TF2: Pyro's Bizarre State

the classes of team fortress 2 all have unique personalities background lore as well as gameplay mechanics that have allowed them to become practically timeless but none more utterly bizarre than pyro the only class with almost no backstory or viewable personality on top of being the only class to use fire damage as their main weapon of choice as someone who mains pyro i feel that i should take a serious look at the current state of such a confusing and semi-broken class but first the sponsor of today's video the [ __ ] subscribe button i don't usually ask for subs especially at the beginning of the video but promise me if you do enjoy this video that you least consider it i'm running out of lime extract to feed the vaporeon they're gonna die in two weeks anyways on to the video as i stated pyro is a weird character as the only real things we know about the class is that they're a pyromaniac hence the name of course we can see what the pyro sees through pyrovision but as for a deep character analysis that's about as far as one can go it's certainly an interesting approach since it allows for the player to treat the class as a sort of blank canvas which is most certainly why the class has both the most amount of cosmetics as well as the most bizarre ones cry about it but in terms of actual gameplay pyro is an interesting concept but one that does not really have much of a purpose behind it if you had to guess what the proper way of playing pyro is what would you say please pause the video right now and write me a comment letting me know what you think the purpose of pyro is based on the current knowledge you have of the class i'm very curious to hear what you have to say with that out of the way let's see what the class selection screen says huh well burning enemies certainly is what you should do but it's not really helpful in defining the purpose of pyro moving our attention to the tip shown on the stat screen there was at least an attempt made giving tips on general things the class can do like reflecting sentry rockets spy checking and etc but because of how scattered these tips are they still fail at boiling down a basic purpose for pyro it almost seems that pyro can fit as an offensive defensive as well as support class but if we move our attention towards the community highlander gives pyro a simple to understand role which is mainly defense from dealing with incoming spam as well as extinguishing teammates to many other defensive plays pyro's main job is to protect the team this is mainly due to pyro's weak damage output which may come as a shock but there are reasons for this that i'll get into later of course this is just one of many play styles for pyro but this is as close to an agreed-upon role for pyro as we're gonna get you can of course stray away from this if you have a basic understanding of comboing or reflecting projectiles as it allows the class to at least somewhat shine offensively personally i try to run combo pyro whenever possible since i have the most fun when i pop flares but if i need to play somewhat seriously i do try to play defensively but with what i've said so far it's clear that pyro can be run in various ways because the class has mechanics that allow for such gameplay which is very interesting within these mechanics i would definitely say that there are some that are overpowered or at least just a little too powerful in standard play so anyways time for opinions to start things off i feel airblast is in a rather odd spot right now because in some ways i feel it's certainly an overpowered tool but in others not so much for example the current hitbox used for projectiles as well as player knockback is surprisingly big which i can to a degree understand given tf2 sometimes being weird about how it registers things but even still this is just big on the other hand though is how players are knocked around with airblast which back in 2018 i thought was quite random but is surprisingly tight if you understand what makes players go in certain directions if you would like to hear more about how air blast works in its current day form check the video in the description below but as for how i feel about the current state of airblast i believe it's honestly okay aside from the size of the hitbox which alone should not cause a substantial change to pyro anyway but now on to the weapon that i'm practically obligated to talk about the good old scorch shot and oh boy what a weapon for starters it is an extremely powerful weapon at spamming down choke points and across the map but that's to be expected given the weapons explosion range and once you add on top the damage it does an overpowered weapon begins to take shape because despite its damage penalty having full afterburn on top of getting hit twice if already on fire with mini crits is actually surprisingly effective but to me the damage issue would be completely nullified if the explosion range was just reduced as a whole or even just on surfaces endorsing at least some aim to use it effectively because my personal goal is to reduce its use in spam because if that was done i would actually use it on a semi-related note the flagistinator it's one that i honestly believe