In any game, there are certain skills which can be trained without playing against other players. These are sometimes called the ‘fundamentals’ of that game, since they are the groundwork on which the rest of a player's skills are built on. In Team Fortress 2, the Soldier has two basic fundamentals: Accuracy and Rocket Jumping. There are other skills a Soldier must have such as aiming, the ability to bomb, and many more, but all of these have their root in these two fundamentals.
Take aiming, for instance. There are two equally important aspects to aiming as Soldier. The first is prediction, making an educated guess of where one’s opponent is going to be. Without prediction, a Soldier cannot hit anything, since rockets take time to travel to their destination. The second aspect is equally important however, because once a Soldier predicts where his target is going to be, he must then be able to shoot at that precise location. This is where Accuracy comes in. Accuracy, as I define it, is a player’s ability to move their mouse to a point on their screen and shoot at it. This is not as easy as it sounds, but it can be trained.
The best way to train Accuracy is to go onto the map tr_walkway_rc2, activate the launchpad with random height and speed, and shoot the bots after they have been flung into the air. It is not a complicated task, but it is a difficult one which even great players will find hard to perform without error, and which less skilled players will find challenging. I recommend killing at least two-hundred bots like this every day in order to improve Accuracy. After I started doing this, I found that, though my prediction was not improved by the training, my shots always landed when my prediction was correct. who is "allany" and why is he on my friendslist xd
The second fundamental is Rocket Jumping. Rocket Jumping is the most efficient way for a Soldier to get from point A to point B, and the ability to utilize it is extremely important in competitive play. A common misconception I’ve seen about Rocket Jumping is the idea that to be ‘adequate’ for competitive, a Soldier needs to be at a certain level of skill. The implication, of course, is that any training beyond this level is not important to being a great Soldier.
This is not the case, however. Just as improving Accuracy increases a Soldier’s chances of winning because he will be landing more rockets, having better Rocket Jumping increases a Soldier’s chances of winning as well, since he will be able to do more maneuvers with greater consistency. Just as with Accuracy, there is no ceiling when it comes to Rocket Jumping. Constant improvement is necessary for someone to be the best player he can be.
The best way to improve Rocket Jumping is to do jump maps. Servers running jump maps can be found by typing ‘jump’ into the map filter in the server browser. It is best to devote a significant amount of time to Rocket Jumping - at least thirty minutes a day, preferably more - to improve. A Soldier should also practice common jumps on all of the competitive maps, such as rollouts, so that he can do those jumps flawlessly every time.
Going through this training regimen will not make someone the best player in the world, but it provides a foundation for great play. There are many other aspects of the game which cannot be trained like this which require other players, and the best methods for doing that are up for debate. That being said, any Soldier who does as I have said will show marked improvement.
About the Author: I played Team Fortress 2 casually starting in June of 2010, and a bit over a year ago I decided to become a competitive player. I studied the best ways to improve as Soldier, and my research was based on my experience with playing and coaching in League of Legends, where I peaked in the top 1% of ranked players. My first Season of competitive Team Fortress 2 was Season 19 of UGC 6s where I played in Iron. I then joined a Steel Highlander team in Season 18, which was promoted to Silver in Season 19 and is currently in Gold.