Pyro's ability to cause chaos is my favourite aspect of the class, honestly. When you use the Detonator (and this point is even more prominent if you pair it with the Powerjack) it enables you to approach frontline fights from the flank. This allows the Pyro to vary its angle of approach to the enemy team, and enables them to ambush a focused frontline. Because fire goes through enemies, an ambush on a consolidated frontline can essentially strip away everyone's overheal simultaneously and will cause them to switch focus from the objective to get rid of you. If you're good at this mobile hit and run playstyle you can often escape into their backline or jump back to your medic before they kill you, which allows you to harry them constantly and break their team cohesion. Displacing them with airblast to overextend their power classes or isolating their medic from them during these flybys is another excellent method of sewing chaos for the enemy team that your team can capitalize on. If their medic goes down and you catch them at a bad time, your mass spread of fire damage and afterburn can easily cause them to scatter from the objective to avoid getting dropped. If you're extra bold, a life or two with the Backburner will throw in some essentially random crits into the mix when you're flanking into their team. So long as you're constantly switching up what you're doing with pyro (defending, pushing mainline, flanking, etc) and keeping the enemy guessing, you can get away with some plays that stir up a ton of chaos and cripple team cohesion.
If I could make one change to any weapon in the game, it would be removing the cooldown penalty on the dragon’s fury if you don’t miss an airblast. The weapon is so much fun otherwise, but I hate being punished for using one of pyro’s most unique and powerful mechanics.
Because it replaces pyros powerful skill vacuum crutch airblast with the ability to actually deal damage and kill things. Having both would be way too much.
pyro main here: as for stock vs degreaser it is large dependent on the format tho. In 6s stock is better mainly cuz pyro is very defensive there and you'll benefit more from that extra 2 airblasts (8 vs 10 since you said you didn't wanna do the math so I did it for you). However, if you're playing highlander the degreaser is better as pyro is more dynamics there and you're not just limited to defending last. In fact the degreaser is a must if you're playing in high divs. The biggest boon of that weapon is the DEPLOY speed which allows you to have airblasts available all the time and considering how often you have your secondaries out as pyro, it's very important to be able to react to oncoming projectiles or to extinguish a dying teammate in a pinch. This reason alone is what solidified it as a mainstay for pyro and quite frankly I was a bit shocked when you didn't realize it despite you being a comp player. Overall id say stock vs degreaser is a lot like the stock vs iron bomber in which they're both equally as versatile as each other, just in different ways. Stock is more defense/support oriented while degreaser emphasizes more on dynamics and personal utility
@@Wild_Rumpus assuming you're only playing 6s but in HL the degreaser is clearly superior due to it allowing you to play more reactively and dynamically. Also 8 vs 10 airblasts is not a huge difference at all unless you're solely defending your team without switching to your secondaries much. In fact degreaser is arguably better at airblasting mainly due to them being constantly available. TH-camr Pirateer (a pyro main) once demonstrated how big a difference that deploy speed makes in his most recent video on "how to airblast", feel free to check it out. Spoiler, in the vid he has his secondary out while a soldier stands in front of him shooting rocket, in the trial with the degreaser, he literally stands a lot closer to the soldier and still manages to switch to the primary and airblast the rocket while in the trial with the stock, he stood a lot further and still failed to do so
@@Wild_Rumpus also as for the phlog you literally mentioned it's a fringe weapon that works in very specific areas on very specific maps so in that case it's a bad weapon. Using it full time is basically throwing the game. Although I guess it's better than backburner since the backburner has basically 0 uses in comp formats while the phlog at least has a few fringe uses
Pyro would be so much more fun to play if the DF didn't have a ridiculous airblast penalty and if the Detonator didn't hurt you for a billion self-damage when you detjump. The playstyle would be way more mobile and aim-oriented. Don't think it'd make Pyro full time viable but it'd definitely help bridge the gap a bit.
