Hey,

 

Well its that time again, another riveting part to my team fortress 2 walkthrough, The pyro.

 

The pyro is a devastating short range combat class, you are right at home clearing rooms of enemies and generally disrupting their front lines. You are not invincible though, so use strategy when burning them suckers and you'll live longer and see your points skyrocket.

 

Your main weapon the flamethrower, has fairly short range, you work best skulking around corners waiting for a unsuspecting enemy to wander into your range. If you can manage you can even push the front lines if the enemy is bunched up in a smaller room, just charge in, light em all up and charge out, let them burn to death. Remember that, you can simply ignite a enemy and let them  burn to death allowing you to move back into cover, occasionally they will find a medic or a health kit or dispenser that will save them, but most of the time if there health is a bit low they will succumb to your flame.

 

The pyros victims are many, your flamethrower makes quick work of pretty much everyone. The easiest victims are scouts, engineers and medics and spies the squishy classes if you will. You can make short work of demomen, heavies and other pyros but its more risky and more of a battle. Scouts and spies  especially will melt within seconds, its quite satisfying having a scout run around a corner thinking he will get a cap and some congrats from the teammates only to burn in seconds.

 

Your top enemies are few, but like I said, demomen and heavies (especially with medics) and of course other pyros will give you trouble. Demomen have the advantage of range on you, so if you can nullify that you are on fairly even ground, they still have those explosives they can set off themselves though which is a huge advantage, to combat this do not let him make any distance between the two of you, this will force him to hurt himself with his own explosives in order to fight you.

 

The heavy is only difficult if he sees you coming, if you can get him around corners and nullify his slow to start mini gun with hit and run tactics you'll take him out fairly easily. If he has a medic you are in trouble, your best solution is to wait for a teammate to help take em out. or if you absolutely need to take them now, or perhaps just want to go out with a bang, attack them using your best tactic, ambush. When you do ambush, ignore the heavy completely and concentrate on the medic, you will not kill the heavy if he is being healed and the medic is a "squishy" class...so torch em!

 

A quick note about spies...your a pyro! test everyone, As a pryo you have the luxury of being able to tell if the enemy is a spy almost immediately by lighting them on fire. You are your teams primary spy hunter...so give every suspicious player on your team a quick burst of flame if they light up...finish them off and rejoice as the spy killer.

 

I wanted to cover one thing that many players do as a pyro and it always gets them killed. Popping out of a ambush to early. The enemy will always start running away, the biggest mistake you can make is to chase them if they are slightly out of your flamethrower range. In chasing them you are giving them opportunity to pump you full of lead while being out of range to deal damage to them with your flamethrower. Not only that as the enemy backtracks they are bringing you closer to their teammates which means you will be killed. In other words, if your ambush fails, its not always best to give chases, instead set up somewhere else and try again. It will save you a few deaths per game guaranteed.

 

That's it for the pyro walk through, hopefully there is some helpful hints there for some of you.

Cheers,

Z