Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: awkm on April 30, 2014, 01:19:36 pm
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Nerfed as requested.
1.2 Fire Dmg
18% Fire Ignition
Too much nerf? Too little nerf?
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I'll take a 4 flamer Mobula and find out.
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After playing with it for a day and even taking a triple flamer pyramidion for a game, I'm pretty happy with the current flame thrower.
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I really like it a lot right now!!! the only thing I would suggest would be to bring the range in a bit and a slight buff to the amount of stacks chem spray puts out
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I really like it a lot right now!!! the only thing I would suggest would be to bring the range in a bit and a slight buff to the amount of stacks chem spray puts out
That's something I wouldn't mind testing. Like you said it makes lesmock all the more useful.
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Flamer, while not able to do everything on its own, is still a ridiculously powerful disabler that can't be dealt with in a fun and practical manner.
Having every particle hit is too much of a buff and fire stacks are far too quick even with good chem spraying.
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I've flown two matches with a flamethrower-gat build against BFS with a SIR-Ryder team tonight.
Based on these experiences I think the flamer is in a acceptable state on a competitive level. It lacks the raw killing power of competing builds which is usually necessary for brawly builds against experienced and coordinates pilots and crews. Still I think it might be an interesting option for a couple of builds (side weapons of goldies, 3rd weapon for trifectas, squids, etc).
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I've flown two matches with a flamethrower-gat build against BFS with a SIR-Ryder team tonight.
Based on these experiences I think the flamer is in a acceptable state on a competitive level. It lacks the raw killing power of competing builds which is usually necessary for brawly builds against experienced and coordinates pilots and crews. Still I think it might be an interesting option for a couple of builds (side weapons of goldies, 3rd weapon for trifectas, squids, etc).
yup and with the return of the heatsink we may start seeing more gunners finally!! (just not on my ships)
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Flamer, while not able to do everything on its own, is still a ridiculously powerful disabler that can't be dealt with in a fun and practical manner.
Having every particle hit is too much of a buff and fire stacks are far too quick even with good chem spraying.
once an ultra close combat weapon gets close it SHOULD feel hard to beat! the key is to soften the target up before it gets there... also if you have heatsink loaded up you will be able to kill it long before it kills you since it does almost no damage
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Current flamethrower is balanced.
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Still overpowered, too much disable power... xD
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Still overpowered, too much disable power... xD
I'm shocked to hear you say this! you were the main engi on a boat of mine and we handled it just fine... I remember talking about how well we handled it in fact..
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Haha I like the flamethrower... But some ships once they get hit, their structure makes it too hard to remove the high number of flame counters... Everything just burns...
But also Janeway, none of the ships we hit with that flamer survived... :P
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none of the ships I hit survive regardless... ;) false senses of superiority a side, I think your crew just needs to decide they are going to be committed against fire and you'll be fine... I will always have heatsink clips one person with chem and another with ext, and my boats will always be fine. it's a mentality shift that's all.
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Glad to hear most of you are liking it. As usual, I will keep monitoring the weapon to see if it needs further tuning. It does push for newer kinds of engineer builds and behaviors and it might be pushing them a little too hard.
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just a mentality shift not a stress shift... it's learning how many stacks is actually a threat, it's committing to bringing heat sink. it's being properly punished for allowing a flamer to get close to you. the last part is important to remember; close range weapons need to be punishing up close otherwise the risk reward ratio would be wrong. if I took the great risk to close the gap on a ship and get up close and personal the reward needs to be equally great...
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I... can't believe I'm saying this but I agree with Janeway. The extremely limited close range of the flamer warrants it's strength as a disabler. Sniping teams now have something to fear from a brawling team. However, on a hwacha/heavy carro goldfish particularly, any other light gun seems sub-par to put on as an active bifecta weapon, the other choices being banshee, carronade, or artemis. The flamer outclasses them all at the cost of range, which I guess is how it should be, though I'm still unsure.
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I still don't get your heatsink-hype. In almost all cases I'd prefer chemspray + dps-optimizing ammo over heatsink for the sole sake of fire prevention. E.g. on a gatling gun greased rounds deal more than 1.5 times the damage of heatsink rounds. I don't believe the flamer changes encourage the usage of the gunner class. Rather the opposite actually as they are helpless against fires if they usa ammo that does something useful for the damage output.
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first, nidh we have always agreed on the most important things, like brawling is the most fun that I talk too much or that the falcs were awesome! but as to you point about the flamer outclassing those other guns I disagree. if I am against an opponent that is bringing heatsink and keeping up on the chem spray my flamers will be completely out done by a gat or a caro. it's just a Rock Paper Scissors match now instead of only being a rock rock match...
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and wund I'm telling you right now you aren't thinking about how to beat flamers correctly. I don't want to explain it all here cuz then how would I beat you with it? I suggest asking those who were in beta when flamers were awesome. they will probably help you learn. or I will fly with you and show you :)
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but hint hint: it isn't trying to out dps them
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This new one definitely is closer to balanced, but I really think it needs another slight change. I mean, if putting 1 weapon on my boat forces the other team's entire crew to re-build their engi equipment just so they can handle it... that seems OP.
I'd say either bring in range or lower through-chem fire damage. Possibly both, but in any case it should just be a very minor nerfing.
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Yall are acting like getting in flamer range is nigh impossible. It is quite easy actually and one solitary flamer alone can lock down any ship with its ridiculous fire stack capabilities. Chem spray is now mandatory with the weapon and with the nerf of chem spray, the ability to repair and chem the ship is greatly diminished.
Previously you could chem once, mallet twice, however, with the extra two seconds of chem spray, this is no longer an option due to it leaving your hull exposed meaning that against flamers you need due alternate between mallet and chem one for one.
Here's the repair per second
Full time mallet (unusable due to ridiculous flamer)
250 repair/9 seconds = 28 RPS (repair per second)
Previous 2 mallet 1 chem (unusable due to chem nerf)
500 repair/21 seconds = 23 RPS
Current 1 mallet 1 chem (required due to stack buff)
250 repair/ 14 seconds = 17 RPS
Basically the flamer currently makes repairs nearly half as effective. Also the 1:1 ratio is horribly ineffective as it requires far more babysitting and far less optimal time with chem spray (6 seconds wasted) this is pretending that the only issue here is hull damage. While the flamer is doing its negation of effective hull repairs, stacks are building up on the ship like crazy. You've got 250 particles of which all are hitting probably two if not three or four different components. Each of those particles has an 18% ignition chance so if by some miracle each particle only hits the ship once, un-chem sprayed you could have 45 stacks across your ship from one clip.
Balanced my ass. People think its overpowered now? Wait till you see actual meta builds around it as opposed to people goofing off with it. One gun being able to half the repairs on armor and balloon and take out weapons, its beyond ridiculous.
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Yall are acting like getting in flamer range is nigh impossible. It is quite easy actually and one solitary flamer alone can lock down any ship with its ridiculous fire stack capabilities. Chem spray is now mandatory with the weapon and with the nerf of chem spray, the ability to repair and chem the ship is greatly diminished.
