Difficult But Awesome / First-Person Shooter

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• Alien vs. Predator:
  • All three factions had their own unique style of play, but the Marine mode was the most fun considering it basically turned the game into a Survival Horror First-Person Shooter.
  • The Aliens in the 2010 game. You will either rack up the kills against people who don't know how to play them properly, or be Persecuted ad nauseum by a player who has mastered the unique play style.
• Battlefield 2142:
  • The Baur has high recoil, low magazine count, but dealt out high damage, and if you could pop off quick headshots, and stay out of most close quarters combat, you could drop enemies with ease.
  • To a lesser extent, the Scar-11, which was a watered down Baur (which makes sense, as the in-game description says that the Baur is a bulked-up edition of it.) It had higher recoil compared to the Krylov and the Voss, but dealt out more damage and performed better at range.
• In BioShock 2, the Drill Specialist plasmid denies you use of any weapons except for the drill, but in return cuts the cost of using plasmids (the game's version of spells) in half. At that point in the game the player has access to plasmids that can turn security systems and other enemies to their side, and unleash streams of Fire, Ice, Lightning and Bees at a whim. While obviously requiring more thought than just filling everything with bullets (at least, until acquiring the "Summon Eleanor" plasmid), it is still entirely viable.
• Borderlands 2:
  • Gaige and her Ordered Chaos skill tree. The tree is focused around the "Anarchy" skill, which raises her damage while lowering her accuracy both by 1.75% any time you gain a kill or empty your clip, but all stacks decay instantly when you die or reload prematurely. The higher you stack the Anarchy skill, the more damage you do and the more inaccurate you become. It can eventually get to a point where bullets will actively try and break the laws of physics to avoid hitting anyone. While there are certain guns and abilities that can mitigate this somewhat, good luck trying to hit anyone at a certain level of stacks but anyone that does get hit will feel it (as in, you can kill the final boss in less than a minute with the right guns). The stack limit is 150, meaning 262.5% stronger and inaccurate, but fully investing in her Preshrunk Cyberpunk skill increases the stack limit to 400, which buffs her damage/debuffs her accuracy by 700%.
  • Similarly, there is also Krieg and his Mania skill tree, which is focused on melee damage and Critical Status Buffs. Several of his skills in said tree are not only focused on being in low health but also offer some disadvantages, such as instantly reviving teammates while putting yourself in Fight for Your Life mode, or a massive buff to melee damage that gives you a chance to hit yourself with your own melee attack. The idea of the tree is that Krieg will do the most damage when he is at near-death.
  • Hyperion guns in general, due to their "reverse recoil" effect. The crosshair starts out with a massive spread, and if you aim down the sights, the gun sways all over the place; you have to shoot for them to stabilize and deliver their true (generally murderous) accuracy, and a good deal of it is lost when reloading. This forces the player to use a different strategy when employing them (like shooting wildly in the enemy's direction at first and only then start aiming for critical points, and starting with the closer foe in all circumstances), and there's no such thing as ammo saving with them. It's easier with shotguns, as the idle sway doesn't mean much and the starting shots don't make the shotgun jump around like a pistol or SMG would, and sniper rifles, which only need you to stay scoped for a bit to stabilize.
  • The Sloth sniper rifle you get from Mordecai if you give him the booze in "Rakkaholics Anonymous" has a high damage and accuracy but a terrible muzzle velocity. Unless you're Zer0 or Maya, both of whom have acceleration powers, most targets will move before the bullet arrives.
  • Zer0, just in general. He's a Glass Cannon with a lot of damage-enhancing skills and little that improves his health. He needs to be good at scoping in quickly and hitting a critical point, if specced as a sniper, or at landing melee attacks, if specced as a ninja — tasks that aren't helped by enemies with odd or hard to hit critboxes, such as Goliaths, or enemies who lack them entirely, such as Saturn. Sniper Zer0s also have the problem of the average sniper rifle's fairly low rate of fire. That said, Zer0's critical damage buffs add up fairly quickly (+125% before Ascension stacks are counted if you have the right purchases from the tree), and in the hands of someone who can reliably manage backstabs or critical shots (especially with a Jakobs sniper rifle), you can see some very large numbers appearing above people's heads indeed.
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has Claptrap's Fragmented Fragtrap skill tree. Unlike other skill sets, this particular tree requires enormous amounts of stack management, timing counts, and familiarity with a wide variety of weapons. As a Fragmented Fragtrap, the player is obligated to pick skills that force them to switch randomly between certain weapon proficiencies, sometimes at the most inopportune times. It is easily one of the most micromanagement-intensive skill trees in the game. However, rein it all in and master the finicky switching system, and you can deal hideous amounts of damage at terrifying speeds. A well-played Fragmented Fragtrap basically wheelies from opponent to opponent, hits them with enormous elemental damage en route, then slaps their face off with a melee attack that can deal upwards of 540% more damage (before any weapon or badass modifiers), before zipping off at an even greater speed while basking in the glow of instant health recovery for every such opponent he's slapped to death. If anyone dares shoot at him, he gains critical hit bonuses for the duration, then emits damaging novas every time his shield drops, raises, or if he's crippled. Finally, at the highest ranks, he takes substantially longer to die and inflicts all forms of elemental on nearby enemies simultaneously every time he activates a fresh subroutine. Similar to Krieg, Claptrap will probably spend most of his time either in his opponent's faces, mere inches from death, but so will everyone else, and Claptrap is much better with the game's Comeback Mechanic than they are.
