I was going to do these guys in order as they appear in the character selection menu. Then I realized that the second class, Soldier, doesn’t have any unlocks yet, and I want to cover those, AND I generally don’t like/play soldier enough to give an accurate portrayal.
So I’m moving on the Pyro, which is my favorite class. Some pointless trivia on this note. It has been speculated and hinted repeatedly, even by Valve themselves, that the Pyro is in fact a girl. This works into my idea of naturally choosing a favorite since in games like fighting games I tent o pick “the girl” as my favorite character, especially if it’s the ONLY girl. Also the {yro certainly is the “hottest” class.
The Pyro has a lot of good strengths and a lot of bad weaknesses. There isn’t much in the middle about them. Pyro is “The Martyr Class”. You can generally easily rank up a lot fo kills but your close weapon is also going to get you killed a lot. Almost as much as the Scout gets killed. Your primary job is to spread mayhem and confusion by jumping in and flaming everyone up. If you’e lucky the opposing team will waste an Uber trying to kill you instead of saving it for the sentry they wanted to kill.
The primary weapon is the flame thrower. It comes in two varieties, the regular Flamethrower and the Backburner unlockable flame thrower. Both are fairly good and which to use depends on your preference of play style. If you like to face off against people on the front line the Flamethrower is probably the better bet. If you like to ambush people and more often burn people from behind, certainly go for the Backburner. The Backburner adds 100% critical hits when burning someone from behind. The trade off is that you loose your concussion blast ability (more in a bit on this).
Like all classes the Pyro does more damage the closer you are to the target, an the fire does a lot of really quick damage. To top it off even if you die, the enemy will continue to burn (unless it’s another Pyro, Pyros are fireproof). This is great for weaker classes. If you’re spraying a large group of the opposing team with fire if you see a scout, spy, or engineer, you don’t need to spray them until they die, just light them up for a second or so then move on to the next enemy. Let the remaining flame do the rest of the work. Keep in mind, the Medic can put out our fire so it’s a good idea to flame up Medics first. Also flame up medics until they die since they have a natural healing ability than tends to keep them alive. Burning Heavies and Soldiers to death is a good idea as well as their high HP tends to keep them from burning to death.
The Pyro is also extremely effective at taking down engineering buildings as well, especially if you can get a spy to sap them first. People always want to Uber Heavies and Demos to take down sentries but I find the Pyro is the most effective method. You can take out a whole nest at once and the engineer that’s trying to repair them. The key here is to get your medic to run in first against a sentry. The sentry produces a lot of knockback that will make your Uber Pyro useless. Let the medic go first to absorb the knockback while you swing in and burn things up.
However the Pyro is highly effective for things besides randomly burning things. The Pyro is the best class for “spy checking”. This can be a boring job but it can be extremely important when on Defense. Basically, plant yourself in an Engineering next and spray the whole area at random. Cloaked or disguised enemy spies will ligh right up saving your friends from a potentially devastating sap attack.
Something else yo keep in mind, don’t forget about your concussion attack! The secondary fire on the Flamethrower will produce a puffing burst of air. Don’t spam this TOO much since it uses a decent amount of ammo each puff but it can be extremely effective in the right situation. Here are some of those situations:
If a soldier is spamming the area with rockets. Run right out and get his attention. If timed right, you can deflect his rockets right back in his face. Soldiers don’t always expect this either since most Pyros are not very good at deflecting rockets or they forget that they can do it at all. I played on a map that was essentially a long corridor once, full of soldiers. With effective concussion bursts I easily pushed my way to the other end where I could light up a ton of surprised players.
A demo man has placed stickies/grenades all around. You can push sticky bombs away with the concussion blast, clearing the way for your team mates to push through without getting hit by the trap. The Demoman may not be around to notice his stickies have moved and will detonate them too early to be effective. You can also deflect regular grenades. There is a key difference here. Deflected regular grenades will change color and becomes “friendly grenades”. These will no longer hurt team mates, HOWEVER, like the emo man’s own grenades, they WILL hurt you. So don’t deflect a bunch of grenades back then charge in only to be destroyed by them.
You can also use the concussion to knock around enemies. This can be effective if there is a drop off or cliff nearby and an enemy that you can’t easily kill such as a Heavy is about to kill you. Concussion him right over the edge. It also causes confusion for the enemy. An even better plan. At the start of many rounds, especially payload maps, enemies will have Ubers ready to rumble or Ubers will rush in to take out Engineering nests. As a Pyro, the most helpful thing you can do is charge in and push the Ubered enemies around. This will confuse them and keep them from destroying their targets. If you push enough you might even seperate the Medic an his Uber friend dropping the Uber effect.
Moving on a bit to the other weapons.
The starting secondary weapon is a shotgun. This is pretty much like all of the shotguns you’ve ever used in any game. Effective at close to medium range, slowish reload, decent fire speed. This shotgun can be replaced with the unlockable Flaregun. The Flaregun takes practice to use it effectively but it can be extremely useful at long to medium range. On the official TF2 stats, the Flare gun is second for “Damage/distance”. It beats out even the Sniper Rifle. And Snipers are it’s best target. Chuck out out at a sniper, as he lights up, he likely won’t die but he’ll run off for some healing or miss his shot. Also it’s hilarious to “out snipe” the sniper with a non sniping weapon. This is unfortunately a terrible weapon for close combat. Fortunately, you’re already using the most effective close combat weapon as your primary weapon.
The Melee weapon of the Pyro is the Fire Axe. There isn’t too much exciting about this weapon other than I believe it does slightly more damage than other Melee weapons though ti has slower rate of fire. I don’t have numbers to back this up however. The Fire Axe can be replaced by the Axtinguisher. This weapon does massive damage to anyone on fire but does less damage otherwise. Honestly, the Pyro has a much more effective close range weapon already at his disposal, the Axe is hardly worth using. The Axtinguisher is also generally useless sinc it does less normal damage and if you’re lighting someone up int he fast paced heat of battle, you’re not going to care about switching weapons when they could just burn to death.
I’m starting to run a little long so I’ll wrap this up here. The Pyro is most effective against Spies, Scouts, Snipers (under surprise attack), and Soldiers (with concussion blast). The Pyro’s primary enemies are water (puts out fires, Flamethrow doesn’t work), Snipers (long range beats short), Heavies (BURN ALREADY WILL YA??!), and other Pyros (fireproof).
I’m biased but Ramen’s Rank is: Extremely Effective.
Posted by Josh Miller 
May I Cut In:
On Her Majesty’s Secret Surface:
Point Breaker:
Sap Auteur:
Sapsucker:
Spies Like Us:
Spymaster:
For Your Eyes Only:
Posted by Josh Miller 
Posted by Josh Miller 
Here’s an interesting movie tie in for th eupcomming Transformers film. Starting (around) June 22nd, you’ll be able to get the BBQ Double Stackticon at Burger King. Here’s a quote.
