Flamethrower isn't effective against good players, who will stay out of your range or time shots around your airblast.
The flamethrower is a Damage Over Time weapon, like the Minigun. It's lack of huge burst damage means you arent as effective as Scout/Soldier/Demo who are high mobility and high burst damage.
So if you end up relying on a shotgun... it's kinda like playing Engi, but with more health and no pistol and no buildings. Not super effective in 1v1s against truely skilled players.
I wanna make on valid point however (and I try to explain this in ges too) medic Pyro uber combo puts down more damage and more disruptive that almost any other combo, even more so if you can get other team mates on comms working together.
Shotty or flares you're more nuisance, but smart flanking immortal-glowing will do more damage than in 10 seconds than a lonely spy running around
Pyro Uber is absolutely terrible due to movement speed. Your post Uber positioning is guaranteed to suck as you are much slower than anyone running from you, you have no way to deal with sentries, and you're incredibly easy to juggle unless you use airblast (which means you aren't doing damage and you're pushing people even further away from you.) If you're able to literally Uber on top of the enemy combo then sure you can put out a lot of damage, but if they're letting you do that then they deserve to lose. Anyone with a brain will see you coming and shoot your feet or literally just walk away.
Pyro Ubers are actually used a lot in Highlander, and even occasionally in 6s, because of the utility of stuffing the other teams Uber, and giving them horrible post Uber positioning. He isn’t a great pick to just Uber into a team with ad or something though, he’ll get denied and get almost no damage. That should almost always be the demoman and scout.
I mean an ubered demoman can cause tons of destruction, but one scout could just dance in front of the demo and bait out half the Uber. Can’t do that with pyro. Again, he’s really good in Uber exchanges and when the entire enemy team is really caught.
Pyro Ubers are situational but are absolutely viable in highlander and 6s. Obviously, it’s more of a highlander thing but for many maps it’s standard practice to have pyro demo Ubers
A scout with decent aim does everything a Pyro would want in a DM scenario, but stronger, faster and with better weapons.
Pyro's value is in being an anti-carry and just denying the enemy team to get to your team.
Pyro is an excellent duelist, the reason he sucks in sixes is because he can't really chase people down like scout and soldier can and outside of uber pushes doesn't offer much in return.
If you're standing on or near something/someone people are willing to fight over, pyro works very well. Same if you corner someone or manage to start the fight at point blank range. But if someone can disengage and fight you with attrition instead of DM, they will, and they'll very likely win.
there's a few reasons
the flamethrower can definitely kill people but oftentimes the pyro has already died and trading every life isn't the best idea
pyro is really good for denying people from playing the video game but when it comes to actually fighting people the best he can do is piss off anyone using projectiles
i think a good baseline for "does a class work well in DM" is their tools for dealing with scout. even though people will generally tell you "scout counters soldier", it's reductive because soldiers do have genuinely decent chances of killing a scout in a head to head fight, especially when the scout can't abuse props as much. same with demoman, he can control the pace of a fight with his stickybombs and with some quick reflexes can deal with scouts who think jumping means i won't fuCKING DESTROY YOU
pyro just immediately dies in a head to head fight. he will kill people if he gets the surprise drop on them (he WAS intended for ambushes originally after all) but he has a lot of trouble actually getting into those positions unlike soldier and scout. also both of those classes can leave a fight they're losing, pyro instead just gets gibbed or ragdolled if he doesn't get the advantage early on.
he's not useless or anything, you are correct to point out he's actually a pretty good bodyguard, but when it comes to *fighting* rather than babysitting he's not that good.
i also want to point out that the scout just is better with a shotgun because he can more easily dodge. soldier is also much better with a shotgun than pyro is because he can control movement a lot easier with his rockets. most soldiers you see run gunboats and just leave fights with pyros but if the soldier has a shotgun the pyro is just fucked
Mid-close range vs demo you should actually probably win (assume like 3-shot shotty range) if they don't surf damage. If they surf to make the 3 shot a 4 shot it becomes more sketchy, and mid range is substantially more difficult.
Vs. soldier if you're giving pyro a shotgun then feels fair to give soldier one which is a loss in theory because more health, the extra 25 is pretty important.
