Completed Crack down on Pyro's airblast in VSH (1 Viewer)

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KronKrian

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Before I get into the nitty-gritty part of this post, I'd like to make some things clear. I acknowledge the fact that plenty of discussion regarding knockback in VSH has been had on these forums already, mainly revolving around Sniper. The topic has been, as far as I understand, very much thoroughly discussed and remains a controversial issue among members and the developers. I'd also like to say that, GENERALLY, I do not have a problem with knockback. Aside from Pyro (and Sniper), which I will talk about now, I find the other classes to be completely fine in terms of knockback.

That being said, I find the lack of a pyro measure totally bonkers. What do I mean by this? Well, despite Pyro being one of the weakest classes in terms of damage output not related to stomping, which any class can do under certain conditions, the class is incredibly annoying to play with and against due to a certain mechanic that even a fully lobotomized ape can grasp and use effectively.

I can't explain the frustration of having a single Pyro hold me back with his constant uninterrupted airblasts which, even though generate Hale rage, throw a Hale off quite a bit and make him pull his hair - chest hair or otherwise, out from frustration. If that wasn't enough, that same single Pyro can deny a Hale's super-jump by just flare-jumping into his face and airblasting him away, singlehandedly denying him air and changing his direction of movement, usually in some degree towards the ground. Hell, some Pyro players have taken to doing only that. There are literally players who go entire rounds without dealing a single point of damage and instead just push around the Hale and deny him Super-jump. Sniper also has that same issue of easily denying Hale super-jump by just a single shot from his Sniper rifle, regardless of whether the shot in question is scoped or not.
The point I am trying to make here, if not clear by now, is that Pyro (and Sniper) has an overpowered influence over the Hale through the potent knockback of his airblasts, with said influence manifesting itself in the Hale being pushed around like a ragdoll on the ground and the effective nullification and denial of his Super-Jump (or wall climb in Horseman's case), a key tool for all Hales.

And don't get me wrong, other classes also have the ability to deny a Hale's super jump though knockback, however a Hale can also make use of knockback to boost his momentum and air time and deliver a fast and unexpected swift attack to the enemy. Pyro's airblast (and Sniper's shots) also give an insane amount of knockback, which however cannot be properly utilised or played around because, for some reason, whenever the gust of a Pyro's flamethrower (or the bullet of a Sniper's rifle) hits you, it stiffens you and almost completely removes the ability to control one's movement while in the air, with the effect persisting until Hale touches ground.
Even if you are skeptical of my claim of a single Pyro having the ability to exert that much influence on a Hale, consider the fact that Pyro is also uncapped in the gamemode. Now take what I said about a single competent Pyro being a huge annoyance for the Hale and multiply it by 3 or more. Now you have Pyros running around and playing volleyball with the Hale while also shoving him into tight spaces and corners, denying him basic mobility, slamming him to the ground from the air, you get the gist. And let me say right now that none of these scenarios and examples I give are purely theoretical or made-up for the sake of argument. All of this is a common occurrence in the server.
Pyro exerts on Hale enormous influence through airblast. That airblast is far too effective, even with the aforementioned rage gain as a "deterrence", which frankly I think is not enough as it is.

Now, on to the solutions I propose. To start off, I don't think a Pyro limit would solve the problem, since as I said, even a single Pyro can darken a Hale's day significantly. The changes I would propose are 3.

1 - The Hale becomes less susceptible to knockback and/or getting a fixed increase to rage gain from airblasts.

2 - Pyro to have a sort of "diminishing returns" on his airblast - the more a Pyro airblasts, the less potent said airblast becomes (with the potency resetting either after a certain period of not using airblast or after the round ends). Don't know how feasible this is, if at all, but I am sure there are well versed people who can tell me.

3 - Another solution is to attack the source of the problem directly and just nerf the airblast a bunch on different fronts - ammo consumption, range, general potency, delay between airblasts etc.

What do you think?
 
This has been suggested I think close to 20 times since I started playing vsh.
I have made threads myself begging for pyro nerfs but nothing seems to come of it. I personally think increasing pyros ammo consumption per airblast to 100 would make him perfect but it never seems to get through.
 
Number 1 reminds me of https://www.panda-community.com/threads/reduce-knockback-on-hale-in-vsh.26568/ but this isn't limited to pyro, was mainly a dig at snipers which was briefly mentioned in this thread.

Number 2 I wouldn't think is possible

Number 3 is interesting, wondering if possible. Probably is! But it depends what kind of plugins VSH is all ready packing. If there's something all ready in the server files that can modify the weapons. This is complex however.
 
