To play pyro you need good trigger control. Many players come from playing assault, a class where you are not punished for spamming shots and missing. With pyro you have 2 bullets in your pistol and you cannot miss either shot if you want to carry. I see level 50+ players picking pyro at the start of a scrim match, and then swapping back to assault when they die 4 times in a row because they spammed both pistol shots and got rushed while reloading.

As pyro you need to understand that when you have 2 shots in your pistol, you win any 1v1 trade fight as long as you hit your shots. Your pistol will 2 shot any class in the game except for guardian and pyro. Since there are no headshots in this game, HP entirely dictates how aggressively you can play. If you can land your first shot, the enemy player is already at 1 shot and needs to play very safe if they want to win. So even if you are low HP against a full HP juggernaut or assault, all you have to do is land 1 shot to even out the fight. This is why, in theory, pyro is the strongest class in the game. If you played with perfect aim and landed every shot, you should not lose a single even fight, and many disadvantaged fights as well. The only reason why pyro is balanced is because players are not mechanically perfect and will miss shots. If you are playing pyro and miss twice during a close range 1v1, you are pretty much dead as the enemy will push you while you reload and kill you. So this class is very risk-reward.

Your pyro gameplay will improve significantly if you focus on trigger control and only taking shots that you know you will hit for sure. To improve your trigger control, stop playing assault and practice in instagib. As pyro you want to play as if you have the instagib railgun. Once you land your first shot as pyro, you are pretty much playing instagib since you 1 shot the enemy if you hit them, but are dead if you miss because of your reload time. Try to only shoot the enemy when you know for sure you will hit them, especially at close quarters when you are at risk of being rushed. At the end of every match look at your precision stat, and try to aim for above 50% accuracy.

As pyro you pretty much want to play like you are playing instagib. For some reason, the only time I see many players try to fake peeks and bait out shots is in instagib. They never do it in actual games, and this is one of the reasons why their pyro is not good.

If you fake a peek in instagib and the enemy player peeks and misses their shot, you have the chance to repeek and kill them while their shoulder is still out, or push up and kill them while they rechamber. As pyro you should follow the same idea. Once you land your first shot, you are essentially playing instagib as your next shot is a 1 shot kill, and your gun behaves like a railgun. Do a microbait (fake peek, sudden turn) and shoot them after they miss and expose their shoulder.

The problem with this is that it cuts both ways. If you have bad trigger control and the enemy microbaits you into missing your shot, you are pretty much dead as pyro is punished much more than other classes for missing shots. So do not give up your biggest advantage by missing.

To practice microbaiting, play gTDM 1v1s as pyro or play more instagib, and always try to bait enemy shots and shoot them while their shoulder is exposed. Experiment with this in open lobbies and you will see just how many free shots you will get if you just fake a peek before you engage.

Pyro is very good at 1v1s so try to position yourself so that you are only facing one enemy at a time. You should restrict your shooting angle to isolate one enemy, double tap them with your pistol peeks, and then reangle to engage multiple targets. Pyro has very good burst potential with pistol + fast swap to flamethrower combo, as well as good long range 1v1 potential. So try to position for 1v1s.

To play pyro well you pretty much need to just follow these three simple steps and you will win hard, in pretty much every situation.

1. Hit the enemy player once with your pistol.
2. Now that they are scared, you can readjust your positioning or reload depending on how much time you have.
3. Play like instagib, and 1 shot the enemy when they expose themselves, either by microbaiting them or abusing their poor positioning.

Remember, there are no headshots in this game, so in theory, if both players in a 1v1 have perfect aim, the one who has more HP wins. Pyro by default has more health than assault and juggernaut, and only has to hit 2 shots to win, while the enemy likely has to hit 4. So abuse this and use it to your advantage. As long as you hit 1 shot, you know that your next shot is going to kill, so you can pretty much hard engage as long as you don't miss your second shot. Pyro simply wins every 1v1 trade, as long as you hit both shots.

Remember that in theory, pyro is the best class in the game. You pretty much 2 shot every class in the game and win all 1v1 trades. Even if you are low HP against a full HP opponent, all you have to do is hit 1 shot, and the playing field is even. So essentially, if you do not miss your shots, you are untouchable.

If you are switching over to pyro from assault, it will take a while to learn good trigger control, and you will die a lot and think that the class is underpowered. Everyone will experience that. When this class first came out in the beta testing, everyone considered it useless because it had bad long/mid range crowd control and was too difficult to land shots with. Only months later scrims players realized how overpowered it was, when people improved their trigger control, peeking skills, and got used to the rhythm of the pistol.

So give pyro a try and stick with it because as a pyro main I think a lot of people are missing out from the fun of being able to 2 shot everyone.

~niggle