@@kaesitha7006 the airblast penalty for df is the only thing preventing it from being an upgrade from stock. I mean yeah it's a flamethrower that actually requires aiming, but if you never miss AND had no airblast penalty thered be 0 reason to use stock
It's such a shame it doesn't get much attention and most people disregard it as "funny hat simulator with guns" (which isn't a bad thing, but it would be so awesome for the comp scene to have more recognition)
I feel like a lot of my personal issues with Pyro comes from the fact that its such a Frankenstein'd class. Its class role is really nebulous and vague and Valve did very little over the years to actually fix the fact that Pyro is just really not good at doing what it was designed to do -- which is being a short-ranged but average speed and somewhat tanky ambush/skirmisher type class. Instead, they applied a lot of band-aid gimmicks and mechanics to the class without really ever touching the core design (except for Jungle Inferno sort of). I'm not really the biggest fan of airblast as a mechanic, either. Not because I dislike playing around it as a Soldier (I think the Soldier vs Pyro matchup when playing as Soldier can be nuanced and interesting), but more that I don't like airblast as a mechanic I'm the one who is playing Pyro. I mostly don't like how it's a 100% reactionary mechanic and not something I can utilize on my own outside applying push force, but I also don't find airblasting explosives to be fun or engaging, even in-spite of the obvious incentive to do so, because it's just really simple and all you're generally doing is tapping M2 at the correct intervals. And by extension of this, I don't like how airblast became Pyro's defining characteristic as a class wherein most of his balance changes became subject to their relationship with airblast. Basically: when I think airblast is a boring mechanic, and it becomes the central core function of the Pyro class then it kills a lot of enjoyment of the class for me as a result. I want to say that the most interesting weapon in Pyro's arsenal is the Detonator because of the insane amount of utility the weapon gives in how not only can you jump with it, but you can also rack up afterburn and how it gives a way to spam splash damage. Detonator lets you spam and proc burn around corners, you can ignite groups, you can harass from a longer range more effectively than the other 3 flare guns. I really cannot say enough for all its uses, but I also want to draw attention to the fact that the Detonator (and Scorch Shot) is incredibly similar to the Incendiary Cannon from older TF games. Valve initially removed the concept from TF2 because they felt the Pyro was too similar to Soldier as a result, but I think the unintended result of this was them making Pyro a significantly weaker and less interesting class. The Detonator added back a lot of the Soldier-esque function that TF2 Pyro was sorely missing.
bruh what are you smoking when you mentioned about how you don't like airblast? airblast is literally the only thing that keeps pyro from being the most linear class and there are so many creative things you can do with it. You're not just limited to reflecting projectiles, you can juggle ppl with it and even perform your own version of rocket jumping by reflecting a rocket close to your feet. Without airblasts pyro is literally nothing, even worse than spy as at least spy has good range and burst damage with his revolvers
@@wtzhang586 I explained why. I think it's a boring mechanic and effectively a band-aid for all of pyro's problems that are present because Valve failed to design the class well when making TF2. It allows Pyro to do things he wouldn't otherwise be able to do like stuffing ubers for free, but it didn't do really anything to actually fix his problems like a lack of range, lack of mobility, lack of burst damage and so on. Furthermore, airblast is purely a reactive mechanic. No one on the enemy team playing Soldier? Reflecting is almost entirely useless. No one on the enemy team playing Pyro? Airblast's ability to extinguish teammates is null. It would be like if Soldier could only rocket jump if someone on the enemy team is playing Sniper.
@@ToastedEgg89 first off, airblasting is useful more than just against projectiles and burning teammates. It allows you to throw off enemies aims; allows you to get out of fight you don’t wanna be in and prevent from enemies from being too close to your team etc. Even against spies airblast can be super useful for either pushing a spy about to backstab a teammate away from said teammate or keeping a trickstab happy stab away from you. The only class where airblast isn't super useful on is sniper and that's mainly cuz at long ranges, he has the advantage over you while at close range, you're gonna win regardless. How many hours do you even have in the game cuz you clearly don’t know the full extent of airblasts. Secondly, if you think pyro is a weird class, how would YOU resign him into a new class that is unique and doesn’t have any sort of overlapping roles with the other 8. Since in the current state of pyro, airblast is the only thing that's strictly unique to him and it gives him the unique role as a team bodyguard that keeps projectiles and ubercharges at bay. If you complain about him being flawed, why don’t you pitch in your ideas instead of just crying about a game that’s probably older than you
Speaking about degreaser a lot of pyros use it in Highlander, and not because of combos but because of the deploy speed since then you can be mostly on your detonator and ignite people and then react to spam to reflect. Stock is more punishing in that regard
As someone who plays casually and knows way too much about pyro I have some stuff to say, I'm not a comp player though and still have much to learn. Overall most of the things you talked about make complete sense and are understandable. In terms of flamethrowers the 2 best are stock and degreaser, the degreaser only has 2 less airblasts but due to the faster deploy speed it gives you easier access to it as stated in other comments. I think it matters more in highlander when you have your secondary out more and as a bait to make people shoot rockets. Back burner would probably be decently viable if the airblast penalty wasn't so high, in casual ammo is much more frequent which is why it isn't bad there but unfortunately the crits from behind aren't enough to save the airblast cost from kneecapping it. Also if I'm not mistaken the reason the Dragon's Fury airblast is weird is because the cool down is long regardless if you hit the reflect or not. On the note of secondaries pretty much everything stated was spot on, the lack of strafing on the thermal thruster (jetpack) pretty much kill it in competitive, and all the flare gun stuff makes sense. The gas passer still sucks even if you can throw it through walls, and there's no way your getting in range for a neon kill. Shotguns are pretty decent I think for dealing more consistent burst damage, especially the panic attack allowing your to swap between primary and secondary much faster. In terms of melee powerjack is obviously the best no questions there but I think the backscratcher/rake could maybe be better than the axetinguisher, not sure I haven't played comp before, but the lower heal rate of the medigun on rake pyros might help build uber and the axetiguisher doesn't seem like you could consistently get into melee range saving it for flashy plays instead of practical use. However the rake I think slows overheal rate so that could be why it doesn't see use, because while you can bypass the heal penalty with crossbow, you can't do the same with overheal. Anyway sorry for the essay, you're videos have gotten me interested in comp and I really enjoy them. Keep up the good work!
