Hey, I appreciate that some people might just want to skip to certain parts, so here's a timestamp list! Afterburn Changes - 1:06 (Talking about visibility & colours as well as other things) Flare Gun - 3:13 (Error- I intended to say decrease deploy time on the Flare Gun, not the Degreaser. Sorry!) Axtinguisher - 4:11 (2 different change ideas, although they could both be added) Detonator - 9:19 Gas Passer - 9:57 Scorch Shot - 10:42 Homewrecker - 11:30 Flamethrower Mechanics in General - 11:58 Phlogistinator - 13:57 Dragon's Fury - 15:43 (weapon is very buggy, fireball going through enemies is not a bug though, i think.) Airblast & Reflect Jumping - 18:25 Recap & Conclusion - 19:35 Sorry for the couple of editing errors here and there, e.g. 15:11 - editing error? this text is meant to be on the dragon's fury section (what am i on today) I might be slowly losing my mind its ok though i think it happens to everyone hoho haha oh no
Personally, I do agree with you that the scorch shot is easy to aim and annoying to fight against. So perhaps if it had a slightly reduced area of effect ,had the same direct damage but did say 15 or 20 percent less aoe damage. Its after burn duration could also be affected depending on whether or not the shot was a direct hit. Meaning Pyros would have to aim properly to use it effectively.
A little thing for the Dragon's Fury, I believe the command for its hitbox debug is tf_fireball_debug. And just as you suspected, it's absolutely humongous (maybe a bit wider than player collision hulls I think). It also helps highlight areas of maps where it just doesn't work whatsoever (in the first week of JI, I was toying around with it in the debug commands, and it for some reason doesn't work on the floor in tr_walkway. Kinda weird, dunno if it still does it.)
The Gas Passer was meant to be a Crowd Control weapon, but it people still just walk through it. I think the gas cloud should be ignitable, meaning that if you blast the cloud with your flamethrower, the cloud of gas will become of cloud of fire This would discourage people from walking through the cloud, *which is what crowd control is meant to be.* *A R E A D E N I A L*
Nemesis So much like MVM has passed right? This is my suggestion to fix the gas passer... Like in MVM, if you light a group of people that are doused in gas, they will all take a flat 10-20 damage. It will also ignite them as well and have the burn time it usually has. I think it would make the gas passer a bit more useful but still hard to charge
Main issue with it now is there's no reason to move out of it once you're in it, and it's two weak to deter passing through it anyway. I'd change it so If you pass through the cloud you're doused and can be ignited on damage like it is now, but If you're caught in it you take afterburn damage all at once, then tick until you get out of it, and then once out tick for normal afterburn duration.
Just make the MvM explosive upgrade stock. That is it. Nerf the damage to say 80-100, but make it so that a few seconds of flame thrower or a dragons fury shot will ignite the entire cloud.
Yeah I agree, all you need to do is wiggle like crazy with the flame thrower and if the opponent has a toaster pc, the low res flames can basically block most of his vision. Makes it pretty annoying when you're trying to aim for the pyro head etc.
I actually asked for flamethrower particles to be more opaque, and am happy with the change. It suits Pyro's role as a counter-acting spray bluff class, akin to an octopus squirting ink to blind its target. That said, the particles also make it harder for teammates to see. That I didn't ask for. Make flamethrower particles from the own team much more translucent (and slightly team-coloured) ftw.
I am very sure that's intentional. Reduced visibility gives the pyro another layer of survivability, which isn't to bad on a class that's a literal lemming.
I don't particularly like it. I don't mind the idea of tiered afterburn, however, using flame colour to depict that is a bad idea. All classes, when lit on fire, burn with a team coloured glow. This would either be a useless, unnoticeable change, or it would undermine that glow. Especially on spies.
Strange video today where I talk about rebalance and change ideas for Pyro, some of which I think would be universally good changes (like making afterburn clearly indicate how much damage its doing based on the colour). *EDIT: Just noticed an error in the video; I talk about fixing the Flare Gun, what I mean to say is to make the Flare Gun pull out faster, but in the video the strange man says the degreaser. How I didn't pick this up in editing, I don't know, but apologies for any confusion.* The intent is to make the flare gun slightly better at comboing again (like the old, universally considered fairly balanced one), without having to screw with the degreaser. Literally just a 20-25% faster deploy rate or something on the Flare Gun would be enough to make me want to run it way more.
I think your suggested changes are good, but you left out one thing. I feel like the back burner is in a weird spot at the moment. It’s intended as a flank weapon, thought it doesn’t stop player from the Ye old’n W+m1, and it also feels like it kills almost to well. I understand that pyro, like a lot of the classes, are built for burst damage. It’s just that weapons like the BB and phlog do it in a way with little to no down side. How about we make the BB the pyro’s version of the Backscatter? Maybe less Ammo, shorter range, and instead of full on crits, melting players in under a second flat, it does mini crits. Similar to your diamond back video, these weapons that give players super damage for things they are supposed to do already is pretty dumb.
I'm not sure how to balance the backburner, since it's already pretty balanced for competitive (can do wonders on upward if the other team's not paying attention, kind of bad on long holds) Beyond making airblast cost more / making flames take more ammo / lowering range or width of flames maybe, I'm not sure what they can do. Maybe make it so the crit ramps up? If you see a target, it's initially normal, then minicrits, then crits, over the space of a second or two?
I like pretty much all the changes you suggested, I think you really nailed the flamethrower argument. It's not the damage that's the problem, it's how easy it is to get the damage. I don't mind being juggled and airshot in under 2 seconds by the RL, because it takes skill to do that damage. I do dislike being dissolved in 2 seconds by a gibus pyro flailing wildly. Thx for the vid (:
I think the old axtinguisher would be fine with how airblast works now The reason it was so aids before was because of airblast, not because of the axtinguisher
I know this is old but I'd like to sya that it was onyl a small part of it. Being 2 shot as a heavy from something that can be bound to a key, puff&swap to melee striking was a common bind. Airblast was hardly used if you weren't rushing at someone face first, and it was more just the instant 195 damage you took, even a soldier would die to it if they reverted the axe.
Yes, but all those quick switch weapons work differently now, especially the degreaser which was the why that worked so well. It should be mentioned that you aren't getting two swings off on a good player too.
I absolutely love these ideas. You should definitely do more of these videos. Also while I can't speak for all viewers, I'd watch the 2-hour speaking vid with a minimum of editting. Very impressive presentation by the way, it's quite cute and very demonstrative to see little Pyro burning people in time with each topic.
Some individual thoughts on weapons and mechanics discussed in this video. Coloured afterburn based on number of ticks left = genius. Here's colour range as I'd do it: 20 (max, 80 damage if untreated) - White 17 - Light Yellow 14 - Yellow 11 - Yellow-Orange 8 - Orange-Red 5 - Red 2 (just 8 damage in the next second) - Dark Red
Axtinguisher: I like the damage scaling, and I had an idea based off it. Here's the Axtinguisher model with this idea incorporated: Benefits + On striking a target with Afterburn: + Deals increased damage proportional to the remaining Afterburn ticks, then *removes* the Afterburn - Eg/ If the target has 20 ticks left, the hit does 65 + 80 damage = *145* + THEN the damage does a mini-crit - Eg/ so the 145 damage is increased to 145*1.35 = *195.75* damage Damage range of Axtinguisher hits given below: Ticks Damage 1 93.15 2 98.55 3 103.95 4 109.35 5 114.75 6 120.15 7 125.55 8 130.95 9 136.35 10 141.75 11 147.15 12 152.55 13 157.95 14 163.35 15 168.75 16 175.15 17 179.55 18 184.95 19 190.35 20 195.75 Drawbacks: - Slower draw and sheath speed - Marked for death while active (very good idea, no lazy Axtinguishing) In a nutshell, this neatly scales the extra damage bonus of the weapon with the degree of Afterburn, conveniently settling on 195 damage aka a typical full crit. AND as a bonus, the weapon actually (axeually?) axtinguishes its poor victim.
Gas Passer definitely needs some reworking. Obvious it bugging through walls needs seeing to. I very much like the idea of the flamethrower immediately imparting full Afterburn to gas-soaked targets, as that solves the "what personal benefit does Pyro get from this again?" question, and similarly the Neon Annihilator change is good. There's a big change I'd make, and I detail that below. Gas Passer: - Remove through walls drawback - Rather than affecting enemies caught in splash, instead affect enemies while in the cloud and for ~1s afterwards - Cloud lasts longer, linger in the environment for ~5s and acting as a better area-denial tool - "poisoning the landscape" - Combos with Neon Annihilator - Flamethrowers immediately grant 20s Afterburn ticks
Off-topic but I want to talk about Mad Milk and Jarate while I'm at it. These items, while not necessarily that strong, are too easy to use for something so nasty. I propose some changes, some obvious and others weird. Mad Milk and Jarate: - Share the charging mechanics of the Gas Passer - Larger amount of damage required than for Gas Passer - User is Mad Milked/Jarated on use for a short (2-3s) duration No pain no gain! in short. Snoipahs have to put up with getting a bit of piss on themselves for soaking a target.
Well I'll be damned, It's one of these proposed balance changes for weapons videos on yt, and I actually agree with almost all of 'em. Since you've asked so nicely for feedback here it is. (also I'm not really goin' to put them chronologically, I'm sorry) 1. Dragon's fury - Idk why but people seem to not know something about this weapon. With a buff regular flamethrower received, Dragons Fury deals the same ammount of damage as stock IF you aim every shot perfectly, where as stock just gives you max damage with some wiggle room. Anyway, I really do agree with making hitboxes smaller for both of the bloody things, especially since it would "fix" the problem of dragons fury not being worth it, cause some people might like the "shotgun like" nature of it better than the tracking flames require. I would also get rid off the hidden airblast delay stat it has, it just doesn't need that downside. 2. Flamethrower - It might sound silly, but what about making it that so, airblast costs less ammo when reflecting projectiles. Why tho you may ask, you curious devil. Well, if we were to keep pyro competetive, note that Pyro = airblast. It's a counter for the classic 2 soldiers, 1 demo setup, and when picking pyro, considering his low mobility and range, his strenght would be in scaring away projectile classes, and area denial. The problem arrises once you have to push. One of the biggest problems imo, is spam. Pyro is going to CHEW thru ammo, after what like 8-9 reflects, while soldier has 24 rockets to just waggle at your face with. So why don't we just let his airblast use up the ammo it already does when airblasting other players, but when reflecting projectiles, it could be something very silly, like 10 ammo. Basically one more reason for existing on offense. 3. Scorch Shot - Just take away the mini-crits, also your idea of lowering it's range could work. A limited range flaregun would be quite unique. Or a different idea I like better, make it so instead of exploding on surfaces, it explodes on player hits, it would retain it's "crowd harassing" ability, and it could also shoot faster to compensate for the nerf, and make it feel different than the Detonator. Granted the weapon would still be quite useless, but still. 4. Gas Passer - It desperately needs a damage buff, so looking at the game mechanics we have now, I see two options, either make it so the afterburn damage is increased drastically, or people covered in it, take maybe 20% more fire damage. "That's fucking ridiculous, pyro already kills you with a litteral fart!" True, but this fucking thing takes away your secondary, and in theory it would be very strong, but only once you have it. Mind you still need to fill up the bloody thing, and even while it's charged, it leaves you there hanging like a sitting duck, for anyone that can hurt you on mid-long range (which is basically, everyone except other pyros without a shotgun). It's an area denial thing, so lets treat it as such, I would personally be terrified of crossing that choke while the gas is up. ...I'm not gonna fight to the death for that one tho (could be HELL on pubs), and yes it needs to let Neon Anihilator crit covered players, like come on. 5. Thermal Thruster - (Suprised you didn't mention that one) Out of all the toys pyro got, this one is the most wow and meh at the same time. I think what's holding it back is 2 things: a). The switch speed. b). Giving up your secondary. I can live with the b), as long as it's worth the tradeoff (after all we all love gunboats, basic mobility over damage), but a) is quite bad. Like really makes it unusable while in combat. You see, I've been tricked, deceived, lied to. While watching the SFM short you can CLEARLY see, that Pyro is HOLDING his flamethrower while using the jetpack. And it gave me the impression, you actually can use it WHILE holding the fucking thing, IMAGINE HOW COOL AND EFFECTIVE (I think) THAT WOULD BE. Needless to say I was dissapointed that It's not the case, but I want it to be, so here's an idea, if you want to use the jetpack ASAP you pull it out and it's ready in like a blink of an eye, and when you are in combat and use your big smart brain to predict your oponent, you can thrust upon him with slight delay BUT without holstering your flamethrower. Try and tell me that wouldn't be rad af. Pyro's doing sky battles with Soldiers, even if Soldiers would still have better mobility just by the nature of how the jetpack works now. Which mind you it's a good thing, we dont want Pyros doing what Soldiers do, which is jump the med (oh the horror). So the afterburn idea you had, I love it, it's fun, it's something to learn the timing on, and it's informative. Love it. Also quick note (I'm adding this post commenting) your idea for the phlog, while I would want for it to be as good as it sounds, I think it would just make the weapon unusable. Bad/Meh at pubs, and impossible against even slightly competent players. Not to say it couldn't be mastered. But here's a thing, In quake the lazer pew pew'er is suited for long - mid range combat, and quake gives you the arsenal for every situation. I don't quite understand whenever you want the phlog to have unlimited range so I'll go with both options. a) Unlimited range. Pyro is not a long range class, now this doesn't mean he can't have weapons for that but in TF2 classes are way slower than players in quake (besides scouts and jumpin classes), so it would basically give you a way to just sneak-peak finish off the med (or any other not too mobile class) like a sniper would. But you know, hold m1 on his body for a sec instead of clicking his head, and you have 175hp not 125. Not fun. b) Limited range (same as stock). The lazer gun is suited for long-mid range cause it's impossible to reliably hit someone upclose. In tf2 most of the combat happens in the short-mid range category. So like it would be basically a straight downgrade with crits or not. Simply, theres no way you gonna hit shit with it. (Unless you literally just mean, stock but more damage, harder to track with... then well... I guess ? :P) Shit i would write more but the wall of text is rising. Anyway, Thanks for reading thru this impossible shite I wrote, I do belive I'm quite a smart boy and came up with some fun things that wouldn't break the game. I want my jetpack now valve. plz.
