The IB Drakegun (flamethrower) just owns entire packs of enemies, elites and all. The fact that it staggers them is also huge (but pushes them away from your melee teammates). You just burst fire it and you can keep it from overheating. It just seems like a really silly weapon to be in the game in the first place, but having that much impact is also crazy.
It seems like this weapon alone has greater impact than some or possibly most career skills.
Shields? Armor? No problem.
No its exactly where it should be, as a strictly horde management tool. Lacks the exact finesse thats required to hunt specials, which is huge. As a legend player specials have always demonstrated to be an even greater threat than hordes. Well placed specials have in the past, demolished entire parties in games. If the IB has no backup and a packmaster comes out of nowhere, that drakegun isn’t going to stop him from getting dragged away to a horrible death by 1000 pokes. I know I have seen this happen many times.
It is severely range limited. Blightstormer across the map or globadier, gasrats, gunners… basically, all these threats are now other careers jobs to take out. Actually also attacking the armor while being staggered is other careers jobs as well.
Everytime I run a hordes deed, I always try and convince the dwarf to go IB and bring drakegun though. Yes against hordes, either Flamestorm sienna or IB Bardin with Drakegun makes everyones lives SO much easier. By virtue of kills, is insignificant. During a high risk battle the player that eliminated 3 specials did as outstanding a job as the IB that killed 80 rats.
So yes very much agreed, its an extremely high impact weapon that has a huge effect on party survival. With BH saltz and WS elf hunting specials full time and picking off elites and armor w Sienna support you have a solid team that can take on most deeds.
I like the flamethrowers, but I think they need a rework in how they work.
As it stands, they will either be useless or too good.
It’s true that there is way better weapons in the game atm and better builds overall, but the combination of high stagger with good damage on flamethrowers needs to be looked at.
I still think that they’re more balanced/close to where they should be now than they were before the big buff they received (aka. they were WAY more useless than they now are good).
I would personally reduce the stagger and keep the damage output. The weapon won’t be worth a dam if it becomes a simple stagger machine with bad dps… staggering hordes (if they are in a single line) is possibly the most useless thing you can do in legend with your ranged weapon (considering that there’s a countless amount of weapons that outright kill said hordes… faster that you can stager them too).
That being said, if stagger is nerfed across the board, there could be a place for a stagger centric flamethrower, but, as it stands, stagger is way too common to allow for a low dps & high stagger flamethrower to shine.
It’s elite stagger that is in question here imo. On one hand, you trivialize patrols, on the other hand you would somewhat struggle to kill hordes if you had no way to push away the elites that are in them. I personally think that the latter scenario is preferable to the former. Make patrols dangerous and implement some tactics and skills in how you have to delete hordes with a flamethrower. As I see it, alt fire (rmb+lmb) should deal a lot of damage and light attack (lmb) should be what you use to either dealt considerable stagger or delete elites. Like that you would be forced to use both type of attacks to deal with hordes (killing trash with alt fire and staggering elites at opportune moments with light attacks). You’d have to make light attacks faster to cast for it to work though.
To sum it up,
I would reduce the stagger on the alt fire (rmb+lmb) while keeping its damage (or increasing it to compensate for loss of stagger… depends on the stagger nerf obviously) and rework the light attack (lmb).
I would like the light attack to either do a massive stagger effect on a wide angle or a concentrated single unit deletion attack. It also needs to be faster to cast imo.
The Drakegun (and Flamewave Staff; it’s the same weapon even if the context is different) is hugely effective at what it does, that much is true. But it needs a couple of seconds to prepare for use (a luxury that isn’t always there), and you lose any long-range effectiveness you could have had. A Drakegun IB has no more effective range than any Slayer, and possibly less with Leap and mobility are taken into account. So in addition to its strength, it has steep tradeoffs - too steep already for many players. (There’s also the annoyance factor, but that’s a different thing and even more a question of personal preference.)
So if anything, I think it’s too specialized. While it takes on a role most other ranged weapons have trouble with (horde decimation, mixed or not), it struggles or completely gives up other roles of ranged weapons, and those cannot be compensated with melee, unlike the usual setup. I don’t know whether anything really should be done to change the balance, even if the weapon is a one-trick pony.
Thats why I say leave it where it is.