@@windlybandibunbrother4670 It does make people more angry, that's true. The only time I've ever seen someone get mad at me using the det, they straight up said I had a scorch shot lmfao
The class inherently having poor range in its primary, poor effectiveness at range with its secondary (with respect to other classes), and having no inherent tool to close that distance made Pyro a doomed class from the onset (if being created as the class specifically for people with dialup internet wasn't bad enough of an origin story). Compression blast gives it a bit of safety and arguably some advanced tech via reflect jumps but it does nothing to help Pyro with it inherent weakness to bullets and its general inability to close the gap (on its own terms) to any degree comparable to the 3 core mobile combat classes, even full on melee-man Demoknight has better mobility that he's in full control of than Pyro. While Pyro does have Detonator, Scorch Shot, and Thermal Thruster as options, they come at the expense of the secondary slot for general burst damage purposes, and don't offer nearly as good of mobility as its contemporaries. The Flamethrower design is at odds with the desire to make the class an "ambushing close quarters king" when it has so many design elements competing with one another: it's easy to aim with, it hits multiple targets at once, you get free burn damage for brushing anyone, but it overall has pitiful damage (relative to other weapons) which means its damage is easy to react to and then outdamage (aside from Dragon's Fury, a Backburn when it actually registers, and a pre-charged Phlog), it's no wonder that a more passive defensive style has become prominent over the game's lifespan, since there's safety in preserving distance via damage falloff, having more time to react to projectiles instead of timing intuition/baiting, and generally being able to hold its ground when the fight has to come to the Pyro instead of the other way around. While I think your assessment of the Det vs Scorch is accurate for the format, I think the real reason that it differs from the general public consensus is that 6s is a lot more airborne, so having that kind of control while the projectile is in-transit is a lot more important for getting that ignite. Meanwhile pubs are generally going to have way more grounded players, even from those that have the mobility capabilities as Demo/Soldier (primarily due to an absence of overheal in pubs, and more people fighting over who gets the healthpacks) A bit of amusing timing to see this since a week or so ago a friend basically dared me to record my ramblings after we had a 2-hour long discussion while pubbing, on more or less the same subject. With the key difference being that I was offering my sentiments on what could be (and probably won't ever be), rather than taking a look at how the class's arsenal behaves as-is within the existing format.
I had a enemy pyro absolutely destroying me with his airblast when I’d go in to Uber my teammates for our pushes and it was a bit frustrating for sure but I was more blown away (pun intended) of how he was single handedly keeping us from making the final point it was kinda badass.
It's not bad ass, it's fucking stupid. Airblast is so easy to abuse it's comical. Fucking over other player's movement and attempts to use their weapons with such a skilless crutch is a cowardly an pathetic way to play the game, and to argue that it's balanced is to go against the fundamental balancing core of tf2
Random thoughts because (unfortunately) im still much better at pyro than scout. Pyro on beam is still prob better defensive soldier protection than scout but there are some really awkward scenarios. One is that if you cant get a position to outright airblast deny a bomb a lot of the time u actually want to be on top of or even behind ur medic player because otherwise the soldier literally just bombs over your head and now your med is between you and the rocket. This is obviously kinda ass for positioning reasons and means you cant get chip on a bomber prior to them jumping. On pocket scout oftentimes the best spot for vision/denial/ability to engage enemy team are one and the same. Fun fact scorch shot is like 1 of 4 weapons banned in (NA) hl but not 6s. Also there was a full time pyro team in ESEA-IM, i think they went 8-8 or something (been a while). Unfortunately though it was pre JI so not really representative of current pyro and the player got...code of conducted so I'll just leave it at that. Good vid!
