Pyro stuff coming this Thursday. Meet the Sniper TODAY.

[caladein]

I haven't played TF2 since the Medic changes for the most part, so playing as a Medic is in a server full of achievement-humping Pyros is the most fun I've had in TF2 in a long time.

[Der Helm]

The great rush seems to be over, at least on the decent euro servers.

[Prospero]

It seems to be subsiding on the west coast servers as well. I actually got to play pyro last night for awhile because we only had one when I joined the server.

[Triforcer]

I found one fellow person fed up with achievementboxing with 24 retards and we went to an empty two-person server (for some reason, neither of us could create a server without the other getting "server will not respond").  We both got 22 achievements in an hour.

And yes, the Backburner is overpowered.  Compressed air is so very situational that losing it isn't a liability 90% of the time, and most good Pyros attacked from the back anyway.  Coupled with 50 extra health point, its godly.  Losing 15 or 20% of frontal damage may have balanced it.  But maybe that's balanced by the fact the other two things are pretty  meh (flaregun not better than shotgun in most situations, axtinguisher useless except on heavies). 

[Triforcer]

UPDATE:

I have never played a full round with a Pyro until today.  My first round, on a pubbie Warpath (with Backburner)- first on a 24 person server and a 62-26 K:D ratio.  THe highlight was charging toward the center point on the bridge while 2 soldiers and 2 medics were capping it, all facing me and firing, and me wasting them all. 

So yeah, either I am Pyro Mozart, or there are some slight balancing issues.

[Prospero]

They sucked. AS a soldier I killed two pyros and a medic charging across the bridge on 2fort. Of course, they also sucked. One soldier shouldn't lose against a pyro, let alone two with medic support.

[KallDrexx]

They sucked. AS a soldier I killed two pyros and a medic charging across the bridge on 2fort. Of course, they also sucked. One soldier shouldn't lose against a pyro, let alone two with medic support.

huh?  as a soldier pyros are easy, cause I just juggle them back with rockets.  It's only a problem if you have 2 or less rockets currently loaded, or you aren't great at leading.

[Triforcer]

They sucked. AS a soldier I killed two pyros and a medic charging across the bridge on 2fort. Of course, they also sucked. One soldier shouldn't lose against a pyro, let alone two with medic support.

Well, the nerf helped some too.  I'm sure one/both of the soldiers in my example contributed greatly to their own damage by shooting at their feet as I went around them. 

I think it helps that I play a Pyro like a spy.  On goldrush stage 1 yesterday, I just sat on the crates to the right of the far right door until the offense had cleared most people out and started moving the cart with 5 people.  Nobody ever looked at me, and I rushed out and killed them all.  But I still don't think a pyro should have instakills (and against anyone except a heavy, a critting backburner is basically a ranged backstab) against 5 people, even if they don't initially see him. 

[Prospero]

They sucked. AS a soldier I killed two pyros and a medic charging across the bridge on 2fort. Of course, they also sucked. One soldier shouldn't lose against a pyro, let alone two with medic support.

huh?  as a soldier pyros are easy, cause I just juggle them back with rockets.  It's only a problem if you have 2 or less rockets currently loaded, or you aren't great at leading.

Exactly. I was saying the soldiers sucked. Pyros are a piece of cake for a soldier. I was trying to give an example of how easy they are, but it came out all wrong.

[KallDrexx]

ah yeah I misread that.

[Johny Cee]

Fuck the Backburner.  Fuck it.

I didn't have a real problem with it,  when not alot of folks had it.  Now,  every god damn pyro running around has it and its completely stupid.  For most classes, if a pyro catches a bit of you from behind that's it.  The extra health also makes it much dicier for soldiers and heavies to take them out. 

Not too mention that they completely break insta respawn servers in half.

[Samwise]

You can't break something that's already broken and stupid.

[Samwise]

Just unlocked the axe.  I have 8 hours logged since the patch, and I figure about 2 hours of that was the first night when I went engy to rack up kills from the swarms of noob pyros.  That makes the time /played to unlock all the weapons without doing any weird grindy shit about 6 hours.

This feels like about the right place.  I'll be interested to see if they can keep the bar set around there for future achievement packs.

[Johny Cee]

You can't break something that's already broken and stupid.

I changed my mind on insta respawn:  for many maps,  its not that bad.  It just makes it nearly impossible to win as the attackers. Which is better than getting constantly run over on some of the massively team stacked servers.

Its even less fun to play on a server where the people you play against are all in the same clan,  and you have guys on your team who are obvious noobs.

[eldaec]

Fuck the Backburner upgraded weapons.  Fuck it all of them.

I didn't have a real problem with it,  when not alot of folks had it.  Now,  every god damn pyro player running around has it and its completely stupid.

This.

I don't understand why, in a game like tf2, anyone thought that having a half assed grind system to improve weapons is a remotely good idea.

Alternate weapons balanced against the defaults would be fine.

But this entire concept is stupid. I just hope they figure that out before they fuck up all the classes, then they can come back and nerf stupid shit like the backburner before the game degenerates.

[bhodi]

BTW, for those of you that hate the grind, the unlock achievements works for pyro as well. Just re-run it.

I rehosted it: Unlock_TF2_Achievements.exe

For everyone else, enjoy your treadmil.

Edit; Just a quick note. This does not modify your game in any way, it uses steam's own API to communicate that the client has unlocked all achievements. Tens of thousands of people have used it; It's not hacking, you won't get banned for it, but they might take your achievements away some day. They probably won't though, since it's been months and if they cared they would have done it before now. They probably figure people who are willing to use it aren't willing to grind and so they don't care.

[MrHat]

Thx.

[Triforcer]

http://steampowered.com/status/tf2/tf2_stats.php

Valve keeps TF2 stats.  Why is the red team so dominant, even on CP maps?  You'd think over thousands of rounds that would be within a few decimal points of 50/50. 

[schild]

Ah neato, it looks like everyone hates well, badlands and hydro. That'll learn'em.

[eldaec]

25% of all damage done is flamethrower damage... hmm... achievements bollocksing things up much?

[Prospero]

I'm curious if the backburner criticals are counted in the criticals chart. If so, the backburner really is not a big deal;  it's below almost every other weapon.

[Samwise]

25% of all damage done is flamethrower damage... hmm... achievements bollocksing things up much?

Half of that is probably people AFKing with the mouse button held down on achievement servers.   

Pyros have gone down to pretty normal levels on all the standard servers.  I'm not seeing more than 2 to a team these days.  Although I'm still tending to favor it just because I want to get really good with that air blast.   

[Samwise]

In the category of "should be an achievement but isn't": I killed a sentry with its own rockets.   

[Triforcer]

In the category of "should be an achievement but isn't": I killed a sentry with its own rockets.   

I knife-killed a sentry.   

EDIT:  Will one rebounded volley take out a level three sentry?  That seems pretty OP if its the case. 

[Samwise]

That's only awesome if there wasn't a sapper on it at the time.   

Will one rebounded volley take out a level three sentry?  That seems pretty OP if its the case.

It's only as OP as the sentry's ability to dish out damage.  A level 3 sentry fires 3 rockets at a time, but it only takes 2 rockets to kill a sentry of any level.  If you bounce back three rockets, bye bye sentry!

In practice the airblast isn't a great way to get rid of sentries, because unless you're ubered you're not going to survive a sentry long enough to bounce its rockets back at it.  In my case I was able to do it because the sentry was built out of range, so I was able to dance back and forth to get it to fire a single volley and bounce it back without having to eat bullets the whole time.

[Samwise]

CLEARCUTTER, BITCHES.