Why is Stock not an option?
That's my preferred weapon, for most situations.
The degreaser doesn't hold much appeal for me. Afterburn damage is credit to Pyro. Anyway, I'm too much of a teamwhore to use anything but the homewrecker as a melee weapon, so axtinguishing is out of the question, and aside from that, weapon switching has never been a problem for me.

Still, I switch to the Backburner whenever I can reasonably do so. It forces me to play smarter. It's never stopped me from extinguishing burning teammates, or knocking projectiles away from buildings, or blowing apart übered pairs--but it does stop me from spamming airblasts everywhere when I could be planning my approaches more carefully and avoiding enemy attacks.
But it also stops me from covering my teammates' stupid asses when they do stupid shit--which they do regularly--so I don't play with the backburner as often as I would like.

Personally I use the Backburner for the 10% damage bonus, afterburn damage, and the fact I rarely airblast unless there's a teammate on fire or an uber pair nearby. And I've just got shit timing when it comes to reflecting projectiles.

Degreaser all the way. I airblast constantly, and I use the Gas Attendant set, so I like having that little speed boosts.
On certain matches, though, I may switch to Backburner. Usually if there are a lot of corners and places to jump out behind people. Barnblitz was the first place I ever used it like that.

The Phlogistinator can just go fuck itself, though.

Backburner USED to be the red headed step child of the flamethrower family, but ever since it was equalised with the return of airblast but with less damage, that title has dropped to the Phlog.

I actually posted a short article about this on a website which I'm just gonna copy paste for time savery.

"I just had a rip roaring round on dustbowl where I was Backburner pyro, and I dominated a spy killing him no less than twenty times, 12 times with the backburner (non spam, always knowing where he was), 5 times with a flare gun, 2 taunt kills and a homewrecker kill. Even during the non BB kills, he would instantly start pitching a bitch fit over how OP Backburner is, and I started to wonder if it really was.

First up, the stats. Backburners up side is that it does 10% extra damage and crits when attacking from behind, the downside being that each airblast will suck up 50 ammo, so if you didn't actually fire it at all, you are looking at 4 airblasts max per tank, but realistically, its 2-3.

First, the ten percent extra damage is hardly game breaking, it doesn't change the play style, and coupled with the airblast downer, seems a little underwhelming. Then comes the 100% crits from behind, which makes the airblast a lot more viable.

When people die from the 100% crits chance, they tend to get rather antsy and many are fast to hammer hate into their keyboard over it, but in actuality, I don't see it as being that much to complain about. Pyro is hardly a subtle class, being a big, red, fire spitting blob, you'd have to be blind not to see him most times, along with deaf to miss the loud mumbles and roar the flamethrower makes. So considering this is it possible that when a Pyro gets behind you or the entire team in many cases that he really had to plan ahead and work at it to get to such a position? Or maybe you or your team mates just were not paying enough attention, in which case the blame would be yours.

Pyro is hardly a spy which boasts disguises, invisibility, death feigning devices, near silent kill weapons as well as a set that makes him deathly silent at times, yet when the backburner pyro comes roarin in from behind after ducking, fighting and weaving to get behind everyone gets all the flak in the world because his weapon, that isn't even insta kill, took them out.

Yes its easier and faster to kill five people from behind in one quick blast of fire than a spy with his knife, but considering how much it took (or how little, depending on the team) to get there, does it not seem that the chaotic pay off is perfectly in tune with the effort?

Im just saying."

>>12273
This post is a good post.
polite sage