The State of Pyro and Chemist in my view (Rant)

The poll was based on the first variation of the mana change (we tweaked it after that). Regardless, I agree that the mana change should not have been added, and in the short term, we should revert to how the mana was before the update.

What do you think we should do to buff Pyro? Or do you have a rework suggestion for Pyro?

 

what i don't get is why doesn't pyro just get reverted completely to its old version. the instakill was changed only because of chap and more people had more problems with archer and assassin anyways. for the most part pyro's instakill was accepted iirc. more people enjoy playing old pyro as it was simpler, quicker, and more effective.
if things need to be tweaked and changed you can start off the base pyro the majority loves instead of working off of the pyro the majority hates.

 

Yeah reverting pyro is cool but something needs to be done about stalemates then for sure. In my experience of matches pyro makes up for 33% of all recoveries, and if it's plain old insta it's totally easier to counter. Again that's mainly from a competitive viewpoint.

 

So here's a few thoughts about CTF as a whole and how it relates to pyro and chemist (I'll rant as well). The process of balancing, introducing, and reworking classes is all about where do we want CTF to be. Each change we make makes a step in a certain direction, so we want to make sure we're going in a direction we want. Now this is harder than it sounds, since it's easy to look at a class and think "that class is too powerful and needs to be nerfed" or "that class is too weak and needs to be buffed". In fact, that's been most of the drive for a ton of CTF changes over the year. Pyro instakill too op/annyoing? nerf. Chemist, soldier, ninja, assassin, engineer, necro, and dwarf all have been nerfed in their lifetime due to one reason or another. Of course we have seen the impact of so many nerfs without that many buffs, as it runs to a more stale game. So to counter this we've been trying to buff classes instead of nerfing classes to head into a more fun but balanced game. Of course we don't succeed all the time (clearly with scout, chemist, and pyro), but we're making progress. So now when we're considering pyro, the question is, what do we want pyro to be? With the current pyro and especially with old pyro, it's a pretty campy class. Most of the time it stays inside of the flag room, since that's where it's the safest and can deal the most damage. Do we want it to remain that way or have it more active role? Are there other routes that we could pursue that makes pyro more fun to play but balanced? Loads of questions to ask when trying to change classes, and even more so when adding classes.

In terms of class design, personally, I try to achieve three things:
1. Balanced in gameplay and useful.
2. Fun to play.
3. Not super annoying to play against.

I think we succeeded in doing this, more or less, with the engineer rework. It's a little too powerful (and that'll be addressed hopefully soon), but overall it's fun to play and not super annoying to play against (at least imo). However, there are a ton of classes that don't pass this test. Mage is not very useful, and it's very annoying to play against, archer headshots are never fun, chemist right now is not fun to play against, necro is never fun to play, neither is dwarf, scout is a mess right now, pyro is becoming less useful as you stated. So my goal, more or less, is to get all these classes to a point where it would pass that test. So for pyro, what we need is it to be balanced and useful, fun to play and not super annoying to play against. There are two easy options right now: buffing current pyro, or reverting to old pyro. I personally am not a fan of either of those options, but if I were to choose one, I would buff current pyro in some way. I would also consider ways of doing small tweaks to the current pyro to get out of places where it's either not fun to play, or annoying to play against. Change to how frenzy works? Add another fire ability? So many questions... Anyhow, another issue I want to address is offense vs defense balance. One reason why I do like chemist buff is due to it's ability to cap (though a little too much right now), since it gives offense more ways to get in the flag and cap as a team. Right now we're still stuck in the Heavy clears, Soldier steals, Medic heals meta. If we could shift out of that (and buffing chemist definitely helped that, but a bit too much), it'll make offense a little more fun and so hopefully less of a super defensive biased game. In the future I want to see a good major elf rework to help, a small medic rework (the one I shared a few months ago), and a new support healing class. And in conjunction with those changes we also do changes to defense, such as pyro, mage, and assassin. Of course we'll also have to address the 3 major problems with CTF right now: Necro, Dwarf, and Stalemates. But that's a different story, since the those two classes are way out of the meta and stalemates are not classes. Anyhow, that's my rant. A bit off topic, but it gives a perspective as to how I view the process of balancing classes.

