Pyro Guide

## Pyro Overview

(Updated to v15.6)

Pyro is an excellent frontline hero. His ability to kite enemies come from his Adaptive Armor mastery and his Heatwave ability. The Adaptive Armor mastery heals Pyro for a % of his total HP, and his Heatwave ability allows him to slow enemies, and increase his own movement speed. He is extremely efficient in clearing hordes of weak to moderately high HP enemies, and his liberators can assist him in dealing heavy point damage. Hence he is a well-rounded hero in terms of dealing damage.

Pyro and his Liberators go hand-in-hand for every single type of game, whether its normal games, speedruns or solo games. Before his 2500 score unlock, it is his Liberators that will dish out the most damage.

After Pyro unlocks his score, he will deal massive damage to surrounding enemies because of his 'free' Firestarters that his ultimate mastery allows him to cast. His Liberators will still assist him in setting up kill zones where he can kite and kill high HP enemies and structures.

Last, but not least, his Arsenal mastery is the best support mastery in the game. Despite the existence of Aquilla's excellent Altruism, Tassadar's excellent Protective Sensei and Fury's Battlefield promotion, Arsenal provides unique benefits that significantly boosts each hero in a unique manner compared to Altruism, Protective Sensei or Battlefield Promotion.

## Pyro's Perks for OS and HW

The optimal perks for Pyro are:

1. Onslaught
2. Leadership
3. Air Support
4. Bug Zapper

For quick entry of Perks at the beginning of the match, type (without quotes) "-perk olab".

There is no debate about Leadership and Onslaught.

Air Support perk benefits hugely from Leadership, and is therefore a natural pick as the 3rd perk. It also provides Pyro with high-ground vision without deploying Liberators. Most importantly, having high ground vision allows Pyro to deploy Liberators deeper onto the high ground. Permanent high ground vision allows Pyro to chain his Firestarter passive talent once he unlocks his Ultimate mastery. Without high ground vision, chaining of Firestarter cannot occur if there are enemies in the fog of war on the highground.

~~Pyro needs Lightweight Equipment mastery anyways. Therefore picking Compartmentalization perk allows him to save a mastery point to use elsewhere.~~ Unfortunately, in Version 15.1 and Version 15.2, the myopic and poorly tested changes to the cost of Compartmentalisation perk means that Pyro must pick another perk, because picking Compartmentalization perk would cause Lightweight Equipment to complete only by the 20th minute of the game due to its massive cost (20,000 minerals), which is slower than Pyro picking Lightweight Equipment by level 10 and having it complete within the first 10-15 minutes of the game (because of its reasonable 7500 mineral cost).

Many intermediate players pick Helldivers with Pyro. There already exists good synergy between Leadership and Helldivers, and a small buff was given in Version 15.4, where Leadership boosts the damage of Helldivers by an additional 5% to make a total of 20%. Unfortunately, Helldivers without a blinking hero are far too fragile and die off too easy, especially if Pyro does not get the Inspire Talent early to boost the armor and healing of Helldivers, and their only benefit is to allow Pyro to reach his 2500 about 1 to 2 minutes earlier, which is not an optimal usage of his perk.

Bug Zapper is an excellent perk that shines as soon as Pyro reaches his 2500 score and picks his ultimate mastery. It adds +10% damage to his attack speed, and is further boosted when Pyro uses Stimpack. Each of his auto-attack has a high probability of starting a Firestarter, and the more attack speed Pyro has, the more overall DPS he will deal.

Tenacity is never needed for Hellwalker even where many deaths are to be expected and toxic hordes of bosses would appear, since Perpetua Ignis mastery exists. Additionally, Scorched Earth doubles the duration of Riders of the Apocalypse movement speed buff allowing Pyro to remain permanently buffed by auto-casting Heatwave and kite any toxic boss by late game, and not even fear other slowing effects from blue (slow) roaches and nightmares.

## Pyro's Mastery Order for OS and HW

Once Pyro picks his 4 essential perks, his mastery order becomes very straightforward:

1. Level 0 = Skyshield
2. Level 10 = Lightweight Equipment
3. Level 20 = Adaptive Armor
4. Level 30 = By Fire Be Purged Ultimate
5. Level 40 = Living Torch
6. 2K Streak = Arsenal
7. Level 50 = [Global Nukes + Grand Slam] or Ruination
8. Level 60 or Hourly mastery = [Ruination or Global Nukes] + Grand Slam

For multiplayer nonspeedrun games, it is extremely important to capitalize on Pyro's greatest strength, which is to create Firestarters with his auto-attacks once he picks his ultimate mastery. Combined with Stimpack, he can deal with hordes of enemies much better than even Tychus and Fury.

