Bard's guide to a better Pyro

The pyro is one of the best assault classes in the game. With decent armour, weapons and speed the pyro has what it takes to make it to the enemy base quickly and outmanouevre the heavier defenders. The Napalm rocket launcher and the Flamethrower give you excellent long and short range firepower. The napalm grenade is excellent for killing sentry guns and are excellent for covering your escape.

General tips

• Your napalm rocket launcher allows you to lay down excellent anti-sniper suppressive fire. A sniper cannot aim while burning. You can use the area effect to your advantage by aiming at walls near to a sniper. Due to the rocket speed it is often a good idea to duck out of cover, shoot a rocket at a sniper and then duck into cover again for the time it takes for the rocket to reach the sniper's position. Come out of cover and then lay a suppressive fire at the sniper position with your rocket launcher as you weave across open space. This will usually get you and your teammates across open ground successfully. On well6 you can shoot at the walkway below an enemy's feet and the area effect will still hit them.
• the flame thrower allows you to manouevre around an opponent, both hurting them and blinding them. Circle strafing works well against opponents. Often it is enough to just burn them for a good second or two and let the burning flames finish them off while you race further into an enemy's base. This also works well on defense allowing you to switch to another target and let the other enemy die or be cleaned up by the defense.
• the napalm grenade is an excellent tool for taking out sentries, blocking off a route or flushing a hiding enemy out of position. If you are playing on TF servers that are version 2.8 or below you can air-shot the grenade. This involves priming the grenade for about 2-2.5 seconds before tossing it at an elevated enemy or sentry gun. Even though the napalm grenade may land away from your target the explosions from the grenade occur where the initial explosion started. These grenades can also affect people behind walls or on a floor above you.an example is well6 with a sentry gun in the flag room. You enter the bottom of the tower, grenade jump on top of the teleport gate, prime your napalm grenades and explode them underneath the sentry.

Offense

When playing offense the pyro's role is usually to suppress enemy snipers, skirmish with the defenders and possibly capture the flag. When engaging enemy it is often good to use the area effect of the napalm rocket launcher to your advantage by shooting at obstacles that an enemy is hiding next to or at walls, floors or ceilings nearby. This allows you to remain out of sight and still hurt your enemy. A skilled player can literally run rings around any other defensive class but the heavy weapons guy in a dogfight. By circle strafing and using your flame thrower you'd be suprised at how much damage you will inflict while staying healthy.

Taking out sentry guns as a pyro is easy if you can get close enough to drop a grenade next to one. The napalm rocket launcher does not have the firepower to quickly take down a sentry before the supporting defenders jump all over you.  The napalm grenade also takes a little time to take a sentry down which gives an engineer time to jump in and repair it before it explodes.

Defense

As a reserve defender the pyro is excellent at rushing to help out the defense where he is needed. His speed allows him to chase down most other classes but the scout. Unfortunately the pyro doesn't have the hitting power of the other defensive classes and can't be counted on to kill an enemy if assigned to a static defensive position. The pyro should pretty much be delegated to first line of defense allowing the 2nd line of defense to kill the seriously weakened enemy attackers.

Binds to have

Nothing out of the ordinary.