Airblast, good or bad?

[MannsOverMeta]

This all started when i was in a mvm server on advanced. My teammates told the pyro to airblast the giant pyro when it came the the bomb hole. I said that airblast was for noobs who can't defend. Everyone got really pissed off when I said that. That begs the question, is airblast good or not? I have seen guides having mixed thoughts about it, but i just wanna know everyone elses opinion.

[Hacked Exhale]

Both

[frogger]

airblast can be useful in some situations (like reflecting crockets) but it gets used for the wrong reason (resetting the bomb, delaying bots) by people who play pyro by attacking from the front.

it's not ♥♥♥♥, but I always refer to it as absolute ♥♥♥♥ to encourage people not to use it. there's no way in hell airblast is going to be better than straight up damage most of the time and anyone who says otherwise hasn't played pyro enough.

I would never use stock instead of the backburner just so I could airblast easier. pyro has 2 free crit primaries and those are what I use.

[GIR]

Let's imagine you are sniper and want to headshot the robot.

But the pyro in your team airblasts it all the time.

Would you like it?

[gimmethegepgun]

Nearly all of the time it's better to use your flamethrower to incinerate them.
Nearly all of the time that airblast is worth using is because it offers you the opportunity to blow them the ♥♥♥♥ up with reflected crockets instead of burning them.
tl;dr damage is king

[Hell-met]

it should only be used if you know exactly where you want the robot to be.

airblast for the sake of airblast is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid and idiotic

[TNT]

If it's a choice of air blasting or losing the wave then yeah, air blast. So the team was right about air blasting at the bomb hatch. But if they think that's all a pyro should be doing, they're quite mistaken.

And sure, air blast a bunch of projectile spam if needed. Or air blast those direct hit soldier + uber medic combos the last wave of Empire to keep them corralled in the pit (or if you've lost the first gate, air blast them into the shredder to get everyone the Chippin' In achievement).

So if you're focusing on doing damage and are smart and selective about when to air blast, great. There are times when air blast is good and you will be credit to team. It's just most people play neither smart nor selective, so you see blanket "no air blast" statements here.

[Soldier Claus]

Almost always bad. Pretend it doesn't exist until you're good enough to discern the few instances where it's effective.

Things to take into consideration:

1. Pyro relies heavily on Health on Kill/Mad Milk/strafing to stay alive. Resetting a giant takes multiple compression blasts and requires basically standing in one spot while not healing yourself. You have a MUCH higher chance of dying.
2. Okay, so you reset the bomb. If your team doesn't still have the front, the bomb carrier will probably have a damage resistance aura, +45 health per second, and full crits when it reaches your position after respawning.
3. You're not doing damage, and making robots harder to hit. Most Pyros think they're being SUPER USEFUL when they juggle a giant in front of the bomb hatch. Sure, they're buying time, but their team is probably being spawncamped, anyway. And they're decreasing their team's DPS significantly: More time + Less Damage ~ Same result, but more painfully drawn out.

As a general rule of them, it's more likely to be useful on the first wave or two of a mission. Many Pyros successfully buy their team time on the slow-paced first wave of missions like Expert Decoy or Expert Mannworks (essentially, let the Heavy do all the work by giving him more time to kill things). However, they don't adjust their strategy later on during the waves that just require DPS-spam to win and they become dead weight.

[frogger]

Let's get a number for this. Poll here
http://strawpoll.me/3642011

[Alexander]

0


If you're at the point in where airblast is required, the team is bad.

The only real time Airblast actually shines is Wave 2 Mannslaughter. Everything else is done better with Phlog.

[Hell-met]

Originally posted by Deus Alexander:

0


If you're at the point in where airblast is required, the team is bad.

The only real time Airblast actually shines is Wave 2 Mannslaughter. Everything else is done better with Phlog.

how do you know what's everything else when you only play the same thing

[Jimmi Stixx]

If you have a good team AB is not very useful. It is still useful for bomb control in any case. If you can use it to keep the bomb in the kill zone then good. Over all though it's just useful not a must.

Mostly i hate how Pyros use it to try and stop the sentry busters with no way to kill the things. So it drains my ammo and the sentry targets it while everything runs past and i still have to bait the damn thing. Noobs though...

[Mic]

It is situational but I prefer to use phlog on any map. The biggest issue is pyros buying afterburn damage and duration... Kill it now not later and get some resists for that 1600$..

[Jakapoa]

Airblast is very situational (how does spell?). In general combat, airblast is frowned upon, as stopping your damage output to push bots away isn't the best idea. Snipers will hate you for spasmaticly throwing bots everywhere, demos that lay sticky traps will cry as bots go flying away from their carefully laid trap, and Medics and engineers will scream as murder-bots are sent hurling towards their faces.

However, that doesn't mean that you should never use it. I'll give two examples of good airblast usage.

I was in Metro wave 1, and Sergeant Crits and his merry band of medics spawned in. The demo and medic ate ♥♥♥♥ immediately, leaving no one to medic pick. I ran forward and airblasted back a handful of crockets at the medics, killing all but one of them (and then I also ate ♥♥♥♥).

Later, on [mission with the giant monarch scouts], our engineer died while moving his sentry into the usual sentry block position. One monarch scout managed to get through, and proceeded towards the hatch. I managed to powerjack parcour it to the hatch just in time to catch the scout, who had 3/4ths of its health left. I then airblast locked the scout in place until the engineer was able to respawn and help me quickly kill it.

[MannsOverMeta]

So what i am getting here is that airblast is situational, and only helps if the team is bad or etc.

[Jet]

Originally posted by HypeOverManns:

So what i am getting here is that airblast is situational, and only helps if the team is bad or etc.

Pretty much. Assume that if you run a flamethrower that can airblast, just focus on damage and leave airblast untouched. Full bomb resets and Projectile reflection seems like the only reasons one should airblast. But then again, teams can survive without airblast. Feel free to go phlog.