Hello everybody.

People's experience with Two Cities pyro is generally confined to the final wave of Hamlet Hostility. That's unfortunate, because a good pyro is likely to outdamage every other class out there, with a rare exception being a very talented sniper. Others may switch to him after receiving a Refund Upgrade credit. That's fine, but you'll have so much money by then for upgrades that it's a lot easier to survive. You won't even HAVE to learn certain skills - the massive amounts of cash is a crutch. I want you to play pyro from wave 1 (in some cases 2) until the finish.

Controversial Statement Time: A good pyro will have the highest score in all Two Cities missions except Empire Escalation, where a demo or sniper may have higher scores. This is skill level being relatively equal of course. To be honest, I rarely play pyro on Empire Escalation, but the wave compositions lead me to believe that it's not the best class for that map. Ocassionally, really agressive players can match your score, but not your damage. They'll usually make up for the damage deficit with their bloated support numbers. You may find that unless your heavy is ultra-agressive, you will be taking a lot of the damage away from the heavy. Yup, you're probably going to embarrass the heavy.

So, why is the pyro a non-meta class? Because newbs tend to favor pyro and the wave of bad players have tainted his image.

Playing pyro to his full potential also has a bit of a learning curve. It requires some experience. The pyro is quite similar to the spy in this sense

"How can this be? You just have to hold down Mouse1"
True, there isn't much aim required to the class and a lot of times you are just holding down M1. So what will make a good pyro is Good Movement, Good Positioning, Understanding Aggro, and a Proper Upgrade Path. It will also require both knowing what a pyro excels at and what his limitations are.

A lot of the guide may focus more on Rottenburg than Manhattan. Manhattan is a little boring. You stay in 1 spot and do 1 thing for the most part, but I'll talk about it as well.

My aim is to share some knowledge about Pyro to some less experienced players who enjoy pyro and wish to play their favorite class on Two Cities. So let's begin...F4 Newbs!!!

Only one thing matters: The correct flamethrower

That's right, secondary and melee will not have a real meaningful effect on the game, but I will discuss my preferences just for the heck of it.

I will preface this section by saying - A PYRO SHOULD NOT FOCUS ON AIRBLASTING. If you're playing Two Cities thinking that airblast will be the team's saving grace, you will most likely be kicked...and you deserve it. You're probably taking up the soldier or demo's slot in the 'standard meta' - 2 classes that can dish out tons of damage. If you're just airblasting a few projectiles here and there...you're kind of a waste of a class slot. Your goal is to dish out damage that those 2 classes wouldn't even be able to do.

There are really only 2 flamethrowers you should use: Phlogistinator or Backburner (FREE CRITS!!!!)

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Recommended Primary:
PHLOGISTINATOR

Awww yeah, baby, this weapon gives me a hard on. Doing damage charges an Mmmph meter. Pressing Mouse2 activates this charge. It cannot airblast. It suffers a -10% damage penalty

Two reasons to use this:

- Mmmph mode gives you 10 seconds of crits (36 damage per fully upgraded Phlog flame). It's easy to charge later in the game when you've got a lot into upgrades, so you will have crits for a good amount of the game. This MORE than makes up for the -10% damage penalty in the long run

- It keeps you alive. Activating Mmmph also recharges your health to full while nerfing damage taken during the activation. This fact makes the Phlog OP.

Use this flamethrower on any of the maps, but especially the Rottenburg Missions

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Recommended Primary:
BACKBURNER

The flamethrower requires 50 ammo to perform an airblast.

One reason to use this:

- Attacking from the back deals crits. Free crits! Yeah, that's always good. I've found that the best place to hit for the crit to register is usually on the back of a Giant Bot and a little to the left - not the exact 180 rear of the bot.

Use this flamethrower on Manhattan maps. The ledge underneath the bot spawn allows you to camp their drop point and attack their rears usually without them turning around. As long as there is someone near the front (Usually Heavy) to draw their aggro initially. It can work fine on Rottenburg, but I find the opportunities to get the free crits aren't as available on this map compared to camping the spawn in Manhattan.

Note, no free crits on tanks. Manhattan has no tanks, Rottenburg does. One reason why the Phlog is a superior weapon in Rottenburg

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Secondary:

Use whatever you want. Here are some quick points:

Flare Gun - can do 90 crit damage to an already burning bot. This is good when you are pushed down a lane and there is no realistic way to run straight at the bots without dying, so while you wait for the bots to come to you...chip away at their health.

