Syringe Gun is fun. It doesn't matter because it is so bad that you should never take it out when you could be healing people, unless you are alone. If you're alone and someone is fighting you, the Crossbow takes more skill to kill them anyway.

And there isn't really much complexity to running stock Medic. You critheal things that are not Scouts and then ignore them until they have critheals again.

is everyone who wants the crossbow banned someone who can't hit arrows on people standing still or walking in straight lines

i would literally fall asleep playing medic without the crossbow

i actually don't understand how anyone can bear 99.9% uptime on a gun that takes no aim

please don't take away literally the only thing about medic that is mildly difficult

that tairong meme is far worse than everything xqc did in that video

Faust surprised me with how solid his pocket was last season. He can definitely squish IM!

Yeah, you go right ahead and do that.

Do you not see the irony that you're telling me I can't criticize Thalash because he's better than me, while criticizing me, while I'm better than you?

Nobody is perfect and even the best players make mistakes constantly. If you think that top level players don't make mistakes, or they don't make mistakes that people worse than them can recognize, I don't even know what to tell you.

He didn't die because he was too slow, he died because he walked into the flamethrower. It was easily preventable and he fucked up, the end.

What the video's author intended is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that they succeeded because the Pyro's victims fucked up incredibly simple things, like, for instance, walking into a Phlog Pyro when he has crits, or not juggling a Pyro who can't airblast and is holding W.

Here is STAR's most popular video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGr18BHG4ak&ab_channel=STAR_

Show your friends this and ask them if TF2 looks like a competitive game.

I also don't understand where you're going with this. Iatgink doesn't have the following of Banny or STAR, and if they watched Banny today they'd be far more likely to appreciate competitive TF2 than if they watched STAR's youtube in 2009 or whatever. I can find hundreds of videos that depict TF2 as a silly casual game from 2009 that have at least as many views as that Pyro clip.

As for the argument that there are less competitive players in pubs which leads to less awareness of competitive TF2 in pubs, it's far more likely due to the horribleness of Casual matchmaking and the death of community servers stopping competitive players from pubbing. That's what's deterred me and most people I know who have taken a step back from pubbing.

I would too. That doesn't equate to banning Pyro.

...What?

I don't think I need to go any further.

Pyro takes significantly more thought than Medic. Pyro has to make difficult decisions constantly because you are leading pushes or alone, and is punished harder for positioning errors because of the opportunity cost of not running Pyro and slower speed. Meanwhile, everything a Medic needs to think about can be microd for him, and he can brainlessly follow whoever is leading the push like a dog on a leash. I guarantee every player who reads tftv can play Medic at the same or higher level than they can their combat class main after a few weeks of practice. I would not say the same of Pyro.

If your team has lost multiple people to a Pyro Uber, or worse, a Pyro sac, then I have no sympathy for you and you deserve to lose. He has shit approach tools and walks too slow to catch any 6s class. How the fuck do you ever let that happen? Your argument was that Pyro should be banned because killing people doesn't take mechanical skill. Surely, any person to die to something that takes no mechanical skill is a tragedy that we must never allow to happen again, since this is an FPS, and aim is sacred, right?

Yes, but the difference is there's quite a bit of counterplay. For example, staying five feet away, and/or being invulnerable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Pubbers think Sniper and Scout are bad, that Heavy is mandatory, and that Soldier is overpowered. They've also been bitching about Pyro as long as Pyro has existed, even when it was utter garbage.

If you have to stoop as low as saying that you're right because the lowest common denominator of X category agrees with you, your argument is lacking.

I guarantee you do not want to play the version of 6v6 that pubbers imagine to be ideal. Seriously.

It does not take skill to press S and check corners. This is not a technique exclusive to high level players, anyone can do it.

Are we balancing for the skill floor now? Medic is significantly easier than Pyro with a much lower skill ceiling. Building Sentry Guns also takes zero skill. And Spy is capable of instagibbing any class with no mechanical skill, if they don't play around Spy existing.

Competitive 6v6 has never balanced with the mindset of protecting low level players from their idiocy. I hope that will never change.

Also, you said this:

Implying that the only way to counter [Phlog] Pyro is with another Pyro. This is what I am disproving.

No, because the Phlog Pyro's Medic popped much earlier.

If you take it a step forward and say, "well, what if the defending team lets the Pyro walk onto point uncontested?" And the answer to that would be, "Then they would have a much better chance of capping last if the Pyro had airblast, and that defending team would have lost the cap to pre-JI Pyro anyway."

Your argument is that Pyro is not easy to run away from because he can run at 100% speed.

In 6s.

Think about that for a second.

Also Powerjack is obviously terrible as an approach tool and Detonator is extremely mediocre. It's the equivalent of doing a minimum damage rocket jump as a gap closer. They are passable at getting from place to place, but that doesn't matter if you can't get kills without the enemy team donating them to you.

(also i edited previous post to respond to you in case you miss it)

The trade is assuming that the class that is faster walks into range of a class that is slower. Going Pyro is not a guaranteed trade or people would sac on Pyro.

I don't understand how you can be so deluded. Have any of you actually played 6s Pyro for more than a handful of lives post-JI update? If you get a guaranteed trade every time you go in as Pyro, I have a spot on my Invite team for you.

Yes, killing people with the Flamethrower is easy if you get into range. What nobody seems to understand is that if you get into range of a slow, short range class with bad mobility you have already fucked up and deserve to die. You can apply everything you said about Pyro to talk about Engineer or Heavy, but neither of them are overpowered, because they're limited by their mobility, their range, and by the opposing team's capacity to not walk into their optimal range when they could just not do that. Not walking into range of a turtle class is not mechanically difficult, I have no doubt that every player on every team in Open has an S key.

