From a design standpoint, this isn't very useful, or constructive, infact it's kind of disrespectful. The changes haven't even been ingame for 24 hours. I would suggest that we (we as in everyone) take the weekend, play with the new stuff as much as possible, and then on monday come back and discuss the changes in a more constructive manner. See what people think after trying it for a while.
Disrespectful? I'm terribly sorry, but if Valve allows TF2 to be released in the state it is now, not counting weapon balancing, they're the one being disrespectful, to both the game itself and to me as a (now no longer) paying customer. You as a game designer should know that you can't release a broken game to the masses and ask money for it in return yet here is Valve doing exactly that. Don't go "the update is free": only the weapon balances are free. Every other bit of content is behind a paywall, down to the motherducking cosmetic crate.
If you want me to be constructive, sure. Let's talk about our favorite masked mumbling psycho: the Pyro.
The addition of the Degreaser changed the way the entire class was played down to the core level. No more holding down M1 while running into people with the occasional airblast here and there. It traded afterburn damage (and later primary fire damage) for greatly increased weapon switching speeds so using your secondary and melee was not only much more useful, it was encouraged. This weapon was made for doing one thing: weapon combo's. No more W+M1'ing, instead you needed quite a bit of skill in order to time your airblasts with your Shotgun shots or a flare shot, with the latter having the extra "drawback" of needing good predicting skills as well since, well, it's a flare that goes in one direction and one direction only. No bullet spread on this one. No homing projectile mechanics. It goes where you pointed your crosshair when you fired.
The other option is the Backburner, which is made specifically for M1'ing (by initially not even having the option to airblast). Not the cheap running-straight-into-others kind however, but rather the kind that required knowing the map well and using the flanking routes in order to get behind people. If you manage to pull that off without being seen and shot at you are rewarded with guaranteed crits, and rightfully so. You're basically a Spy without the disguise or cloak, so you better be rewarded nicely for doing all that. Hell, for a while it even did more damage than stock to compensate for the fact that not all maps have great flanking routes (or not having flanking routes at all, like Turbine or Junction although even that is questionable since the stock Flamethrower still exists).
Then Pyromania came out. The overall base damage of every flamethrower was increased by 10%. The Backburner no longer did 10% more damage than the stock flame thrower but because the entire weapon category got buffed its damage remained the same. Same with the Degreaser, but this time it kept the same damage as the old stock Flamethrower. This was kind of needed as base flame thrower damage was kind of low for what it was.
Let's backtrack to 5 months before Pyromania. Between Mannconomy (which included the Degreaser) and Pyromania, the Phlogistinator was released with the 2011 Australian Christmas update. It promoted the very thing the Backburner did (getting guaranteed crits under certain conditions), except you could now get crits from any angle. The majority of people had the same opinion about this weapon: it requires very little skill and is not fun to fight against. If you let yourself get ambushed by a Backburner Pyro, you kinda deserve the crits. If you round the corner and a fully charged Phlog Pyro comes at you you don't deserve to get the crits unleashed at you, yet you're getting them anyway. Valve tried to fix this by giving the taunting Pyro less damage resistance (from 90% to 75%) but it still was a cheap alternative to everything else.
Fast forward to Love&War. Out of the blue the Axtinguisher gets nerfed to near uselessness doing basically no damage in any other direction besides the back, and as you may know, melee hit detection in TF2 isn't exactly working properly, so more often than not it'll either do mini crits or no damage at all. People now call the Powerjack the new melee of choice forgetting the fact that if you're in melee range as a Pyro you either need a guaranteed kill or a bloody good reason (75 health on kill is a good reason) to be there or you're a dead person since basically every class will outdamage you in that range if they have anything but their melee out (Scout included but any semi-skilled Scout is overpowered anyway to all classes excluding turtling Engineers and general weapon spam). Random crits excluded, the Powerjack doesn't do that. Then Gun Mettle shows up. The next weapon to bite the dust is, you guessed it, the Powerjack, lowering the health regained on kill from 75 to a puny 25. Again, if you're in melee range as a Pyro you need a guaranteed kill or a bloody good reason (25 health on kill isn't a good reason) to be in melee range or you'll be waiting on that respawn timer again.
Now it's Smissmass 2015.
