

It's reduced clip is a significant drawback, so you need to manage your rocket supply similarly to the Black Box. It's rockets are slower and do less damage than the Direct Hit's, making it better for this purpose, but the Liberty Launcher has a much more forgiving splash radius. It's usage is similar to the Direct Hit's, able to hit more accurately and good for launching and airshooting enemies. The Liberty Launcher's rockets travel 40% faster than the default Rocket Launcher, but holds only 3 rockets per clip. However, you are sacrificing your main source of damage when using this weapon, so you become much more of a support class. Being able to constantly rocket jump improves your mobility a lot, and let's you soar through enemy fire. While being only meant for training, it is useful to some extent. However, it deals absolutely no damage to enemies and you will be unable to pick up enemy intelligence. It deals no self-damage when rocket jumping, allowing you to rocket jump without worrying about damaging yourself. The Rocket Jumper is a training weapon for rocket jumping. You can also use the healing to survive and escape when you're low on health. You can negate your rocket jump and fall damage by simply hitting enemies while midair and after falling back. It's a good idea to bring your Shotgun along to help you keep dealing damage after you used up a Black Box clip. The smaller clip size means you will waste a lot of time reloading, so always remember to keep it loaded and reload an entire clip at once instead of each rocket individually. The self-heal it provides lets you survive in a heated battle longer, but makes it harder to sustain fire at your enemies due to its clip size. The Black Box heals 15 health upon hitting an enemy, but only carries three rockets in a clip. Note that the mini-crit from airshots apply to any enemy launched by any form of explosive, such as a Demoman's grenades or even enemy rocket jumping Soldiers. Try to land a hit on an enemy's feet, as it launches them up for an airshot. Its higher damage is also good for dealing with low-health classes at close range, and destroys sentries much quicker. Take advantage of its faster speed to land direct hits better, and rely less on splash damage, since its blast radius is greatly reduced. Learn to make accurate shots, especially at enemy feet. Practise with the default Rocket Launcher before trying this weapon. Airshooting enemies launched by explosives will deal mini-crit damage on them. Its rockets travel much faster and deal more damage, but has way less splash damage. The Direct Hit is designed for, well, direct hits with a rocket. If it's safe to do so, you can also pick up dropped weapons. The rocket launcher has a tendency to run out of ammo with heavy use. If you have a medic attached to you, rocketjump often as it helps build his uber and gets you moving faster. Proper rocket jumping deals about 50 damage to you, but if you bungle it it can do up to 100 damage, so be careful. It is also very useful for getting to an ideal distance in combat, for instance, quickly getting close to a sniper. This allows you to get to high places that you couldn't normally reach or simply to get somewhere much faster. With the Rocket Launcher you can Rocket Jump by crouching, jumping and then firing. Launching ubered players into the air will delay them and if there's a friendly sentry nearby they can often be sent flying very far away, wasting the uber completely. While they're in the air, you can hit them with another rocket (this is called an "airshot" or "middy"), which will not only deal more damage but also send them higher in the air, increasing the amount of fall damage they take. Landing a direct hit on the feet of an enemy will send them flying into the air, which is incredibly useful. The rocket launcher has a lot of knockback. Whenever you aren't in combat, reload your rocket launcher. Rockets from long range are easy to dodge and reloading is time consuming. The rocket launcher is strong, but it fires slowly to make up for its power. A direct critical hit will kill most classes, even with a medic, in one hit. The Rocket Launcher deals a lot of damage on direct hits and a lot of splash damage to nearby enemies. If there's a medic around, call for a buff before rocketjumping up to that perch and you can fight with 200 health instead of 160. The Soldier has a larger variety of weapons than any other class, giving him a lot of diferrent playstyles and letting him take on a lot of different roles. 1.3.1 Shovel/Frying Pan/Saxxy/Conscientious Objector/Freedom Staff/Bat Outta Hell/Memory Maker.