• Call of Duty
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:
    • Riot Shield classes for multiplayer are generally easy to kill when you spot them. However, in the hands of a skilled player, they're nigh-unkillable without either a teammate helping you, or a high explosives class.
    • For most part, the Throwing Knife is incredibly hard to use, especially on the consoles. However, if you manage to get the hang of it, it is extremely rewarding to kill players with it at close to medium range before they can manage to hose you down with bullets.
    • People usually expected a Riot Shield to rush forward to bash, or to stay back and continue deflecting bullets. Few expect the Riot Shield/Throwing Knife pairing. You have no crosshairs while using the shield, making this a difficult build, but if you keep your cool and aim carefully, you can catch an enemy off guard with a sudden Throwing Knife. Many players come to a dead stop when they see a Riot Shield, trying to shoot the bits of you that aren't covered. Others back straight away, all the time firing wildly. The clearer heads pull back and ready an explosive. In all these situations, a sudden toss can end the encounter. If you miss the toss, you can still bash, or even maneuver over to the dropped knife and go for another attempt.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II:
    • The KSG shotgun in multiplayer is unusual, since it fires slugs (big bullets) instead of buckshot, making it an hybrid between a shotgun / sniper rifle. It has high damage up to mid-range (200-75), high range (making 1-shot-kills at longer distances than the Remington 870 MCS), high penetration (on par with assault rifles), high capacity (14 shells by default, second only to the M1216) and a 1.5 headshot multiplier (something that the rest of the shotguns lack), which makes the KSG specially deadly at longer ranges and shooting through cover (specially if the user is good with headshots). You pay all of this with a slow rate of fire (since it's a pump-action shotgun) and decreased hip-fire effectiveness, even with the increased hip-fire accuracy over it's peers (given it's not a buckshot weapon, it can miss if fired this way).
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War:
    • High End Killstreaks. On the one hand, the likes of the Chopper Gunner, VTOL and Gunship are kill machines once used; on the other, getting them is a whole other ball game. Streaks in this game work based on how well you do in the game, and require obscene amounts of score to obtain. This usually requires players to get an inordinate amount of kills in a game, or build multiple killstreaks for bonus score. The worst is that due to the easy accessibility of the Cavalry Lancer barrel on weapons, your air support that took you the entire game to obtain can be downed in less than ten seconds by an LMG or high calibre sniper rifle, such as the M82 or the 20mm.
    • Melee weapons. Due to the high HP and the fact that regular melee hits aren't one shots, melee gear in close range is downright brutal to play against. Having said this, staying in melee range is tricky, as many players will be quick to stay far away from you and pump several rounds into your defenceless body instead. Even with Armor, playing a melee class is an extreme example of min-maxing in terms of range.
    • The ZRG-20mm has some incredibly poor handling stats - low movement, high weight and high ADS time, as well as an abysmal 3 round default magazine. Said magazine holds the same size rounds as the Minigun, and has the highest base damage modifiers of all weapons, as well as the highest vehicle damage of any weapon in-game. The Tiger Team and Cavalry barrels turn this weapon into two distinct but difficult to master roles. The former turns this into the hands down greatest long range weapon in the game, with 146 base damage and high armor damage one-shotting virtually anything that moves. The latter becomes the best anti-streak option in the game, downing most aircraft in 2-5 shots. The only aircraft it has difficulty with is the HARP and the Gunship, but that is only due to the altitude making them take 7-8 shots to down. Outside of these two roles, the 20mm is incredibly clunky to use in close and medium range gunfights, getting outclassed in almost all areas. Did we mention it has a rate of fire of 23 rpm? Miss a shot and you are most likely looking at a respawn. But if you enjoy 'old man sniping', you have on your hands a highly reliable one-shotter out to incredible distances, able to consistently nail other players time and time again.
• Jones from Clive Barker's Jericho is this. Of the entire playable cast, his ability to possess enemies is the hardest to use in a fight, since he's left vulnerable while using it, and aiming it correctly can be difficult at long distances. However, once he's possessed an enemy, he can cast a variation of Church's Blood Ward, which freezes enemies in place, and can do so using the enemies health. This makes fighting some of the tougher enemies, like Machinegunners less daunting.
• Doom: The BFG9000 is a rather tricky weapon to use to its full potential. On the surface, the gun fires a powerful green projectile, which then explodes and somehow causes everything around it to disintegrate into steaming piles of gore. That "somehow" is 40 invisible hitscan tracers which fire from the player in the direction the original energy ball was shot when the latter explodes, which in fact collectively deal most of the damage of the attack. If the player is careless about where they're facing when they fire the ball and when it explodes, the attack becomes ineffective, but if they keep their aim steady they can deal a lot of damage. Even basic understanding of this behavior allows you to one-shot the Spider Mastermind at point-blank, while more advanced strategies involve firing the ball into a wall and then peeking around the corner, skipping the delay and instantly clearing out a room full of powerful enemies, or getting stealthy kills in multiplayer deathmatch.