Picking Living Torch has as main benefit to provide detection and movement speed, which will be necessary especially in Hellwalker to engage Nemesis. Arsenal helps the whole team, but most importantly it grants Pyro energy regeneration and increased Firestarter damage.

Weapons Research increases the attack speed of Pyro, which, in turn boosts the frequency of Firestarter with his ultimate mastery when auto-attacking. Additionally, Weaponsmith also increases Firestarter damage by +20.

Ruination increases the attack speed of Pyro, further increasing the frequency of Firestarter with his auto-attacks.

If you feel like nuking with Pyro, you will obviously need Nuke Mastery and Grand Slam Mastery.

## Comments on Pyro's other Masteries

### Scorched Earth Mastery,

As at version 14.17, doubles the effects and duration of Riders of the Apocalypse. It still grants one round of massacre and power cube progress for all players for each nuke which deals 2500 damage and no friendly fire, which, for games lasting for more than an hour, is of little benefit due to the fact that massacre and power cube progress are mostly already completed for all players.

The major benefit of Scorched Earth Mastery is not for nuking, but rather, to make Rider of the Apocalypse provide a permanent movement speed buff when Heatwave is placed on auto-cast in late-game, because Scorched Earth doubles the duration of Riders of the Apocalypse.

### Energy Mastery

Pyro rarely had energy problems (provided his Heatwave ability is not on auto-cast). With the reduction of Firestarter's base energy cost by 5, Pyro does not need Energy mastery. His energy regeneration is plentiful when his abilities are used only when needed.

There is no point justifying picking Energy mastery over other more useful masteries. Therefore, Energy mastery is now a mastery that is a late game mastery.

### Perpetua Ignis Mastery

This mastery adds +15 seconds to Heatwave's slowing effect. The default slowing effect of Heatwave is 5s. Therefore, with Perpetua Ignis, Heatwave slows for a total of 20 seconds.

This mastery also increases the duration of Eternal Flames from the default 3 seconds to 6 seconds. Eternal Flames are cast on enemies by:

1. Pyro's auto-attacks which deal AoE damage in a straight line.
2. Pyro's Firestarter
3. Liberator's with the Apocalypse Now talent
4. Heatwave talent (each usage of Heatwave adds 5 stacks of eternal flames)

On Hellwalker, Perpetua Ignis ensures that Pyro is never caught up and overrun by toxic hordes of bosses. This means that Tenacity perk is now obsolete on Pyro.

Unfortunately, even highly experienced players would think that Perpetua Ignis is important early game mastery. But, on the contrary, since casting Eternal Flames by any means refreshes the whole stack (similar to Predator's Battlecry), it does not matter how long eternal flames last, as long as they keep being applied.

1. Liberators can focus on structures such as hives and yagdras as well as bosses and high hp enemies, keeping up the stacks of Eternal Flames without Perpetua Ignis mastery.
2. Pyro without his ultimate mastery can focus fire on the high HP target such as hive and yagdra and strong enemies to keep up stacks of Eternal Flames without Perpetua Ignis mastery.
3. Pyro with this ultimate mastery can easily spread Eternal Flames via the Firestarter procreations. Targets that do not need to get stacks of Eternal Flames such as spine crawlers and low HP buildings would quickly die, and targets that remain will always keep receiving stacks of Eternal Flames. Examples of buildings are when Pyro simultaneously hits the middle hive and the adjacent ultralisk cavern, the omegalisk's and leviathan's hive and lair, and the General Hives. Examples of strong enemies are when Pyro is kiting a group of brutalisks that will always get hit in a straight line or by firestarters, allowing Eternal Flames to continously stack up.

As such, keeping up Eternal Flames is entirely possible without Perpetua Ignis, but this requires a certain level of skill to do so.

There is one exception, and this applies almost exclusively to the Heatwave talent. With Perpetua Ignis mastery, Heatwave allows Eternal flames to continuously stack on all surrounding buildings and enemies, which is something Pyro cannot do early game without his ultimate mastery. This might be an exceptional priority in solo speedrun games, but definitely not in multiplayer OS and HW games of any nature, whether speedruns or not.

Conclusion: Perpetua Ignis is only useful for kiting and damaging hoxic hordes of bosses. It is an incredibly important late-game mastery only if there are toxic hordes of bosses to be expected.

[Just for the sake of information, The Floor is Lava talent doubles eternal flames tick damage and adds bonus damage to structures. Pyrokinetics is a 5-step talent that increases eternal flames damage over time and nuke damage with each step.]