The Jungle Inferno update is here. The long-awaited content patch that we've all known would include the Pyro class update as well as the jungle themed aesthetic and boy, we got all of that and then some. Now, it's still in the first week of Jungle Inferno being out, so there's still a few unpatched bugs and such floating around. But as launch week's go, Jungle Inferno has been a pretty big success in my book almost doubling the current amount of players to little under a hundred thousand overnight and revamping the pyro class in a way that actually makes him... Dare I say it, fun to play. Now usually when I do one of these update videos, I mostly focus on the Engineer changes, and I leave out a lot of my general thoughts on the update itself. But considering the Jungle Inferno is the Pyro class' time to shine and the Engineer only got three relatively minor changes, I'm gonna talk a little bit more in detail about my first impression thoughts on the five new maps, Pyro weapons, and changes which I personally voted to happen first, and the new contract system. So let's start off with the class everyone in their ons are playing right now. The new and improved Pyro. *How Pyro Got His Groove Back* The Pyro class pack portion of this update is the result of a voting period that we had back when Meet Your Match was released, where we could vote on who would be getting a class pack first: the Heavy or the Pyro? I personally voted for Pyro as well as made a video explaining the reasons why I think Pyro deserves to be changed for the better and the too long didn't watch version of those reasons is simply this: Consistency. Before Jungle Inferno, Pyro's flame particles were like playing the lottery. Sometimes, you'd get hit by flames that weren't there. Sometimes you'd get engulfed in flames and take no damage, and for a first-person shooter where you expect your weapon to do what you're telling it to do this can be pretty frustrating for both parties involved. Couple the randomness of the flame thrower with the fact that the Pyro's mobility and damage output paled in comparison with other close-range classes like the Scout and Heavy and it was clear to me that Pyro needed the most attention when it came to balancing and general improvements. So I voted Pyro and it turns out Pyro won. So here we are with the changes that the devs have deemed necessary to Pyro's feature as a viable member of the team and despite there being at least six or more Pyro's in each team and whatever server I play on which is to be expected for the next month or so but it's no less annoying than playing against a team of any stacked class for that matter, I'm going to confidently say that the TF team have slapped the nail on the head here. First of all, the new Pyro weapons. My quick take on all these are as follows: The Dragon's Fury is basically a burst damage flamethrower that requires a little bit more traditional aiming skill than the rest of Pyro's primary weapons and rewards that skill pretty effectively. I think any weapon that requires you to practice with it to make it viable is a step in the right direction. However, fighting against more than one Pyro who is using this thing makes you feel pretty helpless because it only doubles the speed in which you get melted. So right now, The Dragon's Fury might feel pretty powerful due to the sheer number of them being used simultaneously but in 1v1 situations, it does feel pretty balanced. I'll give this one a 4 out of 5. The Thermal Thruster is more or less a jetpack backpack for the Pyro that allows you to have way more vertical mobility and horizontal speed at the cost of having no secondary weapon to do reliable damage with. You can land on people to damage them a bit, but overall this is the perfect secondary option for Pyro's that want to flank and occasionally jump into the fight for a suprise sky attack, but my main gripe with The Thermal Thruster is that the hidden switch speed downside really makes air bomb attacks only work if you get an insane amount of height and then switch to your weapon at the peak of your arc so you can actually use it by the time you land. It just feels really clunky for that reason alone. Even the Degreaser doesn't seem to help much. As a result, It feels like the intended use for this jetpack Isn't to bomb people which I think is what everyone expects to be good for since the Mantreads stat really suggests that but instead It's supposed to be used for getting around the map easier and making flanking Pyro's faster, and have more options. Which is pretty good. I rate this one a 3 out of 5. The Gas Passer is a throwable gas canister that douses people in gasoline when they walk over the spot that you threw it on for a few seconds. It's a pretty neat idea, it reminds me a lot of the Jarate except the way that the gasoline works is when you're covered in the green stuff: Any damage you take will set you on fire, even if you're a Pyro. This effect is pretty underwhelming compared to the rest of the other throwable liquids like the Jarate or even the Mad Milk, but because it lingers on the ground after throwing it It's obvious that the Gas Passer is intended to be more of a supportive tool for discouraging your enemies to pass through a specific area like a choke point. You can also charge the meter up way faster by doing damage which is an interesting concept that I'm not really sure how I feel about. The main issue I have with the Gas Passer is that It's only really useful on certain maps and only has a very situational use for a generally underwhelming effect and for some reason it doesn't count enemies as being wet when using it alongside than Neon Annihilator, which if fixed