I had Bardin IB backups with this on legendary horde deeds w abduction, hordes and specials take huge hordes into the nest and athel yenlui getting 1200-1500+ kills with Drakegun. The one trick it does it does well, this games about trusting people with jobs. 2 good people specialized hunting specials works very well while someones job is to control incoming volumes of enemies. Long range aimers need to trust in immediate surroundings to take aim at range, so they dont get hit while aiming - obviously - and standing next to bardin with a drakegun is a good idea. Trusting people with jobs works. No need to confuse people with specific jobs. Drakegun has a specialized job, and role. If thats what a party needs the person does not need redundancy doing other jobs if other people like elves and bounty hunters have a different job. Good ones, well let them do their job.
Every character does not need to be doing everything super well.
I’d just like the flames to look a little lighter on the eyes for the teammates. It’s the only part of the weapon that’s a real problem right now.
Well, that, and that it’s a strictly anti-horde (and now somewhat anti-elite) weapon in a game where anything and everything deals with hordes, making it insanely hard to balance between useless and needlessly powerful, but, hey, that’s a design problem - not balance.
I don’t think it’s a fun to play with someone using this, they just burn everything in sight and obscuring everyone’s vision. Being melee, you either get burned all the time or have little to nothing to do. It staggers SV so much that you can’t really chase them to land a hit, other weapons do that too but not as bad.
I think this is important to note. It’s all well and good for one person to be having a good time, but if they’re ruining the experience for everyone else (and they usually are), then it’s a problem. Shade’s ridiculous boss damage has a similar issue. I’m glad they feel powerful and useful, but I want to fight things too.
There are definitely considerate flamethrower users out there who will only pull it out when it’s needed, but for every one of those there are five who just burn and blind everything, enemy or not.
Honestly the Drakegun seems fine to me,
The one that needs an adjustment though is the Flame Thrower. Not the damage. There is a reason that was buffed. The Flamethrower is supposed to be able to kill things. It was far too weak before.
But they forgot to adjust the Overheat on it, so it becomes another case where, much like Sienna prior to the Balance Beta you could just spam it over and over. Its turning into another Beam Staff situation. Where the rest of the party is sitting there on their Thumbs while the Flamethrower is just endlessly running.
It ends up excluding the participation of the other members of the party.
So yeah keep the damage where it is, but they do need to adjust the heat the way they did the Sienna Jobs so that it can’t be spammed constantly the way it is now.
A little overtuned? It’s redic. But the difference between what it is and what it should be is that on top of having obscene levels of all purpose crowd clear it also is near completely safe. A fact alone that would have been fine if it wasn’t stuck on the tankiest career bar none.
Personally I’ve stopped playing for awhile and will come back when they decide to add another difficulty mode or something to address all of these issues.
The Drakegun IS the flamethrower. The Drakefire Pistols are the other one.
I kick them from my groups. I know I always said I wouldn’t kick people for weapons or talent choices. But this weapon drives me nuts. It pushes everything away from the team, eats up all our Temp HP, and constantly makes us miss headshots on elites. It’s beyond annoying. Not to mention it nearly blinds you, it’s too damn bright and covers your screen. The only other option is to just sit back and let the IB kill everything until we get surrounded. Which normally ends up with him just spamming it in all directions. Not to mention most of the IB I see using this are beyond bad, they never switch back to melee, just spam it constantly. Meanwhile, I’m playing a zealot who I keep my green health low for extra stacks. Had nearly 150 FF from a drakegun user the other day… Not in my games if I’m host.
This.
Shade needs to be looked at before the drakegun, in my opinion.
I’m maining IB but I’m using the pistols because I prefer them over the drakegun. That being said, I don’t have a problem with the drakegun itself, it’s just a personal choice. But I do have a problem with some of the players who use it. They are just spamming it all over the place and burning our asses. They don’t give a fu.ck about friendly fire… I don’t know if they think that they’re entitled to such behavior just because they’ve brought a drakegun to the fight, but it’s just not ok. There’s a place for drakegun of course, but it should be used with great care and tactical positioning, just like a mage.
The Temp HP argument, I think, is foolish. If someone is killing all the enemies that could give you THP, they are by definition also killing the enemies that could harm you, thus greatly reducing the need for THP. This was true before, and it’s so even more now that Temp Health is more of a momentary help.