Shotgun - Not that good at long range, so usually only used when you've run out of flamethrower ammo. At close to mid ranges, you're going to be putting out more DPS than the Flare Gun. I usually carry this these days because I like to practice my hitscan aim.

UPDATE:
Detonator - can only do minicrit damage to an already burning bot. Mostly this is used for increased mobility reasons. You can use the self-damage to perform 'flare-jumps' over obstacles you couldn't normally get over without buying upgrades into Jump Height

Gun Mettle UPDATE:
Scorch Shot - After the gun mettle update, valve unknowingly introduced a horrible game mechanic to the Scorch Shot. (It's one of the problems when they make changes geared for PvP without testing it properly on how it affects MvM) The scorch shot ignores Giant's programmed airblast resistance. This allows it knockback on hit. This sends Giants flying back as if they were a small bot. Normally this isn't a bad thing. However, idiots have decided that they wanted to spam it and delay bots for as long as possible.

For 3 years MvM, people were beating missions without endlessly stalling the bots. Then this was introduced and now it's normal to see Giants constantly flying backwards and popping up and down. Holy crap is that annoying to try to aim at. Just kill the damn thing please.

The thing is that it's completely unnecessary. It makes missions last longer for no reason. It also messes with the enjoyment of the gamemode for your teammates who are getting pissed off trying to aim at something going all over the map.

Examples:

Instead of just killing Major Crits like every normal team easily does, pyros are actually going out their way to extend the wave and try to push him either into the death pit or into the water near the hatch. Why?? Why spend an extra minute on such an easy miniboss.

Instead of just focus firing the Black Box soldiers in Empire Escalation, pyros are spamming scorch shot into them and delaying them only making it MUCH harder to actually kill the 10 of them. They were never a problem before this scorch shot update.

"But I'm delaying them forever"
No, have a votekick

Updated the bug on Sept 24, 2015. Finally fixed that annoying oversight. Hallelujah!

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Melee:

Homewrecker - used to remove sappers off of an engineer's building in 1 hit. Usually any decent team won't really need you to use this weapon. It can help during Wave 3 Bavarian Botbash during the spy swarm.

Powerjack - used for increased movement speed in certain situations. Not really intended to be used to deal damage. The damage vulnerability only applies while the Powerjack is the active weapon.

UPDATE
Tip from Cat-nip:
Third-Degree - Damages all units connected by a heal beam. This means that you can damage all the medics attached to a giant with a swing of this axe. This method should really only be used with a guaranteed crit (kritz medic or crit canteen). Or if the medic-picker died or is not around....you might be lucky to get a random crit on the medics. It's risky.

- Always hit the patient instead of the medic.

That's what is recommended, but use what you like.

Here is a quick synopsis of the pyro's roles. This is a guide on what you excel at and where you will be most efficient.

TANK KILLER
Tanks require DPS to take it down. Heavies are nerfed -75% against tanks, so they're out of the picture for being a tank buster. Sticky Demos don't have great sustained DPS and are more expensive to upgrade. Pyros really only need 1600 credits into Flamethrower damage to reach their DPS ceiling against the tank. Pyros are also very efficient with ammo, so they won't be searching for ammo every 10 seconds.

A tap-fire beggar's bazooka soldier is the only practical match to a Phlog pyro in terms of tank busting, but he will require 1600 credits in damage and 750 credits in reload speed to reach his DPS ceiling (sort of) against the tank, and even then he won't have a big ammo capacity and will have to hog all of the ammo boxes.

So a pyro (especially a phlog pyro) will be ready to solo tanks by wave 2. If the soldier wishes to match that, he will have to place all credits into only damage and reload speed, which isn't usually the upgrade path. Normally the soldier spends 300 on rocket specialist, 200 on health on kill, as well as on 250 credit ammo capacity upgrades. So the Soldier would have to specifically upgrade with tank-busting in mind to match the pyro for wave 2.


