In the video, I misspelled it. Sorry. I'm currently working on making a pyro hat out of 75 phlogs.
This weapon is, as far as I'm aware, the most stupidly overpowered thing ever to disgrace the good name of pyros. Perhaps the very worst-balanced weapon Valve has ever implemented, direct upgrades included. For those of you who don't know or don't see what all the fuss is about, allow me to pontificate.
First off, we'll go over the disadvantages, almost none of which impact a bad player in any meaningful way:
- No airblast whatsoever. This is the big one. You can't put out teammates (selfish pyros don't anyways). You can't reflect projectiles (unskilled pyros can't anyways). You can't push enemies off cliffs on the few maps that feature them (dumb pyros don't anyways). You can't do that dumb, cheesy reserve shooter combo (the one good thing about this weapon). Compare the former most OP flamer, the backburner's penalty (3x airblast cost)
- 10% damage penalty. Compare the Degreaser's similar penalty (10% damage penalty + 25% afterburn damage penalty.)
- No random crits. We'll see more about crits in advantages.
- Doesn't flame someone close enough to bump into you (as much), so if a scout drops down directly on your head or you're enough of a noob to get outstrafed, you have to switch to melee. This means that in some ways the best way to kill a phlog user is to go Pyro. I mentioned in another thread that the biggest hallmark of being OP is when the best way to counter a class is to become that same class. Not in the same way, but the phlog does make pyros OP.
Let me briefly mention the advantages of the weapons compared above. The backburner gives you mini-crits on flame damage just for getting behind someone (which adds up to a lot of low-damage mini-crits in a few seconds), and is undeniably cheap but takes a small amount of skill. The Degreaser lets you switch weapons way faster, which can be manipulated for crit combos of varying cheapness but requires you to have some skill and timing and work with your enemy as they change ranges.
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.