could by itself make it worth using since it would become a combo to rival the long-dead Axtinguisher 'Puff N' Sting.' So I'm gonna rate this thing a 2 out of 5, but if they fix it to be comboed with the Neon I'd probably bump it up to a 3. The Hot Hand is a melee weapon that is basically just the Pyro opting not to use his primitive tools and instead just straight up slapping people around. Stat wise it's just a combination of the Disciplinary Action, and the Holy Mackerel. It does less damage, but on a successful hit allows you to run around faster for a few seconds. It's honestly the most underwhelming weapon that the Pyro got from this update from a gameplay standpoint And I see no reason to use this weapon over the other staple Pyro melees other than just wanting to dick around and slap people In other words, this is probably going to be the most popular weapon of the four. I give the Hot Hand a 1 out of 5. So those are all of the new weapons for the Pyro, But the Heavy, the second place winner, surprisingly got to walk away with a new weapon as well. And while the update page seemed to market it as an underwhelming joke weapon compared to the Pyro's new toys, I actually think that the Second Banana is a pretty great side grade to the Sandvich. It recharges twice as fast, which actually seems to translate to almost instantly. At the cost of only healing 200 health instead of the full 300 and dropping a small health pack instead of a medium one. Now on paper this seems like a pretty obvious downgrade to the Sandvich on all fronts since you get less health and you throw less health, but in practice I found it to be even better than the Sandvich when you are playing without a dedicated healer. Because it charges so fast you will essentially have access to a sizable health pack at all times, which is extremely useful for the roaming style Heavy who works mostly off of picking up health packs already. However, because it heals less health when you throw it, It's not ideal for sharing when compared with the Sandvich. So basically when you have a pocket, use the Sandvich and when you don't have a pocket, use the Banana. I rate this one a 5 out of 5. Second place doesn't seem so bad anymore. Overall the new weapons are all pretty great, and I'm very excited to see how they affect 'the meta game' over the next few months but what I'm mainly stoked about when it comes to the Pyro pack is the changes to the way the flamethrowers work in general. Simply put, they did everything I hoped they would. They made the flame particles that land on people actually do damage they made the air blast make way more sense. The only thing I don't fully understand is why they nerfed after burn, especially since it wasn't really an issue to begin with. But I also like that I don't have to scramble for a health pack every time I'm set on fire. As a whole playing Pyro just requires you to pay attention more. You have to put your flames on enemies in order to damage them instead of just putting your face on them I never thought I'd see the day where aiming as Pyro actually pays off, but it really does now! I rate these changes of 5 out of 5 just excellent form on the TF team's part. But with every great idea comes a terrible one, so let's talk about maps. *NEW MAPS* Now I actually think that a lot of the community maps that were released with Jungle Inferno are top-notch and extremely fun to play. Lazarus is hands-down my favorite from both a gameplay and artistic point of view it simultaneously the most fun and the best looking map of the bunch. Mossrock comes in with a close second because I hate this damn train. Why does it kill you when you touch it? But it's also one of the only maps where you can build on roofs and not have it be completely unfair to everyone which makes it challenging and very fun. Enclosure's awesome Jurassic Park theme kind of makes up for the fact that it's obnoxiously long in both around length and Sniper sight lines. And Brazil is just... meh. The art style reminds me of a less interesting Borneo, and the maze-like buildings are pretty unfun to play in. Banana Bay looks very pretty and the whole train destroying the cart thing is an interesting dynamic concept borrowed straight from Cactus Canyon, but I'm just not a fan of Payload Race at all and overall it just feels like a labyrinthian Hightower. But the real disappointment, for me at least, is Mercenary Park. Mercenary Park is the thematic map that ties in with the fantastic animated short that fired off the first day of Jungle Inferno. Now don't get me wrong, this map looks amazing. The detail is seriously staggering! I don't think I've seen a more detailed map from the TF team. The crocodile pit, the entrance lobby is full of funny signs, there are little tourist pods zooming around in the background. Exploring the map on your own is completely worth it. The concept is brilliantly executed, and I applaud whoever was in charge of designing the aesthetics for this map. But when it comes to playing Mercenary Park, I'd liken it to banging your head against a wall for 30 minutes. The first area of the map is actually pretty great a lot of low and high ground open space to jump around interesting props to use to your advantage when fighting people. But once you enter these doorways you're now doomed to a tiny room after tiny room with choke points and low ceilings and MORE choke points, and little corridors that finally ends with a tiny hallway choke point. After Powerhouse came out, I was pretty impressed with the ability of the TF team to use simplicity to their advantage when making a map. Powerhouse is pretty simple when you think about its design. It's got a wide-open mid