alright hello yes i am back let us have a look here 1. Yeah, the stock is currently probably better than the DF, or at least a strange sidegrade; the reflect debuff is a pretty serious concern though. Easilly killing other pyros at a high range is quite nice though. 2. tbh i think ammo management is a skill good pyros need to learn in highlander, and having airblasting projectiles take less ammo would kind of not really help the good ones and only serve to buff the bad ones ammo in pubs isnt usually too much of an issue, and in 6s you usually only stay alive for like 8 airblasts anyway, so i feel like it'd just be a buff to pyros who have difficulty managing ammo packs with their heavy 3. Exploding on player hits would 100% be better than the strange roller thing it has now ; making it more like a loch n load kind of thing. I'd like that quite a lot. 4. imho increasing gas passer afterburn would be pretty big, esp. if its like 20 damage a second or something rediculous. The thing takes forever to charge, so it should realistically be the strat to either run through it with your own pyro to put you out, run manmelter if its an issue, or wait the like 5 seconds for it to run out. It's not very spammable, so I think that'd make it a really good area of denial tool (right now i pretty much always just run through it and ignore it. I can never tell what team's gas it is anyway. 5. I just have no idea how to balance the jetpack, I feel like the switch speed & loss of a secondary is a pretty big downside for what is essentially just a slow rocket jumper. I've used the detonator for long enough that I know most of the spots you can use to get around the map as needed, so the extra jump height is only really usable in strange situations like hightower or getting back onto 2fort battlements (which I think you can detonator jump up to anyway) Imho a midair flamethrower would be pretty strong, esp if you horizontally charged at someone super fast It would be cool though 6. Yeah, it is true that it'd be a bit odd. Quake is deffo balanced around switching loads of weapons, i see a lot of people do rocket into lightning / lightning into railgun I feel like pyro with a strong flare gun / the shotgun would still be able to do a good job in competitive (as far as im concerned, the best way to play pyro in the past was to basically just run around shotgun anyway). If they need to buff the damage & make it really hard to aim, or nerf the damage and make it a bit easier to aim, then so be it really Its already kind of bad vs good teams, so having it be potentially really good if used well and potentially bad if used poorly speaks to me the same range as the lightning gun would be a bit silly too, i still think the phlog range is fine really danke for the reply
I really like these Pyro balance changes as I do think these ideas can make Pyro more useful and skilful! Also, here are some of my ideas for balancing Pyro’s weapons just to make him more useful: • Phlogistinator - Make it able to restore health again but only 50 health once you have full 'Mmmph' and giving the Pyro an Alt-Fire that doesn't airblast but rather disintegrates projectiles that can fill a bit of your 'Mmmph' meter but costs 25 ammo to use but at the cost of increasing the amount of damage to get a full ‘Mmmph’ from 300 to 500. • Gas Passer - Make the ‘Gas’ Meter able to be refilled from extinguishing players and collecting ammo while making the afterburn deal more damage (white/blue flames) and unextinguishable from all healing sources. • Manmelter - Make Alt-Fire able to remove all debuffs like Jarate, Bleed and Mad Milk and make pressing the reload button consume a stored crit for a speed boost to make it more of a supportive weapon. • Sharpened Volcano Fragment - Increase the afterburn duration and afterburn damage from what it normally is while making the afterburn unextinguishable from all healing sources like Health Packs, Mediguns and Dispensers and giving it the ability of setting enemy Pyros on fire, but at the cost of enemy Pyros being able to set you on fire, a slower holster speed and no random crits. • Third Degree - Either give it the ability to make the damage scale depending on the enemies health from 150% damage bonus on full health players and 50% damage penalty on low health players, crits on players connected by Medigun beam, steal the enemies overheal on hit while making the Medic unable to overheal for a period of time or prevents enemy Medic healing their patient on hit for a period of time but at the cost of a slower holster speed and unable to be overhealed by a Medic. • Hot Hand - Increase the speed boost duration from one second to three second and either make it deal knockback on hit, damage resistance on kill, mini-crits on burning players or crits on every third consecutive hit or make the slaps be part of a combo system from the 1st slap giving you the 3 second speed boost, the 2nd slap setting enemies on fire for 5 seconds, the 3rd slap dealing a critical hit and the 4th slap dealing knockback to the opponent. Also, they need to make the flame particles more visible since sometimes when you fire one flame particle, no flames actually appear and when that flame particle looks like it disappeared after one second of firing one particle, it can still put you on fire even though there’s no flames to be seen.
It's a silly thought but they could make it so tap firing the flamethrower is impossible, and it always fires at least like 5 ammo or something every click to prevent the invisible particles
Lyra make it have the "white" afterburn and faster switch to speed (like 60%) and poof, you have a decent pub weapon that, who knows, maybe will be used in competitive lobbies.
Another benefit of the pyro ignoring the minicrits from their reflected projectiles is that when defending a sentry from rollers being a little less dangerous, because rollers usually won't go far when airblasted.
Great video! I like these Pyro balance change ideas, especially making the flame hitboxes smaller (I'm surprised it hasn't been done already). Maybe in the future, we can see some 5-minute videos on specific weapon balance ideas? It's fun to watch/ listen to someone passionate about TF2. Keep it up!
Heyo Sleevelet, just a small thing on the flamethrower balance thing: The flamethrower still does less dps than pretty much any other offense class. It's extremely close-range, which means a bad pyro will do much less damage simply because they will not be able to get close to good players. In the case of an ambush, a good player will still do much better, simply because of timing, and better aim with the secondary(which is vital to good pyro play even now, btw). Besides which, a pyro should always kill any other individual class in an ambush situation, because it is an ambush class. When running at other players, you will very rarely do anything to a good player playing any class other than medic, or spy. So, with the fact that the pyro is still very weak in mind, why should valve nerf the effectiveness of pyro's only strong range (that is, very close)? By reducing the size of hitboxes, you get a situation where pyro becomes a very weak heavy at close range. As you (probably) know, it's very difficult to properly aim at very close targets as heavy. By reducing the pyro's flame hitbox significantly, you essentially reduce the projectiles to very close-range hit-scan. This means that ambushing becomes entirely unviable, as you would do better as any other class. I would like to thank you, however, for not using the statement that one particle hitting is the equivalent of every particle hitting, like so many other UA-camrs have parroted. This video by Minty Coffee shows very well how this is patently false:ua-cam.com/video/LvnTY3pcVV0/v-deo.html. It's nice to see a voice of reason in the face of all the misinformation.
As someone who uses the Scorch Shot constantly because I get off on the suffering and salt of others, I feel like the explosion radius on non-direct hits should be reduced and make the explosion radius on secondary bounces and direct hits larger. That way the three flares guns all reward aiming and have their own niche's. The Flaregun would be the best for solo kills, scorch shot for long range crowd control, and the Detonator for mobility. EDIT: Just finished the video. I think they should make the hitboxes for the flamethrowers require more aiming. Also, the color-changing afterburn is a dope idea and I want it purely because I feel it'd be visually pleasing.
A lot of these ideas are really good. May i also suggest that extinguishing teammates should give the pyro ammo not health. -Removes the weird dynamic where a pyro might actually be helping the other teams health pool by lighting up players -Helps pyro not run out of ammo so easily -Pyro doesn’t really deserve to randomly get health boosts like that Also pyros flames could be more transparent on the pyros own screen. Right now you blind yourself whenever you use them which just encourages w+m1 and not aimming. Lastly I think the pyro could be better at moving enemy stickies because he’s suppose to be a utility class, and right now soldier is often better at clearing them.
And sometimes they do w+m1 and me,how i can see him?.is like a flashbang but i think just reduce a LITTLE they range of w+m1 because some times pyro they catch you and that excuse that just run and not see him is not working right now and if the pyro is smart they use the hammerjack so faster that you not have chance to escape
11:08 I use the scorch shot as my premier Pybro secondary. For these reasons; You can harass peaking players, give them some afterburn, soften them up and make it easier for the sentry and your engineer to deal with the people peaking the sentry. It has an area of effect so it can light up groups of enemies momentarily. Said AOE reach's around corners so you can give people who aren't even peaking a sentry gun afterburn damage. This is less useful against medic pairs but still, it provides that added utility above the shotguns, etc. You could also use the gas passer or the detonator for this role, but the scorch shot takes out the skill for the detonator and the cooldown for the gas passer + necessitating ignition on the target that the gas passer requires. When it comes to the detonator VS scorch shot I think it comes down to, do you want more knock-back or do you want slightly more damage on players who are trying to peak the engy nest. Comparing them to the gas passer, the gas passer isn't always there when you need it. It takes some powers of prediction and has a long cool-down but it is effective at stopping a non medic assisted push for a limited time. Giving your engineer vital time to fix or replace buildings, but one miss step of unnecessary use and it's now lost that utility. Of course to actually gain any DPS out of it you have to ignite the players, and the sentry gun will do a good job of that. You won't necessarily be able to ignite people who are behind corners though, and that's where the detonator or scorch shot comes in handy and for knock-back purposes in getting people softened up and away from a position to damage a friendly sentry. I'd grab the Scorch Shot, but no disrespect to people who are actually skilled who can use the detonator for the same thing and actually kill harassing players. I know pybro is incredibly niche but I just love the Homewrecker, Detonator/Scorch Shot, with stock flamethrower (with maximum allotted airblasts) I know the shotguns can get rid of stickies but you can also just air-blast them off the sentry too. I just see skilled players slowly pecking away at vulnerable sentries as more of a problem than demomen spamming stickies which you'd still have somewhat of an answer for with this loadout.
The only thing with these colors on the afterburn would be that it could be confusing disguised spies depending on the color they are burning, as the player should always shine in the color of their own team, even disguised spies
I think all these suggestions are spot on, and I have one thought to add: from what you're describing, the afterburn color would remain a constant from the time the last particle hit to the time afterburn ends. I.e. white-tier afterburn remains white until the flames die out. What if the color changed depending on how much effect time remains? I.e. white-tier flames turn yellow and then red before dying out. I don't think this is necessarily a better idea, as it has significantly different implications for signaling. I'm just curious to hear what people think.
the scorch shot: lower damage/afterburn, remove mini crits, increase the knockback the weapon does, and have the AoE projectile bounce up a wee bit higher so there's a better chance of avoiding it if you're paying attention.
I think you really nailed pretty much everything here. My only suggestion would be to restore the old axtinguisher but with slower movement speed and bullet/explosive resistance to make Pyro a bit tankier as a sort of subclass
the after burn thing seems over complicated, but I do like the lightning gun idea and and the detonator, to bad the jetpack makes the detonators explosive jump redundant now :(
In your afterburn changes, I remember a similar concept that was "Originally" going to be used in the pyro update WAY back in the day (when it was just a rumor or something along the lines), like you said, there were going to be levels, but instead of visuals colors, it was different, it was just purely visual on the flames, so if someone was just recently ignited, they would have burn marks on them. Heres a list to better understand: (NOTE: Info about this may be off since the last time I read that rumor'd info on a pastebin) Level 1 - Players have burn marks Level 2 - Players have small visible flames Level 3 - Players have bigger flames on them but it doesn't look like the current afterburn visuals... Level 4 - Current afterburn flames look Level 5 - Players are fully engulfed in flames And like what you said in your video, different flamethrowers (and flareguns) would have different starting levels such as: Default Famethrower - Afterburn starts around level 2/3, briefly igniting someone would produce level 1 afterburn (up to level 3) Backburner - Afterburn starts around level 3, briefly igniting someone would produce a level 2 afterburn (up to level 4) Degreaser - Afterburn starts around level 1, briefly igniting someone would produce a level 1 afterburn (up to level 2) Phlog - Afterburn starts around level 4, briefly igniting someone would produce a level 2 flame (up to level 5 via 'Mmmph') Skins of the flamethrower work the same as the default flamethrower As for flares: All types of flareguns would always start on afterburn level 3, and work up to level 5, no matter what type of flaregun was used (according to the concept) And thats pretty much it... honestly, I would love if valve did use the afterburn level system, but more in the way you used it (colors then purely visual)
I like yr ideas! Very interesting. It's a shame we probably aren't going to receive any actual major Pyros fixes for a while..or maybe we will who knows
Agreed on everything in this video, with some bonus stuff: Before Jungle Inferno I had an idea similar to that with the afterburn levels, but with a twist. Going with your colour-coding, red and orange burning players would take normal damage. Yellow burning players would take mini-crit damage from all damage sources (except maybe explosives). White burning enemies would receive crit damage from all damage sources (except maybe explosive). White burning would only be possible if you are continously burning them at the max afterburn level. The base damage of flamethrowers would be severely reduced, making it so you have to burn enemies for a while to start dealing proper damage. Then, once you do get the enemies to that level of burn, you provide massive support to your team. I don't know if this would be better or worse for the game, compared to just having Pyro deal his own damage. But I like the idea of making Pyro more support-oriented. Combo Pyro would automatically become more interesting, because the different afterburn crit levels can interact in many ways with your various secondaries and melees. The Volcano Fragment could give instant white afterburn. So it would not be trash. The Axtinguisher could be like the Bushwacka, so that it can full-crit on yellow burning enemies. Backburner, rather than instantly critting, could possibly be changed to apply the afterburn level much faster from behind, so you reach the crit stage much faster. That's very similar, but has a more subtle mechanical depth to it. Degreaser would be better with base damage and airblast combos, but would be worse at afterburn-based crit combos, since it has weaker afterburn power. I think all this added depth would be really nice for Pyro.