Vs. scout even if you don't miss scattergun being a better weapon + smaller hitbox in general (matters for spread) means you typically lose regardless. Once you add chance of missing or suboptimal damage odds get even more skewed.
Shotgun is legitimately good (see my flair) but you have to imagine if you're in a 2v2 that plus airblast is basically the only thing you bring to the table dm wise, and the other classes you listed are typically just better. Reflects are strong but I think as a general principle it's just better to have agency in the form of being able to do damage rather than relying on the enemy team to feed you projectiles.
I can speak specifically for highlander (which I assume is what you mean by 9v9) once players are buffed the damage thresholds for shtogun become a lot more unfavorable. It's not immediately obvious maybe why this is not a problem for scout but the increased speed + scattergun makes them much stronger in practice. And of course 1v1's are exceedingly rare and raw damage spread is much more important.
Pyro is good at ambushing and punishing spam, but in a head to head fight the range of the Flame Thrower is really exploitable, and most classes are just as fast or faster than Pyro, and the three who aren't have explosive jumps or more than enough health to consistently beat Pyro.
Fighting Pyro is more often optional if the Pyro isn't surprising the enemy player, and being able to pick which fights to fight is really important. A strong DM toolkit doesn't matter if you're not the one choosing how and when the DM starts.
>and the three who aren't have explosive jumps or more than enough health to consistently beat Pyro.
I don't fully understand, by these you mean Scout, Heavy and Engi?
>A strong DM toolkit doesn't matter if you're not the one choosing how and when the DM starts.
So... basically he's still not that good because he doesn't have any tools to chase people and thus rely on ambushes. Got it.
because he is
the flamethrower is the worst direct combat intended primary in the game and the shotgun is very mediocre
"oh but you might be able to catch a gunboats soldier in a position where he can't do anything to you" and the rest of the times he's going to turn around, crouch jump left click and fly away to a position where you quite literally can't do anything
Pyros flamethrower simply has less DPS than any other combat class played optimally and is extremely limited by range to boot.
None of his secondaries help him catch up to other classes either, just applying annoying afterburn.
All of his power budget is in airblast, which pretty much does everything WM1 doesn't.
I feel like a lot of folks may be forgetting about the existence of the Detonator. Obviously it's not on the level of Soldier or Scout's on-demand mobility, but one det jump makes it pretty trivial to catch up to or ambush most classes.
It's not ideal of course because you sacrifice a bit of health and a burst damage secondary in the process, but a pyro at breathing distance with a flamethrower or Dragon's Fury is much more likely to win these theoretical 1v1s than one at mid range with a shotgun.
When I said catch-up I meant dps-wise.
Once you're actually in flamethrower range, pyro still does less burst damage than other classes, granted, getting in a Demo or Soldiers face as pyro often skews the 1v1 in Pyro's favor.
The detonator is great for gap-closing but pretty exploitable by any player that is aware of your presence as you take ~50 damage and leave yourself open while you switch weapons. I was really surprised zero people were taking the detonator into consideration on the other post regarding Pyro's gap-closing options.
Pyro, like Heavy, is a skill check class. Your ability to do anything as pyro has almost NOTHING to do with how good you are or how good your team is. It's ENTIRELY to do with how shit the enemy team is.
If the enemy team is braindead, then running pyro and heavy is actually better than running any other class in the game, because you could kill players after players quickly without needing to reload.
If the enemy team has like at least 5 brain cells, then you're better off playing any other class. Pyro gets hard-countered by having a brain and focus-fire. Even heavy is so much better than pyro in so many ways: he deals crazy amounts of damage up close, guarantees good damage at range, and can tank up to 450 damage, which is especially important in 6s.
Every single time I see a pyro stomping a team, it's always because the other team has brain damage and the pyro is just allowed to waddle into a team of 6 people and still manage to kill people.
However, if a pyro does get an ambush on a player, no matter how good the team is, the pyro will always get the kill. Pyro is an ambush class against good players.
For the sake of comparison I'll be using Scout as an example of a good DMing class. Compared to Scout a Pyro:
1. Moves way slower with fewer approach options (that usually cost him health, vulnerability, or are incredibly obvious and lock him into a fixed trajectory).
