Team Fortress 2 - Pyro Guide Current as of the Polycount Update

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Ah, the Pyro. The nameless, faceless, mumbling arsonist that we've all grown to love... or maybe hate. Either way, like the other eight classes in the game, the Pyro takes a certain level of skill and finesse to play correctly, as you must analyze your weaknesses, your enemy's weakness, their paths, and exactly how you're going to go about ending their lives in a bright and energetic way.The key to any good Pyro's strategy is just that: strategy. You have a variety of tools at your disposal, each one is just as lethal and useful as the other, but there's no way that you'll be successful by just rushing into battle as if your flamethrower is a minigun. You must know the map. Know the common routes, the not so common routes, the hiding places, the chokepoints, the Spy paths, everything. Many say that the Pyro is a class that takes little to no skill to play, and while it may seem that way, a good Pyro has earned that kill, and based it off of his enemy's unpreparedness. ~ The Vanilla Pyro ~The Pyro has three basic weapons at his (or could it be her?) disposal.- The Flamethrower: A basic flamethrower that upon close inspection seems to be homemade. It has the shortest range of any primary weapon in the game, but that's to be expected since it doesn't really fire projectiles. It does reasonable damage and if you leave someone alone, they'll remain on fire for a while, inflicting about 3 damage per second to them unless they find water, a medic, or a health kit. One of the great benefits of the flamethrower is its compression blast feature, a compressed blast of air that is able to send any rocket, grenade, arrow, or jar back to its sender. It can also push around enemies, move sticky bombs around, and put out burning teammates, which makes you especially helpful to people who just don't have enough life to make it to that health pack/medic without dying. - The Shotgun: A basic shotgun. Not much to say here.- The Fireaxe: A basic Axe. It has moderate damage output and moderate rate of fire. It is no more or less useful than any other basic melee weapon. ~ The Pyro Update ~- The Backburner: A new Flamethrower. Initially, the Backburner came with a 25% health boost and 100% crits when you hit a target from behind at the cost of your compression blast. Nowadays, the Backburner adds no health, but instead does a bit more damage than the normal flamethrower. The lack of compression blast renders you an almost completely offensive class, so the Backburner requires quite a bit of intelligence regarding your enemy's position to use to its most effective. A good Backburner Pyro has to be as sneaky as a Spy to operate at 100% efficiency, and even then, getting kills can be pretty hard. - The Flare Gun: An interesting weapon that has a very, very long range. It replaces the shotgun. It is a single shot gun with 16 backup flares, and takes a while to reload. Anything it hits is set on fire. As of a recent update, if a target is already on fire, depending on your range from them, the gun will either mini-crit or crit the target upon another successful hit, making it a very dangerous weapon in the right hands. The projectile it fires is pretty heavy, so it travels in a sharp parabolic pattern, much like the syringe gun, so you have to compensate for gravity when firing. Both this and the Shotgun that it replaces has the Hadouken taunt kill. The Pyro, Heavy and the Spy were the only three classes to have a taunt kill for a vanilla weapon.- The Axetinguisher: Funny name, Valve. This new brutal looking fire axe is another rather homemade looking weapon from the Pyro. It of course, replaces the normal fire axe and is much better at extinguishing lives than the normal fire axe, unless said lives were not on fire, at which point it does 50% less damage than the normal fire axe. If your target was on fire, though, it has a 100% change to inflict critical damage.~ Community Update ~- The Homewrecker: A Sledgehammer that does double damage to buildings, but does 25% less damage to players. The homewrecker destroys any building in two hits, and takes one hit to destroy a Mini-Sentry or a Sapper. That's right, the Pyro can not only defend an Engineer's base, but keep it running, too! ~ The Polycount Update ~Set Bonus: Gas Jockey's Gear: (Must be wearing: The Attendant, The Degreaser, The Powerjack) 10% faster move speed, 10% more vulnerability to bullets.- The Degreaser: Another seemingly homemade flamethrower, this flamethrower gives the Pyro a much faster weapon switch speed, making it ideal for the Axetinguisher. On the downside, you lose afterburn time, so leaving someone to burn isn't necessarily a good idea. As a note, the afterburn time loss isn't really noticeable, and in fact, you probably won't ever care.- The Powerjack: A car battery attached to a stationary jack. The Pyro really has a lot of stuff laying around his house to make weapons with, doesn't she? This weapon sacrifices random critical hits (and if you're used to using the Homewrecker, the ability to destroy sappers) for 25% more damage and an award of 75 health per kill. This is the strongest unaided melee weapon in the game.