Should Pyros Have To Aim To Ignite You?

[Austin]

Every update has Nerf'd the pyro.

Medic: Blutsager can out heal all but the great pyros.

Heavy: Natasha slows down the pyro keeping him at bay.

Scout: F-A-N keeps pyros at bay.

Pyro: Air-Blast Keeps Pyros at bay

Spy: C&D Lets them stalk till pyro leaves. Dead Ringer allows them to put themselves out. Abassitor allows easier dispatching of pyros in just a few shots.

Sniper: Jarate puts people out.

Spy/Sniper: Airblast puts out after burn.

Hell: Payload: The cart puts out heavies before you can land a second axe hit to kill them.

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With the ability to manage afterburn ever growing the pyro is getting weaker and weaker. The "W+M1" pyro only exist for one reason: bad players. I play pyro a lot and I usually have 2->5 dominations a round half of which are usually terrible pyros. They aren't good. They shouldn't be killing you. Kill them and move on. After they die more then they kill they will switch class. Don't reward them for being bad by being bad in return. My three biggest pet-peeves in this game are: 1. People who can't seem to focus fire on a heavy. 2. People who think a level one will instantly kill them and thus they should wait for the "all clear" before doing anything close to useful. 3. People who suddenly lose 100 IQ points because they've been lit on fire.

Pyros are credit to team in two ways.

1. Chaos. Pyros can destroy the best laid plans of mice and men. They make stuff confusing and hard. They are annoying and they are the only class that keeps hurting you after they die.
2. Lingering damage.
2.a for you to understand this I want to present some numbers.
Pyro is considered "Offense" so lets compare him to the Scout and Soldier.

Scout damage: Reg Gun: 85-105 (180 crit) FAN: 95-100 (175 crit) HP: 125/185
Soldier Damage: Rocket Launcher: 105-112 (Direct hit 270 crit, Splash at 3ft/1m: 226 crit, Splash at 6ft/2m: 140 crit) HP: 200/300
Pyro: BothGuns: 22.5 fire particles each second - 4 to 6.8 damage per particle, according to range - max of 153 damage/sec. Short range, no reload. Crits do 3x damage, up to 459/sec. Additionally, victims burn for 5-6/sec for 10 seconds. HP: 175/260

The pyro's damage is terrible. The soldier is going to do 105+ damage at the same range a power is doing 6.8/sec. The soldier is going to do it in a bigger area aswell. The downside? He is gonna blow himself up in some cases. The pyro has less health at the advantage of moving 20% faster. Now reading that pyro damage can be tricky so let me explain it. At max range the particles are most spread out. This means that 1-3 are actually going to hit a medic running backwards. 1-3*6.8 isn't much when the medic is getting all those nice +3+3+3+3+3+3+3 from their blutsuger. At point blank range the pyro does 153/sec. This is why idiot snipers that try to melee pyros usually die.

Now back to the two credit to team post. Since the damage on a pyro is so shitty its unbearable at any range besides point blank they HAVE to rely on lingering damage. This damage is 50-60 over time. So if I hit you with one particle and deal 6.8 damage you are going to continue to burn and take another 50-60 after I walk off. Why stay around visting and most likely dieing when I can walk off and come back when you are out again? Saddly now there are 4 ways for the lingering damage to be gotten rid of. Medic, Jarate, Airblast and health box. So why do people play pyro? It is a terrible class that just gets weaker with each update so why do people love it so much?

Because everyone is dumb. Pyro is credit to team because of Chaos! I assure you if more people calmed down, dispatched the pyro, jarate/airblasted and moved on without panicing that 100+point pyro (me) would end up only having 50 points.

Sorry that was long:

Here is the TL;DR Version: Most of pyro's damage comes from tapping people with the flame not from holding the flame on them. Making it harder to tap people makes the class completly on playable. 80% of my kills are gotten by me rushing in, killing a medic/sniper/pyro and lighting everyone else on fire, grabbing the medkit and running away to watch my burn kills stack up.

[Purplecat]

[Sekh765]

[Austin]

Yeah but the numbers I posted are post-pyro update. The pyro does Good damage verses 1 person terrible damage verses large groups. As far as the CnD not being good verses pyro I agree but that is the EXACT thing the OP is complaining about and proposing a rediculas fix too.

Pyros that haven't learned to dodge, what I like to think of as "never played medic Pyros", are EASILY killed with the Ambassitor.

The range wasn't extended in the pyro update, it was fixed. If you would of toggled on FF on a server prePyroUpdate it was possible to kill oneself by running forward and using the flamethrower. The push back from running forward would knock the flame back into the pyro, igniting him.

[Stormcaller3801]

I've played a Medic with the Blutsauger, and with dozens of 1v1 fights versus Pyros, both starting out at range and up close, I have lost all save those where the Pyro was badly injured prior to the duel. I have been told I should be winning at least some of the time. I do not, and have not, and do not expect to in the future.