Every class gets a weapon switch speed increase. In order for the Degreaser to not have completely idiotic weapon switch speeds its switch speed to and from gets changed, but due to the overall weapon's switch-to speed increase (which is the speed that matters for combo's) the difference is basically 0. Great! More flame throwers to choose from! Awesome! As a Pyro main I appreciate that. But then for whatever reason Valve decides that the Degreaser needs to be useless now, instead of repurposing the weapon. For instance, it could have been a weapon that rewarded airblasting even more by giving a portion of the ammo back based on damage done by reflected projectiles. Encourages people to airblast even more (in addition to the +20 health on extinguishing a teammate). Sure, give it an airblast penalty (maybe even increase that penalty), but make it do something else in return. It's the last part Valve didn't do which makes this weapon useless, especially since it also basically has no afterburn anymore. Then we go to the Axtinguisher. Oh boy, that's a fun one. For no reason at all there's a 75% increase in switch-to speed. Combine that with the damage and swing speed penalty and you have a weapon that a: takes longer to take out, b: does less damage, and c: swings less often. What? Equipping the current Axtinguisher is an insult to the Axtinguisher because you have to dig it out of its peaceful grave and drag it along into battle while all it's going to do is sit in your melee slot unused because Flare punching is a much better option.
Then we have the Phlog buff. Don't even start on calling that balanced. Full Ubercharge and immune to knockback effects when taunting. Seriously? Like, SERIOUSLY? "Hey, you know that weapon that has crits on demand at no cost and mows down groups of people with almost no skill required? Yeah let's give it Ubercharge and no knockback when activating it. There, balanced". Now, instead of at least trying to get a quick taunt kill or laying down some stickies on the taunting Pyro you gotta de-ass the area with the quickness or you're a dead motherducker.
Funke made a great video on the Phlog just now.
In one update with a lot of small changes to a few weapons we went from a class that required skill in almost 90% of the battle scenarios to a braindead "+forward +attack1" in 90% of the battle scenarios. The only exception here is the Backburner, which was (thankfully) left alone (actually got a slight buff because of the increased weapon switch speed). That W+M1'ing is further encouraged by the damage increase further out from the Pyro with the flame throwers. I don't know about you, but only doing W+M1 isn't fun to play as and it sure as hell isn't fun to fight against. Valve went all Snowplow on Pyro: too confusing for new players. Of course, this is with the exception that Snowplow did eventually get included in the game yet I highly doubt Valve will do anything to Pyro to make it a good class again for a very, very long time, seeing how the pre-Tough Break Axtinguisher was in its state for
a year-and-a-half.
Don't get me wrong, some of the changes to Pyro and Pyro's weapons are a very welcome thing. Getting health back from extinguishing team mates? Great! Being able to strafe out of an airblast unless you touch the ground? Good, it was frustrating to stay airborne with nowhere to go by getting airblasted all over the place. Reserve Shooter still needs to have one shot removed but at least it doesn't punish people from pressing the spacebar anymore. But other than that all Valve has done is discourage getting skilled at Pyro by actively promoting to just hold down M1 and hope someone walks in front of you. Right now my new stock loadout is Backburner+Detonator+Powerjack (just for the speed) because it's the last loadout Pyro has that still takes skill to do right, and I enjoy being tested on my abilities with rewards if I get it right. That is, if I get TF2 to work for more than 30 seconds.
My suggestion: make Pyro have an even faster default weapon switch speed on all weapons and repurpose the Degreaser into a true airblast-promoting weapon. Make the Phlog less braindead by giving the Pyro a 25% damage reception increase during Mmmph (like with the Crit 'a Cola for Scout) and increased knockback so you have a bigger chance of getting killed while charging at people with the glowing crit monstrosity. Get the Axtinguisher back to the pre-Love&War state while keeping the 20% swing speed increase so it's not doing 195 damage every .8 seconds. Finally make W+M1'ing less effective by giving every flamethrower an overheat mechanic that renders the weapon useless after holding down M1 for x seconds. Give the Backburner and Phlog a buff/exception to that mechanic since those weapons have the M1 concept in their core weapon design.
Constructive enough? Or do you want me to also tell you about the death of the Demoknight/Hybrid Demoknight in detail?
