Guys there's multiple ways to pronounce "Conch."

I didn't even know this thing _had_ a negative reputation; I always assumed the general consensus was that it was just.. alright. Far from the worst option you could pick, at the bare minimum.

Gotta respect the scout from 15:10 for seeing the tauntkill and walking back into it for the sheer funny

I once saw someone who would drink it, run to the enemy team, taunt, and run away. They kept doing this for the entire game.

Conspiracy Theory: This video is just unmarked advertising for Bonk. You didn't see the fat paycheck Fish received behind the scenes.

That feeling when you realize that your In Defense video was actually a cleverly disguised advertisement for the Bonk.

12:06 As a medic main, I feel that crossbow shot on a primal level

The legend of the Bonk Drinker 🗿

Genuinely one of the best uses I’ve seen for Bonk is on Steel Offence. If you play your cards right, you can back cap to effectively either cut the enemy team’s numbers in half or increase their respawn timers for a bit, since they’ll all be focused on dealing with the back cap, then crack open a cold one the moment things get hairy. It may not be the most consistent strat, but when it works, it fuckin works

Fun Fact: The Inspector Bonk meme video predates the release of the actual item. (September 15, 2008 and February 24, 2009) It was even published when Bush was still in office, showing just how far TF2 memes go back

15:10 Props to Gibby for respecting the taunt kill potential

I love "In defense of" series. Please do not end it

7:55 I love this, because this is actually something Jerma himself said about the Bonk back in the day when he made the spy scout video

the main problem with the bonk is fighting the urge to schadenfreude immediately after drinking to escape an unwinnable situation

Imagine if Scout could share his drinks Heavy shares his food items.

One of the more interesting applications I've seen with bonk is as an anti bot tool. Not like mvm bots, but sniper bots. Those bots are built to ignore invulnerable people, so during those 8 seconds, you aren't just invincible but also invisible to bots. So you don't have to worry about getting pushed around or even avoided. If you stand in front of the path they're supposed to follow, they can't do a thing. And so people are using bonk to taunt kill bots like a sport. The tf2 community is really something

Bonk’s viability as an escape tool is why it’s banned in sixes since it basically allows a scout to yolo himself at a med, pick said med and then get back to his combo.

Bonk is actually pretty good for aggroing sentries and forcing heavies to back off. For example, if your team pushes, you can use bonk to distract the sentry to let your team finish it off at little risk, or bodyblock a heavy to prevent him from doing much damage. It has it's own team uses.

8:55 "Get a pick or two" *Deals 65 damage to a Heavy*

Dude the Bonk is my favorite scout item! I'll admit I use it way more for memes than actual strategic plays but its a very unique item.

One time, I was playing CP_Granary and below the dropdown before mid, there was a Level 3 Sentry. Fortunately, I had the Bonk and a Soldier with me. I drank the Bonk, dropped down, and let the Soldier take care of it. It's a simple example, but it's one of my favorite memories with the Bonk.

You'd have to drink a whole helluva lot of Bonk! Atomic Punch to get any of those side-effects. Like, full as a tick on Bonk!.

The winger itself is also underrated, you literally get to do the FaN jump spots for free while still having about 100 damage, PBPP is more subject to spread due to the fire speed and the winger stays as a good finisher in a shorter time, if it had 1 more bullet it could kill 125 pretty consistently. Use it with the soda popper to burst from weird angles or pop the 5 jumps and literally fly away.

Fun fact: Baby face's blaster boost works with Bonk invulnerability.

I was playing on an uncletopia server as engineer and had a rough time setting up, but a scout stayed behind while under bonk and soaked up shots for my level 1 sentry from spam. Crazy smart idea and unbelievably helpful

aw geez I'm going to die of radioactive poisoning

I thought we pronounced Concheror like that because we all just understood it was a pun on it being a conch but I guess we're all troglodytes.

My only "buff" to the Bonk would be to have it give the player an extra (stackable with Atomizer) jump while invincible, as well as immunity to sentry knock-back. That'd cement its niche as the ultimate flank tool that can compete with the Winger, and ensure a bonk scout can consistently jump their way to the backline without being body-blocked by defenders or pinned by turrets. I put "buff" in quotation marks because this feels more like a QOL change that just lets it do its job more consistently.

Love him drinking bonk and leaving his medic to die cuz fighting a single pyro with a medic on u is too hard

Bonk is an item that isn't always strong, but when it is, it's amazing. Perfect niche sidegrade.

