[TF2] The Worst Flamethrower

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flamethrower okay let's be real pretty much everyone who doesn't use this thing constantly [ __ ] hates it i think we all know the feeling of rounding a corner only to stare death itself straight in the face and accept your own inevitable demise i don't think that many weapons in tf2 are so good at replicating exactly what it feels like when you know you're gonna die and you just have to accept that even with a direct hit a sniper rifle or a sticky trap you round a corner and it's instant poof you're gone what the sh excuse me what [ __ ] demo man that is right click and you die instantly i don't have to be [ __ ] looking at you star calmed down didn't you see the bloody balls i did not see the bloody balls [Music] with the flog you get a good couple of seconds to see that glowing flamethrower and its particles burning you into a smoldering pile of ashes maybe you panic maybe you try to escape fight your way out take the power down with you or maybe you just stand there and let death take you the end result is the same unless you have a pocket medic with an uber handy but why is it so devastating so punishing and if that's the case why does the title of this video call it the worst flamethrower well let's take a look the flagistinator has a charge meter called the oomphmeter and to fully charge it you need to inflict 300 points of fire damage on the enemy team or rather 300 points of effective fire damage yeah for some reason the flog seems to charge based on the effective health of the enemy against fire damage which is why dead ringer spies are basically free flog charge if you manage to track them down charging the meter can also be done using any of your weapons not just the flog itself as long as they deal fire damage so any of your flare guns and yes even enemies lit by the gas passer and sharpened volcano fragment will charge up your meter with their fire damage and afterburn keep in mind with the volcano fragment the melee hit does not deal fire damage only the afterburn does this is not the case for the flare guns and their crits or mini crits are a very effective way to build up flog charge you can also get your charge through spawn doors on certain maps which is [ __ ] [ __ ] and it's always a good idea to stay away from the spawn doors for this reason in theory you could also get charged from reflected projectiles like flares dragon's fury shots and cow mangler super shots but the flog is also incapable of air blasting to make up for this crippling downside once the meter is full you can taunt or right-click in order to gain guaranteed critical hits on your flog though not your other weapons for 10 seconds following the taunt and while you're taunting at fulton you're invulnerable or rather you have a period of invulnerability and crits lasting exactly as long as you're taunt if you manage to cancel out the top prematurely well the taunt freezes you in place leaving you fairly vulnerable to things like sticky traps head shots and back stabs which is a fair trade-off but sometimes the invulnerability can save your life in a pinch and in accordance with other weapons that get some kind of guaranteed crit or mini crit effect well most of them anyway the flog gets no random crits look everyone knows how to use the flog this isn't exactly rocket science even though the weapon canonically comes from outer space and honestly that's kind of one of my biggest problems with the weapon not not the space thing the simplicity the flog is incredibly straightforward in fact it's too straightforward strategy is so incredibly difficult to come by using this thing and most of the time the only option you have is the stereotype that many pyro players are universally hated for brainless wm1 so let's talk a little bit about air blast when tf2 launched in 2007 pyro didn't have air blast and i'm gonna be honest that blows my [ __ ] mind air blast is such an integral part to pyro it's honestly more useful than lighting people on fire in a massive amount of situations you can get so creative with air blast you can combo with so many weapons to do so many things use it to push enemies and projectiles around all over the place and it makes pyro incredibly fun rewarding and satisfying to play walking forward is walking forward like yeah if you catch people off guard it'll work for you and it's decent for finishing off players already hurt or buttering them up for a finisher with one of your secondaries but when just using fire is your only option for your flamethrower you start to see just how limiting wm1 is unless you have a dedicated pocket medic as much as people like to [ __ ] about pyro and how much wm1 sucks and i've seen some people ask for pyro's flamethrower to be nerfed which is just [ __ ] ridiculous to me the part they're complaining about is the weakest aspect of the class wm1 is basically worthless if the pyro is out in the open running towards a team that is a very easy way to die as a pyro where wm1 is at its strongest is in tight corridors when you're ambushing the other team or better yet catching them off guard at already low health in a 1v1 fight pyro with just fire loses out to nearly every class depending on the range at close range he's like a guaranteed win against the sniper who isn't using the shield of go [ __ ] yourself and usually spy sometimes a medic if he's bad with his needle gun but outside of his flamethrower range he loses to everything unlike the other automatic fire options like the minigun the pistol the smg or even the syringe guns the flamethrower has a hard cap on its range unless you [ __ ] around with some traffic cones or something what the [ __ ] is this is why any flare gun even the man melter is a huge boon to pyros the ability to inflict afterburn damage from a distance is incredibly valuable since at least you can do something outside of flamethrower range and the damage over time effect will likely be more beneficial than simple shotgun peppering at the range they're effective in and air blast is a huge part of what makes pyro a threat to classes like soldier and by extension everyone around that soldier because if apyro knows how to air blast that soldier shooting rockets is now a liability to his entire team the dynamic of the entire battlefield completely changes in a way that both players are now in control of if the soldier