You get airstalled if you double jump right after certain movements. Getting airblasted and getting knocked back by the FaN specifically.

changing airblast to not become a predictable arc would be a great start

this.

yeah

airblast completely negates momentum (and it DOES prevent airstrafing initially), change that so it works like fan knockback (class mass / momentum is taken into account)

lower airblast fire rate unless you get a reflect to nerf pyros holding m2 like retards against ubered soldiers while not allowing soldiers to hold m2 like retards

then make the pyro less shit at fighting things (fthrower range buff / dmg increase / particle speed increase or movement speed buff, i feel like range would be best cuz limited range + lack of approach tools pigeonholes it into defensive / ambush roles, but movement speed works too and the others make it better at ambushing)

while you're at it fix the particle animation (does not accurately show particles) and random reflect trajectories, and revert rrj nerf

then make stock and backburner not downgrades somehow (oft-touted idea was halving the downtime between airblasting and being able to fire your flames, but not airblast, reducing reliance on switching weapons)

i feel like a spuffer again lol

ideas:

put a cooldown on airblast so holding m2 isnt an actual way to shut down an uber

ubered targets cant get airblasted

scale back the minicrit dmg of flare (i think like 60 would be a spot to start at, 90 is obviously insane)

fix airblast raping any movement ability whatsoever

for .5-1 second after airblasting pyro takes minicrits

degreaser takes 30-40 metal per airblast to balance weapon switch buff

make airblast arc tiny so you have to have your crosshair close to the projectile/player you want to airblast

treat airblast like heavy revving minigun...airblast = slow as fuck movement speed for 1-1.5 seconds

idk if this is possible but make airblast only able to hit 1 projectile/person per puff.

So airblasting seems to be a big problem people have with the class, eh? Lemme see if I understand this correctly:

• When being airblasted, the player is momentarily stunned. This is disliked.
  
• If people could better respond to being airblasted, there'd be less of a problem.
  
• The mechanic is simply too binary, too all-or-nothing, at this point.
  
• Nobody's writing good things home about the mini-crits, if at all.

Is that the general opinion? What have I mistaken, if anything?

I came in a little late to the discussion on powerjack v. escape plan, so sorry if this has been said somehow.

In TF2, almost every way you can move faster hurts you or makes you take fewer hits to die. Escape plan has the double whammy of minicrits and low hp, GRU has minicrits (definitely a nerf from when they used to do damage), explosive jumping does damage, the fast classes have lower hp... etc.

Powerjack doesn't have this downside.

On the flipside, I don't think "buff the escape plan" is any sort of solution. There's a reason the escape plan was nerfed 3x in a row yet still remains insanely popular. It doesn't need a buff.

Nerf the powerjack is more reasonable. I like the weapon, but I don't see the downside of, say, having pyro take minicrits while using it. Powerjack's a really really solid upgrade, primarily rivaled by the axetinguisher in terms of how often it's used.

That said, I love the powerjack.

---

On a different note, if we're talking pub play, I think QuickFix users should take knockback from airblast during the uber. Pyros with the axetinguisher are one of the easiest ways to kill a popped QF med (sans stickytrap), but knockback would be nice and balance QF a bit more. Also, if they haven't fixed it already, QF meds should be able to detonator jump with their pyros.

if you are running away from a pyro

and he airblasts you

you should not stop

you should continue higher and faster in the direction you are going

also right click on your mouse should be replaced with razorblades/needles so that you know the true pain the people you are airblasting go through

i feel like if this thread was locked to plat / invite (maybe main) level players this conversation would be very interesting

so just because someone isn't invite means they can't possibly have an idea or argument worth hearing? thats fucking stupid.

Honestly, just stopping airblast from completely negating a player's prior momentum would be a godsend. Anything else, like fixing the Reserve Shooter, is gravy.

What about if the Pyro airblasts and doesn't extinguish a teammate on fire with it, instead extinguishes the pilot flame and the Pyro is forced into a animation similar to a Spy backstabbing a Razorback Sniper?

