#phlogistinator

I think it’s wise to start with the Phlogistinator’s history. It started as it is today, except that it would fully restore your health upon Mmmph taunting, and you had 90% damage resistance rather than full invulnerability.

It received its first nerf in March 2012, bringing its damage down by 10% and reducing the time you got crits. The damage debuff was reversed later that year, but damage reduction during the taunt went from 90% to 75%.

The really big change, which happened in December 2015, was when the taunting Pyro became fully invulnerable and immune to knockback effects. Coupled with the full health restore, you could jump into combat and force the enemy team to scatter - or claim at least one or two kills. The Phlog ran rampant; one of my most painful memories is when, in a badly-coordinated team in a competitive pickup game, the enemy Pyro used it to defeat us soundly.

It was nerfed in pretty short order, removing the full health restoration and increasing the damage necessary to charge Mmmph. That way, if you deployed while at low health, you were likely to die soon.

I think it’s helpful to view the Phlogistinator as a collection of knobs that you can twist to alter its aspects. The important ones are:

How resistant are you to damage while you’re taunting?

This one controls how easy it is to activate your crits - i.e. how careful you need to be. Can you deploy them with no consequences (even if you die afterwards)? Right now, nothing can stop a Phlogistinator Pyro while they’re taunting, meaning they are free to deploy with impunity.

How much health do you restore when you taunt?

This one controls how easy you are to kill after you taunt, and how deadly the ensuing rampage is for your enemies. Noteworthy because the Phlog’s apex was when both this attribute and the first were at 100%.

I’m going to propose a theorem of sorts: these two attributes cannot both be at 100%, at least not without sharply reducing some other factor(s).

Ultimately, the current design is one that removes the health regen in favor of invulnerability. I think this is good, because going from 1 to 175 in a heartbeat is a lot of effort wasted for your enemies, who had very little control over you getting that health back. By contrast, becoming invulnerable but staying at low-health means they’re in a good position to back up and end you once you get out of the taunt.

I want to hazard the idea of a Phlog where you’re not invulnerable, or even resistant, while taunting. This forces you to taunt behind corners or in other secluded places, only to unleash critical fire on unsuspecting enemies. This way, you can’t walk into a crowded place and immediately cause mass panic by activating your Mmmph.

Mass panic is kind of a fun strategy to employ, though. And it’s not that invulnerability while taunting means you have no counters; it just means you can command more attention and taunt with fewer (not no) repercussions.

One thing I definitely want to see added to the Phlog: enemy compression blasts cancel the taunt. Right now, you can be knocked airborne by some things (in defiance of the knockback immunity), but those things immediately trigger your crits with no taunt time. This would give Pyros a very important role in stopping the Phlog’s rampage, rather than an accidental role in facilitating it.

So, a few lasting questions for the Phlogistinator:

Is it okay to be able to drop yourself down in a group of enemies and cause them to all focus on you? Even if you die shortly afterwards?

Is the critical time too short to capitalize on, or is it too long? Should it be an ambush-type thing?

Is it okay that Mmmph can be built with flare guns via long-distance spamming?