- The Flamer’s overall damage is too high.
- The Flamer’s overall damage is too high only once it fully ramps up.
- The Flamer’s overall damage is close to balanced.
- The Flamer’s overall damage is close to balanced, but takes too long to fully ramp up.
- The Flamer’s overall damage is too low.
0 voters
- The Flamer’s overall stagger is too much.
- The Flamer’s overall stagger is close to balanced.
- The Flamer’s stagger is close to balanced against weaker enemies, but too low against tougher ones.
- The Flamer’s stagger is too low against weaker enemies, but close to balanced against tougher ones.
- The Flamer’s overall stagger is too low.
0 voters
- The Flamer’s overall ammo is too high.
- The Flamer’s overall ammo is close to balanced.
- The Flamer’s tank capacity is close to balanced, but its maximum ammo is too low.
- The Flamer’s tank capacity is too low, but its maximum ammo is close to balanced.
- The Flamer’s overall ammo is too low.
0 voters
So I think enough time has passed since the big, and arguably somewhat deserved, nerf back in April to properly re-evaluate the Purgation Flamer. There were three aspects of the weapon addressed in that patch, which I believe accurately match the three most influential parts of the weapon which make it effective:
- Damage (both burn damage and from the weapon itself)
- Stagger (varying against different kinds of enemies)
- Ammo (both tank size and total ammo pool)
These have been reflected in the polls above, as I think it would be useful to see what the Community here thinks. Please forgive the slight bias towards options indicating the weapon is currently too weak, but I feel this is where there will be most most variation without bloating the poll. Feel free to elaborate on your choices in the comments (but keep it civil, please). I’ll include my own opinion as well below.
Please vote considering the weapon’s performance on Damnation difficulty.
I understand that possibly a minority of the remaining playerbase plays exclusively on Damnation, but I’m willing to bet a majority of people here do. This is also the difficulty which where any change to the weapon will see the most significant impact.
History of the Flamer
I should preface this by saying that despite how historically difficult they are to balance, I’ve always been a fan of flamethrowers in multiplayer FPS games. Probably because of this though, they often end up feeling a bit on the limp side. When I first started up Darktide back in November, my first class was the Zealot just so I could speedrun getting the thing. And when I did, boy was I happy. It felt just as impactful as I’d hoped it would while seemingly having enough limitations to keep it from being totally broken. “Much like the Bolter”, I thought at the time.
Unfortunately, as I moved up to Damnation, I noticed the effectiveness of the weapon didn’t really decrease compared to that of other ranged options. As by that point we’d all either learned to play around its limitations or were finally able to actually choose Blessings to mitigate them, it became clear that the weapon may have been a tad over-tuned.
This, more than any other weapon, came as a detriment to the game as a whole. I began losing missions because 80%+ of Psykers and Zealots for awhile were reliably were hauling flame weapons around, making us incapable of dealing with long-ranged threats. It also took fun away from the Zealot’s teammates, as it could almost completely remove the melee part of the game for them while also eating all of the ammo pickups. This is to say that overall, I think the changes in Patch #7 were healthy.
The Flamer Today
Today, I think the weapon’s pick-rate is about optimal. It’s also nice to see that most Zealots only pull it out in appropriate or clutch situations. Overall, I’d argue the Flamer is currently a pretty effective weapon. However, this has come at a cost. The weapon lacks the impact it had before, which is a large part of what made it fun. There’s a few reasons for this:
- It takes firing most of a tank at basically anything, including hordes, to have a noticeable effect.
- Most heavier enemies can now run straight through your flames largely unaffected.
- The “Secondary Fire” doesn’t immediately interrupt shooters, sometimes making it unsafe.
The flamer may still be a decent weapon and solid pick for the team, but I believe it lacks some of the fun factor it had before the nerf, and not only because it’s no longer a click and delete tool.
My Opinion: The Flamer Going Forward
I’d like to see the Flamer retain it’s current effectiveness while upping the oomf factor, overall making feel more satisfying. If it ends up getting a slight buff in the process, I don’t think this would overly hurt the health of the game.
