/tf2/ - Team Fortress 2

I prefer to use the axtinguisher. It's so much fun to creep up on people and flare/axe them in the blink of an eye.

I practice airblasting on tr_walkway with soldier bots that fire rockets.

Airblasting is really just a matter of experience. Pubs are probably the best place to practice.

>>3295

Addendum: You should also play soldier to get into the right mindset. It really helps when dealing with bombing soldiers.

You can try dodgeball servers. I think they're fun.

default, shotgun, and back scratcher are good for a roaming/ambush pyro

for defense, default, scorch shot, and homewrecker (Neon a shit)

>>3296

also, keep in mind that a soldier who knows you can reflect can easily kill you at close range, even with the rocket launcher.

ditch the degreaser and go default

ditch the flare gun and go default

power jack is fine if your a roaming pyro, as is the backscratcher.

If you go defense, grab a homewrecker

Full fledged assault, probably the axtinguisher or the powerjack

degreaser, detonator, axtinguisher

I would suggest instead the Homewrecker. Most of Pyro's melee weapons are weird and unbalanced power grabs which are fairly annoying when his primary already has so much power.

>>3296

Disregard this, the best way to get into the right mindset is to play pyro. Failing that, play melee-only battle medic or suicidal spy. Do not sneak and learn the maps and seek out advantageous situations. That is a matter of familiarity more than skill. You can always do that. Throw yourself into your enemies…from the back or side when possible, but if there is no passage to run through, charge. Charge and weave and dodge, even if it's a heavy or a sniper.

You're going to die a LOT and contribute very little to the team at first, and when you do your enemies will rage and call you a w+m1.

The most important psychological parts of being a pyro are AGGRESSION, tunnel vision, temporary (and very brief) disregard for your health bar, and the understanding that you are meant to rampage until you die and that you will certainly respawn. If an enemy is too good or too far away, you must decide to either tunnel vision them (and probably die, maybe to another enemy, and often without killing or sometimes without even damaging them).

Another thing it's important to remember is that what is important in tf2 is not kills (unless you're actually playing Arena or competitions for some weird reason), but rather time and space. The pyro who hunts down and kills two soldiers on the front lines is helping his team out, but the pyro who lights them on fire briefly then sneaks or dodges past them, lights up the reinforcements, and lets the scout gun him down while he destroys the teleporter exit with his last gasp is better, though. It doesn't even matter if you get the assists on the soldiers or if they lose, or if your team pushes forward to get the ones you lit on fire.

The point is that they scatter. They lose health and they waste time without capping a point, pushing or stopping a cart, or controlling an area. Sometimes, hilariously, they actually run all the way back to their spawn for health when nowhere near it, even though it would be faster to die and wait to respawn. A lot of gamers have this infantile "I didn't lose if I didn't die" mindset that just doesn't fit in tf2…and with killstreak weapons now, you can waste even more of the other team's time because of their own vanity. If you have a good spy on your team, he's laughing his way to their spawn to sap the sentry the engi's building there while they scatter like morons looking for health.

Of course, a medic will fuck up your "strafe around clumped enemies to light them up and then run off into a side passage and laugh at them" strategy. Even the rather better "strafed around scattered enemies and do as much damage and start as many afterburns as possible before I die trying to kill one" tactic can be ruined by a good medic.

This is why you should disregard everything anons tell you about the shotgun and always carry the flare gun. Well, that and snipers. Some snipers are too dumb to move when something hits them while scoped, even with afterburn hurting their aim. The second flare will kill the sniper. This is hilarious.

>>3314

Don't use melees like the backscratcher or ones that give you conditional crits. It can be fun for a little while but it's pretty cheesy and no one is impressed. If you didn't want to impress anyone in the first place, may as well use something balanced to improve overall gameplay. Otherwise you should just quit pyro and go sniper or demo so you can just roflstomp anything with your base weapons. Carrying the homewrecker is like being the pyro who actually airblasts (though scouts are usually too dumb to let you and just keep running around, kek). If you airblast, remove sappers, guard engi stuff when it needs it, spy check, sow chaos and discord over pure kills or damage, go for building destruction (you can destroy a level 3 sentry during setup with a degreaser even with the engineer present if you know what you're doing and get there soon enough) and helping your team over getting kills, then you are the true essence of a pyro. Afterburning, flare tagging, and generally harrying and harassing enemies who are fighting your team right on the front line basically makes you similar to a medic, only instead of helping your ally's health drop slower, you help the enemy's health drop faster so your ally doesn't die.

