Oh, Soldier...

Forget everything I whined about the Soldier, turns out I can still play as one, and do pretty good. Yeah, sure, I suicide more often than not if a Pyro charges right at me, and it pisses me off, but... oh well. At least I'm somewhat more conscious about Pyros now.
Also did probably the most awesome kill I've ever done on Badlands. There was an enemy Demo trying to cap their spire back, and I was just getting out of respawn. So just before the point was capped, I rocketjumped from the ledge, fired a rocket at the Demo while I was still airborne, and landed right in the middle of the cap point just as the Demo exploded into gibs. And I got a domination out of it, because I had killed the player before while he was still playing as a Spy. I'd love to show you a screenshot, but my F5-fu was too slow and I only got a screenshot in which I've already landed and there are giblets everywhere. Besides, the said screenshot is on my little brother's computer. But I'll show it to you once I get my hands on it.
Anyway, I just couldn't stop grinning after that. And a mere moment later the round ended, we won, and I was the number one MVP.
So much about not being able to play as Soldier anymore. Sorry about whining, Soldier, I think I still love you, even with all the nerfing and everything.
I should learn to use the shotgun, though. I don't know why I can use the shotgun as a Pyro, no problem, but as a Soldier I use the shotgun very rarely, if ever.
And godDAMN I hate skilled Pyros who can already use the airburst like it's always been there.

I also got the Flare Gun for Pyro (I got Weenie Roast, Fire and Forget, Spontaneous Combustion and Firewatch since the last time I wrote), but it doesn't really matter because I like the shotgun so much more, and I'm not going to give it up. Besides, I have a horrible aim, I'm laggy, and I have hard time hitting distant moving targets even as a Soldier, so I probably wouldn't even hit anything with the Flare Gun.

And finally I have hands-on impressions about the Kritzkrieg and the Übersaw.
Kritzkrieg is... well, I'll just have to learn to use it. And find people who I can give the charge to without them just rushing out guns blazing and thinking that they're still invulnerable (which is what I usually do when I'm kritzkrieged...). And I felt pretty stupid kritzkrieging a Backburner-equipped Pyro, but at least the havoc we caused was formidable.
And naturally there was some Heavy player yelling for Medic and after seeing that I was holding the Kritzkrieg, he started whining how Kritzkrieg is completely useless, hey Medic change it to normal medigun, and goddamn I raged. "Your ass is useless," I wanted to say. Don't fucking question what I'm doing. I think I'm a pretty good Medic (and at least the stats don't argue against me: yesterday, whenever I was a Medic, I was on top of the scoreboard. No exceptions.), and I dare to claim that I know what our team needs and when we need it. We were in Granary, pushing for the last point (oh I wonder how we managed to get to the last point with just the "useless" Kritzkrieg! Shut the fuck up if you don't know what I can do, and you weren't there to see how me and a Pyro cleared the entire warehouse a couple of times and capped the point), and yes, there was a sentry, but everyone knows that all it takes is a Demoman or a Soldier to take down any sentries near the last point (if I can do it, any Soldier with half a skill can do it!). There is no need for the regular über: the Kritzkrieg, if used well, can make more of a difference by killing every single player guarding the point, after which the sentry is left unattended.
So if you get killed just because I didn't have the über to give to you, fuck off. What makes you think I would've übered you anyhow? Heavies are useless against tanked sentries in the distance, I would've much rather picked a Demoman to do the job.

But yeah, I totally admit that Kritzkrieg is useless in some situations. When there are a lot of sentries (I wouldn't use the Kritzkrieg if we're attacking on Dustbowl - at least), sure, I'd pick the regular medigun. You just have to know when and how to use it. Which I'm planning to learn. And it's not that I can't change weapons during respawn if the situation changes so that it isn't favourable to use the Kritzkrieg anymore. And I think a team with two Medics one of which is holding the Kritzkrieg and the other the regular medigun, can be extremely successful.

And the Übersaw? Less-than-three. I tend to forget all the time that hitting with it once charges the übercharge meter by 25%, so I was mighty surprised after killing a Spy with it and then sporting a full charge, even after I had just übered a mere moment ago. Lolwut. I might have to learn to melée a bit better, I usually attack with the Blutsauger. Which keeps even those monstrous Pyros at bay and it's wonderful. <3

I even got a max übercharges record yesterday; managed to stay alive during an entire Gravel Pit round (if my team can hold B, I can usually stay alive for the entire round - and keep most of my team alive as well) and launched five übers during that time. I have to thank our Engineers for that, though, a dispenser on the point saved my life so many times (since I was the only Medic in the team). Damn flame damage drop-off removal. Nothing's more awesome than seeing your life drop close to zero and reaching a dispenser when it's down to six or so. Ehh.

