The Axtinguisher!

[Juice]

"We've almost completely wrapped up the next big release for Team Fortress 2, which will focus on the Pyro class, along with the Meet the Sniper movie. We've spent time looking at how the recent Medic release went, and have rolled feedback from that release into the new item designs for the Pyro and into the design of the achievements required to unlock those items. One item, shown here in concept form, will be the Axtinguisher. Although it does about half of normal damage to standard run-of-the-mill non-burning enemies, once you light someone on fire the Axtinguisher will guarantee a critical hit.

Along with all of the new content, we're also going to be making some significant changes to the Pyro class for everyone, regardless of whether they have unlocked any new items."

 

[MangyCarface]

Wait, what? Did you do this as a mockup? Cool idea but it would have to crit at normal damage, not the crit of the half damage, to have any appeal. So did you do this or do you have a source to credit?
Good job if you did

 

[PMAvers]

Wait, what? Did you do this as a mockup? Cool idea but it would have to crit at normal damage, not the crit of the half damage, to have any appeal. So did you do this or do you have a source to credit?
Good job if you did

It's from a Steam Update News thingie.

 

[MrAlBobo]

Along with all of the new content, we're also going to be making some significant changes to the Pyro class for everyone, regardless of whether they have unlocked any new items."

This strikes me as ominous for some reason...I rather like pyro as it is...

 

[Shmitz]

...into the design of the achievements required to unlock those items...

That it's still achievement based at all means the Pyro update is going to suck just as much as the Medic one.

 

[Nineaxis]

Yay, some incentive to use the axe. But it'll now be a fest of quick drawing the ax after lighting anyone on fire instead of playing the pyro class well.

EDIT: Along with the Ubersaw, Valve is getting much more gory with TF2.

 

[MangyCarface]

Nvm, saw the steam update. Good catch, looks sweet. They better release it like next week

 

[TheDarkerSideofYourShadow]

When you crit, what does it multiply your damage by? I always thought it was x2 for some reason, but that wouldn't make sense because (1/2 normal ax damage)*2crit = normal ax damage

 

[AWESOME-O]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53041

 

[Hawk]

I love the Pyro. What bothers me about him being next on the list is we'll get servers full of Pyros, and I won't be able to play my favorite class for a while, out of stubbornness. I refuse to farm achievements at the expense of my team's score.

But on another note, does anybody want to venture guesses for the Pyro's other items? It's hard for me to think of any imaginative variations of the flamethrower and shotgun. Maybe they can make a flamethrower with really short range but surprisingly high damage.

Or fire grenades? That might be kind of cool.

 

[MangyCarface]

I'd rather see long-range flamethrower (1.5-1.75x longer) more along the lines of a jet of flame, i.e. actual flamethrowers than a shorter range flamethrower. Long, arcing stream, less damage, tighter stream, maybe takes a second of concentrated fire to ignite someone.

Shotgun-wise, how about replacing the shells with oil shells. Wouldn't make sense physics wise as it would explode in the barrel, but what if they did minimal damage, but when they hit a player and then that player is lit on fire, the DoT progresses much faster for the flames or stays longer or something.

Pyros are supposed to be all about the fire, so I just want to see that emphasis tightened.

 

[The Asylum]

Underwater flamethrower?

 

[AWESOME-O]

Flamethrower to lift yourself up? >.<

 

[ChronoTriggerFan]

Or fire grenades? That might be kind of cool.

I wold highly doubt valve would add class specific grenades back in. If i may quote from the developer commentary "When we removed the grenades, the game was instantly more fun".

 

[Ida]

I think I'm just gonna stay away from Team Fortress 2 for a week after this update has been released.

 

[MrAlBobo]

they could always bring back the flame rockets from tfc...just make them more effective, and perhaps harder to aim, and make pyro into a distance class with that weapon.

 

[YM]

Given that the medic's new weapons are just exaggerations of the existing ones and the axtinguisher is an exaggerated fire axe I suspect that the pryo's other two weapons will be:
1) a flamethrower
2) a shotgun

Hopefully though their textures wont be as insanely lowres as the Kritzkrieg, I mean did they temporarily forget that we're in 2008 or something, the texture is SO low res you'd think they'd made it for TFC.

I never ever use the fire axe, I think I've killed less than 6 people with it TOTAL and pyro is the class I play most, by far.
I highly doubt this will convince me to choose melee more often. The Ubersaw had a great advantage over the bonesaw, the longer fire time doesn't really matter but the 25% uber is really worth it, a crit if they're burning? that seems useless really, means you've got to burn them, THEN get out the axe otherwise its worthless.

They say there are changes to the way they are unlocked.....I hope they changed the milestones to 1 achievement 2 achievements and 3 achievements. I want to earn the achievements properly AND have the new weapons, I don't want to rush though the new achievements to get the new weapons, then I've wasted the achievements. Its stupid really, they make you waste either the new weapons or the achievments.

 

[Nineaxis]

Nvm, saw the steam update. Good catch, looks sweet. They better release it like next week

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

Three months until this is released.

 

[Hawk]

I wold highly doubt valve would add class specific grenades back in. If i may quote from the developer commentary "When we removed the grenades, the game was instantly more fun".

Yeah, it was just an idea.

But the idea was that the grenades didn't explode like the ones Valve removed, but just burst into flames, igniting the people around it. But even as a fun idea it's not very likely since I'm sure Valve will just modify the flamethrower.

 

[YM]

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

Three months until this is released.

nah I'm confident these will be out before the end of july, if they took much longer we'd be waiting until 2010 until the final unlock pack