is smart he can fake the pyro out into air blasting too early and take advantage of the small delay between aeroblast to secure some damage or if he's not confident in his abilities to do so he can use a shotgun or he can use a rocket launcher like the direct hit or liberty launcher to throw off the pyro's timing the pyro meanwhile has a plethora of options once that rocket is fired he could of course send it right back to the soldier or maybe to a more valuable target in the same line of sight or if he's feeling really ballsy he can even use the rocket for his own mobility and all of this comes down to the pyro's timing and aim if that soldier does decide to use a direct hit and the pyro is capable of air blasting that consistently then that soldier's medic is really gonna [ __ ] hate him if all the pyro can do is walk forward he'll eat two rockets and die wm1 is far from overpowered it's just annoying because pyro doesn't need to aim his fire in close quarters combat while all the other classes do need to actually aim and in situations where it's most effective it's likely because you're getting ambushed and getting ambushed isn't exactly fun to fight against due to the all or nothing design of a lot of tf2's weapons and the close range nature of combat apparel being able to consistently do at least some damage very easily makes up for the fact that his dps isn't as high as the other core combat classes a good scout versus a good pyro will win pretty much every time in a straightforward 1v1 unless the pyro is a god with flares or using one of the shotguns but a bad scout is going to have a much worse time against even a bad pyro because the skill floor is so low on the pyro's end and so high on the scouts the flog is this system incarnate it's a fantastic ambush tool and it works great against bad players not so great against the ones that you know shoot at the pyro it's easy to sum up my feelings on the flog in regards to team balance because someone else has already done it for me when you're winning it's great when you're losing ugh it can be pretty surprising just what a detriment the flaw can feel like when you're on the losing team you really start missing that air blast and even the other flamethrowers that limit your air blasting capacity don't feel nearly as punishing in this regard for a weapon that is so consistently complained about i found myself willing to switch off of it and go back to air blasting constantly the flog lives and dies by momentum and advantage when you don't have the advantage it can be slow going getting that charge up it's like the definition of a pub stomping weapon because it's at its best when you're already stopping and when you have that momentum if your team is rolling the other team might have a flog pyro and you probably won't even notice the entire match if your team is the one getting rolled a vlog pyro might just feel like the sole reason for that when he melts your entire team on the payload card at once good players can still get caught off guard by the flog if their teammates suck ass and keep feeding the pyro free fire damage through no fault of said good players or through the part of terrible weapon design but we'll get there when we get there this means those good players essentially have to play babysitter to their team and keep the flog pyro dead as much as possible so that they're not the ones who round a corner only to come face to face with a pyro with guaranteed crits it's the same issue i talked about with snowballing weapons in the bizarre bargain video however this is rarely going to be the case if the pyro is just using the flog on its own or rather without some other weapon that's granting him fire damage there's a reason you don't see flog powers running the shotguns not that it's unusable since the flog's focus on fire damage means fire resistant targets like other pyros demo knights and danger shield snipers are going to be a massive pain in the ass but it means you're gimping yourself out of your primary's main function for the sake of countering these specific targets this is actually one of the things i dislike most about the flog it limits how you play dramatically unless you have a dedicated pocket medic you can't just run into an exchange like you normally can with the ability to air blast you have to hang back you basically have to equip a flare gun and you can't even be aggressive with the flare guns you just sort of take pot shots waiting for your meter to go up so you can finally play the [ __ ] game and it sucks ass but it's necessary power's lack of range and now lack of air blast with the flog means just about everything is out to get him everything zones him out oh is that a heavy sorry try getting that charge somewhere else we're closed sentry you can't play the game anymore soldier demoman demo [ __ ] knight yeah you go from effortlessly shutting down demo knights with one click to being free demonite food with the flog good luck getting through his better than soldier health coupled with ridiculous fire resistance and a charge that eliminates afterburn without your charge and pocket medic pyro essentially needs to become an ambush class exclusively if he wants to charge up the flog with the flog or else play extremely passively and only get his charge from enemies flanking his team like spies effectively letting the fire damage come to him instead of going out of his way to get it seriously try using the flog with a shotgun and then with any flare gun and see the difference of how often you can charge and you'll see what i mean of course there is a way to be entirely passive completely safe from harm and also easily charge up your meter with roughly the same amount of technical effort as walking into people but you already know where i'm going with this don't you if the scorch shot didn't exist i genuinely don't think a single [ __ ] soul would use the flog maybe some people would with the detonator but that's it as i've mentioned in the past several times now to the point where it's irritated a lot of people the scorch shot allows you to essentially farm free fire damage on top of about a dozen other things because game design is really hard effectively meaning you can stand on one corner of the map getting free flog charge and having it in your pocket whenever you need it but if you ask me this betrays not the strength of the scorch shot which it still does