The "Spawn-Pestering" Scout is actually a really efficient playstyle that can genuinely help the team, from my experience. If top-scoring is anything to go by, at least. It works best on Payload and most Attack/Defense maps on either team, so long as you have enough room to run around actually behind the team, so usually after your enemy's spawn moves for the first time. The strat gets better if you can get in a voice call with a friend and coordinate. It counters sentries they might place to deter you, not to mention that being double-teamed by Scouts is a death sentence for most classes, especially if they're caught off-guard. It's a fantastic weapon, and I hope Scouts continue to not use it so I don't have to deal with people doing that to my team.

The bit at the end of the video about how many other good options scout has I think really just nails it. Bonk is versatile, and has a few things it does amazingly(running through a hell choke/distracting sentry/meme tauntkills), but is really just overlooked because of how many additional great choices it has to compete with. For the situations bonk lets you barely escape too much damage, perhaps milk lets you barely get the kill instead. For the situations bonk lets you take a breather to reload, perhaps pistols let you barely get the kill instead. Etc etc Which puts it in the useful but weird middle-ground between playing really aggressive and really careful.

As someone who has always used bonk as a secondary on scout, it rly is an underrated tool for scout. As the many applications for it are very handy when you need it such as: -Potentially distract a sentry to try to pave way for your team to destroy it -Get out of jail card if your in deep, meaning you can run to safety (unless pyro's or sentries lock you in place) -Avoid effects of afterburn/bleed -Works with jumping effects such as: Soda popper, atomizer -Generally act as a distraction -Run behind the enemy lines with the bonk to harass and annoy the enemy team or destroy engi's teleporter to buy your team more time But that's what it is a tool for scout to get around or get out of situations or to use it to distract the enemy team! As for why i feel like its unpopular among scouts is cause they see bonk as a gimmicky secondary that strips you of other secondry choices such as dmg or healing. Anywho Great Video Fish!

It’s actually an amazing item because people are so used to bonk being used as a meme that when someone uses it to be effective people get surprised

Thank you for making this video. The conversation rarely comes up, but people never believe me when I say this thing is really useful maybe now people will see us true potential. Great video, Fish! ❤

Funnily enough in the spanish translation of tf2. The Bonk is called Bonk! La bebida salvavida (the lifesaver drink). Giving your point as a main focus of the item

my go to Scout secondary is Bonk! Atomic Punch mainly because i have a strange festive one from when it didnt have the slow down if you got hit while invulnerable. it is still a fun item for scout even with the slow down.

Great video man! I have always wondered why no-one seems to pay any attention to the Bonk despite it's obvious advantages, so I'm glad this video gives the Bonk the respect it deserved

One day us TF2 players will learn that teamwork in this game will make items perform better

Bonk is literally mini uber, people just don't use it right, I use it to help team push sentry nests, or straight up tank an enemy heavy medic uber by body blocking

Distraction Scout exists for a reason. Enemy teams can be completely steamrolled cuz "GET THA SCOUT" becomes the entire mindset

I’ve been running bonk as my main secondary for quite awhile and I never really understood why people disliked it so much. The most common complaint I see is that you use it to get behind the enemy lines and the enemy team will just chase you down, but this is often a good thing. They could be doing the actual objective, but instead there chasing around some random scout who may end up killing them anyway. Either they ignore you and you can do whatever you want, or they chase you and multiple players waste their time dealing with you.

15:25 I love how you referenced old Festus here!

Huh. Now I'm wondering if Bonked Scout can taunt-kill a dispenser.

The best use for the bonk is what King Mudkip does, where he drinks it, blocks the path of a sniper bot and taunt kills it.

Thinking about it, the Bonk basically turns you into a Medic who popped Uber on themselves only, since they have to hold the medi gun to keep the Uber active and therefore can't attack.

Love your content fish! not only funny but informative and entertaining!

Fish: "We're gonna call this strategy Aggressive Bonking." Me, as my cat rubs his head on my laptop with the force of a Buick with its brake lines cut: "yeah I'm familiar"

Bonk, Cleaver, and Winger are the Scout secondaries I use (in that order). Bonk is just really great for escapes, closing the distance between impossible odds, blocking enemies, and taking down nests.

I remember I was on the last point of upward and managed to help my team push using the bonk. I was too bad at demoman or spy to take out their two level 3 sentries, but as it turns out they’re not very useful when locked onto a random scout with invincibility.

As much as I love Elmaxo, his legend of bonk drinker video really pushes that negative stigma of the bonk. Great video, very funny and entertaining, but put down by a misunderstanding of what the bonk is really meant to do. Glad to see another great creator doing their best to redeem it in the eyes of the community.

It's always been one of my go to scout secondaries.

I will always love the bonk, I fondly remember the game which I fell in love with it, all I did was drink the bonk, laugh at the enemy team, say thanks and then run away, peak scout gaming.

