Q3TOURNEY4: Vertical Vengeance

The Map
This map is a complex structure with catwalks and a tower in midst. All the weapons and items are scattered around the different floors of catwalks and tower in the middle. There are about 5 doors to enter and exit the mid vault and at the most beneath floor there's a small acid pit.

There are 3 bouncepads scattered around the map. 2 of them being at the end of the catwalks that surround the mid tower in a U-shaped fashion. Both sends players flying at the top floor from ground level. Middle one stands by Rocket Launcher spawn and sends player to middle floor.

There's only 1 accelerator pad and it's at the second floor of the tower, flinging player to the Railgun spawn at the top floor.

Weapons
The weapons that are available in this map are: Railgun at the top floor of the middle tower, can be reached via an accelerator pad from middle floor or via a door. Rocket Launcher at the second floor nearby 2 Yellow health orbs. Shotgun at the end of the catwalks. Plasma Gun spawns nearby a bouncepad at the middle close to a ground level door leading inside the tower.

Goodies
A Megahealth that spawns every 2 minutes instead of the traditional 35 seconds. Red Armor at the ledge on top of door, spawns every 25 seconds. Small narrow gates under catwalks that link them to the middle tower have a series of Armor Shards or +5 health orbs at the each side of the map.

Middle tower homes a few yellow health orbs by the ground level across corners of the acid pit. There are 2 more by the RL spawn.

Noticeable
The first thing that player will notice how separated the items and weapons are from each other. Megahealth and other goodies have their own unique spawn timer and metallic spawn noises out of the standards.

Strategy
Please see PRO-Q3TOURNEY4: Vertical Vengeance

Okay so when you are acquiring prep time and the fight starts, the first seconds you have to think critically fast and depending on where your opponent spawns and you spawn, you have to get the necessary weapons to fight and cut them off from the resources. one huge example and infamous times when the game on T4 (noticeably vertical vengeance) starts is one individual spawns on top yellow and rushes to mega, while you spawn by rail you grab rail and cut them off from mega and you can hit some good shots since you have positioning and all they have is a yellow or a shotgun depending from where they spawned. now this won't happen all the time keep in mind you will have to go for different resources depending on where the opponent spawns and what advantage they have over you and vice versa. Okay now what you want to do is you will either have taken damage or have a good health and armor depending on the outcome of the first situation. if you are in a good stack and favorable fight, you have the best advantage in staying on top of the halls of the map since you have the best advantage in this map and listen to where opponent is so you can cut him off and frag him and when you frag him you can grab some health and position for an armor since you have the weapons to fight for them. if you are out of control in this map, your best situation is to use the angles to weave around the map and be sneaky to grab resources and also calculate what weapons your opponent has and how much armor he has. you also want to keep in mind when the next armor comes out so you can fight for that item. the armor that is by the railgun is the worst armor to take beacuse if you have no weapons to fight for or a decent health and armor, you just end up having no escape and end up getting trapped not to mention your opponent more then likey ha s a good weapon to do good damage to you, but you can always take your luck and take it but you will still end up eating damage which is never a good thing. you only want to get it if you have the necessary weapons to fight for it and it spawns by the second.

the best armor to grab in this map is the top platform next to rocket ammo and health underneath but even then you have to think twice about rushing and getting the item or just spamming so your opponent eats damage and you can buy the time to go for other resources. in this map you are constantly fighting and you always have to think every second or making a bad decision can cost you alot of frags and losing the game. positoning in this map is very IMPORTANT because those fight have to favor you so you can force your opponent to go somewhere else. the best weapon in this map is the railgun because the railgun covers alot of angles and it forces your opponent to dodge and get a resource or weave around it, but beware railgun isn't everything on T4 every weapon is valuable and you have to use those weapons to your advantage and you also want to keep track of your ammo or else you could end up being fragged for not making the right decision to use the right amount of ammo and you could end up having no ammo and dying for spamming to much so every valuable resource in this map is important and you have to use it to your advantage. keep in mind there is alot of angles you can shoot through the doors and do dmg through the small creaks so beware of tricky shots like that but that doesnt mean you cant do it either :). there is also a trick where you can strafe jump from shotgun to yellow armor which is strafe jumping from the gap over to hitting the corner of the pillar to reach to the other side of the platform. its not very easy but you can access to the different side of the map faster which catches your opponents off guard. this map is all logic and you have to be beware of everything from calculating the opponents armor to having a solid map awareness to keep track of where your opponent is at and taking safe exits in case something goes wrong in a fight or if something completely unorthodox happens you have somewhere to fall back on. also railgun spawns every 15 seconds so its important that if you are in control its important to take and control rail from them since its the most important weapon next to the rocket launcher.

In conclusion, this map is very complex and requires careful decision making no matter if you in control or out of control, you have to be careful of the possible situations that can happen. of course, this map is very sharp-cornered so you have to use the angles to the best of your abilites to get resources and use them in your favor to win situations so you can take armor. 1 thing i forgot to add is always use the machine gun if you have nothing and you are being chased doing damage is better then doing nothing and your opponent isn't worrying of going to pick up health and so on. This map is by far the most difficult to play in Quake 3 Arena/Quake Live. If you dont know what you are doing in this map against a experienced veteran you are not going to have a good time. I forgot to mention that mega health spawns every 2 minutes so you have to prepare and make a decision whether to fight for it or not depending on the situation and armor and what kind of advantages/disadvantages your opponent has. and of course, always watch your demos whether you win or lose because there something you can learn from analyzing.