Everyone calls Pyromancer the nuke hero — so here's the number that should bother you: her burst ceiling is 12 on a typical token stack — 14 if she's maxed out — and Monk and Barbarian both hit 18. What actually kills you is the boring part. Fireball connects on 98% of her turns, she averages 6.7 damage every single turn, and against most of the roster that pace ends the game before the opponent's plan finishes loading. The explosions are the show. The 98% is the weapon.
Your first three turns are the same turn: Fireball. Three Flames connects 98% of the time with disciplined rerolls, deals 4/6/8 for three, four, or five Flames, and banks a Fire Mastery token every cast — pressure and engine in one throw. When a Meteor shows up next to your Flames, upgrade the turn to Pyroblast: 6 damage plus a bonus die that adds 3 on a Flame, inflicts Burn on a Blaze, banks 2 Fire Mastery on a Fiery Soul, or inflicts Knockdown on a Meteor — a 77% line worth 6.2 expected. And when the dice come up Fiery Soul-heavy, Burning Soul is your builder: it triggers 70% of turns with best play, banking 2 Fire Mastery per Fiery Soul and chipping 1 damage per Soul on the way. What you never do early is hunt Meteors — there is exactly one Meteor face on the die, and the four-Meteor and five-Meteor lines are 10% and 1.3% even with every reroll.
The middle turns ask one question over and over: cash the stack or keep throwing Fireballs? Remember the leak — you lose a token at every Upkeep — so Fire Mastery held with no cash-out planned is value evaporating on schedule. Against slow heroes, don't overthink it: your clocks read 7.8 turns against Artificer and about 8.5 against Shadow Thief, so pure Fireball pace wins before their engine matters. Against the heroes who out-pace you — Ninja's modeled 13.1 to your 15.4, Barbarian's 11.8 to your 14.2 — even trades lose, and this is where the stack earns its keep: Combustion converts up to 4 tokens into 3 undefendable damage each, sliding straight past prevention, and Meteorite's Stun steals an entire enemy turn while handing you a bonus Offensive Roll Phase. Take the 54% Combustion when three of the four symbols are already showing; never dig for it from nothing.
Everyone at the table can count your tokens, so a full stack telegraphs the nuke — and negation is exactly what good opponents save for it. A Ninja Smoke Bomb, a Shadow Thief Shadows token, a Seraph Flight, a Moon Elf Blind: every one of those is priced against your loaded turn, not your jab. So spend their answers before your big swing — throw the plain 98% Fireball into a standing dodge token, and cash Ignite the turn after it's gone. Check for punishment effects like Paladin's Retribution before committing, because reflected damage hits a hero with no healing twice as hard. And watch your own board: you have no sustain and Molten Armor stops nothing, so below 20 health every incoming swing is live. Your consolation is that you rarely need a miracle — at 6.7 expected damage a turn, simply not missing is usually lethal on schedule.
Her die is 3 Flames, 1 Blaze, 1 Fiery Soul, 1 Meteor — half the die is Flames, and that one fact writes the whole playbook. Fireball is 50% natural and 98% across three attempts, so any two Flames after roll one is a keep. Pyroblast (3 Flames plus a Meteor) is 23% natural but 77% with best play — take it when the Meteor arrives on its own; it's worth 6.2 expected against Fireball's 6.7, so never burn two rerolls chasing the Meteor. Burning Soul needs just 2 Fiery Souls and lands 70% of turns — your default when Flames scatter. Hot Streak's four-in-a-row hits 59% and pays 5 plus 1 per Fire Mastery after banking 2 more, making it your best pivot with a straight brewing. Combustion's one-of-each-symbol is 54% with rerolls — commit holding three of the four. Ignite's full straight is 25%, Meteorite's four Meteors 10%, the ultimate 1.3%: windfalls all three. Take them when the dice hand them over; plan around the 98%.
