Bard's guide to a better scout

The scout class is the mainstay of the initial offensive rush in clan games. His speed allows him to outmanoeuvre every class in the game and attack earlier than expected. Fortunately this is balanced by his low health and weak armour, plus almost no offensive weaponry. Still, when a skilled player uses this class he can open up gaps in the defense by concussing or blinding the enemy before they are aware of his presence.

General tips

• ensure that you use the scanner - many players are not even aware of this item. Skilled use allows you to work out when to move in for an attack or if a bottleneck is clear of a guarding enemy.
• the concussion grenade can also be used for concussion jumps to get you to places here you are not expected.
• the nail gun is an excellent weapon for use against sentry guns. If you can place yourself where you can see a small part of a sentry gun you can often kill the gun quickly without it attacking you.
• the scanner does not detect sentry guns or dispensers
• the concussion grenade has a larger area effect than the other grenades and can affect people on the other side of walls and through floors.
• in tf2.8 the scout has flash and concussion grenades. TF 2.9 has more powerful concussion grenades and caltrops instead of the flash grenades. Also TF2.8 grenades (or "old grens") allows cheaters  to cheat with gamma fixes and anti-concussion cheats.

Offense tips

When on the offense the initial attack by a team is often the "scout rush" where most of the offense start as scouts and try and capture the flag before the defense can be set up. This works well when the scout can reach the flags before or shortly after a defender can (a scout can arrive at the flag 5 seconds after a defending engineer can get to it on well 6).

The scout is good at later stages when the enemy has a solid defense together. The scout uses his scanner and concussion/blind grenades to incapacitate the enemy shortly before heavier hitters arrive on the scene to kill them properly. It can be particularly demoralising if you concuss, blind and then axe murder an opponent.

Remember that because your grenades have a bigger area effect the chance of concussing friendlies is pretty good if you are not careful.

Defense tips

Defensive scout? you bet. The scout makes a good spoiling defender when your team is ahead of the enemy and you wish to forgo any more capturing attempts. working in partnership with a soldier or an engineer the scout can concuss or blind an enemy, drop caltrops on ramps, chase after enemy scouts and generally make a surprisingly effective defender. If it becomes obvious that the enemy have noticed that you are no longer attacking and start throwing all they have at you then you can quickly switch to offense to take advantage of their weakened defense.

Binds to have

//Class specific keys
bind "c" "scan10; wait; scan10; wait; scan10; wait; scan10; wait; scan10; wait; scan10; wait; scan10; wait; scan10;"
bind "v" "scan30"
bind "b" "scan100;"
bind "+" "scane"
bind "-" "scanf"
bind "CTRL" "scan100"