I've played a Heavy versus Pyros. The fights are more even than playing a Medic, but it's not so one-sided as you make it out. If a Pyro makes the mistake of running out in front of my gun and staying there, it's extremely one-sided in my favor. This is pretty much true of any opponent, depending mostly on range. If the Pyro bothers to circle strafe or attack from behind or the side, there's a good chance I'll end up dead.

I've played a Scout versus Pyros, and Pyros versus Scouts. If the person playing the Pyro tries to chase down the Scout, the Pyro dies. If it doesn't come down to a foot race, the Pyro has at least 50-50 odds of killing the Scout first, and decent odds of afterburn doing the job if he doesn't.

In Pyro versus Pyro fights, I tend to lose more than I win, but not because of air blasts. I lose because I get outmaneuvered, with the other Pyro getting out of my line of sight or reach, with the former resulting in me burning to death, and the latter resulting in me getting blasted with the shotgun until I stop twitching. I've tried air blasting opposing Pyros; most of the time it doesn't work out nearly as well as I'd like.

I have two separate achievements, both for burning Spies. At least one is due to having burned 10 cloaked Spies to death. I've also managed to kill more than one Dead Ringer'd Spy because I kept burning after the Spy fell and the flames caught the cloaked Spy.

Snipers will get me at range, but I'll put them down faster than they can switch weapons and Jarate if I can get them within flameshot. I've had more people avoid death because they ran for Medipacks after I died than I've had people saved by Jarate. By an order of magnitude. There's also the fact that many Snipers are now using the Huntsman, and you can air blast the arrows.

The ultimate truth is that as a Pyro I have been killed by every other class. As every other class, I have killed Pyros. I have seen Pyros clean out groups around a cart, I have seen Pyros wipe out Engie nests, I have seen Pyros disrupt offensive and defensive lines, defend and claim CPs, and both successfully carry off the Intelligence and prevent other people from doing the same.

Further, I would point out that repeatedly Air Blasts have been used to say Pyros have been nerfed. Yet this was a new ability given to Pyros. A very useful one. You can extinguish teammates, sure- and also deflect projectiles, which has resulted in more than one rocket, arrow, sticky bomb, and grenade ending up other than where it was intended. Sometimes with extremely unfriendly effects against the firer or his allies. Last night I cleared out a half dozen stickies from around the cart, saved several people from death by burning, reintroduced a Soldier to his rocket, and prevented a point blank FaN shot at a Medic by sending a Scout over a ledge before he fired.

[Austin]

I was simply trying to point out how important lingering damage is and how making that harder to accomplish would be a GIANT problem. I think the class is completely balanced and think the problems people are facing aginest them is a result of them not handling the situation to the best existent. I tend to not complain about class balance for one reason and one reason only.

Valve = Great company with great people working there.
Me = College student hoping to one day work for valve.

They know best until me is part of valve at which point I will give my 2cents.

[Sekh765]

[Ayeaka]

And despite people INSISTENTLY claiming that pyro is 'HOMG THE EASIEST CLASS, NERF NOW OLOLOLOLOLOLOL', it really isn't.

UNLESS YOU'RE GOOD AT IT.

Imagine that.

The truth is, I find SPY easier to play and do 'well' than I do pyro. And by well, I don't mean point-wise, although, there, too, if I'm doing well. I mean 'sufficiently stopping the enemy team enough to help my team'.

Even if I'm NOT getting points as a spy, all I have to do is cloak and uncloak, while running around erratically to distract the enemy team enough that my team can take care of the effortlessly. As pyro, I actually have to be dealing a good amount of damage to be this effective.

And with the combination of skilled battle medics, heavies with Natascha, (which has a RIDICULOUS amount of knockback, making it close for quote 'axtinguisher pyros' to get close enough TO whack'm.)

I'm ok at ambush, when I feel in the mood. But hell, as spy? Cloak. If a map has good hiding spots that haven't been removed yet as exploits...everything's usually smooth sailing. I can just cloak, and pick person after person off with the revolver. Can't do that as pyro. :/

[Stormcaller3801]

Oddly enough that's more or less how I play Pyro- how you play Spy I mean. My goal is not to kill people, it's to set them on fire. As many as I can. People on fire will do one of two things: they either want to stop being on fire (in which case they run off to find a Medic or bottle of pills or that Sniper back there who might've had Jarate a couple maps ago), or they'll ignore it and lose a good chunk of health. Generally speaking across a team you'll get both reactions, so half the people stay and half run. Which means I've disrupted and distracted the enemy team enough that my teammates get the breathing room they need to get a defense set up, or push forward, or just eat a few more seconds off the clock. Going for kills is generally secondary, and something I do only after I've set as many people on fire as I can (within reason). Generally I die before that point.

[Ayeaka]