Commenting before watching the video, since I’ll fall asleep watching anyways: While the bug with the phlog exists, where you can jump one someone and cancel the taunt while keeping the invulnerability, the phlog+SS is undeniably the strongest loadout Edit: in casual/ highlander
phlog scorch shot loadout only works when you're already winning since crits or not, it doesn't matter when the other team is smart enough to back away while shooting at you and with your lack of airblast, you'll be dead in no time. You're probably just bad at the game since only idiots who are shit at the game complain about that loadout
everyone says use the powerjack but nobody ever talks about the 20% damage vulnerability on wearer, which is quite a bit. i wonder if that contributes to the idea of pyros getting one kill then dying, since everyone equips powerjack, sometimes even when they dont make use of it (me)
I don't know about 6s really, but for highlander it was always degreaser/detonator/powerjack in more open areas and for overall pyro play, but if you know for a fact that the map is gonna be very closed and tight, then the stock/panic attack/powerjack is going to be a very good option
You have a lot of thoughtful insight! I've watched a couple of your videos now and my only complaint is that you use a lot of specialized jargon that's hard for people who don't play competitive (or even TF2 at all, like me) to understand. In this video, for example, I had to look up what "flashing" was, and you say at 5:10 "especially for that *post*", which I can only assume means "post-uber encounter", and in other videos you say "ad" and "disad", which I eventually intuitively figured out; and "bombing", which I still haven't figured out... That brings me to say, it would be nice if you could, the first time you mention jargon like that, explain it for people like me who might not know what something means in this context, and then you're good for the rest of the video; or briefly put some text on screen (I've noticed your videos are very casual, so do whatever is easier).
the post 64 bit unintentional airblast patch has made this class so much less fun to play for me... crazy how they unintentionally fixed player airblasts entirely on accident 7 years after Jungle Inferno broke it.
Do you have an opinion on kawa as pyro if anything? I know kawa is more of a casual competitive player but do you ever see them actually win anything in a tournament setting if they become actually serious with pyro, cause there was the season with GPG on pyro on bagel and they won against froyotech which is nice but not like a grand final type of victory, so what do you think?
kawa is goated, pyro is a counterable class but not everyone is going to counter it correctly and it can become a headache to deal with (plus potential tilt factor)
Scorch Shot a.k.a. Incendiary Rocket Launcher is pretty nifty. Any weapon that extends range for classes other than Sniper, like Loch for demo, have a lot of potential that gets slept on and dismissed as annoying instead of annoying _and_ effective.
Games are supposed to be fun. If something is inherently annoying it's not balanced, no matter how effective it is. It's also completely redundant given that the rocket launcher already exists and is on a much better class.
@@evan9730 I never said it was balanced, I said abuse it before you lose it. Plus, standard rocket launcher is affected by damage falloff and is much slower.
degreaser is arguably better at airblasting since the increased deploy speed means that you have airblasts constantly available. Given how often pyro has his secondaries out, it's a very big boon. Overall degreaser for HL and stock for 6s
scorch shit because i mean a long range spammable stun that aplies dot and has a blast radius while dealing enough damage to one shot light classes ARE WE SHURE THIS ISN’T AN OVERWATCH WEPON?
![The Art of Phlog Canceling [TF2 Exploit]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fvl1_hfMI_s/mqdefault.jpg)
the scattergun
*the Force-a-Nature
it's the rake
- sincerely, Medic mains
Pyro's ability to cause chaos is my favourite aspect of the class, honestly.
When you use the Detonator (and this point is even more prominent if you pair it with the Powerjack) it enables you to approach frontline fights from the flank. This allows the Pyro to vary its angle of approach to the enemy team, and enables them to ambush a focused frontline.
Because fire goes through enemies, an ambush on a consolidated frontline can essentially strip away everyone's overheal simultaneously and will cause them to switch focus from the objective to get rid of you. If you're good at this mobile hit and run playstyle you can often escape into their backline or jump back to your medic before they kill you, which allows you to harry them constantly and break their team cohesion.
Displacing them with airblast to overextend their power classes or isolating their medic from them during these flybys is another excellent method of sewing chaos for the enemy team that your team can capitalize on.
If their medic goes down and you catch them at a bad time, your mass spread of fire damage and afterburn can easily cause them to scatter from the objective to avoid getting dropped.
If you're extra bold, a life or two with the Backburner will throw in some essentially random crits into the mix when you're flanking into their team.
So long as you're constantly switching up what you're doing with pyro (defending, pushing mainline, flanking, etc) and keeping the enemy guessing, you can get away with some plays that stir up a ton of chaos and cripple team cohesion.