I think it'd make an interesting idea for a unique flamethrower, but might break the class a little (to one extreme or the other) to have it apply everywhere Imho volcano applying full huge afterburn would make a lot of sense That would also work with the axe yeah Someone also suggested the backburner just doing less damage from the front; I feel like they could literally just make it do like -33% damage from the front and +50% from behind or something, replacing the crits entirely imho the degreaser is okay right now, the little afterburn doesnt really matter (really) compared the switch speed upside it doing the -10% damage from before with a bit faster switch speed would be fine, i still think
Scotch Shot: I like your idea about giving it LESS range. I think it should do a fun amount of knock back just to make it viable for disorientating enemies (thus it might need a slower firing rate.)
I think the way to balance the dragon’s fury is to have two hit boxes on it. The main damage would be in the middle, and there would be a hit box surrounding that one that does half damage
Being a fan of the stock flamethrower, i find shotgun or scorch shot as the ideal combos. I really like the idea of making flares with stock more viable
Make the Phlog instead of gaining full crit upon left-click makes it does normal damage or mini-crits and heal him base on how much health he has left while double the amount of ammo consumption during the activation (aka the less health he currently have the fewer health he can gain back) which encourages the pryo to dodge and actually plan when to charge in and retreat.
And once again good video, papa woolen I agree with most of your suggestions and really hope Valve will do something with Axtinguisher I love this axe, it was my bread and butter on pyro. I still use it till this day, but it's hard right now :c Also the thing u didn't mention (i think, ehhh? 🤔) are those new visuals on pyro's flamethrower. They are driving me mad, most of the time u can't see shit and it's a bad thing for an FPS game.
a better idea to recognize the duration/strength of afterburn wouldn't be colours to signal what afterburn it is, as that might conflict with the blue glow on flaming blu classes. Itd be better and would fit tf2 more to have the amount of fire on someone fit how long the afterburn will last. For example a small puff from a degreaser that'd last 2 seconds would have a couple flames here and there, maybe one on the arm, a small one. but for full afterburn from 3 seconds of a backburner for example, the full flaming effect we see today would fit. The effect will gradually decrease based on the current afterburn time left, so vigilant players will be able to identify when it will run out, this'd help medics especially to triage their team after a pyro attack Also everyone would love a lightning gun flamethrower redux, but itd have to be tweaked since players in tf2 move much slower than players in quake, maybe with lower damage or lower fire rate.
Yeah, a difference in particles might make more sense than a colour change. A tf2-y lightning gun doesnt even need to be hitscan, it could just be really really high velocity and short range alongside a smaller hitbox to make up for the speed differences
MAYBE instead of Phlogistinator having no airblast whatsoever, maybe we can replace it with this: > *Alt-fire: Fire a short burst of energy that extinguishs teamates for a small amount of Mmmph (~15% meter gained)* > *Alt-fire does not reflect projectiles* > *No health gained from extinguishing teamates* > *Press the Reload key to activate Mmmph* I know the Manmelter would essentially be obsolete, but it needs a rework anyway
-Stock flamethrower : Change the way that particles works so pyro requires tracking in order to do full dmg.That will reward good pyros that have practiced the flamethrower and will give a motive to new players to learn it. -Airblast I think that airblast is too forgiving.From close-mid(i mean between close and mid) airblast range can be arround 3 meters above pyro and 2 meters at his side (without moving his screen),meaning he can airblast everything at any range if he gets the timing except at his feet but that is countered by the pyro jumping.(also he can airblast behind him).Also i believe that airblast is inconsistent,if you airblast the enemy near his feet he will fly ~10 meters away instead of normal airblast of like ~4 meters but if you airblast him directly at enemy feets then he will fly vertically. -Phlog If particles are fixed i would leave phlog where it is,maybe a small vulnerability when running crits so you can not just spamm scorch shots and take crits every 2 mins. -Dragon's fury Reduce its hitbox,make it to have a clip and not infinite ammo.Make it hard to aim or else reduce its dmg.Two shoting ppl should require skill that rewards the good players and give the new a motivation to train it. -Scorch shot Make it more like a tool.Increase a little bit its jumping capabilities,let the splash radious the same and the ability to clear stickies.Also leave the push back in but remove its mini crits on burning players and reduce the afterburn from 10 secs to ~3 secs. -Detonator When jumping eats little less hp,like about 25 hp per jump. -Gas passer All ppl when they take dmg they get a 10 sec afterburn and neo annihilator can crit on it.That can make it work more like a area denial at comp (when also they fix passing through walls sometimes) and as a fun combo at pubs.(not spammable cuz the recharge time) -Mannmelter Make it a long range option for pyro.Remove afterburn,at long range will do 50 dmg at players and 35 buildings-at mid and close range it will deal 35 dmg at players and 35 at buildings.Keep the extinguish of players but only with 20 hp bonus and not a crit system. -Volcano fragment It gives all time 10% ressistance on sentries,15% knockback resistance and a double rate of capping the on wearer but it has -10% ressistance at bullets. -flare gun Give it a slight faster switch speed (~10%)so it can be used with stock more easily,at degreaser it will add a 5% faster switch speed on top of the already one existing. -Axtiguisher What wollen says from 4:11+ the dmg should be depending on the afterburn of the enemy player meaning 1 sec + crit tactic will not work. -Homewrecker i will leave it at its current state.
i think making the axe take timing would be a nice change though i feel like having it so that -> initial burst of fire, then axe does a little bit of damage; but instantly (good vs low hp targets) -> timing exactly like 1 second of fire or whatever to get a lot of damage, but later (good vs high hp targets) makes more sense to me than just full damage no matter the input
wait cuz you confused me,you are talking about the stock axe or the extinguisher and at second you say about afterburn effects like 1 sec of fire then extiguisher?
as well as reducing flame size, i think the particles should also die a bit quicker so walking into flames you've already been hit by doesn't happen. also i think airblast should be vertically inverted, so aiming up pushes peeps up and aiming down pushes peeps down; right now to try and pop people up involves bouncing them off an extremely variable floor which makes it pretty inconsistent on where they're going to go. inverting it is a pretty simple fix i'd say. good vid
I really do agree with virtually all of your points, glad you made the video. Also, maybe make the Phlogs MMPPH be a whip speed boost with mini-crits + full healing? I think that since you'd lose airblast (and in this videos case; ease of use), it'd be nice to make Pyro be quicker.
+Heikki Legit I wouldn't mind it, but I feel like a speed boost would make it harder to kill the pyro and possibly overwrite the damage down from crits to minicrits (buff banner stock still seems to kill quite fast, not as good as kritz, but id probably give it up for a speed boost)
How 2 fix the pyro class from team defense fort 2 1. Nerf Afterburn. Simple, decrease damage. Duration is fine 2. Nerf scorch shot. Remove the knockback, reduce the afterburn duration (full duration if flare hits twice) 3. Buff gas passer. 10 damage on ignition, gassed players are considered "wet" 4. Fix the Backburners broke ass crit hitbox and change it to mini crit from behimd 5. Rework Phlog. Phlog should absorb projectiles instead of reflecting. Absorbing projectiles builds mmph. At full charge, taunt to temporarily give all nearby teammates to do afterburn damage on non crit(or minicrit ) damage 6. Buff the hot hand to do, well...anything useful. Buff team reload speed, buff team meter charge (ex. Banners, shields and sandvichs get reduced cooldown.
I think that the axtinguisher could be fixed by shifting the deploy penalty to a holster penalty (and possibly increasing it). It's a weapon that exists to be a combo but the deploy time prevents that. If you changed it to a holster time penalty you would still be able to use it as a combo but it would punish you for messing up or using it in the wrong situation.
How I would balance axtinguisher: -50% damage vs non-burning players Marked for death while active +100% mini-crits vs burning players +100% critical hits while blast jumping (Includes deto/scorch jumping) So mini-crits from all around (88) Crits with -50% damage while deto/scorch/reflect jumping (98) And regular crits while the person is on fire and you are blast jumping (195)
I don't agree with the change to the axtinguisher about damage scaling with afterburn level. The reason the axtinguisher is so garbage is it's totally inferior to just continuing using the flamethrower than trying to combo. If I had to get max afterburn level, then I'd rather just keep burning them since they're probably close to death. I much more like the idea of it marking you for death. That much better suits the risk reward playstyle. The pyro could still be rewarded a fast kill combo while also giving the opponent a window to counter. And about the homewrecker, I think that some buff would be nice like resistance to sentries. It's practically useless for anything other than being a pybro. There's rarely a circumstance where it's useful against an enemy engineer.
I mean they could screw around with the damage levels, I was just trying to think of something that would make the axe take a bit more skill & timing to use than just 1 ammo and insta switch If it was the case that just one tier above a puff would do a good amount of damage, then pyros could learn to set fire to the target for exactly like 1 second or whatever, before switching to the axe for the first frame it gets the afterburn tier up & axe damage buff
I honestly don't mind the way the Scorch shot is now but if I had to change one thing I would just change the insane knockback it gives like holy shit you get launched a million miles from this. Also the ability to jump with it is a bit strange, sure it's not as good as the Detonator to jump with but is still a viable mobility option and kinda blurs the line between the two.
Just a thing to add to the Afterburn Level: I think it should increase the level every time the target gets hits by another weapon (that belongs to you) that can apply afterburn. (and also add more levels to compensate i.e. red, orange, yellow, *green, blue,* white) i.e. Degreaser hits the opponent (red), Scorch Shot hits once (orange) and then another (yellow), and then V O L C A N O F R A G M E N T (green)
a Woolen Sleevelet it certainly makes it easier to see the different types of afterburn but whether all the new players out there will understand it even exists is the problem. Take for example the airblast new players just don't realise it's a feature because it is only in the item description - something they don't read. It's honestly a great idea that I could never come up with, but how will new players (specifically pyros) know it is a feature?
I liked every idea except for a couple: 1. The lowest tier flame shouldn't be red as it will be pretty hard to determine what colour is the burning player, can't really come up with a more neutral colour from the top of my head.. uhh.. maybe some purple pink-ish? 2. Reverting the axtinguisher and just applying the "marked for death" debuff is just going the same path of the Crit-a-Cola. You might take 35% more damage if the target hits you, but it's not really gonna stop you from insta-killing them in 85% of scenarios. Plus, that's gonna make him an even stronger 1v1 class, which I really don't think is necessary.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be red. It could even just be orange but with less particles & more transparent I liked peoples ideas of making the axe extinguish a target and instantly deal the remaining afterburn in one hit. seemed to be a fun idea.
I think, they should add random crits to the axtinguisher (When are you going to just Melee an enemy that isn't lit) and decrease the switch penalty as well as the DMG penalty
I really think the Detonator needs to do the like 15 damageish like you said. I feel like it's a good skill-based movement tool for Pyro, and it's just a fun and good weapon overall. Right now it can do up to like 40someodd damage and it is just WAAAY too much. I don't think it would change balance that much either. Detonator jumping is one of the most skill-based tools Pyro has and so I think it SHOULD be better.
Oh holy shit, this explains so much. I didn't realize the pyro was firing behind them. I gave up on the game because I found playing to be too frustrating. And yea, the pyro is broke as fuck, and the only reason players are praising it is because it is a crutch for them.
The color of the fire damage is a smart idea, but I don't think the game would look very good with those color effects. I think "transparency" in fire would be a cool idea. The least afterburn damage would be a faded flame effect (80% transparency from original flame particles), medium (45% transparency from original flame particles), and then the worst afterburn (0% transparency) Other than that I really like your thoughts on these weapons, I LOVE the thought about punishing players for not aiming as its always a constant complaint that good Pyro mains have to sit with and suck up. Love the smaller hit box idea as well for the flamethrowers, would possibly fix a lot of problems and redeem the class. If only Valve would pay attention.
What I would like would be for Blu plays to not look red when they are on fire. I like the first Axe buff of being marked for death, but not the other. Way too complicated. Although the shorten after burn isn't a bad idea either.
Afterburn colour is the best idea ive ever heard axtinguisher with marked for death sounds good smaller hitbox on flamethrower as long as they are not size 1 sounds interesting flare gun change is great.