• The Wraith from Evolve is a Fragile Speedster/Glass Cannon who, although highly mobile and powerful, has poor health and armour even when fully evolved, and is a Close-Range Combatant to boot; all the other monsters have proper ranged abilities, but her only ones are Warp Blast, an explosive Deadly Lunge that puts her right in the face of the hunters, and Abduction, a hard-to-aim You Will Not Evade Me. Newbies fail to use her right and get shot to bits trying to kill the hunters or are constantly scared by the poor health into being on the defensive and fail to kill them all before the match ends. In good hands, she's a Slasher Movie villain; the hunters never see her unless it's a Decoy and/or part of the plan, while she outmaneuvers them, Abducts them away from the team and turns them one-by-one into confetti with Supernova.
• Many of the so-called "special weapons" from Far Cry 3 count.
  • The flamethrower has a limited capacity tank, short range, and can end up doing more harm to the player if used carelessly. Video Game Flamethrowers Suck, right? Wrong. Using it in jungle and confined spaces is risky, but if you know what you're doing, it's one of the most deadly weapons available to you.
  • The recurve bow. It's silent, can use a variety of special arrows, kills most unarmoured humans and herbivores outright, and heavily damages armoured human enemies and carnivores. However, it has a limited ammunition capacity (unless you take the time to craft a nice big quiver) and slow rate of fire. The most niggling issue of all, however, is the fact that it, like the flamethrower, has a realistic firing arc, meaning hitting any human-sized target over 50 metres away is a challenge, even with the reflex scope attachment.
  • The flare gun. Harmless to enemies, it can only serve as a distraction, or to set the environment on fire, which means like the flamethrower it can backfire against you spectacularly if mishandled. However, the fire can be used to kill a number of enemies standing in foliage, and keep enemies away from you. It also can instantly ignite any vehicle in the game, turning it into a crippled time bomb.
  • Also in Far Cry 3, stealth. Due to the Artificial Brilliance of human enemies, taking out groups without being detected is tough, especially later in the game when dogs and heavies come into play. However, if you manage to clear out an outpost without being spotted, you net a pretty impressive EXP bonus.
• The Boltshot in Halo 4. This Forerunner pistol has average accuracy, and poor enough damage that you're practically always better off with your primary weapon. However, it has a charge feature which lets it effectively be used as a pocket Short-Range Shotgun and one-shot kill enemies at close range, out-damaging almost every other weapon if you can get close enough in time and land the shot. The charge takes just under a second to build, and then can only be held for about another second before it fires automatically, so it requires precision timing as well as aiming; miss the first shot, and you'll be unlikely to get another as the weapon cools down and then charges again.
  • The Armor Lock from Halo: Reach allows you to become temporarily invincible at the cost of being completely immobile, but if you master it well enough you can, quite literally, become a briefly-immovable Stone Wall that can turn full-boosting Ghosts that try to run you over into destroyed bits of scrap.
• While most of of the weapons Killing Floor are rather straightforward in what they do and in their purpose, the M14 Enhanced Battle Rifle takes the cake for being a skill-gate weapon. As with all weapons under the Sharpshooter perk, it is most effective at its designated purpose, headshots, but in comparison to its alternatives the Lever-Action Rifle and the Crossbow, it deals less damage on headshots and does poor damage on body shots. Despite these two flaws, the M14 EBR packs an impressive magazine size of 20 with 7 spare magazines (whereas the LAR has 80 shots and reloads on a per bullet basis while the Crossbow only holds 36 bolts total), reloads the entire magazine, and has a semi-automatic rate of fire, which makes it ideal for making multiple headshots in a small time frame. In the higher difficulties, this makes the M14 EBR a solid choice in a Sharpshooter's arsenal as the Crossbow gets a damage Nerf on certain targets, especially when considering the toughest non-boss creature in the game can go down with 10 well-placed headshots on the hardest difficulty with max (6) players. In the hands of a skilled Sharpshooter, they can take out a sizable chunk of the smaller enemies using only 1 to 2 headshots max and still have enough remaining bullets to deal with the bigger threats when necessary.
• All of the combat in Mirror's Edge. Faith's combat maneuvers are mostly not spelled out and difficult to master. Once you get her in hand, however, she becomes a grand-master ninja practitioner of Waif-Fu, literally running circles around the enemy.
• Nexuiz and its Spiritual Successor Xonotic:
  • Similar to the Shock Rifle example above, the Electro allows you to do a combo of both fire modes from the weapon, with almost the same mechanics. The only difference is that the alternate fire shoots a bouncing ball and several of them can be shot in order to create a minefield of sorts.
  • The 2.5.2 version of the Rocket Launcher in Nexuiz includes a laser to guide the rockets, which are now slow as hell. With a bit of practice, you can blow up your enemies with little to no damage to speak of.