"I was going to drink my drink but I forgot to drink my drink so I died. ...BONK ATOMIC PUNCH!" -Ster

10:20 The main reason is because of target priority. Who's a bigger threat- The guy shooting at you, or the guy who will be shooting at you a few seconds from now that's immune to damage? Either they focus fire on you, and then get gunned down by your teammates who are actively shooting at them, or ignore you, and then get meatshot when the bonk effect runs out with their back turned. That's the true power of the Bonk. You present them with a choice, either make a stupid play or a different stupid play. Either way, they just left themselves vulnerable and distracted.

I started using bonk a while back when I decided to give the shortstop a try and it's actually really fun to use, especially getting in the face of a kritz duo and stuffing shots. Nothing feels cooler than running straight into the face of a heavy trying to gun my team down and jumping all over him like a flea while he's helplessly focused down, unable to return fire. It is also a great but still balanced and not always useful escape tool, and most soldiers or demos won't realize you're bonked at first so you absolutely can get them to do some serious self-hitting, especially in a scenario like the heavy one where they try to keep shooting your teammates, since you can just stand in the way blocking shots.

1:47 oh no, don't tell Fish that the download link goes to Furaffinity or he's gonna get livid

pissing someone off while behind enemy lines and baiting them to 1v1 you is like mge but better, and you can do it so consistently with bonk, i love it.

Fun fact, Bonk use to cause slow speed now matter what back when it first released, and even back then, you could still negate the slow down in the same way. There was a video showing you could tap A,D back and forth while moving forward and it still works.

Another way that agressive bonking is useful is that the scout can have clean meatshots which can very well kill the opponent or leave it at low HP that another shot + teammates can also kill them. Since the bonk effect is very subtle while stationary they'll usually react slower than the scout that is about to shoot them at point blank

The ending commercial was pretty funny lmao. Great video!

One of thd funnest things to do as a bonk scout is to just annoy the fuck out of the enemy heavy, whenever he is in a spot to shoot your teamates, pop bonk and just stand infront of him. Eat his bullets so he cant do anything, also a great way to ensure your heavy wins the heavy 1v1

While watching this some points may already have been talked about but I need to say that one viable method I found with the Bonk is one thing: Bonk Surfing. Specifically for making tactical retreats and feign plays. When I play Scout I like to be a constant nuscience, doing the absolute most stupid stuff possible to make the enemy hate me. If the enemy hates me, they'll shoot me. And when they shoot me, I can surf off that damage to do even more stupid stuff. So if I combine that with the Bonk, I turn into a subclass of the Bird Scout: The Bonkers Bird Scout. Flying through the air, using damage surfing to bob and weave through danger, and the skies remain my home, all while taking absolutely no damage, whatsoever. For tactical retreats, I often use the Bonk as a distraction tool and more of a taunting method than anything. After all, annoying the enemy is good for my team, since they'll be too focused on *me* to stop a push of *11 other people.* Plus, it's funny to see the entire team trying to damage me as much as possible only for me to get away and do it all over again nearly half a minute later, as I'm in safety and the slowdown is meaningless unless there happens to be a Spy there. For feint plays though? Oh boy. Oooh boy. I can use Bonk to do so many flanks, so many impossibly stupid stunts that if I take a direct fight, I don't care if I die. The moment I use the Bonk to feint out my enemies it's satisfying to see the cart or point being capped because some Boston born idiot decided to drink a soda and get an 8 second Godmode buff. And if I win direct fights even with the slowdown it's even more hilarious, because most people assume a slowed Scout is an easy target. They're not.

this is the best bonk video ive seen, good one mate

That Ed, Edd, n Eddy sound effect in the opening clip threw me off so much. I love watching your vids, I'm about 500 hours deep in TF2 and I learn something new whenever I watch your vids Fish! Thanks for being peak Team Fortress 2 edutainment.

The bonk punch is actually pretty good in MvM. If you use it as the first part of each wave comes down, your essentially immune and can pick up the first few money drops without issue, immediately raising your health to 300+. From that point on you simply don't die the entire wave unless you do something incredibly stupid.

If it was up to me I'd just make the Bonk give you a slight speed boost & extra jumps but when the effect wears off you get a speed debuff & can't double jump for a moment

Phenomenal video as always! I most often see Bonk! being used as a panic button- a form of 'I fucked up, so let's do plan B!', which is a valid use! I don't know why people call Bonk! bad at all.

“Videos like this are made possible by viewers like you.” My inner PBS child: 😀

Bonk Atomic Punch on offense: get behind enemies to made sentry nests easier to deal with while also making flanking harder to deal with Bonk Atomic Punch on defense: Fatmagic easy mode

The Bonk! is my favorite scout secondary, because it has all the qualities I look for in a tf2 weapon. It's a silly concept, with a fun gimmick, with great potential for meme play while also being a good offensive or defensive tool for serious play.