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This has been suggested I think close to 20 times since I started playing vsh.
I have made threads myself begging for pyro nerfs but nothing seems to come of it. I personally think increasing pyros ammo consumption per airblast to 100 would make him perfect but it never seems to get through.
I don't think that this would work by itself, given that Engineer is ran almost full-time regardless of the map, and even if it did, I feel that we are just gonna have ourselves a new breed of pyro which just uses flare gun to jump and cycle through health and ammo packs while stalling out the Hale with it's DOT (thinking Military here, specifically). Basically, a more annoying and frustrating Soldier who can also push you away as a last resort.
It also doesn't solve the super-jump negation part since a Pyro really only needs to airblast you once to fuck up your air time and then flare back to a dispenser.
 
We could just make the class limit 1?
Pyro is inheritaely OP when a coordinated set of players use his high mobility and M2 to avoid being raged and make it impossible to play hale.
 
We could just make the class limit 1?
Pyro is inheritaely OP when a coordinated set of players use his high mobility and M2 to avoid being raged and make it impossible to play hale.
As much as I hate Pyro and as much as I want to see him irrelevant, I don't think that limiting the class to a single Pyro at any given time is a good idea. Sure, it will significantly improve the quality of the game as a Hale, but the measure is very restrictive and almost completely eliminates the class from the gamemode. It would drive players away, both Pyro players and non-pyro players and it would take from the complexity of the gamemode.
Look even though Pyro is annoying and frustrating, there are methods to deal with Pyro players even now, scarce as they are. All I want is for the class to be brought down a little for the sake of balance. What you propose is almost a complete crossing off of the class from the gamemode. It's a radical approach that I don't really think we should ever resort to under any circumstances.
 
Limit to 2?

Honestly couldn't care less about driving pyro players away. Most of them take pleasure in making the hale afk and half the playerbase now just no hale 24/7.
 
Limit to 2?

Honestly couldn't care less about driving pyro players away. Most of them take pleasure in making the hale afk and half the playerbase now just no hale 24/7.
Two is more acceptable, but I think we should focus on the actual problem with Pyro, which is the airblast mechanic.
Also, I think you misunderstand why people don't play Hale. While there might be people who don't play Hale exclusively because of Pyro and Sniper, most people simply don't want to or don't know how to and aren't really big enough masochists to put themselves through hours of losing and humiliation to learn how to.
That's the main issue - aside from sitting your ass down and doing it the hard way - a.k.a getting beaten like a dog until you "git gud", there is no other way to learn how to play with the Hales, which tbh are pretty interchangeable with a few exceptions, but still.
 
Number 1 reminds me of https://www.panda-community.com/threads/reduce-knockback-on-hale-in-vsh.26568/ but this isn't limited to pyro, was mainly a dig at snipers which was briefly mentioned in this thread.

Number 2 I wouldn't think is possible

Number 3 is interesting, wondering if possible. Probably is! But it depends what kind of plugins VSH is all ready packing. If there's something all ready in the server files that can modify the weapons. This is complex however.
Tbh I will be honest, I proposed the second mainly because I heard some rumors of "VSH2 coming soon" being tossed around and thought that maybe something like this could be made into a thing, if not in the current version, then maybe on that? I don't know to what extent Kevin and other devs have the capability to tweak, change and/or add stuff to the current version of VSH, so I just thew it out to see what people can tell me.
 
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one thing to note if you are adding airblast delay is the back burner and dragon's fury. backburners and dragon's fury airblast is already a last resort option for both (with 50 ammo consumed for one and very large delay on airblasts for the other) so maybe they would excluded from this?
 
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Personally all for a class limit on pyro.

In my opinion, the inherent problem with pyro is that there's too many of them.

You can easily solo rage a pyro, or maybe two. The problem is when there's 3, 4 or even 5 of them.
Their ability to flarejump to the action in no time, allows the pyros to save eachother. I've had rounds that were /literally/ impossible, cause everytime you would rage a couple of pyros, you'd get instantly airblasted away by the others.

I don't think the delay between airblasts is going to solve anything, it's not like they're constantly charging and airblast spamming the hale (ok maybe sometimes), but that's not my experience with it.
They mostly push hale away with some intervals, like: push, retreat, fire, push etc.
 
Class limit would be the best solution without changing how the class works
 
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Majority is in favor of having all of the suggested changes implemented (Class limit, delay between airblasts, decreased push force).

Dragon's Fury and Backburner won't be getting the changes.

Task #237 - [VSH] Changes to Pyro and his airblast
 
class limits are now in place and about the airblast we can look into it on the rework.
 
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