Why is the Flamer like it is?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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There’s a million and one issues with the game, but I’m gonna bring up another:

I wish Flamers were awesome.

I am sure some people will swear by the Flamer as it is, and I don’t know if it’s secretly OP, but from a conceptual standpoint I do not get it. Why is it such a lame weapon? It slowly tickles enemies to death, even weak ones.

The weapon should have a redesign from the ground up.

Points against it immediately for looking like your typical movie/game gas flamer, rather than something shooting out a liquid that is affected by gravity. It’s extra weird given that’s sorta how the flamers from the enemies are supposed to work, since they create puddles under your feet.

Secondly, the idea that it is this long-firing anti-horde weapon is weird. I mean, sure, you should be able to use it to melt hordes, but it should be an egregious waste of its fuel instead of “basically the only thing it can do”.

I feel like it’d be a much more enjoyable weapon if it was a high-dps, short-range weapon that burns through its ammunition in the process. I wouldn’t even give it a high ammo reserve; I’d give it like 5 shots a magazine, and each primary burst will consume one. Alt-fire tweaks the settings (same animation as right now) but lets you hose out all its ammo at a slightly slower rate. Slightly - it should still empty itself pretty fast. Even the bursts should be brief, but high-intensity.

The shot should be affected by gravity. It arcs out, so if you want to hit enemies a little further out you have to aim up. Really, it should even bounce off surfaces. And where it hits the ground it should create a pool of damaging fire.

Those changes seem possible in the game, though if we were going a bit further afield the thing should really make enemies run around screaming on fire, like in the old Blood games. I frankly doubt heretics know to stop, drop, and roll.

Let the Psyker’s staff make its little poofs; the Flamer should be a thing of terror.

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Flamers are like this because thats how 40k flamers are. Theyre movie flamers, not military ones. THOUGH its too weak imo.

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They were op on release, people complained, got overnerfed into the ground. Woulda been fine if they work like they do in vt2 where they specialize in fodder removal, but there aren’t literally a thousand shooters in vt2 and the so the flamer’s drawbacks against shooters and nerfed usefulness against melee elites make it more of a gimmick than a useful tool.

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Yeah the flamer would be okay, just okay, if the ammo efficiency wasn’t so bad. Even if it was alright with ammo, braced-autoguns would still do the flamer’s job better. With the braced-autogun you still have the horde-clear of the flamer, except it’s more versatile than a short ranged hose of fire. They really need to buff the flamer, at least for trash clearing, it really has no place in the game now.

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What @Rainman said. You missed the golden Flamer times. When the game came out, the iconic Flamer was immediately meta together with Bolter and the Powersword. And honestly, it was fine, maybe a bit overtuned. They were on the strong side clearly, but each still had their downside then (range, slow deployment, reload).

The people playing then did not like that.
“Weapons must be specialized”, they said. “You can’t have one flamer roasting all the heretics”, they said. Thread after thread, here, Reddit, Steam. It was quite the outcry. Thus it got nerfed.

Fatshark doesn’t nerf everyday, but when they do, they really bring the hammer out.
Damage was reduced, flame DoT damage was reduced, ammo capacity, ammo pickup and a 5th thing. Forgot what. I think Elite and Crusher damage?

In any case, since then Flamer has been very niche. It still operates alright, if you find the right Blessings, though.

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It had (still has to some extent) an overly strong overlap with Chastise the Wicked special.

You’d get some burn dots going, then hit special, and everything would just instantly melt as the enemy armour types were all downgraded by the effect of the special.

I think rather than fix the effect of CtW, they just nuked the flamer. And they did nuke it. Every aspect.

I don’t think it is versatile enough now for higher level play. It’s much less horde shooter than it was, more elites, so you need better anti armour. IMO anyway.

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It has one remaining niche, and that’s as a ranged weapon to complement a thunder hammer and throwing knives with anti-horde capabilities. Even then, you’ll only use it to make a chokepoint horde stop existing.

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yes, its armor penetration modifiers (inherent to every weapon), particularly floored against flak and carapace (of which pretty much every elite has flak). The dot system already works as a scalar, and it would’ve been better if they hit the scalar instead of the armor modifiers. Lower front-end damage without affecting the top-end damage would’ve been fine.

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I have to echo what many people said already.

The flamer used to be perfect, and I loved it. In fact, that’s the reason why I bought Darktide in the first place: burning heretics.

It was a very fun weapon, but some very influential members of this community didn’t like it because they thought it was better than some other weapons and had “infinite cleave”. After enough complaining, the game designers nerfed it and those people were happy. Everyone else was sad.

Now almost nobody uses it and any suggestions to make it fun again are shut down or ignored.

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As is, the Flamer doesn’t really appear to have much of a role. Even for muppet-mowing horde clearing, it just takes too long to kill things, the first like dozen stacks of fire do almost nothing and then ramp up exponentially, and that just takes too long to work. I can’t think of a good reason to use this weapon other than just cool factor for its own sake.

There’s lots of ways to address that and make it more useful, but it definitely needs some assistance currently.