If a target is moving AWAY from a pyro in midair, and gets airblasted, it stops the target dead instantly. I think that airblast should at least mesh somewhat with the fundamentals of physics.

edit: I didn't notice there was a 2nd page and this has already been said like 8 times haha

minicrits are fun on the flamethrower and backburner where you're trading reaction ability for the ability to screw people over, but if you have both like on the degreaser then it gets annoying

also, I have a sort-of kind-of solution for the airblasting airstrafing thing
right now it seems like when you get airblasted, your air acceleration is set to zero or near zero so that you can't just airstall yourself and defeat the whole point of horizontal airblasting
the problem is that it prevents airstrafing too
how about, instead of turning off air acceleration, it makes it so that any air accelerations you make need to maintain the same speed you started with

that way you could totally still airstrafe, but if you tried to airstall yourself, it would do almost nothing
just an idea in case someone with the know-how (or a valve employee who feels like trying it out) reads this

I agree with you, that's not what I meant in the slightest, being in invite, plat, prem, whatever means you have more experience and understanding of the game than the rest of the players below you. my idea was to have those experienced players post and stimulate the discussion and change pyro so the game is able to be more balanced and more fun. ultimately, it is getting tested so dumb opinions will have less of an impact in the end once they are weeded out.

also can people stop quoting things and saying "this" or "I agree" without adding or subtracting anything from their arguments, that's what the +/- frags are for.

pyro nowadays is annoying to play against, though not exactly overpowered

stock pyro is too shitty tho

have to find a middle ground of not annoying but also not shitty

Rework airblast to take initial momentum into account and rework Pyro's unlock's effectiveness to reflect the amount of work that goes into using them. Degreaser affect should also be stock because why would you ever use anything else?

I actually like Pyro but I do wish it were less gay

So you're just gonna ignore the fact that I opened up this thread with "I'm a modder with a server click here to see it look look"? Why, if I had a glove and were standing before you right now, I'd slap you with it and demand satisfaction!

(Also, I'm currently investigating how to tell when someone's been airblasted, which will open up a lot of options for changes.)

I'm just assuming that hooking into movement code is as hard as it usually is in games, man. Well, if this wasn't a modding thread, I wouldn't have posted that at all. So I guess I was posting with a little bit of a double standard in the first place.

By the way, thanks for uploading the source, because I get understood how hooking works with sourcemod after reading it. I never looked into sourcemod at all before this.

So it was a lamentation of exceptional difficulty, then! Understandable, but I feel that applying physical force is well within the abilities of SourceMod and myself. ;)

I play stock pyro. Stock pyro is better for the most part.

The degreaser is shit. Usually results in abusing airblast for comboing, while rewarding a fast weapon switch with a mere 10% deducted dmg from the flamethrower. Not to mention the same ab ammo as stock. Basically a secondary primary. Things like the 1 hit kill axtinguisher, reserve shooter...yea no. Some weapons encourage bad play by rewarding too much.

Back to stock. Could probably use fewer airblasts. Make reflects harder to do, requiring more accuracy, either by aiming spot on or decreasing the window time/space needed to reflect. I'd also like to see a dmg deterioration for holding down m1.

Good luck with your project.

along with the airblast stuff that's been mentioned already, i'd kinda like faster travelling/tighter flames just so there's a little more emphasis on actually aiming

i like the whole aiming/movement part of the game and right now pyro doesn't really require it and takes it away from other players

Degreaser: Airblast costs 30
Flare: Minicrits opponents on fire
Detonator: -33% damage Rocket jump height on Detonator jump
RS
Axtinguisher: Backscratcher damage, slow speed

Objection.

[Mini]crits are not inherently bad. The Kritzkrieg, for example, is universally loved as one of the best unlocks in the game.

However, many weapons that have [mini]crits are broken, because either the [mini]crit is too easy to get, or a [mini]crit does too much damage.

The Reserve Shooter, for example, is dumb as fuck. Anything in the air (or on stairs, or underwater) takes a minicrit. And the Pyro can additionally force things into the air if they are close, with airblast. And a minicrit does 121, aka it 1shots scouts with 1 flamethrower particle, which is also dumb, and they can't avoid it because it's hitscan and airblast stalls all momentum.