point where long-range attacks are more viable along with plenty of space to jump around in. And then there's a more enclosed last point where close-range attacks become more useful, but still allows for a bit of vertical mobility. It's the perfect example of a map that encourages certain play styles in certain areas, but doesn't completely restrict the less viable classes from succeeding if they play it right. But Mercenary Park is 80 percent indoors, which means rocket jumping, sticky jumping and the brand new jetpack are met with bumping your head on the ceiling. the viability of close-range classes and spamming explosives down corridors is way too high, while the usefulness of mobility mechanics is pretty much reduced to jumping to the second floor instead of taking the stairs. It's grindy, claustrophobic and encourages the stalemate eternal tactics that make TF2 less fun. I'm pretty sure Mercenary Park will become a little bit more bearable after there aren't so many Pyro's running around to the tight hallways, but I can't really see myself playing on this map very much after I finish the contracts associated with it. And speaking of contracts... *NEW CONTRACTS* The new Contracker system is visually much better, and the choose your own adventure style lifted straight out of CS:GO is a great improvement. And I've been having a lot of fun with it, the reward system gives you a lot of control over what kind of loot you get which is now the War Paint's replacing all skins, but they're basically skins it's just easier to get a skin on the weapon you actually want. You have a clear-cut end game that you're working towards and it even makes the obtaining of the new weapons way more interesting than just simply crafting them. I personally hope that after the Jungle Inferno contract season is over, they would consider making all weapons available in the exact same way as the free Pyroland contracts where you both test out the weapon and become familiar with how it works by doing specific challenges and then at the end you're rewarded with one to use forever. That's a cool idea, but one of the cooler features of the Contracker that I'm finding extremely useful is that when you do contracts at the same time as the friends that you're partied up with they can get points towards your progress and vice-versa, which can allow you to do some pretty quick speedruns of the more grindy contracts if you lobby up with five or six people. But the only complaint that I have about the Jungle Inferno contracts is that there are a few pretty annoyingly difficult challenges that don't seem to be correctly leveled for the section that they're in. Now, I genuinely appreciate that they went a little harder this time and gave us challenges that take a lot longer to complete, But some of the ones in here like extinguished teammate with the Thermal Thruster 30 times Or defend the control point 30 times are frustrating even for seasoned players just because of how little opportunity you have to actually aim to do these things. there are a few challenges in there that can be completed almost like an achievement where all you have to do is just play a certain class for a long period of time and it will eventually happen without you really trying to go for it. Such as the a thousand damage is taken as Heavy or to collect 200 health as Medic challenges, which are good to have on in the background when you don't feel like doing anything super specific but also want to work towards completing a contract, and those are cool ideas that encourage diverse team compositions, however I really wish that you could choose to play a different class in order to participate in the free Pyroland contracts. I know that it goes against the theme of getting the weapons and trying them out before you are rewarded with one, but I'm already getting pretty sick of fighting against entire teams of all Pyro's. All of them just trying to do extremely specific things with a new weapon. If you were instead given a random set of three classes to choose from that you had to play as in order to complete the Pyroland contracts, I think the composition of every pub team would have been pretty manageable from the start. But because you HAVE to play as Pyro in order to participate in one of the most easily accessible parts of Jungle Inferno, It's made for some really awful rounds where if you're not actively trying to complete a Pyrolland contract you pretty much have to play Heavy or Engineer in order to not get burned to a crisp around every corner. And of course, Spies are nowhere to be found. They're probably all just cloaked in the corner of every map waiting for this whole thing to blow over and I don't blame them. And one more thing to talk about before I get into the Engineer stuff is the completely overhauled lobbying UI. Now when it comes to casual mode, I never solo queue. I much prefer to lobby up with my friends. And before Jungle Inferno the system was little more than just a slightly different looking MvM lobby screen you were restricted to unless you used console commands to get out of it. Well, now the way you queue up to a match is streamlined to work from literally anywhere in the game. In a custom server? You can queue up for casual. Looking around your backpack? You can queue up for casual. Want to check on your contract progress while queued for casual? You sure can! This feature is obviously a long time coming. The ability to queue up for a match from anywhere is a modernized feature that works perfectly in TF2 and it makes joining your friends That much easier as well. Is your friend currently in a match and want to join them? Just request to join the party and you'll