Your suggestions are awful, but I'm not going to address them because they're irrelevant. I'm seriously questioning if you've ever touched Pyro if you think that giving him 40 ammo will fix anything though.

They could literally have solo Ubered any standard class and done the same thing.

The argument was that Phlog and/or Pyro is overpowered because in this video, a team pushing last with Phlog Pyro one time succesfully, and there was no way to counter that. I'm telling you how to counter it. If you want to continue arguing that the Phlog and/or Pyro are overpowered, you need to make a new argument.

It's been an entire season. If it's such an auto-win button that can only can be countered by running your own Pyro or a Sniper, where is the plague of unstoppable Pyros ravaging Open?

I don't have the CS knowledge to refute your analogy, but I feel like there's a fundamental difference between a very strong hitscan weapon and JI Pyro. The difference is you counter a hitscan weapon by aiming better, which is mechanically difficult. You counter Pyro by pressing S and taking corners wide, which is not difficult.

You also have to think of the cost. As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), nobody was using the gun before and so banning it costed the metagame nothing. There is a real cost in banning Pyro that affects every team and every player in the division. Don't minimize that.

I know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_entitled_to_my_opinion

As for assuming the admins won't make drastically misinformed decisions, I used to think like you.

But they banned the Dragon's Fury, which makes 0 sense, and I honestly believe they are going after the Detonator next.

So no, I am not going to allow people to spread misinformation and rabble rouse, because I think it does have real consequences. I also don't want lurkers to come upon this thread and perpetuate inaccurate criticism of the game.

If you admit that you are on the moral / logical low ground, you can't just stay there because it's comfortable, because changing hurts, because it means you were wrong. You should seek the moral and logical high ground in all things even if it hurts, because it leads you to being better for it. Don't become so attached to what you believe that you're not willing to shift your beliefs upon realizing that they make no sense. That leads to personal stagnation and prevents you from reaching your potential.

I don't understand why pubbers and Steel players are trying to play the "you don't have enough competitive experience" card on me.

This shit is as ridiculous as the hysteria back in HRG days when people were blaming the slow metagame on Heavy and Engineer and calling for class limit 0. Offclasses are not uncounterable or broken, they are good for the game. Turtle classes help ensure the dynamism of 6s is preserved by mitigating the heavily unfavorable situation of being stuck on last with Uber disadvantage after wiping on mid. 5CP is good because both teams at any moment have so many options, have to make so many decisions. Pyro is a huge part of being able to defend against a full Uber push into last and the ability to clutch a round from the jaws of defeat makes the game exciting and fun both to watch and to play.

It's not as cut and dry as saying that Pyro slows down the game, either. Certain stalemates that are incredibly difficult to break, like Viaduct forward hold, pushing Granary second, and pushing Gullywash / Blands last, can be broken by running Pyro. This speeds up and freshens the metagame. What's more, the inability of Pyro to effectively hold chokes because of bad range provides opportunities for smart teams to push whereas they wouldn't feel comfortable doing so against a Scout or Soldier, because they are better.

And out of these niche situations, Pyro is still really fucking bad. It is significantly harder to play Pyro full time and win at a high level than Scout and Soldier, which is probably why nobody has done it. Outside of holding last, running Pyro means you're giving up consistency, flexibility, and raw power, which is a huge risk and easily punishable. If you read your opponents tendencies to make mistakes and take the risk of going Pyro instead of staying on the consistently good and almost always better standard classes, and it actually pays off, then that is skill.

Restricting classes alienates your playerbase. Back when I was a pubber, over half my friends who were interested in competitive TF2 were turned off of 6s by a perceived state of staleness and inflexibility and ended up losing interest because pubs and Highlander are boring. My first 6s team had two Pyro mains, a Heavy main, and a Sniper main, but we realized that those classes were inflexible and bad and became fully-fledged 6s players. These are the people who you are turning away from 6s by banning Pyro, and you'll never realize how hard you fucked the playercount because nobody will be here to tell you about it.

Last and least, I personally find reaction reflecting (predicting when they shoot because they're too close to react) to be one of the most challenging and satisfying things in TF2. There are so many things about Pyro, like reflect jumping, or finding new detjump flanks and hiding spots, or maximizing damage per particle, or the Dragon's Fury / Jetpack, that make it so even the best Pyros haven't approached the skill ceiling. I enjoy outplaying people by doing suboptimal, unorthodox things, and I enjoy specifically fighting Pyros as projectile classes because of the psychological intensity that reflecting brings to the matchup.

I understand that there many 6s players who don't share my opinions. Disagreeing with me is fine, but what frustrates me is when people disagree with me and dislike Pyro because they either don't understand or refuse to attempt to understand. There are people in this thread who are arguing that the only counters to Pyro are Sniper and other Pyros, that they win every other matchup. There are people who are arguing the Dragon's Fury is too strong. These things aren't just differences in opinion, they are flat out, factually wrong. So, so, laughably, utterly wrong.

I want to ensure that the hysteria in this thread doesn't spill out of control, and lead to the whitelist getting fucked because ignorant people are consumed with fear of things that they do not understand.

So if anyone wants to actually discuss anything, instead of restating their opinions, flat out telling me I don't know what I'm talking about without a tenth of my experience or any evidence, and posting gifs of confused people, let's do it.