I main pyro, I'm not really comp or anywhere near top tier but I've logged some hours and racked up some complaints about my preferred class. Pyro gets a bad rap as a noob class and a lot of hatless players do gravitate like moths to that flame but it's really a case of taking a moment to learn and a lifetime to master. If you're going to be a good pyro you have to be an all around-er and dabble in the tactics of every other class, you'll have to learn to hit quick and evade like a scout, charge the enemy like a soldier, destroy buildings like a demo, hold the line like a heavy, you're an engineer's best friend, putting out flaming allies like a medic, you'll counter snipe with your flare gun, and you must get into the mind of a spy in order to spot and check them.

Do all that and you still have to overcome the w m1 stigma, so you'll practice flare punching and air juggling just so that your kills are seen as valid by the community. You'll have to deflect incoming rockets, grenades, and arrows with a slow, poorly defined counter that saps your ammunition and pushes opponents out of your range. Meanwhile your main weapon, fire, is countered by water, mad milk, jarate, medpacks, medibeams, demo charges, and time itself.

So why play pyro at all if it's such a pain? Well you have to be a little mad to go up against classes that are faster than you, stronger than you, who can turn invisible or jump half way across the map, or pick you off before you're at all in range but that's what makes it fun. You're a wild card class that frustrates and surprises the enemy at every turn, we've gotten creative with pyrosharking and airblasting people into the abyss, and nothing is quite as satisfying as clearing an entire hallway of charging mercenaries and defending a point like you own it.

Now we're getting some updates, maybe sooner or maybe later but they're coming one way or another, and I'd like to voice my humble opinion on some of the things I'd like to see:

1. Return of good fireproofing; I'm old enough to remember the days of original team fortress and one of the things that made pyro an exciting class back then was the standoff between you and an opposing firebug. You were so invulnerable to flames that it instantly became a battle of shotguns and melee as you jumped and juked to avoid being hit, nowadays it's asinine to back-pedal with a shogun out while the advancing adversary roasts you alive. It's nice to have afterburn nullified but pyros being burned to a crisp seems just silly.

2. A throwable; The pyro is all damage all of the time and while that's nice it''s very limiting, some support qualities would make the pyro more accepted by other players and my proposal is as simple as a tin of lighter fluid. 'The party starter' would be easy to animate and work off of existing physics for mad milk or jarate, taking the place of the secondary weapon it would coat enemies in barbecue starter and any subsequent damage would start them on fire. Great for retreating foes or combo-ing damage with the rest of your team, but if a player drenched by the party starter gets hit by flames then it triggers an explosion to really drive home the fun.

3. A chainsaw; hear me out on this, you may hate w m1 (if you'd stop running away we wouldn't have to hold w) but what if we embraced that mechanic and made it more of a challenge? A primary chainsaw which used ammunition, caused bleed damage, gave a speed boost, and announced it presence would be delightfully chaotic and a madcap answer to the demoknight. In truth I wish it would replace the phlog which is already not helpful to your team and a little op but I doubt we'd see anything as drastic as that.

Now seemed like the right time to bring all of this up seeing as we're at war with the heavy, I welcome discussion and would love to hear what people want to see on the Russian side of the update. Take care and Hudda hudda huh.