Update TF2 - 4/28

waking up to a pyro nerf (I airblast a lot & it's still a nerf):(
 
waking up to a pyro nerf (I airblast a lot & it's still a nerf):(

I don't understand. If you airblast a lot then this is a obvious BUFF. If your a w +m1 pyro noobity nooby noob.... then yes its a nerf... Pyros can VERY easily counter both uber and kritzkreig under a skilled user. So don't say they killed him/her because they infact made the class stronger.
But seriously this pyro update pushed the skill ceiling for pyros just a little bit more.
 
The heavy has effectively turned the game around. The increasing walking speed will make him even more of a danger powerhouse than before - especially in the Black Mesa vent system.
 
Crit-a-cola is going to be annoying as hell and banned from competitive play.

Seriously. Think about a critted scout with the FaN. God help us all.

Well, in practice, the FAN scout can only get off the double-tap, which means he'll get one guaranteed kill if ambushing.

With the Scattergun, in practice, it's usually around three normal shots.

Take that for what you will.
 
I don't understand. If you airblast a lot then this is a obvious BUFF. If your a w +m1 pyro noobity nooby noob.... then yes its a nerf... Pyros can VERY easily counter both uber and kritzkreig under a skilled user. So don't say they killed him/her because they infact made the class stronger.
But seriously this pyro update pushed the skill ceiling for pyros just a little bit more.

Sigh..a few things that less flamethrower damage does:

Circle-strafing/edging sentries harder
Scouts with FaNs don't burn to death
Heavys that spin up faster are harder to catch napping
Soldiers will simply shotgun you to death
Flaming big groups of enemies to force them to retreat and get health -> not anymore

Airblast Buff does:

People with low health will be even more dead after being mini-critted
1 in 100 people hit with reflected projectile will die because of the extra mini-crit damage

Soldiers, demos, and huntsman snipers are really not that dangerous to a pyro, the hitscan weapons are.
 
The heavy changes are good stuff. I see myself playing heavy more. It is one of my least played classes so it's time for a change anyways. I'm bored with soldier (not medic though).

And I see this as a small pyro nerf. I feel the dmg decrease (6 second burn is included with my dmg decrease comment) out weights the airblast buff. ALTHOUGH, last night pyros were still pushing in and dropping fools clumped together on points and such, so maybe it isn't that much of a nerf.

I should probably stop saying nerf.
 
Sigh..a few things that less flamethrower damage does:

Circle-strafing/edging sentries harder
Scouts with FaNs don't burn to death
Heavys that spin up faster are harder to catch napping
Soldiers will simply shotgun you to death
Flaming big groups of enemies to force them to retreat and get health -> not anymore

Airblast Buff does:

People with low health will be even more dead after being mini-critted
1 in 100 people hit with reflected projectile will die because of the extra mini-crit damage

Soldiers, demos, and huntsman snipers are really not that dangerous to a pyro, the hitscan weapons are.

You do relies a lot of people have problems with at least half the things you listed:P?
Sentries, Fan Scouts, (and decent heavies is pretty much the pyro's counter to begin with)
And couldn't soldiers have shotgun you to death before the update anyways? At least your forcing them to not use the rockets on you, and If you start charging after me in a big group flaming everyone into a crisp I'm still gonna fall back.
I can see your point but the airblast really makes up for the lost damage in the flamethrower.
 
My 2 cents:

Last night I played both pyro and heavy to see what was up with the changes.

As a heavy: Holy crap he's fast. Realistically, he's still slow, but compared to before, he's noticeably faster, and that will most certainly be huge in blackmesa, but that's already been established.

As for the pyro: it seems it's still up for debate whether this should be called a nerf or a buff. My thought is that it is a nerf, certainly, but one that the game needed, and is far from being game breaking. I typically don't play pyro; I have about 20 hours of playtime with him (my least played class). However, yesterday, I wasn't noticing a whole ton of difference. Flames still do a lot of damage.