So, the Reserve Shooter is broken both because the minicrits are easy to get and because the minicrits are too powerful.

The Flare Gun seems just as easy to get crits. Hit something with your primary and they will take crits. But it's not. For one, it's a projectile, a projectile without any splash. This means that it is much less reliable, because people can move out of the way. In addition, there are many more situations where your target would be in the air than on fire. Scouts jumping to dodge explosions, explosive jumping, surfing explosives, and random mashing of the space bar to dodge whatever (on top of aforementioned stairs and underwater situations). If you want to crit with the Flare Gun, you need to either get into flamethrower range, and be unable to hurt them UNTIL you get into flamethrower range (because you have no shotgun and 30 damage flares are weak), or hit two flares in a row, which is incredibly difficult outside of flamethrower range because they are projectiles and have no splash.

Wall of text. The point is that Flare Gun crits are much more difficult than Reserve Shooter minicrits to attain. They'll be even harder if we, like everyone seems to want, remove the completely momentum stalling mechanic of airblast, which would allow enemies to, even in close range, airstrafe out of the predictable airblast trajectory and avoid a flare (which is not hitscan).

The Flare Gun isn't as powerful as the Reserve Shooter, either. It fires incredibly slowly and does only 90 damage, which means that you need to soften even light classes before "OHKOing" with the crit flare. This may seem insignificant, but while it's very easy to set things on fire with the flamethrower, it's difficult to actually aim the particles and lead them into a target (particularly a fast, double jumping target), and while airblast makes them easy to hit, there's a cooldown after the airblast which means you have to hope that the flare will kill them, otherwise they'll just meatshot you again and you die.

The Shotgun as of right now is balanced with the Flare Gun, because it's more reliable. Hitscan and faster firing speed lets you better hit faster moving targets (like standard 6s clases) and do more DPM at close range. The Flare Gun is good because of passive reload and the fact that you can deal 90 damage to targets who are escaping you, where Shotgun would only do 30 or 40. If you nerf Flare Gun's base power, it's just a shitty Detonator: it sets things on fire for 6 DPM (worthless) and it leaves the pyro with no effective attacking power beyond flamethrower range and no strong finisher to compensate for how garbage the flamethrower is at killing stuff.

disclaimer marma is invite and im in ugc steel so my opinion isn't really worth anything

also he shouldnt be able to do like 500 damage in 1 second at melee range thats kind of dumb

When I said "nobody's writing good things about mini-crits, if at all", I meant "people aren't pleased with reflected projectiles dealing mini-crits, if they're even thinking about it". Sorry for the confusion. ^^;

flaregun should deal 60 to burning targets at close range an 90 at long range

backburner and flamethrower dealing mincrit reflects is fine

also the axtinguisher is fine

it's basically only to kill distracted and/or retarded heavies and soldiers who have no rockets loaded

pyro is slow and fairly worthless outside of flamethrower range, which makes it incredibly difficult to close with targets

getting in point blank range (which is SIGNIFICANTLY closer than flamethrower / airblast range) with classes who have rampup and can wreck you and not being able to switch weapons (to defend yourself with airblast) for 1.2ish seconds (with degreaser) or whatever seconds leaves you incredibly open for pretty much every class to just wreck you, and with the degreaser it's pretty much always safer to just flame + secondary combo them, which gives a pretty much equivalent dps (especially considering 195 is overkill in a lot of situations)

also axtinguisher means no powerjack which means you're slow as fuck when going ANYWHERE (and people want to nerf the uberstalling power of airblast so it needs a niche as a not-annoying anti-soldier alternative to roamer/scout as a flanking class)

EDIT: degreaser not being able to deal minicrits sounds fine to me, but honestly it's not enough to get anyone to switch to stock flamethrower on its own, switch speed is WAY too good

:(

i don't understand why anyone would try to nerf the degreaser. It doesn't matter if airblast costs more or it doesn't reflect minicrits it's still the best choice for a Pyro that plans on doing a lot of fighting.

Weapon switch speed is so crucial to pyro that the only way to balance other unlocks with it is to either make it a stock effect (the correct answer) or to remove it. No amount of indirect nerfs will balance it, only break it entirely.