Missing headshots is more the fault of players, on both sides, than the weapon itself. The same happens with a lot of Sienna’s staves, Hagbane Bow, and basically any weapon that doesn’t one-shot those elites.
The “annoyance factor”, what I consider pushing enemies away being part of, seems to be the biggest gripe most players have against the flamethrowers. Clearing waves alone, blinding others, tendency for FF… They don’t have siginificant impact on the weapon balance or (directly) the user, but they have an impact on others, and as such, should be reduced. Waveclear is what the weapon does, so that’s kind of iffy to change, and FF is more on player(s) than the weapon, but the blinding effect and other smaller things could indeed be something to look at, specifically to make the weapon less annoying for others.
Wrong, playing zealot with low green hp to keep up 6 stacks. You need enemies to keep yourself full with temp. And ofc he doesn’t kill everything, just makes a wall of flame that makes it hard for us to spot specials on the otherside. Playing elf and salty, I build for head shot breakpoints so I don’t have to stack useless power vs and only try to get headshots. Which is why I can finish games with around 200 headshots. The drakegun just doesn’t sync well with the rest of the part.
For those five annoying ones, I’ve found the best policy is to stay clear and watch them get bopped from behind without anyone to cover their back. Flamethrower weapons with charge attack have some serious tunnel vision, can’t hear much less see what else is going on nearby when using them.
there a terrible weapon and should not be used . maybe in a co ordinated team where your the only ae there maybe , but even then i cant imagine a scenario worth the cost.
its not that its bad its whtat it does isnt useful . monsters in this are either a threat a resource or neutral , no threats die in a flamethrower you just loose resources. all it does is blind your team and bring everything to halt.
it and the poot poot pistols are fantastic for stat padding though!
Wow, so much hate.
Did not realize Flamethrower IB was so despised. Now dwarfs are not my chosen primary careers (i main kruber, sienna and elf) , but when I play deeds and theres a hordes modifier I will be asking the dwarf to bring the BBQ. Sorry for my choice!
I still think its where it should be and requires no changes. I honestly also believe a few successes I have had with some very difficult legend hordes deeds was partially due to the dwarf bringing this weapon.
If it’s alright for me to chime in, I think there is some unnecessary aggression towards the weapon based on someone using the Drakegun. I do agree that the Drakegun makes it considerably more difficult for an allied player to depend on melee-based talents, but it is also a pretty cool weapon. It performs its functionality extraordinarily well, which is characteristic of Sienna in the same way. It also clears Elites remarkably well, removing some need for a headshot-kit outside of Specials.
I couldn’t agree more… but then again, you are playing quick play. Most of the people you meet aren’t designing their character around the build of someone they haven’t yet met or talked to. My IB buddy (he LOVES his IB) enjoys the Drakegun. I play a spear Kerillian and use him as a body-shield. I don’t move without him moving first and I never let him get hit… I don’t even deal with hordes when he is there. He massacres them all and I protect his flanks. When there are stray Elites/Specials, I pound them with the Longbow knowing he can Taunt control aggro off of me to give me time to kill them. We can also depend on an anti-armor Sienna and a FK Kruber (overlapping roles… but hey, we play to have fun). When there isn’t a horde, he puts away the Drakegun and we clear zones as normal.
With a team that is designed to work together the Drakegun is not a detriment: it is an awesome tool for him to use. We are in voice comms which makes it even better! Again, I agree that a team not designed to work together can make this weapon a nightmare.
I think @Yzneftamz nailed it on the head here: if the Drakegun didn’t blind teammates so dramatically, I don’t think there is a ton else to complain about. Again, I totally agree with a lot of what’s being said in this thread, but getting kicked for it seems like overkill. Then again, this is an opinion… one that seems an outlier here 
I think this is also an excellent point as made by @Flinlock. If the IB isn’t communicating with their Drakegun AND their team isn’t communicating back, the weapon is worthless and can harm the team.
I don’t think this is about a weapon being terrible as much as it is a center-piece for coordination… they aren’t common, but certain builds/kits require special attention to be used properly.
EDIT: Sorry, guys, I had no idea I had typed out such an essay on the topic. My bad! I should learn to be more succinct.