Previously you could chem once, mallet twice, however, with the extra two seconds of chem spray, this is no longer an option due to it leaving your hull exposed meaning that against flamers you need due alternate between mallet and chem one for one.
Here's the repair per second
Full time mallet (unusable due to ridiculous flamer)
250 repair/9 seconds = 28 RPS (repair per second)
Previous 2 mallet 1 chem (unusable due to chem nerf)
500 repair/21 seconds = 23 RPS
Current 1 mallet 1 chem (required due to stack buff)
250 repair/ 14 seconds = 17 RPS
Basically the flamer currently makes repairs nearly half as effective. Also the 1:1 ratio is horribly ineffective as it requires far more babysitting and far less optimal time with chem spray (6 seconds wasted) this is pretending that the only issue here is hull damage. While the flamer is doing its negation of effective hull repairs, stacks are building up on the ship like crazy. You've got 250 particles of which all are hitting probably two if not three or four different components. Each of those particles has an 18% ignition chance so if by some miracle each particle only hits the ship once, un-chem sprayed you could have 45 stacks across your ship from one clip.
Balanced my ass. People think its overpowered now? Wait till you see actual meta builds around it as opposed to people goofing off with it. One gun being able to half the repairs on armor and balloon and take out weapons, its beyond ridiculous.
The sunny (flaming) side of this, Sammy, is the fact that now, instead of being killed really quickly by a Gatling-mortar combo, is that you get to witness the chaos (Yay!) and that Cake Vs. Ducks in competitive would be less of a Kobayashi Mrau situation (Not Kobayashi maru) and more of a balanced fight, along with an entrée of roast duck to be followed by a dessert of sweet pastries!
/sarcasm
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I'd say either bring in range or lower through-chem fire damage. Possibly both, but in any case it should just be a very minor nerfing.
I agree and have made both of these suggestions myself
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I agree and have made both of these suggestions myself
I just figured I'd reiterate them in case awkm thinks the majority opinion is "hotfix changes are enuogh" :D
The sunny (flaming) side of this, Sammy, is the fact that now, instead of being killed really quickly by a Gatling-mortar combo, is that you get to witness the chaos (Yay!) and that Cake Vs. Ducks in competitive would be less of a Kobayashi Mrau situation (Not Kobayashi maru) and more of a balanced fight, along with an entrée of roast duck to be followed by a dessert of sweet pastries!
I know you're kidding around :) but let's not miss another good point that Sammy raises: a quicker ship can always, and rather easily, close and unleash the flames in a slower ship's face. Which would be fine and part of balance, except that the flamer is such a powerful & disabling CQC weapon that the slower ships' other advantages (more firepower or armor) are rendered useless very quickly.
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I disagree smaller ships can be easily blown apart by slower better armed ships from afar and alternately with heatsink and chem spray loaded up would be able to weather the initial attack giving it plenty of time to disable in turn or simply kill it with superior firepower...
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played a game the other night against a flamer/carronade pyra.
first game - didn't have chem spray since i hadn't played since the initial flamer changes. hull was going from 0 to 20 flame stacks within the cooldown time of the mallet.
second game - took wrench/chem/ext because I was so scared of the flamer. this worked out fine, but every time I missed a chem spray application, a component died, whether it was the one on fire or another one that died as a result of me fixing the one that was constantly getting ignited.
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This is much closer to being balanced, but it also feels wrong. Maybe it's from using flamethrower too much before, or maybe it's that people hardly ever used flamethrower on me, but right now it feels wrong somehow.
My initial desire was for low damage and easy fire stacking.
The damage right now is probably pretty good. I think you could argue in either direction, but if I were to choose one I would say it is a smidge on the low side (by like .1 per particle or so).
But the fire stacks feel broken. Previously people could make a personal choice on chem vs ext and it would usually be pretty okay. Now I get scared when someone on my ship has an extinguisher, or when I have a low level on my ship. Right now everyone has to be involved in keeping the chem up, which doesn't feel good.
Essentially, previously a flamer was like any other individual weapon: dangerous if you ignored it long enough, but something that could be combated by decent engineers. Now it feels like ignoring a flamethrower for half a second leaves you with nothing: no balloon, engines, guns, or armor.
The fire stacks are a really cool concept, but the speed with which they grow feels absurd, even admitting that I was a fan of having a higher stack growth.
In my opinion there are 2 directions to go with this: nerf the flamethrower some more, or buff fire tools.
Nerfing the flamethrower reduces its ability to be used as a feature weapon, but makes it less abusive to anyone who doesn't intimately understand the game.
Buffing fire tools places more responsibility on engineers, making it a higher skill weapon to fight against.
I am more a fan of nerfing the flamethrower a bit in 2 ways:
Start cutting into the range a bit
Lower the fire stack chance (again)
Right now it isn't very fun. You are fighting fire, not the enemy. It may not be strictly OP at the moment, but it is too strong in a way that makes the game less fun (in my opinion)
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I agree. Bottom line, it isn't fun. Even with a good crew, in TS with you, you feel helpless and therefore frustrated.
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I think if you bring in the range a bit we will be golden... make the flamer have the risk reward ratio it should have. dangerously close devastatingly effective...
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Range has been brought in on dev app.
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Range is not the issue. I understand the desire for balance via specialization but as long as the flamer can set stacks like it does it will be overpowered.
My suggestion, drastically reduce the ammo and rate of fire. Granted this is functionally taking the flamer back to its balanced state before this patch due to the "problem" being that not every particle hit. However it was balanced, fun, playable, and competitive then. It could have used a slight buff but not a complete overhaul.
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What if the amount of damage would be based on distance? Doing very little damage at max range, and doing the current amount of damage when you are as close as possible. (A little bit of inspiration from Team Fortress 2)
Sammy does have some good ideas too.
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I agree with sammy here. Just playing around today, my ship took a double flamer pyra, and wrecked the whole game, with the enemy pretty much unable to do any damage to us. Also, being on the receiving end of a carronade and flamer, with a rather experienced crew, we still found it difficult and frustrating to try to recover, with every attempt of fixing the balloon ending with it being broke again, or more fire, which by the time you get around to being able to repair it after a shot of chem, the carronade can and usually will have the balloon broke again, that along side trying to keep every other component from catching fire.
I personally feel it should get a little more of a debuff, reduced damage to 1 and stack chance reduced to 15% maybe. Because right now the only time it usually destroys components is with ~13-20 stacks of fire and needing to fix/chem other things to minimize the number of components needing to be rebuilt.
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it is honestly so frustrating for me to read these responses. the flamer is a perfect example of not being OP in the SLIGHTEST in higher level games but perhaps being frustrating in lower level matches. it's frustrating to me because here is a gun that could truly shake up the face of the competitive scene and give some much needed diversity to brawlers, but because people don't know how to handle fire in pub matches (or perhaps even with high level people who weren't around in beta and so haven't experience actual true balance with the flamers) it is gaining the reputation as OP nerf-bait... please awkm give this change some time and let the community learn how to handle it, I promise you it will be seen as balanced soon enough...