And people, if you got headshot yesterday by me and I was doing the kukri taunt in the deathcam, it was not me. Little brother was on a roll in Granary, and taunted after every single kill he got. He even had the nerve to do it while in flames and about to die. I know I'd be raging my head off: I hate good Snipers, and I hate it when people taunt after they've killed me.
But seeing someone else ("me") do it, was priceless. I was laughing my ass off. And the kukri taunt is so priceless, oh god... I hope people at least got nice deathcam shots outta those taunts.
The only thing I'm trying to stop my little brother from doing, is using teleporters. He seems to be a compulsive teleport-user, whenever he sees one, he just gets on it and I try to stop him because for fuck's sake, Snipers don't use teleporters. D:
And since no one knows that Sniper-Chrome is not me, well... everyone must think that I'm an asshole Sniper. Yay? Maybe I should get him to change his nick when he's playing (I would've made him do it already, but I can't remember the console command, and I never remember to look it up). To avoid confusion. And to stop people from thinking that I'm a complete asshole and actually a pretty good Sniper (he was called a "monster" a few days ago and told to GTFO of the "newbie" server. The whiner probably wasn't a regular...).

Pyros! Every-fucking-where!

Okay, the only way to stay alive on TF2 now is to be a Pyro. At least that's the only way I can stay alive right now. Fight fire with fire, you know.

And I can't believe how much I actually nerd RAGE'd after realizing what Valve had done to the Soldier. I read the update message, "Removed Soldier's 40% damage reduction from his own rockets. Does not affect rocket jumps." but I didn't even realise (or think about) what it actually meant until I connected to the server today, saw the amount of Pyros and went Soldier. Because hey, at least before the update I was learning to kill them.
And guess what?
Nearly all my deaths? Suicides. If it wasn't some Pyro chucking my rockets back at my face (thank god nearly everyone is using the Backburner already, but more on that later), it was just me, playing like I've used to, and getting owned. Fuck, I'm so used to just shooting at my feet when a Pyro or a Scout or anything gets too close for comfort, and taking some damage but walking out alive. Now if I do that, I die. Not even mentioning the times my aim is a bit off and I shoot the goddamn wall in front of me and get a crit rocket in the face. Now such mistakes are an instant kill. It will probably take me forever to learn to jump whenever I shoot a rocket close enough to get damaged by it too (it apparently counts as a rocket jump then, I had to do some testing by shooting a wall in front of me while jumping, and I got the same old 40% reduction instead of the full damage of about 80 HP).
And imagine how much that must suck from the viewpoint of the player who was chasing me? They get NO points from chasing me down and actually making me suicide - which is not even their fault, but my own. I think that's kinda horrible. I know, because later on I was playing as a Pyro and a friend was a Soldier in the enemy team, and he was mercilessly dominating me. And after I had tried to kill him a dozen times, always getting owned, I finally managed to kill his Medic and chase him down and fuck me dead: he suicided. And I almost banged my head against the keyboard, because so much for my long-pursued revenge.
So at least Valve needs to do something about that, because it's downright unfair.
And if Demomen don't get the same fucking nerf I'm going to rage some more. Fucking unfair.

Okay, yeah, no one's going to agree with me on this, seeing how everyone else thinks that the Soldier is overpowered, the easy class that doesn't need any skill to be good at, and that it needs to be nerfed hardcore. It took me actually ages to learn to play as Soldier. Maybe it's easy to pick up by someone who has years and years of FPS experience, and be good at it, but I had to learn. And I've had fucking great times playing as Soldier. And it's not the easy class for me.
But yeah, Chrome vs. rest of the TF2 community. Valve did what they thought is for the best, and I want to understand, but it's pretty hard when one of my favourite classes is now nearly unplayable for me. And yeah, I feel quite horrible for whining about this, especially since I've been all "I wish I knew how to quit you!" with Soldier for the longest time. But yeah, it's a complete love/hate relationship. And it doesn't matter what I say, I have over 80 hours as a Soldier, I find myself going Soldier even when I think I shouldn't, so on some level I really must like playing as Soldier.
So I can still feel upset because of it, can't I?

But yeah, Pyros.
I'll just come out and say that Backburner is overpowered as hell. I mean ffs guaranteed crits from the back and +50 HP increase?! I know the tradeoff is supposed to be the lack of the airburst (which, I admit, is fucking awesome, and makes me think twice about starting to use the Backburner), but because the airburst is new and I rarely even remember to use it, Backburner just seems like an upgraded OLD flamethrower that has no drawbacks.
They could do without the +50 HP increase, for real. Both Slaverstrike and my little brother who played as Snipers today noticed that Pyros are fucking impossible to kill if they have the Backburner equipped. 225 HP is just insane. And when I did play Soldier, I am so used to juggling them into the air once, and the second rocket usually killed them. Backburner-equipped Pyros? Fucking unstoppable. Add a Medic and they're seriously invincible. So I needed to juggle them twice, which meant shooting at my freaking feet twice, which usually meant a suicide.
Flare gun seemed to correspond better as an alternative to the shotgun, and I actually didn't have anyone kill me with the Axtinguisher, so I can't really say anything about that. Only the Backburner seems a bit unbalanced, but, uh, I'll probably love it once I get my greedy little hands on it. Maybe I'll become a career Pyro. I mean, I was doing pretty fine without the changes (was I the only one? I never really thought the Pyro was underpowered, even against Soldiers. I died a lot, but once I adapted the kamikaze mentality - that I ambush and I might die, but it's okay - I came by pretty well as a Pyro. Maybe I was the only one.)