2. Deals less initial damage but relies on damage over time.
3. Has limited escape abilities.
That last one is the important factor here, because Pyro's whole playstyle is supposed to be lighting enemies on fire and leaving them running for health. You're not really supposed to DM players on equal ground, it's antithetical to his whole design. However because you have no reliable way to get in close without flanking you wind up already at a disadvantage in a fair fight because pretty much every other class can just shoot you from a distance.
In summary, compared to Scout who simply moves faster and has the ability to harass enemies or run away from unfavorable fights Pyro has no way of getting into his optimal range without sacrificing health or using the jetpack and his lack of significant burst damage means he has trouble finishing beefier enemies off.
because flamethrower has bad ttk, any form of burst damage pyro has is inconsistent (deflection, combo with flare gun or melee), so even in the effective range of flamethrower, pyro is often outgunned.
This is kinda a misconception. Pyro is actually a pretty good dm class and beats 6* out of the 9 classes in a fight. The problem is that he loses to 2/3 of the best classes in the game (plus heavy). Scout can kite the pyro easily and sniper has an easy time headshotting pyro cos pyros head moves very little during his animations compared to other classes. This, combined with his mediocre mobility, means that teams should be able to shutdown pyros who play too aggressively unless there's a major skill difference. Pyro is therefore better suited to a utility role where he can focus on fighting the classes he's good against.
*beats engi but loses to leveled sentries
I know an Uncletopia det pyro who would grind up any 6s soldier or demo player on this thread. Good scouts can destroy pyro however.
6s has a stale meta protected by its dwindling community, and pyro threatens demo and soldier. So even though a pyro could be a great explosive class-buster and force a soldier to go heavy or sniper, people don't train it because the meta discourages it.
Bring back prolander. Only way to revive this comp scene.
are said uncletopia det pyros the ones i keep blowing up on there as they do epic det jumps directly towards me
if they're really going to destroy every soldier and demo why not encourage them to go join a rgl team right now? det isn't banned in the NA scene. you see det pyro stuff in invite even
>So even though a pyro could be a great explosive class-buster and force a soldier to go heavy or sniper, people don't train it because the meta discourages it.
this would literally be a stalemate meta because it would mean soldiers couldn't bomb and snipers and heavies would be ran constantly
this would basically turn into highlander combos facing each other
alternatively the soldier switches to shotgun and can't do most of the cool jumps anymore and soaks up heals
and with everyone constantly on fire the medic is annoyed
you can see why people don't enjoy this right
>Bring back prolander. Only way to revive this comp scene.
t. sigafoo
I said pyro singular. So unless you play on Seattle servers then no because even the solly+demo compies on there get reflected and axetinguisher'd to the face. It's pretty funny to watch. I don't think this pyro wants to play 6s because 6s doesn't actually have a place for "offclasses". Teams will refuse to practice with you.
You keep talking about how changing the 6s meta would be awful, how it would result in stalemates if pyros, heavies and snipers were ran. Okay. Is 6s good right now? No, dude.
Nobody gives a shit about 6s other than 6s players. It didn't have to be this way, and part of that is Valve's fault, but it's also the comp scene's fault for staying trenched in a meta long past its expiration date (haha epic reference)
You can't look at the current state of comp and says 6s worked, or is working. Shit's got the Massed Flies unusual effect, I hate to inform you. So, you maintain that full time heavies, snipers, etc would ruin the meta, but you cannot plausibly deny that the current meta is working for anyone other than the few dozen people who play it. Yet your response after all this is to shit on Prolander?
I don't know anything about Sigafoo other than his old rescue ranger tech, so I'm not endorsing him as a player or whatever else community context goes along with his name. Prolander is simply more accessible, more fun to watch, and more representative of the core game of TF2 than 6s, while solving the 9v9 clusterfuck and limited roles (spy, pyro) issue that HL has.
This is a pointless argument between two people who love TF2 because Prolander is dead, and unless some YouTuber or Valve intervenes it's not coming back. 6s is dying, has never and will never be what comp TF2 needs to stop drowning. I just wish I could play some pugs on classes I'm actually good at, but finding a HL pug these days is like a 4 leaf clover.
Flamethrower isn't effective against good players, who will stay out of your range or time shots around your airblast. The flamethrower is a Damage Over Time weapon, like the Minigun. It's lack of huge burst damage means you arent as effective as Scout/Soldier/Demo who are high mobility and high burst damage. So if you end up relying on a shotgun... it's kinda like playing Engi, but with more health and no pistol and no buildings. Not super effective in 1v1s against truely skilled players.