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Hmm, us cakes can now hold our own better in competitive... Roast Duck, anyone?
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no you still won't.... ;P
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meh, still, I would be up for some Canard rôti.
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I mean I love roast and fried duck but as I always say "cake is playing a different game than everyone else"
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Not anymore...
Muse:
(http://media.giphy.com/media/2lypEloChTbEc/giphy.gif)
(http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/marniecake.gif)
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you still will...
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Janeway, if you know my history you will know that when I talk balance I solely think competitive. I'm not concerned if noobs can't deal with something. Had the same philosophy in the great Artemis debate.
When I see this flamer, I see a way for a near invincible short range side of a junker with a carronades flamer. I see all the limitations of my old carro/carousel vanish. And I am not seeing counters. I listed my reasons and the math.
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Chem spray and heat sink ammo and a dps build will counter any flame setup.
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I agree with Sammy. Competitive on competitive, one only needs to bring a kerosened squid with two flamers to auto win.
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Chem spray and heat sink ammo and a dps build will counter any flame setup.
The thing is chem spray reduces efficiency of repairs particularly hull repair and heat sink reduces efficiency of DPS. While this can be overcome in a 1 v 1, things get messy in the competitive 2 v 2 where you have a partner to capitalize on the weakness. Even assuming great chem spray and heatsink usage, the quickness of the disable (people repairing, not shooting) far exceeds the ability for the counter kill.
The flamer shoots 16.67 particles per second. Each particle can hit multiple components. With an 18% ignition chance, this means every second you will average 3 stacks per second for every component hit. If you have three seconds before the enemy can chem or heatsink, you've got all weapons all fire locked out. Anything more than a less than 1 second reaction will still result in focus on repairs instead of focus on retaliation.
Practical reprecussions.
Galleons, Mobulas, and Spires are now non competitve. They're simply too difficult to effectively chem ahead of time due to awkward crew placement or spread out components.
Gunners, dead, I can't afford to not have engineers due to weakened repairs and fires. Heatsink is not enough to counter flamers. If heatsink isn't loaded in within 3 seconds of flamer contact, the gun locks out the gunner before ammo can even be loaded and ammo staying in guns is spotty at best.
Buff engis, iffy. Mallet spanner buff is certainly gone, I can't have a crew member without a fire tool. Pipe buff is tricky because with the need to chem armor and balloon, their repairs are made much less effective and pipe wrench repairs require a lot of babysitting in addition to the high level of babysitting constant chem requires.
All this for a buff to a balanced gun.
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Sammy, You're implying that each component gets hit by particles. However, there may be more on one, and less on another, so in practice, your numbers are not always correct, you may also get more firestacks or less firestacks, it just depends. Therefore, you can one cited numbers in theory, as in practice, there will always be a measure of uncertainty along with the fact that particles are weird, and may hit one component but not hit another right behind it, or in the plume of flame. However, remember, the game and balance doesn't wholly revolve around the competitive scene. Also, don't neglect the burst flamethrower... now that thing... is glorious for making Canard rôti.
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When I have my regular crew with me I have yet to feel helpless to flamer builds. this same discussion almost verbatim was had back on the old forum at the tail end of beta and I made the same argument back then; how can a gun that had a counter that effectively makes said gun completely useless be OP? I promise you heatsink a hwacha an Artemis, or a caro and you will find yourself doing just fine. not to mention you ability to wreck a flamer ship way before he even closes range on you. all of you are having a knee jerk reaction and need to take a deep breath and learn a new mentality(or old of you played in beta with the old non-stack flames).
and Sammy It is no secret I have never agreed with your idea of what balance looks like do appealing to me on that notion doesn't inspire me much...
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I feel like this is Sammy's way of trolling for strategies...
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I too believe flamer is in a somewhat good spot right now. It certainly is something different than the most basic gat/mortar combo. The damage is decent. What most people seem to have problems with is the immense stack of fire in such a short amount of time.
But I don't have too many troubles with that thing myself... I played as a galleon in desert scrap against a pyramidion with double flamethrower. I honestly can't recall if the sandstorm destroyed everything or my allies helped get that thing off of me, but the worst thing that happened was that my guns were down for a second and them somehow went back up and we killed that pyra. What I learned in this match was that my gunner was constantly depending on my engineer to get rid of the fire stacks on his gun, because there were too many stacks on it.
And this is were I have to agree with sammy: The gunner's inability to fight against flamer, even with heatsink, is just too great a loss to bear. And I refuse to load heatsink into a hwacha, just because I fear 1 pyramidion to come out of nowhere. I rather have burst or heavy loaded to destroy everything else, after all, that one pyra wasn't my only opponent, so I would like the ability to deal with the other enemies the best I can, which means not using heatsink. And nobody should have to use heatsink on EVERY gun just because of 1 flamer. You might as well bring an engineer with pipe wrench, fire ext and chem spray...
What we need to concentrate on is not the Flamethrower itself, but ways to counter fire in general. Of course it doesn't mean that we should give engineers the ability to make a ship invincible against flamethrowers with ease, but rather make suprising instant stacks of fire easier to fight against.
Chem spray is good, heatsink is good, fire extinguisher is useless. You either chem spray the component or load heatsink into the gun, but if you miss the opportunity, you might as well led it die. You can extinguish all you want, but you just can't repair anything before it catches fire again, which makes the use of Fire Extinguisher useless. You might as well hit it with a Mallet regardless of fire or not, Fire Extinguisher won't save anyone. If you ask me, I see fire extinguisher only useful against mines and on squids. Mines do more than 3 stacks of fire and the Squid does have the ability to escape combat rather quickly, even against another squid.
What I want to suggest is either
1.) Have a way to extinguish fires in a way that it doesn't interrupt repair cooldowns
2.) Give the gunner 1 more engineer slot for fire tools
1.) This might need a bit more tuning, since it negates the use of chem spray, if you could extinguish fires anytime you want
2.) For this I want to say: Already do gunners get replaces with engineers since many people believe that for most if not all guns there is only 1 ammo type they need for what they want to do (in most cases lesmok) and it also provides them with more shiny buffs. With this suggestion the gunners could help fighting fire, or even buff their own guns or just have a Mallet/Spanner combo for maximum repair/-build power. No matter what combo you do, something would have to be given up: Repair power, Ability to fight fires, Ability to Buff
It would make the gunner class more viable and even allow 2 gunners on a ship without asking for a deathwish.
This might actually belong to a new thread, but 'till then I wanna know what people thing of it.
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Previously people were complaining that 8 stacks of fire were too much, and no fire guns could effectively disable weapons. Now the situation seems to be "tables turned". Would there be any idea to actually increase the number of stacks required to disable a gun? The problem with this, of course, that it would make the hades and the carousel even less effective at disabling weapons.
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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.
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Sammy, remember, DPS isn't anything, and a burst flamer has that advantage of more time with chaos in the air and on the ship.
