IDK how I feel about a hitscan lightning gun (ez jump denial?), but a very similar concept made with fast projectiles definitely seems like a workable concept to me

Is there? If so I'm sorry for the clutter. I searched but didn't find one

Please forgive the scrubbiness in my opinions, I know I'm not good.

New pyro is still dumb. He's marginally less dumb than before, but he's still dumb. IMO no other class shares Pyro's incredibly low initial skill requirement and simultaneously unimpressive potential when used by a skilled player. Pyro might just be the least exciting class to watch in the whole game, and that's really impressive considering he has literal stationary aimbot constructors as competition.

Fire doesn't deal unreasonable damage, that isn't really my issue with it anyhow. It's the idiotically giant hitbox stream and idiotically short range on fire that grates on me. Pyro primaries currently either deal pretty good damage completely for free, or are entirely useless. No middle ground whatsoever. Reduces combat interactions with enemies to a flowchart basically consisting of the following steps.

1) does my enemy have tons of friends looking at me? If so, disengage, resupply and find a new angle. If not:
2) is my enemy in flame range? If so, ezmode burn them to death and hope they don't hit clutch shots. If not:
3) is the enemy looking at me? If not, run at them and burn them. If so:
4) does the enemy have a gun out? If not, run at them trying to burn them until they get help. If so:
5) is their gun hitscan? If so, retreat to nearest cover and run back to your team / camp the corner hoping to surprise them if you know you won't escape. If not, do the same thing but don't turn tail, you might be able to guess their firing timing and cheese them with a reflect.

Still braindead. So, so braindead. Either you reach your free damage range and you get free damage, or you don't and you run back to your team because you'll never successfully approach a competent scout/soldier who has seen you. It's like they designed the flamethrower with the express purpose of preventing mechanical skill from affecting player performance. At least fire is consistent in damage output and range now, I guess, but I'd hardly call it fixed. It's both ineffective vs good players and way too easy to use.

Even the thermal thruster is meh. Just feels like a slower, less versatile rocket jump on a cooldown. Does nothing better than a rocket jump, just is easier to do. Even the no health cost benefit is basically moot if you know where packs are.

Pyro still seems ezmode in pubs, terrible in comp and overall just like a worse soldier that can opt to tilt specific opponents by dedicating their life to denying one person's spam/ability to move

At least airblast doesn't reset enemy momentum for free anymore, but the hitbox is still hilariously easy to land in close quarters and the pushback is still strong.

IMO the jungle inferno changes were an improvement, but an astoundingly unimpressive one. Pyro is not "fixed".

Why won't they just swallow their pride and give Pyro a super narrow, longer reaching primary fire stream? Adding airblast was a gameplay mistake, and looks way more immersion breaking than a super thin flame stream would

Please tell me I'm missing something and there's some cool new pyro tech that makes him actually fun