9:50 15 medium HP loss on Det-jumping puts it at Gunboats level of HP loss in blast-jumping, and though its height gain is still half of what a normal rocket-jump/thruster boost gets, it doesn't really need to compare itself to those two in any way, especially since it's already a Jack-Of-All-Trades, Soldier Shotgun-like Secondary to the Pyro. But if it really needs a buff, I'd rather suggest the HP loss be reduced from 23-44 HP to 19-33 HP instead; that'd put its HP loss somewhat between Non-Gunboats and Gunboats level of rocket-jumping, further emphasizing its Jack-Of-All-Trades/Master-Of-None aspect. I'd also like to add an additional balance suggestion on top of all that, and it's a buff for the Thruster: nothing too complex, just cut its switch speeds in half, making it that much faster to pull out and to put away. Such a buff would hopefully also end this recent and nonsensical opinion about the Thruster being outshined by the Detonator in "every way", even though both are effectively as Apples Vs Oranges as any Pyro Secondary comparison could get.
i think the changing the visuals of afterburn can work but it would probably be better if it changed size instead of color. what i would change about stock pyro (besides the hitbox issues) is give it the ability to airblastjump (make him take self damage to balance it) and make afterburn reduce healing (more then it currently does. make the reduced healing a reason to run the pyro when facing a black box + conch soldier or something) but make afterburn do less damage and make it harder to (fully) remove for individual weapons: make the axtinguisher extinguish enemies (with the afterburn changes i proposed it would make it a trade between reduced healing to burst damage) make the phlog an overheating flamethrower. alot of ppl want an overheat mechanic (for some reason) and i think the phlog can serve that purpose. make it a flamethrower that works in short bursts and all for some new benefit. just some ideas i had
I have a lot of changes. I'd like to remove some weapons and introduce some ideas but mainly: Focus on melee damage (increase to 95 (not certain ones like the ting), but reduce the effectiveness of everything else) After burn just burns brighter with more particles (yours might be a better idea but I wanted to use different colors for different effects) Flare guns proc all ignite ticks immediately so the person you hit isn't burning anymore(so axtinguisher can be "returned" to glory) Rebuff degreaser I wanted the degreaser to airblast yourself like a det jump (we can't have airblast and everything else we gotta give something up most of u don't even use it right. I don't have much pyro experience but I do think it's TF2's most interesting class. I think the right way to balance him is to make him the SOLID (not gimmicky, not weird or hard to understand) CQC King. When you die to the pyro you know that you got too close no excuses. I would've already posted a discussion to work on it more but it's just so many numbers and weird things to make it clear to someone reading it. IDK where I would post it just to clear it up. If you read this far there is more ideas that I have but I'm not trying to right a novel just a book.
The problem with melee damage is that melees are an unconventional way to do damage. Which is why the most used melees on Pyro are the ones that add a utility.
-Afterburn change - really like but the flames should not make team recognition a pain -flare gun - I don't think it needs a faster switch speed, it's good enough now and it's not very hard to combo even with stock flamethrower -Axtinguisher - I'd like the old old axtinguisher (no minicrits when pulled out) but with 32-35 base damage, so a very fast swing would do around 102-105. Also I don't think damage based on afterburn is a good idea since it greatly decreases it's combo-ing potential (and that's the main meat of the weapon) and if you have to shoot him with the flamethrower for 1-2 seconds to get ok-ish damage with the axtinguisher, at that point I'd just continue melting him with the flames. Idk about lower afterburn when equipped tho. -Detonator - yes -Gas Passer - how I want it: yellow afterburn yes, takes 30sec to charge and also by dealing damage, pairs with neon annihilator (no going through wallz) -Scorch shot - pretty ok how it is -Homewrecker - yea I like your changes -Phlog - I want that on every flamethrower pls I want lower flame box -dragon fury - yea it's too big hitbox make smol - airblast jumping - your idea good
could just be different amounts/opacities/brightnesses of particles, doesnt have to be colours i just think it would be a nice bonus, only a small buff like 20% or something would be needed to make it actually really good again vs the shotgun They could make it build up the tiers faster, so it doesnt take 2 seconds of fire to build up a crit. There should be a middle ground somewhere where theres an actual timing you can learn to get the most damage in the least amount of flame time, vs just hitting one particle
a Woolen Sleevelet well a 15-20% faster switch speed won't hurt anybody and it's true the shotgun is better than the flaregun so i guess you're right. About the axtinguisher i think your idea could work out if it's something like "in the 1st second of afterburn you only do about 100 damage and after the 1st second you do 150 damage", so against scout/sniper/spy you ca poof them and axe them for around 113 (so near death) and against solly/demo/med/heavy you can hold m1 and do 50-60 flame dmg and then 150 dmg swing. This could actually work.
I have a huuuge Word file that I´m writing balancing ideas into. I have a lot of ideas for pretty much every class. And since we´re talking about Pyro, let me show my stats about restating the Phlogistinator. I want to make it a new weapon. When the Mmph meter is full, taunting activates momentary uber (only during the duration of the taunt) and guarantees mini-crits and 70% tightened fire spread for 8 seconds. Mmph meter requires 400 damage. +40% reduction in fire spread. -30% less gas on airblast -20% damage -Airblast can only delete projectiles -no random crits The point of this restat is to actually make it the flamethrower semi-hitscan, just like the Quake laser gun. And removing airblast for tripled damage is so broken in pubs, that I simply had to change that. The airblast is now worth using when countering a projectile based class, but not so effective against moving targets, which is why it´s a more accurate but less damaging flamethrower that can occasionaly strengthen its stats. And remember, it´s *justmyopinionpleasestopbashingmyheadinwitharock*
Pyro main since beta: Nice video Sleevert. Picked up a lot of my bugbears. My thoughts Afterburn: agree flare guns(s) AB should be bonus, apart from the current Scorch Shot Scorch Shot: I hate this weapon. Too easy with the minicrit bonus and lingering damage and makes the Detonator redundant Detonator : Bring back 45hp damage minicrits and buff timed explosion damage. Too weak Vs SS Homewrecker: too niche, too weak on offense. Needs knockback and damage resistance when out to be useful. Balance with slower deploy. Should be a super hard counter Vs minisentries; should reduce damage by 50-60%. Would stop engies spamming them thoughtlessly Axtinguisher: kind of ok as is, but if superslow deploy, should always do 195 on burning players Phlog: replace full crits with mini crits over longer duration. Dragon's Fury: this thing is fun but horrible to play against if more than one Pyro. Make it that Pyro's cannot stack the damage bonus. Shotgun: sadly the shotgun is now really weak as a defense against another Pyro. Range is terrible and if the other Pyro is in flamethrower range, you're dead, even if you get the shotty drop on them with good burst damage.
I think colour-coded afterburn particles could get too messy and confusing considering that there are already Halloween effects that change the afterburn to green. Valve will likely wan't to avoid confusion for new players asking "so green flame does nothing but white flame is stronger? Why?" I really like the airblast idea though to make Pyro immune to the minicrits of his reflected projectiles. I often feel like I'm punished when I'm saving teammates from rollers because even just a whiff of the splash damage does some huge hurt to yourself.
i like your idea for the flare gun, homewrecker and airblast jumping changes, but personally i take a more moderate approach to a lot of the other weapons on this list. i still use the axtinguisher from time to time and it isn't that bad honestly. 131 damage is nothing to sneeze at. but the reality is that it's barely usable with the degreaser right now and not at all with anything else. i think if some of the switch-to speed is brought down that'd be fine. your idea is interesting, though. potentially it could cause the target to instantly A. be extinguished and B. take all the damage they would've taken from their current afterburn? that's just a thought. i personally dislike the idea of a marked for death debuff, though. i don't think it actually adds much in terms of counterplay. i have less experience with the gas passer but i honestly just think they should halve the current charge time but make it not charge from the damage the cloud does, and then have the gas meter show the cloud's duration while it's out. would help with clarity and usability. another thing would be to have it gain charge from support stuff like extinguishing teammates and dropping ubers. also making it not spread through walls would be nice but knowing valve that change will come in three years time. i don't presently have any problems with the other two flare guns, but i also rarely use them. if anything i think more should be done to differentiate them. no ideas on how to accomplish that though. as for the flamethrowers, all of them could probably use a slight decrease in hitbox size. down to one seems a bit drastic, but maybe somewhere in the 3-6 range is appropriate. the dragon's fury could potentially stand to be a little larger than that but it definitely needs to come down from where it is now. as for the phlog... the weapon's a goddamn mess. whoever added it must cry themselves to sleep every night from sheer guilt. idk if this would fix it, but: - add in a reverse airblast that sucks people in. could still disrupt people and extinguish flames, but no projectile reflecting. otherwise useful for obvious reasons. - take it down to just 100 ammo. airblasting would still be 20. - maybe make it so that while it's critting the pyro is slowed down slightly? that's my personal thoughts. definitely an interesting video, woolen! i think valve will go with more minimalist changes than what you've proposed, but there's nothing wrong with thinking big.
I was running around with the axe on stream earlier and got some pretty fun frags with it, I just don't really like how you can do the same a lot of the time with, if not the powerjack, even the backscratcher (plus the chance of random crit to do over 200 damage is pretty insane) I do like the idea of the axe just extinguishing & dealing the full afterburn damage, it'd be a pretty cool mechanic that would discourage setting everyone on fire and meleeing one at a time, and encouraging focusing on the target you want to get the most damage on first less movespeed with it out or something could also work instead of minicrits, making it easier to get away if you are in an open area & aware the pyro is just running at you i have difficulty telling what team threw what gas cloud tbh, im not sure if theres team colouring or not, but it doesnt seem very obvious at first glance One is pretty low, but i think any size down would be an immense improvement for playing against the pyro thanks for the reply friendo
I dunno, I feel like Axetinguisher was problematic back in the day because of the airblast mechanics. Now that they're different, I think they should try and revert it to its original stats, see where it goes from there. Scorch Shot wise, maybe it could have less afterburn duration than the other flare guns? That would counter-balance the ease of lighting people on fire.
I would appreciate a decrease of self caused damage on the detonator as detonator jumping, while useful, takes quite the amount of health to peform. A decrease in damage taken is very welcome in my eyes.
I would add a few things: first, increase holster time on axtinguisher, so if you miss and the afterburn fades, it takes longer to light them on fire again. Second, the dragon's fury should actually crit burning players -- this 300% damage BS is better than crits anyway. Finally, make the SVF immediately put out white-tier afterburn -- throw that weapon a bone already!
I agree. Phlog needs to have a smaller hitbox, dragon's fury needs to be balanced and axtinguisher needs to be buffed. Airblast should be only for projectiles and pushing peoples in front but NOT IN THE AIR WHILE AIMING TO THE ENEMY'S FEET!! (Then reserve shooter nerf was not needed)
I don't think the sentry bullet resistance for the homewrecker is necessary, considering the building damage is mainly for destroying sappers as they are technically buildings.
The dragons fury could start in red afterburn and in the second consecutive hit change to Orange afterburn but don't give the Dragon's fury the ability to finish in the white afterburn, like, make it have a maximum level of afterburn that finish in idk Orange for example. ( I don't know if I explained this right but I hope someone gets the idea)
Ok but sidenote the “acting” with the character model is on point
This video is secretly an unusual showcase.
Doggo showcase.
Hey, I appreciate that some people might just want to skip to certain parts, so here's a timestamp list!
Afterburn Changes - 1:06 (Talking about visibility & colours as well as other things)
Flare Gun - 3:13 (Error- I intended to say decrease deploy time on the Flare Gun, not the Degreaser. Sorry!)
Axtinguisher - 4:11 (2 different change ideas, although they could both be added)
Detonator - 9:19
Gas Passer - 9:57
Scorch Shot - 10:42
Homewrecker - 11:30
Flamethrower Mechanics in General - 11:58
Phlogistinator - 13:57
Dragon's Fury - 15:43 (weapon is very buggy, fireball going through enemies is not a bug though, i think.)
Airblast & Reflect Jumping - 18:25
Recap & Conclusion - 19:35
Sorry for the couple of editing errors here and there,
e.g. 15:11 - editing error? this text is meant to be on the dragon's fury section (what am i on today)
I might be slowly losing my mind
its ok though
i think it happens to everyone
hoho
haha
oh no
I still like heavy more, oof
That's entirely not relevant to this, though, but I had nothing else to say 👌
this is what doggi doggi bork club does to you
Personally, I do agree with you that the scorch shot is easy to aim and annoying to fight against. So perhaps if it had a slightly reduced area of effect ,had the same direct damage but did say 15 or 20 percent less aoe damage. Its after burn duration could also be affected depending on whether or not the shot was a direct hit. Meaning Pyros would have to aim properly to use it effectively.
A little thing for the Dragon's Fury, I believe the command for its hitbox debug is tf_fireball_debug. And just as you suspected, it's absolutely humongous (maybe a bit wider than player collision hulls I think). It also helps highlight areas of maps where it just doesn't work whatsoever (in the first week of JI, I was toying around with it in the debug commands, and it for some reason doesn't work on the floor in tr_walkway. Kinda weird, dunno if it still does it.)
The Gas Passer was meant to be a Crowd Control weapon, but it people still just walk through it. I think the gas cloud should be ignitable, meaning that if you blast the cloud with your flamethrower, the cloud of gas will become of cloud of fire This would discourage people from walking through the cloud, *which is what crowd control is meant to be.*
*A R E A D E N I A L*
Nemesis So much like MVM has passed right?
This is my suggestion to fix the gas passer...
Like in MVM, if you light a group of people that are doused in gas, they will all take a flat 10-20 damage. It will also ignite them as well and have the burn time it usually has. I think it would make the gas passer a bit more useful but still hard to charge
Gam3rZ Loung3 but that still doesn't emphasize Area Denial like a fire cloud would
Main issue with it now is there's no reason to move out of it once you're in it, and it's two weak to deter passing through it anyway. I'd change it so If you pass through the cloud you're doused and can be ignited on damage like it is now, but If you're caught in it you take afterburn damage all at once, then tick until you get out of it, and then once out tick for normal afterburn duration.
Just make the MvM explosive upgrade stock. That is it. Nerf the damage to say 80-100, but make it so that a few seconds of flame thrower or a dragons fury shot will ignite the entire cloud.
If you ask me, Parkinson's Flamethrower needs a fix and so does his new particle effects. They are so damn bright now and you can barely see anything.
Just like high temperature flames...