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Sammy, remember, DPS isn't anything, and a burst flamer has that advantage of more time with chaos in the air and on the ship.
I acknolwedged that the slower ROF is in some ways better. Heck, that is partially the reason I suggest it as a fix. The way I see ideal flamer balance is not as a damager or even as a true disabler but as an overwhelmer. The gun forces people to leave guns, not because they are destroyed, but because there are stacks of fire everwhere and need to respond to them. You don't need to be able to pile on stacks quickly to do that.
Reduce ROF to 1/2 of where it is and the clip size to 3/5, and maybe increase AOE you're increading the amount of time engineers are having to deal with fire, but making it possible and practical to deal with.
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Sammy, remember, DPS isn't anything, and a burst flamer has that advantage of more time with chaos in the air and on the ship.
The difference here is that while burst rounds increase the AoE, they also decrease the RoF. Greased rounds, however, increase the rof, as we all know. I believe the greased rounds output roughly twice the flames that the burst rounds do. That makes the advantage of the burst rounds significantly smaller in my eyes. Yes, it does have more range. Yes, it does have larger AoE. It also takes longer to empty the clip.
However, with all that said, the sheer number of component-piercing flames compared to burst rounds, the number of flame stacks per component hit (there is jitter so a lot of components are being hit) and the damage per second would have me lean towards greased rounds.
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But Schwer, greased also has the downside of having a lesser range, and thus burst is quite similar with a longer range.
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But Schwer, greased also has the downside of having a lesser range, and thus burst is quite similar with a longer range.
..That makes the advantage of the burst rounds significantly smaller in my eyes. Yes, it does have more range..
Aye aye. However, with the current flamer range (150m), the range difference is 30 meters. Yes, it is a difference.. but in my eyes not a really big one. Don't get me wrong, it has the potential of making the difference in a chase for example, but since the vast majority of my own flamer fights are very much up close and personal and I can switch to normal rounds anyway if I need the extra range (and I will get more flames and damage / minute on the components I'm hitting due to the non-decreased rate of fire with normal ammo), I choose the highest flame stacks + damage / minute as a priority.
According to a spreadsheet with the old damage numbers and clip size (however, the damage modifiers for the rounds are the same) the greased rounds' dps is about 25% greater than burst rounds' dps over time. When it comes to fire stacks, the greased rounds were roughly 50% better at igniting fire stacks (not counting the increased AoE from burst rounds). I don't know how the recent changes have affected these numbers. However, I'll be sticking with greased for now, although I'm not saying burst is a bad choice either.
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remember our suggestion that the range be brought in has been heard and is live in the dev app currently... I believe this change will make the choice between lesmock greased etc far more of a weighted decision
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remember our suggestion that the range be brought in has been heard and is live in the dev app currently... I believe this change will make the choice between lesmock greased etc far more of a weighted decision
Ah, that's right. I was referring to the dev app range. The live version is probably still around 200 meters, but the dev app has it at ~150.
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I have not felt overwhelmed by the flamer at it's hot fixed state when I have my crew with me. we load up our heatsink rounds and chem spray our hull and balloons and laugh at the incoming fire. we either flame the incoming flames or caro the balloon or hwacha the whole damn ship and then back out of range/arc and repeat. your refusal to use heat sink and simplify the chem spray cycle is confusing to me. I know Sammy that you have loved the past rock paper scissors that you fought so long and hard to keep in your skill sets favor but that doesn't mean this new addition is OP just different.
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remember our suggestion that the range be brought in has been heard and is live in the dev app currently... I believe this change will make the choice between lesmock greased etc far more of a weighted decision
Ah, that's right. I was referring to the dev app range. The live version is probably still around 200 meters, but the dev app has it at ~150.
fair enough I can't imagine that isn't short range enough but I haven't played with it with another human yet
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also my Hawacha gunner would have chem spray and no heat sink and would be chem spraying in reloads instead of buffing since a repair wouldn't be that needed since flamers don't do much damage if I keep it sprayed... again a change of mentality is all that is needed
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also my Hawacha gunner would have chem spray and no heat sink and would be chem spraying in reloads instead of buffing since a repair wouldn't be that needed since flamers don't do much damage if I keep it sprayed... again a change of mentality is all that is needed
Are you talking about gunner gunners? Are you sure that sacrificing all repair/rebuild ability is acceptable just to fight fires? Or were you talking about having a gungineer with just burst rounds or heavy clip?
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well I personally hate gunners and always have so I PREFER gungineers but if I wanted to have long range versatility I would have my gunner bring chem because we won't need the repair as much since if I'm facing a flamer there won't be too much direct damage...
but lots not pretend like gunners weren't useless before the patch... I am all for creative ways of making the gunner useful
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well I personally hate gunners and always have so I PREFER gungineers but if I wanted to have long range versatility I would have my gunner bring chem because we won't need the repair as much since if I'm facing a flamer there won't be too much direct damage
Interesting. I would imagine that even if there was a flamer against me, there would be other guns which would be better at destroying weapons without flame stacks. I personally would need a lot of persuasion to have my gunner bring anything else than a spanner or a wrench, but a gungineer could naturally fit a chem spray in his kit a lot easier. To each his own, though.
Welp, here I go again. Talking about how gunners are at a disadvantage in some situations. Well, maybe there will be a day in the future when the dreaded Powder Monkey was no longer shown the door but welcomed with open arms, as he would bring something else to the table than two additional randomly chosen ammunition types that he wouldn't necessarily know how to use.. well, one can dream. ;)
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toats agree dude... tbh I have run an all engi ship since beta... this problem has existed from the beginning
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in my opinion the easiest fix would be to make the buff hammer a gunner tool
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in my opinion the easiest fix would be to make the buff hammer a gunner tool
The problem is that would require the gunner to go to the different components (engines, balloon, hull) if they needed to be buffed. How about just integrating the "buffed rounds" into the gunner as extra damage? For reference:
Normal rounds: 100% damage without buff
All gunner rounds: 120% (+- any ammo modifiers) damage without buff
Buffing engineer rounds: 120% damage with buff
Buffing gunner rounds: 140% damage with buff
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dude that sounds awesome... or what if the gunner had different effects on different weapons e.g less jitter or longer range depending on the weapon...
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but to my point he wouldn't because your main engi would just bring a buff as his ammo type
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dude that sounds awesome... or what if the gunner had different effects on different weapons e.g less jitter or longer range depending on the weapon...
That is also a possibility. However, it could be a little confusing and possibly even a bit hard to code (not sure about this one). A simple damage boost is not only easy to implement, but new players would understand it quicker. :)
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we should start up a new thread!
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We can argue about the finer details all day long, but the way I see it there are still two huge problems with the hotfix flamer (& in very preliminary testing, they still seem present in the dev/range-reduced build). & not to pick on you Janeway, but you touched on both points... just the wrong side of them ;)
it is honestly so frustrating for me to read these responses. the flamer is a perfect example of not being OP in the SLIGHTEST in higher level games but perhaps being frustrating in lower level matches. it's frustrating to me because here is a gun that could truly shake up the face of the competitive scene and give some much needed diversity to brawlers, but because people don't know how to handle fire in pub matches (or perhaps even with high level people who weren't around in beta and so haven't experience actual true balance with the flamers) it is gaining the reputation as OP nerf-bait... please awkm give this change some time and let the community learn how to handle it, I promise you it will be seen as balanced soon enough...