Everything you said was spot on, thanks for spreading the word
If I could make one change to any weapon in the game, it would be removing the cooldown penalty on the dragon’s fury if you don’t miss an airblast. The weapon is so much fun otherwise, but I hate being punished for using one of pyro’s most unique and powerful mechanics.
Because it replaces pyros powerful skill vacuum crutch airblast with the ability to actually deal damage and kill things. Having both would be way too much.
You get that or you choose to keep minicrits on reflect. No spam for you buddy
pyro main here: as for stock vs degreaser it is large dependent on the format tho. In 6s stock is better mainly cuz pyro is very defensive there and you'll benefit more from that extra 2 airblasts (8 vs 10 since you said you didn't wanna do the math so I did it for you). However, if you're playing highlander the degreaser is better as pyro is more dynamics there and you're not just limited to defending last. In fact the degreaser is a must if you're playing in high divs. The biggest boon of that weapon is the DEPLOY speed which allows you to have airblasts available all the time and considering how often you have your secondaries out as pyro, it's very important to be able to react to oncoming projectiles or to extinguish a dying teammate in a pinch. This reason alone is what solidified it as a mainstay for pyro and quite frankly I was a bit shocked when you didn't realize it despite you being a comp player. Overall id say stock vs degreaser is a lot like the stock vs iron bomber in which they're both equally as versatile as each other, just in different ways. Stock is more defense/support oriented while degreaser emphasizes more on dynamics and personal utility
@@wtzhang586 interesting!
Another reason why the degreaser is used is for baiting out an attack by swapping to your secondary and then immediately swapping back to counter
@@Wild_Rumpus assuming you're only playing 6s but in HL the degreaser is clearly superior due to it allowing you to play more reactively and dynamically. Also 8 vs 10 airblasts is not a huge difference at all unless you're solely defending your team without switching to your secondaries much. In fact degreaser is arguably better at airblasting mainly due to them being constantly available. TH-camr Pirateer (a pyro main) once demonstrated how big a difference that deploy speed makes in his most recent video on "how to airblast", feel free to check it out. Spoiler, in the vid he has his secondary out while a soldier stands in front of him shooting rocket, in the trial with the degreaser, he literally stands a lot closer to the soldier and still manages to switch to the primary and airblast the rocket while in the trial with the stock, he stood a lot further and still failed to do so
@@Wild_Rumpus also as for the phlog you literally mentioned it's a fringe weapon that works in very specific areas on very specific maps so in that case it's a bad weapon. Using it full time is basically throwing the game. Although I guess it's better than backburner since the backburner has basically 0 uses in comp formats while the phlog at least has a few fringe uses
Pyro would be so much more fun to play if the DF didn't have a ridiculous airblast penalty and if the Detonator didn't hurt you for a billion self-damage when you detjump. The playstyle would be way more mobile and aim-oriented. Don't think it'd make Pyro full time viable but it'd definitely help bridge the gap a bit.
i think aoe flares are way too oppressive to justify any lower movement cost. Afterburn is cringe!
Oh no, not the tickles of death fired slowly one at a time in a small radius that has to be timed, nothing but that.
Meanwhile soldiers rockets:
@@kaesitha7006 the airblast penalty for df is the only thing preventing it from being an upgrade from stock. I mean yeah it's a flamethrower that actually requires aiming, but if you never miss AND had no airblast penalty thered be 0 reason to use stock
not related but, this game probably has the coolest competitive scene ive ever seen
It's such a shame it doesn't get much attention and most people disregard it as "funny hat simulator with guns" (which isn't a bad thing, but it would be so awesome for the comp scene to have more recognition)
I feel like a lot of my personal issues with Pyro comes from the fact that its such a Frankenstein'd class. Its class role is really nebulous and vague and Valve did very little over the years to actually fix the fact that Pyro is just really not good at doing what it was designed to do -- which is being a short-ranged but average speed and somewhat tanky ambush/skirmisher type class. Instead, they applied a lot of band-aid gimmicks and mechanics to the class without really ever touching the core design (except for Jungle Inferno sort of).
I'm not really the biggest fan of airblast as a mechanic, either. Not because I dislike playing around it as a Soldier (I think the Soldier vs Pyro matchup when playing as Soldier can be nuanced and interesting), but more that I don't like airblast as a mechanic I'm the one who is playing Pyro. I mostly don't like how it's a 100% reactionary mechanic and not something I can utilize on my own outside applying push force, but I also don't find airblasting explosives to be fun or engaging, even in-spite of the obvious incentive to do so, because it's just really simple and all you're generally doing is tapping M2 at the correct intervals. And by extension of this, I don't like how airblast became Pyro's defining characteristic as a class wherein most of his balance changes became subject to their relationship with airblast. Basically: when I think airblast is a boring mechanic, and it becomes the central core function of the Pyro class then it kills a lot of enjoyment of the class for me as a result.
