don't play him he's gay lol

Is Pyro more viable? Yes, in certain situations and on certain parts of certain maps.

Is full-time Pyro viable at the highest level? Probably not. Pyro is still slow with short range, meaning there's nothing you can do against kiting, especially since you only have eight to ten airblasts. For that reason, It's also just worse at keeping up with the flow of 6v6 - chasing down targets, rolling forward off of momentum, things like that.

Even though Detonator can put out a lot of damage over time, it does so slowly and doesn't stack well compared to regular spam, since you can't set someone on fire twice, only refresh the cooldown. This shitty spam means that Pyro can't deny chokes like Soldier, and makes pressuring the flank much more difficult to deal with.

Pyro also has to choose between ranged killing power with the Shotgun or spam + out of combat mobility with Detonator / Scorch or Soldier-tier mobility with Jetpack. If it had any two of them it would be full-time viable.

There's also certain points where you're completely useless - long lasts like Granary and Snakewater where nobody is holding close, you don't have the speed to get in, and you can't do anything against Heavies, Sentries, or Manmelter Pyros.

Also a big reason to run Pyro was that he could easily get rid of stickytraps, but since Quickiebomb Demo exists and it's much worse to be stuck on Pyro than to be stuck on QB, that niche is gone.

I also tested Backburner + Jetpack bombing and melting people with glitchy crits, but that's gone now.

It also might be viable if the enemy Soldiers are constantly feeding you rockets to reflect rocket jump off of, but that's unreliable, and I think eventually they will just figure out how to play against Pyro and not let you do that.

I think it's theoretically possible to substitute a Shotgun Pyro for a Scout and do okay, but Scout is just better at doing a Scout's job than a Shotgun Pyro is, and the things airblast and flames bring to the table almost always don't make up for the loss in speed and double jumping.

I've seen pyro be especially useful in last-ditch last defenses. The fact that he can damage multiple players without losing any damage on any individual target makes him good for dealing with multiple players trying to huddle onto the last point. But beyond that and maybe airblasting an uber push on Badlands last, he's still pretty stupid.

I played tf2center 6v6 only pyro once as an expiriment and i carried our team!

theres ur reason

yea probably, you can go full demoknight and win, one time we had a battle med and won somehow. And people offclass to sniper every game.

thats not a tf2center exclusive

theoretically you could replace pocket scout and be better at protecting your med and worse at everything else (lol) but with the medic scout speed buff you're pretty much just a downgrade in every possible respect

This might be the wrong thread to ask but also, why does noone use banners for soldier?

Wait, becuase you dont get many amazing killstreaks?

gunboats has become kind of a standard because of the mobility it gives you. people use shotgun because of the damage and cleanup capabilities it gives you in exchange for mobility. banners are something that require you to spend a ton of ammo and time building to be useful for a few seconds while still impairing your mobility. not to say they are always bad though because concheror and buff banner ive seen some use in to combo with ubers. i think concherors probably the better of the banners since it has the self healing which doesnt entirely negate the damage taken by jumps but it helps + speed + healing when activated makes for a good makeshift uber

paging kawa

paging kawa

well, if your wondering i can assure you that it works until low prem level ( low invite i guess)
But it requires lot of teamplay and gamesens.

I personally play pyro as a substitute of pocket soldier to protect your medic against any soldiers/scout because you can just annihilate them with your flamesthrower

What i recommend as a generalist loadout : Stock flamesthrower, detonator/scorch shot (depending on you and also on high positions on the map ), powerjack

But you can also play other weapons,
-as primary they're all good enough to be played competitively
-as secondary i hardly recommend scorch shot or detonator, but you can also run mannmelter (against pyros) or shotgun but in my opinion they're a bit weaker
-as melee : just use powerjack, that weapon is currently op

nope, pyro doesn't work in low invite because then b4nny won't pay your fees

yes but if you play pyro you're a massive fag

it's viable (on some maps) if you can hit detonators consistently with good positioning, in my opinion you should never be using anything else
det jumping gives you better gap closing/kiting ability than I think most people expect

counterintuitive as it may sound, ive found the most success running it on scout maps like process and sunshine. fire damage blocks healing so on huge mids you might run a pyro over a soldier since your det spam will do more net damage than rocket spam.

also, the ability to deny ubers on parts of the map other than last cannot be overstated

maps I would not consider running pyro full time on - viaduct, snakewater, badlands; scout and soldier are just too strong on these 3 maps comparatively

Interesting, I would have thought Badlands to be one of the best maps to run Pyro over a Scout, at least outside of midfights.

It's obviously fantastic pushing last because it's small, you can blow up point traps and walk onto point, or Uber into them top left/right, or walk into Soldier bottom. This is one of the strongest possible things to do with Pyro right now outside of holding last.

Pushing second you just bully away the roamer and jump up dropdown, he can't do fucking shit about it. You can probably just jetpack sac onto the Demo's head too, or just walk through Haunter since it's only a pocket there usually.

Pushing mid is shitty, but being able to blow up traps and keep explosives off your team walking through choke or house seems pretty great. You could also switch to jetpack off of resupply and jump somewhere dumb like your shithouse or their house or their diag, or just walk under / shithouse and flank.

Holding mid and second passive is much stronger for a Pyro since Scorch/Det have no falloff and they'll naturally stack as they walk through the choke.

Holding 2nd Scorch/Det is perfect for holding flank, Pyro is much harder to kill with double Soldier bomb or stickytrapping as well, and is quite decent walking into house and fighting the Soldier or wrapping Haunter. You can also switch secondaries really quickly with the resupply cabinet - if you need to jetpack somewhere. Since both a roamer and a Scout walking through house can't really win a 1v1 vs you sitting on diag you can afford to walk onto diag and poke whoever is sitting on porch. If they shove their whole combo into you, you can probably do like a thousand damage just by walking into them and get a million kills by wrapping your pocket through Haunter.

And Pyro is great holding last top right, or you can just switch since the spawn is right there.

I don't think full-time Pyro is ever a good idea, but Pyro is disgustingly strong pushing and holding Badlands last, and getting stuck on Pyro isn't that bad on any particular point, I think, as long as your team reacts accordingly to the swap - you need to play slower because Pyro is bad at killing stuff at mid+ range, but a good portion of the map is cramped and you can afford to play slow on wider sections because Pyro can deny spam, can blow up traps, has great long-ranged damage over time, and has the option on your second to quickswap to jetpack if you need to roll them.

Didn't STAR_ play plat 6s as demoknight in ye olden days?

He got carried by invite and IM players.

yeah, that makes more sense