I just picked up this game and in 2 days I played 30 hours. This game is INCREDIBLE. However; the Zelot flamethrower… Just kind of isn’t and theres A SINGLE change that would make it so it would be.
Swap the Left and Right click.
Aka the “burst” of fire. Being the “aim” and the Breathe of fire being the left click. As of correctly it takes around 2.5 seconds to swap, animation of turning the dial, spew fire. In that time it takes ANYTHING to hit you once to animation cancel and stagger you completely when you NEED the breathe of fire INSTANTLY.
Teams don’t always play around you properly with being frontline and sometimes you have to be. But you NEED the breathe to be clearing out a MASSIVE hoard and it takes WAY too long to just do what you should be instantly good at.
you can ignore the stun with Thy Wrath Be Swift (right side, half way down the tree ish) or Punishment at 5 stacks, AFAIK.
if you’re pulling out the flamer when stuff is right on top of you, you’ve kind of left it a bit late - create some space with your melee weapon of needs be; stagger/push enemies away, use your dodges to get out of range
use the primary fire on the flamer to stagger enemies
flamethrower is a bit of a controversial topic, has been seen as broken by many.
now at least its in a spot that it isn’t talked about in every balance discussion, and i doubt people wanna talk about it again.
This deserves repeating. The flamer is perfectly capable, but timing plays a bigger role than it used to back when you could just stagger the whole screen with it.
If anything, I think the flamer would benefit from a quicker pull-out time. That’s a buff I could probably get behind. Try using it with Blades of Faith. You can animation cancel the flamer’s pull-out animation by throwing a knife and then go straight to burning heretics.
Not at all, its an excellent weapon. Its simply designed around having its power checked by its cumbersomness. Much like the bolter. It simply takes a little learning on how and when to pull it and when to make space. If there are a couple enemies right on top of you simply dodging backwards and firing a few LMBs before laying into the horde with the full gout is usually sufficient.
Having run it a bit this patch i still think it is a strong weapon that slaughters elites and hordes. It pairs quite well with the throwing knife blitz.
I favor a return to a larger magazine size but keep the nerf to total ammo reserve. I just want more trigger time.
That could be worth considering TBH, since the general availability of ammo went down (again) recently.
I like the faster pull-out time because zealots are on their melee weapon a lot, and time spent weapon switching is much more impactful by comparison. Right now the main thing that holds back the flamer IMHO is just that it feels a bit clunky to use.
I think thats generally a good balancing act for the weapon. Things being super strong and super quickdraw as ranged weapons go is probably a bad idea. Having the i-win stick gated by slow drawtime is good. I still like using it and it makes its way into my loadouts pretty often just because its fun and strong.
The flamer also has the “luxury” of having 2 dials to tune there - the weapon’s draw time, and the brace time.
If a buff to handling had to happen, my vote would go for buff draw time slightly (so you can use LMB in a reactive manner) and leave the brace time alone. If you already have the weapon out, dodging while you brace tends to “cover” the brace time.
The timings do add a nice feeling of weight to the weapons, so it’d feel a bit funny if they went too fast.