Rocketman vs Pyro in 2.3, 60% pyro wins. Rocketman vs Pyro in 2.4, 90% pyro wins. Rocketmen have no chance anymore against pyros now. After 2.4 becomes official, imo pyros will replace soldiers in competitive matches. I hope this doesn't happen because soldier is what I main.
idk what you are talking about. At point blank where reflects are more prediction rather than reaction, the problem is they are prediction. Don't press m2 within one or two frames of the exact time the soldier shoots, and there goes nearly half your health. Really if you're getting anywhere near half of your rockets reflected at point blank then you should make your shots less predictable.
At mid-long range where reflecting is easier, the problem is aiming them is difficult due to the shot origin not being consistent -- on soldier it always comes from the same point, when reflecting it starts wherever the rocket is when it's reflected -- plus rockets are pretty easy to dodge already. Rockets coming very rapidly are hard to dodge, but when reflecting you only reflect as fast (not really, it's even slower) as the opposing soldier shoots. So the solution is to stop feeding the pyro easy reflects.
Basically the only place reflects are reliable and anywhere close to being too powerful is in a range that's not a core part of playing soldier. You can definitely still be effective without having to spam rockets from far away. And the only change that really affected the soldier pyro matchup was the lowered blastReloadTime. It's still slower than the rocket fire rate, so really it only helped mid-long range reflects since now you can reflect consecutive rockets with less backpeddling. But the solution is still to stop feeding easy reflects.
Also pyro won't replace soldier since the soldier feeding the pyro is what (might) make him useful enough to be used full time. If both sides are running pyro then no one is feeding rockets which means the heavies are just going to mow down the pyros. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyways as far as airblast cooldown goes, I'd be okay with it being increased to 40 frames (+5 from current beta, -10 from current official), but any more is dumb. Although I still don't think it needs to be changed.
Sort of edit: I'd be okay with the reflect range being made a bit shorter. Is that blastDistance? Or is that for just against players?