summoning cole

imo the nerfs were pretty fair... a lot of people on r/tf2 are pub/ trader mains and their opinions are irrelevant really

*edit: their not "if there"

god bless pyro tears

I honestly miss that guy and his pyro post, where has he been :(

tl;dr: story, story, story, another thread to discuss pyro update.

Nevermind

Real talk, the changes aren't that big of a deal EXCEPT for the weapon switch speed. The ability to combo the flare gun or shotgun with the airblast was one of pyro's only real dm capabilities. Yes airblast was stupidly broken and it's good that that part of pyro has been nerfed, which honestly should be nerfed even harder, but taking away the weapon switch speed was uncalled for.

Nerfing the worst class in tf2 (I'm looking at this from a highlander viewpoint) and making it even worse at doing one of the few things it can do isn't justified.

they tried to give degreaser a nerf that would make people use other flamethrowers more

now people will still only use degreaser (outside of 6s, where pyro only exists to air last and then die, which they don't care about) except it's worse

pyro needs degreaser switch speed to be able to shoot secondaries (only source of ranged power) while still being able to react to projectiles and reflect them

and the flamethrower damage buff isn't enough because pyro still has shit range and no good approach tool

I honestly don't think there was anything wrong with pyro, at all. The only thing I would have changed about pyro was the way the airblast affected you; you should be able to airstrafe and use the momentum of the airblast, instead of freezing in the air. It's different in pubs and highlander, but you barely need any crit weapons to make pyro effective, prior to the nerf. I never understood why pyros in 6s even ran the flaregun. The only strength of the pyro was closerange combat, and its weapon slots argue that point. The primary weapon is a closerange weapon. The primary weapon. The best complement to pyro in a competitive setting was an airblast to shotgun combo, and the ability to kill scouts or demomen from mid-range with good shotgun aim. The ability to flare someone across the map is almost useless damage, and the inconsistency of "puff and sting" combos compared to puff and meatshot were the reason the shotgun was a better option.

The problem with pyro and the reaction to the class is that its mechanics aren't versatile enough to be run under as many situations as scout, demo, or soldier. You can't have a versatile class that has slow movement speed and a primary weapon that only does damage at close range. And I think that's absolutely fine. It's so hard to balance 9 different classes to be run whenever in an FPS game. Your example of running behind the enemy team in a 6s lobby to backburn your opponents is lost when you consider people eventually learn flank routes and are more responsive to calls.

Newer players who only play pyro, or spy, or engineer (or one of the very shallow, aim-unimportant classes) will have to learn that aim-dependent classes, with incredible depth and versatility are the key to success in an arena-style FPS game (if you consider every control point to be its own arena, which they are, in a sense). The primary benefit of pyro has always been its airblast. It's a way to stuff pushes through area denial and spam reflection. And that's all the class will ever be, and should ever be. There are 4-5 primary combat classes who require so much attention and practice to master their versatility - concentrate on those.

They need to change pyro flamethrower to make it a more powerful class at range, but require more aim to use. The whole reason for this problem is that the flamethrower's primary attack is garbage, fix that and you fix pyro for users and for opponents. Cone size vastly reduced so that it requires good aim to do damage, and then boost the range significantly and damage slightly.

Each flamethrower then needs a niche. Degreaser for fast-switch, backburner for flanking, phlog for w+m1, default for airblasting.

i think it was dumb that the degreaser was the must use flamethrower and hopefully they fixed that

gonna need some context there

pyro is still fine in the same situations it was being used before and people are going to keep using the degreaser + shotgun/flare/det/whatever

glad they fixed not being able to airstrafe out of airblasts

Valve tried to make other Flamethrowers more used so they nerfed the most used one. The thing is that Pyro needs the Degreaser for the faster switchspeed for most of his Combos. Just imagine a Übersaw without a Medigun. If Valve really want people to use the other primarys, they have to buff them and not nerf the popular one.
Valve wanted to help but screwed up. But for the Phlog change is no excuse. Making a weapon which is only used for W+M1 even more powerful isn't a good idea. What was Valve thinking when they made this change
For the Axtinguisher change I have no words. Who asked to nerf a underused weapon like this? I can only imagine what people who bought an aussie Axtinguisher only weeks before the change. Before it was fine so why fix it?
The general Pyro changes aren't bad I mean getting rewarded for extinguishing teammates is great so is removing the stunlock from airblast because it was very annoying getting pushed around and not being able to do something.