The current 'meta' for the tanks of Rottenburg is soldier and demo are on the tank. Depending on their upgrade path, the tank pre-occupies them for quite some time. On Hamlet Hostility, uber medics can still spawn while the demo is busy with the tank. Of course experienced teams can switch the demo off with the heavy later on or the soldier can just solo the rest of it, but a pyro on the team eliminates that problem. If a pyro is mostly solo'ing it with a phlog, tanks can make it to just passed the tunnel, but that's about as far as they will get. And it only requires 1 person, not 2. BAM! Meta improved.


On Manhattan, this role is non-existant. There are no tanks, dummy!

An Example: (Sorry for the default hitsound)

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GIANT KILLER

Here's some math for you:

Maxed out flamethrower damage + crits the entire time = dead giant. (I even showed my work)

With the backburner, you're doing insane damage to those Mini-Bosses, Giant Medics, or other Giants. Just take a look at damage stats when you're up against the Giant Heal-on-Kill Heavy of Manhattan. You're going to have the highest damage against that guy...because even though Heavy with crit canteens does more damage, the heavy won't be able to sustain crits the entire time like you can.

Phlog pyros will also melt through Giant Medics like butter (crits required). The only Medics that might pop on you is the Giant Medic of Wave 1 Bavarian Botbash and two Giant Medics of Wave 3 Bavarian Botbash. The rest I've never seen pop. They just die. In 3 seconds after spawning.


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CROWD CONTROL

The natural penetration of the flamethrower makes the pyro good at killing multiple enemies at a time. They are not as good at crowd control as a soldier, demo, or sniper, but they can still take out large groups of enemies fast. A pyro stationed at a corner / choke point is deadly

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Now a quick mention, YOU ARE NOT A TANK (Well obviously, dude, I'm not big and blue). You don't want to draw aggro unless you know you can win the fight. More on that later

The number 1 reason that a pyro is not part of the meta is that a bad pyro will always die very quickly in Two Cities. The pyro is a glass cannon, he can dish it out but he surely can't take it.

The pyro has 175 health, normal movement speed, and must fight up close to bots in order to properly do damage.

The scout is usually in the frontline, but he has increased mobility, usually built with resistances, and gains lots of health from picking up cash dropped on the map.

The heavy normally wants to be close to do damage, but he has a larger pool of health and is usually pocketed by a medic with a shield. (We are talking about Two Cities here after all)

The other classes do fine fighting from range, where it's easier to stay near barriers, hide, or just dodge incoming fire. You, as a pyro, are the odd one out. You're normally going to be very far forward and away from the medic, won't have the perks of the scout, and will have a lower health pool than the heavy. So if you just stand out in the open in front of the bots, you're going to die...A LOT.

The main focus of this guide is to teach you how to not do that, you dope.

Upgrade path does not have to be strict. Please feel free to experiment, but I will give a general guide to what you should work on and then talk about upgrades you should avoid. Build upgrade paths to your playstyle, but I find that some seem to be clearly superior to others.

High Priority Upgrades:

Flamethrower Damage
First Point of Health on Kill
Movement Speed
First Point of Ammo Capacity

Medium Priority Upgrades:

Resistances appropriate to the wave
More points in Ammo Capacity
More points in Health on Kill

Buy as you feel appropriate

1 Ammo Canteen (I will usually keep one on me during early waves)
Uber Canteens

Low Priority Upgrades:
Burn Damage*
Burn Time
Airblast Force
Fire Resistance
Health Regeneration (unless have extra credits) *
All Secondary or Melee upgrades

Explanation:
The build path is to make you even more of a glass cannon. The point of the early upgrades is to allow you to do lots of damage. You will stay alive by killing enemies faster than they can properly aim at you. The Health-on-Kill upgrade replenishes your health and if you run into a group of small bots, will give you a quick overheal.

I emphasize movement speed over resistances because even WITH resistances maxed you are still a squishy class since you're up close with the bots. PLAY STYLE, MORE THAN RESISTANCES, ARE GOING TO KEEP YOU ALIVE. The key to staying alive is proper positioning, dodging, and aggro manipulation. The movement speed is important because it will allow you to hide faster, dodge a lot, and get you to the correct positions on the map faster. More on that later.

Ammo capacity is nice, but you can do quite well with just 300 ammo as long as you manage your ammo properly and make frequent runs to the dispenser or ammo packs. If you're newer, and not familiar with the waves, you may have a hard time with ammo management. Feel free to get more ammo capacity if you want to, but watch for breaks in the waves. You might find that during those free times, you still have 150 ammo. Basically, you would have been fine without that extra ammo capacity upgrade.