• Overwatch has a difficulty rating of 1 to 3 stars for each of the heroes. The 3-star heroes all qualify:
  • Ana is very mechanically-demanding and is the only healer who doesn't have consistent Healing Per Second because she needs to constantly shoot her ally (and land the shots) to heal them, and she is subject to down time via reloading because of this. One firing mode uses projectiles, which requires leading the target, and the other firing mode (which uses hitscans) gives the user tunnel vision and lessened movement. She is also the only healer with no regenerating shield or Healing Factor, meaning her Biotic Grenade is her only option of self-healing (which is often saved because of the high utility it has), and has no movement abilities, meaning bad positioning and dying are very punishing. Flankers are especially troublesome because of her lack of close-range firepower. However, Ana has the strongest healing in the game, at 99 average HPS, or an even higher 149 average HPS if the ally has the Biotic Grenade buff applied. She also has very high utility with her Biotic Grenade^note heals allies and temporarily increases the amount of healing they receive from all sources; damages enemies and temporarily prevents them from healing. Does both at once and Sleep Dart^note Shuts down an opponent by putting them to sleep for up to 5.5 seconds. Topping it all off is her Nano boost, which makes a targeted ally go into Super Mode.
  • Genji is considered by the playerbase to be the hardest character to master, and for good reason. His shuriken do sub-par Damage Per Second when compared to other offensive heroes, and his abilities are a lot less straightforward than most heroes. Using Genji effectively requires good map knowledge, good ability knowledge and timing, good aiming, clever positioning, and good reflexes. His abilities, though, are a Flash Step which damages anyone it hits, an Attack Reflector, and advanced mobility in a Wall Crawl and a Double Jump. A good Genji is a Lightning Bruiser who'll use his superior mobility to flank the enemy from angles they won't expect, capable of slaughtering entire teams by himself while turning their own firepower against them, and then vanishing as quickly as he appeared.
  • Hanzo. While his younger brother is considered to be the most difficult character to master, Hanzo is considered to be the most difficult character to use effectively. First of all, he's a sniper, so that already sets the skill bar high. Second, he uses a bow and arrow instead of a sniper rifle, meaning arrows need to be drawn. Additionally, the player has to take into account draw time, travel time, and arrow arc when firing. His only real method of fighting at close range (aside from spamming low power arrows) is to open fire with Storm Arrows, meaning he needs to stay at range, and his Dragonstrike is a Painfully Slow Projectile. The awesome part? Hanzo doesn't need to reload, has Hitbox Dissonance in his arrows' favor, has Wall Climb to get into ideal positions, and his arrows leave no trail while making little noise, making him harder to spot. His Storm Arrow can do insane amounts of damage quickly when carefully aimed, his Sonic Arrow can provide team-wide echolocation in a notable radius every 20 seconds, and Dragonstrike disorganizes the enemy team through either killing them or scaring them away. A good Hanzo can kill the entire enemy team with minimal assistance (case in point), but good Hanzo players are the hardest players to find.
  • Mei isn't as difficult as the other 3-star heroes, but she still qualifies. Her primary fire shoots a close-ranged beam which slowly freezes the enemy in 3 seconds of continuous fire, and her alternate fire shoots powerful icicles at a slow rate with a delay before actually firing it. Because of this, Mei faces difficulty in taking on more than one enemy. Her wall also requires precise aim, because 1 meter off can make the wall form in a less-than-ideal place, and a badly placed wall hinders her teammates. A good Mei can use the wall to isolate enemies and freeze them to death, while also knowing when to self heal and when to block off the enemy.
  • Sombra has the lowest DPS (though it's not to be ignored) of all the Offense characters, and her Hack ability has a lengthy 8 second cooldown. She cannot take a direct approach to a fight, as she risks getting spotted before reaching optimal range for her weapon. This is however balanced by Hack being an incredibly powerful shutdown tool, restricting the enemy team from using anything from medkits to even Ultimates, and Sombra has all the tools to be obnoxiously evasive, with her Translocator and Thermoptic Camo. A Sombra player that makes their Hacks count while staying alive can virtually control the fight.
  • Zarya is most effective when in the midst of her allies and when she's actively getting attacked with her shield up, unlike all other heroes, who strive to avoid being hit at all. She also has less health than the other tanks, at 400 HP with no armor. The player also needs good tracking to do damage effectively. Additionally, her basic attack is weak if it's not powered up. However, 200 of that HP is regenerating shields, and when using her correctly or in unconventional ways means that she can dominate the battlefield when used effectively, with a more area-of-effect focused power set than the other tanks. At 100 charge, her DPS reaches 190, the highest of all tanks, and higher than the DPS of most dedicated DPS characters. That's without a damage boost from Mercy or Ana.
  • Zenyatta's healing from his Harmony Orb is somewhat weak at 30 HPS, and keeping track of both of his Orbs can be difficult at times, especially in a firefight. He has no movement abilities and his Orbs of Destruction require leading the target, but he has enough firepower to shred most characters in seconds, his Discord Orb^note The target of this Orb takes 30% more damage from all sources is useful in any scenario, and Transcendence is extremely potent, healing nearby allies at a rate of 300 HPS, out-healing Pharah's Barrage most of the time. Oh, and he has no footstep noises, so he can be very sneaky.
  • Although they're rated 2 stars in terms of difficulty, Cassidy (formerly McCree), Tracer, Widowmaker, and Moira qualify as well.
