spammy confirmed for dyslexia

I'm 99% sure if I got people to play this game who have never played an fps in their life or are not very familiar with FPS's the class they will instantly relate to and find more fun to play with will be the pyro because it's so easy to play right from the get go. You don't need to learn building mechanics like the engineer, you (kinda) don't need to aim like the others you mentioned, and you find it way more fun than medic.

I have seen this happening, I got 3-4 friends to play tf2, some of them only played mobas, some played fps's ages ago, and the class they instantly started playing after trying most of them was pyro.

Not saying this is a bad thing, but you can't deny pyro skill floor is probably the lowest amongst all 9 classes. You don't need to buff a mechanic that will make it even lower. It doesn't sound very logical from a competitive pov. Mind you Im talking about skill floor not skill ceiling, which pyro can have a incredibly high one with the reflect and combo mechanics.

Pyro's not op
learn to aim

balanced

The Class is pretty much a giant gimmick of crits, easily applied movement stalling, baindaid unlocks and "free" damage from vaguely looking at someone. That's literally a plethora of unenjoyable mechanics, and it's all combined into one class. I'd honestly just start over with the class entirely. Pretty much remove everything it currently has and turn it into a proper flanking/combo class that doesn't heavily rely on unlocks to be relevant.

Address those band-aid "gimmicks", and keep the mechanics of the current sickburn airblast (remove the charging requirement. Seems unnecessary).

I'm just a boy with a dream

No one thinks pyro is op. It is just extremely frustrating to play against and the mechanics of the class are gimmicky and stupid.

In their defense, they may have flubbed and meant to type "up".

Beyond that, your assessment is precisely what I've aimed to address. I do have a few questions for everybody:

1. The crit mechanics of the Flare Gun: typically found to be annoying? From what I'm reading, buffing direct combat and keeping flarepunching goes against the stated "make Pyro less annoying"-goal.
   
2. Beyond airblasting, what other gimmicks of the class are just unsatisfying to go against?

how bout we just remove pyro altogether

~NERD ESSAY~

I have to acknowledge that valve has made the pyro a lot less of a train wreck than it was at release, and I feel like now it actually has a defined yet flexible role in highlander at least, which is pretty decent, however it's also the fucking lamest and shittest class in the game besides minisentry engineers.

interesting/unique/team-oriented parts of pyro:
- combos as a concept
- reflects as a concept
- balanced/interesting secondaries

faggot parts of pyro:
- afterburn as it is
- getting airblasted
- weird stupid flame mechanics
- reflects as they are

proposed fixes:
- airblast takes momentum into account (both less annoying for bombing soldiers and means you can't get flarepunched as easily)

- maybe smaller reflect window/you have to actually aim reflects, at the moment it's pretty common to accidentally reflect stuff and it's pretty easy to hit point blank reflects

- afterburn strength/duration is scaled to the amount of direct fire damage taken, so when you get touched by that w+m1 idiot from 15 metres away just before you kill him you don't take 60 damage guaranteed or have to find a pack

- much faster-travelling flame particles in a tighter cone

all pretty basic things but it's the most comprehensive/non-gimmicky way to actually fix the class rather than just saying "it's shit remove it" or whatever

"Pyro's not up"
Shit youre right how did we not see that

gang garrison 2 has an afterburn system where being exposed to various types of fire affects the intensity ("heat") and duration ("fuel/gas contamination, whatever.") differently.

when a flame particle hits a player a set amount of duration is added to the afterburn, and an amount of heat with some falloff is added. (side note: on low end of existing afterburn intensity, heat additions are more generous)

both afterburn values decrease over time, but "duration"/contamination doesn't affect the damage output, and the damage output doesn't start decreasing until several seconds after the character was last hit by fire.

this makes it so that "tagging" players with the end of your stream of flames isn't essentially the same as keeping them at the core of your flame stream. you only have to keep contact for a chunk of a second to get close to full afterburn, but it's not as simple as flailing around or giving a sudden puff.

when a flare hits a player, it's very hot, but low on duration/fuel/contamination, so it'll do less total damage against someone who wasn't on fire and it's difficult to chain them together.

this is a good way to reward combos as a way to make up for being unable to maintain close ranged contact and gives long ranged fire attacks a defining purpose that balances out the intentional shortcomings of the close range part.

It still baffles me that a pyro can send a heavy into the air the same way as it would on a scout, and yet a rocket or stickybomb placed at the feet can send a scout flying while hardly lifting a heavy at all.

i pretty much agree with all of this, except for reflects. Do you really find reflects to be all that random or easy?

I agree that in close range there is an element of randomness, however it feels more like playing mindgames than anything. Really good pyros can hit those reflects more consistently than mediocre ones, just how hitting certain airshots or stickies is technically random, but better players predict actions more consistently.

At range its a bit easier. You have to aim a rocket, which is actually really easy. But its a lot harder to actually get a soldier to feed you a rocket.

the hitbox is gigantic. it's almost impossible to miss the rocket/projectile so all you have to do to reflect it is time it right. obviously actually hitting something with a reflect is just as hard as aiming that projectile regularly is (except more rewarding because for some mind-numbing reason reflects do minicrit damage), but it's way too easy to deny damage right now. a 2 hp pyro should have to actually aim to survive a gunboats soldier.

you know reflects are pretty broken when you can reflect a rocket that is 180 degrees directly behind you

Like i said, because the soldier has to actually feed the pyro a rocket, which soldiers are often smart enough to avoid.

this has nothing to do with the actual reflect thats all up to the other player

this is like complaining about getting headshot when ur standing still

I actually didnt understand that at all lol. Sorry, do you mind breaking it down for me?