It's almost as if this is a video game that already sets itself apart from reality, it's possible of having flames that dont blind you
Yeah I agree, all you need to do is wiggle like crazy with the flame thrower and if the opponent has a toaster pc, the low res flames can basically block most of his vision. Makes it pretty annoying when you're trying to aim for the pyro head etc.
I actually asked for flamethrower particles to be more opaque, and am happy with the change. It suits Pyro's role as a counter-acting spray bluff class, akin to an octopus squirting ink to blind its target.
That said, the particles also make it harder for teammates to see. That I didn't ask for. Make flamethrower particles from the own team much more translucent (and slightly team-coloured) ftw.
I am very sure that's intentional.
Reduced visibility gives the pyro another layer of survivability, which isn't to bad on a class that's a literal lemming.
Omg he actually put in my idea for tiered-flames
its a good strat
i'm glad you liked the idea :)!
I don't particularly like it. I don't mind the idea of tiered afterburn, however, using flame colour to depict that is a bad idea. All classes, when lit on fire, burn with a team coloured glow. This would either be a useless, unnoticeable change, or it would undermine that glow. Especially on spies.
Strange video today where I talk about rebalance and change ideas for Pyro, some of which I think would be universally good changes (like making afterburn clearly indicate how much damage its doing based on the colour).
*EDIT: Just noticed an error in the video; I talk about fixing the Flare Gun, what I mean to say is to make the Flare Gun pull out faster, but in the video the strange man says the degreaser. How I didn't pick this up in editing, I don't know, but apologies for any confusion.* The intent is to make the flare gun slightly better at comboing again (like the old, universally considered fairly balanced one), without having to screw with the degreaser. Literally just a 20-25% faster deploy rate or something on the Flare Gun would be enough to make me want to run it way more.
god if only we had some form of citations we could use on youtube videos to correct things without having to look in the comments
annotations dont work on mobile & cant be used in conjunction with end cards
im not sure if you can even really use them anymore
it was a joke at youtube, not you babe
I think your suggested changes are good, but you left out one thing. I feel like the back burner is in a weird spot at the moment. It’s intended as a flank weapon, thought it doesn’t stop player from the Ye old’n W+m1, and it also feels like it kills almost to well. I understand that pyro, like a lot of the classes, are built for burst damage. It’s just that weapons like the BB and phlog do it in a way with little to no down side. How about we make the BB the pyro’s version of the Backscatter? Maybe less Ammo, shorter range, and instead of full on crits, melting players in under a second flat, it does mini crits. Similar to your diamond back video, these weapons that give players super damage for things they are supposed to do already is pretty dumb.
I'm not sure how to balance the backburner, since it's already pretty balanced for competitive (can do wonders on upward if the other team's not paying attention, kind of bad on long holds)
Beyond making airblast cost more / making flames take more ammo / lowering range or width of flames maybe, I'm not sure what they can do.
Maybe make it so the crit ramps up? If you see a target, it's initially normal, then minicrits, then crits, over the space of a second or two?
I like pretty much all the changes you suggested, I think you really nailed the flamethrower argument. It's not the damage that's the problem, it's how easy it is to get the damage. I don't mind being juggled and airshot in under 2 seconds by the RL, because it takes skill to do that damage. I do dislike being dissolved in 2 seconds by a gibus pyro flailing wildly.
Thx for the vid (:
I think the old axtinguisher would be fine with how airblast works now
The reason it was so aids before was because of airblast, not because of the axtinguisher
I think it was a big part yeah
between groundstalling & holding against walls being fixed it'd probably not be nearly as bad now as it was
The new airblast just pushes you back into your team, you can't really even utilize it with a melee weapon anymore
I know this is old but I'd like to sya that it was onyl a small part of it. Being 2 shot as a heavy from something that can be bound to a key, puff&swap to melee striking was a common bind. Airblast was hardly used if you weren't rushing at someone face first, and it was more just the instant 195 damage you took, even a soldier would die to it if they reverted the axe.
Yes, but all those quick switch weapons work differently now, especially the degreaser which was the why that worked so well. It should be mentioned that you aren't getting two swings off on a good player too.
I absolutely love these ideas. You should definitely do more of these videos. Also while I can't speak for all viewers, I'd watch the 2-hour speaking vid with a minimum of editting.
Very impressive presentation by the way, it's quite cute and very demonstrative to see little Pyro burning people in time with each topic.
Some individual thoughts on weapons and mechanics discussed in this video.
Coloured afterburn based on number of ticks left = genius. Here's colour range as I'd do it:
20 (max, 80 damage if untreated) - White
17 - Light Yellow
14 - Yellow
11 - Yellow-Orange
8 - Orange-Red
5 - Red
2 (just 8 damage in the next second) - Dark Red
Axtinguisher: I like the damage scaling, and I had an idea based off it. Here's the Axtinguisher model with this idea incorporated:
Benefits
+ On striking a target with Afterburn:
+ Deals increased damage proportional to the remaining Afterburn ticks, then *removes* the Afterburn
- Eg/ If the target has 20 ticks left, the hit does 65 + 80 damage = *145*
+ THEN the damage does a mini-crit
- Eg/ so the 145 damage is increased to 145*1.35 = *195.75* damage
Damage range of Axtinguisher hits given below:
Ticks Damage
1 93.15
2 98.55
3 103.95
4 109.35
5 114.75
6 120.15
7 125.55
8 130.95
9 136.35
10 141.75
11 147.15
12 152.55
13 157.95
14 163.35
15 168.75
16 175.15
17 179.55
18 184.95
19 190.35
20 195.75
Drawbacks:
- Slower draw and sheath speed
- Marked for death while active (very good idea, no lazy Axtinguishing)
In a nutshell, this neatly scales the extra damage bonus of the weapon with the degree of Afterburn, conveniently settling on 195 damage aka a typical full crit. AND as a bonus, the weapon actually (axeually?) axtinguishes its poor victim.
Gas Passer definitely needs some reworking. Obvious it bugging through walls needs seeing to. I very much like the idea of the flamethrower immediately imparting full Afterburn to gas-soaked targets, as that solves the "what personal benefit does Pyro get from this again?" question, and similarly the Neon Annihilator change is good. There's a big change I'd make, and I detail that below.
Gas Passer:
- Remove through walls drawback
- Rather than affecting enemies caught in splash, instead affect enemies while in the cloud and for ~1s afterwards
- Cloud lasts longer, linger in the environment for ~5s and acting as a better area-denial tool - "poisoning the landscape"
- Combos with Neon Annihilator
- Flamethrowers immediately grant 20s Afterburn ticks
Off-topic but I want to talk about Mad Milk and Jarate while I'm at it. These items, while not necessarily that strong, are too easy to use for something so nasty. I propose some changes, some obvious and others weird.
Mad Milk and Jarate:
- Share the charging mechanics of the Gas Passer
- Larger amount of damage required than for Gas Passer
- User is Mad Milked/Jarated on use for a short (2-3s) duration
No pain no gain! in short. Snoipahs have to put up with getting a bit of piss on themselves for soaking a target.
Thanks for the long reply!
i'm a bit tired today, but tomorrow i'll have a read through what you wrote and write a proper reply
Well I'll be damned, It's one of these proposed balance changes for weapons videos on yt, and I actually agree with almost all of 'em.
Since you've asked so nicely for feedback here it is.
(also I'm not really goin' to put them chronologically, I'm sorry)
1. Dragon's fury - Idk why but people seem to not know something about this weapon. With a buff regular flamethrower received, Dragons Fury deals the same ammount of damage as stock IF you aim every shot perfectly, where as stock just gives you max damage with some wiggle room. Anyway, I really do agree with making hitboxes smaller for both of the bloody things, especially since it would "fix" the problem of dragons fury not being worth it, cause some people might like the "shotgun like" nature of it better than the tracking flames require. I would also get rid off the hidden airblast delay stat it has, it just doesn't need that downside.
2. Flamethrower - It might sound silly, but what about making it that so, airblast costs less ammo when reflecting projectiles. Why tho you may ask, you curious devil. Well, if we were to keep pyro competetive, note that Pyro = airblast. It's a counter for the classic 2 soldiers, 1 demo setup, and when picking pyro, considering his low mobility and range, his strenght would be in scaring away projectile classes, and area denial. The problem arrises once you have to push. One of the biggest problems imo, is spam. Pyro is going to CHEW thru ammo, after what like 8-9 reflects, while soldier has 24 rockets to just waggle at your face with. So why don't we just let his airblast use up the ammo it already does when airblasting other players, but when reflecting projectiles, it could be something very silly, like 10 ammo. Basically one more reason for existing on offense.
3. Scorch Shot - Just take away the mini-crits, also your idea of lowering it's range could work. A limited range flaregun would be quite unique. Or a different idea I like better, make it so instead of exploding on surfaces, it explodes on player hits, it would retain it's "crowd harassing" ability, and it could also shoot faster to compensate for the nerf, and make it feel different than the Detonator. Granted the weapon would still be quite useless, but still.
4. Gas Passer - It desperately needs a damage buff, so looking at the game mechanics we have now, I see two options, either make it so the afterburn damage is increased drastically, or people covered in it, take maybe 20% more fire damage.
"That's fucking ridiculous, pyro already kills you with a litteral fart!" True, but this fucking thing takes away your secondary, and in theory it would be very strong, but only once you have it. Mind you still need to fill up the bloody thing, and even while it's charged, it leaves you there hanging like a sitting duck, for anyone that can hurt you on mid-long range (which is basically, everyone except other pyros without a shotgun). It's an area denial thing, so lets treat it as such, I would personally be terrified of crossing that choke while the gas is up.
...I'm not gonna fight to the death for that one tho (could be HELL on pubs), and yes it needs to let Neon Anihilator crit covered players, like come on.
5. Thermal Thruster - (Suprised you didn't mention that one) Out of all the toys pyro got, this one is the most wow and meh at the same time. I think what's holding it back is 2 things:
a). The switch speed.
b). Giving up your secondary.
I can live with the b), as long as it's worth the tradeoff (after all we all love gunboats, basic mobility over damage), but a) is quite bad. Like really makes it unusable while in combat.
You see, I've been tricked, deceived, lied to. While watching the SFM short you can CLEARLY see, that Pyro is HOLDING his flamethrower while using the jetpack. And it gave me the impression, you actually can use it WHILE holding the fucking thing, IMAGINE HOW COOL AND EFFECTIVE (I think) THAT WOULD BE. Needless to say I was dissapointed that It's not the case, but I want it to be, so here's an idea, if you want to use the jetpack ASAP you pull it out and it's ready in like a blink of an eye, and when you are in combat and use your big smart brain to predict your oponent, you can thrust upon him with slight delay BUT without holstering your flamethrower.
Try and tell me that wouldn't be rad af. Pyro's doing sky battles with Soldiers, even if Soldiers would still have better mobility just by the nature of how the jetpack works now. Which mind you it's a good thing, we dont want Pyros doing what Soldiers do, which is jump the med (oh the horror).
So the afterburn idea you had, I love it, it's fun, it's something to learn the timing on, and it's informative. Love it.
Also quick note (I'm adding this post commenting) your idea for the phlog, while I would want for it to be as good as it sounds, I think it would just make the weapon unusable. Bad/Meh at pubs, and impossible against even slightly competent players. Not to say it couldn't be mastered. But here's a thing, In quake the lazer pew pew'er is suited for long - mid range combat, and quake gives you the arsenal for every situation. I don't quite understand whenever you want the phlog to have unlimited range so I'll go with both options.
a) Unlimited range. Pyro is not a long range class, now this doesn't mean he can't have weapons for that but in TF2 classes are way slower than players in quake (besides scouts and jumpin classes), so it would basically give you a way to just sneak-peak finish off the med (or any other not too mobile class) like a sniper would. But you know, hold m1 on his body for a sec instead of clicking his head, and you have 175hp not 125. Not fun.
b) Limited range (same as stock). The lazer gun is suited for long-mid range cause it's impossible to reliably hit someone upclose. In tf2 most of the combat happens in the short-mid range category. So like it would be basically a straight downgrade with crits or not. Simply, theres no way you gonna hit shit with it.
(Unless you literally just mean, stock but more damage, harder to track with... then well... I guess ? :P)
Shit i would write more but the wall of text is rising.
Anyway, Thanks for reading thru this impossible shite I wrote, I do belive I'm quite a smart boy and came up with some fun things that wouldn't break the game. I want my jetpack now valve. plz.
thanks for the long reply friendo
i'm a bit tired today, but i'll come back tomorrow and write up a proper reply :>
Now now, don't get me too excited here.
alright hello yes i am back let us have a look here
1.
Yeah, the stock is currently probably better than the DF, or at least a strange sidegrade; the reflect debuff is a pretty serious concern though. Easilly killing other pyros at a high range is quite nice though.
2.
tbh i think ammo management is a skill good pyros need to learn in highlander, and having airblasting projectiles take less ammo would kind of not really help the good ones and only serve to buff the bad ones
ammo in pubs isnt usually too much of an issue, and in 6s you usually only stay alive for like 8 airblasts anyway, so i feel like it'd just be a buff to pyros who have difficulty managing ammo packs with their heavy
3.
Exploding on player hits would 100% be better than the strange roller thing it has now ; making it more like a loch n load kind of thing. I'd like that quite a lot.
4.
imho increasing gas passer afterburn would be pretty big, esp. if its like 20 damage a second or something rediculous. The thing takes forever to charge, so it should realistically be the strat to either run through it with your own pyro to put you out, run manmelter if its an issue, or wait the like 5 seconds for it to run out. It's not very spammable, so I think that'd make it a really good area of denial tool (right now i pretty much always just run through it and ignore it. I can never tell what team's gas it is anyway.