I want to say that the most interesting weapon in Pyro's arsenal is the Detonator because of the insane amount of utility the weapon gives in how not only can you jump with it, but you can also rack up afterburn and how it gives a way to spam splash damage. Detonator lets you spam and proc burn around corners, you can ignite groups, you can harass from a longer range more effectively than the other 3 flare guns. I really cannot say enough for all its uses, but I also want to draw attention to the fact that the Detonator (and Scorch Shot) is incredibly similar to the Incendiary Cannon from older TF games. Valve initially removed the concept from TF2 because they felt the Pyro was too similar to Soldier as a result, but I think the unintended result of this was them making Pyro a significantly weaker and less interesting class. The Detonator added back a lot of the Soldier-esque function that TF2 Pyro was sorely missing.
bruh what are you smoking when you mentioned about how you don't like airblast? airblast is literally the only thing that keeps pyro from being the most linear class and there are so many creative things you can do with it. You're not just limited to reflecting projectiles, you can juggle ppl with it and even perform your own version of rocket jumping by reflecting a rocket close to your feet. Without airblasts pyro is literally nothing, even worse than spy as at least spy has good range and burst damage with his revolvers
@@wtzhang586 I explained why. I think it's a boring mechanic and effectively a band-aid for all of pyro's problems that are present because Valve failed to design the class well when making TF2.
It allows Pyro to do things he wouldn't otherwise be able to do like stuffing ubers for free, but it didn't do really anything to actually fix his problems like a lack of range, lack of mobility, lack of burst damage and so on. Furthermore, airblast is purely a reactive mechanic. No one on the enemy team playing Soldier? Reflecting is almost entirely useless. No one on the enemy team playing Pyro? Airblast's ability to extinguish teammates is null. It would be like if Soldier could only rocket jump if someone on the enemy team is playing Sniper.
@@ToastedEgg89 first off, airblasting is useful more than just against projectiles and burning teammates. It allows you to throw off enemies aims; allows you to get out of fight you don’t wanna be in and prevent from enemies from being too close to your team etc. Even against spies airblast can be super useful for either pushing a spy about to backstab a teammate away from said teammate or keeping a trickstab happy stab away from you. The only class where airblast isn't super useful on is sniper and that's mainly cuz at long ranges, he has the advantage over you while at close range, you're gonna win regardless. How many hours do you even have in the game cuz you clearly don’t know the full extent of airblasts. Secondly, if you think pyro is a weird class, how would YOU resign him into a new class that is unique and doesn’t have any sort of overlapping roles with the other 8. Since in the current state of pyro, airblast is the only thing that's strictly unique to him and it gives him the unique role as a team bodyguard that keeps projectiles and ubercharges at bay. If you complain about him being flawed, why don’t you pitch in your ideas instead of just crying about a game that’s probably older than you
@wtzhang586 "airblast is literally the only thing that keeps pyro from being the most linear class" maybe that's the problem?
@@pathulhu200 I recommend you read what I said about the things airblasts can do
Speaking about degreaser a lot of pyros use it in Highlander, and not because of combos but because of the deploy speed since then you can be mostly on your detonator and ignite people and then react to spam to reflect. Stock is more punishing in that regard
I was making a grilled cheese while listening and burnt my toast.
Also it’s one less airblast
As someone who plays casually and knows way too much about pyro I have some stuff to say, I'm not a comp player though and still have much to learn.
Overall most of the things you talked about make complete sense and are understandable. In terms of flamethrowers the 2 best are stock and degreaser, the degreaser only has 2 less airblasts but due to the faster deploy speed it gives you easier access to it as stated in other comments. I think it matters more in highlander when you have your secondary out more and as a bait to make people shoot rockets. Back burner would probably be decently viable if the airblast penalty wasn't so high, in casual ammo is much more frequent which is why it isn't bad there but unfortunately the crits from behind aren't enough to save the airblast cost from kneecapping it. Also if I'm not mistaken the reason the Dragon's Fury airblast is weird is because the cool down is long regardless if you hit the reflect or not.
On the note of secondaries pretty much everything stated was spot on, the lack of strafing on the thermal thruster (jetpack) pretty much kill it in competitive, and all the flare gun stuff makes sense. The gas passer still sucks even if you can throw it through walls, and there's no way your getting in range for a neon kill. Shotguns are pretty decent I think for dealing more consistent burst damage, especially the panic attack allowing your to swap between primary and secondary much faster.
