Problem A: When they blow up the damage ignores Toughness* and 15 damage is actually significant for non-Ogryns.
Problem B: The knockback is pretty severe for how devastating getting ledged is (it’s arguably worse than being downed).
Which wouldn’t be quite so bad if it weren’t for:
Problem C: Other players can trigger the tanks (which is pretty easy to do even if you try not to) even in the space of time between you starting a melee attack and it landing. If this only happened if I hung around or walked up to Flamers leaking fire every which way it’d be one thing but this constantly happens even if someone just kinda tries to help or incidentally shoots one close by.
*: The Scab Flamer death patch also does this and I feel like since I’m on the subject barrels honestly should stop ignoring Toughness as well. There’s no reason for what is mostly a player accidental(/on purpose) griefing tool to have this additional punishment mechanic.
I get annoyed the hitbox for their tanks vacuums ammo. It’s effectively impossible to not hit the tank. Meanwhile they then become suicide bombers that melee characters have 0 answers for. The whole interaction has just become yet another frustration that blocks your vision and denies the ability to play the game.
This game needs less annoying trash on the floor, not more.
They really are annoying.
I like the diversity and challenge, but then recently I played a melee only maelstrom, and one player dropped and was replaced with a bot, which consistently managed to set the tanks on fire.
Like so many things, it becomes a chore.
I believe there was another threat already that called for mechanical consistency because the fire they shoot doesn’t ignore touchness, and the flame patch of the exploded tox bomber doesn’t, either, yet the explosion fire of the scab bomber does.
That’s probably the most obvious fix to mechanical inconsistency.
Taking an extra 0.2 seconds after the tank’s being shot before they are primed would probably also be nice - every other enemy in the game telegraphs their status like mad.
The only thing I really take issue with is that after the tank is primed you can eg melee headshot kill them and it’ll blow up immediately. Punishing you for hitting the tank in melee range fair enough, doing so for killing them by hitting them anywhere other than the tank in melee after a team mate primed them though feels a bit tedious to me.
I propose that if they’re primed and you kill them in melee without hitting the tank there’s like a 1-2 second delay between them dying and blowing up.
Flamers overall need a revision. They can do some harm currently only cause of tank blows or when player is trapped. Their rotation speed during fire is slow, so you always can get them by rushing in a slight arc trajectory. Starting to spray is also takes to long for them. Flamers are rushung at you without any flankings in a suicide attempts (that’s what poxbursters are for) and it’s kinda lame and boring.
There’s already a timer when the tank is breached AND becomes unstable, it will then detonate when they run out of health, so killing them triggers the tank to explode.
The tank only explodes if it’s breached, so once you hit it, their death will always trigger an explosion. In Vermintide 2, a breached tank would instantly kill the warpthrower. However, in Darktide, the flamer can stay alive for a short time even after its tank is breached, but the tank will still detonate upon death. This makes hitting the tank much more punishing in Darktide compared to Vermintide 2.