Alzir

Well ok in the clear light of day I’ll concede they’re not completely useless, but it has a niche which I still think is too small. I know you can use pyro’s quite effectively on the likes of granary vs a mass scout rush (I still find those to be rare), but does it still work against good scouts? I mean most of the time when this happens, in my experience, the team of scouts are not all very good at playing the scout class. Putting a pyro up against a good scout is a different matter as the scout (being much quicker) will know how to stay out of flamethrower range. The scout rush also relies a lot on the element of surprise, and you could argue an appropriately placed sentry gun along with some heavier classes would be more efficient than a team of pyro’s. Basically I can think of few situations when I’d prefer a pyro over an alternative. In TF2 the three main areas classes have advantages in are speed, range, and health, of which the pyro has an abundance of none. Pretty much anything he can do can be bettered by another class.

Heavily fortified positions like the one in the picture I would consider using an ubered pyro, as it’s probably more efficent than a demoman (who’d find it tricky enough getting in there anyway).

Of course you would also need a pyro to help defend the same sort of position from spies, although I think even spies would have a hard time getting into that particular room, but that’s an extreme example. In a team communicating well and playing together there really shouldn’t be any need to waste a player on spy defence though. Most spies are easily detected, and taken out without the need for flames. In the mass confusion of some servers we play on obviously some of us find pyro a fun class and it might just scratch some pyromaniac itches, which is fair enough and quite funny at times.

have to admit I was getting a bit stresssed with your stressings last night Matt 😛

heh sorry if I was a bit tetchy didn’t mean to be, that last minute own goal on Tuesday had the effect of bringing out my competitive side and deep down I was wanting us to kick some serious ass 😳 If not obvious from my rantings above ;), I basically see them as a fun class with little use, and I was really wanting to win that night!

Anyway now that I’ve said all this I’ve properly set myself up for quite a literal flaming, and fully expect this thread to be taken up by lots of screenies showing my flaming corpse. Must remember to hit print screen when that mass XDC pyro charge comes flying at me 😆