I feel like this is Sammy's way of trolling for strategies...
Before I respond to this, I would like to say that what I am about to post does not prove my point about flamers. This is simply a response to the idea that I am "trolling for strategies."
For the last few months, I have been part of a fiercely competitive Duck team called the Mandarins. Objectively we kind of rocked.
Between the Fabria Conclusion, Saturday Rumbles, Scrims and the Sky League our game Win/Loss/Draw was 51/4/1. Our K/D was 261/63 or condensed to 4/1. We only lost one set of matches. Once we get our badge for the Sky League, we will be the first competitive team with three competitive badges.
As I said, this isn't to prove my point concerning flamers. This is just to give some context to why I am puzzled by the accusation that I am here trolling for strategies.
Mac, of course my numbers are averages, however I feel like of all weapons, the flamer with its high clip and ROF is going to be the most normalized due it being a high sample size. The flamer is currently a pin point accurate weapon. Its not a question of whether you're going to hit the component you are aiming for, its are you able to hit a second component as well as hull on the way.
Burst flamer is of course still fantastic, in some regards because of its lowered ROF, the more time spent with particles in the air, the more babysitting is required. Sure the stacks per second is lowered however you gain more hits and longer duration of the "OMG fire es everywhere...per second stat.
My suggestion is still ROF and clip reductions to basically bring it to the level of the flamer pre-patch. However, to buff it slightly, I would reduce the fire stacks needed to kick people off of guns to 4 or 5.
I however, I'm finding the greased flamer to be the underused powerhouse. with its ROF increased by 60% you got an average of five stacks per second. 5 stacks per second is a lot of hurt per second.
Janeway, concerning balance, if you want to beat an artemis or hwacha, we ducks do a trick we call peaching. When the gun breaks you rebuild it till its one hit away and then wait for it to be in range or you're out of danger and in arc (waiting for the hwacha reload or getting out of the art arc). We used this technique to charge the alleged OP Gents two triple art junkers on Dunes. Dealing with carros is easy, its something we mandarins took to long to learn. Drogue chute allows you the time to kill the enemy as you slowly fall.
My strategy in this game has always been to overwhelm the enemy crew, I don't pop balloons and shoot out engines to reduce enemy maneuverability, I do it because it forces crew to repair and not shoot. That is why the Mandarins struggled against OVW, they brought carro/flamer pyra. The flamer doesn't need ridiculous stack speed to be effective competitively. Instead of a tidal wave of stacks, it just needs to erode at repairs. If you mallet something with even a small stack of fires, at best you just wasted your repair.