My suggested stats:
Degreaser :
All they have to do is change the switch-to speed and switch-away speed a bit around because why should the Switch-To speed buff be so high. Something like +30% Switch-To speed and +50% switch-away speed

Phlogistoinator :
I think adding a health reduction like -30 health would balance it out and bringing back the -10% damage

Axtinguisher :
All what they have to do is reduce the damage penalty from -33% to something like 20% and change the longer switch -to speed to omething like "Player takes more damage while weapon is deployed" making rushing in with it a abad choice

Maybe Valve should buff the Backburner a little bit to make it more useful and reliable, something like a +15% Switch-To speed buff

You can tell me what you think of my stats if you have any complains

the only thing that was wrong with the degrease was the fact that it did damage, its only use is to airblast and set people on fire to switch to the flares or shogun, it should really do no damage at all and be a conduit to the secondary/tertiary only

I know that you nearly never use the Degreaser for it's main damage, so lowering is would also be fine but not "No Damage" It should still deal damage but not that much more something like "-40% less Damage"

I definitely agree that you should be able to strafe when you're air blasted. I think the mechanic is just a little bit messed up, i.e. airblasting a rocket that was shot at your back while you were facing forward.

yeah

Actually Valve changed something with airblasting and it's stunlock:
You can't strafe out of the first airblast but you're able to strafe in the following blasts
http://imgur.com/Xo5EAtl

Honestly, it's still more than easy enough to flare combo. While there was no need to nerf what was the weakest class, the difference is small and just needs a little bit of adjusting. In more enclosed spaces pyros will now have to predict and aim rather than just relying on airblast arc for easy hits.

People just need to give it a little time to see how things end up.

So make it a bit more similar to a lightning gun?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/3xe0vt/how_the_tough_break_update_skillcapped_the_pyro/

This is actually a very well written post about pyro from the pov of a long time pyro main. I mostly agree with the points they bring up and the weapons changes the proposed make a lot of sense.

The problem I see with pyro is its very hard to introduce a mechanic that has a high skill cap simply because of its base design. A flamethrower is a weapon that is very easy to use but is inherently limited on what it should be able to do, which is close-range dps. The airblast mechanic is a creative solution by valve to give pyro something to master, other than tracking people with their flamethrower/shotgun. The problem is that airblast is extremely annoying to deal with as the enemy, and basically removes your ability to respond to the pyro attacking you.

I think that people that haven't played much 6s don't understand why we avoid or dislike pyro so much. The design of the class itself is so limited compared to any other DM class that its basically throwing to run it at any point other than last. And the only reason it's useful on last points is because of the airblast mechanic. If that part of pyro is buffed it won't make a difference in the class structure of 6s, it will simply make it better at holding last. This is the same reasoning behind banning things like the wrangler or fists of steel, it just makes those classes better at something they're already good at.

Personally I think it's fine to keep the offclasses the way they are, even though soldier/scout/demo are leagues above them. But Valve's vision might be that of an equal playing field, where teams can run pyro/heavy/engie/sniper/spy at any point on the map. In which case, I think pyro would have to be redesigned from the ground up.

What if the pyro could have a shotgun and a flaregun.

I've been saying make it a small hitscan beam for a while now, but mostly because at higher pings the flamethrower becomes more and more useless. Having to actually track and aim the beam would be a pretty good change, imo.