don't get me wrong because the score shot is [ __ ] but the weakness of the flog you need to use the strongest and easiest to use pyro secondary as a primary to use the flog consistently in theory using the flare gun or in some cases the man melted with the flog would actually fill up the meter much more quickly because of their higher burst damage but those actually take aim and no flock power on the [ __ ] planet knows how to do that speaking of the man melter that's one more thing that having no air blast completely hinders you in supporting your teammates if someone is burning to death around you unless you're using the man melter you kind of just have to let it happen so if you're not using any flare gun besides the man melter constantly hogging your team's medic and not incinerating half the team or more with every push you're not just a hindrance to your team you're a [ __ ] parasite when i would always see flog powers using the scorch shot i thought it was annoying that they were basically abusing the aggravating strengths of both weapons to become impervious at long range and devastating at close range but now i see it's more like they needed to abuse the [ __ ] out of the scorch shot to use the flog at all in this capacity you need the flare gun that can do everything pyro is already notoriously hated for at any range without needing to try because without it the vlog just lags behind but with it and especially with a pocket medic it's [ __ ] infuriating now it's actually a bit of serendipity that i'm writing the script when i am because the high gps balance mod recently updated and dramatically nerfed the flog in this aspect i was just complaining about it was changed so that it only charged up the oomph oomphmeter from the flog itself not your secondaries or i guess your melee if you're using the volcano fragment i completely disagree with this change which sounds weird i just got done complaining about why this is broken right but that's because the scorch shot is broken nerfing the flog because the scorch shot makes farming free fire damage so goddamn easy actually reminds me a lot of when valve nerfed the extinguisher because air blast made stun locking people into an extinguisher combo too easy so the overpowered thing is still overpowered but now a weapon suffers for it because it paired well with the overpowered thing that was being abused and it's even on the same class too all a change like this does is punish the hell out of the flog in a way that's detrimental to the gameplay like i mentioned earlier you can combo this with more skillful secondaries like the flare gun and man melter and honestly it's actually pretty fun and a half decent way to train yourself in hitting flares without the need for air blasting someone i think my flare aim has gotten pretty insane since i started using this thing i think i'm starting to like the flare gun even more than the detonator now but if a change like this were to come to the base game all it would do is completely discourage powers using the flog from ever using their secondaries because their only option to get flog charge is to hold down the fire button against their enemies with the flog and on a combo-centric class like pyro that seems like a mistake hell the flog already does this to melee there's no incentive to ever use any of your melees as finishers and the near reliance on either a pocket medic or overheal in general really discourages use of the back scratcher once again limiting your play style like high gps might do it the slower score shot speed does nothing it still does way too much [ __ ] just nerf it more do you have a [ __ ] pyroman on your rebound team or something look i have a list of potential nerfs here that you can the flog on its own isn't a weapon that's overpowered or underpowered it's fine where it is now but maybe it could stand to change a bit i think something that would be pretty neat is for the end meter to have four mini charges kinda like the vaccinator maybe to add a drawback it could take more fire damage to charge let's say a hundred damage per mini charge 400 total what each individual mini charge will do is give you one air blast use so you could sacrifice some of your fire damage to potentially save your life or your teams or to get a combo for even more damage or save it up until you get your full [ __ ] charge so it still plays just about the same but there's more variety in how you can play i think some kind of visual cue on the flog when it can air blast would be beneficial similar to how it has one when it can crit charge now that way you can tell when a flog power you're facing has the capacity to send your rockets back to you yeah i'm arguing to buff the flog i'm sure this video is going to go over well but i've also been asking to nerf the scoreshot for the past like five years so i think it balances out also i think the handful of things that make the flog actually broken like the flames passing through spawn doors at certain angles and the ability to cancel out of the taunt should be fixed if possible if those come down to fundamental game design problems then honestly i don't know through saying all this i don't think the flog is a bad weapon i mean how many weapons in the game let you melt the entire enemy team just by holding down a button and running forward with this level of efficiency but the fact that you basically need to abuse one of the most overpowered weapons in the game alongside it and have a pocket medic shoved up your ass in order to pub stomp with it means it leaves a lot to be desired and the brainless playstyle it encourages might be pretty zen to some players but for me who really enjoys combo pyro and the dragon series it's not my cup of tea so yeah those are my thoughts on the vlog i probably pissed off some more people with this one oh well until next time i piss you off bye [Music] you canceled it again you utter sand you didn't switch to explosive did you you didn't switch to explosive resist did you when that random crit rocket was heading for me it was all explosive but then i had been got detached okay i'm [ __ ] switch back

Channel: FishStickOnAStick - Gaming

Views: 801,375

Keywords: tf2, team fortress 2, phlog, phlogistinator, phlogistinator tutorial, phlog tutorial, bad weapon academy, fsoas, fishstickonastick, tf2 pyro, pyro

Id: kFvDbOuQDB8

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021