5.
I just have no idea how to balance the jetpack, I feel like the switch speed & loss of a secondary is a pretty big downside for what is essentially just a slow rocket jumper. I've used the detonator for long enough that I know most of the spots you can use to get around the map as needed, so the extra jump height is only really usable in strange situations like hightower or getting back onto 2fort battlements (which I think you can detonator jump up to anyway)
Imho a midair flamethrower would be pretty strong, esp if you horizontally charged at someone super fast
It would be cool though
6.
Yeah, it is true that it'd be a bit odd. Quake is deffo balanced around switching loads of weapons, i see a lot of people do rocket into lightning / lightning into railgun
I feel like pyro with a strong flare gun / the shotgun would still be able to do a good job in competitive (as far as im concerned, the best way to play pyro in the past was to basically just run around shotgun anyway). If they need to buff the damage & make it really hard to aim, or nerf the damage and make it a bit easier to aim, then so be it really
Its already kind of bad vs good teams, so having it be potentially really good if used well and potentially bad if used poorly speaks to me
the same range as the lightning gun would be a bit silly too, i still think the phlog range is fine really
danke for the reply
Holy crap that's some dedication to a comment.
Highest damage should be blue
the_rustydoornob why?
james it’s more realistic
Because fire’s hottest color is a bright blue
Blue would also look p cool yeah
only problem with blue is it is much harder to deal with it since the team colors are best not to be compromised
I really like these Pyro balance changes as I do think these ideas can make Pyro more useful and skilful!
Also, here are some of my ideas for balancing Pyro’s weapons just to make him more useful:
• Phlogistinator - Make it able to restore health again but only 50 health once you have full 'Mmmph' and giving the Pyro an Alt-Fire that doesn't airblast but rather disintegrates projectiles that can fill a bit of your 'Mmmph' meter but costs 25 ammo to use but at the cost of increasing the amount of damage to get a full ‘Mmmph’ from 300 to 500.
• Gas Passer - Make the ‘Gas’ Meter able to be refilled from extinguishing players and collecting ammo while making the afterburn deal more damage (white/blue flames) and unextinguishable from all healing sources.
• Manmelter - Make Alt-Fire able to remove all debuffs like Jarate, Bleed and Mad Milk and make pressing the reload button consume a stored crit for a speed boost to make it more of a supportive weapon.
• Sharpened Volcano Fragment - Increase the afterburn duration and afterburn damage from what it normally is while making the afterburn unextinguishable from all healing sources like Health Packs, Mediguns and Dispensers and giving it the ability of setting enemy Pyros on fire, but at the cost of enemy Pyros being able to set you on fire, a slower holster speed and no random crits.
• Third Degree - Either give it the ability to make the damage scale depending on the enemies health from 150% damage bonus on full health players and 50% damage penalty on low health players, crits on players connected by Medigun beam, steal the enemies overheal on hit while making the Medic unable to overheal for a period of time or prevents enemy Medic healing their patient on hit for a period of time but at the cost of a slower holster speed and unable to be overhealed by a Medic.
• Hot Hand - Increase the speed boost duration from one second to three second and either make it deal knockback on hit, damage resistance on kill, mini-crits on burning players or crits on every third consecutive hit or make the slaps be part of a combo system from the 1st slap giving you the 3 second speed boost, the 2nd slap setting enemies on fire for 5 seconds, the 3rd slap dealing a critical hit and the 4th slap dealing knockback to the opponent.
Also, they need to make the flame particles more visible since sometimes when you fire one flame particle, no flames actually appear and when that flame particle looks like it disappeared after one second of firing one particle, it can still put you on fire even though there’s no flames to be seen.
It's a silly thought but they could make it so tap firing the flamethrower is impossible, and it always fires at least like 5 ammo or something every click to prevent the invisible particles
I would totally rework volcano fragment but Idunno how :D
2018 kids will never know Spookwagen
Lyra make it have the "white" afterburn and faster switch to speed (like 60%) and poof, you have a decent pub weapon that, who knows, maybe will be used in competitive lobbies.
StickMaster500 Are
making the phlog like an LG sounds like a lot of fun lol
I think the color of the "extreme" afterburn should be blue, and not white
Arquimedes Yeah, seeing as that fits with real life science and is more noticeable.
Boy howdy I just love it when youtube lets me know about videos 4 hours late.
oof
12:34 I love how the timing on the killstreak effect was there. Made your pyro look absolutely pissed about how idiotically easy that was
Another benefit of the pyro ignoring the minicrits from their reflected projectiles is that when defending a sentry from rollers being a little less dangerous, because rollers usually won't go far when airblasted.
Great video!
I like these Pyro balance change ideas, especially making the flame hitboxes smaller (I'm surprised it hasn't been done already). Maybe in the future, we can see some 5-minute videos on specific weapon balance ideas?
It's fun to watch/ listen to someone passionate about TF2. Keep it up!
thanks
Heyo Sleevelet, just a small thing on the flamethrower balance thing: The flamethrower still does less dps than pretty much any other offense class. It's extremely close-range, which means a bad pyro will do much less damage simply because they will not be able to get close to good players. In the case of an ambush, a good player will still do much better, simply because of timing, and better aim with the secondary(which is vital to good pyro play even now, btw). Besides which, a pyro should always kill any other individual class in an ambush situation, because it is an ambush class. When running at other players, you will very rarely do anything to a good player playing any class other than medic, or spy. So, with the fact that the pyro is still very weak in mind, why should valve nerf the effectiveness of pyro's only strong range (that is, very close)? By reducing the size of hitboxes, you get a situation where pyro becomes a very weak heavy at close range. As you (probably) know, it's very difficult to properly aim at very close targets as heavy. By reducing the pyro's flame hitbox significantly, you essentially reduce the projectiles to very close-range hit-scan. This means that ambushing becomes entirely unviable, as you would do better as any other class. I would like to thank you, however, for not using the statement that one particle hitting is the equivalent of every particle hitting, like so many other UA-camrs have parroted. This video by Minty Coffee shows very well how this is patently false:ua-cam.com/video/LvnTY3pcVV0/v-deo.html. It's nice to see a voice of reason in the face of all the misinformation.
This was an informative video...
...is what I would probably say if I wasn't just watching the Doggo's tail wagging all vid.
I didn’t notice that its tail wags!
I could happily watch you dissect every class in this format, MOAR!
As someone who uses the Scorch Shot constantly because I get off on the suffering and salt of others, I feel like the explosion radius on non-direct hits should be reduced and make the explosion radius on secondary bounces and direct hits larger. That way the three flares guns all reward aiming and have their own niche's. The Flaregun would be the best for solo kills, scorch shot for long range crowd control, and the Detonator for mobility.
EDIT: Just finished the video. I think they should make the hitboxes for the flamethrowers require more aiming. Also, the color-changing afterburn is a dope idea and I want it purely because I feel it'd be visually pleasing.
I would like the scorch to reward aiming on players vs the ground, sounds like a good idea
A lot of these ideas are really good. May i also suggest that extinguishing teammates should give the pyro ammo not health.
-Removes the weird dynamic where a pyro might actually be helping the other teams health pool by lighting up players
-Helps pyro not run out of ammo so easily
-Pyro doesn’t really deserve to randomly get health boosts like that
Also pyros flames could be more transparent on the pyros own screen. Right now you blind yourself whenever you use them which just encourages w+m1 and not aimming.
Lastly I think the pyro could be better at moving enemy stickies because he’s suppose to be a utility class, and right now soldier is often better at clearing them.
And sometimes they do w+m1 and me,how i can see him?.is like a flashbang but i think just reduce a LITTLE they range of w+m1 because some times pyro they catch you and that excuse that just run and not see him is not working right now and if the pyro is smart they use the hammerjack so faster that you not have chance to escape
11:08 I use the scorch shot as my premier Pybro secondary. For these reasons; You can harass peaking players, give them some afterburn, soften them up and make it easier for the sentry and your engineer to deal with the people peaking the sentry. It has an area of effect so it can light up groups of enemies momentarily. Said AOE reach's around corners so you can give people who aren't even peaking a sentry gun afterburn damage. This is less useful against medic pairs but still, it provides that added utility above the shotguns, etc. You could also use the gas passer or the detonator for this role, but the scorch shot takes out the skill for the detonator and the cooldown for the gas passer + necessitating ignition on the target that the gas passer requires.
When it comes to the detonator VS scorch shot I think it comes down to, do you want more knock-back or do you want slightly more damage on players who are trying to peak the engy nest. Comparing them to the gas passer, the gas passer isn't always there when you need it. It takes some powers of prediction and has a long cool-down but it is effective at stopping a non medic assisted push for a limited time. Giving your engineer vital time to fix or replace buildings, but one miss step of unnecessary use and it's now lost that utility. Of course to actually gain any DPS out of it you have to ignite the players, and the sentry gun will do a good job of that. You won't necessarily be able to ignite people who are behind corners though, and that's where the detonator or scorch shot comes in handy and for knock-back purposes in getting people softened up and away from a position to damage a friendly sentry. I'd grab the Scorch Shot, but no disrespect to people who are actually skilled who can use the detonator for the same thing and actually kill harassing players.
I know pybro is incredibly niche but I just love the Homewrecker, Detonator/Scorch Shot, with stock flamethrower (with maximum allotted airblasts) I know the shotguns can get rid of stickies but you can also just air-blast them off the sentry too. I just see skilled players slowly pecking away at vulnerable sentries as more of a problem than demomen spamming stickies which you'd still have somewhat of an answer for with this loadout.
I love how the pyro 'talks' in this video
The only thing with these colors on the afterburn would be that it could be confusing disguised spies depending on the color they are burning, as the player should always shine in the color of their own team, even disguised spies
I think all these suggestions are spot on, and I have one thought to add: from what you're describing, the afterburn color would remain a constant from the time the last particle hit to the time afterburn ends. I.e. white-tier afterburn remains white until the flames die out. What if the color changed depending on how much effect time remains? I.e. white-tier flames turn yellow and then red before dying out. I don't think this is necessarily a better idea, as it has significantly different implications for signaling. I'm just curious to hear what people think.
yeah, i just want any visual indicator at all as to what afterburn does
particle count, colour, opacity, etc
What’s this?
An actually civilized discussion on Pyro and rebalances for him?
What sort of alternate universe am I in!?
Wouldn't a high-damage lightning gun for the Pyro just turn him into a knock-off Sniper?
Mere Lyap depends of they cap the range, and how much damage falloff it has
it doesnt need lg range, i just want it to be a needle high damage thing
more like a short range minigun with tiny spread than a sniper rifle
How haven't I come across your channel before? Your videos are really engaging and fun to pay attention to. Keep up the good work!
Me just staring at that UGC medal with a spinning propeller
the scorch shot: lower damage/afterburn, remove mini crits, increase the knockback the weapon does, and have the AoE projectile bounce up a wee bit higher so there's a better chance of avoiding it if you're paying attention.
Okay, the axtinguisher changes that you put forward are great but wouldn't it just be easier to m1 targets down with the flamethrower?
Not if they make the flamethrower harder to use for the same damage
I think you really nailed pretty much everything here. My only suggestion would be to restore the old axtinguisher but with slower movement speed and bullet/explosive resistance to make Pyro a bit tankier as a sort of subclass
slower movespeed would be pretty okay i think
the after burn thing seems over complicated, but I do like the lightning gun idea and and the detonator, to bad the jetpack makes the detonators explosive jump redundant now :(
In your afterburn changes, I remember a similar concept that was "Originally" going to be used in the pyro update WAY back in the day (when it was just a rumor or something along the lines), like you said, there were going to be levels, but instead of visuals colors, it was different, it was just purely visual on the flames, so if someone was just recently ignited, they would have burn marks on them.
Heres a list to better understand: (NOTE: Info about this may be off since the last time I read that rumor'd info on a pastebin)
Level 1 - Players have burn marks
Level 2 - Players have small visible flames
Level 3 - Players have bigger flames on them but it doesn't look like the current afterburn visuals...
Level 4 - Current afterburn flames look
Level 5 - Players are fully engulfed in flames
And like what you said in your video, different flamethrowers (and flareguns) would have different starting levels such as:
Default Famethrower - Afterburn starts around level 2/3, briefly igniting someone would produce level 1 afterburn (up to level 3)
Backburner - Afterburn starts around level 3, briefly igniting someone would produce a level 2 afterburn (up to level 4)
Degreaser - Afterburn starts around level 1, briefly igniting someone would produce a level 1 afterburn (up to level 2)
Phlog - Afterburn starts around level 4, briefly igniting someone would produce a level 2 flame (up to level 5 via 'Mmmph')
Skins of the flamethrower work the same as the default flamethrower
As for flares:
All types of flareguns would always start on afterburn level 3, and work up to level 5, no matter what type of flaregun was used (according to the concept)
And thats pretty much it... honestly, I would love if valve did use the afterburn level system, but more in the way you used it (colors then purely visual)
I like yr ideas! Very interesting. It's a shame we probably aren't going to receive any actual major Pyros fixes for a while..or maybe we will who knows
Tbh i would sit and watch that 2 hours video while i had breakfast
Agreed on everything in this video, with some bonus stuff:
Before Jungle Inferno I had an idea similar to that with the afterburn levels, but with a twist. Going with your colour-coding, red and orange burning players would take normal damage. Yellow burning players would take mini-crit damage from all damage sources (except maybe explosives). White burning enemies would receive crit damage from all damage sources (except maybe explosive). White burning would only be possible if you are continously burning them at the max afterburn level. The base damage of flamethrowers would be severely reduced, making it so you have to burn enemies for a while to start dealing proper damage. Then, once you do get the enemies to that level of burn, you provide massive support to your team.