Pre-nerf, I usually used to fire the flamer in short bursts, staggering enemies and applying some burn damage while making it safe and easy for the rest of the team to mop them up. This conserved ammo while not being obnoxious to others. I’d only go full blast when we were getting overwhelmed. With the stagger changes, this is no longer possible; I’m forced to continuously fire at an area to have any impact.
I’ve detailed some of my suggestions in the drop-down boxes below. These are only suggestions; with a weapon as complicated as the Flamer to balance, there’s no real way to know if they’d be effective without actual playtesting. So, I may be totally off the mark. However I think we should:
Increase Initial Stagger
I personally don’t mind the damage as-is (including vs. Flak), and I think the lowered clip size was a good change. However, from Patch #7 there was this change:
- Reduce initial impact on alt fire spray, ramps from impact range 1-2 to 10-15, was 5-9 to 10-15
Personally, I’d like to see this change reverted or tweaked to more quickly be able to stagger weaker enemies. I would keep the reduced stagger on Maniacs and Carapace from that patch, but consider returning the stagger values vs. flak to where they were pre-nerf. It’d be okay if a special exception was made for Scab Ragers and possibly Maulers though, if that’s even possible.
Another option would be for the Fan the Flames blessing to work for both Primary and “Secondary” fire, allowing players to build into this style of play by sacrificing a damage blessing for more stagger.
Adjust Burn Damage to Ramp Up Faster but Cap Lower
If increasing stagger would perhaps bring the weapon a bit too close to it’s pre-nerf power, perhaps its damage should be adjusted to compensate. As most of the weapon’s damage comes from its burn DoT stacks and not from the weapon itself, I think this would be the easiest to adjust.
Currently, I really like the dichotomy between the Psyker’s Flame Staff and the Zealot’s Flamer. The Flamer has a higher cap for DoT burn damage and seems to apply ticks faster, while the Staff applies applies stacks slower but more consistently over time while even being able to come close to reaching the same damage cap once all of Psyker’s various damage buffs are stacked up.
The end result of these differences feels similar, however. I think it’d be interesting to increase the damage each burn stack does for the Flamer, but lower the max DoT Burn Stacks. Overall, the upper burn damage should probably be lower than it currently is, resulting in a net nerf to the Flamer’s damage but distinguishing it even more from the Staff.
However, because DoT stacks would ramp up to maximum so quickly, it would better solidify the weapon’s optimal use as short, interspersed bursts to maintain burn stacks and keep crowds staggered without first needing to empty half the tank.
If players do enjoy firing the weapon ceaselessly however, this would also give the Blaze Away blessing (which is already very effective) a more defined use case.
As all burn damage seems to be related, this would have the additional benefit of buffing the Infernus blessing and Kantrael Shotgun’s fire shot!
Have More Consistent Damage Between Fire Modes
This is less important for weapon balance, but the changes in Patch #7 left a few strange anomalies in the weapon’s damage profiles. Disregarding burn damage, currently the Primary Fire does about 40 damage to Flak while the “Secondary Fire” does under 20. To Unarmoured, each fire mode does about 20. Logically this makes no sense and is unintuitive to the majority of players who aren’t testing these things out in the Psykanium.
Have the Primary Fire do a set modifier more than the “Secondary Fire” across all damage types. This can be the same or higher, but considering it’s damage is already quite low and mostly used for staggering enemies anyways, I don’t have a strong opinion as to which.
I believe these changes would solidify the Flamer’s role as a support and control weapon without drastically changing its power, encouraging staggering and slowing whittling down enemies for your team instead of being forced to empty a tank at any situation you want to use the weapon to deal with, while still keeping that option viable when sh*t hits the fan.
This should result in a more well rounded, engaging weapon with the added benefit of actually feeling impactful when you do fire those short bursts, and therefore feeling even more satisfying to use.
Finally, the weapon would be more team-friendly. It would:
- Be less of a drain on the team’s ammo pool.
- Emit fire effects less frequently, therefore not blinding and annoying teammates.
- Give the team more of a role in clearing hordes instead of deleting them all on its own.
This is where I’d ultimately like to see the Flamer, but I’m curious as to what everyone else thinks!