be queued up for the very server they're currently in and you'll be added to his team! (Given there's enough space for you to pop in.) It's a huge quality of life change, and I'm just so glad that I get to kiss goodbye to reinviting my entire party once we decide to hop into a different server. Alright, finally on to the last thing that I'd like to talk about and probably one of the big reasons you're even watching this video right now because I've been known to discuss this kind of thing from time to time... Engineer! *Engineer goes around with a jackhammer while running in the 90's* "The hell? The Frontier Justice sounds like it's shooting a box of Captain Crunch!" Overall, the patch notes and balance changes were kind of one of the more underwhelming parts of the Jungle Inferno update for me, But that's mainly because I've known about 90% of the weapon balances for months. The TF team tested the waters back in June, and while a few of the more polarizing proposals were edited in response to feedback, most of the patch notes looked pretty familiar and have been discussed to death already by me and other speculative TF2 players. However now that we're actually able to play around in game with these changes the reactions can be a lot more fine-tuned and educated based on firsthand experiences and for the Engineer it seems he got off with a lot less than I expected, but generally a net gain as far as balance goes. The only weapons that got touched by the Almighty Hand of the Nerf God were the Rescue Ranger and the Panic Attack. But he also has received a pretty substantial buff to the way his buildings work in setup time let's start by talking about the set up time thing. So during the set up period of every round if the map has one, the Engineer will spend twice as much metal per swing when upgrading his buildings. This means that for around 60 seconds before the gates open you can be much, much speedier about getting that gear upgraded, which pretty much fills all of the gaps for the perfect Engineer rollout. The best way to get your buildings fully upgraded and to the front without assistance from your team was to use a technique dubbed "The Jag Effect Rollout" by yours truly. And while it often wasn't perfect for getting all of your buildings to level 3, You got pretty darn close and generally, You'd be able to finish off everything before your nest started receiving any oncoming fire. With this change to set up time metal application, "The Jag Effect Rollout" just became a lot simpler and it allows a perfect ace of a level 3 buildings before the gates open on pretty much any map. I plan on making a comprehensive guide to the new and improved Jag Effect Rollout on every popular map where it is applicable, but until then I think it's pretty self-explanatory based on just seen it done on a few maps. Now the Panic Attack rework, I was personally disappointed in. Mainly because it feels like they removed what made the gun interesting to begin with instead of improving upon the core concept, but it technically works better as a secondary. Now it does slightly more damage at close range, and it's really fast to switch to but it also does less damage at a distance due to the huge spread. I also don't completely understand why it punishes you for firing your shot consecutively, but basically it's been buffed on every class except for the Engineer because the Engie is the only one who uses it as a primary weapon, while every other class uses it as a secondary. However as far as Engineer weapons go it's not a huge loss in the Engie arsenal. Every other shotgun except for the Pompson was a better option than the Panic Attack before the rework, and it looks to remain that way. And now we arrive at the big one. The nerf that every Engie main had an opinion about this summer and now it's finally here. The Rescue Ranger. With the Jungle Inferno update you now spend metal at a four to one health to metal ratio when you heal a building using the Rescue Rangers bolt, this means one simple thing: You have to spend metal to heal and upgrade buildings, no matter what. This is how it should have always been and I'm surprised it took this long to get here and here we are. So what does this mean for the viability of the Rescue Ranger? Is it dead? Well, no. Not much is going to change I can tell you that for sure. Ever since the Rescue Ranger was added to TF2, it's been a staple in the 'defensive Engineer meta game'. Even after they lowered the healing rate and nerfed the Sigafu save, It's always been an extremely powerful tool. Now I don't think the Engineer would be very fun without the existence of the Rescue Ranger. It allows him to safely leave his building side for a bit to scavenge for metal or check the flanks. Without this weapon the Engineer would be glued to his buildings and make hauling long distances even more of a pain in the neck. That being said, being able to easily rescue your buildings to safety at any distance for only a hundred metal as well as heal your buildings at any distance for free with the only downside being that you take more damage while hauling and you have decreased self defenses is a little too powerful of a trade-off but more importantly I think that metal management is a pretty big part of playing Engineer effectively. Requiring the Engineer to keep track of how much metal he has how much metal he needs to do what he wants and how to spend the metal in the best way possible in the heat of the moment is a decent chunk of what raises the skill ceiling for the Engineer, So if you give him a powerful tool that increases the mobility of his buildings and allows him to become more independent of his buildings while