This is all you really need to read in this thread to understand his point of view. He wants to have fun, everyone else can fuck off.

Once dudes like this are tolerated in pugs by being allowed to run pyro to mid, other ppl will have every excuse to run heavy/sniper/engi. This just leads to every single pug being unpleasant. I am very glad this is only an EU problem at the moment. :)

can we just not touch the meta

paging cole

this guy just seems like a dick... pyro in pugs = CRINGE!!! I say keep him banned

the amount of retarded rhetoric about how we're all so nice to each other, and that's why we respectfully agree to not play pyro... just fuck off, please.

people would rather die to a sniper headshot or spy backstab, lose to spy backcaps rather than learn to deal with pyro.

it's ridiculous. every pug where I try pyro outside of last and it works devolves into chaos; the other team stops trying, which in turn makes my team stop trying, and then I'm somehow to blame. because I got a 3k on pyro and won a round? because their uber push was awful because I happened to be on pyro during a stalemate? what about the people who play 10 minutes of sniper and lose their team 3 rounds? if pyro is so bad like people claim, they should easily be able deal with the class.

olgha makes some really fantastic points about people playing for stats (which is absolutely true, at least in NA. we've created a community of people who care more about who got 300 dpm rather than who had the most impact) and people not acknowledging how overpowered things like invite/prem scout movement and sticky traps are when compared to the rest of the game's mechanics

whatever tho everyone should just keep sucking sweaty nerd dick and bait for stats/play sniper/spy and fuck their team going for 12 airshots in a row for the sake of bein cool :)

playing for logs isnt really related to full time pyro but i guess were just farming upfrags now

Honestly, all the argument comes down to for me personally is that i find 6s against a perma pyro less fun then 6s without it. So I'd like to play a version without.

I'm going to post about Highlander because its got many more examples of cancer things than 6s.

There are few normal scrims that have stuck in my memory for a long time, one of them being against Fair Enough. It was one of my team's first scrims against a Prem team, and we got destroyed. Partially because they were just better, partially because they had people on their team like HartzFartz, who was notorious at the time for running the Beggar's Bazooka, and doing well with it.

The Beggar's would allow Hartz to do 300 near instant damage, shoot rockets without reloading faster than soldier can normally shoot rockets, and do very quick and high bombs, giving him time to load his rockets for 300 near instant damage when he lands.

A few members of my team (myself included) said that this weapon was overpowered, and needed to be banned. We hadn't ever played against a soldier that could tear our team apart like this.

However, over time, playing against good players that could use the weapon well, we learned how to play against it. We just didn't know how to play against it, and we realised that it wasn't overpowered or even that annoying to play against.

Its strange, because we only really found it annoying to play against when we were losing to it, because we didn't understand it.

i'm surprised this debate hasn't happened sooner tbh

fwiw, the last 4 pugs he played he went on average ~13 kills and 3 deaths while playing ~8:30 of pyro a pug. he clearly tried and went out of his way to play 33% of the class, which is within the rules. banning things/people is a slippery slope to say the least, and while idk how i feel about people running fulltime pyro, if he was banned solely on premise of those games alone, that's fucking stupid.

Suppose it's 2007 and TF2 is freshly released. Competitive mode is being setup and you're tinkering around with your mates to see what exactly is the best team composition. After a few tweaks by Valve and some restrictions by competitive leagues, the meta of 2 Scouts, 2 Soldiers, 1 Demoman and 1 Medic is adopted. But how did they reach such a conclusion? And better yet, why did it work so well?

The answer is that they had tried different combinations and experimented. There was no preconceived notion of what they ought to do, they developed it through intuition and genuine understanding of the game.

Following this new players did not have to do the experimenting anymore, it was all laid out for them. All that they had to do was mimic the pros and were berated if they didn't. Naturally the meta works, it is efficient, but this discouragement from experimenting meant that they didn't develop the same sense of intuition as those who built the meta. This wouldn't be a problem if at least we allowed the meta to evolve freely, but we don't. People are conditioned to be 1-trick ponies and then get stumped when something unexpected happens.

These are good points, and the part you mentioned about log whores is true, and the whole log thing would be a good conversation elsewhere

However, I think the reason people sorta just 'give up' as you say when a pyro comes into play and its wrecking havoc, isn't because we don't know how to deal with it per se, coordinated hit scan fire exists after all, it's more like, the thought about how much effort it will be to deal with something that's really not fun to deal with, especially in an uncoordinated environment, especially for projectile classes, (airblast fucking your movement mechanic, flames doing an unholy amount of damage for what feels like little tracking ability/effort), and people, given that it's, 'just a pug', really won't be inclined to prolong the experience by trying very hard at that point. or they'll counter off-class leading to more off-classing and throwing and the whole pug has gone down the drain.

complain about the mindset all you wish but that's how it is.

