Everything has been talked about to death with this game, but I have a question that no one has asked. It is an already known fact that Pyro's Flamethrowers lack in damage department due to several bugs, but what if those bugs are finally fixed, what is the optimal DPS for Flamethrowers then? We can't have Pyro melting Heavies and Soldiers milliseconds he sees them. What is the optimal DPS for him to have to not overtake Heavy's role and take his deserved place as a close quarters combat expert?

The flamethrower can already achieve its max DPS (~173 DPS), but there are some bugs that can hinder it in some scenarios:

1. At point blank the ramp-up speed is twice as long. (1.8s to reach max DPS vs 0.9s at just beyond point blank)

2. If flames don't leave the target (such as a wall behind them), the damage uses the max age falloff (50%) instead of the current age falloff (0% at point blank).

3. Ramp-up can reset without breaking tracking, but I've not seen consistent reproduction. Regardless, it is very unforgiving and will fully reset if your tracking ever breaks (not really a bug but still impacts DPS).

Fixing these bugs wouldn't make the DPS anything crazy, just more consistent.

flamethrower used to have around 150-160 dps before the JI damage system if you hit every shot

Flamethrowers are designed to melt at close range and be weak at every other range. A good change would be to remove the ramp-up and add a check for wildly spraying your mouse. Reduce your damage if you attempted to do so. This would give pyro back his damage that he had in jungle inferno without making it inconsistent. The ramp-up time to kill is reduced with the current ramp-up system, making his DPS very inconsistent. Not to mention the bugs that come with higher ping values. Flames do not have proper lag compensation, making flames harder to track with higher ping values. His ramp-up can be reset by simply bumping into someone or losing contact; also, his damage is reduced when players are next to walls. Fix all of those, plus the ramp-up being removed in favor of a parkinsons pyro check, and he becomes a good class. He should beat Soldier at close range due to the fact that he is the close-range class.

I never even knew this was a thing.

So I'm not crazy in thinking it's nuts how some pyros rapidly kill me as a heavy, but I often need a long time of constant assault to do so as a pyro?

Not at all. Also the flicking like a madman thing actually increases DPS because flame parties are bugged beyond all fuck.

pyro before the flame rework was already considered a low damage class. all they need to do is revert to old flames. they were harder to use but had higher max damage.

Technically it can reach max DPS, but practically speaking, bug 3 makes reaching max DPS impossible against a real player.

I wouldn't mind if the flamethrowers dealt like 20% more damage with pretty much perfect accuracy

I would only be fine with this if they made the flames not block vision. Right now it’s extremely obnoxious when a pyro just swings his mouse around and blinds you but he doesn’t do any dmg so it’s fine.

thats almost on the level of spy face/air stabs, goddamn

The problem is that the game’s ancient netcode and lag compensation makes it pretty much impossible to get consistent performance this way. That was the entire impetus for the Jungle Inferno change, that was how it “worked” before but in reality the amount of damage you dealt was basically random.

they had lower max damage afaik because the fire interval gets rounded up (it was something like ~156 dps rather than the intended ~170) but yeah imo the old damage system made more sense