Her ult on pyro doesn’t always go where you’re pointing it; even when you’re highlighting an enemy sometimes it just “nopes” and goes directly to the side completely missing what you were aiming at and most likely just hitting a useless stormvermin instead of the special you wanted to hit. Other times it’ll hit one unarmored enemy and then just go straight into a wall and instead of bouncing it just dies out killing essentially nothing worth value. Her THP recovery traits also kinda suck, thp on cleave is a good trait but that’s about it and it doesn’t generate enough thp unless you’re in a horde and only if you have her sword, mace (which has its own issues), or her flail. THP on kill is temperamental at best and not great against boss-type enemies making her a glass cannon. Her crit values are alright but not enough to make up for her ult being so lackluster and her thp generation just not being great. On top of that, she only has one trait tied to her overcharge and her melee weapon, why? The entire class is built around having overcharge yet there’s only one trait that gives her any melee bonus, and it’s an atk spd bonus on top of that and there’s a soft cap on atk spd with how fast the animations get through and the diminishing returns. She doesn’t even come close to stacking up against battle wizard which is just extremely powerful with its thp on stagger and ability to reposition very quickly, and doesn’t really match up to unchained again with unchained thp generation and its numerous melee bonuses. So where does that land pyromancer? It’s in a weird spot where it seems like devs wanted you to be sniping elites and specials but it doesn’t do that as well as BW, and doesn’t stand up well in melee with very little thp generation and only 1 trait that ties into her overcharge mechanic. Essentially it feels like a leftover after all the nerfs over the years and has never been reconsidered after the rework. If it’s ever going to fit into the meta the ult needs to be more reliable (waystalker’s ability is what pyro’s ult should be but just way better and pyro’s should either refund some overcharge and/or give the player a melee damage bonus depending on the trait selection). Remove or rework execute, it’s already a bad trait and hardly anyone uses it when given the chance of carve/second wind. Im not even going to mention Sting because it’s just carve but more temperamental. Ride the Fire Wind should scale with overcharge instead of just being a counter. That alone would help her ranged (or melee if it would apply to that) attacks a lot and put pyro on par with her other subclasses
I think you’re mixing a few things up here. You’re mixing up the buggy interaction of her ult, defining her identity by that ult, and misunderstanding what the career is actually designed to do.
The ult definitely needs some fixing, especially things like tracking enemies behind walls and switching targets faster when you move your aim.
But her actual identity is ranged combat, and she excels at it. Her high crit chance might tempt you to play her as a melee or mixed career, and she can certainly do that, but where she really shines is as a ranged monster.