In terms of the changes made, yeah it buffed the wrong thing and nerfed the wrong thing. I can still do all the basic combos just fine. It's way easier just to +forward now too but I can't do any of the weapon switch combos that weren't necessarily airblast related very well, if at all. I don't really think the way I play competitively will be affected much so the changes really seem weird and misplaced.

Totally fine with the airblast changes, but it seems like they could have stopped there and got the same if not better effect.

it's just not the same... :|

I personally believe this is wishful thinking on Valve's part, and I wouldn't enjoy that metagame nearly as much. That being said, if we improved Pyro's mobility, we'd probably see more use of the flamethrower. Whether that would be a balanced change or not, I doubt it. It'd probably be extremely annoying to see a Pyro outrunning a Medic and M1+W forward.

The other way to make Pyro more useful is if we saw more Spies in 6s. As it stands though, with only 6 people to keep track of, and two Scouts and two Soldiers, it becomes pretty difficult to pull off a worthwhile Spy play.

http://puu.sh/dvZXg/51d0293545.jpg

they nerfed pyro and engie, which were already the worst classes in the game... yes, airblast deserved to be nerfed and it it's fine that it got changed to make more sense and be less stupid to play against, but as muma said, making the weapon switch speed slower just makes pyro even more irrelevant in most combat situations, which is pretty unfortunate. airblast deserved to be nerfed, not the weapon switch speed

I just don't think Valve is going to make massive changes to this class. I'd welcome it; let pyro have a fire LG, with higher movement speed. It's a cool idea. But pyro is and has always been an entry class; it's like tf2 101. You play pyro when you're new to the game because it's fun to burn helpless pubbers and even posthumously kill them. It's easy to aim, has low depth, and lets you learn other aspects of the game, like map awareness and the capabilities of the other classes. However, as I got better at the game, my mindset changed, as many others' do as well. There's a distinct difference in what is "rewarding" as you progressively improve your aim and start to control more aspects of the game. For most people interested in an FPS game, they might realize the flamethrower has very low depth to it, as it's easy to aim and you can't even use it unless you're very close range. With the airblast, you're a little more viable, in that you can protect yourself more easily, but you still fail to be as useful as soldier, scout, demo in a normal 6s environment. That being said, it still has its place, and there's some measurable amount of skill attributed to how well a pyro can stuff an uber.

I thought that mechanic was perfectly fine, because the other aspects of pyro are just not good enough to warrant it being run full-time. Just like engineer. How are you going to run an engineer full-time? The mechanics of the class itself argue that it should be run sparingly, when required. A sentry gun without much longevity that takes a while to build implies that it should be used when you can predict you'll be on a chokey point and you'll need it for more defense. And for 6s maps, this is almost exclusively last cp. Pyro is useful in the same locations.

It seems like I'm just spouting the same bullshit, but this is something we've talked about many times as a community. It might have been on the old forums, where we listed changes to classes like pyro that would deepen its skill pool. I don't remember what they were, but it should include an airblast that's always strafeable, with a fire lg with low damage but damage-over-time and longer range, and probably faster movement speed. But it's been this long and valve has never dabbled with the class' primary weapon. It's always the same low-skill bullshit. It makes me think that it's how they want the class to be. And it seems like people want to create depth out of a class without depth. Even without any of the changes of this past update, pyro is not a viable class for almost any situation. In pubs, maybe, with 12 players on each team and a clusterfuck of information and RNG, pyro was useful. But thinking that environment is something we should ever prioritize is ridiculous. Pyro doesn't suck because they nerfed the degreaser, it's not good because they buffed the phlogistinator - it's BAD because the class has no depth. There's no movement or aim that can help you survive situations that medic, scout, demo, soldier, and even sniper have at their disposal. If anyone is a "pyro main" and wants its class to actually have an impact outside of 24 man dustbowl or that map where you can airblast people off the side, huge fundamental changes to the class need to be made.