I know the competitive scene is very important and a big thing on the forums, but in a game with such a small community this is the exact opposite of the approach we need! GoI will never grow if pub servers are easily dominated by frustrating flamer teams. It will take exactly 1 game against a double double-flamer pyra team for any new players to quit and never come back. Given that the flamer's main role is to be frustrating, I think we need to be VERY careful that it's not such a dominant choice against noob ships. I have no idea how we'd actually achieve this (Sammy, any ideas?) but it seems like the ideal 'nerf' would be something that makes it less commanding in noob games but more useful in competitive games in the hands of expert. Something to make it tougher to use (but still good when used correctly) would probably get close?
I have not felt overwhelmed by the flamer at it's hot fixed state when I have my crew with me. we load up our heatsink rounds and chem spray our hull and balloons and laugh at the incoming fire.
Whether or not it is counterable shouldn't be the deciding factor in OP/fair... if the presence of a single weapon on board the enemies ship demands a specific engitool+ammo setup, that is not balanced. As Sammy said, even one flamer on the other team pretty much necessitates a chem spray/extinguisher for every crew member. Now if the enemy is rocking a double flamer or similar ship, obviously you should need to counter it with your crew's setup... but for 1 single weapon to have this effect should be the telltale sign that it is still too powerful.
TLDR;
1) The flamer is way too annoying, dominant, and easy to use in noob games-- this will frustrate a lot of first timers right back out of the game
2) A single flamethrower dictates the other team's tools. No one weapon by itself should be such a gamechanger
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there are plenty of weapons that the presence of which demands direct strategic reaction; blender fish? bring drogue or stay far away. mine launcher? don't get close or of you do stay very close. art? just bring more arts...
as for the flamer I was showing how there is a DIRECT counter to it. in this game is there any other weapon in which if you brought a certain item you rendered it useless? a gat strips armor no Matter how much you mallet. your balloon pops and you descend and have your armor stripped in spite of drogue Shute. your weapon is perma disabled no matter what you do from an art. but load heat sink or Chem and your weapon will take almost ZERO damage! and inspite of the very obvious and hard counter existing the flamer is considered OP? I not only disagree but am
slightly offended that you don't give our community enough credit to accomplish this...
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Ha, finally a greenhorn voicing his opinion - thanks XtremeNameX! Your impression is quite what I've personally expected. New teams are generally more vulnerable against disabler builds (carronades, hwachas and flamers in particular) as countering them requires some experience how to prioritize repairs. Also knowing who should take care of which component and who should continue putting pressure on your enemy by shooting at him helps a lot. Neither can be expected from teams consisting of new players.
For the flamer I assume that the lack of knowledge how to deal with fire-stacks causes your difficulties to deal with the situation, as the flamers direct damage is very low compared to competing weapons like gats and carronades.
Reducing the ignition chance of flamers while increasing the direct damage might be an alteration which makes the flamer behave more like a conventional weapon. Minor repair-mistakes wouldn't result in massive fire stacks and could hence be handled easier by (new) players. At the fame time the increased direct damage would ensure the flamers stays a viable option against more experienced crews.
On a somewhat related side note: I think the unique piercing characteristic of the flamer to be quite problematic. Flamer projectiles can travel through ships, hitting any component they pass along the way - effectively multiplying the nominal damage of the weapon. As a result the flamer poses a way higher disable-threat to some ships than to others. Try flaming a junker from above and behind with burst rounds and watch your hit-markers to see where I'm coming from! Its balloon, hull, all 3 engines as well as all 4 main weapons will all be very close to your line of fire.
I dislike this piercing characteristic in general and I think it should be removed entirely. If that's not possible, reducing the flamers projectile size might help to at least contain the multiple-hit problem.
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On a somewhat related side note: I think the unique piercing characteristic of the flamer to be quite problematic. Flamer projectiles can travel through ships, hitting any component they pass along the way - effectively multiplying the nominal damage of the weapon. As a result the flamer poses a way higher disable-threat to some ships than to others. Try flaming a junker from above and behind with burst rounds and watch your hit-markers to see where I'm coming from! Its balloon, hull, all 3 engines as well as all 4 main weapons will all be very close to your line of fire.
I dislike this piercing characteristic in general and I think it should be removed entirely. If that's not possible, reducing the flamers projectile size might help to at least contain the multiple-hit problem.
I personally like the piercing mechanic and would like for it to stay. However, as far as I know the flame projectiles are currently 4m wide. Perhaps it would be more balanced if they were 3 meters instead?
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Heh, a hard counter to the junker's maneuverability, by using the flamer.
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As if the gat/mortar combination, the lochnagar flak, the mine launcher, the lumberjack, the heavy carronade or any other weapon isn't frustrating to be faced against when a level one.
This 'flamethrower ruins noob games' argument is invalid. Yes, it is easier to run but it's also easier to counter compared to any of the guns and tactics that have been common for the last 10 months.
edit;
and yes wundsalz is right
if everyone keeps complaining about the flamethrower an alternative would be to just make it a piercing 'gatling' with far less damage which also creates a fire every now and then
boring, lame but retains some usability
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I have the feeling that Wundsalz is requesting an alternitiv to the incendary gatling...
And as far as noob-friendliness goes, we will have to rely on the tutorials, showing the new players how to use tools against fire.
Another thing is that having the pilot bring drouge chute is not the same as having the entire crew go firefighting, but since most competitive teams already use constant chem spray and heatsink is always an option, there is not much that changes, actually. As said before, we have to rely on tutorials showing non-competitive people what to do in case of fire.
As a side note, this game should not have a gun that can be countered with tools to make it entirely useless, else everybody has the potentional to be invincible/"immortal". Staying out of range requires pilot "skillz" as well as hiding behind cover to render artemis useless and even destroying enemy guns before they can even do anything is strategy. Tools, of any kind, should only help you gain the upper hand and not negate death indefinitely.
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and yet the flamer practically has that counter which why I am so confused by the cries of "OP"
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Because you cannot have just 1 engineer keeping everything save from it. You need at least 2, if not 3 on certain ships, to keep everything fireproof and still shoot at the enemy. The Gatling as well as the Carronade could be dealt with, with 1 engineer respectively and at times even with help of the pilot. The gunner in the meantime has all the time to shoot at whatever is in sight.
The flamer, as stated before, requires much more effort to be dealt with. But then again, who says the effort isn't worth it?
Think of what the enemy has to sacrifice: A gun slot for a gun that you can counter, a gun that you can render useless. Another aspect in which the flamerthrower is unique: The crew actually can fight against this gun. Every ship that has a flamethrower either has to be ready to fully rely on it's other guns or has to catch its opponent off guard to be useful for the team.
