Is that different to any other class? Are you saying that if I were to play medic and play out of position it wouldn't matter?

Unless somehow pyro requires additional positional awareness than any other class your point is null.

Pyro is important because it can help neutralize ubers and do other things to help it's combo, but he's also a fairly easy class to kill and you don't want your Pyro dying too much. A Scout or Soldier who knows what they're doing can easily take out a Pyro who's overextended or in a place they shouldn't be.

And a Pyro who knows what they're doing can take out a Soldier or Scout who is in a place they shouldn't be, and I'd much rather have one of them alive than a Pyro, so Jas is right, Pyros shouldn't have to have extra additional awareness compared to other classes

The Soldier can wait till the Pyro airblasts then shoot. Like Cygnus said, it's even better if the Soldier has height advantage. The Scout can just chip shot and dance around the Pyro until he dies, or have a Soldier on flank to help kill him.

If you know how to, killing a Pyro isn't that hard.

I'm not saying its hard to kill a pyro 1v1, I was merely agreeing with Jas that positioning yourself as a pyro is no different to any other class, there are places you go and places you don't, if you stray out of position against any class you will generally die.

I technically main this class in HL, but it's so dumb and terrible and have had infinitely more fun playing Soldier, despite having to deal with three utility 6s classes that actively dedicate themselves in some way to sabotaging my role, one of which is Pyro.

My life is full of regret, procrastination, and beatmania.

Everything that was needed in this thread was answered in post #3. Low skill high reward unmissable crit garbage class.

This thread makes me smile.

Surely pyro must be difficult as such an educated young man like Sylvester can't reach the upper limits of silver highlander by playing tf2 more than Chinese laborers work.

They've taken away just about every weakness that the pyro originally had especially with the ability to reflect, quick weapon switch at a low cost and weapons that guarantee crits on enemies who are on fire. I think the best way to balance the class would be to reduce its health to 125 or 150 max. I don't quite understand why 175 health is justified for pyros seeing as they aren't supposed to be a tanky class and move just as fast as the spy, sniper and engie who all have 125 heath. If they move at the standard speed it isn't entirely fair to give them as much health as the demo.

I've put this idea forward to many users so far (mainly during my rants in servers) and the only people who disagree with me are those that main pyro.

Pyro's primary is limited to extreme close range, while no other class has this issue. He needs either extreme speed like Scout or a little bit of tankiness like Demo in order to facilitate getting into his only effective range, and I'm sure most people would rather have a slower but tougher enemy running towards them than something that moves at approximately the land speed record.

I see what you mean but then again just about every class has a range disadvantage except obviously sniper. All the assault classes except demo to a lesser extent are more effective at closer range: heavy, soldier, scout. Even demos are more likely to do damage with their projectiles as closer range.

The pyro's so called ranged disadvantage can be mitigated with weapons like the shotgun and flare gun as secondary. Two well placed flare gun shots can easily take out most classes.

Also it annoys me when I continuously juggle a pyro as soldier and he just won't die.

Except Pyro is completely unable to deal any damage past close range, while other classes are able to deal damage from mid to long range. Scout and to a slightly lesser degree Soldier would be largely useless without their respective tools to get into close range, and Heavy is a living tank. Pyro has none of these qualities and still is much more restricted by his primary weapon. While his secondaries are able to do damage outside of close range, one of them benefits heavily from being in close range (shotgun) and the other has a 2 second attack interval, during which his enemies have the ability to reposition themselves to prevent eating a second flare. Projectiles become more and more difficult to predict as the range between you and your target increases, and flares don't have any splash damage or timed detonation like rockets and pills do.

This is implying clicking on heads is easier than drowning people in a sea of fire.

Hmm I seem to recall that there are some insanely good snipers in the high levels of this game and they miss the "something close to the head" very often as it's ya know, kinda hard to hit. If it was as easy as you say it is then why don't teams run it all the time? Carnage, Bloodsire and all that didn't just 24/7 sniper all day.
The only incredibly successful main sniping in 6v6 that I've seen that wasn't on viaduct was sheep the other night in the iM game someone here casted, and even then he went scout to deal out heavy damage a few times, the mans hand is an aimbot and even then he needed scout to deal heavy damage sometimes

Though somewhat misguided, I think the point Sylvester may be trying to make is this:

Situational awareness and gamesense are the core of any class. Pyro is an easier class than most because Pyro DM, for lack of a better word, is ez-as-fuck. However, Pyro is one of the less mobile classes in the game (tied with Engi and ahead of Heavy). While other classes have mobility (RJs, double jumps, speed, etc) or (keyword:) reliable mid-range damage output to get them out of sticky situations and across the field to where they need to be on the drop of a hat, the Pyro's presence is requested in many different areas all the time, while he lacks any quick way to get around. Powerjack is a slight exception to this rule, but it has a VERY high opportunity cost because everyone knows what the Axetinguisher does.

In other words: Yes, you will definitely fulfill the baseline of requested effectiveness by floating around your combo and looking around every once in a while, but intelligently positioning yourself on the combo/flank ahead of time to account for your limited mobility takes a degree of foresight not always required of other, more mobile classes. This is the same reason people say that Heavy is ALL POSITIONING, because the tracking/aiming part of Heavy is laughably easy for most people with FPS skills.

Perhaps Pyro does not require MORE gamesense than any other class, but simply gamesense in areas that some other classes don't need to consider, and because the class's DM is so easy the only way to truly excel is to utilize that gamesense better than others in similar positions.

/my2cents

Hate to revive an old post, but I recently played pyro to discover I scored about 4 times higher than I do in any other class. It is alot easier, and for those who say "But it takes skill to airblast" - I learnt how to do this in about an hour, it does not need that much skill. I think pyro needs a nerf, but that is just my opinion.

thx mightymat good to hear ur opinion on this heated and relevant still debate

I can die even after the pyro dies even if he just taps me with flames. He also can stop my projectiles, stop my movement, gets easy shotguns / minicrits / flare gun shots. And the flames are obnoxious on my screen and he doesn't have to aim. Oh and he has a melee that makes him faster than a medic (?) haha what isn't broken

Boy necroing threads is fun... How do people even find these old things?

My short take on pyro, its airblast is necessary to be useful at all, but is implemented incorrectly, free stunlock is dumb and too simple, should have been vector addition type stuff, where velocity from the pyro's blast is added to your current direction and you get redirected, retaining ability to airstrafe, or if you're a soldier falling on a pyro, its airblast only stops you or heavily slows you, stuff like that.

Also the the blast should require aim. The fact that a pyro can airblast rockets that wouldn't even have hit them is dumb, the effective box and range as it stands makes no sense.

edit: I don't like typos.

You're dumb and you were probably playing against shitties.

If you would actually read anything we're saying it has been established that it's stupidly useless in general play, and then stupidly easy to use in really niche situations. Just a poorly thought out class in general.

The point is that the pyro's meta game is just too easy.

You know, balance it by making the airblast extinguish all players :3
Then the pyro has to decide, w+m1 or m2.

can some1 lock this please

the fact that you can turn a corner and this dirty ass asbestos suit class main can control your movement and then use his superior weaponry with stacks upon stacks of stupid ass fucking stats like reserve shooter and flarepunch you and instantly kill you in the matter of seconds if your one of the 6 or so of the 9 classes is gay

not to mention most pyro mains are all like "ecks dee pyro is so cute and random" :\

mana pls

paging cole