It's too easy

Abilities that take low skill, have high reward and control enemy movement are not fun too play against.

airblast

I have no idea why this is getting -fragged, he's just asking a question. I'd say another reason that people dislike pyro is that it introduces a new mechanic, where if you fire at the wrong moment you can take 150 damage, in addition to the reasons above that makes people not like to play against it.

It's not fun to play against, probably because of airblast.

things that stun players in fps are generally frowned upon

mix in reflect/return damage mechanics and a lack of need to aim and you have a pretty lame class to combat

theoretically in close quarters a pyro should never lose a 1v1 as he can literally do 195+ damage to you for just hitting m1 + m2 + m1

Because seeing the freeze-cam of a Pyro just respawning is infuriating.

Honestly I don't like it because airblasting people is just a dumb mechanic. It's effectiveness is the same if you're right in front of the enemy or if you are at the edge of it's range. Puff'n'sting is an easy combination to pull off. Basically, Valve threw their hands up in the air in the early stages of TF2 and said they'll just make it the ultimate gimmick class, when it could have been so much more interesting.

Everything it does crits. I'm pretty sure it's the only class in the game that can equip 3 different weapons (primary, secondary, melee) and be able to fully crit with all of them easily on top of having an innate minicrit mechanic that to me is completely skill-less because you can just mash that m2 like a QTE and still reflect things back. It's also the only class that can instantaneously fuck up an uber without prep time (for instance - demoman with sticky trap launching one or both uber members up into the sky) and without much thought or real aim (soldier/demo juggling an ubered player who jumped with rockets/grenades).

It's stupid, it sucks, and I hate it.

originally pyro had a bunch of limitations. he sucked at long range and he couldn't do much outside of mouse 1 with flamethrower and shotty.

however valve added all these unlocks like the flare gun, axtinguisher, and degreaser that basically removed almost everything that was bad about the pyro. the skill cap of the class is really really low compared to what it was before his unlocks.

it's a close range class that only works close range, and once it gets to a close range with you, it's a very difficult class to beat. And even if you do win the fight, you will probably die of afterburn damage.
sixes classes can't fight them in a long-mid range because it will just airblast your rockets or stickies away or will laugh at your low damage scattergun shots.

it's valve's way to let low skilled players enjoy the game, just like engi.

Literally every other Pyro weapon gives crits/mini-crits for the simplest things.

Also, the airblast mechanic is really messed up. Unlike rockets or pipes, you don't have to aim at all to hit your opponent with it. And once you do, it forces them into a pre-defined movement pattern that can't be surfed or strafed out of like explosive knock-back. You basically press a button and get an instant Sandman stun.

I really dont mind pyro mains, but when I see DR spy mains that tell me why DR is good, like, getting rewarded for being bad doesnt take much skill at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTSGcdoJcCg

Because Pyros are annoying because of airblast. That's about it. Airblast is a really good utility function that makes Pyro actually usable in fringe situations, but because it's ridiculously good in the fringe situations it's really annoying (and basically takes no skill, time your right clicks and you win). Without airblast Pyros would never see any use at all in competitive play because every other class has more utility than it.

It takes no skill to do well as pyro in a pub though, but that's because people can't aim.

PS. I'm actually fine with Pyro because it's not heavy and has limited usefulness. I'd rather see pyro seen a bit (for last defenses) then have 0 use at all.

If you have a good pyro that uses the unlocks in pubs (ie almost all) it can do very well as it has insane DPS upclose with either reserve shooter or axtinguisher, and good dps midrange with flare, can reflect so much damage away, not only deflecting it but potentially turning it against you, and you can't even chip away effectively long range if they are either being healed or know pub layouts well since there are so many easy to get to health packs on most maps, most of which are also in areas that suit the pyros style of combat.
In 6v6 pyro isn't as effective as in pubs and is just a good utility option to stop ubers, still a pain but not as annoying IMO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdNm1b2-E2w

still less annoying than heavy

I personally don't like pyro because the hitboxes are broken and the class has a very low skill ceiling, once you can aim and reflect it's literally a cake walk.

The range of the ignite just feels way longer to me than it's model, especially when the pyro is looking up somewhere. The same goes with airblasts.

Also the airblast function in general just doesn't make sense, you're like caught in a stream of air.

the timing for airblast is so forgiving it's almost funny.

cause stupid nerds get mad at video games so they dont try anything new

sometimes i cry 2 my mum when i get airblested =O(

Well don't I feel like a noob for attempting to play the class lol. Personally I never had much of a problem with it but seeing all the complaints made me ask the question. How should it be balanced?

airblasts ruin fun

if they made airblast only work on projectiles and uber/kritz/qfix players it would be fine. being able to deny people the ability to dodge/move in an fps game is just wrong.

Am I the only one who thinks Pyro is fun? The only good reason for hating Pyro is the current airblast mechanic which doesn't take into account original momentum of players. Which I agree with by the way, but I still think the rest of the mechanic is fun and unique. Hating Pyro because he can push ubers is dumb. So is hating him for close range effectiveness when he doesn't have much for long range.

also this is completely unrelated but for whatever reason my IP still can't access tf.tv. I'm posting via proxy. Anyone know how to fix it?

if airblast didn't completely stall you in the air and minicrit projectiles. that's a good place to start with a nerf

It's honestly fine the way it is.

The only problem comes with people forcing people to use it (ie, the HL game mode or those discussions where you try to buff the pyro to such a degree that the 6s community has to run it all the time).

When you're forced to run pyro 24/7 it doesn't help your team (another good scout/soldier will always be better in terms of pure DPS, flanking ability, etc), it's annoying for the other team to deal with and it sucks the fun out of the game.

It's not overpowered or underpowered, it's just annoying. That's the main problem, it's not fun to play against and equally not fun to play as once you've mastered scout and soldier to a level where you can be effective (problem is most pyros playing in HL can't play any other class competently, same with most players who play the "support" classes, so they don't know their potential as scout or soldier or demo).

I've played 6s soldier/scout/demo at a decent level and whenever I play pyro I just always say to myself: "if I was X class I could do something, this guy wouldn't be able to do this to me, I could zone out this place better, I could make a bigger play, etc". The standard 6's classes are all so good and do multiple things so well that a pyro just isn't going to be the best answer in most cases, there are times when it is good (last holds mostly) but those times are rare.

It only really took me 30 hours of the class at most to master the standard pyro playstyle and once you've learned the basic weapon switches, combos and it becomes part of your muscle memory, it's not hard. Learning the C-tap is about 100 times more difficult than anything a pyro has to learn.

you get mad at mge all the time though

http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/f0/f03d5957032be2f907f9626b78e6ef22d51500fd_full.jpg