This is, of course, purely competitive, if you get caught off guard and thus get set on fire, something went wrong. Otherwise you are prepared to block the gun entirely. High risk for high reward. Either it works or it doesn't.
Concerning normal matches, and I am saying this again just to make sure, we have to rely on the tutorials teaching new players what to do in case of fire.
Does this end the discussion? Please let us be more professional and refrain from moving in circles or does somebody have something to say that hasn't been stated before?
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dem i hope it is as clear to you as it is to me that we are saying the same thing
which is honestly no surprise to me since the Ryder's and wolves have a standing history of agreement
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...Chem spray duration buff would silence those who dare cry "OP" in the face of the flames.
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dem i hope it is as clear to you as it is to me that we are saying the same thing
which is honestly no surprise to me since the Ryder's and wolves have a standing history of agreement
Just so you know, I am Daniel.
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Y'all act like the mere presence of chem spray stops flamers. What is not being understood is what is lost by chemming. Typically a repair means someone jumps off gun, whacks the hull with a mallet and goes back to the gun, not having the ability to do anything more for 9 seconds. However a hull that is taking flamer as well as damage means that repairs mean cheming and then waiting for chance to mallet. What was spending an instant off the gun, the engineer is forced to babysit for a little over three seconds. This may seem small but it definitely adds up over time.
To achieve the goals of the flamer, weaken the repairs and force engineers to repair over shoot, the flamer doesn't need the current ridiculous stack throwing.
Now to the crys that a tool shouldn't negate a gun. Functionally all guns, with the exception of flechette and shatter guns are functionally negated by tools when they are used alone. All guns need, and should need to be paired with another gun. I'm not afraid of a gat and I sure as hell ain't afraid of a mortar. However, the two of them being used in conjunction is deadly. Flamers are best paired with gats or carros because like every weapon combination, they overwhelm engis on two fronts. This is what made the Rainbow Crash the most effective brawling pyramidion in the competitive scene of late.
A good conceptual way to see this game is that destroying a ship is not overcoming its natural defenses but instead as overwhelming its crew. The flamer has been able to do that for months now. Competitively speaking I've been forced to respect the flamer as a competitive weapon since I first faced the Rainbow Crash back in January.
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I disagree with your argument chem spraying had a severe impact on your damage output. Chem spraying is usually done by engineers who are either dedicated to repairs or engineers who quickly jump into a weapon with explosive damage once the enemies hull is down. The player who delivers the hull strips shouldn't be affected too much by the presence of the flamer.
It's true that a flamer/gat combo put more pressure on the engineers than a gat/mortar setup. However the additional disable and strip power comes at the cost of cutting a serious hull damage source - so I think that's fair.
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I agree with wund... not to mention how close you have to get
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I disagree with your argument chem spraying had a severe impact on your damage output. Chem spraying is usually done by engineers who are either dedicated to repairs or engineers who quickly jump into a weapon with explosive damage once the enemies hull is down. The player who delivers the hull strips shouldn't be affected too much by the presence of the flamer.
Only Pyras, Squids, and Goldies have that full time dedicated engi for hull. Junkers, Mobulas, Galleons, and Spires generally have a part time hull engineer. Functionally no ship has a full time dedicated balloon engi. Furthermore with the fire stack rate and piercing nature of the flamer, functionally everything has to be chemed, not just the old stand by just the armor and balloon.
I agree with wund... not to mention how close you have to get
It is not that difficult most of the time.
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I suggested this in the dev app earlier this morning
4 X Area of Effect
.66 X Ammo
.5 X Rate of Fire
A tiny bit longer range
Same damage and ignition chance
What this does is makes being in the flamer extremely noticeable. If the flamer is in range functionally everything on your ship is being hit for a long time. If my calculations are right you will have 165 shots, shoot 8.33 per second and cover the enemy ship in flames for 19.8 seconds. (current is 250 shots, 16.66 per second, and 15 total seconds)
What this gives?
An overwhelming long in flames duration (the flamer shoots nearly the duration of chem spray)
Ability to deal with stacks due to messed up prevention (stacks don't pile as ridiculously)
Ability to force the whole of a ship to deal with possible fires (huge aoe)
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I just feel like other than range the gun is in a great place and shouldn't be messed with
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I just feel like other than range the gun is in a great place and shouldn't be messed with
I agree, with lesmok this thing can shoot pretty damn far...
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ANOTHER Ryder wolf agreement!
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Read everything.
Just letting everyone know. Poking around to see what's possible... in dev app :)
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I don't really mind where the flamer currently is sitting its no longer unstoppable since the nerf and it might be best to wait a little before tweaking it again.
An idea i had for perhaps making it less frustrating to newer players would be a buff to the extinguisher. The previously mentioned idea of having extinguisher take immediate effect and just adding the 3 second cooldown to the already existing cooldown sounds interesting, but hard to code and could lead to 15 second cooldown timers if you keep getting doused with flames. Perhaps reducing the cooldown for extinguisher by a second and increasing the time it gives fire stack immunity by 1 second so it has a 2 second cooldown but gives 4 seconds of fire immunity. This makes the extinguisher better at nursing components and slightly reduces the fire stacks that could be added if the engineer acts quickly, without moving into the chem sprays turf of immunity for the whole ship.
The main reasoning for this was to be less frustrating to the newer players as they might not have the skills to keep everything chem sprayed or know how to prioritize repairs when a flamer squid gets on top of them. This would just allow their engineers to fight the fires a little better without reducing the weapons capability, still rewarding good engineers and punishing those that just to ignore fires.
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Y'all act like the mere presence of chem spray stops flamers. What is not being understood is what is lost by chemming. Typically a repair means someone jumps off gun, whacks the hull with a mallet and goes back to the gun, not having the ability to do anything more for 9 seconds. However a hull that is taking flamer as well as damage means that repairs mean cheming and then waiting for chance to mallet. What was spending an instant off the gun, the engineer is forced to babysit for a little over three seconds. This may seem small but it definitely adds up over time.
To achieve the goals of the flamer, weaken the repairs and force engineers to repair over shoot, the flamer doesn't need the current ridiculous stack throwing.
Now to the crys that a tool shouldn't negate a gun. Functionally all guns, with the exception of flechette and shatter guns are functionally negated by tools when they are used alone. All guns need, and should need to be paired with another gun. I'm not afraid of a gat and I sure as hell ain't afraid of a mortar. However, the two of them being used in conjunction is deadly. Flamers are best paired with gats or carros because like every weapon combination, they overwhelm engis on two fronts. This is what made the Rainbow Crash the most effective brawling pyramidion in the competitive scene of late.
A good conceptual way to see this game is that destroying a ship is not overcoming its natural defenses but instead as overwhelming its crew. The flamer has been able to do that for months now. Competitively speaking I've been forced to respect the flamer as a competitive weapon since I first faced the Rainbow Crash back in January.
I don't see how having to adjust your gameplay style due to a change is a catastrophic thing.
