I am a bit biased since I love the flamer myself. But I want to throw rocks in all directions in this thread.
It is quite balanced in my humble opinion. It’s not to powerful due to its ammo-consumtion (talking about hogging all the ammo if you let it run alot) and icky to use in aurics when swarmed.
Which leads me to the next rock I am tossing: It IS powerful when used correctly and it can most certainly be useful in aurics if you just dance and use it in the correct moments. It does indeed melt high armored targets and specials. I do not know what kind of setup you guys run who says it does not.
But again. It is more ammo (fuel) efficient not to blast the flamer on all heavies/specials. But during the right circumstances.
Secondary fire vents 10 ammo units of napalm on to the floor as a pool over 2 seconds, ready to ignite with primary… which then has massive stagger and applies 12 stacks of burn.
The flamer is still a massive clunker of a weapon. It’s just next to impossible to balance because it ignores mass. If you do see a zealot blasting down a huge mob with a flamer, try to remember that those moments are few and far between, and the rest of the run they’ve probably been at a disadvantage. But yeah, ignoring mass does lead to some pretty silly gameplay.
I think the new blessings is why the flamer is seeing a bit of a resurgence. Everlasting Flame is a fun one, since per usual Fatshark methodology it doesn’t actually do what it says. Rather than spend ammo from your reserve, it actually loads more ammo from your reserve into your magazine. So stick a flamer on a crit build and you basically have a weapon that never needs to be reloaded. Sounds better than it really is, but it’s fun to play around with for a bit.
With flamer you can hurt a lot monsters. But you can also do it with a TH and even with an AIG…
With flamer you can delete hordes. But, a zealot has 95% of its melee weapons that can do it.
With flamer, you can die cause of snipers and your impossibility to kill them.
With flamer, ranged enemies are a real threat.
In fact flamer can be fun. However, there are lot of other options. And with it you get a big disadvantage that you don’t have with other weapons… You deal damages only at short distance. Added to the fact it is slow to swap to this weapon, I really don’t see how it can be considered OP. Especially with all too strong weapons that exist actually.
And we are far from what flamer was by the past before the huge nerf it received.
I remember a time in which people used to say that bringing either a drakegun or flamestorm staff was actively griefing and they were correct.
Why would a flamer be OP now all the sudden?
You’re bringing a “ranged” weapon to deal with hordes. The probably worst use case for a ranged weapon unless that’s all you want it to do. At least the recon las’ can be built so it does more than just kill hordes. Sure the flamer kills a horde faster than any melee weapon but not to such a degree that it’s worth taking in your ranged slot.
The only group of people that I still see swear by the flamer are the solo runners. That’s it.
I really wonder if we play the same game … apart from the range limiting factor, which prevents you from killing them at a certain distance, crucial against snipers/bombers but also in general because it forces you to wait for disablers to get closer… but then, in your opinion, pulling out a weapon with a slow swapping time, waiting for the necessary delay before firing, repeatedly spraying primary fire just to perma-stun them (all this while you have to dodge with one of the slowest weapon)… is the same thing as quickly pulling out a gun, one shot, one kill?
Is there any melee weapon that you feel that can do it better then a weapon that can just cleave through an entire horde?
If you would have told me that it is ammo inefficient to use all the time and overall a dedicated melee weapon for horde will do more damage in the long run, I’d agree.. but for short engagements where everything is funnelled into a corridor or smaller spaces where you can burn everything, it is very hard to beat.
I’d say health increase on enemies and fury of the faithful no longer working on ranged weapons had bigger effect on how flamer functioned then any nerfs the weapon received.
You don’t need to wait, cause if they are coming without a horde you can just melee them, if there is a horde then flamer should be already equiped anyway. If specials are coming fom behind, you can just ignore them and move forward till they will not get closer later.
And it’s not like you need repeatedly spam primary, one poof is enough to stop their attempt preventing your hordeclearing while you covering teammates busy with objective, be it cells/capsules or hacking.
I never said it’s as efficient as any other gun, range is a thing on flamer duh.
But saying flamer sucks vs specials is just not true when there is a perma stagger and they die from burning damage just fine.
Yes 2 short dodges can be tricky in many cases, but it’s the price you pay for unlimitted cleave on spray weapon.
The strongest flamer build is Everlasting Flame with Blazing Piety. Reloading basically becomes a suggestion, which seems crazy to me. But I just don’t encounter people using it that i could tell, and i only ever see flamer come out in tentacle missions.
If we want to discuss the value everyone gives to the word “suck”, we can be here forever… there is no official scale like terrible > suck > meh > acceptable etc. etc.
The whole thing simply started from the fact that, in my opinion, the flamethrower is not OP because, among other flaws, it’s not good vs specials, if “suck” is a exaggerated term for you
For you is it? Fine, I fully respect your opinion, but to me saying that “stun is like killing” (enemy will return)… or ignoring points like slow swapping time, delay before shoot, bad mobility (because nope, ammo are few, I certainly don’t use it against every horde, so I may need to take it during a fight) makes little sense to me
… apart from the range limiting factor, which prevents you from killing them at a certain distance, crucial against snipers/bombers but also in general because it forces you to wait for disablers to get closer… but then, in your opinion, pulling out a weapon with a slow swapping time, waiting for the necessary delay before firing, repeatedly spraying primary fire just to perma-stun them (all this while you have to dodge with one of the slowest weapon)… is the same thing as quickly pulling out a gun, one shot, one kill?