There are weapons other than flamethrowers that apply afterburn.
That doesn't negate the point nor address the fact the majority of afterburn is through direct flamethrower action.
Yes. the class is weaker in competitive, because the pyro really helps with distorting players. Classes that rely on direct aim more are more hurt by afterburn than others. Specifically, snipers. Trying to snipe while on fire turns the game into DDR. Not to mention that competitive will have a medic that's dedicated to keeping the team healed, something that cannot be guaranteed in most games.
A competent sniper never lets a pyro get near, their low hp makes for easy quickscope then smg blasts.
What you are saying makes no real sense here either, you are saying they have good targets in competitive yet they perform badly. How does that work ?
At the point where rockets start dealing good amounts of splash, the pyro's airblast hitbox can hit the projectile. Pyro's dancing for space at this point. If the pyro's too close up to the soldier, he's going to have a tough time airblasting. But at medium ranges, the pyro's playstyle adapts. Pyro doesn't need to hit soldier with the flamethrower. Pyro just needs to deny the soldier to deal damage, while either damaging the soldier some other way (flare gun, shotgun, et cetera). The pyro has more base speed than the soldier here and thus has more power to decide the course of action in that fight. The soldier could rocketjump for increased mobility, but then there's a trade-off. He loses at least one ammo in his launcher, he's airborne (which means, his path is more predictable), and he loses health to the jump.
That simply isn't true, you can easily hit someone for 60 hp off a wall or more.
It's also easy to waste his ammo off by making him airblast and dodging the rockets.
The pyro can't deny the soldier that's the point, if he charges he dies. If he stands still he can easily be walked up too and get killed in short range. Finally if he retreats backwards he doesn't deny the enemy any actual territory. In every situation on a level playing field the pyro loses, it's not a class designed to do that so I'm not sure why you are trying to categorize it as such.
Pyro is a roamer.
This isn't a matter of me not liking to heal up. This is a matter of me not liking that the game essentially has to be frozen for me until I've healed up. Earlier I've already stated that being on fire and trying to aim is basically a rhythm game; press the mouse button while you're coming down from the fire knockback. Also, losing half my health from a stray scorch shot flare is a mechanic I'm just not comfortable with.
Me not liking being hit by afterburn isn't a reason for changing it, that's true. But if there are enough people who think the same way as I am thinking, maybe there are grounds for at least considering an alternative.
It's just the same as if you were brought down to low HP by a rocket, it's unfortunate you aren't comfortable with it but you have yet to supply a single valid reason for removing it beyond you don't like it.
People not liking something isn't grounds for destroying the balance of a game, that's a bad argument.
But why is he a weak class?
I've noted a number of reasons, as an offensive class he's weak and easily overcome by soldiers and scouts.
There is very few pro players due to this, he can only kill support classes or distracted assault classes.
1.
Straight from the tf2stats website. There's about a 6% gap in owners equip, that's right. But it'd be fair to also take in account how many dead new accounts linger, accounts that only /have/ stock, thus can only /have/ stock equipped.
Except there is a large gap between ownership rates, 100% and 80%.
Therefore that 6% gap is a lot larger than it seems because it's relative to the number of owners of which there is a large discrepancy.
2.
A poll, submitted to the TF2 subreddit. We can assume that people who participate in those kinds of communities are at least competent at the game and give a decent representation of the playerbase. The degreaser beats stock in terms of equips, with 58% to 28%.
I'm convinced more experienced players use the degreaser instead of the flamethrower.
That's a bad assumption, the majority of people on that sub reddit are terrible players from experience they usually whine about every change no matter whether or not it's balanced.
It's not really a valid basis for comparison.
Mostly ease-of-use. The airblast still resets and sets momentum of airblasted players. It's not additive momentum, which makes getting caught up in it all the more frustrating. It doesn't instakill since the changes made to the degreaser, which is nice, but it still deals a TON of damage in a fell swoop. Damage that eventually leads to the victim's death, unless he manages to 1. Deal with the pyro, either through killing or escaping and 2. find some way to extinguish the fire.
It could be argued that staying out of harm's way is a possibility here, but rarely is the answer "should've played around it". Some maps simply do not allow for this kind of playstyle, and sometimes you cannot anticipate what's around a corner.
Yes however it's that players fault for getting close enough to a pyro to allow this and it only works on support classes.
It leading to the death or loss of HP is an argument that could be used against any weapon, "Rocket launcher is OP" since when it hits me it deals a lot of damage to me in one fell swoop that eventually leads to my death or going to a HP pack...
Yes you cannot anticipiate whats around every corner but that applies to every weapon not just a degreaser, a sniper running around a corner is just as dead if a scout or soldier is there.
Your argument does not actually give any reason as of yet to why the flamethrowers or afterburn are OP more so than these weapons.
Here's where the team play aspect comes in. Critstickies to your team can be returned, engie nest can be protected. Stickies, pipes and rockets are usually the cause of death of an engie nest, and the pyro is, besides the short circuit, a class that can very well deal with these projectiles.
This is the one thing that pyro's excel at and it's unfortunate that more don't do this however it's easily balanced by it's lack of true offensive ability when facing any other non support classes.
I won't argue that the class is weak. That's why eventually the fight was between "Who needs an update? Pyro or heavy?". However, I think the pyro's weak is because he fits too many roles, and doesn't execute one specific role well enough.
Removing afterburn won't solve that, only makes the class weaker. If you are looking to make it stronger then improve it's mid range ability.
