steam update

[Boss Llama]

-Players killing themselves will now give a kill credit to the last enemy who damaged them

About time!

-Fixed players being killed and creating ragdolls during team switches

Good

-Removed health bonus from the Backburner

Just made the Backburner a worthless piece of garbage. /sigh. It was so nice to have an updated piece of equipment that was actually worth using.

[abiscuit]

Well now I'm going to have to start using backburner since no one will want to use it anymore

[Buzzy Beetle]

[quote="Alizée Fan";p="111005"]
-Removed health bonus from the Backburner

Just made the Backburner a worthless piece of garbage. /sigh. It was so nice to have an updated piece of equipment that was actually worth using.
[/quote]

I'm afraid I must disagree. The weapon isn't going to crit any less now that there's no 50 HP attached to it. You can ask the pyros who roasted me tonight if you'd like a second opinion.

[Boss Llama]

[quote="Buzzy Beetle";p="111028"]
I'm afraid I must disagree. The weapon isn't going to crit any less now that there's no 50 HP attached to it. You can ask the pyros who roasted me tonight if you'd like a second opinion.[/quote]

I didn't use it for the crits. I can get behind a person and cook them without the crits. The health, however, made the difference between whether a single sticky or single rocket, or even a single scatter gun shot, kills me or not. With it back to killing me, deaths are up, successful assaults are down. Totally changes the playstyle again (pretty much back to how it was before the update).

What I don't get is why Valve bothered with the update at all if they were just going to undo the important changes? I mean sure, airblast or rear-crits are nice, but the real meat of the pyro update was that A) damage fall-off was eliminated, and B) pyros could survive direct confrontation. They added damage fall-off again, so we need to be in melee range to fight effectively, and then got rid of the health bonus, so we're back to not surviving melee range. If they consider pyro an "ambush class" only, they should mark it a support class and drop the farce of battlefield survivability.

/grumbles

I'll get over myself, but I'm pretty pissed about it right now.

[Nick Mame]

If people didn't use it for the crits, the backburner as a concept has failed. The health addition was intended to let people survive long enough to set up and escape from their ambush, a side effect of the weapon rather than its main perk. Now that the health has been removed, it'll force backburner pyros (if they exist anymore) to utilize the weapon the way it was designed rather than as a more aggressive flamethrower.

I don't play pyro, so I can't comment on how useful the backburner is without a health addition. However, this change is a good one. Now Valve can focus on tweaking the backburner into a useful alternative ambush weapon rather than letting it persist in being an extension of pre-air blast pyros with more health.

[abiscuit]

[quote="Nick Mame";p="111037"]If people didn't use it for the crits, the backburner as a concept has failed. The health addition was intended to let people survive long enough to set up and escape from their ambush, a side effect of the weapon rather than its main perk. Now that the health has been removed, it'll force backburner pyros (if they exist anymore) to utilize the weapon the way it was designed rather than as a more aggressive flamethrower.

I don't play pyro, so I can't comment on how useful the backburner is without a health addition. However, this change is a good one. Now Valve can focus on tweaking the backburner into a useful alternative ambush weapon rather than letting it persist in being an extension of pre-air blast pyros with more health.[/quote]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Captain Jim]

Thinking about it, this may not be a bad thing, for the reasons already stated. And if we were content with playing Pyro BEFORE the update, why shouldn't we be content with it now?

[Hobnail Sneakers]

[quote="Captain Jim";p="111050"]Thinking about it, this may not be a bad thing, for the reasons already stated. And if we were content with playing Pyro BEFORE the update, why shouldn't we be content with it now?[/quote]

I'm sure it'll be fine. I often used the Backburner because of the extra HP, mostly because I'm such a poor Pyro. Without it, it'll just encourage me to improve.

[Nick Mame]

Before the update there was an update coming. After the update, the pyro's major changes are finished. If someone expected a major change that they believe Valve failed to deliver, they would be very discontent. They're stuck with how things are now, rather than the hope a future patch might tweak things in their favor.


That said, the situation for pyros now is better than it was before. Once a huge portion of pyros put down their backburners and start adjusting their play style to a post-patch mode, we'll see if the changes were enough to give a pyro any hope outside of an ambush situation.

[BlackHawk]

Basically what it comes down to now for the 2 flame throwers is how you play. The normal one is good for taking on soldiers and demos or protecting a CP, while the back burner is good for ambushes and causing chaos for groups of enemies

[Flobee]

Oh well! It doesn't really affect me too much. (Although I will miss the health boost for when we're playing Cube Soccer!! :C)

Once the update came out, I immediatly dropped the old flamethrower and started using the Backburner. Not for the health boost (that was just icing on the cake), but because even before the update, my Pyro play style had always been about the ambush.

Sneaking around behind enemies and suprising them from behind, and just generally making things miserable for the enemy team. The crits made doing this even more effective, regardless of the extra health. Hell, since the crits are most likely to kill all the people you ambush before they can even retaliate, the health boost was kind of superfluous in that aspect.

Cause of my pyro play style, that is actually pretty much the only time I ever use my flamethrower (aside from burning those goddamn spies, and taking out engineers buildings). The rest of the time, I'm blasting people with my shotgun, and axing those who get too close to me.

Seeing me running head-on into battle as an offensive class is a very rare occurance indeed.

This is because overall, I'm more of a support and defense player than a full on attacker. Engineer, Medic, Sniper, Defensive Pyro play...

And...

I'm rambling...

...I should go to bed. It's quite late here in Australia.

[Reipin]

I don't know if you guys read the regular steam forums at all but right after the update there were legions of people complaining about no fall off damage.

It got nerfed.

Then they switched to crying about the +50 hps (those 50 hps are so that if you actually get behind a mass of people without 1 of the 12 turning around to see you it made sure you were going to do some damage after the first person died).

It got nerfed.

Now AB pyros will become all the rage, and guess what will be complained about and nerfed?

This is turning into WoW with the crybabies and the nerfs and buffs.

I can count on one hand the amount of times a BB pyro actually got the drop on me.

Newsflash, they don't have cloak and their angle that is considered the "back" for backburning is quite small.

Failed pyro update is full of fail.

New item! backburner! lets you play as pre-update pyro (aka the worst class in the game). level 10 item +100 challenge +50 self eyestab

[Torven]

My problem with the health is that it really encouraged a play style counter to the intended use. The health bonus was just over 28%, enough to put the pyro second only to the heavy in terms of total health. Instead of encouraging ambush play, that just gave players more reason to charge headon and circle strafe an enemy.

[Portland_BEER]

[quote="Reipin";p="111092"]

Failed pyro update is full of fail.

[/quote]

I don't think so... the axe is awesome for defending CP's and the airblast has added an entire new element to play.

and the damn flare gun is the bane of snipers everywhere.

Look at medic update. Most medics don't use the kritz and opt for Uber instead.. so does that = fail?

[Torven]

The only think I could see them doing with airblast would be the interaction with ubers. Not eliminating it, but possibly making the ubered players "heavier" so that they couldn't just be juggled straight into the air; basically put it somewhere around the effectiveness of rockets or stickies in terms of disrupting the charge (as opposed to allowing one player to completely negate it).