    • Cassidy is very reliant in the player's aim to perform well. His Combat Roll isn't very helpful, and is mostly just used for a fast reload, and his Flashbang can miss easily. However, a player who has mastered Cassidy is very deadly, and can keep two of the most annoying and dangerous characters, Genji and Tracer, at bay.
    • Tracer's very low HP and short range mean she has to take a lot of risks to do her job, and she can be two-shotted by many of the other playable characters. Her Blink is also tricky to master, especially if you plan to use it for dodging stuff. But if you get a handle on her, Tracer is easily the most maneuverable character in the game, hurts a lot, and can leave the enemy team tearing their hair out in frustration.
    • Widowmaker is arguably the hardest character to play. FPS snipers are already typically some of the most mechanically demanding characters to play, and she is no exception. What makes her stand out from other "snipers" such as Hanzo and Ana is that all of her team-wide value comes from sniping and one-shotting enemies, meaning all of her abilities serve as utility to complement the player's ability to land constant critical hits, including her ultimate, which won't help decide games in the same way other ultimates in the game will. This means if you don't have good aim or produce as much damage to consistently pick off squishy targets, you aren't taking advantage of her potential, ergo possibly wasting a good hero pick. That said, those who can master her are complete nightmares to face against, and she can shut down entire teams unharmed from a distance.
    • Moira is a tricky character to play effectively. As she's support, she's fairly squishy with 200 HP and no armor or shields. On top of that, when her healing ability is depleted it takes almost a full minute to completely replenish, which can hamstring her team. However, if the player deals damage with Moira's right hand, it both refills her biotic meter and heals her. This puts anyone who's going to try their hand at her in the unique position of needing to heal your team and also needing to dive into the fray and pick off the enemy team. She can also cast orbs of healing or damage that bounce around, which can make it embarrassingly easy for new players to send them flying off in the wrong direction. A bad Moira can't juggle these tasks/abilities, and winds up either trying to heal ineffectively because she can't keep a charge, or forgetting she's a support hero and getting killed every 30 seconds. However, a good Moira is able to balance her abilities and split her time between healing and fighting, which can lead to some seriously lethal gameplay, especially if her Fade ability is being used effectively.
• Quake:
  • Quake II has the Railgun, which has the distinction of being to all intents and purposes a sniper rifle without a scope (or with a scope if the player makes two keybinds from the in-game console) while retaining the long reload times one would expect. This makes it quite difficult to use, but a player that takes the trouble to master it will cause opponents to groan in frustration as soon as the blue trails of the Railgun bullets start appearing. You see, Quake II came to life in that glorious era when weapon balance was something that happened to other people, and no gun reflects this better than the Railgun: as it does a full 100 damage hitscan across the map. Just spawned with full health? A Railgun slug will one-hit you. Grabbed some armor but came out of a firefight with reduced health? A Railgun slug will one-hit you. Spent the time to search for tons of health and armor powerups? A Railgun slug will instantly invalidate all your work, and hope the other player isn't determined enough to follow you for a second shot, because that will one-hit you. Railgun player grabbed a Quad Damage power-up? A slug will now one-hit you regardless of how much health and armor you have.
  • Quake III: Arena, predictably enough, nerfed the Railgun such that it now requires two shots to down a newly spawned player. But it gained a level of usefulness on maps with jump pads, as it is impossible to maneuver in the air and therefore the Railgun is the weapon of choice to hit jumping players during their predictable trajectories.
  • Computer bots are able to hit players in mid-jump with rockets. Indeed awesome, but almost impossible for human players.
• Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is situational, somewhat tricky, and can't handle mobs of enemies well, but careful application of Force Choke by a skilled player allows him to win games by slaughtering the enemy a few at a time. Of course, there's a bug that allows you to use both Force Choke AND Force Lightning at the same time. It's also impossibly easy to perform once you know how. Count Dooku can also do the exact same thing, with slightly better overall skillsets.
• Team Fortress 2 is a very odd sort of game in that every class falls under this:
  • The Scout. Normal Scouts are low-health cannon fodder, and easily dispatched by just about anything. Skilled Scouts are nightmarish, appearing from nowhere to kill any class (even the Heavy) in seconds and are as easy to hit as a raindrop. Any player's absolute worst nightmare is a competent Scout that knows how and when to dodge, flank, ambush, retreat, and pursue.
  • Unskilled Soldiers are Crutch Characters, great for beginners but never more than decent against better players. Good Soldiers use Rocket Jumping to turn the slow Soldier into a highly mobile force of Death from Above, juggle enemies (which requires they know how to blast enemies into the air and keep them there by predicting their landing spots, completely neutralizing unaware players), and use aerials to take target-leading to a whole new level to work beautifully in conjunction with the other two abilities.
    • Combining the Rocket Jumper and the Market Gardener (usually with Mantreads as a secondary) takes this to extreme. Using this loadout removes most of your sustained damage and makes you a sitting duck when not rocket jumping, but your rocket jumps are almost free, and if you have the timing required to consistently hit with the Market Gardener in the narrow window of opportunity when you're in melee range and haven't hit the ground yet, you can become an ambushing terror able to one-shot all but two (Soldier and Heavy) out of nine classes.
