I'm home before the update has hit. Whoopee. My last final is 7 days from now so I much free time until I start studying for that test.
Pyro stuff:
The Backburner is the most skillful Pyro flamethrower. You still have airblasts, but a limited amount, so the only people that can use airblasts on it effectively are those that are really good with it. As an extra reward for being so skillful with airblasts that you don't need as many, you get a back crits every once in a while. But back crits are hard to regularly, you actually have to really work to get them consistently. And you also give up random crits, meaning that all of your kills will come from less luck than other Pyros. You don't have a faster weapon switch that makes it so easier to use all of your weapons at once, and you're rewarded for that with the extra damage and afterburn. And if you want to see a comp game where someone used a Backburner I can point you to a recent UGC finals game I watched this morning. I can currently airblast rockets semi-consistently on any server I play on with some time to warm up and get used to the ping. It's always been my plan to eventually graduate to the Backburner while keeping the other parts of my playstyle in tact. I use the Degreaser these days just because it makes me feel safer if I ever pull out a melee weapon, and it helps me deal with Scouts easier. Despite all this, most of my kills come from not switching weapons anyway.
The addition of the Manmelter is an extra buff to the Backburner since it means you can still help teammates, and then you get another weapon that doesn't give you random crits and have to work for them, somewhat. The fact that it also fires a projectile that will almost definitely travel slower than the Flaregun (but hopefully will have a faster rate of fire) means that it's sadly overall weaker and harder to use.
The Phlogistinator will sadly become the new W+M1 weapon, but I'm fine with it, because even if charges at a decent rate people will complain and it will get nerfed to hell just like the two banners did. Meanwhile you get the playstyle the old Backburner (before it got airblast) had, but a better reward than back crits you'd rarely get.
I want a medigun that charges based on how much damage your target does... As for what the uber does, I have no clue. But it'd be neat.
Edit: NVM. Then the medics would never get off Wartime and Fallengorn. Oh wait...
I would love to see that. Maybe something that gives minicrits and potentially charges a little bit faster than the Kritzkrieg (although anything charging faster than the 30 second Kritz will be pushing things...).
I just hope they give something to the Medic to help offset these new threats. It's actually kind of tearing me up inside how two of my three favorite classes are turning around on my most played class. Hopefully one of those Soldier rocket launchers that deal damage to the Soldier while providing some benefit to the Medic finally get out of beta. Or maybe a similar type of weapon for a different class. Or they can buff the Quick Fix since too few people seem to be interested with letting me play with it properly, so you might as well make it more similar to the other mediguns rather than come out with something else I'll think is new and interesting and fun for me to use and everyone else will yell that it sucks.
Still, TF2 is a game about life and death decisions, and it'll be interesting to lose my uber before I can pop it, but not because I got one shot by a Sniper/Spy/crit.
