I ran this thing exclusively when I got into damnation. I ran it for like 6 missions after the nerf, it feels basically the same. ALL i noticed was that the flamer got weaker against crushers and ragers and maulers which is A GOOD THING and if you don’t think that’s good then you’re just wrong… I don’t use the flamer not because its bad but because its so good and because I prefer using shotguns because I like snap-firing specials.
My issue with the post nerf PS is, how much the weapon’s effectiveness relies on the PC blessing.
With 3 swings per activation, it is stiill completely fine, but without the blessing, it is definitely crippled.
I have seen at least two people make the suggestion to swap the 1 and 2 charges of “default” and “power cycler”.
That way the weapon would feel more powerful by default (now 2 instead of 1 base charge) and the blessing would no longer be mandatory.
It would make the weapon more accessible and open it up for more blessing options, while keeping the same number of max achievable energized attacks.
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This is like putting 1 trillion horde enemies in front of the Kantrael shotgun and using the alt-fire that has infinite pen.
Enemies aren’t moving, flat terrain, stagger isn’t relevant, you’re fully reloaded with an ult ready and know the timing for it, the flamer has max rolls with carapace and blaze away, you’re not dealing with a single other melee/ranged threat, etc.etc.etc.
Yes, as someone with a better flamethrower and an embarrassing amount of playtime, I can usually replicate this in-game too with enough situational awareness and planning. But to post this like it’s a slam-dunk without any qualifiers or disclaimers is…weird at the very least. Think this is the second time I’ve seen someone post this clip whenever flamer is discussed post-nerf.
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I think the issue is that a lot of people couldn’t play higher than Malice without Flamer on Zealot/Power Sword on Vet, so they were assuming that the devs would be “bringing everything else up” to the power levels of the flamer, power sword, etc.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s constructive when people post unrealistic demonstrations of the weapons post-nerf saying, “see, they’re still fine/overpowered, be quiet.”
It would be more helpful if people were shown how to use the other “non-viable” weapons, so they can learn, rather than be bashed for not understanding why their favorite thing got nerfed quite a bit.
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Making people sacrifice a blessing slot for power cycler is part of the balance I think. Maybe they will make power cycler less rare to find now who knows.
Is it balance when the other blessing is Slaughterer, giving you an ungodly amount of power? 
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I have made overtures to bring newer players into damnation in the past, but received no takers.
Not that I’m some pro-youtuber or pro-player or anything but I do quite well in damnation most games. Heres footage from just a few days ago of a flamer/chaxe game.
Addmittedly I favored the Chaxe because I was feeling it out.
Here’s me taking on damnation hi-int shocktroops using two suboptimal weapons:
lawbringer plus pre-#7 ironhelm. I do quite well based on my scoreboard for that game.
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I agree with your post completely so far.
This is also a take that would bring a lot, but mostly it’s just that the players are unwilling to learn, claim that stuff is not possible or just “want to have their sort of fun”.
And even if you’re kind and reasonable, it often lasts in “but not everyone is a pro player” pr take any advice as “git gud”.
I’ve had also players ingame and gave them advice how to deal with poxbursters or plague-ogryns. Yet i’ve had only 1 Ogryn-player being like “Alright didn’t know that, thanks for the info.”, while pretty much everyone has been like i described.
Just lately there was also a random dieing all day long and started to insult the rest of the team for taking grimoires. We finished the run and they claimed “die in RL” etc…
I know it’s not always the case, but the times where poeple interacted and helped each other is long gone. Poeple check out youtube videos or so and suddenly everyone knows what’s going on and if things go nuts it’s the games fault, the weapon is too weak or yeah “the others”…
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1,000 hour zealot here who lives in damnation, hi intensity and preferably shock troop when it’s available.
Flamer is fine. You’re just terrible and call everyone liars for no reason. Cope and seethe.
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I honestly think the old flamer was fine, what sent it over the edge was the interaction between the ult and ranged weapons
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Do you play without sound?
*Edit I’m just dumb.
I think I’ve found the one person on this forum that is better at baiting than me. Congrats.
Not to be this guy, but these topics rarely start with something like “x/y weapon feels weak are there any tips to make it better?”.
Just looking at flamer topics , its mainly topics complaining that its absolute usless trash after the patch and when its proven to be absolute false, we get some massive resistance “only pro players can use it now” or “you never have used it” or better yet " must be lying".
Like holy crap you actually have to be mindful of your positioning and trigger use now.
I dont think many people even in these forums are against helping newer players, sharing tips/tricks on how to improve and discussing what would be good blessing/perk combinations to make runs feel smoother.
But the simple fact is many don’t truly care to learn these things. Its just simply easier to use the flavor of the month weapon discussed in some tierlist and faceroll the content. Content that anyone who has played tide games previously can probably faceroll with D tier meme weapons.
It wasen’t too long ago when i said you could solo beast of nurgles with melee weapons only. Literally 90% of the community still don’t understand that the slug won’t eat you if you do not have any slow stacks on you.
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For sure, it’s a tough nut to crack.
If I had the time, maybe I could use the modded Meatgrinder area to show side-by-side video clips of how different weapons perform against a “chaos pat” (maybe 6 Crushers, 6 Zerkers, 12 shooters, 12 stalkers, etc.). I would enable AI, and show how I would engage the pat with every single ranged weapon family, and I would use a melee weapon/build that complements the ranged weapons. For instance, Tac Axe + Bolter, Combat Axe + Flamer, Hammer + Shotty, Knife + Bolter, etc.