  • Pyros have very average stats, don't have very many options against enemies past point blank range, and are mostly used to charge into battle flaming the entire time^*derogatorily known as W+M1, after the two keys most often bound to "move forward" and "attack" respectively. Those who master the airblast, however, which repels enemy players and projectiles, are death-dealing monstrosities, the bane of Soldiers and Demomen everywhere, enabling such feats as Rocket Jumping using enemy projectiles, but it requires split-second timing and not a small amount of luck. Reflecting a Huntsman arrow in particular is considered a sort of rite of passage for airblast Pyros thanks to the unpleasantly narrow window of opportunity and the amount of damage you'll take if you fail.
    • The Degreaser + Flare Gun + Axtinguisher combo sacrifices some flamethrower damage and use of a shotgun with the ability to rapidly switch between weapons that give guaranteed criticals on burning players. It requires superb reflexes, juggling enemies, and leaves you vulnerable to enemy Pyros, but takes the Pyro's already superb ambush skills and results in a player that can kill several enemies in a single attack, and can take down other Pyros.
    • The Dragon's Fury added in the "Jungle Inferno" update trades the continuous DPS of the usual flamethrowers in favor of concentrated blasts that, like the Flare Gun, deal a Critical Hit on a burning target. The catch is, if the Dragon's Fury hits a target, its fire rate increases, to the point where if two consecutive shots hit even a Pyro, the second blast will crit. The blast's hitbox size was reduced in the Blue Moon update to prevent exploitations, so while it's still an awesome weapon, it takes at least decent aiming and maneuvering to use.
  • Any Demoman who doesn't just spam grenades everywhere needs to be damn good at predicting where your opponent is going to be in a second (grenade launcher), two seconds (airbursting stickybombs) or ten seconds (sticky traps), as well as able to instinctively compensate for both weapons' considerable projectile arcs. Even more so are Demomen who can master sticky jumping, a technique akin to the Rocket Jump except that it utilises Stickybombs as opposed to rockets. It is considerably more dangerous as it costs more HP than a Rocket Jump (unless you're using the Sticky Jumper), but thanks to the ability to airburst his stickies, the Demo can chain several jumps and become the most mobile class in the entire game, being able to outpace even the Scout. Combined with proper grenade aiming, the Demo becomes a terrifyingly mobile target able to dish out insane amounts of damage, especially against clusters of enemies. In competitive circles, the true skill of a Demoman is oft-measured in not only how much damage he can deal, but also how quickly he can navigate the map.
  • Surprisingly, the Heavy becomes this trope in higher levels of play. The Heavy is oft looked down-upon among veteran players as a Skill Gate Character, dangerous against those who don't know how or when to retreat, but little more than a temporary damage sponge against competent players. The Heavy's massive 300HP and extremely powerful-at-short-range Minigun can easily fool the unaware into thinking that the Heavy is Nigh-Invulnerable and requires More Dakka from the other team to bring down. In actuality, a Scout can send the Heavy straight back to the respawn room in just three solid Scattergun shots, and that 200 ammo of his runs down very quickly. In addition, the Heavy's massive size and pitiful mobility means that any halfway decent Sniper or Spy can One-Hit Kill him if he's distracted or out in the open. In order to actually play the Heavy well, players must have extremely good situational awareness about the situation, his position and that of his teammates, and his health and ammo. Oftentimes the Heavy is referred to as a mobile Sentry Gun, and the positive and negative attributes are as applicable as the title: alone, stranded from teammates, and poorly positioned out in the open, the Heavy will go down extremely quickly, taking maybe one or two reckless players with him. When fully-buffed with teammates to clean up the damage being dealt and safe from backstabs/headshots/bombing Soldiers and Demos, the Heavy becomes a one-Russian death-dealing machine, even capable of ambushes if he's using the silent-deploy Tomislav.
    • Another factor to consider with the Heavy is how he uses his edible secondaries. An unskilled Heavy will stop out in the open to nom his food and can be easily killed while he's busy chewing, or toss it at a disguised Spy about to backstab him. A competent Hoovy knows exactly when to nope out and where to stop to recover health, tosses the banana and chocolate often at burning teammates, constantly heals his Medic, swaps out small health packs for the more powerful thrown Sandviches within the area his team's controlling, and is almost as good at keeping his team away from the spawn room as a good Medic or Engineer with good Dispenser placement skills.
  • The Engineer can build stuff, sure, but if you have no idea exactly where and when to build, your team will fail. But with well-placed Teleporters drastically improving team movements, a Dispenser to keep them supplied and a Sentry to provide fire support and area denial, a skilled Engie can and often does mean the difference between victory and defeat. Extremely skilled Engineers can bullet jump using their Sentry or use the Dispenser not only as a resupply station but also as a temporary obstacle in chokepoints and a stepping stone for him to reach higher places.
    • One of the most reliable and annoying styles of play in the game is the Combat Engineer, using the Gunslinger. The Teleporter and the Dispenser are incredibly vital to everything, Teleporters being the only thing able to keep continuous pressure on the enemy team in a timely manner and the Dispenser allowing people to stand in tactically sound positions which generally would suffer in terms of health and ammo supplies, but the addition of a fast-building Mini Sentry which falls into Boring, but Practical territory for substituing health, ammo and damage for a fire rate twice as fast and a build time four times as fast allows the often turtling Engineer to play a lot like a less mobile but tougher^note the Gunslinger adds 25 HP to the Engie's health pool for a total of 150 and more resourceful Scout by mixing the reliable shotgun-and-pistol combo with a second, quick-to-deploy firing position that will allow you to focus down most foes save for a Medic with a Vaccinator set to bullet resistance.