is balanced properly in the hands of someone using it on its own the lack of airblast functionality is a suitable downside for getting basically kritzkrieg after dealing 300 damage as it'll be much harder to defend yourself from projectile based classes since you cannot reflect anything but once we have the option of having flares things change depending on what is used prime example yet again is the scorch shot given the opportunity for spam it has it allows for you to build much quicker just off of the afterburn it does towards an opposing crowd as much as i would hate for a bad egg to ruin a fine weapon i can certainly see a nerf being applied to the weapon that would make it take more damage to build off of secondaries in terms of the other flares you still need to try in order to build so really just the scorch shot can be blamed the flog itself doesn't need to be nerfed just its balance when used with such a strong secondary on to the weirdest case the third degree while the long-running joke exists that it's the only direct upgrade in tf2 its upsides are so situational and lackluster that it doesn't really work much better than stock anyway and getting a fat random creating casual does not excuse that fact one bit but if we really do want to think that this weapon should be nerfed then maybe just a 10 to 15 damage penalty but honestly no one cares anyway when you have some overpowered weapons and mechanics you gotta have underpowered mechanics to round it out so let's look at the trash beneath [Music] starting off with an absolute antique the sharpened volcano fragment a weapon that has never been good but has had many opportunities to become viable prior to the blue moon update i think the fragment could have been easily turned into a diet extinguisher kind of like how the eviction notices to the grew but in the game's current state that just wouldn't work so alternatively the weapon could mini-crit when hit consecutively which realistically wouldn't give much more value to the weapon but in all honesty i cannot see it getting any better than that on to the literal jet pack the thermal thruster i have a hard time seeing a use for this thing at all for one you lose your secondary weapon which forces you to basically jump in for a killing out all while hoping that you don't get annihilated in the time it takes to use the damn thing but i'm bouncing around the point please just use the detonator while the thermal thruster does have better mobility the detonator is a weapon that can deal actual damage that isn't just from goomba stomping plus it's more skillful to use given its own jumping mechanic it's a real mystery what valve was thinking when they added this during jungle inferno but even then i rarely see pyros using this but that's more than a certain weapon oh dear saving the absolute worst for last the gas passer on the surface this weapon actually looks really cool because it's a [ __ ] gas can you would think it would be basically a molotov or some sort of an explosion especially since it has such an obnoxious particle or indicator that it has been thrown but oh boy do i wish that was the case it only activates once coded players take damage which even then just results in afterburn so basically it does nothing for something designed for area denial it's an utter flop let me put this into perspective a basic sticky trap could have been set and detonated dropping two or more players in the time it takes to charge the damn thing so not only does it do barely anything damage wise but it takes forever to do that but luckily out of all the weapons i've covered today the gas passer can be saved the easiest in fact it's already in the game in man vs machine that is of course i'm talking about the explosive upgrade for the weapon as i believe it's going to be its saving grace not only would this make more sense for a weapon that is literally a gas can it would give some merit to the area denial claim that this thing wants to have however it does need tweaking i think the explosion should be singular like a sticky detonation but still function in the same way requiring outside damage to set it off damage wise 100 to each player caught in the explosion as well as the full afterburn feels about right optionally the charge time could be decreased again but i don't think it would be necessary if the damage the weapon can deal can make it worth the wait but overall this to me feels like a much better weapon to use but doesn't go beyond what it should be able to do and for a weapon that basically gets used in a secondary pve game mode only anything counts but these have just been the most severe examples but most of pyro's weapons can easily be seen as overpowered or underpowered but now i'd like to focus on the more interesting side of pyro the broken [Music] side i'd like to focus this section on the most popular bugs and oversights that are still within tf2 at the time of uploading this video if they have been removed please check the comments as i will likely have noted that but knowing valve i doubt it for starters i want to go further into detail regarding air blasts since out of everything it's the most broken part of pyro prior to jungle inferno there were two