Warning: pyro main opinions below

• I never expected a generalist pyro. Maybe it would be possible with literally replacing flamethrowers with fire-based lightning guns, and I would enjoy that, but it seemed optimistic to hope for Valve to essentially remove pyro and add a new class in its place. They have a lot of different people to cater to and a lot of tf2 players, especially at the pub level, like pyro as he is now.
  
• Given that, I think most of the changes were good. Airblast feels fair and I've been enjoying learning to use it effectively. Flame range is no longer directly tied to your ping. Reflecting stuff also feels more intuitive.
  
• The one thing that worries me a lot, though, is that pyros right now feel like w+m1 monsters, and the flamethrowers haven't become any harder to aim, if anything they're easier now. I wonder how effective it would be to simply spawn smaller fire particles than the current ones in terms of introducing an aim requirement, because I feel that it's needed. There's also a couple exploitable properties with the new flames that TMP has mentioned but maybe those will still be fixed.
  
• In terms of new weapons, the jetpack is kinda bad but it's probably better that it is. It would be too easy to equip a stock flamethrower and fly all over the map melting faces. I love the dragon's fury but again I think it needs a bit more of an aim requirement to be balanced (the airblast cooldown is a good downside though). The gas passer is horseshit but I don't care too much.
  
• Nerfs and buffs on other classes seem good for the most part except for the dead ringer and ambassador, there was no need to destroy those weapons and I've already talked about it here.

Overall I definitely have some qualms but I'm still enjoying the update. You think it'd be worth it to write Valve some feedback about this?

In my eyes this update is just a slightly better Gun Mettle 2.0
They keep adding content with the hopes that it generates interest in the game, but they fail to realize that, in the end, they add pointless weapons/skins that have no lasting effect on the game and how it is played.

Matchmaking still sucks. The HUD is still outdated. Casual fights are messier and more cluttered than before.

Fortunately i had'nt had my hopes up for this one.

i like that you can actually outaim people in pyro duels now without having to sell your soul to the devil and spend 1000 hours learning where the fuck flame particles actually spawned. Now it's see person, click person, burn person. new weapons have potential, they're interesting mechanics, don't think they're implemented perfectly yet. Not a fan of the jetpack though, it's basically just turning pyro into a worse winston from ow, and that really doesn't add anything to this game.

The hud changes seem like they're at an intermediate stage; they might actually be leading to something good eventually but now everything's still worse than pre mym. contracts and cosmetics are irrelevant, i actually kinda like the reasoning behind maps they added though because they're all filled with close range areas, they definitely focused on making a pyro focused update. Unfortunately it makes them useless for proper play.

weapon rebalances were mostly things we've been asking for for years and they were done in pretty decent ways with a few potential exceptions. I think the gru changes are really good, glitches aside, because they force you to sacrifice total health pool for speed. If you wanna get to mid at the same time as everyone else, you're going to have about 150 health including overheal. Seems potentially balanced.

only thing I wanted was decent matchmaking though so r i p, gonna enjoy waiting another year and a half for that...

There are a lot of good things and a lot of bad things in this update.
New skin and contracts system is really good, barring the dumb bonuses.
Party system is great.
Airblast change is fantastic, no more mongo crit combos.
Dragon's Fury is fun, but the hitbox for the projectile should probably be just the ball itself instead of all of the particles created. Also make it not shoot from the center of the screen so I can see.
New flamethrower mechanics are both good and bad. Bad because wm1 is more effective, good because I no longer get set on fire from a mile away because Jose.Martinez2005 has potato internet.
Gas passer is bad.
Thermal thruster is bad but has potential.
No mm changes is stupid and they should have had that shit done first.
The new maps are ass. (Especially Brazil fuck you Brazil)
New mantreads are dope
No optimization.

overall im alright with this update even if they didnt do mm changes or optimization, the new pyro weapons seem fun to use and the nerfs/buffs seem mostly ok (although there were questionable changes)
honestly the only big deal for me is hoping that they dont pull a csgo on tf2 when it comes to sound (new winger, brass beast and frontier justice sounds are imo rly bad and dont fit the game at all)

pyro was a dumb class that nobody could fix for almost a decade, and now it's a dumb class where the things they do actually reflect the visuals you see, and those visuals are consistently the same range and speed. this alone likely took up 90% of the time for this update so it's unsurprising that the rest isn't much

unless you compromise really hard on them always winning 1v1s at certain positions, they'll never be a generalist class like scout or soldier but there's potential for them to fill a lot of specific niches other classes can't, with good item balancing, and that's a good place for the pyro to be in imo

also, the sound updates are bad and it's wild how they made a new fall sfx that simultaneously sounds too cartoony and too uncomfortably realistic

airshotting with the dragons fury is better than masturbating

dont question it.

fps is appalling now, new main menu causes freezes and stuttering if left alone, half of the new particles don't show up half the time, and the only solution anybody offers is DURR JUST PLAY IN DX95 AND LOSE ANOTHER 100 FPS

oh and new mantreads completely ruin any fun I might have had with them with that awful whistling noise when you fall

If you could actually use the jetpack to surf ramps it would be so much more fun. It's such a good idea, but the skill ceiling is reached after about 2 minutes of playing, which blows.