By my math, instead of doing 153 damage per second at point blank range, it now does 122. That means that it will take 1.025 seconds to kill a light class as opposed to the previous 0.817 seconds. Functionally, do you think you would notice a difference of 1/5 of a second?

Also, the mini-crit buff on the airblast: Rockets baseline at 90 damage; multiplied by 1.35, which I believe is the standard mini-crit bonus, it goes up to 122. That means, once again, that any of the light classes is easily finishable by anything, including a light breeze. The direct hit rockets do 151 for a mini-crit; that means the light classes ARE dead, and most other things are a shotgun shell away from being dead. A huntsman arrow that hits the body caps out at about 137 damage, meaning 185 damage on mini-crit. I'm not going to calculate grenades because of all the different potential cases (bounces, direct hits, splash), but for reference, their base is 120.

So, what does all of this mean? Yes, it's a quantifiable nerf to the flamethrower of about 30 dps. However, For the purposes of ambushing people, the effect changes the death time by literally fractions of a second. Not a big deal. Plus, the mini-crits on airblast are now enough to do a lot more damage, to the tune of one shotting a number of light classes, depending on the circumstances. Additionally, I think that this only effects the flamethrower; According to TF2wiki, the backburner's values are unchanged. If this is the case, that's a buff for the backburner, which was needed to make it more attractive, but in reality, the same math that proves the nerf isn't that big, proves the potential backburner buff isn't so hot either.

/2 cents.
 
They heavy update is looking pretty awesome, seeing it in action, the heavy is a powerhouse especially in PL maps. Needless to say, i can feel more spies going to be running around to counter the heavy mobs :p
 
heavy's are unstoppable now on pl maps lol. ive seen teams of 75% or more heavies. crazy!
 
My 2 cents:

Last night I played both pyro and heavy to see what was up with the changes.

As a heavy: Holy crap he's fast. Realistically, he's still slow, but compared to before, he's noticeably faster, and that will most certainly be huge in blackmesa, but that's already been established.

As for the pyro: it seems it's still up for debate whether this should be called a nerf or a buff. My thought is that it is a nerf, certainly, but one that the game needed, and is far from being game breaking. I typically don't play pyro; I have about 20 hours of playtime with him (my least played class). However, yesterday, I wasn't noticing a whole ton of difference. Flames still do a lot of damage.

By my math, instead of doing 153 damage per second at point blank range, it now does 122. That means that it will take 1.025 seconds to kill a light class as opposed to the previous 0.817 seconds. Functionally, do you think you would notice a difference of 1/5 of a second?

Also, the mini-crit buff on the airblast: Rockets baseline at 90 damage; multiplied by 1.35, which I believe is the standard mini-crit bonus, it goes up to 122. That means, once again, that any of the light classes is easily finishable by anything, including a light breeze. The direct hit rockets do 151 for a mini-crit; that means the light classes ARE dead, and most other things are a shotgun shell away from being dead. A huntsman arrow that hits the body caps out at about 137 damage, meaning 185 damage on mini-crit. I'm not going to calculate grenades because of all the different potential cases (bounces, direct hits, splash), but for reference, their base is 120.

So, what does all of this mean? Yes, it's a quantifiable nerf to the flamethrower of about 30 dps. However, For the purposes of ambushing people, the effect changes the death time by literally fractions of a second. Not a big deal. Plus, the mini-crits on airblast are now enough to do a lot more damage, to the tune of one shotting a number of light classes, depending on the circumstances. Additionally, I think that this only effects the flamethrower; According to TF2wiki, the backburner's values are unchanged. If this is the case, that's a buff for the backburner, which was needed to make it more attractive, but in reality, the same math that proves the nerf isn't that big, proves the potential backburner buff isn't so hot either.

/2 cents.

Backburner was nerfed too.

Backburner is now officially the worst unlock ever.
 
While I'm happy with the heavy buff (much needed), it pretty much cements my decision to never again play in blackmesa. It was fun, but I do not want to deal with heavies that are being significantly buffed on a map that already strongly favors them.

EDIT: And I don't know what wedge is talking about unless he's only playing on 2fort. Flare gun is by far one of the best unlocks I've got.
 