Also consider this: Instead of 250 credits on ammo capacity, you could just get an upgrade in movement speed (200) plus 2 ammo canteens (50). Movement speed is prioritized higher than ammo capacity. You may end up "wasting" 50 credits when you pop those canteens, but you won't even miss it.

Uber canteens are the normal canteen to carry in later waves. You already get crits from your flamethrowers. Pyro is a cheap class to upgrade. You don't need any Reload Speeds or Firing Speeds to upgrade or special ability upgrades like a lot of the other classes. Once you got the main upgrades, you have a lot of free cash. That's why using credits on uber canteens is not that big of a deal. The uber canteens are to be used in dire situations when you're battling a giant while you're drawing his aggro (attention). You won't have to use many in Manhattan, but you will in Rottenburg. The uber is mostly used for when a Giant is about to drop down, your Mmmph meter is charged and ready, and you want to kill it fast (IE a Giant Medic coming up).

Burn Time and Burn Damage is a waste of credits for the most part. Maybe if it were 100 credits each it might be worth checking out, but at 250 per upgrade, it's definitely not a priority. You're trying to kill things outright with damage, not burn something and run away. Also, both upgrades do not effect the tank, since it cannot be set on fire. Also a waste against demoknights with ignite resistance or enemy pyros. However, later waves when you have cash to spend, consider upgrade burn damage. Burn damage can help charge the Mmmph meter much faster. That way you can spend more of your time in God mode.

Health Regen is a situational. Health Regen cannot get you an overheal. The Health on Kill is the superior upgrade and they both cost 200 credits. Instead of Health Regen just get another HOK instead. However, if you're playing with a good group of players, there may be instances where you won't be able to get a lot of kills since your teammates are bursting them dead too fast. This is where Health Regen becomes a good upgrade. However, it's still lower priority for me and never more than 1 tick if I have better upgrades to get.

Nope, it's not the ability to airblast. It's the ability to solo a Giant Demo no problem without taking any damage, regardless of aggro.

All this trick requires is 600 credits. Max out movement speed. You need the extra movement speed for this to work.

Ok, now......just circle strafe around the giant over and over while holding down M1. Yup, it's that simple. You're like Neo in the matrix.

You should maintain proper distance from the giant however. Don't get too close. It works best if you keep the giant towards the max range of your flamethrower


And it's not just an isolated demo. It works against groups of them as well.


All Day, son~!

This should be one of the basic skills to learn if you want to play pyro on these maps.

The pyro is not a good class out in the open when he is drawing the attention of all of the bots. The pyro is an ambush class. And when you're playing against bots that have preset paths of movement, ambushing becomes quite easy.

Here are the main spots to know in Rottenburg:


Here's some of that in action:



UPDATE:

This skill of camping a corner is applicable to any class. I do this a lot as heavy as well and I might have 6 deaths the entire mission regardless of the team skill. However, since pyro is so squishy, it's most important for him to learn it.

As stated earlier, the pyro is a squishy class and has little choice but to fight up close to the bot horde. If you think you can tank all of that damage...you're in a for a nasty surprise.
This is the main thing that will seperate a good pyro and a bad pyro.

So aggro is when you draw bot attention. It's when everyone shoots at you. It's so important to know that I wrote an entire guide on it previously:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=280425208

That guide was centered around Big Rock. I'll add on to it in this guide. Here are some of the highlights from that guide:

Scout tricking stupid Heavy

Sentry tanking the crit rockets

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The basics of playing pyro in Two Cities is that you want somebody else to draw initial aggro of the bots. THE WAY TO DO THIS IS TO BE HIDDEN WHEN THE BOTS DROP DOWN AT THEIR SPAWN. Bots aren't going to aggro on a player that they can't see while there's other teammates nearby in their line of sight. *nearby being a keyword


The ONLY reason I'm able to survive that encounter is that I'm waiting for the Giant Pyro to lock his aggro onto another teammate. If I were a dumb pyro waiting out in the open to 1v1 that Giant Pyro....I'm dead. That's why nobody likes newbs playing pyro.