In terms of melee powerjack is obviously the best no questions there but I think the backscratcher/rake could maybe be better than the axetinguisher, not sure I haven't played comp before, but the lower heal rate of the medigun on rake pyros might help build uber and the axetiguisher doesn't seem like you could consistently get into melee range saving it for flashy plays instead of practical use. However the rake I think slows overheal rate so that could be why it doesn't see use, because while you can bypass the heal penalty with crossbow, you can't do the same with overheal.
Anyway sorry for the essay, you're videos have gotten me interested in comp and I really enjoy them. Keep up the good work!
Sometimes I run scorch shot and phlog, spawn chokes and say easy win after every kill, I know it makes some people angry but goddamn it’s funny
The detonator is so much better than the scorch shot with the phlog, no one expects the crit pyro to fly at them when they're running away
@@shrimpchris6580 I know, but I prefer the mental anguish the scorch shot inflicts, at least with detonator shots they take skill
@@windlybandibunbrother4670 It does make people more angry, that's true. The only time I've ever seen someone get mad at me using the det, they straight up said I had a scorch shot lmfao
The class inherently having poor range in its primary, poor effectiveness at range with its secondary (with respect to other classes), and having no inherent tool to close that distance made Pyro a doomed class from the onset (if being created as the class specifically for people with dialup internet wasn't bad enough of an origin story). Compression blast gives it a bit of safety and arguably some advanced tech via reflect jumps but it does nothing to help Pyro with it inherent weakness to bullets and its general inability to close the gap (on its own terms) to any degree comparable to the 3 core mobile combat classes, even full on melee-man Demoknight has better mobility that he's in full control of than Pyro. While Pyro does have Detonator, Scorch Shot, and Thermal Thruster as options, they come at the expense of the secondary slot for general burst damage purposes, and don't offer nearly as good of mobility as its contemporaries.
The Flamethrower design is at odds with the desire to make the class an "ambushing close quarters king" when it has so many design elements competing with one another: it's easy to aim with, it hits multiple targets at once, you get free burn damage for brushing anyone, but it overall has pitiful damage (relative to other weapons) which means its damage is easy to react to and then outdamage (aside from Dragon's Fury, a Backburn when it actually registers, and a pre-charged Phlog), it's no wonder that a more passive defensive style has become prominent over the game's lifespan, since there's safety in preserving distance via damage falloff, having more time to react to projectiles instead of timing intuition/baiting, and generally being able to hold its ground when the fight has to come to the Pyro instead of the other way around.
While I think your assessment of the Det vs Scorch is accurate for the format, I think the real reason that it differs from the general public consensus is that 6s is a lot more airborne, so having that kind of control while the projectile is in-transit is a lot more important for getting that ignite. Meanwhile pubs are generally going to have way more grounded players, even from those that have the mobility capabilities as Demo/Soldier (primarily due to an absence of overheal in pubs, and more people fighting over who gets the healthpacks)
A bit of amusing timing to see this since a week or so ago a friend basically dared me to record my ramblings after we had a 2-hour long discussion while pubbing, on more or less the same subject. With the key difference being that I was offering my sentiments on what could be (and probably won't ever be), rather than taking a look at how the class's arsenal behaves as-is within the existing format.
I had a enemy pyro absolutely destroying me with his airblast when I’d go in to Uber my teammates for our pushes and it was a bit frustrating for sure but I was more blown away (pun intended) of how he was single handedly keeping us from making the final point it was kinda badass.
It's not bad ass, it's fucking stupid. Airblast is so easy to abuse it's comical. Fucking over other player's movement and attempts to use their weapons with such a skilless crutch is a cowardly an pathetic way to play the game, and to argue that it's balanced is to go against the fundamental balancing core of tf2
Stock flame thrower stock shotgun. Basically am saying the power jack if you can only equip one item on pyro.
sike, thats the wrong number.
Random thoughts because (unfortunately) im still much better at pyro than scout.
Pyro on beam is still prob better defensive soldier protection than scout but there are some really awkward scenarios. One is that if you cant get a position to outright airblast deny a bomb a lot of the time u actually want to be on top of or even behind ur medic player because otherwise the soldier literally just bombs over your head and now your med is between you and the rocket. This is obviously kinda ass for positioning reasons and means you cant get chip on a bomber prior to them jumping. On pocket scout oftentimes the best spot for vision/denial/ability to engage enemy team are one and the same.