also revolving this playstyle around them and remove the need to manage metal due to just giving him a pool of metal that costs nothing but making sure you got bolts in the chamber, and there's a little too much hand-holding going on here. So that's why I think this decision is good for the Engineer, it rounds out the metal application to be all-encompassing with no exceptions if you need to heal your building you have to have the metal to do it. And if anything I think we got away with a real steal here because the Rescue Ranger heals at a four to one ratio while the wrench still heals at a three to one ratio meaning tt's still cheaper to use your bolts than it is to use your wrench, and you can do it from any distance. So yeah, nothing has changed about the power of the Rescue Ranger. It's still incredibly useful in almost any situation where you want to play around your buildings and it will remain this way until something better comes along. In fact, the only thing that has really changed here is what is required of you, the Engineer player. Now if you want to heal your building you have to make sure that your metal count isn't at zero. And as far as the Engineer skillsets go looking at a number every once in a while isn't that hard. You'll survive. Umm... what else? they change the bounding boxes for the ammo and metal distribution from dispensers to match the one for health which basically means that getting both health and ammo from dispensers is more consistent however that trick where you can get ammo and metal through some walls is effectively patched since the dispenser correctly does a line of sight check for all of its properties now. And... umm... you can't use the Eureka Effect to teleport out of hell anymore, so yeah. You're doomed to this existence forever, it seems. Now before I end the video, I wanted to talk to you guys about one last thing and that is my community I've got a bunch of you guys always wondering what I'm up to and possibly might want to chat with me and other Uncle Dane fans about my YouTube videos, Twitch streams and other just general TF2 stuff or you just know just stuff in general. Well, there is a place where you can do all of those things the "Uncle Dane Community Discord." Now if you don't know what Discord is, it's a completely free voice and text application where you can join servers to chat with other people all over the world inside of user-made servers. All you have to do is make an account and click the invite link to the server you want to join and that's it. So after you've made a Discord account and downloaded the app you can join my Discord by clicking the link in the description. Once you're in there, you can read over the rules, pick you favorite TF2 class and just start chatting either in voice chat or in text chat. It's already a pretty active community with over 5000 members and while I'm much more of a lurker than most people I do like to chat with fans about the latest videos or give my opinions on the current TF2 topics. We've got channels for pretty much anything, so feel free to pop in and introduce yourself I personally think it's one of the best TF2 focused community hubs out there. Once again the link to join is in the description of this video. Anyway, thanks so much for watching and you guys can certainly expect more videos from me now that there's a lot more new content to have fun with in TF2 so I will talk to you nieces and nephews next time. Buh bye! (Outro Music)
Uncle Dane-"Banana Bay feels like Hightower. I don't like it"
Sounsmith-"Banana Bay feels like Hightower. I like it"
I like having different perspectives to compare.
It's also worth mentioning that the Gas Passer is amazing in MvM. The Explode on Ignite upgrade lets the Pyro fill the role of the Medic killer, and because you recharge it with fire damage (and the ignition damage counts toward that recharge), you'll be throwing out these things ever 5 seconds. Damage wise, you can keep up with the soldier pretty easily.ο»Ώ
I'd argue that the Pyro Jetpack has that holster time because giving him that much mobility as a secondary option is pretty huge, whether you're flanking or retreating, the former being previously expected only near tight chokepoints.
Nothing too ground-breaking here, but I think he's spot-on about the new weapons. Gas-passer could be great but is currently meh, Jetpack's good but imperfect, Hot-Hand's a joke, and Dragon's Fury is fucking annoying when used in swarms. And the banana's a fuckin' awesome sidegrade.
Ankle dan is my favorite video man
How dare he insult Mercenarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyy Park
I agree with his thoughts on Mercenary Park being the worst map, feels like the Overwatch team made it.
Looks great, but plays terribly.
Nothing but bottle necks and choke points.
This is genuinely disappointing.
Dane has always spent so much time researching and refining his videos, but the views he has expressed here are just cursory and downright lazy. I mean, he blathered on about how pyro rewards accuracy now, despite the stock flamethrowers needing less aim than before; this a huge issue that has been discussed in very much depth, I have no clue how he can not mention it at all.
It feels like Dane has done almost no research into the bulk of the update, and just put together another generic update video that we can get from any mid-quality tf2 youtuber.
EDIT: this is the pyro stuff that Dane has overlooked. Either he doesn't know about it, meaning he didn't do his research, or he decided that pyro being arguably more broken than before the update isn't important. Either way, pretty poor compared to the high quality content we usually get from Dane.