Flame On!

Seyon and I enjoy Team Fortress 2 a lot. So much that we go beyond playing the game and begin to explore the realm of Screwing Around. Empty servers become playgrounds where we test oddities in game mechanics, rocket-jumping, Engineer buildings, ubers, Spy abilities, Scout accesses, achievements, etc. Yesterday we were messing around with our friends, Domino and Taco, on our own private fake LAN and came across a few neato facts:

  • The Pyro’s Backburner (available after Pyro Milestone 2 with sixteen unlocked achievements) has a considerably longer reach than basic flamethrower. The animation’s draw distance for both weapons looks exactly the same and is not a reliable tell of fire range.*
  • One of the newest additions to the Pyro’s arsenal, the air compressor, has the ability to blow back Pyro flares, Soldier rockets, Demo grenades, Demo stickies, and sentry gun rockets in mid-air. Each of these projectiles has its own associated kill icon, though you may have to squint to see them.
  • Catching a flare within the compressor’s AoE is particularly difficult to time as it is a tiny target and rather fast. If you successfully reflect it, the flare will change to the color of your team.
  • Demo stickies will not change color if blown away but will still show the reflected kill icon if he dies by them even some time later.
  • The flare does little damage to the Pyro (~20 hp), so try aiming it back at one of his highly flammable teammates.

* Kudos to our buddy, Scrub, for informing me about this ninja update.

1 Comment

  • Taco
    04 Aug 2008

    AWESOME article. Keep ’em coming guys. You forgot to mention the tiny feet on the spy. LMAO

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