Unfortunately, this would only prove that everything is viable, but the viability of each loadout is dependent on build knowledge/crafting costs & RNG/playstyle enjoyment/piloting…
This also wouldn’t even take into consideration comparative career options for Ogryn/Psyker/Vet, and now I’ve also lost the control variable of only testing “flamer-esque” things. So now I’ve gotta showcase Psyker Flamer vs Vet Shotties/Autoguns vs Ogryn Rippers/Rumblers for perspective…
Lol yeah idk man, I’m not a Youtuber with the time and incentive to do so, and who knows if I could present it in an easy-to-understand format for the intended audience.
I think we just have too many conflicting systems atm to easily convey viability and advice to casual players (silo’d resources across characters and poor crafting state with locks & blessings acquisition).
I think I’ve been eaten maybe twice since learning this so long ago, fantastic example 
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Yeah, those are all valid points.
I think some of the responsibility lies with Fatshark deciding how they want to market their game and difficulties. Is this a game where only 50% of players should be able to beat the highest difficulty, even with “maxed meta” gear? Should we move that slider to 90%, but then add Twitch mode and customizable deeds/“conditions” to please the rest of the community?
It would help if we had the same lobby/matchmaking capabilities as we did in VT2, with more QoL features to facilitate newer content additions. Then for example, you could host a “Damnation, High int, Lights out, Dogs, Snipers” mission, and not care if most people can beat vanilla Damnation. This could split the community populations, but it’s better than people quitting entirely.
And as far as server hosting/costs, I’d implement the following: Using a map creation wizard, you “request” a map with XYZ difficulties and modifiers. Once enough people have “joined your request,” Fatshark spins up the custom server for you. Now they don’t have to list 10,000 map permutations in the Mission Terminal area.
Think I’m devolving off-topic again but so many inter-linked systems are creating symptomatic problems like “flamer balance.” Sigh.
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Yeah "viability"has even historically been an odd topic, we don’t have to look further than 2H greatswords in vermintide2 to realize this.
I think the big problem with darktide currently is that the top few weapons can be absolutely game warping while even the worst weapons in this game can still clear every bit of content if you put some piloting effort into it.
It creates this odd sitsuation where “weaker” players are clearing content they should not while better players are resident sleeping content with some absolute crap. It also makes any sort of viability discussion nearly impossible to have because some people expect every content, including T5 to be fully clearable by just the virtue of “power fantasy” and others expecting it to be challenge like it was in previous tide games.
Some middle ground is needed here.
Yeah and fatshark is not making this any easier. Like just looking at the tutorial, its already outdated due to changes and many people i’ve interacted with still think toughness works like advertised in the tutorial.
That said i don’t think many youtubers are good at either explaining the many nuanced mechanics this game has either and in fact seem to just contribute to the misinformation being spread around.
And when there is video like this J_sat Stagger System it barely has any views?
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Just to be clear, anyone can kill hordes. And most people don’t have to expend ammo to do it. So if you tell me “the flamer can still be used to kill hordes”, I say “yeah, so can every other weapon, and some do it better and don’t hoover all the ammo to do it”. I’m more interested in the flamers crowd control as opposed to its killing potential right now, but thats a different discussion.
I think the flamer is perfectly viable still, but I also think it was overnerfed and that they should have addressed how ranged weapons interact with Chastise the Wicked instead of swinging that nerf bat. Things like burning damage should’ve had no interaction with CtW in the first place.
Hell, I only play Ogryn on damnation as its the only class I am damnation confident with. I can kill those same hordes with either the rippergun or a heavy stubber, and have better ammo economy, better range, better special or elite killing potential, and better use of ammo pickups.
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100% - massive horde clear, great stagger, has to use push stab for armor pen/headshots, great mobility while dodging at ending of heavies…but people just see “slow and no armor damage on lights/heavies 
”
I think some of the perceived balance issues are resulting via the state of only having 4 careers. People ask for XYZ balance changes to make all combinations of melee and ranged loadouts viable and fun, but they don’t realize this is forcing homogeneity of all the careers’ and weapons’ playstyles/blessings.
If Fatshark focused more on doubling the amount of careers, the amount of viable builds would skyrocket, and people would be more focused on enjoying the game. Yes this requires more balancing, but now you’re nerfing a much smaller percentage of things someone might enjoy at any given time, rather than maybe nerfing the ONLY weapon/build that someone enjoys per career. Variety = fun and people buying cosmetics, nerfing after variety = game’s staying power and continued monetization
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I think I have a similar take on what I’d like the Zealot flamer to do - great stagger, horde clear, and can take out flak if needed but with heavy ammo commitment. Basically, I wouldn’t care if it did 0 damage to Crushers and just kept Bulwarks stuck standing in place. I would just follow up with my melee weapon afterwards. I’m giving up ALL my long range killing potential for snipers/specials/shooters/gunners, so I should at least be able to have crowd stagger and horde clear.
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The flamer dealt with so many different enemies before really easily. I was hoping they’d only reduce it’s flak damage and keep it’s great suppression/stagger/whatever. Chastise interaction screams of cheese. I noticed the same as OP, that no one uses it anymore. I just ask dudes at the start of the mission what guns they are using and switch back and forth between bolter, headhunter and shredder now on zealot.
Power sword nerf was hardly a nerf at all. It really only changed the melee rotation and made a rare blessing auto include. Imagine if a single blessing on flamer made it work like prenerf flamer lol. I mean, I guess there’s no way to make power sword work like a power cycler PS prenerf… but hot damn was that crazy strong lol. I low key think everyone was mad at the flamer because they didn’t get to cleave hordes with their power swords.
I prefer the current meta