Fun fact scorch shot is like 1 of 4 weapons banned in (NA) hl but not 6s.
Also there was a full time pyro team in ESEA-IM, i think they went 8-8 or something (been a while). Unfortunately though it was pre JI so not really representative of current pyro and the player got...code of conducted so I'll just leave it at that.
Good vid!
Commenting before watching the video, since I’ll fall asleep watching anyways:
While the bug with the phlog exists, where you can jump one someone and cancel the taunt while keeping the invulnerability, the phlog+SS is undeniably the strongest loadout
Edit: in casual/ highlander
phlog scorch shot loadout only works when you're already winning since crits or not, it doesn't matter when the other team is smart enough to back away while shooting at you and with your lack of airblast, you'll be dead in no time. You're probably just bad at the game since only idiots who are shit at the game complain about that loadout
Phlog scorch shot fucking sucks, you need the detonator to really bring out the phlog's potential
everyone says use the powerjack but nobody ever talks about the 20% damage vulnerability on wearer, which is quite a bit.
i wonder if that contributes to the idea of pyros getting one kill then dying, since everyone equips powerjack, sometimes even when they dont make use of it (me)
Video idea; What if everything but stock (and stock adjacent items like the cow mangler/reskins) was allowed? What would the meta look like?
I don't know about 6s really, but for highlander it was always degreaser/detonator/powerjack in more open areas and for overall pyro play, but if you know for a fact that the map is gonna be very closed and tight, then the stock/panic attack/powerjack is going to be a very good option
pyro gaming
You have a lot of thoughtful insight!
I've watched a couple of your videos now and my only complaint is that you use a lot of specialized jargon that's hard for people who don't play competitive (or even TF2 at all, like me) to understand. In this video, for example, I had to look up what "flashing" was, and you say at 5:10 "especially for that *post*", which I can only assume means "post-uber encounter", and in other videos you say "ad" and "disad", which I eventually intuitively figured out; and "bombing", which I still haven't figured out...
That brings me to say, it would be nice if you could, the first time you mention jargon like that, explain it for people like me who might not know what something means in this context, and then you're good for the rest of the video; or briefly put some text on screen (I've noticed your videos are very casual, so do whatever is easier).
Could also be nice to see it flash on screen for a bit when he says a competitive term/lingo
what are your thoughts on running pyro full time in 6s?
@@nektahatz5646 fun to play not fun to play against and not very consistent
@@Wild_Rumpus good enough . i will now run fulltime pyro until my team kicks me.
the post 64 bit unintentional airblast patch has made this class so much less fun to play for me... crazy how they unintentionally fixed player airblasts entirely on accident 7 years after Jungle Inferno broke it.
@@KnishG what was the "fix"
Do heavy next :)
Do you have an opinion on kawa as pyro if anything? I know kawa is more of a casual competitive player but do you ever see them actually win anything in a tournament setting if they become actually serious with pyro, cause there was the season with GPG on pyro on bagel and they won against froyotech which is nice but not like a grand final type of victory, so what do you think?
kawa is goated, pyro is a counterable class but not everyone is going to counter it correctly and it can become a headache to deal with (plus potential tilt factor)
@@Wild_Rumpusso there is a small chance but a chance none the less
Scorch Shot a.k.a. Incendiary Rocket Launcher is pretty nifty.
Any weapon that extends range for classes other than Sniper, like Loch for demo, have a lot of potential that gets slept on and dismissed as annoying instead of annoying _and_ effective.
Games are supposed to be fun. If something is inherently annoying it's not balanced, no matter how effective it is. It's also completely redundant given that the rocket launcher already exists and is on a much better class.
@@evan9730 I never said it was balanced, I said abuse it before you lose it.
Plus, standard rocket launcher is affected by damage falloff and is much slower.
given how every one of pyro's primary unlocks has some kinda of airblast penalty, i can't imagine in a comp setting why you'd veer away from stock?
degreaser is arguably better at airblasting since the increased deploy speed means that you have airblasts constantly available. Given how often pyro has his secondaries out, it's a very big boon. Overall degreaser for HL and stock for 6s
Dustbowl moment
Do people use cow mangler in 6v6?
@@big_brein4 banned. everyone used it when it was allowed
Pyro would be way better if airblast was removed.
Awww hell naw.... how tf did you win that first round dawg? The second one was soo close! Why are you playing soldier?
Back blast is the best pyro primary 100% ok bye
scorch shit because i mean
a long range spammable stun that aplies dot and has a blast radius while dealing enough damage to one shot light classes
ARE WE SHURE THIS ISN’T AN OVERWATCH WEPON?
Bob