I've often been using the Bonk as a crutch, but in time I kinda saw what kind of mind games you can play on the enemy team with it. When you zip past the enemy team to flank them from behind, you are putting them in a position where they have to either ignore you and risk an ambush, send one or two of their numbers to hunt you down instead of assissting, or worst case scenario (for them) they halt all their momentum briefly as they turn around to try and hit you when the effect ends, which can cost them dearly if your allies just so happen to be making an important push at the time.

The Pokémon music in the background is wonderful, god the memories.

When I was doing the backscatter contract, this thing was amazing. Saved my life countless times and let me get away with silly things and escape scott free.

That fallout: new vegas reference at the end was amazing! xD Got to love Festus and Sunset Sarsaparilla

1:47 Finally! SOMEONE GIVES THAT MASTERPIECE OF A THEME SONG CREDIT!!!

You can’t eat what ain’t bugs but apparently you cant drink what ain’t radiation. Sucks to suck Scout.

Hugely underrated perk to the Bonk!: third-person view with full mobility and no noise-making. You take full advantage of it at 10:55 -- nobody saw you, and if anyone snuck up on you, you'd just run away.

Dafuq? I don't think I ve ever heard someone use the old regi-fight theme as a background for anything - big fan of it, great choice!

15:22 I caught that fallout NV festus reference you sly fish, that was amazing

ok, altough it did not laughed out loud (wait-) i still wasn't expecting the "like father like son" joke

My favorite bonk combo is with the baby face since you can run in, get speed, then run out with bonk using the speed to get out

that inspector bonk song was my whole childhood

That clip at the end was solid gold, like the rest of the video

So from what I’m gathering, the best strategy for bonk is “tactical meat shield”

Well I've mained bonk for a few years now and I gotta say you nailed most of the important playstyles behind it, but something I gotta add on is the surfing. When flanking, speed is key, because you gotta outrun as many pursuers as possible. Stuff you gotta look out for is sentries, stickies and soldiers. For their _Good_ knockback. The best you can get is with sentries, as seen here 4:20 all you gotta do is jump as its firing at you and you get launched into the roof of the map for you to freely drop down where no one suspects. Be aware of what gives you knockback, cause there is the good knockback like this, the soft knockback like simple shotgun hits and the bad (hard to manipulate) knockback like Airblast.

I don't think anyone is complaining about this, but if you have a presistant enemy that can cover the same distance as you (soldier, demo, pyro with the thrusters, or another scout), the atomizer can help you take paths that the enemy either can't take as quickly or can't take at all. Even though you are invinicble, its better to take flanks and not be seen. If your running past a hold, you should try to run and lose who ever may be chasing you, by losing line of sight with flank routes. Also, plan where you want to go before drinking the bonk. Running into a dead end is a result of poor planning and will get you killed. You have think more like a dead ringer spy who just used his dead ringer. Finally, Im very happy that someone has talk about the bonk and of how good it can be. Your using the bonk to flank and to be a lethal distraction, or to make more risky plays with a get out of jail card. I love your videos fsoas!

with regard to comparing it to scouts secondaries, the bar is just REALLY high. Scout arguably has the best secondary selection in the game.

Honestly, this is more "advice for using" than "in defense of", but that's what Bonk needed so I'm not complaining.

Finnaly🙌 Legend says bonk drinker is still drinking to this day

"woah ive never thought of the bonk that way, what a good video with a great end card- is that a leoplurodon.

Yknow. It's because of these videos that I now run bonk and sandman on my scout. You helped me find their use cases. Bonk to escape. Sandman to slow down enemies to compensate for my bad aim

literally the baby faces blaster, you click once, get atleast minimum move speed back, and run away and live, and yeah also the funny force a nature and sodapopper kills

Dang Bonk Atomic Punch has a lot of the same side effects as Sunset Sarsaparilla 😢

I think it's because Bonk's reputation is tarnished a bit by noobish scouts who run face first into the enemy, get pinned to the air by a sentry, die, and repeat. But this is like saying disguises are bad because noobish spies disguise as scout before running straight into the enemy team.

the way you start the this made me remember PBS kids

FINALLY!! Someone who realizes that bonk isn’t bad! I have no clue what everyone was thinking when saying it’s bad. Having on-demand invincibility is INSANE, no matter what class it’s on.

I always assumed everyone knew that bonk wasnt bad, but that most people who first pick it up use it wrong and then give it up

I would give it just one change. Make it heal you to full, or maybe just 50%. So you steal less health packs, and pull new players towards using it ass an escape tool

Tbh as an engineer main i always wanted to borrow some secondaries from the scout , especially the Bonk Atomic Punch imagine nijaneer with Bonk+ Eureca effect combo, sneaking behind enemy line just to make tele or sentry in tactical location it would be ridiculous creative and fun