First of all, switching to flamer takes way too long compared to other weapons. Then the primary fire (a little puff of fire) is just useless… primary should be like the secondary (constant flame) and the secondary should be something else. Maybe a shorter flame that uses ammo slower? Or the other way around? The secondary fire as it is now is also very annoying to use, because of the turning-random-knob animation and movement slow-down. Damage seems quite low too, and most importantly, enemies on fire don’t seem to give a crap about it. They should get staggered, or run away, or try to put off the flames or something.
8 Likes
If your flamethrower does not give you the feeling that you are bathing the enemy in a wall of righteous, purifying flame that gives them great pause, then you have done flamethrowers horribly wrong.
4 Likes
In another 100 hours maybe I’ll have unlocked the flamestaff for the Psyker, to see if it’s the same or better
I agree. The visuals of the flames are fantastic and when I was testing it out in the meat locker it made me fail NNN, but using it in a mission is just… painful.
It’s too slow to switch over from melee to using it to clear a horde, and while you’re doing so you’re so exposed that unless the party protects you and/or have extremely situational and specific terrain, you’re not going to be able to use it.
I’ve only been using it in what I’d consider a lower difficulty then what I’m geared for, and it’s still too situational for what it is.
I mean we’re already giving up anything remotely looking like range, armor piercing, and burst fire for it, so we’re hoping that our teammates can deal with specials. Having it take forever and a day to ready up has consigned it to ‘screwing around with premade only’ for me.
4 Likes
I understand after trying out the flame staff on Psyker. Unless you are in a premade team with lotsa long-range guns, using a flamer or the flame staff just feels terrible. It doesn’t do enough dps to justify its short range, and it’s only effective on hordes full of fodder. And you need to constantly rely on your teammates to destroy the guardsmen that are killing you from 200 feet away.
The lightning staff is just straight-up better in every situation except hordes.
I can’t believe they just copy-pasted the flamers from Vermintide 2, that almost nobody ever uses, and basically changed nothing.
1 Like
Flamer is freaking useless 
such a waste 
This is weird to me. I’ve seen Zealots take down entire waves with the flamer. It both stuns the horde and does great damage.
My issue with the flamer is how unwieldy it is, as people have said the time to swap weapons is atrocious. It’s almost how I’d expect a heavy flamer to operate, not the lighter version. I’d like to see the swap speed closer to the lasgun/autogun, just a touch slower if it must be. A slower reload and lack of versatility is already punishing enough for the weapon, I feel. It does excel at destroying hordes, and is surprisingly good damage on monsters and sometimes elites with sustained fire, just needs a better feel when using it.
2 Likes
Haven’t had a chance to test the flamer yet and I can’t find footage of it. But I have a zealous love for flamethrowers and want to see it done justice. I think flamethrowers tend to be more fun with some range on them and look better. In Darktide this would make it less punishing to use.
Shooting into close combat is risky in this game and it’s often better to switch to melee. The flamethrower is also taken at the expense of others ranged options eg. cant snipe specials. So the flamer needs to be exceptionally good at what it does to justify the risk and opportunity cost.
The Ogryn Ripper gun feels good to me so maybe the flamer should have similar effective range.
Also from what others are saying it seems like it has low damage. It should have good damage and the DoT be a bonus. Not DoT at the expense of damage because DoT is just worse than upfront damage and the weapon is already sacrificing range and precision. Some knockback is also a good idea.
Maybe a bit complicated but it would be really cool if the fire bounced/flowed around corners as it’s pushed forward. This would make it a great room clearing tool in a unique way.
Edit:
So I’ve had a chance to put some time into the flamer and I actually think it feels great. The stacking dot and slight pushback is enough to make the weapon effective with the maintained secondary fire(on malice, I suspect this weapon doesn’t scale well to higher difficulties). The primary fire feels a little impotent. Maybe up the base damage or knockback with the primary fire a bit.
I also feel like the hitbox on the fire could be a little more generous. Sometimes it seems like there are enemies in the flame that don’t get hit. And I would still like to see the fire deflect off walls and flow around corners.
1 Like
The range on the flamer does feel appropriate, but to make it different having it be a high stun lock and DoT AoE weapon would have it be a good niche for actually locking down an area that I haven’t had with other weapons. TBH it also does surprisingly well with dealing damage to bosses because the DoT doesn’t care where you hit and stacks with itself so unloading a whole tank into a boss does crazy damage.
It looks and feels amazing imo, but because of how slow it is to go from “I made some room with my melee weapon” to “I now can lock down this direction” is absolutely not worth taking., while also taking forever to clear out a horde compared to the ‘burst’ damage AoE/spread weapons.
1 Like