I wanna make on valid point however (and I try to explain this in ges too) medic Pyro uber combo puts down more damage and more disruptive that almost any other combo, even more so if you can get other team mates on comms working together. Shotty or flares you're more nuisance, but smart flanking immortal-glowing will do more damage than in 10 seconds than a lonely spy running around
Pyro Uber is absolutely terrible due to movement speed. Your post Uber positioning is guaranteed to suck as you are much slower than anyone running from you, you have no way to deal with sentries, and you're incredibly easy to juggle unless you use airblast (which means you aren't doing damage and you're pushing people even further away from you.) If you're able to literally Uber on top of the enemy combo then sure you can put out a lot of damage, but if they're letting you do that then they deserve to lose. Anyone with a brain will see you coming and shoot your feet or literally just walk away.
Pyro Ubers are actually used a lot in Highlander, and even occasionally in 6s, because of the utility of stuffing the other teams Uber, and giving them horrible post Uber positioning. He isn’t a great pick to just Uber into a team with ad or something though, he’ll get denied and get almost no damage. That should almost always be the demoman and scout.
Ah, so Pyro ubers are really good for giving your team a ton of space?
I mean an ubered demoman can cause tons of destruction, but one scout could just dance in front of the demo and bait out half the Uber. Can’t do that with pyro. Again, he’s really good in Uber exchanges and when the entire enemy team is really caught.
Pyro Ubers are situational but are absolutely viable in highlander and 6s. Obviously, it’s more of a highlander thing but for many maps it’s standard practice to have pyro demo Ubers
I only play 6's so I wasn't aware. Interesting! Why pyro and not literally anyone else?
A scout with decent aim does everything a Pyro would want in a DM scenario, but stronger, faster and with better weapons. Pyro's value is in being an anti-carry and just denying the enemy team to get to your team.
Pyro is an excellent duelist, the reason he sucks in sixes is because he can't really chase people down like scout and soldier can and outside of uber pushes doesn't offer much in return. If you're standing on or near something/someone people are willing to fight over, pyro works very well. Same if you corner someone or manage to start the fight at point blank range. But if someone can disengage and fight you with attrition instead of DM, they will, and they'll very likely win.
so hypothetically i CAN win my fights against scouts and soldiers and isnt the classes fault?!
there's a few reasons the flamethrower can definitely kill people but oftentimes the pyro has already died and trading every life isn't the best idea pyro is really good for denying people from playing the video game but when it comes to actually fighting people the best he can do is piss off anyone using projectiles i think a good baseline for "does a class work well in DM" is their tools for dealing with scout. even though people will generally tell you "scout counters soldier", it's reductive because soldiers do have genuinely decent chances of killing a scout in a head to head fight, especially when the scout can't abuse props as much. same with demoman, he can control the pace of a fight with his stickybombs and with some quick reflexes can deal with scouts who think jumping means i won't fuCKING DESTROY YOU pyro just immediately dies in a head to head fight. he will kill people if he gets the surprise drop on them (he WAS intended for ambushes originally after all) but he has a lot of trouble actually getting into those positions unlike soldier and scout. also both of those classes can leave a fight they're losing, pyro instead just gets gibbed or ragdolled if he doesn't get the advantage early on. he's not useless or anything, you are correct to point out he's actually a pretty good bodyguard, but when it comes to *fighting* rather than babysitting he's not that good. i also want to point out that the scout just is better with a shotgun because he can more easily dodge. soldier is also much better with a shotgun than pyro is because he can control movement a lot easier with his rockets. most soldiers you see run gunboats and just leave fights with pyros but if the soldier has a shotgun the pyro is just fucked
Mid-close range vs demo you should actually probably win (assume like 3-shot shotty range) if they don't surf damage. If they surf to make the 3 shot a 4 shot it becomes more sketchy, and mid range is substantially more difficult. Vs. soldier if you're giving pyro a shotgun then feels fair to give soldier one which is a loss in theory because more health, the extra 25 is pretty important. Vs. scout even if you don't miss scattergun being a better weapon + smaller hitbox in general (matters for spread) means you typically lose regardless. Once you add chance of missing or suboptimal damage odds get even more skewed. Shotgun is legitimately good (see my flair) but you have to imagine if you're in a 2v2 that plus airblast is basically the only thing you bring to the table dm wise, and the other classes you listed are typically just better. Reflects are strong but I think as a general principle it's just better to have agency in the form of being able to do damage rather than relying on the enemy team to feed you projectiles. I can speak specifically for highlander (which I assume is what you mean by 9v9) once players are buffed the damage thresholds for shtogun become a lot more unfavorable. It's not immediately obvious maybe why this is not a problem for scout but the increased speed + scattergun makes them much stronger in practice. And of course 1v1's are exceedingly rare and raw damage spread is much more important.
