To be honest, I haven't played too often lately so I have no idea how many flamethrowers there are.
And now a warning: I will now try to summerize the majority of arguments and statemants against flamers and try to counter it with my own. If you wanna read this, it might take a while and is full of stuff I already mentioned. I only want to make others see what I see, because that's apparently not the case. At the end is a little summarization and I hope I got it all down, if you really don't wanna read this.
Argument #1: Flamethrower dictates an entire ship in order to counter it.
Counter argument: Every other gun in the game requires my entire crew to bring repair tools. Else there would be more gunner with buff tools. I need a repair tool to counter shatter damage on engines and guns, I need a repair tool to counter flachette damage on balloons and I need a repair tool to counter piercing damage on the armor. There is no difference between this and the flamethrower.
The flamethrower does fire damage, which can't be countered with a repair tool, so you have to bring either fire extinguisher or chem spray, maybe even both. Even a gunner can counter it with heatsink, but heatsink isn't always the best type of ammunition for guns so the gunner has to know when to use it, and god forbid if it's too late.
The flamethrower does a lot of fire, if not perma chem spray/heatsink and if things go problematic you have to let the fire kill whatever is on fire or use a fire extinguisher if one is around.
If countered correctly you can almost nullify the damage output of this gun, no other gun in this game gives you the privilege of countering it to such a great extent.
Argument #1 can be seen as either entirely invalid or valid when it takes every other gun into account too, since you have stuff to counter every gun in the game to some extent.
For carronades there is even a pilot tool (drouge chute) and no engineer in the world can keep up with the gun AND at times requires the entire crew repairing balloon and hull to stay alive. Is that not op? At least I can beat the flamer without having to fear the ground. This effectively counters every flamethrower on the enemy ship, without the pilot actually having to do something and still have somebody shooting without disturbances (e.g.: Gun destruction, balloon destruction leading to the gun to be out of arc).
Example: Enemy pyra has double flamethrower
Once my crew gets going I see an enemy being useless, thus allowing my team to effectively beat up his ally in a 2v1 scenario which leads to a 5:0 victory.
Example: Enemy pyra has flame/carro combo
The carronade will fuck me up before the flamer gets in range. Therefore I will make use of special pilot skillz and teamwork for suprise attacks or to disable the enemy guns before they even get close to me. This is basic piloting with strategy, not necessarily a flamer counter.
Example: Enemy Spire has flamethrower and 3 more guns to back it up.
Same as before. Don't give the enemy the opportunity to even use it.
Last Example and very often mentioned: Triple-quadritruple Flamer Squid Trifecta of Fire.
Squid with their high manouverbility can counter almost any ship in close range. If it gets close to me I will be forced to tank the fire if I can't kill it from the very beginning. While tanking I hope my ally gets my message and goes for the squid. The squid with its low armor health will naturally escape, this is where it loses flamer arcs and I can effectively concentrate on shooting it down.
Double flamer squid? Go long range and camp in a corner is the easiest counter strategy. You don't even need anti-fire tools for it.
If you think that is just stupid: Charging headfirst into a flak spire while at least 1km away is stupid. Long range is a tactic and squids are known for not being good at long range. This will lead to victory.
Argument #2: With the new power of the flamer a 3rd engineer with either chem spray or fire extinguisher is obligatory, at least on certain ships that to some are hard to repair in general.
Since it never actually became harder to counter the flamethrower Argument #2 lacks arguments. The real problem here is that more people have started using it and you are just not used to the amount of flamethrower, does not used to keep up with perma chem spray.
Let me tell you that before the buff Flamer was still devastating once a chem spray has been forgotten or missed. Again, only more people use it, thus you will meet the flamer in situations where you once thought you wouldn't meet a flamer. Get used to it.
This is like the artemis hype all over again. Too many people used the artemis thus everybodies guns and engines were down, even from a longer distance. It eventually led to death. The artemis then got a nerf in which it didn't really get weaker, but harder to use.
The flamer is a close range gun and close range gun are usually easy to use, the best counter to it is long range. This applies for all close range guns like the famous gat/mortar combo.
Argument #3: Less experienced don't know how to deal with flamethrower.
Again this was a problem before, but now that this gun actually gets used, it deserves to be mentioned.
I stated that we have to rely on tutorials on this one. Of course not everybody takes a look at them. But from personal experience I can say that I am glad to have a decent tutorial showing all the basics I need to know to play this game correctly. When I started playing this game, the tutorials lacked content. I had no idea what my pilot tools did, because I had yet to earn the ability to read the description. And some point I got it down, read the forums for guides, asked other player what to do and learned. Now people say I am a good pilot. You start every game low and you have to learn stuff to become better.
Biography aside, it is up to the new players wether they want to learn how to play this game correctly or just have fun by doing what they want to do.
The latter is often not widely supported, but I feel MUSE does its best to enable this feature. If somebody decides quit playing this game because of one gun that they have yet to learn how to counter, it does require some tuning, without a doubt. Maybe this gun just requires such a high amount of teamwork to counter that it should be locked for less experienced players, but is certainly doesn't deserve another nerve regarding % of stack, damage in general and range.
Concerning Argument #3 I have to be honest: I have no idea what do to in this situation. All I can say is that the gun is fine as it is and changing it's ease of use is no ease task, since it is close range and in close range everything is easy to use (e.g.: Hit the balloon with a carronade, hit the hull with gat/mortar. Not the hardest things in the world).
To summerize a bit of what I wanted to say and maybe a bit more stuff, I dunno:
- Every gun needs to be countered, the flamer only has it's own tools for it.
- And Fire extinguisher usually isn't the way to go against a Flamethrower, so there is only 1 tool being used that has been used for forever.
- Fire Extinguisher might need a buff
- If counter is successful: Flamer is useless and can render an entire ship useless (Double Flame Pyra)
- Strategy is always a counter to flamer (long range), which does not negate the usefulness of the gunner
- The gunner himself can use heatsink to not worry about his main gun or other guns getting set on fire.
This does replace an engineer circle of chem spray for guns only. But it also depends on the gunner to know when best to use heatsink, if the pilot is busy.
- A flamer squid catching you of guard is like a mine or burst Hwacha hitting you while you are off guard. Stuff is destroyed and without help from your ally eventually kills you. "How to teamwork"
- Flamer was always devastating. Because of the the lack of use nobody ever paid it any heed.
- Subconcious/Psychological bullshit going on where excessive use of flamethrower gives it special powers, which it doesn not possess
- More nerf might push the flamer back to the corner of never used guns
- New players have to learn the game in order to defend their fun, somewhat. If you happen to not know how to shoot a gun in (example) counter strike, you will not have fun.
Please consider that it was rather late when I wrote this and thus might lack some clarifications here and there.