With all of this said, pyro is a team player which does not rely on team support. You can accomplish amazing things with the orgasmic touch of a heal or even (gasp) an uber, but it's somewhat rare to find medics who get that, plus there are lots of shitty muh kills pyros not worth ubering out there to discourage them.

When push comes to shove, especially when the enemy medic is gathering uber behind the front lines, it's time to stop helping your team out and go for the jugular…whether it be killing them all, wasting their time and leading them on chases until they finally kill you (so, they lose nothing apparently, but if three of them chase you for an entire minute, you just robbed the enemy team of two man-minutes), or just plain and simple sabotage. The main thing about pyro is not to be predictable. Will he go around burninating people up front, or will he start punishing the snipers and support with flares, or is he seriously going to charge the Huo Long Heavy from the side and strafe him down despite the health drain? Or is he behind you and you're already dead? You're not the fastest class, the only long range capability is your flares, and to do any decent damage with the flame cone you have to keep the enemy right in the center while you're both moving, and oh yeah…it lags behind, you have to know how to trail the center of the fire over a moving enemy…you have to be a step ahead of them at all times just to maximize your primary weapon.

Last time I checked pyro is the only class with no items to raise max health. Revel in your expendability, bully the engis, medics, and snipers, and sting the power classes from behind, with reflects, with flares, or by jumping in their face while they fire explosives.

If your medic and heavy pair have 5% charge left on the uber and soldiers/demos come in to fuck with them, congratulations, you're up. You can't airblast everything, so you have to block with your body while you try. You can only take between 1 and 3 explosions and you're done. Use that health wisely.

Engi's sentry is down and the enemy team is pushing for the final cart point while an uber medic/heavy advance? Light up the pushers, airblast them away, then go airblast the medic back until you run out of ammo while bodyblocking the heavy's bullets or drawing his fire. If you keep the medic back, the heavy can't advance because of the uber range. Airblast them both if you still have the ammo. You're going to die and the only chance you have is your lazy team pulling together and taking out the burning cart pushers. Shit sucks but they have no chance at all with the uber pair pressing in.

If the cart isn't moving, push it. If it's blocked, clear it. If you can't clear it, light everyone on fire and pick someone to try and finish. Even if you die too soon, there's a 50/50 chance they can't get to health before the afterburn kills them. If you're lucky, a friendly heavy or soldier or two will arrive to mop up the low-health enemies you left behind after you die. Remember, your KtD doesn't matter. That matters less than points or raw kills even. What matters is space, time, and composure. I forgot composure. When your enemy is supposed to be pushing the cart or capping the final point and they're hunting a rat in what they thought was ground they controlled, or defending buildings or bottlenecks from sudden threats, their push is screwed unless someone on their team knows to bypass and has the skill to push solo. Basically anything spy can do, you can do showier. It's just harder and instead of slipping away invisibly, you die as soon as someone manages to nail you down. One good pyro can turn the tide of a control point map without even getting a single assist in the process, just by wasting time, stymying aggression, scattering enemies, wasting ubers.

Did I mention wasting ubers?

If you see a heavy/medic heading towards your team's controlled ground and there's nothing to push them off of to environmental death, engage anyways. Even if you didn't surprise them. Remember, go for the medic. This is even more important than usual. Even if you're getting gunned down quickly and can't get to them, pop off some flares hoping to hit. As soon as the flames touch a medic, especially if you're actually doing some real damage, most of them will pop the uber. They can watch a heavy's giant health pool detachedly, but when it's the uber that's in direct jeopardy with their little health pool, either strategy or panic will usually make them pop the uber. Then they kill you. This is good. By the time the fatass heavy gets where he's going, Gloves of Running Urgently or no, they have what, 20% of the uber left if any? Usually the medic won't even survive long enough to build up another one. Either way, you wasted more of that medic's time than you will waste waiting to respawn and run back to the fighting area.

Don't use noob combos like "airblast + reserve shooter"…just don't.

If you use the flaregun enough to get good and then go demo, you will find it suddenly pretty easy to hit with pipes. Then all you have to do is know your map, think in three dimensions, learn to use angles to take down engis, and practice airfragging with stickies, and you can kick basically unlimited ass with demo.

>>3543

Don't do this, it makes for a boring grindy pyro, even if it's better base damage in humdrum easily predictable situations. It works for a playstyle with no risk, waiting behind people for an opportunity to pop out. It's great for KtD and shitty for active gameplay. Again, if slow grinding monotony for maximum firepower is the goal, sniper is ideal…they can make entire servers slow, grindy, and non-volatile. If you're just going to have soldiers and pyros running around shotgunning each other, why even play TF2 over any other shooter?