  • The Medic has a deceptively high skill ceiling, especially when going into higher levels of play.
    • The Medic's disadvantage in combat means that most of the time he will need to avoid taking damage as much as possible. High level medics know how to position themselves to avoid being flanked, juke opponents to allow their teammates a fraction of a second longer to kill a rushing enemy, and use enemy explosives to propel himself out of danger (known as "surfing"). In addition, a good medic needs to know how to wait until the optimal moment to pop his ubercharge that grants him and his heal target 8 seconds of invulnerability. This requires quick reflexes in order to block incoming burst damage before it kills the medic or his teammates. A medic that manages to stay alive constantly can help turn the tide at virtually any level of play.
    • The Combat Medic style of play. The Syringe Gun, even with its gravitated arc and limited range, has a higher DPS than the Sniper's SMG or the Scout's Pistol. A Medic who can alternate between fully healing allies and fighting alongside them can utterly terrorize the enemy team.
    • The Kritzkrieg is an alternate Medigun that grants 100% of critical hits for a few seconds. However, both the Medic and patient are not invulnerable while the charge is being used, and as such requires some timing cooperation to fully utilize the potential. When done correctly a big portion of the enemy team will be dead in seconds.
    • The same difficulty is also in the Crusader's Crossbow. It's much slower than the Syringe Gun, has to reload after a single shot, and can't really be used in a panic. Once you learn how to aim the weapon, you have one of the most useful Medic tools in the game. It does more damage with range, making it harder to aim, but if you have good aim and predictive abilities, you can not only down a sniper in one hit, but you can also heal an injured teammate half the map away because it heals when hitting allies. It might allow you to heal an otherwise dead Soldier or Heavy enough to let him get back to safety from a heavy battle, or get a kill-shot in on an enemy.
    • The Vaccinator's healing and overheal amounts are rather normal, and it builds uber rather fast, but it overheals very slowly, and it has the quirk that you can switch between types of damage to defend against, healing you for any of that kind of damage that hits your patient, and defending 10% against it. Where it's truly hard, however, is the uber itself. It charges fast, but the normally 10 second charge is split up in four 2.5 second mini-übers, and the actual charge provides 75% defense (the healing for matched damage still goes, mind you) and nullifies crits against that selected form of damage, but you cannot switch between them during the charge. A bad medic will basically be using a gimped stock medigun, but a skilled one can make both himself and his patient almost impossible to take down.
    • The last medigun, the Quick-Fix, cannot overheal as much as the others and has the "weakest" übercharge (3x healing for the Medic and his patient). However, it provides by far the fastest healing rate, it builds über faster, and it allows you to capture objectives unlike an übercharge with the stock , and a skilled medic will know how to share damage with his patient(s) to keep everyone healthy until the job is done. Since its release, two of its notable upsides (of being able to catch up with faster allies when healing them and being able to cap while ubercharged) have been relegated to other mediguns, and removed, respectively, but some still use it because of the faster heal rate both normally and with ubers, which is invaluable when the medic is focused less on ubercharges and more on keeping the entire team healthy.
    • No matter what kind of Medic you're playing, if you're good with the Ubersaw, you're significantly more of a threat. Adding a quarter of the übercharge meter per hit is nothing to scoff at even if you're using a medigun with quicker über build like the Ktitzkrieg or the Quick-Fix, and can keep aggressive pushes into enemy positions going for a lot longer than normal.
  • The Sniper requires excellent aim and good reflexes to hit something as small and erratically moving as an enemy's head, especially at close range, needs to know absolutely every flank route where his enemies could possibly surprise him from, and it's absolutely imperative that he checks those flank routes regularly lest he get a knife in the back or a cluster of stickybombs at his feet. However, a good Sniper can render a large section of the map completely uncrossable, pick off flimsier classes with 150 health or less in a split second, and open up weak spots in the enemy defenses for his teammates to exploit, as well as shredding the health of any enemy that dares to poke their head into his line of sight. There's a reason that most high-level players, especially Medics, avoid common sniper sightlines like the plague.
  • The Spy is an incredibly finicky class that requires at least a decent knowledge of a map's layout and enemy movements to play even half-way competently, along with knowing when, where and how to use his Invisibility Cloak, disguise kit, and Back Stab. Unskilled players are easy prey that spend more time dead than alive by attempting to be fancy with Ambassador headshots or trickstabs, decent ones can be a frustrating annoyance, but a good Spy knows how to use ambient noise to mask his cloaking, prioritizes key enemies like pocketed Medics and bothersome Engineer nests, uses his ability to see enemies' health to either go for a Back Stab on overhealed players or pick off injured ones with the Revolvers from a safe distance without straying far from his original path, and will terrorize any team and cripple all offense/defense maneuvers they attempt. There's a reason a good chunk of the Meta Game revolves around finding and killing enemy Spies before they can wreak havoc, and good Spies exploit their Paranoia Fuel-inducing nature to distract the enemy into ignoring their teammates by being such an unkillable nuisance that the enemy focuses all attention on them. Updates made spies somewhat easier to play somewhat decently, but playing a really good spy is still all about mind games. You might not even know you're playing against a top-level Spy until it's too late, since Spy is all about the quick and quiet assassination of key enemy targets.
