People often look at stuff like spies that love going for trickstabs out in the open and act like it's the end of the class's complete identity. I agree that having spy being a supertank off F2P Heavys' backs is a bit frustrating, but that's the Kunai's flaw, not the playstyle's.

People probably forgot about it because of how many spies have difficulty landing trickstabs, but they still require to trick your opponent. New players may fall to a simple strafe or matador but trying to stab advanced players requires both mechanical skill (airstrafing, movement, stab timing) and the secretive strategy that makes Spy characteristically fun (tricking them into going down an unfavorable hall or up/down a staircase; using your gun to bait them into a stab; pretending you don't know about them (tension); switching stab targets to surprise them; and everything else). If anything gunspy is a worse example of the class role because he's just a lame scout with a dead ringer and a knife, but at least he can still find his role in assassinating low health or lonely, out of position targets while in the backlines.

Can we all just agree that playstyles like chainerspy (i.e. trickstab focused) and gunspy both have elements of spy's core design? Is either really a "wrong" way to play the 18 year old class??