Fairly big necrobump! Two months left for QuakeCon. Who's going?
BYOC seats ran out fairly quickly

Fairly certain extremely low picmip didn't affect performance. Might be wrong though, I can't remember where I read it

Honestly, I only became involved because I kept seeing extreme misconceptions on the class regarding how strong it is. If this is going to be shown to Valve, I want to at least cover the other side

Those of us who are defending pyro really just agree that the class is fine where it is, and buffs/nerfs would have to be slight otherwise you end up disbalancing the class

Afaik it's more a distribution and modeling problem. Valve puts them into the game, but IIRC the leagues submit them and handle distribution

This is a great post. As a community, i46 was our greatest accomplishment and i49 is set to dwarf that monumentous effort and incredible event. How many communities can really say they've allowed three undefeated teams of six from three continents to have a showdown at an international event which will also be casted by the community?

Color correction is important for maximum quality, but you also have to remember that overdoing it is worse than not correcting in the first place.

Personally I love using curves for color correcting. It's easy and fast

Yeah I'm totally fine where pyro is right now. The minicrits on reflect are a bit superfluous and, while I don't think it makes much of a difference anyway, adding .05 seconds to the airblast cooldown to make it equal to soldier's firing rate would be nice. Airblast and degreaser are just at a point where they are both defensive and offensive tools, and a nerf will severely hamper both of pyro's jobs.

As for Short Circuit, I always felt the metal cost was way too high and the firing rate way too slow to justify its use. 35 ammo is more than the widowmaker requires, and the firing interval is so low that you can't really protect your sentry or team from spam, not to mention that its use will hamper your ability to build, upgrade, or repair buildings by chewing on metal.

Holy batman strawman everywhere. Don't even know where to begin.

"That isn't yomi" is no true Scotsman if I've ever seen it. If you want to keep being a pedant then whatever I'll call it Spoon's layering since such a meta does exist whether you call it yomi or not x)

Also, did you really make the implication that pyro has midrange combat or was that just aimless rambling?

A note on Bonk, the consumption time allows you to escape mid-battle and the duration pretty much guarantees an escape

You're really just yelling mindlessly and superciliously. For one, the idea that we don't understand yomi because we don't play fighting games is ludicrous and, quite frankly, misguided. It's not exclusive to fighting games, and applies to any game that has first order optimal move, a counter to that move, a counter to that counter, and a counter to that. All four are present, which enables yomi to be present. It's predicting your opponent's move, and acting accordingly. It's that simple. Unless you'd like to elaborate on how this isn't yomi, in which case I'm all ears and looking forward to your infinite wisdom.

I don't know if you've played HL in the past, or even played pyro really, but pyro is extremely helpless if he doesn't have the support of his team and the enemy isn't in range. Generally, for me to be able to take on most classes in a 1v1 I have to bait them to follow me and surprise them. I'd also like to note that I love how you make the implication that the flare gun is overpowered due to crits. Flare gun is a 100% sidegrade to shotgun, at the expense of some versatility you get midrange+ damage. If you've been airblasted and are on fire, the pyro's choice of secondary generally isn't going to make a difference in the outcome of the battle. I really don't understand why it's difficult to believe that pyro is easily dealt with, there's a reason he isn't run almost at all in 6s. Is it the easiest DM? Probably only second to heavy, but DM isn't what makes pyro difficult to play in competitive modes.

Can you please make proper arguments rather than overly vague, reactionary comments with little thought put into it? You aren't really saying anything that adds to the discussion.

While this is a legitimate issue, nerfing the knockback on the airblast removes a huge support role the pyro holds while simultaneously nerfing the pyro's offensive capabilities.

Pyro is in a very fragile state right now, and anything that isn't a slight nudge is going to have a very adverse effect on the class. :c

You can't argue about the original intent of the class as pyro had no real role when the game was launched. Just spychecking, and that's it. And spies were pretty awful back then, invis watch didn't recover with metal and spy as a class didn't have most of its techniques become well known until the 2009-2010 period.

And the quickswitch is fairly important to keep the pyro's ability to punish people who get into range. The only thing I can really think that can do that job is an incredibly unfun Natasha type flamethrower that slows people with the flame particle.

