Tips for using Compressed Air?

I want to get good with the Compressed Air, as it seems to have a huge amount of potential, but I can't seem to get good with it. This is the setup I'm using:

P: Flamethrower
S: Flare Gun
M: Fireaxe (because I don't have the Axetenguisher yet)

How should I be approaching enemies? Should I just be shooting flares until I get in close enough to pull out the Flamethrower? Should I be sticking with everyone else or go out by myself?

Sorry if I come off sounding like a n00b. I just really want to get good with the Pyro, and asking for tips from the best seems like a good place to start. Thanks.

Quote:

Very carefully if you really want to be trying the compressed air.  Best advice is get a friend to fire rockets at you till you get competant enough to blast them back at him.  Then try it out in a real fight.

Flank, never enter direct combat.  If they see you, you're going down.  Attack an enemy when they're shooting at someone else (This is much easier with the axstinguisher), burn for a few seconds then air compress them (If needed) and run.

With the axestinguisher you can just ignite heavies that are shooting at someone else then hit them twice and they'll go down before they knew what hit them.

You can also start with a flare when you are out of flamer range then pull out your axstinguisher so the delay is over when you get to them.


Axstinguisher should be your first priority.

Verden Odela said it all, why do you think they gave backburner the "back burn" ability? Why did they give pyro 50 HP for SURVIVABILITY? Because Valve wanted players to FLANK with pyros, the last thing you should do is face the enemy from his front, even if it's a spy with a revolver.

About the compressed air, back to the main topic, I realised that in 2fort you can drop people into water with it, so if a übercharge is available, you can push the medic into the water, which is about 1 minute loss for the medic to get up there. If your team has sentries up in the sewers, they're probably dead.

But that was only useful in 2fort, what else? Practice reflecting rockets, not to the soldiers' face but just somewhere else that it won't hit you, but still don't try to face soldiers face to face, never. Push the stickies off the ground, reflect the rockets to save your team mates, reflect demomans' grenade spam, push people off high places(for example the death hole in hydro).

That's all.

I haven't really played much since the update due to summer midterms coming up. Although, I used the compressed air a few times to keep foes from a point I'm about to capture, or from a payload about to reach the target.

Most people I've observed are extremely trigger-happy with the compressed air. Don't use it unless you have a reason to do it! Just because you picked the flamethrower over the backburner doesn't mean you have to use compressed air every fight. It's somewhat of an ammo guzzler, and it's better to take enemies by surprise with a few, well timed shots rather than spamming it and putting them on guard.

I don't profess to be great at deflecting or anything.

One thing I had a lot of fun with though was when a solly, pyro and myself worked together. The pyros would be of opposite factions, solly's doesn't matter. The soldier would then fire a rocket at the enemy pyro and have him deflect it, the idea is for the two pyros to bounce the rocket back and forth. Switch out after a while so the soldier can get in on the action too, its pretty fun.

I find the Compressed air most useful when on high ground. For example on the last CP on Gravelpit, you can use the compressed air to blow enemies off of the control point.

How to use it?.. How to use it?! Use your imagination! The possibilties indeed are amazing!

1. Retreating, this is amazing stuff when you're running away from a soldier or someone else.
2. Controlling, use this to push people down from a ledge, or to push them to a bad position (in front of a turret, or in front of your teammates' line of fire for example.) - this also messes up their aim most of the time.
3. Pure wtfpwnage, it feels amazing when you can predict the timing of when the enemy soldier is going to shoot his rocket in a close-combat fight. *BOOM* Dodge this!
4. Übercharge nullification, you can either block the übered one, or push his medic away from him --> byebye über.
5. Stickyfields, you can indeed push enemy sticky fields away.
6. Sentry Guarding, you can protect a friendly sentry from projectiles by reflecting them back while the engy repairs them.
7. Grenades, even if a grenade is not flying, you can convert it to a friendly one by air compressing at it. This makes your teammates immune to it.
8. If you use this to an übered enemy that is standing in front of your SG (for example: überheavy with his minigun rolled), the SG will push the poor one away.

.. And so on. Just use your brains! I'm so in love with pyro right now due to this. <3 Only thing that sucks about this update is the backburner and it's +50HP.

Frost Army hit on my point. Just today I saw this used by not the defending team - but actually the attacking team. Anyone who tried to come near to fight got blown off by the pyro on top.