If you want people to accept pyro as being a legitimate class and a meaningful addition to gameplay, you'll have to convince them that playing as and fighting a full time pyro is just as much fun and interesting as the experience that originally drew them to playing their chosen class and sixes in general, and i'm afraid you'll probably have trouble on that front.

like sure pyro has many many advantages but they sorta boil down to 'man fuck airblast' or 'man i can't fucking see through these flames holy shit they do so much damage'

Also, pugchamp admins in general try to deal with that regular crew of consistent off-classers you're probably thinking of, but every time we dish out a ban for off-classing we get another thread like this. I'm not saying we stop banning people because of that, but it does get tiresome having to reply to these things

as I said before, we're trying to foster an environment that strikes a balance between competitive play and a casual fun environment, because it is 'just pugs'. A place where you can fight people who aren't so braindead its boring like on tf2c, and not so sweaty as scrims/matches allowing you to relax a bit.

so if you want to try and make pyro viable in your scrims with your team, I'd encourage that you do and would honestly love to see the results of that because that sort of thing can be rather interesting. I just ask that you don't do it when nearly 11 other people would be happier at the end of the day if you didn't fuck with their pug with such a widely hated set of mechanics, that in my opinion, have good reason for much of the hate.

as a side note I think Kaidus had a really good commentary on the whole logs issue a couple weeks ago on his stream and i wish i had it saved but i don't. all i remember is that he was watching an old viaduct demo for one of the i-series matches

honestly just waiting for cole to show up to say that pyro class is the devil

There's a strange contradiction in people's viewpoints that I think gets to the heart of this discussion. Before the update much of the community was extremely hyped that valve was finally taking an interest in tf2 again and eager to see how the changes they made would freshen up the meta. But now that the update is out and as olgha has demonstrated pyro is at least sometimes viable, most pug players are nonetheless extremely resistant to its use in the actual game. Almost no one wants pyro to become the meta.

In my opinion the main reason for this change in viewpoints before and after the update is not that players are resistant to change per se. It is simply the regrettable fact that however viable pyro may be in a 6s meta, it is simply not a fun class to play against. It isn't hard to set out the reasons for this, but I will give the most important one here.
Airblast is a horrible mechanic. When a scout takes a fair fight with a soldier, they both know that it is within the power of each of them to hit their shots and win the fight: when the soldier loses, he knows that he could've won by hitting better rockets; when the scout loses he could've dodged better or hit all his shots. Compare this with a soldier/demo fighting a pyro: if the pyro is on the ball and hits his shots there is literally nothing his opponent can do against him (this is the main reason why people don't enjoy playing against sniper in pugs, as teams rarely have the coordination to properly counter it). It is particularly soul-crushing as a demo if you put in the work to correctly aim a pipe at pyro and to have your careful prediction/aim instantly negated by something that is more or less completely out of your control.

So while it would be nice if the meta could be less stale, the fact remains that moving away from the stock 6s classes is an unwelcome prospect for most because of the simple fact that the fine balance of movement and aim, a key reason why tf2 has such great mechanical depth, is largely lost when you include other classes whose combat is less interactive. Indeed, when soldiers complain "scout class..." after a failed bomb it is precisely this they are talking about: the scout hit their shots; there was nothing they could do. But at least when fighting a scout whether the soldier hits his rockets is up to him. Pyro is not fun because it's out of your control both whether he hits you or whether you hit him.

i dont understand why people actually try to take pyro seriously you can achieve maximum dps by flailing your mouse around with 30% accuracy or bind a button to +left or +right with a high yawspeed and also do maximum dps
like yeah sure maybe you like playing pyro and think ugly evil tryhard elitists oppress you but take a step back its a game people play for fun. a pyro has to put less than 1/10th the effort as someone else into actually operating their computer
not even mentioning the broken ass airblast black hole and the fact that if an entity is on screen you can airblast it without looking at it. how is that fun for other players? if u really wanna play mega gay and disregard the skill indexed mechanics in a game to get a high win rate why not play a game with money lmao
why would you want change for the sake of change if it lowers the quality and level of play?

i dont understand why people actually try to take heavy seriously you can achieve maximum dps by flailing your mouse around with 30% accuracy or bind a button to +left or +right with a high yawspeed and also do maximum dps
like yeah sure maybe you like playing heavy and think ugly evil tryhard elitists oppress you but take a step back its a game people play for fun. a heavy has to put less than 1/10th the effort as someone else into actually operating their computer
not even mentioning the broken ass sandwich black hole and the fact that if an entity is on screen you can sandwich it without looking at it. how is that fun for other players? if u really wanna play mega gay and disregard the skill indexed mechanics in a game to get a high win rate why not play a game with money lmao
why would you want change for the sake of change if it lowers the quality and level of play?

