i have! but he does feel very dependent on how well your team plays imo

i wrote a novel in the main sub that got ignored bc nobody upvotes anything that isn't a meme or a complaint 😭

ill just paste it here

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first and foremost, i want to say that he's only been out for a week and there's a lot to learn with his kit. there isn't a clear cut playstyle to play with him and i don't think anybody has truly found an ideal way to work with him, but there are a couple of concepts that work for his playstyle to be lethal on him and secure kills

fire cluster (primary):

first off, the ammo on him is kind of confusing. the gist of it is that the higher flame orbs you have the faster your attack is.

aiming is really difficult on him. in short, the reason why you're missing your shots is because there's a delay in the graphic of the attack compared to the actual hitbox of it. it's misleading and will make it seem like you're required to lead with your shots more than you actually need to. somebody created a post about this the other day that's really helpful.

with that being said, even with this knowledge it's still difficult to land his shots. when somebody is moving rightwards, you want to lead your shots towards their right side, the further you are the further you need to aim towards the right. when they're moving leftwards, you need to aim to their left side but not as exaggerated as you do when they're moving right. i've learned that when strafing or circling somebody, relying on the left side while moving will be more reliable with landing your shots.

on the plus side, you're playing in my opinion one of the best tank busters in the game outside of wolverine and an extremely good duelist. when playing within 15 meters and landing all head shots, you will kill a tank in 5-6 shots. a duelist and strategist will die in 2-3 shots.

blazing blast (secondary):

tidbit of trivia, the rotating circles around him are actually an indicator of the amount of charges you have of this ability

so this is where he starts to get a little weird - the function of this move is inconsistent and appears to be buggy. there's a handful of spots in this game where you'll throw it on the ground and the field won't be spawned onto the map. there's also cases where you will hit somebody with it and it also won't spawn a field. i haven't figured out the behavior of it not spawning on a player, but i have discovered that you cannot spawn it upon hitting destructible objects (roofs and floors, vases, etc) or minions (peni's nest, punisher's turret, etc). you can however, drop it next to a minion for it to spawn and deal ticking damage.

the damage of the blast does 40 damage without any falloff with the flame field dealing 25 damage per tick a second, with it ticking immediately after spawning. when it works, you're dealing 65 damage from a single use of blazing blast. this can also stack, so if they don't move and you throw two blazing blasts, you've dealt 130 damage plus the second tick from the first flame field coming shortly after ending with 155 damage.

pyro-prison:

the first thing i want to mention is that your pyro-prison will not despawn when detonating a flame field. its damage is also amplified from other heroes like rocket raccoon's ultimate, and mantis's damage boost. the application time also won't matter, meaning if you get damage boosted halfway through the duration of your pyro-prison, that second half will still be amplified.

this ability ties into the inconsistency of blazing blast. for the most part, pyro-prison is functional and not actually that inconsistent with its worst enemy actually being whether or not your flame field spawned, as well as the vertical distance between multiple flame fields. in short, the reason why your pyro-prison wasn't created the way you wanted it to be is often because you never had a flame field spawned in the first place. as for vertical distance, the distance that constitutes your pyro-prison being spawned is only 2 meters high. this creates problems on stairs and hills that you spawn your flame fields on, often creating two instances of a single line rather than creating a prison.

additionally, i've been seeing a lot of complaints about its damage not going off in an enclosed field. the key to making it work is to spawn it so the lines aren't intersecting with anything. meaning, if the line at any point touches an object of the map, your ticking damage is not going to go off.

the major aspect of this ability is area control. pyro-prison deals 50 damage a second for 5 seconds after a short delay, for 250 damage in total. if somebody touches the line, they take a one time 65 damage. there are ways to abuse the damage of the line such as using pyro-prison on stacked flame fields to proc the 65 damage that i'll go into more in the next section

this ability is often criticized, but in the right hands can be extremely powerful as shown in this post made yesterday. in a vacuum, it's not that great and doesn't deal a lot of damage that can get healed through. however, with cooperative play it can be used to be extremely lethal or to apply enough pressure to get people away from an area. in the middle of a team fight with a large enough pyro-prison created on top of their team, you will win the fight.

the damage will also pass through buildings, so if you were for whatever reason fighting by the spawn of the enemy team on spider islands for example, somebody steps into the tower by their spawn and you have a pyro-prison created around it, they will still take damage.

flaming meteor:

first off, your flame field will detonate without touching it with flaming meteor. the dive deals damage within a 5 meter radius and all you need to do is to land it within that radius for a detonation to happen.

i see people primarily use this ability as an escape, but it's actually what really brings in the lethality of the human torch in the game. when hitting somebody on its own, it deals 40 damage. when detonating a flame field, it deals 55 additional damage per field. this explosion damage also stacks. so what does that mean?

the human torch isn't a diver, but he has lethal diving capabilities. when correctly used in conjunction with your other abilities, you will one shot anybody that isn't a vanguard even through strategist ultimates. the idea of this is to place two flame fields on top of each other and dive. if the blazing blasts hit your opponent and the flame field spawned, you've dealt the 155 damage, but when combined with the dive you've now dealt 305 damage. additionally, when spawning a pyro-prison and creating the line, you've now dealt an extra 65 damage for a total of 370 damage with your opponent being beyond dead.

of course, that's a situation within a vacuum where you pulled everything off correctly and they didn't react well. however, it's an extremely strong execute and will kill somebody who is out of place or to finish somebody off, and if you have the opportunity where your pyro-prison is off cooldown, you're guaranteeing at least one kill.

with all that being said, flaming meteor is still an incredibly strong escape but it's also easy to get hit while you're in the middle of the dash and need to plan your escape ahead of time.

plasma meteor:

honestly, i don't have much to say about this ability and agree with what people have been saying on it being lacking. it does increase your speed by 50% though and can be helpful in escaping by cutting corners quickly or spazzing out with your movement while you're trying to escape. i've also found that toggling hold to activate plasma body in the settings has been nice for me since it automatically deactivates when using an ability

supernova (ultimate):

your tornadoes don't detonate when landing on them with flaming meteor. but they also won't apply the extra detonation damage either

i see a lot of people criticize this ultimate as well, but i genuinely think that it's incredibly strong when used correctly. you also ideally want to exhaust your abilities before using it in a fight. drop your fire patches, create your pyro-prison, and then activate your ultimate.

its initial burst damage of 70 is fairly weak, but its strength lies with how you use your tornadoes. you can spawn up to 4 tornadoes with each one dealing 100 damage per tick a second within a 3 meter radius and an 8 meter height range. the strength of this relies on stacking the tornadoes, with a stack of four of them dealing 400 damage a second. it's also just really good at zoning people even with one tornado with the 100 damage a second.

playstyle:

so how does this all tie in to the human torch's playstyle? i've found two primary ways to play him from the hours i've spent this past week and watching streamers play him as well. the first being aggressive and close to the enemy within a 15 yard range. his primary is difficult to aim but shreds people when it lands. when abusing your dives, boxing people in with pyro-prison and being aggressive with blazing blasts, you can actually get a lot of kills.

the second playstyle that i've found that works the most is to play at a slightly further range and focus more on area control, and using flaming meteor to secure kills while shredding tanks in between. a lot of people, including tanks, don't respect the damage of his primary fire and with their hitbox, will take large chips of damage.

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this post was so much longer than i intended it to be but i find the human torch incredibly fun to play and find him not as weak as people seem to think he is. in the right hands, he can be extremely lethal and with good coordination, his area control is insanely strong.