Hello there, firstly I'd like to say, thanks for taking your time to view this guide, so lets get started!

I'm Pure, a TF2 Spy main with approximately 9200 on the class spy, today i'd like to bring up how to play spy, fundamentals and advanced Stabbing tactics.

The first step to playing spy (well), is your mentality, if you've played soldier or any other class, forget everything you know, spy is completely different, so i will try my best to explain gamesense to you.Do note, I spent 1% of my time trickstabbing and 99% of my time playing the acual class. Trickstabs are nearly always useless when used uncessarily.

1) Your Picks, picks are always important as spy, especially in competetive, one player down out of 5 for a 10 second duration could be absoluetely game changing with the correct player kills. Here's a list of priority targets in competetive.

-Medic/Sniper
-Demoman
-Soldier
-Spy
-Scout
-Engineer
-Pyro

Medic/Sniper Picks, these picks are among the top priority because of their importance to the game, Medics provide massive heals coupled with their amazing Ubercharge ability, allowing an ally to be invincible or have crits for a certain period of time, this makes him a very high value target. Sniper, Hah! didn't expect that did you? Well, Sniper is also very game changing, Snipers in competetive are usually very good and headshots are extremely damaging and has the ability to OHKO nearly every class in TF2 , even while overhealed!

Demoman Pick, the demoman is able to place "sticky traps" in hard to access or high traffic areas, 8 stickybomb can also OHKO any class, and is a formidable force when placed with a medic and skill with the pills and stickies.

Soldier Picks, Soldiers like ShadowBurn can be real game and pace changers, they can attain massive control of the tempo of your team and it would best that you take the good ones out, Trust me, Dont ♥♥♥♥ with shadowburn's rockets.Buff's from soldiers can also be very deadly to your team, so shift your priorites accordingly.

Spy Picks, As you may or (may not) have read earlier, spy, similiar to soldier can also be a team's tempo controller, an enemy dead for 10 secs can easily win you many games, if you see a spy, get em' , do not chase though ,do you job as a spy, if he runs away, inform your team, he will most likely be unable to get away with a single stab with good and clear communication betweeen you and your team mates.

Scout Picks, Scouts are fast and agile, they can easily get away from you, so when you see one, try leading him to your team or make the appropriate call outs to his location to ensure that he does not flank behind your team and possible ruin your game.

Engineer Picks. My my, Engineer, the bane of everyone's existance, engineer picks are highly team based, if your team needs that engineer down, he should be at your top prioriies, remember, your playing spy, not your own solo MMO RPG grinding ♥♥♥♥, show some teamwork and cooperation.

Pyro Picks, Pyro's in competetive are probably the most useless class, pyro has to go || This close to an enemy to actually do damage, and guess what happens if they go that close? Theyre most likely dead. Just watch out for pyro's checking into frequently used spots for cloaking, try hinding in more unorthodox areas to prevent yourself from giving a free kill to their Pyro.

Trickstab are a weird thing in tf2, it allows or utilizes a situation in which the user is able to manupilate the enemy's view direction and movement to as to achieve a backstab, this is will explained in more depth below, stabs are split into 3 divisions, Divsion 1, the highest and toughest stabs, Divsion 2 , hard to pull off but a sure stab. Divsion 3, Basic trickstabs and The Art of Poking an enemy

Division 1 Stabs====
The Snap Stab
The Strafe 'n' Snap Stab
The C2C or counter to counter

Division 2 Stabs=====
Certain matadores
Moonstab

Division 3 Stabs=====
The Stairstab
The Corner Stab
The Understab

I will first touch on the Division 3 types of stabs, the stairstab is a stab in which the user has a positive incline advantage on the enemy and is able to get onto their heads to perform a neck stab, or back stab, do note that your knife has to be where their back is and in most instances, crouching is mandatory in pulling of this stab.

The Corner stab, the corner stab is a stab in which you trick and enemy to take the shortest path to you, the spy, the tight corner that they do can expose their back if you reveal from the corner at just the right time to perform the stab.