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It is if that change means you need to run all primary engi and sacrifice trifectas and even simple bifectas because a balanced weapon needed its ability to put stacks down tripled.
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It is if that change means you need to run all primary engi and sacrifice trifectas and even simple bifectas because a balanced weapon needed its ability to put stacks down tripled.
You don't need to. Aren't you famouse for playing Junker and not letting enemies know your current positions? Isn't that effectively fighting the flamethrower? And what about your ally? Does he have to watch you helplessly die in fires? Come on man, let's be real, this is not the end of the game, it has yet to ruin everybodies fun and certainly it's not the only gun used in the entire game.
Just sit back for a second and watch the community play. You have been complaining about it the second the patch came out and even after the nerf came. I wonder, have you even tried play this game the same as before? Is that really not possible?
I still believe it doesn't matter. The gun got more useful and not more gamechanging. The old flamerthrower had the same problem, but because of chem spray people didn't care too much, why care now? What has changed?
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agreed with DAN
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Concerning normal matches, and I am saying this again just to make sure, we have to rely on the tutorials teaching new players what to do in case of fire.
No offense but this is a really terrible philosophy :P Any game developer can tell you that 90% of users will never read the manual/play the tutorial, let alone pay attention and remember everything it teaches you. Tutorials are just not a very effective method of instruction. Relying on a tutorial to teach new players a relatively complicated strategy isn't going to work, and if failure to understand/deploy this strategy results in the ultimate frustration of your entire ship being on fire, a lot of new players are going to prematurely pass on this incredible game.
To put things in perspective, and since the 'greenhorn' perspective is definitely needed :D Here's a little tangential tale: I'm a relative noob; my crew (all friends who got in on the 4-pack sale) and I have been playing fairly often for the couple months since the sale. We have a pretty good understanding of the mechanics, and can almost always go 5-0 against teams of randos. We, like almost everyone ever, didn't bother with the tutorial; just jumped in, excited to explore this game, and had no issue with that. This game is a great example of "simple to understand, hard to master" and we picked up on all the important mechanics within the first few games. Sure we had some frustration the first time we ran into a blimp popper, but it wasn't game-breaking; there were clearly things we could do to counter it (better communication with teammate-ship, keeping distance, clinging to every meter of altitude like its divine). That kind of introduction allowed us to fall in love with the game, and binge on it for hours whenever we get the chance.
The very first night the 1.3.6 flamer hit, we played 3 games and quit in frustration, and have only bothered assembling to play once since then. We did better in that second time, but only because we equipped every single crewperson to counter the flamethrower, and planned against it every second of every match. The presence of 1 single gun on the enemy ship dictated every aspect of our strategy. Now maybe our relative lack of experience played into this; maybe the elite players don't have to work so hard to deal with it. But I would guess that the majority of players are closer to our skill level than to the elite players' (who seem to be the biggest contributors in this discussion). And again, we are fairly decent-- couple months worth of experience, and a much stronger crew than most of the people we face in the game. How can you honestly expect any real noobs, let alone (and god forbid) first-timers, to figure out enough of how the game / metagame works to deal with the flamethrower? For such a frustrating weapon to be so easy and effective is just going to be a major deterrent to a growing community.
TLDR; The flamethower is just way too easy to use and hard to counter for anyone but the most coordinated and elite players. You can't count on a tutorial to fix that. If my team of relatively experienced friends was frustrated out of the game in 30 minutes, new players are in for a very rough time.
Does this end the discussion? Please let us be more professional and refrain from moving in circles or does somebody have something to say that hasn't been stated before?
I haven't seen anyone concretely respond to Sammy B.T.'s mathematical breakdown of why requiring engineers to chemspray + repair is an alarmingly huge efficiency slowdown. Maybe I've missed it; there are a few comments anecdotally suggesting otherwise, but this looks to me like an unexpected side effect of the new flamethrower that makes it even more powerful than intended... I don't think the discussion can be wrapped up until that's actually answered (and Sammy has numbers backing up his argument so any counter-argument should have them too :)
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Just sit back for a second and watch the community play. You have been complaining about it the second the patch came out and even after the nerf came. I wonder, have you even tried play this game the same as before? Is that really not possible?
I still believe it doesn't matter. The gun got more useful and not more gamechanging. The old flamerthrower had the same problem, but because of chem spray people didn't care too much, why care now? What has changed?
In the experience of me + 3 friends (in the 1.3.6 and hotfix version) 'sitting back and watching the community play', every ship we face has at least one flamethrower on it. This one flamethrower dictates our ship's ENTIRE strategy to counter it. So in my experience (which I'd daresay is gonna be a lot closer to the 'average' or new player's experience :P) the flamethrower is prevalent, frustrating, and dictatorial.
It is the very definition of gamechanging!!
When ONE weapon demands an entire crew's equipment and strategy to counter it, that is OP. Whether or not this is the case at the highest competitive level should not be as important as the fact that it is VERY true at the low-to-average level of gameplay.
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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.
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I've got a more thorough response coming :) but one main question that sticks out (and I've been meaning to ask this whole thread):
- More nerf might push the flamer back to the corner of never used guns
Was the flamer really such a useless gun before? Obviously the glitchiness needed to be fixed, but as far as it's overall effectiveness, it seemed to have a pretty good role.
I'm brand new to following the competitive scene, but from watching the last few rounds of the Sky League finals there was at least one team (Overwatch) that used a flamer very effectively. They gave the Mandarins a better challenge than the team in the finals did. In addition, Sammy B.T. (whose recent & history of championships should earn him the title of "Foremost Expert" !) is in here arguing that the flamer DID have a role at the highest level.
IN ADDITION, in my 'noob'er games, I used to see the Flamethrower about as much as any other gun. And it seemed very well balanced-- especially with the relatively low level of play in public games, it could be very dangerous if the other team wasn't prepared for it with a good chemspray rotation. As many people have said here, the flamer was quite punishing/frustrating to unprepared teams before, and there were plenty of unprepared teams amongst the general population of the game. So even if Sammy is wrong (and I'm afraid the burden of proof is on you for that one!), and it was a bit too counterable for high level matches, it was at a pretty perfect level of 'counterability' for most of the population of the game. Why would we move away from that??
IN CONCLUSION: If it served it's purpose in public/lower level games (punishing but counterable), AND had a role in high level play (source: Sammy B.T., Sky League champion, Probably Top-5 Player, Leading Expert in Mathematics of Engi Efficiency), why would it need any kind of buff? Why would returning it's functional damage/flame output back to pre-1.3.6 levels be such a terrible nerf?
I get the sense that a lot of the pro-flamer people had a special place in their heart for the flamethrower, but regretted how counterable it was (...if the other team devoted 3+ tools just to counter it..) and now that it's very effective they're afraid of a return to how it was. But how can "how it was" be so bad if it worked well in noob games and took a team to the semi finals (& effectively the finals) of the most recent tournament?
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Yes, thank you for pointing out one of my missing clarifications. I thought I had mentioned it somewhere, but I will do it now anyway. I agree with you on the point of the flamerthrower always being a powerful gun. But for some reason not many have used it.