While I'm happy with the heavy buff (much needed), it pretty much cements my decision to never again play in blackmesa. It was fun, but I do not want to deal with heavies that are being significantly buffed on a map that already strongly favors them.

EDIT: And I don't know what wedge is talking about unless he's only playing on 2fort. Flare gun is by far one of the best unlocks I've got.

The flare gun got hit by the flame nerf too.
 
At least the Flare Gun's more fun. The Backburner is just the most boring unlock ever.


I disagree.

I think the backburner gets a lot of hate because people don't use it properly. Now, I'm not a typical pyro player, sure, but I've played with the backburner before and gotten great results. As Carmine said earlier in this thread, pyros were originally intended to be an ambush class. 100% crit is a powerful, powerful tool when it does 353 dps. It can kill anything in less than a second. That's huge.

So, how do you make it not suck? Ambushing! Do you play battle spy, running around uncloaked shooting with your revolver? Probably not. So why would you play pyro that way if it's primary source of damage comes from being behind? Play like a spy, and the backburner becomes awesome.

Also, It's not losing anything to the flamethrower from its front-end power, either, aside from the compression. Compression is a big deal, but when your primary goal is to get behind people and only fight in front for emergencies, well, I'd say the backburner is viable.

Fun fact: There isn't a single weapon in the game that can do as much unaided damage as the backburner. Sure, critical hits on other weapons can do as much or more damage, but nothing can CONSISTENTLY get that much damage out.
 
I disagree.

I think the backburner gets a lot of hate because people don't use it properly. Now, I'm not a typical pyro player, sure, but I've played with the backburner before and gotten great results. As Carmine said earlier in this thread, pyros were originally intended to be an ambush class. 100% crit is a powerful, powerful tool when it does 353 dps. It can kill anything in less than a second. That's huge.

So, how do you make it not suck? Ambushing! Do you play battle spy, running around uncloaked shooting with your revolver? Probably not. So why would you play pyro that way if it's primary source of damage comes from being behind? Play like a spy, and the backburner becomes awesome.

Also, It's not losing anything to the flamethrower from its front-end power, either, aside from the compression. Compression is a big deal, but when your primary goal is to get behind people and only fight in front for emergencies, well, I'd say the backburner is viable.

Fun fact: There isn't a single weapon in the game that can do as much unaided damage as the backburner. Sure, critical hits on other weapons can do as much or more damage, but nothing can CONSISTENTLY get that much damage out.

Classes that inherently hinge on the need to ambush inherently suck. That's because EVERY class can ambush and gain huge rewards from it. But only certain classes can do well by ambushing, whereas the other classes can also do well in direct combat, which is 90% of active TF2 gameplay.

This is why why the Heavy is so limited and why the Spy and Pyro are so situational.

Backburner only shoehorns the class into HAVING to be an ambush class, which only limits it, which makes it a sucky weapon.
 
The flare gun got hit by the flame nerf too.

If you were counting on using the flare gun for damage you're doing it wrong. The point is to set him on fire and axtinguish his face off. Besides that, it pisses off snipers easily and puts a beacon on enemy medics. It's a damn fine weapon so long as you're not anywhere near a source of water or health. Just keep in mind, it is a secondary weapon that's not meant to pump out damage. Does the razorback suck because you can't hit an enemy with it? No. It does it's job just fine.
 
If you were counting on using the flare gun for damage you're doing it wrong. The point is to set him on fire and axtinguish his face off. Besides that, it pisses off snipers easily and puts a beacon on enemy medics. It's a damn fine weapon so long as you're not anywhere near a source of water or health. Just keep in mind, it is a secondary weapon that's not meant to pump out damage. Does the razorback suck because you can't hit an enemy with it? No. It does it's job just fine.

I would just like to say that the razorback doesn't suck because you can't hit an enemy with it, it sucks because it convinces the smart spies to go for the taunt kill or revolver kills, which are much more humiliating. It also slows you down slightly, which can make you an easier target for enemy snipers and soldiers!
 

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