My FPS is pretty wrecked (dropping down to 50 at times in casual, lowest before update was 110), Pyro stuffing is gonna be ridiculous on certain lasts, I don't care for his items too much, Amby got nerfed unfairly and DR needed a counterbuff or a rework, current nerf just kills it.

Changes to casual queuing and partying are great QoL changes (so long as they actually work), Lazarus is a cool map, stupid amount of bugs (thats tf2 for ya), a couple interesting balances, mostly uninteresting balances.

Overall it's a pretty average update that would have been fine if it was a few months wait (not including the SFM).
Pretty shit imo for a 420 day update.

I am very interested to see if Vita-Saw will be allowed now. I could definitely see it being on par with Ubersaw.
Run Vita-Saw to mid, switch to Ubersaw once you respawn perhaps.

Panic Attack is also kind of a direct upgrade to Shotgun for Pocket Solly's imo. Am curious to see what others think of it.

i expected the new fireball launcher to require some prediction+aim
but you can just look in their general direction and it'll hit
honestly easier to kill people holding down m1 with the dragon's fury than it is with the flamethrower

https://i.imgur.com/pT4jPlB.jpg

and the new airblast is still aids you can't airstrafe at all when you get sent flying into the air

idk why but i was really hoping they'd revert the medic speed buff

I'm pretty sure your just doing it wrong

The only update they've ever reverted was the first sticky nerf right? Seriously hope they don't go down the Blizzard route where they have so much pride they leave shit that's completely aids in the game.

Also I think new update makes pyro less gay to play against (big plus) but also reduces his skill ceiling a lot because flames are now so good and they're stupidly easy to aim. Less aids to play against than stunlock combos but man this class still takes little to no mechanical skill it's kinda sad :(

Edit: For context I don't think I can remember a single memorable reflect kill/flamethrower kill. Winning shotty 1v1's versus buffed scouts I remember, and having massive brain plays as a result of good positioning I remember, but actual displays of mechanical skill that are specific to only the pyro class, practically none.

Can someone actually explain how they don't have class restriction for mm yet. It's literally a few lines of code that the community have been using for years.

if the update was released as a christmas update after the pyro update id be happy with it

but 450+ days of waiting an no competitive matchmaking changes and tons of bugs and things not working? absolutely not worth it. kinda makes u wonder if they actually gameplay tested their update at all

-dxlevel 81 -w 1920 -h 1080 -force_vendor_id 0x10DE -force_device_id 0x1180

keep all these in your launch options and dx8 will work perfectly fine with the new weapons, particles, and contracker

only downside i've seen thus far is alt-tabbing taking forever

Bison and Claidheamh changes got reverted this last update, for what it's worth.

Maybe this was a good update for pub players, but for me, aside from the airblast fix it was almost completely worthless. There was a huge potential in pyro and they missed it. An lg gun with a passive jetpack would have been awesome. Also, no mm changes, no sticky detonation fix, contracts don't work on community servers, etc.

And I have to say it triggers me that they spend their time on absolutely useless things like changing the fall damage sound to a worse one. But they still couldn't change the default unreadable little red damage numbers, in 7 YEARS. It would take 20 seconds.

i thought that u could get the new skins from the contracts but you still need to uncrate with keys, it's less cool when i'm completing contracts for the shitty skins from old updates

another waste of an update and i'm surprised people can still manage to get disappointed by it

someone tested the new FT mechanics.. apparently instead of just checking which hitboxes collide with the target, it rapidly checks if any hitboxes are hitting the target. so while its a lot more consistent, its also a lot more forgiving when it comes to optimizing dps. pretty lame.

omg the thing at 2:08 is really dumb, you literally dont have to aim at all lol

they just reverted the claymore and the bison

What exactly do these -force variables do? Do you have a source for that?

Someone send this to Valve, it explains why I feel duels as scout against Pyros seem harder now. That hit detection is pretty dumb, taking every skill out of pyro again instead of giving him a skill ceiling.

the force variables are for laptop gamers whose tf2 doesn't recognise that they have dual graphics cards, it's a common thing people have been suggesting recently to fix the flame particles.

allegedly tells the game that you have different hardware than you do, which stops it from choosing not to render certain particles (for who knows what reason)

anyway doesn't matter because after 3 hours of trying every combination of dxlevel and config known to mankind I can't make tf2 anything other than unplayably laggy