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Release flamer was overtuned that is for sure, but it’s been a year and many things have changed since then, not flamer though. It was a perfect addition to thunder hammer which can struggle in dealing with a huge horde very fast. Back then it’d melt any room with CtW bugged penetration on ranged, it also had a ton more ammo + toughness regen and mobility provided from CtW.

These days it is a shadow of it’s former self. Many weapons are absolutely ridiculous both in ranged like plasma, columnus mk5, voidstrike and melee like combat blade. new shovels or even a powersword. Flamer has terrible ammunition conservation, the damage ramps up slowly and by the time it manages to get the DOTs going, most of the horde is typically dead, unless you are the main damage dealer at that time, it can definitely save a team overrun by a horde but then again, how often does it happen with decent teammtes and competitive weapons?

In theory it should melt hordes due to it’s slow draw animation and braced fire + terrible mobility, but you pretty much just pin yourself in place praying that mobs won’t run through flame and 2 dodges to eviscerate you in melee… which of course, happens quite frequently. Also, if you just use it to clear a horde you will burn through ammunition like crazy, so you have to hold it for the right moment like a grenade and then it still is just okay at best (also fire grenade doesn’t have to be held in braced mode limiting your mobility and it doesn’t have the drawback speed of a flamer)

Personally the nerfs to stagger/impact hurt me the most. You want me to brace and flame but random trash will pour on top of my head anyway and slice me to death. Okay then use the left click with a blessing right? Oh yeah I forgot that for some reason FS gave the left click that stupid slow down on your mouse side movement whenever you shoot it (unlike purgatus obviously) so it’s hard to stop ragers/maulers from advancing since they can just dodge that little fire fart so easily, split in two small groups and suddenly your left click is worthless.

Flamer lacks damage and support ability through stagger, the only thing it’s still decent at is mass suppression against gunners when you have to push through a choke point.

WIth many other weapons/builds being so incredibly op I wish they buffed flamer a tiny bit. Either make the damage+dots stack faster, give it more ammunition or bring back the old stagger to play a more support oriented build and not get overrun by literal trash sometimes. If voidstrike can penetrate through hordes, 1 tap most specials/elites, have infinite ammo as a ranged weapon and f**ing stun bosses, then why can’t flamer get just a tiny bit of help?

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I am 99% certain the weapon OP wants is the Meltagun, which in lore is a short ranged high-powered anti-armor heat thing gun.

Flamer is still pretty whatever. Fuel mag(?) too small.

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I would like to propose adding Flamers that perform like military ones to Darktide. Hel, my friends back in high school used to call me Firefly because- I have said too much.

1 Like
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The puff is funny since Fan the Flames can’t do anything the puff can’t do normally. Crushers are fairly hard to interrupt for most attacks now and do not seem to care about it at all from testing. They also don’t let you slide and puff.

But looking back at the flamer nerfs besides ‘impact’ (stagger) the only thing nerfed was flak damage, carapace damage and ammo. There’s just a huge gameplay difference between it being a no target limit surge staff applying DoT and right now.

It is pretty strong and they could probably give it a light tuning pass to make it less all or nothing. There could be some in between use of it besides ‘everything is on screen’. But I think the bigger problem is Zealot not really lacking for clear at all anymore, like they could give him the auspex scanner for a melee weapon and he’d do fine. This was not the case before so the actual value of controlling close entities as this class is weird. But at least the throwing knife makes it way less situational than before.

As for jets of fire please use the heavy heavy flamer for that, I want to burn heretics on top of things.

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I think it would be really cool if lmb pushed the fuel out, and rmb ignited it, that way you could cover a group/area with fuel then ignite it for an explosion with high impact/stagger aoe.

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Ah! Yes, those were the good old times. I remember it fondly.

But then the scoreboard-people came… and we can’t have nice things anymore.

:frowning:

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No, I want a flamethrower that is an actual flamethrower. XD

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Yes that’s the general problem with nerf requests - they most of the time come from people who didn’t use the weapon before. Once the fun is spoiled and nearly noone uses it anymore they probably feel quite accomplished. Same with the powersword btw.

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Because it was overpowered and trivializing the game. Saying it wasn’t is to be delusional and biased. You don’t even need scoreboard for this. I was and still mostly play with flamer on zealot. Currently, flamer is fine damage wise, it needs a bigger tank cap and more dodge limit+distance or faster swap speed.

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Good for you - you are one of the three people enjoying the flamer as it is now.

Disagree - not every weapon needs to lean towards insta swap / high mobility. We do have enough such options. I prefer that unhandy options remain unhandy but that the effort put into using them is made worthwhile as the more different weapons are the more interesting it is to use different options.

It‘s actually a quite common phenomenon: a weapon is unwieldy but powerful (like flamer, bolter and powersword). First people some complain about that power completely ignoring the opportunity cost this power has as the weapon is unwieldy. When FS gives in and nerfs the hell out of these weapons then come complains that now that the weapon isn’t powerful anymore the unwieldyness has to be reduced. This process of making all weapons more alike is destroying variety in equipment that makes the game interesting.

Your opinion. Mine is that it was fine as it‘s downsides balanced it’s power quite well. Saying it wasn’t is to be delusional and biased.

3 Likes