The Icrontic-style Team Fortress 2 Ultimate Pyro guide

Greg 3 Jun, 2008 at 1:00am ET Article published in Tech

The Pyro: A Team Fortress 2 Guide

Ok, I know what you’re saying, “A Pyro Guide!? It doesn’t take any skill to be a Pyro. Just run around with your flamethrower blazin’!”

Wrong.

The Pyro is a very unique class, in that he has no “long range” weapons. Yes you can fire a shotgun across the canyon in 2fort and do a little damage, but it is useless in the big picture. The shotgun is meant to finish off a player at close range.

The Flamethrower; I love this weapon so much. Nothing brings bigger smiles to my face then seeing an enemy on fire screaming. It does a decent amount of damage, and can be used very effectively to disrupt an attack. The downside is that it has a very limited range. This is why you need to master the Flamethrower/Shotgun technique to be a good Pyro.

Spies! Pyros love spies. They are always trying to sap a sentry gun or backstab someone with their cloak/disguise methods. However, they burn very well, and usually will die without you having to use your shotgun.

Now for some Pyro loving advice for defense and offense.

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Comments

4 Jun 2008 ~ 12:08am fatcat thanks for the edits prime o buddy o pal

/me hands ya beerz
4 Jun 2008 ~ 12:10am UPSWeezer Nice guide fatcat. But you didnt add the part about how to defend yourself from "The Weezer Spy" I guess its kinda impossible.;)
4 Jun 2008 ~ 12:19am BlackHawk A few points:

Most if not all of the pyro kills are going to be by surprise. Of these, some come from killing a lot of people in a bottleneck like Goldrush. The non-surprise kills come from ubersor finishing people off.

You can kill any class as long as you catch them off guard. Jump behind a heavy and let the flamethrower go, most of the times you'll win. Same goes for a soldier and a demoman.

Pyro vs Pyro: Let him chase you and run backwards, your flames travel towards the other person and they just run towards their own. Watch if they change to shotgun and change also. They probably have little HP and will die in a few shots.

I personally like to get my kills in bottleneck areas of a map and catching others by surprise, like jumping from above or anticipating them coming from a corner.
4 Jun 2008 ~ 12:32am fatcat great points Black Hawk.

you are one of the better pyro's in the game I will admit.
4 Jun 2008 ~ 1:13am _k Just run and set things on fire, then make smores over the burning bodies of the dead. There might be some more tack that got lost in translation though.....
4 Jun 2008 ~ 4:59am rolleggroll In the Pyro vs Medic matchup, avoid running in straight lines. Zig Zag left and right (you move faster) and you avoid getting killed by the needle gun when its just you and the medic. Remember that the medic runs just as fast as you so if you chase him/her with the flamethrower at a distance where the fires are not burning him/her you will probably get needled to death, or the medic will run away heal and find a buddy to get revenge. Avoid narrow corridors when fighting medics. Any medic that takes out the bonesaw and runs straight at you probably has the uber-saw and is willing to risk the fire to one/two-hit-KO you.
4 Jun 2008 ~ 12:14pm UPSWeezer In a Spy vs Pyro fight... well... if you know who the spy is, you'll have a 99.9% chance of winning.
4 Jun 2008 ~ 12:21pm BlackHawk Sometimes running around blasting the flamethrower works too.
4 Jun 2008 ~ 1:59pm jokerz4fun Job well done fatcat!!!!
12 Jun 2008 ~ 11:11am TiberiusLazarus Nice guide. You completely forgot about the ninja ax tactic. Jump off a ledge (or get blown into the air by a soldier/demo) and ax the poor soul below you to death.
12 Jun 2008 ~ 11:42am GnomeQueen I find that in general, trying to run in circles around people kills them well. When going up against a solider or demo man, I try to run at them at an angle or run around them because it makes it harder for them to kill you.

Also, if a sentry gun is close to you, you have a good chance of killing it. The circle effect works on sentries too, since pyros are pretty fast. If the sentry is too far away though, it will kill you before you can get close. I find times when you can come up behind the sentry gun and run around it to be the best way to kill it, or if you can jump behind it. For example, on the second map of dustbowl when people are defending the last point, and there is a sentry gun in the corner on the right (the most common place to put a sentry gun in that area) as long as there aren't any other sentries, it is possible to jump off of the ledge, end up behind the sentry, and destroy it.

The chances of you being able to kill a sentry in this manner though, tend to be 50/50. It really all depends on the situation and placement of the sentry gun, but it is really fun when you do that and the exclamation of the engineer is "How did you DO that?!" or "That's impossible!"

Also, I think pyros need to be careful about their medics. Since pyros ARE the suicidal class, it can be a bad idea to tow a medic around, because they are likely to get killed if you don't have uber or a specific target in mind. I think that if you are going on a suicide mission too that the medic should be informed.

Then again, Tiberius voted me the least friendly person to medics, so perhaps I'm the only one with a bad habit of getting medics killed....
13 Jun 2008 ~ 9:37am TiberiusLazarus

Gnome_Queen wrote:

Then again, Tiberius voted me the least friendly person to medics, so perhaps I'm the only one with a bad habit of getting medics killed....