 

if pyro reverted to its old instakill, it would still stand little chance any where but on defense due to its cushioned leather armor even if it manages to instakill its target... so id think giving it more steak or even a cool fun ability where each player it kills, a raw steak is dropped from that player, and the pyro cant pick it up until the pyro uses its flint and steel over it to light and "cook" the steak - where it would then turn into cooked steak available for any player on the pyro's team (including the pyro) to pick up (only if that player's class uses steak to heal and only if they are missing at least 1 steak)

because pyro survivability, while being able to deal enough damage, is basically the issue

 

Disagree.

Nom nerfed the hell out of chemist and it stayed like that for years. The class has finally gotten the versatility it used to have, without generally being overpowered.

As far as pyro, I always liked the old version. It's more predictable. Pyro these days you never ****ing know if you're gonna die or just trash the other pyro. At least before if I was on fire, I knew I had to commit all of my resources on that specific player because If I didn't I was gonna die. Bring that or something like that back. Frenzy was a temporary fix at best.

 

Lmfao what

This is completely untrue. Pyro's instakill was extremely annoying to play against for literally everyone except Medic (the only class with fire immunity) and maybe Chemist because of fire-immunity pots. You could legit walk into 5 people and kill everyone in 2 seconds with minimal counterplay. **** was literally the pre-reworked Cookiemonster of CTF.

Archer's instakill was/is arguably worse because you can apply it at super long range and aren't as vulnerable to Assassins but both mechanics are so toxic to play against. Glad Pyro's was removed, although imo current Pyro is underpowered

I, too, love experiencing instant death unless I play Medic.

Also who are these mysterious "people"? Did you take a poll? Wait you didn't, you're just romanticizing one of the biggest mechanical nightmares ever added to the game.

and this is when you realize that the mysterious "majority" consists of you and like 10 dudes on a discord server. Also please explain how 'popular opinion' - you and your friends - has anything to do with what's healthy for the game.

Oh my god you actually mentioned Necro i love you

 

Elf? We've been waiting for elf for so long. It's honestly one of the weakest classes out the list^.

 

I could've listed elf, assassin, and buffed heavy as well (and I mentioned the want to rework elf further down).

 

As one of the 2-3 pyro mains that do exist, everything commented on in this post is accurate. The only thing I disagree with is how you say that the iron chestplate did nothing; it would be better to say that it didn't do much. With full leather I was always getting 2 shot by ninjas, but now I don't, which I am particularly satisfied with.

If the CTF team needs a direction to put pyro in, this is what I suggest: rework everything but just make sure it still has fire and a clear and easy defensive class. Pyro is not supposed to be a versatile class. It is supposed to be good at core defense and core defense only. The frenzy rework completely screwed that up though. Now it's okay at recovery and defense. I would personally prefer to see it as a great defensive class and a **** recovery class, because I can honestly just switch to a different class to recover.

I actually have a pyro rework written up, I just didn't think anyone would really care to see it. For example, in my rework, frenzy charge is a lot less reliant on hit detection (because its trash) and frenzy is more reliable for the pyro.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only pyro main left who mained it during instakill days. I have no idea where all of you got the illusion that people liked the instakill. It was hated on hardcore back in the day because so many people mained offensive soldier and such. The only people that enjoyed instakill pyro were the pyro mains lmfao. The only reason it took forever to change pyro was literally because half the ctf staff were pyro mains, thats why. As much as I miss it, instakill pyro does not need to be brought back...

 

learn how 2 aim

 

yea you're right. i personally enjoyed old pyro even while dying to it 24/7 and i remember there being more controversy for archer and assassin than pyro and once the instakill was removed for it there was lots of backlash. I could be misremembering though this was years ago.
what do i know i don't even play this thing anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