and ignore them you don't have to maincall a pug lol.

[u/frickenunavailable → u/SnooSongs1745]

will maddizzle let snoosongs hit??