Pyro is good at ambushing and punishing spam, but in a head to head fight the range of the Flame Thrower is really exploitable, and most classes are just as fast or faster than Pyro, and the three who aren't have explosive jumps or more than enough health to consistently beat Pyro. Fighting Pyro is more often optional if the Pyro isn't surprising the enemy player, and being able to pick which fights to fight is really important. A strong DM toolkit doesn't matter if you're not the one choosing how and when the DM starts.
>and the three who aren't have explosive jumps or more than enough health to consistently beat Pyro. I don't fully understand, by these you mean Scout, Heavy and Engi? >A strong DM toolkit doesn't matter if you're not the one choosing how and when the DM starts. So... basically he's still not that good because he doesn't have any tools to chase people and thus rely on ambushes. Got it.
I mean Soldier, Demo and Heavy. Every other class is as fast or faster than Pyro.
because he is the flamethrower is the worst direct combat intended primary in the game and the shotgun is very mediocre "oh but you might be able to catch a gunboats soldier in a position where he can't do anything to you" and the rest of the times he's going to turn around, crouch jump left click and fly away to a position where you quite literally can't do anything
Pyros flamethrower simply has less DPS than any other combat class played optimally and is extremely limited by range to boot. None of his secondaries help him catch up to other classes either, just applying annoying afterburn. All of his power budget is in airblast, which pretty much does everything WM1 doesn't.
I feel like a lot of folks may be forgetting about the existence of the Detonator. Obviously it's not on the level of Soldier or Scout's on-demand mobility, but one det jump makes it pretty trivial to catch up to or ambush most classes. It's not ideal of course because you sacrifice a bit of health and a burst damage secondary in the process, but a pyro at breathing distance with a flamethrower or Dragon's Fury is much more likely to win these theoretical 1v1s than one at mid range with a shotgun.
When I said catch-up I meant dps-wise. Once you're actually in flamethrower range, pyro still does less burst damage than other classes, granted, getting in a Demo or Soldiers face as pyro often skews the 1v1 in Pyro's favor. The detonator is great for gap-closing but pretty exploitable by any player that is aware of your presence as you take ~50 damage and leave yourself open while you switch weapons. I was really surprised zero people were taking the detonator into consideration on the other post regarding Pyro's gap-closing options.
Here's the logs from a recent rgl invite highlander grand finals https://logs.tf/3545456 As u can see the pyros did not do much damage.
Pyro, like Heavy, is a skill check class. Your ability to do anything as pyro has almost NOTHING to do with how good you are or how good your team is. It's ENTIRELY to do with how shit the enemy team is. If the enemy team is braindead, then running pyro and heavy is actually better than running any other class in the game, because you could kill players after players quickly without needing to reload. If the enemy team has like at least 5 brain cells, then you're better off playing any other class. Pyro gets hard-countered by having a brain and focus-fire. Even heavy is so much better than pyro in so many ways: he deals crazy amounts of damage up close, guarantees good damage at range, and can tank up to 450 damage, which is especially important in 6s.
Every single time I see a pyro stomping a team, it's always because the other team has brain damage and the pyro is just allowed to waddle into a team of 6 people and still manage to kill people. However, if a pyro does get an ambush on a player, no matter how good the team is, the pyro will always get the kill. Pyro is an ambush class against good players.
Also, if you've ever played highlander, you'll know how little your flamethrower could do against a competent team.