Pyromancer's Combat Points have one conversion rate that matters: CP becomes Fire Mastery, and Fire Mastery becomes damage. Warm Up! costs nothing, banks a token, and adds one more per CP you feed it; Fire Up! pays 3 CP to raise your stack cap by 1 and bank 2 tokens; Red Hot! turns 1 CP into +1 damage per token you hold — at a full stack that's 5 extra damage for one point, the best CP-to-damage exchange on her sheet. Huzzah! spends 1 CP on a bonus die that adds 3 on a Flame, inflicts Burn on a Blaze, banks 2 tokens on a Fiery Soul, or Knockdown on a Meteor. Two budget rules: keep 2 CP in reserve against Knockdown-dealing heroes, because standing up costs exactly 2 CP or your entire Offensive Roll Phase — and a Pyromancer who skips her attack phase has skipped her whole identity. Second, spend on the turn you cash out, not the turn you build: a Red Hot! into a leaking 3-token stack is worth less than the same card into tomorrow's full one.
Her upgrade path has a clear order once the card data is in front of you. Fireball II is first in every game and it isn't close: 1 CP makes your 98% ability bank 2 Fire Mastery per cast instead of 1 — the whole engine doubles for one point. Burning Soul II (also 1 CP) is second: it adds Burn at 3 Fiery Souls and raises your stack cap at 4. From there, buy the payoff that fits the matchup: Combustion II against prevention walls like Paladin and Treant, because it upgrades the cash-out to 4 undefendable per token — a 16-point ceiling; Ignite II elsewhere, since the big straight now pays 5 plus 2 per token, inflicts Burn, and unlocks Blazing Soul, which turns 2 Blazes plus 2 Fiery Souls into a cap raise, 5 fresh tokens, and a Knockdown; and Meteorite II for Meteoroid, which needs only 3 Meteors to inflict Knockdown, Burn, and Stun at once — her least reachable line becoming a real threat. Hold Huzzah! and Red Hot! as finisher fuel, sell cards that don't feed the stack, and one honesty note: these card details come from simulator data still marked pending verification, so DiceSlayer will verify the physical cards on camera before treating any of this as gospel.
Deny her the loaded turn, not the chip. Attack negation — a Smoke Bomb, a Shadows token, a Flight token, a Blind — is worth double against a hero whose stack is public information: count her Fire Mastery, and spend your answer on the Ignite turn, never on a plain Fireball. Deny her even trades: she has no healing and no prevention, so heroes who heal (Barbarian's Thick Skin) or genuinely block (Paladin, Treant) win every exchange she thinks is neutral. And tax her rerolls — effects like Constrict, Barbed Vine, and Entangle attack the third roll attempt her 98% consistency is built on.
She is weakest the turn after a Combustion dump — the stack is spent, the leak keeps ticking, and her board is back to plain Fireballs for two or three turns. Every one of her Upkeeps is a small window too: one token cools off, so stalling her attack phase (Knockdown, Stun, forced rerolls) doesn't just cost her a turn, it shrinks the next nuke. And she never heals: any health lead you build is permanent, so a burst hero can put her below 20 and simply hold the lead while Molten Armor prevents nothing on the way down.
Her A-tier reputation makes Pyromancer a reflex ban, but the engine says spend it carefully. If your roster leans slow — engine builders and token stackers — the ban is right, because she farms that whole archetype (64.0 into Alchemist, 62.1 into Artificer, 62.0 into Paladin). If you brought a racer, save your ban for someone else: Iceman (46.1 from her side), Ninja (48.4), and Barbarian (49.2) already beat her pace, and community results in her one tracked tournament sample were mixed — she is scary, not unanswerable.
Pyromancer is the closer slot in a bring-3: the community has long regarded her as a premium burst/DPR hero and an A-tier competitive pick, and the engine confirms the damage-per-turn half — 6.7 expected damage every turn with almost no variance, and winning scores into the entire slow half of the field. Build the rest of the roster to cover her one real hole: her worst scores are Iceman, Ninja, and Barbarian, so pair her with a hero who beats racers, and let her eat the engine decks those racers hate grinding through.
In 3/1/0 Swiss she is the anti-draw pick: her clocks against the slow half of the field are short — 7.8 turns against Artificer, under 10 against most engine heroes — so those wins finish inside the round with time to spare. The pacing risk isn't the clock, it's discipline: Meteor-fishing turns a 9-turn win into a 15-turn coin flip. Play the 98% line, cash the stack when it's full, and her games end in threes, not ones.