With the recent Pyro update I thought I'd play some TF2 to see how it is. I started a few days ago and once again I find myself parked in front of my computer till the wee hours of the morning.
I'm really digging the update so far. I been mostly playing 2fort to unlock the new pyro achievements, so I can't say much about the new community maps, but I can say the changes to pyro are pretty great. The new alt-fire on the standard on the flamethrower is quickly becoming a main stay for me. With the new update, pyros can now fire compressed air to push away enemies and redirect explosives (grenades, sticky bombs, and missiles) .
As you can imagine, this opens up some new tricks while playing pyro. You can use the compressed air to knock people off ledges (and into sentries!), break up ubers by blowing away the medic, defusing a mined room by blowing away the sticky bombs and even turning them to your side, and etc. I've also heard you can knock people to the ground if you nail them with compressed air from the top, though I haven't tried.
As for the new weapons, I've unlocked the new Flare Gun and I'm 1-2 achievements away from the Back Burner Flame thrower. The flare gun is pretty neat and useful for long range targets. It's main purpose is to set people on fire from afar. It can cover a fair amount of distance and its very effective on snipers, engineers and pretty much any one too far to hit with your flame thrower. The only draw backs are that the flare is slow, the gun only holds a single shot at a time, and reloading is about 1-2 seconds. In short, you shouldn't use it in a close range fire fights or fast moving targets.
With the Back Burner you gain a +50 increase in health, automatic criticals for any one you flame from behind, and no compressed air. It's a great weapons for ambushing incoming enemies and it seems like it plays better for defense. I've noticed that pretty much every pyro with a BB attacks by running around in circles with the hope nailing a back critical. It's really effective if you can pull it off and it prevents people from trying to run away with their back to you.
The third weapon is the axtinguisher, a nasty looking axe wrapped in barbed wire. It replaces the standard axe by offering critical damage if used on ignited enemies. There is a draw back however, since the axtinghusher will only cause minor damage to non ignited enemies. I actually haven't see this too much and to be honest it sounds a little meh. I imagine it would be effective working with a group of pyros but I really haven't seem any one using it.
If your a fan of TF2 and haven't been back in a while, I recommend loading it up and playing a few rounds of pyro.