separate hitboxes for air blast the main being a relatively large cube for projectiles as well as a smaller cone for pushing enemies back but after jungle inferno the cone was removed resulting in the current state of air blast that solely uses a cube and allows for weird air blasting occurrences like ass blasting as well as reflex that maybe shouldn't have hit simply shrinking this hitbox would hopefully allow for these occurrences to disappear and to make using this very important mechanic fairer in the eyes of many but as for something that players can actually take advantage of the thermal thrusters weapon switch bug is a prime example as it allows you to keep the thermal thrusters flying effects and switch to the detonator or anything else really it's incredibly easy to perform but is honestly very situational unless you really enjoy this playstyle of basically bombing the enemy my personal issues are that it messes with the damage that pyro can deal and receive despite how my nude it may seem in the grand scheme of things without seeing the thermal thruster it's not something the player will really think about as a factor and that's just not fair now for what i deem to be more tf2 slash source weirdness than pyro weirdness while using flog you can actually cancel your taunt before it finishes allowing you to briefly have uber as well as crits but we're talking like a second so take that however you like flame particles are another thing people sometimes think are buggy and i blame this on the visuals which do not accurately display the particles it doesn't help that they are momentum based which results in a stray particle not being seen but still hitting a target which sucks to fight against they just need to make stray particles more visible and it should be alright notice what i avoided the funny air blast bug that makes it look like you're constantly air blasting it's completely visual so it's just a distraction and nothing i would value talking about aside from just this mention but you know these are all basically related to the core game of tf2 but what about mvm i mean i did bring it up earlier after all so [ __ ] it here's my take [Music] to preface this i don't play a lot of mvm and even when i do it's likely two cities take what i say with a grain of salt because nvm is not my expertise but to me pyro generally plays the same purpose in mvm as in standard play that is kind of being able to do everything whenever needed whether it's mowing down tanks with flog strategically air blasting robots hell even just spy checking for the one tor ng pyro has it all but even with the versatility the class has pyro does not need to be run all the time and no this is not an excuse to kick them for no reason for demeter as long as they can pull their own weight it's fine to me remember mvm is meant for gambling and fun which brings me back to the gas passer in its current state i do agree it's a very powerful tool for basically no effort which i cannot deny is a problem in the overall balance of the game mode but that's something we can all agree on so basing upgrades off of my balance idea for the weapon expensive tiered upgrade on damage seems fair so it'll take at least a few waves to reach the upper limits you know like other classes plus here's a controversial idea reduce gas fill rate on robots it would be weird to get used to but i believe balance wise it makes sense because spam and gas passer literally every four seconds is kind of a little too much i'm thinking 20 to 25 percent of the current rate and it sounds harsh but that's kind of the point i believe this is a well deserved nerf that keeps the weapon usable and values building up to the max damage instead of getting it in the first [ __ ] wave and i hope that veterans as well as new players can at least somewhat agree with my reasoning and if not i'm down to hear what you have to say but do understand that there will never be a perfect gas passer so what have we learned here today even i don't [ __ ] know but hey you may at least have a better understanding of whatever the [ __ ] pyro was meant to be but of course the most important part of pyro is their anonymity this soul characteristic has allowed for all the unique weapons cosmetics as well as such an interest in the class's lore pyro is almost a putty of tf2 allowing you to fit them wherever you please both personality wise and gameplay-wise there are just so many different ways to play the class that truly stretch what one class can do and that's what keeps bringing me back with all that said i do not think there will be another video game character that can capture the same balance of love and hate and i don't want there to be one so [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: UnusualSandwich

Views: 109,868

Keywords: unusualsandwich, unusualsandwich tf2, team fortress 2, tf2, pyro, pyro tf2, tf2 commentary, commentary, tf2 gameplay, gameplay, pyro gameplay, pyro nerf, pyro jungle inferno, jungle inferno, valve, steam, pyro balance, pyro lore, pyro gas passer, gas passer mvm, airblast, tf2 airblast, pyro competitive, scorch shot, pyro weapons, casual pyro, pyro main

Id: qqDPfAejGEU

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022