The Understab, This is a perfect example of a counter to the stairstab, this is a stab in which you strafe or move to an area where the enemy's back is exposed when they are to land, though this can be countered if the enemy makes 3 revolution quickly before landing on the ground.

==========Divsion 2 stabs==
The Division 2 stabs are slightly trickier to pull off so don't be discourage if you can't seem to get it on the first try c:

The Moonstab, this is a stab in which you get an enemy to back into you, similar to the c2c which i will go into further depth, this is sort of a matadore but you get them to back into you.

Matadores, This will be hard, anyways, matadores are stabs in which you influence the direction your enemy is facing, example moving left to right will cause your enemy to mirror you, make a quick swap back to the right? And there you have it a matadore, there are several types of matadores, the hardest being stabby's strafe 'n' snap(I will go into depth later), go find out the other kinds by yourself, there are so many variations out there!

==========Division 1 stabs==
These stabs are extremely difficult to pull off without countless hours on practise and good gear, so buckle up for a bumpy ride.

The C2C or counter to counter was made popular by Culruddud, is it where a spy instead of doing a normal corner stab, comes out on the corner early and extremely tightly, causing the enemy to backpeddal, and since you turn the corner faster and now your a spy moving as the second fastest class in the game at 320 hu, you are able to get the stab, similar to the moonstab, this uses the concepts of both corner stabs and moon stabs to create a totally new stab. GJ CRD

The Strafe 'n' Snap originally founded by Stabby(check him out!) this stab is a slight variation of a matadore, in the strafe and snap stab, you turn left, turn right then backpedal for a stab, as simple as it may sound, it is terribly difficult to pull off in some cases.

The Snap stab, was first created by me, yes me! The snap stab is where you move in one constant direction and force an enemy out of your screen, yes OUT, The second they are out of your screen, imagine where the back is and flick to it, this stab require little to no movement but a lot of concentration and effort to pull off, so I suggest you play a lot of spy before even attempting this stab. This is more of a mindset toward playing spy, this isn't not really a trickstab but a way of manupilation and enemey's mistake in movement or using their movement to postion their back to you using mirror movement and general mouse movement to pull of the optimal conditions as stated above to successfully pull off the stab, since this stab actually require you to adapt to how the enemy moves and create a situation out of nothing instead of leading them into an already existing one, this makes it with enough practise and skill with creating such situations, these stabs are abosuletely impossible to counter or miss, making this a very reliable, succesful, yet difficult to pull off option to spy mains looking for a new style to playing spy.

And now.....The Poking bits
Poking is a not very widely accepted idea in the Spy community as it is considered trash, but is it really? If I can poke you 4 times before you can pull the strafes off for a stab, you still die, pokes are integral part of spying, bodyshotting as well, as soon as you see an enemy low enough to be killed by 1 bodyshot or poke, dont like up for a headshot, dont prepare a stab, just poke! Poking over time also increases your hitbox awareness of all classes making it easier to pull off the trickier and tougher stabs
Just remember poking =/= bad spy, if someone says ur bad just because you poke to get the kill and dont overuse backstabs like every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spy nowadays, your already better than them, Trickstabs are null and void, they mean absolutely nothing about your skill, think your good at trickstabs = good at spy? Nope.

First, lets do a quick run through of the watches present in TF2 as of November 2016

1) Stock, the stock watches provide invis and regen cloak when metal is picked up regardless of being invis or not.

2) Cloak & Dagger, provides invis, cloak meter drains dependant on amount moved, more of a slow paced watch, meter is refilled by picking up ammo when not invis or standing still when invisible

3) Dead Ringer, a pub spy's usual watch, the dead ringer provides a feign which dosen't fool anyone, its mostly used for it's tanking and escape capabilities as it provides extra speed when hit, cloak and some damage resistance.

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I will first talk about the watches' pub pressence then the competetive aspect of them

WIP