I don't know if this would be better or worse for the game, compared to just having Pyro deal his own damage. But I like the idea of making Pyro more support-oriented.
Combo Pyro would automatically become more interesting, because the different afterburn crit levels can interact in many ways with your various secondaries and melees.
The Volcano Fragment could give instant white afterburn. So it would not be trash.
The Axtinguisher could be like the Bushwacka, so that it can full-crit on yellow burning enemies.
Backburner, rather than instantly critting, could possibly be changed to apply the afterburn level much faster from behind, so you reach the crit stage much faster. That's very similar, but has a more subtle mechanical depth to it.
Degreaser would be better with base damage and airblast combos, but would be worse at afterburn-based crit combos, since it has weaker afterburn power.
I think all this added depth would be really nice for Pyro.
I think it'd make an interesting idea for a unique flamethrower, but might break the class a little (to one extreme or the other) to have it apply everywhere
Imho volcano applying full huge afterburn would make a lot of sense
That would also work with the axe yeah
Someone also suggested the backburner just doing less damage from the front; I feel like they could literally just make it do like -33% damage from the front and +50% from behind or something, replacing the crits entirely
imho the degreaser is okay right now, the little afterburn doesnt really matter (really) compared the switch speed upside
it doing the -10% damage from before with a bit faster switch speed would be fine, i still think
Scotch Shot: I like your idea about giving it LESS range. I think it should do a fun amount of knock back just to make it viable for disorientating enemies (thus it might need a slower firing rate.)
I think the way to balance the dragon’s fury is to have two hit boxes on it. The main damage would be in the middle, and there would be a hit box surrounding that one that does half damage
Being a fan of the stock flamethrower, i find shotgun or scorch shot as the ideal combos. I really like the idea of making flares with stock more viable
All the changes you suggest are great and sound very beneficial to balancing the game. Awesome video!
danke
I really love the amount of content this month :D (i like how the pyro's shaking their head like they're talking)
Also, if i got a penny everytime i've got hit from the dragon's fury while their back was turned, i'd probably get 2 bucks a week. >:(
oh dear
That moment when the new axtinguisher is the same axtinguisher balance idea you mentioned in this video
Thank you for showing people that the flame thrower hitbox is actually broken
Make the Phlog instead of gaining full crit upon left-click makes it does normal damage or mini-crits and heal him base on how much health he has left while double the amount of ammo consumption during the activation (aka the less health he currently have the fewer health he can gain back) which encourages the pryo to dodge and actually plan when to charge in and retreat.
The scorch shot's afterburn should be effected by fall of i.e 4 seconds at mid range, 2 at max range.
And once again good video, papa woolen
I agree with most of your suggestions and really hope Valve will do something with Axtinguisher
I love this axe, it was my bread and butter on pyro. I still use it till this day, but it's hard right now :c
Also the thing u didn't mention (i think, ehhh? 🤔) are those new visuals on pyro's flamethrower. They are driving me mad, most of the time u can't see shit and it's a bad thing for an FPS game.
yeah i do think the flames are a bit hard to look through
a better idea to recognize the duration/strength of afterburn wouldn't be colours to signal what afterburn it is, as that might conflict with the blue glow on flaming blu classes. Itd be better and would fit tf2 more to have the amount of fire on someone fit how long the afterburn will last.
For example a small puff from a degreaser that'd last 2 seconds would have a couple flames here and there, maybe one on the arm, a small one. but for full afterburn from 3 seconds of a backburner for example, the full flaming effect we see today would fit. The effect will gradually decrease based on the current afterburn time left, so vigilant players will be able to identify when it will run out, this'd help medics especially to triage their team after a pyro attack
Also everyone would love a lightning gun flamethrower redux, but itd have to be tweaked since players in tf2 move much slower than players in quake, maybe with lower damage or lower fire rate.
Yeah, a difference in particles might make more sense than a colour change.
A tf2-y lightning gun doesnt even need to be hitscan, it could just be really really high velocity and short range alongside a smaller hitbox to make up for the speed differences
MAYBE instead of Phlogistinator having no airblast whatsoever, maybe we can replace it with this:
> *Alt-fire: Fire a short burst of energy that extinguishs teamates for a small amount of Mmmph (~15% meter gained)*
> *Alt-fire does not reflect projectiles*
> *No health gained from extinguishing teamates*
> *Press the Reload key to activate Mmmph*
I know the Manmelter would essentially be obsolete, but it needs a rework anyway
the way in which you've mad this video (as if pyro is saying it)is really hilarious
-Stock flamethrower :
Change the way that particles works so pyro requires tracking in order to do full dmg.That will reward good pyros that have practiced the flamethrower and will give a motive to new players to learn it.
-Airblast
I think that airblast is too forgiving.From close-mid(i mean between close and mid) airblast range can be arround 3 meters above pyro and 2 meters at his side (without moving his screen),meaning he can airblast everything at any range if he gets the timing except at his feet but that is countered by the pyro jumping.(also he can airblast behind him).Also i believe that airblast is inconsistent,if you airblast the enemy near his feet he will fly ~10 meters away instead of normal airblast of like ~4 meters but if you airblast him directly at enemy feets then he will fly vertically.
-Phlog
If particles are fixed i would leave phlog where it is,maybe a small vulnerability when running crits so you can not just spamm scorch shots and take crits every 2 mins.
-Dragon's fury
Reduce its hitbox,make it to have a clip and not infinite ammo.Make it hard to aim or else reduce its dmg.Two shoting ppl should require skill that rewards the good players and give the new a motivation to train it.
-Scorch shot
Make it more like a tool.Increase a little bit its jumping capabilities,let the splash radious the same and the ability to clear stickies.Also leave the push back in but remove its mini crits on burning players and reduce the afterburn from 10 secs to ~3 secs.
-Detonator
When jumping eats little less hp,like about 25 hp per jump.
-Gas passer
All ppl when they take dmg they get a 10 sec afterburn and neo annihilator can crit on it.That can make it work more like a area denial at comp (when also they fix passing through walls sometimes) and as a fun combo at pubs.(not spammable cuz the recharge time)
-Mannmelter
Make it a long range option for pyro.Remove afterburn,at long range will do 50 dmg at players and 35 buildings-at mid and close range it will deal 35 dmg at players and 35 at buildings.Keep the extinguish of players but only with 20 hp bonus and not a crit system.
-Volcano fragment
It gives all time 10% ressistance on sentries,15% knockback resistance and a double rate of capping the on wearer but it has
-10% ressistance at bullets.
-flare gun
Give it a slight faster switch speed (~10%)so it can be used with stock more easily,at degreaser it will add a 5% faster switch speed on top of the already one existing.
-Axtiguisher
What wollen says from 4:11+ the dmg should be depending on the afterburn of the enemy player meaning 1 sec + crit tactic will not work.
-Homewrecker
i will leave it at its current state.
i think making the axe take timing would be a nice change though
i feel like having it so that
-> initial burst of fire, then axe does a little bit of damage; but instantly (good vs low hp targets)
-> timing exactly like 1 second of fire or whatever to get a lot of damage, but later (good vs high hp targets)
makes more sense to me than just full damage no matter the input
wait cuz you confused me,you are talking about the stock axe or the extinguisher and at second you say about afterburn effects like 1 sec of fire then extiguisher?
as well as reducing flame size, i think the particles should also die a bit quicker so walking into flames you've already been hit by doesn't happen. also i think airblast should be vertically inverted, so aiming up pushes peeps up and aiming down pushes peeps down; right now to try and pop people up involves bouncing them off an extremely variable floor which makes it pretty inconsistent on where they're going to go. inverting it is a pretty simple fix i'd say. good vid
yeah i think increasing the decay on them again might be fine
I really do agree with virtually all of your points, glad you made the video.
Also, maybe make the Phlogs MMPPH be a whip speed boost with mini-crits + full healing? I think that since you'd lose airblast (and in this videos case; ease of use), it'd be nice to make Pyro be quicker.
+Heikki Legit I wouldn't mind it, but I feel like a speed boost would make it harder to kill the pyro and possibly overwrite the damage down from crits to minicrits (buff banner stock still seems to kill quite fast, not as good as kritz, but id probably give it up for a speed boost)
How 2 fix the pyro class from team defense fort 2
1. Nerf Afterburn. Simple, decrease damage. Duration is fine
2. Nerf scorch shot. Remove the knockback, reduce the afterburn duration (full duration if flare hits twice)
3. Buff gas passer. 10 damage on ignition, gassed players are considered "wet"
4. Fix the Backburners broke ass crit hitbox and change it to mini crit from behimd
5. Rework Phlog. Phlog should absorb projectiles instead of reflecting. Absorbing projectiles builds mmph. At full charge, taunt to temporarily give all nearby teammates to do afterburn damage on non crit(or minicrit ) damage
6. Buff the hot hand to do, well...anything useful. Buff team reload speed, buff team meter charge (ex. Banners, shields and sandvichs get reduced cooldown.
I think that the axtinguisher could be fixed by shifting the deploy penalty to a holster penalty (and possibly increasing it). It's a weapon that exists to be a combo but the deploy time prevents that. If you changed it to a holster time penalty you would still be able to use it as a combo but it would punish you for messing up or using it in the wrong situation.
How I would balance axtinguisher:
-50% damage vs non-burning players
Marked for death while active
+100% mini-crits vs burning players
+100% critical hits while blast jumping
(Includes deto/scorch jumping)
So mini-crits from all around (88)
Crits with -50% damage while deto/scorch/reflect jumping (98)
And regular crits while the person is on fire and you are blast jumping (195)
I don't agree with the change to the axtinguisher about damage scaling with afterburn level. The reason the axtinguisher is so garbage is it's totally inferior to just continuing using the flamethrower than trying to combo. If I had to get max afterburn level, then I'd rather just keep burning them since they're probably close to death. I much more like the idea of it marking you for death. That much better suits the risk reward playstyle. The pyro could still be rewarded a fast kill combo while also giving the opponent a window to counter.
And about the homewrecker, I think that some buff would be nice like resistance to sentries. It's practically useless for anything other than being a pybro. There's rarely a circumstance where it's useful against an enemy engineer.
I mean they could screw around with the damage levels, I was just trying to think of something that would make the axe take a bit more skill & timing to use than just 1 ammo and insta switch
If it was the case that just one tier above a puff would do a good amount of damage, then pyros could learn to set fire to the target for exactly like 1 second or whatever, before switching to the axe for the first frame it gets the afterburn tier up & axe damage buff
I honestly don't mind the way the Scorch shot is now but if I had to change one thing I would just change the insane knockback it gives like holy shit you get launched a million miles from this. Also the ability to jump with it is a bit strange, sure it's not as good as the Detonator to jump with but is still a viable mobility option and kinda blurs the line between the two.
Just a thing to add to the Afterburn Level:
I think it should increase the level every time the target gets hits by another weapon (that belongs to you) that can apply afterburn. (and also add more levels to compensate i.e. red, orange, yellow, *green, blue,* white)
i.e. Degreaser hits the opponent (red), Scorch Shot hits once (orange) and then another (yellow), and then V O L C A N O F R A G M E N T (green)
I really like these ideas however the one concern I have is with the afterburn changes and whether new players will understand them.
Right now afterburn is the same colour regardless of how stacked it is, I feel like a colour change would be more intuitive than it is now
a Woolen Sleevelet it certainly makes it easier to see the different types of afterburn but whether all the new players out there will understand it even exists is the problem. Take for example the airblast new players just don't realise it's a feature because it is only in the item description - something they don't read. It's honestly a great idea that I could never come up with, but how will new players (specifically pyros) know it is a feature?
my face when Volvo actually did make damage based on afterburn.
You got it, mate
I liked every idea except for a couple:
1. The lowest tier flame shouldn't be red as it will be pretty hard to determine what colour is the burning player, can't really come up with a more neutral colour from the top of my head.. uhh.. maybe some purple pink-ish?
2. Reverting the axtinguisher and just applying the "marked for death" debuff is just going the same path of the Crit-a-Cola. You might take 35% more damage if the target hits you, but it's not really gonna stop you from insta-killing them in 85% of scenarios. Plus, that's gonna make him an even stronger 1v1 class, which I really don't think is necessary.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be red. It could even just be orange but with less particles & more transparent
I liked peoples ideas of making the axe extinguish a target and instantly deal the remaining afterburn in one hit. seemed to be a fun idea.
He's back for more
he's actually back for more
i love how you talk with the pyro's actions, its very entertaining
I truly hope the tf2 team takes this into consideration
I think, they should add random crits to the axtinguisher (When are you going to just Melee an enemy that isn't lit) and decrease the switch penalty as well as the DMG penalty
I really think the Detonator needs to do the like 15 damageish like you said. I feel like it's a good skill-based movement tool for Pyro, and it's just a fun and good weapon overall. Right now it can do up to like 40someodd damage and it is just WAAAY too much. I don't think it would change balance that much either. Detonator jumping is one of the most skill-based tools Pyro has and so I think it SHOULD be better.
Oh holy shit, this explains so much. I didn't realize the pyro was firing behind them. I gave up on the game because I found playing to be too frustrating. And yea, the pyro is broke as fuck, and the only reason players are praising it is because it is a crutch for them.