At least I was doing pretty well as a Pyro today.



And that was the first time in ages I actually had some fun on CP Well. (Oh! That reminds me, I need to talk about CTF Well once I've said everything I need to about this Pyro stuff!)
I even got some achievements. I have Camp Fire, I Fry (and here I was thinking that there would be no Spies around, what with Pyros having a field day...), Burn Ward, Next of Kindling, Hot on Your Heels and Second Degree Burn. I'm also 13/15 through Fire and Forget, 8/10 through Spontaneous Combustion and Trailblazer, 15/50 through Makin' Bacon (and here I was thinking it would take forever... I would have at least 20 Heavies in this, but more on that in a moment...), about 25/50 through Arsonist (ahihi I dominated one Engineer, and he provided me with at least eight destructions: poor thing had always put a teleporter, dispenser and a level one sentry down when I came around the corner, and the whole little nest succumbed to my flames like a house made of paper), 250 through Firefighter/Fire Chief (...I was on a roll), and some others, but they're not yet worth a mention.
I also spent SO LONG on CTF Well trying to sneak behind enemy Snipers and use the Hadouken taunt on them (whoops! Chrome, acting like an idiot? On YOUR server? It's apparently more likely than you think!), but stupid friendly Snipers always managed to kill them right when I was behind them, readying my shotgun. Damn stupid Snipers!
And in one evening, I learned to use the shotgun. Seriously, I probably killed more people with the shotgun today than I've killed in those 30 hours I had as a Pyro. No, really. Too bad that most of those were fellow Pyros (which I used to be very weak against), so I don't have much progress on Combined Fire yet.
And yeah, about Makin' Bacon... I was kinda going crazy on Badlands. I think I killed about eight Heavies with the axe. I imagine them being beyond pissed: one crazy Pyro kept just ambushing them from behind and axing them to death. I even critted ridiculously often against them. But damn it, Heavies are so much easier to kill with the axe than the flamethrower! Usually they don't even have time to turn around before they're dead meat.
And then I realised that the achievement is named "Makin' Bacon" because I have to kill 50 Heavies with the flamethrower, and went aww dammit. At least I had lots of fun. And I imagine my Medic was having fun as well, following me around while I melée-killed Heavies (Medics liked me today).
Too bad that my axe kills record remained as two, I didn't get Lumberjack.

And finally, the regular flamethrower's new airburst. The best thing ever. It took me ages to remember even trying to use it, and luckily I remembered it just when an übered enemy Pyro was rushing at me. One poof, and flying they went. Another poof, and flying they went again. Goddamn, who seriously even needs Soldiers anymore: Pyros do juggling too these days.
Then I once again forgot to entire thing until I saw a crit rocket heading towards me. One poof, and the rocket chenged colours and I couldn't stop going FUCK YEAH THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER! when I saw the crit hit someone in the distance. Ahihihi. I didn't actually kill anyone with returned rockets although I did it a few times after that (I even started to remember using it after a while), but it's always a blast to see the crit rocket changing colours and directions and at least hitting something. I blasted people away from control points and the bombcart in Gold Rush. I saw a Medic/anyone combo approaching and blasted them once before hightailing and trying to get behind them.
I got killed once with a bounced grenade, though. It sucked, haha.

Oh! Yeah! CTF Well! Is actually fun now! I was really surprised when I saw the changes to it, and I was having a blast playing there! The new central area of the map is AWESOME, and the reduced size makes it easier to defend AND attack. I have to say that it's easily much more fun than 2fort has ever been, seeing that 2fort turns into an insane turtling fest nearly always and on Well there was this INSANE battling going on near the central area nearly all the time, because both teams tried to get control of it in order to get easier access to the enemy base.
Or then I'm just so happy that it's almost a whole new map and you probably know how much I love those.

That's about it for now, I think.
And yeah, I'll be playing as Pyro until there won't be as many around as there are now. And until I get over the Soldier nerf, pick it up again and learn to jump whenever I fire a rocket. Dammit, Valve...

Oh yeah! I also wish they would change the Medic achievements to correspond to the Pyro pack, and the Milestones would come at 10, 15 and 20. Because I'm slowly getting pretty sick of still being two achievements away from the Kritzkrieg, and I still refuse to farm any of them. My pride, it is my downfall.
Seeing that the Medic achievements are so much harder than the Pyro ones. Besides, everyone has the Kritzkrieg and Übersaw already, so it would be just me, har har.

And I fucking hope Soldier gets the next unlockables and achievements. Soldier needs some love after all that nerfing.