This means that flamers should know that they are more effective as suicide troops than as flamethrowers, since the main dangers of flamers as-is is the toughness-ignoring explosions.
Fix: Remove toughness skipping, that way the flamers’ explosions match the stuff they shoot out of their nozzle.
Problem 2. The Scab Flamer lingering ground effect uses fire barrel code
This means that Scab flamers use the wrong code for the lingering fire, and are not uniform with Toxflamers and their lingering effect, which uses the toxflame lingering effect.
Fix: Change Scab Flamer lingering ground effect to use scab flamer lingering fire code.
Problem 3. Suicide runs being unclear, untelegraphed and unreliable.
Problem 3.1.
The flamers move without a walking animation sometimes when doing a suicide run.
Fix: The flamers should have walking animations during their suicide runs, currently I’ve seen a few times them remain in the staggering “oh no my tank leaks” state and still move closer to enemies.
Problem 3.2.
The flamers do not disclose when they stop being staggered and instead opt to start a suicide run.
Fix: The flamers should shout a voiceline along the lines of “FOR THE SIXTH!!!” or “FOR ADMONITION” when they decide to - instead of being staggered by their failing tanks - to do a suicide charge, improving the gameplay.
Problem 3.3.
The flamers do not have counterplay akin to another example of suicide bomber - the poxburster.
Fix: The flamers should be bashable like poxbursters, so that they can be avoided like poxbursters.
you actually have a counterplay, killing them without hitting the canister gas, or using ranged to take them down safely if they are about to explode, because the canister gas has been previously hit by someone.
agreed on 3.1, and 3.2 (it would be cool some extra lines for sure, i noticed when they are at the 2nd stage of canister gas damaged, they will slide and walk towards at you, fixing the animation would be nice)
problem 2, i think it is fine like it is imo, but better explanation would be nice
problem 1 i don’t think it’s a problem this, is what makes them a nice addition because of the new risk added (if shooting the canister gas) it will be an enemy where aiming with attention will reward the player. the damage is not even that much imo, it’s fair
Pretty sure the hitreg is too unreliable for this to be “counterplay”, especially since crits seems to blow up the cans more readily, making it an unskilled mechanic, to avoid critting the flamer.
Also it wasn’t a statement of them having no counterplay, I was stating that they lack a mode of counterplay that poxbursters have. Due to their behaviour now being quite poxbursterlike, they should be given the same modes of counterplay as poxbursters.
Also 3.3 assumes that the flamers do suicide runs, because it also may be a bug, since some other people mentioned that they “recover” from being staggered and move closer.
Perhaps there is no suicide run mechanic, perhaps it is a bug where they “forget” that they should just stagger about due to the tank and resume normal flamer operation, this time closing the distance to “flame” the players, but then exploding.
So the whole of 3 is predicated that they are doing suicide runs by volition, and not bug, which I start to think is a bug and not intended, ergo it should not be rectified in any other way than making them not walk.
The question is about mechanical uniformity, a goal of (I deem) good game design.
Also the flamers, as of now, should only do suicide runs, since that is the best way to function, since they skip toughness. They should never waste time shooting their flamers. They should be suicide bombers all.
Due to poxbursters already filling this niche, they should not deal toughness piercing explosion damage, since their flames shot from the nozzle does not.
It isn’t fine, since the lingering flame pierces toughness, which begs the question as to why the flame shot from the nozzle doesn’t, or why toxflamer’s flame does not. Again, uniformity in mechanics.
This is all not to say that the whole concept of flametrooper tanks exploding when shot is a showcase of a lacking understanding by the people who conceptualized it.
Flamertanks are designed to fail without exploding, they are made for battlefield conditions where shrapnel and bullets hit them.
Shooting gunners in the power/ammunition bags should cause them to explode, if flamertanks explode when shot. In fact that is far more reasonable.
I disagree. This change rewards the people who haphazardly waste ammunition by shooting simple specials, like flamers, by meriting them with a reason for their overuse of ranged weapons.
It punishes people who know how to conserve ammo and melee.
Those who can melee flamers are punished for their teammates shooting the flamers and causing them to explode. The shooters are safe, having wasted ammo on the flamer, the people who know how to dodge and melee are punished.
It is not fair for someone who can take down flamers hitless to lose health due to the mistakes of someone else, which this change to flamers brings to the table.
To add something from myself, meleeing them now is just begging to be blown out of the map bounds - and with melee hitreg you barely have a choice here.
We already have one walking barrel (Poxburster) with its ‘fun’, ‘interesting’ and ‘interactive’ mechanic of blowing players 50m away with no counterplay because AI went haywire or teammate was a bit too trigger-happy.
Remove the knockback on explosion entirely, or reduce it drastically so it only throws you away enough to be outside the lingering flames. The way it is now is ridiculous.
You’re likely correct as well. In one of the dev blogs they talked about process for making Poxburster and surprise surprise, they literally glued a barrel onto a poxwalker and adjusted from there.