Same thing, only this time it's in Manhattan - Gate A

Here's a time when it didn't go as smoothly

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Ok, so another skill to pick up is paying close attention to when a Giant DOES lock aggro on you. In such circumstances where you have no chance to kill him before he kills you, YOU NEED TO BACK OUT IF POSSIBLE. Go and hide, let the giant lock aggro on another teammate who can survive it - preferably the heavy or sentry.



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People who play Two Cities repetitively while only playing Meta classes will usually go their entire MvM career without learning this skill. The meta doesn't require them to. It's sad really.

Occasionally, you will find yourself against bots that you know you have 0 chance against. You may want to run, but don't think you can get away fast enough. The bot might also have cheap-ass knockback.

The trick out of this is Damage-Surfing

In competitive TF2, you may have heard someone talk about a medic surfing to safety. This is when a medic surfs explosive damage to perform a kind of 'rocket jump' - only it's purpose is to back out of a situation faster.The most likely time you'll hear it from a commentator is when an enemy roaming soldier jumps the medic and the medic surfs one of the soldier's rockets to escape. This is done by jumping at the moment the explosion is going to hit.


I recognize the crit rocket is coming. I don't want to get destroyed by a barrage of rockets, so I surf the rocket away, where the Soldier then locks aggro onto another teammate.

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The way it's most practically used is if you find yourself trying to run at a Giant Heavy who is crit-boosted or has knockback. You won't be able to reach him because of the knockback. Instead, just jump. The knockback will send you backwards so you can escape easily.

[placeholder for future video]

Now for some theory:

- When you're low on health, and not near a medic nor health pack. Target small bots. You will replenish your health through Heath on Kill. During these times, you're looking at small bots as sources of health.
- This is most true when you're fighting a giant that you can't beat 1 on 1, while said giant is surrounded by small groups of bots. Instead of a futile attempt at killing the giant, sometimes it's best to focus on the small groups of bots nearby so that the HOK mitigates the damage that the giant is doing to you. (If you can position yourself so that you're killing them by penetrating THROUGH the giant...even better). You'll be able to last until the source of small bots run out. By then, the giant might get milked, the medic might find you, concheror gets activated, or other teammates might join in on the fight.
- This is also a good course of action because it helps reduce the total DPS that bots are doing to you. Take this situation:

8 regular Heavies doing 40 DPS each
1 Giant Heavy doing 250 DPS
(I just made up numbers to illustrate a point.)
Total DPS: 570

The Giant Heavy takes 8 seconds to kill
The regular Heavies take 2.5 seconds to kill

So if you target the giant heavy, it'll take 8 seconds to kill him, and you've reduced the enemy DPS to 320. You only killed 1 target and only get one HOK from it. (If you've got 1 point in HOK, that's 25 health)

However, if you target the 8 regular heavies, you'll kill them in 2.5 seconds and reduce the enemy DPS to 250. You've killed 8 targets and get 8 HOKs from it. (If you've got 1 point in HOK, that's 200 health)



The point I'm making about reducing DPS only makes sense if a giant's DPS isn't insanely more than a small bot. I think 8 small heavies probably put out more DPS than 1 giant heavy. I think that's a fair assumption. Even if it isn't, the HOK fact is still a good one

Disclaimer: I have no idea how bots damage compare to one another. I don't know if giants have a higher base damage, or if they are the equivalent to say '4 ticks in +15%firing speed' heavy while a small heavy would be equivalent to an unupgraded heavy. I know that it varies wave to wave.
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Playing Manhattan is quite simple. You stand under the bot spawn, hold M1.

So this is kind of a hit-or-miss strategy. It's high risk because either you're going to not draw aggro and you're free to backburn all of the bots for insane damage - or the bots will aggro on you, turn around and you're now stuck isolated from your team with your back against a wall.

For this to work properly, you need a teammate (or sentry) playing forward near the up-ramp to draw initial aggro. If not, this happens:


It's not pretty, especially in the early waves when you don't have resistances.

However, if it's played correctly. The pyro is a powerhouse. Now my teammates are playing more aggressive up front
-Highlight clip from a game of Metro Malice. Sorry for the quick transitions between clips


This backburner advantage is best utilized if you haven't lost Gate A. Once you lose Gate A, it's a bit harder to get free crits. Once you lose Gate B, backburning becomes even MORE difficult....to the point that pyro kind of sucks now.

