I might be speaking from boomer land since I only had a season back with modern highlander. I’m gonna just play Devil’s Advocate here, while I agree the weapon lacks counterplay, I remember bans were given out on weapons that were truly game breaking.
Some examples:
Mad Milk/Jarate, one throw into a teamfight can easily swing it
Old Razorback, buffed snipers with it could only be killed by another buffed sniper and the game devolved into a pure stalemate
Reserve shooter pyros would literally sneeze on someone when airblasted and/or destroyed anyone in the air.
I literally remember these weapons being completely dominant and/or being unhealthy for the HL meta.
The scorch shot just is a low risk weapon that provides high reward in regards to pressure. The majority of arguments I have seen is that the weapon is annoying and it will completely destroy you if you get hit by one. And that is simply not true, while with 46 damage + ~60 afterburn you’ll be left with very little health that someone can kill you off. You still have PLENTY of time to get aid whether it’d be from a pack, dispenser, medic, or your pyro farming points off extinguishing you. The knockback it hits you with isn’t a stun, I’m pretty sure you can still shoot the pyro that shot you with it. I probably will stop myself here.
As unhealthy as it is, I think if we start banning weapons cause they are annoying. we’re going to start trimming the whitelist. As @HA-Johnny said, we need data and proof that this weapon is truly game breaking. There hasn’t been much data presented that proves that it clearly breaks the game. I’m starting winter break so I am willing to take some time to write a quick program to parse logs.
Also personal opinion, banning the scorch shot won’t really drastically change how pyro will be played in the top level, we’d probably just see mixtures of shotgun and detonator would just take scorch shot’s place as spam and provide some mobility.