Demoman (6v6)

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In 6v6, Demoman holds the primary role of dealing initial damage and crowd control. He makes sure the enemy never pushes into his team without taking damage and uses his spamming abilities to funnel the enemy team so they can be cleaned up by his teammates. He is also essential for defending as his sticky traps can net him easy kills and force the enemy to retreat, and his pill spam can easy chunk the enemy teams health if they are careless with their positioning. Demoman is considered one of the harder roles in 6's due to his lack of mobility, causing him to have to consider his positioning carefully if he wishes to both not die quickly in a fight and still do substantial damage to the enemy.

Main Roles

  • The Demoman's main role is mostly about area control and dealing damage.
  • Hold choke areas by spamming them.
  • Provide initial damage with the Pocket Soldier so that Scouts can follow up the damage with clean-up kills.
  • Slowing the enemy team down while your team is falling back.
  • Trapping chokes or other routes that the other team may push through in an attempt to stall a push or get a free kill.
  • Getting to the midpoint early to dish out damage to the opposing team.

Mid Fights

Compared to all the other 6v6 classes, the Demoman's role has a big impact on the conclusion of the mid fight. It usually is the class that deals the initial damage, and whose damage can affect the whole middle fight. Who the Demoman focuses at the beginning of the middle fight is usually the Scouts and the other team's Demoman. On many maps, the demoman can arrive at the middle before even the scouts. As such, a demoman is the player who will lead the initial attack. He should focus on killing the enemy demoman, or, if the demoman's team's scouts can kill the enemy demoman, then he should simply spam the enemy with both grenades and stickies.

Rollouts

Rollouts are an important aspect of a Demoman's play, and they usually have a big effect on the outcome of the midfight. Usually, the first Demoman that gets to mid and deals initial damage to the other Demoman and/or Scouts gains positional and heal advantages for his team. Practicing rollouts is essential for a Demoman as it comes down to muscle memory. Demoman rollouts are also usually very punishing and demanding as a simple mistake can completely ruin a team's mid fight and strategy, therefore it is also advised to have a backup rollout plan if something happens.

Check our Resources section for more indepth guides and videos on rollouts.

Playstyles

The Pocket Demoman

Pocket Demo is a powerful playstyle adopted by a few teams (Epsilon with Numlocked & WARHURYEAH, TLR with HYS). The style is mainly done by having a Demoman being the focus point of most pushes, the style is becoming more prominent as more and more teams are adopting a dual gunboats style (see i52), this is to create a more aggressive and in your face style from the soldiers as they have a more reliable escape. This creates a lot of space for the Demoman to follow up on aggression unhindered. Along with a pocket Demoman most teams will then have a passive scout in support.

The Demoknight

The Demoknight loadout is a viable strategy in 6's, but it relies on having a strong pocket Soldier as the Demoman will not be able to pocket effectively. This setup is good for getting clutch Medic picks and creating advantages, but it is sparingly used because it can be easily countered by the opposite team. When playing the Demoknight role you will also lose your main source of damage dealing (the Sticky Launcher) thus completely changing the playstyle of the class.

Instead of relying on high damage dealing as your main goal, it's much more efficient to play a more roaming role and use it to flank or pick off lone enemies.

The item loadout when playing this role should be as follows

  • Grenade Launcher
  • Chargin' Targe
  • Eyelander

This role has a few limitations, one of them is the lack of dodge movement or strafing, that can be fixed with a script.

Notable players and examples

SoLID SnaKE is one of the most notable players that have played as a demoknight at a high level competitive.

[1] - Example of a medic pick in a ESEA match while playing as a demoknight

Resources

Demo Review / Analysis

Badlands

Freight

Granary

Gravelpit

Gullywash

Obscure

Snakewater

Turbine Pro

POVs

Badlands

Granary

Gravelpit

Gullywash

Obscure

Process

Snakewater

Viaduct

Warmfront

Rollouts

Tutorials / Analysis

POVs

See Also