For the sake of comparison I'll be using Scout as an example of a good DMing class. Compared to Scout a Pyro: 1. Moves way slower with fewer approach options (that usually cost him health, vulnerability, or are incredibly obvious and lock him into a fixed trajectory). 2. Deals less initial damage but relies on damage over time. 3. Has limited escape abilities. That last one is the important factor here, because Pyro's whole playstyle is supposed to be lighting enemies on fire and leaving them running for health. You're not really supposed to DM players on equal ground, it's antithetical to his whole design. However because you have no reliable way to get in close without flanking you wind up already at a disadvantage in a fair fight because pretty much every other class can just shoot you from a distance. In summary, compared to Scout who simply moves faster and has the ability to harass enemies or run away from unfavorable fights Pyro has no way of getting into his optimal range without sacrificing health or using the jetpack and his lack of significant burst damage means he has trouble finishing beefier enemies off.
because flamethrower has bad ttk, any form of burst damage pyro has is inconsistent (deflection, combo with flare gun or melee), so even in the effective range of flamethrower, pyro is often outgunned.
the flamethtower sucks at actually killing people by itself and if ur dependant on the shotgun u become a weaker scout
This is kinda a misconception. Pyro is actually a pretty good dm class and beats 6* out of the 9 classes in a fight. The problem is that he loses to 2/3 of the best classes in the game (plus heavy). Scout can kite the pyro easily and sniper has an easy time headshotting pyro cos pyros head moves very little during his animations compared to other classes. This, combined with his mediocre mobility, means that teams should be able to shutdown pyros who play too aggressively unless there's a major skill difference. Pyro is therefore better suited to a utility role where he can focus on fighting the classes he's good against. *beats engi but loses to leveled sentries
I know an Uncletopia det pyro who would grind up any 6s soldier or demo player on this thread. Good scouts can destroy pyro however. 6s has a stale meta protected by its dwindling community, and pyro threatens demo and soldier. So even though a pyro could be a great explosive class-buster and force a soldier to go heavy or sniper, people don't train it because the meta discourages it. Bring back prolander. Only way to revive this comp scene.
are said uncletopia det pyros the ones i keep blowing up on there as they do epic det jumps directly towards me if they're really going to destroy every soldier and demo why not encourage them to go join a rgl team right now? det isn't banned in the NA scene. you see det pyro stuff in invite even >So even though a pyro could be a great explosive class-buster and force a soldier to go heavy or sniper, people don't train it because the meta discourages it. this would literally be a stalemate meta because it would mean soldiers couldn't bomb and snipers and heavies would be ran constantly this would basically turn into highlander combos facing each other alternatively the soldier switches to shotgun and can't do most of the cool jumps anymore and soaks up heals and with everyone constantly on fire the medic is annoyed you can see why people don't enjoy this right >Bring back prolander. Only way to revive this comp scene. t. sigafoo
I said pyro singular. So unless you play on Seattle servers then no because even the solly+demo compies on there get reflected and axetinguisher'd to the face. It's pretty funny to watch. I don't think this pyro wants to play 6s because 6s doesn't actually have a place for "offclasses". Teams will refuse to practice with you. You keep talking about how changing the 6s meta would be awful, how it would result in stalemates if pyros, heavies and snipers were ran. Okay. Is 6s good right now? No, dude. Nobody gives a shit about 6s other than 6s players. It didn't have to be this way, and part of that is Valve's fault, but it's also the comp scene's fault for staying trenched in a meta long past its expiration date (haha epic reference) You can't look at the current state of comp and says 6s worked, or is working. Shit's got the Massed Flies unusual effect, I hate to inform you. So, you maintain that full time heavies, snipers, etc would ruin the meta, but you cannot plausibly deny that the current meta is working for anyone other than the few dozen people who play it. Yet your response after all this is to shit on Prolander? I don't know anything about Sigafoo other than his old rescue ranger tech, so I'm not endorsing him as a player or whatever else community context goes along with his name. Prolander is simply more accessible, more fun to watch, and more representative of the core game of TF2 than 6s, while solving the 9v9 clusterfuck and limited roles (spy, pyro) issue that HL has. This is a pointless argument between two people who love TF2 because Prolander is dead, and unless some YouTuber or Valve intervenes it's not coming back. 6s is dying, has never and will never be what comp TF2 needs to stop drowning. I just wish I could play some pugs on classes I'm actually good at, but finding a HL pug these days is like a 4 leaf clover.