To be honest, you can use this class whenever you want to. I find the pyro is great to use on the 2 maps that aren't flooded with uber medics:

- Bavarian Botbash (uber medics are present only on the final wave, when they're difficult to take out before popping anyway)

- Metro Malice (Only the 1st wave feature uber medics)

On Metro Malice, you can play as unupgraded demo, take care of the medics...and then switch out to Backburner Pyro on Wave 2

Pyro is perfectly fine on Hamlet Hostility, sometimes I'll switch from Scout to Pyro on wave 5.
I don't normally use him on Empire Escalation, but you can do so just fine.

It's true, a pyro on wave 1 is very vulnerable. He doesn't have resistances built nor does he have his flamethrower damage maxed out to kill bots quickly. One thing you may consider doing is playing as an unupgraded 2nd heavy and then switch for wave 2. You'll probably have better stats than if you went pyro for the 1st wave. Also, it's good to trick your teammates into you playing pyro (muwahaha)

A pyro is a damage class and therefore can easily take place of either the Soldier, Heavy, or Demo in the standard meta. In Empire Escalation or Hamlet Hostility there are still uber medics so it is not advisable to replace demoman unless there's another medic-picker class on the team already. Bavarian Botbash or Metro Malice allow for the pyro to replace the demoman.

For me, pyro is usually a replacement for soldier on the team. I think their roles are the closest (glass cannon and tank buster). Pyro can replace medic just fine (although expect complainers) and as mentioned, pyro can replace scout later in the waves if you wish.

There are certain situations where you are free to fight out in the open with no worries because you know that the bots can't kill you faster than you can kill them. This only comes with experience.

There's no other way to explain it really. You just need to be able to recognize situations quickly because you've experienced them so many times before and then react accordingly.

NO RESPECT

In general, while drawing aggro, you cannot beat (without the use of canteens):

Large groups of heavies
Large groups of soldiers
Large groups of pyros (normally they're spread out)
Giants with most of their health left (unless it's a Giant Demo of course)


You can beat:

Groups of bots that are spread out
Giant Demos (easily)
Scouts
Bowman
Demoman

So if you're newer to playing pyro at Two Cities difficulty, you're going to want to practice. But if you just do it in Mann Up mode, you're probably getting kicked by your teammates because you're dying SO MANY TIMES!!!

So what are your options?

- Boot camp
- Playing in a private server or with a group of friends
- Practice these skills at a lower difficulty

But the best way I think to practice these skills is to play Big Rock maps. It does not have the Two City nazis there and you'll fit in with 85% of the other ♥♥♥♥♥♥ players already playing Big Rock maps. Big Rock is the closest thing to Two Cities and provides good practice. That's how I learned most of it and it transitioned to Two Cities seamlessly. It just required getting used to the waves a little

Pyro is a fun class to play. Killing giants with crits in a few seconds is a good feeling. Solo'ing a tank is a good feeling. Outscoring all the naysayers - Priceless.

Just so you know, playing as pyro absolutely sucks if your team is horrible or consists of cowards. The main way to stay alive as pyro is having your teammates take the aggro of the bots away from you and attacking them while they're distracted. If your team is always way in the back or hiding, the bots will most definitely aggro on you immediately and you won't have a fun time. Pyro works best when there is heavy/medic on the team, just so that the heavy can take the aggro.

Also this means that a pyro should NOT play too far away from his team unless he can corner camp. If you are too far forward without your team, you're going to draw aggro. Pay attention

So if you have any interest of playing Pyro in Two Cities, give the suggestions in the guide a try. Practice, learn the mechanics, and then go outscore those meta nazis.

- For those interested. Here is Wave 1 Botbash in its entirety (mistakes and all)-


Kill/Death: 279-16 (A little more deaths than I would have liked)


Kill/Death: 280-9


Kill/Death: 326-10
Heavy until wave 5, then switched to pyro. Although, the skill level definitely was not even


Kill/Death: 330-12 (I died 4 times in Wave 7. I sucked that time)

[insert future screenshots]


Thanks for reading~!

P.S.

Even if you have no plans of playing pyro, hopefully you've realized how you can help pyros stay alive. In Manhattan, he needs someone to play aggresively up forward so that he can backburn in peace. In Rottenburg, he needs you to at least show your face to bots that are just spawning so that he can ambush from the side.