Why they made barrels that idiotically broken in the first place is beyond me.
Barrels are the worst enemy type to me, most of my health damage is taken from them being blown by my "team"mates. Also the reason why I prefer private with 1 friend and 2 bots over public…
I’ve been trying to get the karkers to blow up when I melee them and just can’t seem to get it! They just die every time without exploding.
I love the explosions. Just can’t seem to trigger it lol.
Also I can’t believe you guys are all asking for a giant pressurised canister of Nurgle farts to have the same power as…a grenade?! Lol it would definitely explode more like a barrel than a grenade if we’re going to bring physics into the argument.
I think they need some sort of crazy scream as they’re about to blow up but that’s the only thing I’d change
Well in that case I must say I enjoy that it explodes. It’s fun. It helps much more than it hinders imo. The explosion pushed you away from the circle of flames it creates whilst burning enemies. Literally a helpful mechanic.
Melee seems to rarely, rarely blow up flamers. In fact the only time I believe I’ve had it happen to me is a Dueling Sword heavy poke to the tank.
Either way while a fun mechanic it is very annoying, the head hitbox vs tank hitbox is inconsistent and the damage you take is too punishing for something your team mate can force you to take as damage.
I was playing consignment yard the other day and i never stand by the train for obvious reasons but my teammates were. A flamer walks in that I pinged and noone shot it because they were pre occupied and I obviously had a choice to make. Let the flamer attack my teammates or kill the flamer, I chose to kill it, and immediately two of my teammates got blown off the map and then here comes the boss spawning in. One of them ended up needing rescued and we almost lost the run because of it. I shot the flamer because they werent paying attention to it but thats why I hate people lingering around railings because there is now one more way you can get knocked off the map as if we dont already have enough of those. Another reason this flamer change is stupid is how the flamer was positioned to me i had no choice but to shoot it in the back but they were going to go down either way. At the end of the match I said do not ever stand by railings you will get knocked off the map and they agreed lol.
Ive seen multiple people get blown back by exploding flamers in melee range. Also you run into the problem where your teammate is getting stunned in fire with a flamer close to them and your only option is to shoot the flamers back because your teammates not in any position to slide into them and stun them. Ive already seen too many instances where someone cant shoot a flamer and is about to lose their toughness and take health damage and your only option is to shoot the flamer but you know its also going to hit your teammate not really much you can do about it unfortunately.
actually, melee will never ignite their canister gas, unless it was hit previously because of a ranged attack, which you can visibly see the tank being on fire.
if you mean that sometimes, a melee attack, can actually make flamers to explode despite their tank not being lit by a ranged attack, it seems to be a bug.
i reckon it happened to me as well, and may be worth in checking if it is intended or not, but due to the fact it happens very rarely, it seems to be a bug in my opinion. and due to the fact in the training area, only ranged weapons will lit their canister gas. (then obviously if they are lit, and if you attack them with melee they will explode which is intended)
10/10 last testing, when a buddy was near a flamer i shot the lower body without setting off the combustion animation… with a kickback of all things.
same method i use with poxbursters, once you get the gist of the spread, you pepper them with 30-50% of your shot aka scratch them enough and stop em dead in their tracks without exploding.
that gives people enough time to clear and i put it down with the second shot.
love that flamer animation
besides ogryn strong, ogryn not care about funny warm floor
I mostly lose health during my public auric damnation runs to teammates “utilizing barrels” more often than the enemies.
Barrels are a menace comparatively to enemies if a player is skilled enough to - you know, dodge attacks - but foolish enough to assume randoms act with similar level of competence when it comes to not using barrels.
Barrels do not give actual help in most situations when people “use” them. The enemies they kill or stagger do not need to be damaged or staggered by use of barrels. Most players who explode barrels that I face in public just make them be a slow-down, if you want to maintain hitlessness that is, since barrel flame goes through toughness.
Furthermore, the typical use of barrels I see is often foolish in the regard also that they should be left unexploded in case of emergency, where their effects may actually become legitimate to employ. Many times have I utilized unexploded barrels during my clutches to buy time to parkour to safety whilst a chaos spawn was staggered by an exploding barrel or a horde was damaged by a flame one.
You cannot use a barrel in a clutch situation if if was blown up earlier to kill 12 groaners or something equally lukewarm.
Flamers using barrel code is also an issue since it goes against established design of flamers as enemies respecting player toughness( read: the patch where flames were made to be ramp-up toughness-first damage instead of instant toughness removal).
It also is another avenue for randoms to self-sabotage by whittling down the health of the more valuable players on their team who can run hitless and low-ammo usage runs by meleeing flamers/bashing poxbursters and the like. This incidental small damage can be translated to a mathematically lower chance of them being clutched later on, although I admit it is not a large effect. It still should be fixed so that people do not cause themselves harm via griefing their allies through incompetence.