But you have the same situation as the sticky launcher with degreaser, in that it's in an extremely brittle place. Any nerf to it would have to be a nudge, otherwise it loses too much power. Airblast push range nerf is one that's would have to be slight, because the pyro's range is already very very short.

I honestly don't think there's much that can be done without making fast quickswitch an inherent ability of the class. It's just perfect for what the pyro needs to be a less shit class. Still a shit class, but just less so.

Since half of the posts regarding pyro are either poorly thought out reactionary posts or based entirely on playing awful players, I thought I'd make a post outlining the issues with pyro as a class and why I'm so strongly against a significant nerf to the class. Before you minus frag immediately, let me note that I'd be fine with removing minicrits on reflects.

So here's the main problem with pyro. His design is to be an adept CQC class like scout, but lacks both the mobility or versatility to take advantage of it. Pyro is seriously a one trick pony. So when it comes to 1v1s, pyro can only rely on baiting someone to get into airblast range to turn the fight in his favor. However, flamethrower DPS falls off considerably at the end of the flame's lifespan. At that range, the pyro's secondary is far more effective. So even in the pre-degreaser days, the pyro had to switch to his secondary to deal any damage whatsoever. The long weapon switch did not allow for the pyro to really capitalize on the mistake of getting into the pyro's range, and as such the other player could easily either get away or finish off the pyro. The degreaser allowed the pyro to essentially fuse both his primary and secondary weapons, finally allowing pyro to punish players for making the mistake of getting within pyro's extremely short range. Yes, most (bad) pub pyros will just use degreaser in conjunction with axetinguisher, but ask just about any high level HL pyro if the risk involved in meleeing someone is worth the reward, and the general consensus is that it isn't in the vast majority of cases. The ability to punish anyone who gets in the pyro's range is the exact reason why pyro is a decent flank class in HL, and taking that away will remove the hardest part of playing pyro in highlander, which is realizing and understanding when the pyro should be on the flank and when he should be on the combo.

I'd also note that the reserve shooter sucks for the same reason the degreaser is great. The versatility is just too much to give up, and reserve shooter is not nearly as versatile as either flare gun or shotgun.

As for the proposed "go back to pre airblast buff" nerf, I'll go through each.

1)25 ammo cost
This one isn't too bad, but realistically a pyro will generally hover around 160-170 ammo. This is the difference between 6 and 8 airblasts, a massive 25% difference compared to (what seems like) 20%. I guess I'd be okay with this, but I don't see why it would be necessary or what it would accomplish. A pyro only needs two or three airblasts to disrupt an uber properly assuming he doesn't W+M2 into an uber like an idiot.

2)Longer cooldown between airblasts
I actually heavily disagree with this one since it removes a very interesting dynamic between pyro and soldier. BECAUSE pyro has the exact same airblast speed as soldier, you develop the concept of Yomi here. Basically, Yomi is predicting your opponent's action and acting appropriately. Yomi works in layers
Layer 0: soldier fires a rocket
Layer 1: pyro airblasts
Layer 2: soldier waits a little bit, then fires a rocket
Layer 3: pyro waits a little bit, then airblasts

Layer 1 beats 0, 2 beats 1, 3 beats 2, and 0 beats 3. Understanding this is crucial to outplaying high level soldiers as a pyro, though I haven't really experienced many soldiers who incorporate this thinking when playing pyros.

3) Minicrits on reflects
This I'm okay with being gone. Reason being that reflects are close range for the most part, and so the 30% damage boost is superfluous most of the time. It only really adds frustration to fighting pyros so I'd be fine with this being gone.

Hopefully that's in-depth enough to ward off more "nerf pyro" posts. This thread is being linked to Valve and I'd really prefer that reactionary posts about weapons are gone.

Uhh, no. The only reason pyros play on the flank is BECAUSE of the versatility and switch of damage source that the degreaser grants. I can guarantee that if degreaser is banned, a few pyros will stubbornly stay on flank but they'll end up on the combo most of the time because they don't accomplish anything on flank.

It'd end up making pyro just not fun to play or fun to play against, which is against the whole goal of playing the game. To have fun.