Thread: Pyro: The Fighting Game Class

Originally Posted by sickwookie

:facepalm:

Why does everyone assume that I W+M1 because I want the pyro to get buffed

I have hundreds of hours of pyro on TTP, and I played the class with skill. The problem is that no matter how good I got with the flare gun, shotgun, axetinguisher, or airblast it was just not that effective. Even now with the faster lower cost airblast the class is just not effective. There is nothing the pyro does that another class can't do better (except spy checking?). What I want to see is a class that is on par with the others in the hands of a skilled player.

Sadly most of the suggestions made are by people who do not have enough experience to understand what actually makes a good pyro(hint: its not ambushing). Even more sadly the suggestions I make are cast aside as the rantings of a W+M1 pyro. I assure you I despise the W+M1 pyro more than anyone. Those bastards gave me a bad name no matter what proro shit I could pull. I just want to be more than an annoyance when I play the pyro with skill.

Sleepy has made some cool suggestions, and I think they deserve to be discussed. If my points don't make sense to you at least give this post a read to see if he makes any more sense http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1252294.

ok so I read that long post and some of it while being interesting is just an attempt to make the pyro better at killing from a further range. flare gun doing crits on a already burning opponent is stupid, it already does mini-crit. its like asking the soldier to do a mini-crit with his second rocket after he hit him already with blast-damage(already on dh, but this way would make the soldier way imbalanced). and the afterburn doing more dmg if u keep the flame on them longer, stupid(should i do more dmg with my rockets, minigun, pills, stickies if i hit you with more of them, no i shouldn't so why should that be mentioned as an improvement for the pyro?) also in all of these links or videos it did make it apparent that yes the pyro while being "weak" needs to be buffed somewhat, but honestly there is no good way that valve can simply "fix" the problems with this class. as long as the pyro plays smartly, gets some over heal. All that bs i read on how the pyro takes longer to kill the enemies goes away, get the damn overheals and dont run in a predictable path to your target, and the fire in the way already makes it hard to somewhat predict your path. And yes i dont have many hours as pyro, but when i play pyro i rarely run head first into the fight, i stay back spy-check, watch the meds and engies, and shoot flares at the enemy till they get close or they want to uber a pyro towards the enemy. Valve may have said they were goign to be the best clase at that range(they still are). and now with the latest tweak pyros do more dmg again, so now itll take you 1.1 secs to kill a soldier or whatever, but what if the soldier is over healed? now he has 300hp and u don't kill him 1.1 secs..does the pyro need another buff because he cant kill the soldier he surprised or whatever fast enough?

no im not trying to make you rage...im simply expressing my thoughts on the pyro and how ridiculous i think all these arguments are.

I think the flare getting a crit on an already burning enemy is to fix the fact that it is not a very good weapon otherwise. In fact most of the changes to the pyro have been similar tweaks that tiptoe around the fact that the pyro mechanic just does not work very well as the player base gets more skillful. I think there are a number of ways to fix the class, but they all start by starting from scratch and slowly adding back abilities until it is balanced. Sadly, I do not believe Valve is going to take this approach. Instead I have just learned to be happy with the fact that the pyro has become a good defensive class, and when it comes to offense or 5 point maps it is time to switch.

I was mildly disappointed by the re-addition of 10 second afterburn. Rebuffing was not an issue, to me. But the afterburn rewards the same behaviors they were trying to correct, with a single particle hitting any low health class.

Personally, I'm not annoyed with anything but that afterburn readdition. Same AB time and almost the same damage, but lower ammo consumption.

Originally Posted by Cheshire Cat

I was mildly disappointed by the re-addition of 10 second afterburn. Rebuffing was not an issue, to me. But the afterburn rewards the same behaviors they were trying to correct, with a single particle hitting any low health class.

Personally, I'm not annoyed with anything but that afterburn readdition. Same AB time and almost the same damage, but lower ammo consumption.

I kind of agree with you. I think the afterburn should vary based on the number of particles hit. It rewards the pyro's ability to get close to ambush and helps the ambush become more effective.

Also, I think that afterburn should keep hitting when you're only barely hitting the enemy, as if they're still on fire and the light heat only keeps it going.

Originally Posted by Anti-Squeaker

and just for reference, the rage on the M2 flamethrower used in WWII was around 40 meters. So I agree, the flamethrower IS ridiculously not accurate. But for the wrong reasons. :P

Well if your going in that direction I would like to point out that in WW2 if you were shot by a sniper rifle in almost any part of your body you were going to die and I think you guys can all agree that you don't want me or any of the other snipers to get our hands on that. =D

To contribute to the topic Ive thought about one idea a bit, it's based off the particles hit = afterburn one, but instead of afterburn lasting longer for each particle you hit with I was thinking it should have a set time limit but do more damage for every particle that hits. It would work somewhat similar to the heavy's current sandvich. You would need to lower the flamethrower's direct damage to somewhat compensate, but this change would reward pyros who are more accurate (lol) with the flamethrower. Instead of spraying every which way to light as many people as possible you would have to control and concentrate the fire onto a specific target to reach your maximum damage potential.
I think a lot of the ideas proposed are pretty good, namely the more particles hit = more afterburn one or my variation of it, as well as the quicker afterburn, both of which reward skilled players where it matters, in the midst of a fight, no class should be doing a good deal of its damage more than a few seconds after a fight has ended. I disagree with the flaregun hits on burning players should crit idea but to be honest I disagree with all full blown crits. Mini-crits in the right context are perfectly acceptable but any more is too much for me.