  • Saxton Hale (exclusively playable in Vs. Saxton Hale Mode) may seem like a Master of All who can decimate an army of mercenaries with his bare hands, but if he takes his large health pool for granted and mindlessly goes in swinging, he will be rapidly cut down from constant pressure. A good Hale will always stay on the move, prioritize key targets instead of beating up the first person he sees, and take full advantage of the different abilities he has at his disposal.
• Unreal:
  • The (ASMD) Shock Rifle. Primary fire is hitscan with pinpoint accuracy and lots of knockback, which is useful over long distances (and great against snipers) but lacking in damage output; secondary is an area-damage ball that has decent damage and is moderately useful against groups and pursuers, but moves achingly slowly. However, the real power of the Shock Rifle — and what lands it in this list — is the Shock Combo: fire the secondary, then shoot the energy ball with the primary, and you'll cause a huge explosion that's almost guaranteed to One-Hit Kill anyone standing within its large shockwave. Due to the really small hitbox of the energy ball, this is only easy if you stand still while you perform it (in a game where standing still is a death sentence); if you ever spot a player who's capable of consistently performing shock combos on the move, they are guaranteed to be a pro.
  • The GES Bio-Rifle shoots balls of volatile Tarydium sludge that arc to the floor. Almost useless in a gun duel, and fully charging it creates a splash of acid that will probably just kill the shooter if they don't know how to use it. In the right hands, a devastating rear-guard and ambush/assassination weapon, dealing 255 damage on a full charge in a game where default health is 100, plus careful aiming gives you a very powerful splash attack that can decimate entire teams (if the fully-charged shot hits the enemy, there won't be a splash, so the trick is to aim right next the opponent without actually hitting them). Lastly, its spammable primary fire is fast and has surprisingly good knockback, making it a very useful tool to keep your opponent away. One great advantage it has in the single player mode of the first game is that the Skaarj mooks won't dive roll to the sides to avoid the sludge globs like they do with the more predictable straight-flying projectiles, as arcing projectiles are an A.I. Breaker for them.
  • The Impact Hammer/Chainsaw/Shield Gun. To get an idea, set up a bot to favour the hammer and make it insanely aggressive. Suddenly it goes from 'idiot bot' to 'crazed lunatic who kills you on contact' and it becomes a #1 priority to kill it.
• The End Times: Vermintide and Vermintide II:
  • Kruber's two-handed warhammer is a beast of a weapon that defines Mighty Glacier. It wallops anything it hits, and even armoured Stormvermin do not usually require a charged hit to bring down, but every swing has a substantial windup and even moreso with heavy attacks, requiring clever positioning and timing to use without being hit. Bardin's war pick in the second game continues the trend, uniquely having a charged heavy attack that does the most damage of any melee strike in the whole game and renders even Chaos Warrior super armour pointless; but on top of being slow, its light attacks deal only moderate damage and get stopped by any armoured enemy you hit, making it below-average at horde-clearing.
  • Depending on who you ask, Bardin's Outcast Engineer career in II is either this, or just Cool, but Inefficient. It's a Glass Cannon premium class centered around using firearms and experimental weaponry, including a steam-powered gatling gun. The Outcast Engineer can achieve almost unmatchable damage output, melting bosses' HP bars in mere moments and mowing down simple rats like it's World War I. But crucially his ability to take damage in return is absolutely woeful, and he has no ability to quickly buy himself some space or quickly escape being surrounded. In the hands of an unskilled player, the Engineer will not be standing or firing for very long; in the hands of a good player who can defend themselves, the Engineer can be a terrifying force. It's widely considered the most challenging career to play.
  • Kruber's Huntsman career in II is a Critical Hit Class with lots of perks built around dealing headshots from a distance. He can inflict obscene amounts of damage but relies on good aim and careful movement; he's vulnerable to being overwhelmed in close quarters.
  • Saltzpyre's Zealot career in II gains a ton of powerful buffs when he's only got a tiny sliver of HP remaining. He is also a frontline tank who will be smashed and hit quite often. If a careful player can manage his temporary HP gain and avoid taking too much hurt at once, Zealot is a powerhouse; if not, Zealot will die quickly and not contribute much to the game.
  • The Natural Bond trait for necklaces is this compared to Barkskin. All HP gained from poultices and medical kits is converted into temporary HP (which gradually trickles down), but your permanent HP slowly regenerates with a tick every 5 seconds. On lower difficulties like Recruit and Veteran where healing supplies are abundant and enemies don't do much damage anyway, this trait is a bit rubbish. But on Champion and Legend, where picking up Tomes is the norm, healing items are themselves few and far between, and a third of your HP can be wiped out from a single skavenslave hitting you in the back by surprise (which emphasizes guarding and fighting defensively for successful players), this trait is really valuable.

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