The color of the fire damage is a smart idea, but I don't think the game would look very good with those color effects. I think "transparency" in fire would be a cool idea. The least afterburn damage would be a faded flame effect (80% transparency from original flame particles), medium (45% transparency from original flame particles), and then the worst afterburn (0% transparency) Other than that I really like your thoughts on these weapons, I LOVE the thought about punishing players for not aiming as its always a constant complaint that good Pyro mains have to sit with and suck up. Love the smaller hit box idea as well for the flamethrowers, would possibly fix a lot of problems and redeem the class.
If only Valve would pay attention.
What I would like would be for Blu plays to not look red when they are on fire.
I like the first Axe buff of being marked for death, but not the other. Way too complicated. Although the shorten after burn isn't a bad idea either.
Afterburn colour is the best idea ive ever heard axtinguisher with marked for death sounds good smaller hitbox on flamethrower as long as they are not size 1 sounds interesting flare gun change is great.
9:50
15 medium HP loss on Det-jumping puts it at Gunboats level of HP loss in blast-jumping, and though its height gain is still half of what a normal rocket-jump/thruster boost gets, it doesn't really need to compare itself to those two in any way, especially since it's already a Jack-Of-All-Trades, Soldier Shotgun-like Secondary to the Pyro.
But if it really needs a buff, I'd rather suggest the HP loss be reduced from 23-44 HP to 19-33 HP instead; that'd put its HP loss somewhat between Non-Gunboats and Gunboats level of rocket-jumping, further emphasizing its Jack-Of-All-Trades/Master-Of-None aspect.
I'd also like to add an additional balance suggestion on top of all that, and it's a buff for the Thruster: nothing too complex, just cut its switch speeds in half, making it that much faster to pull out and to put away.
Such a buff would hopefully also end this recent and nonsensical opinion about the Thruster being outshined by the Detonator in "every way", even though both are effectively as Apples Vs Oranges as any Pyro Secondary comparison could get.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be that low. I just feel like any buff would be nice, it's fine as is though.
I just find it really fun to use.
This video is low-key just an Unusual showcase.
It’s a nice Unusual, though.
i think the changing the visuals of afterburn can work but it would probably be better if it changed size instead of color.
what i would change about stock pyro (besides the hitbox issues) is give it the ability to airblastjump (make him take self damage to balance it) and make afterburn reduce healing (more then it currently does. make the reduced healing a reason to run the pyro when facing a black box + conch soldier or something) but make afterburn do less damage and make it harder to (fully) remove
for individual weapons:
make the axtinguisher extinguish enemies (with the afterburn changes i proposed it would make it a trade between reduced healing to burst damage)
make the phlog an overheating flamethrower. alot of ppl want an overheat mechanic (for some reason) and i think the phlog can serve that purpose. make it a flamethrower that works in short bursts and all for some new benefit.
just some ideas i had
yeah, changing the size or brightness of the particles might be better
overheating on the phlog sounds kind of cool yeah
I have a lot of changes. I'd like to remove some weapons and introduce some ideas but mainly:
Focus on melee damage (increase to 95 (not certain ones like the ting), but reduce the effectiveness of everything else)
After burn just burns brighter with more particles (yours might be a better idea but I wanted to use different colors for different effects)
Flare guns proc all ignite ticks immediately so the person you hit isn't burning anymore(so axtinguisher can be "returned" to glory)
Rebuff degreaser I wanted the degreaser to airblast yourself like a det jump (we can't have airblast and everything else we gotta give something up most of u don't even use it right.
I don't have much pyro experience but I do think it's TF2's most interesting class. I think the right way to balance him is to make him the SOLID (not gimmicky, not weird or hard to understand) CQC King. When you die to the pyro you know that you got too close no excuses.
I would've already posted a discussion to work on it more but it's just so many numbers and weird things to make it clear to someone reading it. IDK where I would post it just to clear it up.
If you read this far there is more ideas that I have but I'm not trying to right a novel just a book.
The problem with melee damage is that melees are an unconventional way to do damage. Which is why the most used melees on Pyro are the ones that add a utility.
Nico #1325 The most useless Pyro weapons are the ones that suck. The power jack and backscratcher r utility
12:58 That was the weakest “REEEEEEEEE” I have ever heard.
12:50 Perfectly sums up my feelings on the flamethrower, make pyros have to aim valve please!
About the axtinguisher, they could make it extinguish enemy... you know, for puns sake... and to limit the burst damage
-Afterburn change - really like but the flames should not make team recognition a pain
-flare gun - I don't think it needs a faster switch speed, it's good enough now and it's not very hard to combo even with stock flamethrower
-Axtinguisher - I'd like the old old axtinguisher (no minicrits when pulled out) but with 32-35 base damage, so a very fast swing would do around 102-105. Also I don't think damage based on afterburn is a good idea since it greatly decreases it's combo-ing potential (and that's the main meat of the weapon) and if you have to shoot him with the flamethrower for 1-2 seconds to get ok-ish damage with the axtinguisher, at that point I'd just continue melting him with the flames. Idk about lower afterburn when equipped tho.
-Detonator - yes
-Gas Passer - how I want it: yellow afterburn yes, takes 30sec to charge and also by dealing damage, pairs with neon annihilator (no going through wallz)
-Scorch shot - pretty ok how it is
-Homewrecker - yea I like your changes
-Phlog - I want that on every flamethrower pls I want lower flame box
-dragon fury - yea it's too big hitbox make smol
- airblast jumping - your idea good
could just be different amounts/opacities/brightnesses of particles, doesnt have to be colours
i just think it would be a nice bonus, only a small buff like 20% or something would be needed to make it actually really good again vs the shotgun
They could make it build up the tiers faster, so it doesnt take 2 seconds of fire to build up a crit. There should be a middle ground somewhere where theres an actual timing you can learn to get the most damage in the least amount of flame time, vs just hitting one particle
a Woolen Sleevelet well a 15-20% faster switch speed won't hurt anybody and it's true the shotgun is better than the flaregun so i guess you're right. About the axtinguisher i think your idea could work out if it's something like "in the 1st second of afterburn you only do about 100 damage and after the 1st second you do 150 damage", so against scout/sniper/spy you ca poof them and axe them for around 113 (so near death) and against solly/demo/med/heavy you can hold m1 and do 50-60 flame dmg and then 150 dmg swing. This could actually work.
I have a huuuge Word file that I´m writing balancing ideas into. I have a lot of ideas for pretty much every class. And since we´re talking about Pyro, let me show my stats about restating the Phlogistinator. I want to make it a new weapon.
When the Mmph meter is full, taunting activates momentary uber (only during the duration of the taunt) and guarantees
mini-crits and 70% tightened fire spread for 8 seconds.
Mmph meter requires 400 damage.
+40% reduction in fire spread.
-30% less gas on airblast
-20% damage
-Airblast can only delete projectiles
-no random crits
The point of this restat is to actually make it the flamethrower semi-hitscan, just like the Quake laser gun. And removing airblast for tripled damage is so broken in pubs, that I simply had to change that. The airblast is now worth using when countering a projectile based class, but not so effective against moving targets, which is why it´s a more accurate but less damaging flamethrower that can occasionaly strengthen its stats.
And remember, it´s *justmyopinionpleasestopbashingmyheadinwitharock*
a tight spread on it makes a lot of sense to me tbh
Pyro main since beta: Nice video Sleevert. Picked up a lot of my bugbears. My thoughts
Afterburn: agree flare guns(s) AB should be bonus, apart from the current Scorch Shot
Scorch Shot: I hate this weapon. Too easy with the minicrit bonus and lingering damage and makes the Detonator redundant
Detonator : Bring back 45hp damage minicrits and buff timed explosion damage. Too weak Vs SS
Homewrecker: too niche, too weak on offense. Needs knockback and damage resistance when out to be useful. Balance with slower deploy. Should be a super hard counter Vs minisentries; should reduce damage by 50-60%. Would stop engies spamming them thoughtlessly
Axtinguisher: kind of ok as is, but if superslow deploy, should always do 195 on burning players
Phlog: replace full crits with mini crits over longer duration.
Dragon's Fury: this thing is fun but horrible to play against if more than one Pyro. Make it that Pyro's cannot stack the damage bonus.
Shotgun: sadly the shotgun is now really weak as a defense against another Pyro. Range is terrible and if the other Pyro is in flamethrower range, you're dead, even if you get the shotty drop on them with good burst damage.
everyone who doesn't main this godforsaken "you-win-button" of a class hates the flare gun.
you are the most tolerable and reasonable pyro i've ever seen, thank you for being you
I think colour-coded afterburn particles could get too messy and confusing considering that there are already Halloween effects that change the afterburn to green. Valve will likely wan't to avoid confusion for new players asking "so green flame does nothing but white flame is stronger? Why?"
I really like the airblast idea though to make Pyro immune to the minicrits of his reflected projectiles. I often feel like I'm punished when I'm saving teammates from rollers because even just a whiff of the splash damage does some huge hurt to yourself.
Since the flame consists of small particles, it also could be nice if the particle amount would correlate to the afterburn time that is remaining.
would make sense
i like your idea for the flare gun, homewrecker and airblast jumping changes, but personally i take a more moderate approach to a lot of the other weapons on this list.
i still use the axtinguisher from time to time and it isn't that bad honestly. 131 damage is nothing to sneeze at. but the reality is that it's barely usable with the degreaser right now and not at all with anything else. i think if some of the switch-to speed is brought down that'd be fine. your idea is interesting, though. potentially it could cause the target to instantly A. be extinguished and B. take all the damage they would've taken from their current afterburn? that's just a thought. i personally dislike the idea of a marked for death debuff, though. i don't think it actually adds much in terms of counterplay.
i have less experience with the gas passer but i honestly just think they should halve the current charge time but make it not charge from the damage the cloud does, and then have the gas meter show the cloud's duration while it's out. would help with clarity and usability. another thing would be to have it gain charge from support stuff like extinguishing teammates and dropping ubers. also making it not spread through walls would be nice but knowing valve that change will come in three years time.
i don't presently have any problems with the other two flare guns, but i also rarely use them. if anything i think more should be done to differentiate them. no ideas on how to accomplish that though.
as for the flamethrowers, all of them could probably use a slight decrease in hitbox size. down to one seems a bit drastic, but maybe somewhere in the 3-6 range is appropriate. the dragon's fury could potentially stand to be a little larger than that but it definitely needs to come down from where it is now.
as for the phlog... the weapon's a goddamn mess. whoever added it must cry themselves to sleep every night from sheer guilt. idk if this would fix it, but:
- add in a reverse airblast that sucks people in. could still disrupt people and extinguish flames, but no projectile reflecting. otherwise useful for obvious reasons.
- take it down to just 100 ammo. airblasting would still be 20.
- maybe make it so that while it's critting the pyro is slowed down slightly?
that's my personal thoughts. definitely an interesting video, woolen! i think valve will go with more minimalist changes than what you've proposed, but there's nothing wrong with thinking big.
I was running around with the axe on stream earlier and got some pretty fun frags with it, I just don't really like how you can do the same a lot of the time with, if not the powerjack, even the backscratcher (plus the chance of random crit to do over 200 damage is pretty insane)
I do like the idea of the axe just extinguishing & dealing the full afterburn damage, it'd be a pretty cool mechanic that would discourage setting everyone on fire and meleeing one at a time, and encouraging focusing on the target you want to get the most damage on first
less movespeed with it out or something could also work instead of minicrits, making it easier to get away if you are in an open area & aware the pyro is just running at you
i have difficulty telling what team threw what gas cloud tbh, im not sure if theres team colouring or not, but it doesnt seem very obvious at first glance
One is pretty low, but i think any size down would be an immense improvement for playing against the pyro
thanks for the reply friendo
>festive axetinguisher
S A D
that was my favorite festive item, but then she was nerfed into the ground
And finally came the Blue Moon update, thank Arceus...
I dunno, I feel like Axetinguisher was problematic back in the day because of the airblast mechanics. Now that they're different, I think they should try and revert it to its original stats, see where it goes from there.
Scorch Shot wise, maybe it could have less afterburn duration than the other flare guns? That would counter-balance the ease of lighting people on fire.
I would appreciate a decrease of self caused damage on the detonator as detonator jumping, while useful, takes quite the amount of health to peform. A decrease in damage taken is very welcome in my eyes.
As a semi-pyro main, I think the only balance change pyro needs is the phlog do mini crits instead of full crits
I would add a few things: first, increase holster time on axtinguisher, so if you miss and the afterburn fades, it takes longer to light them on fire again. Second, the dragon's fury should actually crit burning players -- this 300% damage BS is better than crits anyway. Finally, make the SVF immediately put out white-tier afterburn -- throw that weapon a bone already!
i think a holster nerf would make more sense than a deploy nerf, yeah
I think that the flame thrower should do slightly less damage if you're farther from the enemy as well as your afterburn changes.
I agree. Phlog needs to have a smaller hitbox, dragon's fury needs to be balanced and axtinguisher needs to be buffed. Airblast should be only for projectiles and pushing peoples in front but NOT IN THE AIR WHILE AIMING TO THE ENEMY'S FEET!! (Then reserve shooter nerf was not needed)
The best thing that they could change is little afterburn for every class except spys and pros. Also, make the volcano fragment good.
As an age old pyro main I can really appreciate these changes
I don't think the sentry bullet resistance for the homewrecker is necessary, considering the building damage is mainly for destroying sappers as they are technically buildings.
i guess yeah
The dragons fury could start in red afterburn and in the second consecutive hit change to Orange afterburn but don't give the Dragon's fury the ability to finish in the white afterburn, like, make it have a maximum level of afterburn that finish in idk Orange for example. ( I don't know if I explained this right but I hope someone gets the idea)