i think it's important to note that his achievements in pugs could also be linked to using a primary that is forbidden in all leagues
on this note i actually wonder, haven't the new unlocks gotten enough playtesting for the pugchamp whitelist to be updated again? thinking of the pretty boys pocket pistol as well

the dragon's fury was banned because it was a new weapon added in the middle of the season, not because it's broken. if you think it is broken, that's a separate issue, but I personally think it's an average weapon.

also, banning things on the premise of whether or not it's fun is an awful way to govern things. i understand the reasoning, but it's absolutely stupid.

if u think pyro should be allowed in a pug at any point other than defending last then fuck you!!!

I think the class should be deleted from the game but if its the better way to play then at some point we need to either accept it or address it. Pretending it doesn't exist and getting mad when people run it isn't the right response.

im not reading all the words above but from my point of view heres two pretty clear reasons why somebody playing pyro a bunch results in pugs devolving into chaos

ur people who are trying rly hard and using the 30 minutes to improve arent getting anything out of playing w/ or against a pyro because nobody runs pyro that much in a match (so theres no point in practicing against it)

ur people who are pugging cuz its ~fun~ who wanna hit airshots or get 5ks and yolo in now have to deal with a class thats just incredibly unfun to fight against in most situations (if im not having fun idc)

i have no idea about the true viability of the class i just know ive never seen a pyro in a match and thought anything past "this isnt rly a good idea but congrats ur being annoying"

holy FUCK the mental gymnastics some people do in order to prove why banning people from playing pyro is ok is amazing

I think the underrated issue here is that the whitelist is utterly retarded in pugchamp

correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this dude using the dragon's fury for all his particularly strong pyro performances? of course people are gonna get pissed off when they play against that weapon because it basically has no counter other than like 5 people shooting the pyro and no one else, or running a perma sniper or some shit

allowing broken unlocks is the issue (see: pocket pistol), not the players who abuse them

edit: yeah if you look at this dude's stats he's literally just spamming detonator to light people on fire from mid range and then using the dragon fury bonus to do a free 400 dpm with no skill required whatsoever, that has nothing to do with pyro in general if you actually have a sensible banlist

http://logs.tf/1891513#76561197963314359

"pyro wont work against good players"

I'm not say you are wrong but to be honest, these logs don't really prove anything when the opposing demo goes 5-16 and has the lowest DPM on the server and does 250 DPM less than the opposing demo. Not to mention this was on a demo heavy map like VIADUCT. Thalash basically cleaned up all of Kaidus's damage, he had 12 assists along with all those frags. He could have played the civilian class and blue might have still won.

The Pyro Deny Demoman

He was on pyro for only 4 minutes. Still a huge DPM issue exists.

i think people should try their absolute hardest to come up with a counter for pyro. if it makes the game even slower or just forces a super specific class composition some action should be taken about it, propose a nerf to valve or something idk

i do agree though pyro against uncoordinated teams in pugs/lobbies is mega aids (really fun if you're the pyro or the medic permakritzing the pyro (patented dunno bro strat (do not steal please))), i just dont have a stance on offclassing in pugs
like if i could have it my way i'd allow any amount of offclassing as long as you aren't throwing (basically if ur team is okay with it its good) but obviously loads of people despise the idea of offclassing esp. in lobbies/low level pugs where they aren't good enough to counter it

this thread has also got me thinking, whats the best way to counter a pyro anyways? pyro obviously becomes so much weaker as range increases but sometimes its hard to stop him closing that distance when hes armed with 260hp buff from 50% heal med and he can also reflect all your rockets assuming he has eyes
it seems like mega focus fire is the only way to counter him
not even pyro counters pyro it just ends up in really aids 1v1s where its a coin flip to see who wins

also i appreciate that olgha is trying something new and that its effective, the newest thing in the meta is cow mangler charge shots and banners, and imo although im perfectly fine with how tf2 is played today (could be a LITTLE more aggressive) i think having something interesting that makes people think about the game more deeply is better. adapting/countering to a refined strategy usually takes some skill

It does require mega focus fire to kill a pyro, which is a fairly difficult thing to achieve, especially when you consider that no one practices against this in scrims. If teams had to learn how to hold last only for pugs, and never had to do it in scrims, do you think lsat holds would be as strong? Teams haven't really had to deal with this new pyro, even though it can be incredibly powerful. Until pyro gets tried in matches/scrims on a more consistent basis, most players won't really know how to deal with it, as no one really wants to learn how to do that during a pug.

i hate pyro > : (