Might I add, that adding the flamethrower does not necessarily beat the Mandarians. Overwatch had demonstrated great teamwork and managed to split the mandarians up, went out of their gun arcs and just picked at the ducks one by one until they died. The carronade alone did the trick, the flamer only added disabling power while everybody was busy on the balloon, effectively rendering their entire ship useless if they managed to get the balloon back up without somebody destroying it again.
The Mandarians needed one another and since they choose the same ship, they had the same weakness in common. Overwatch could effectively beat them in any 1v1 scenario once the carronade went down. Mind you, the carronade did most the work, not the flamethrower.
There is a lot of other stuff that can be said, but I think that's enough to clarify that the flamethrower was not THE gun that led ovw to victory on that one match.
Now, I don't know if you actually know why it was in the patch at all, but I will try to explain it to you why it was:
As most know by now, the flamerthrower's particles have the ability to go through components and the flamethrower shoots tons of that particle stuff at once. These particles had a problem, namely - and I am honestly not sure if I got that entirely correct either - they were traveling so fast that some of these particles weren't calculated correctly, leading to an unpredictable behaviour of the gun. A buf which had to be fixed.
Once this topic was brought up MUSE "fixed" the gun, ergo every single particle hit correctly. This in turn led to a tremendous amount of damage that nobody could deal with it. Before the nerf it was said that double flamer rivaled the power of gat/mortar, which is pretty damn strong.
Now after the nerf, I don't see that problem anymore. It wasn't about the community, it was about fixing a bug and MUSE did fix a buf. This fix however led to an imbalance of the game resulting into a discussion on how to "balance" it again.
I say, it already is balanced and thus won't need more nerf, although I would accept having it's firening speed or AoE decreased, but that's about it.
This "fix" made the gun look more appealing to more people and when more people use it, MORE people use it as well! Spreading like virus.
Really, I think that gun is fine and a damage reduction of 1% won't change anything. Heck, I bet MUSE could say that the damage has been reduced by 25% without actually having reduced the damage (a Hoax!) and most would not know better...
I do believe that those who still are against the flamethrower believe it to be too strong compared to pre-1.3.6 because it gets more use than before. Simply because people use it more.
Let me tell you about ANOTHER one of my experiences in the game:
I once did double flamethrower pyra BEFORE the flamerthrower buff, more than once, and, by the gods, did we annhilate the opposition! If I wouldn't know better, I would say that the Flamethrower is even weaker than it was before the patch! But that might just be subjective gibberish...
Anyhow, I stand and say that this gun is fine for the time being.
If the noobs didn't know how to fight fires before 1.3.6 than they have as much of a chance against it as they did before.
Same with competitive gameplay. If higher levels were beaten up by a flamer before 1.3.6, there wouldn't be much difference to now either.
Nothing changed and if people think that the gun was fine before, it is fine now.
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Anyways, if Sammy wants more fun, I can always arrange that...
...for a price...
...I assure you, it shall be a proper trial by FIRE!!!
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One good thing about this flamer buff is that we are seeing more squids fly around.
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So, Spud, shall we set the world on fire with our cake front/back flamer side banshee squids?
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It was burning sense the world was turning.
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the one thing i learned from all this was that Sammy is the reigning expert on this game
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Having played some games on and against the flamethrower in the recent days after the hotfix, I feel comfortable stating the following opinions:
-I feel the flamer is in a pretty good place right now. People are still using it - perhaps even in part because of the psychological issues Dementio mentioned - and it is definitely a viable weapon. However, it is easily countered and does not demolish ships at the ridiculous speed it used to before the hotfix.
-It has been argued by a very experienced player that the flamer already had its place in the competitive scene and was as such more or less fine before the buff. I do agree with him to the extent Dementio does, but both his opinion and mine are still only our personal opinions. Do not get me wrong, I also respect Sammy's knowledge of the game, both game mechanics and competitive gaming wise. However, it does not change the fact that while his opinions of the flamer are educated opinions, they are still his personal opinions, and hardly enough to reach a consensus.
-If the flamer did receive further nerfs, as it already has on the dev app, I do fear that people would end up using it less. Buffs and nerfs in any game, be it Guns, a MMORPG/Action RPG, or even an FPS, often have the tendency to get people using the modified (usually the buffed) guns more. This directly leads to people losing against said weapon more often than they used to, and this feeds the cycle of "pls nerf". It does not mean that the gun itself is overpowered - although it certainly does not remove that possiblity - but in my eyes rather signals that more time is needed to form a balanced overall opinion among players before further modifications are warranted.
Unless, of course, stuff like the initial flamer fix happens. Then a quick reaction and modification are most definitely warranted.
Just my 2 cents.
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Imo the demoralizing issue of the flamer is that you only have the ability to prevent the stacks by having it chemed before the flamer fires ...
The kinda useless state the ext is in now (personal opinion) limits the ability to fight against the high stacks the flamer causes.
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Then we should discuss what to do with the anti-fire tools, if not Fire Extinguisher only, and leave the Flamethrower as it is, for the time being.
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I dunno I kinda feel like that's how it should feel; e.g. once the flamer ship jumps on you without being chem sprayed you should feel screwed. I think you have a similar feeling if a gat mort pyra jumps you from a blind spot...
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After playing a good amount with my crew last night, I'm willing to call the flamer "ok" for public/low level servers. As long as we used 3 engis all with chemspray (which seems like an acceptable, but definitely the high end, of how much equipment we should need for dealing with 1 weapon) we were able to nullify the flamethrower for the most part and have a very successful evening.
Two (maybe 3) lasting concerns:
1) We were only going up against fairly rook teams. I'm still a bit apprehensive of facing a ship that knows what they're doing and uses a flamer
2) Do we know that it's not now OP in the competitive/high level scene? Obviously Sammy's opinion is not the end-all-be-all of this discussion, nor should it carry (significantly..) more weight than anyone else's. I'm sorry if I implied otherwise :-) BUT he does seem to be raising concerns about the new flamer in high level play, and I STILL haven't seen concrete responses. Since I'm nowhere near the competitive level, I'll bow out of this side of the discussion after this post and leave it up to Sammy and others to continue to argue if they see the need. However I would still like to see a response to either of these two issues he raised:
A. The mathematics of engi efficiency, as discussed here: https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3932.msg68360.html#msg68360
B. The necessity of chemspraying severly handicaps ships with more difficult layouts. In Sammy's words: "Galleons, Mobulas, and Spires are now non competitve. They're simply too difficult to effectively chem ahead of time due to awkward crew placement or spread out components." Again, I'm personally not at a level to accept or refute this claim, but I haven't seen many people offer concrete suggestions for why it's not a concern.
I'm glad that with the new flamer we get to see more squids (they're so squishy!) but if it's at the cost of fewer Galleons, Mobs, and Spires, I think something will still need to be changed.
FINALLY
I agree that the fire extinguisher could use a buff. Once my crew figured out the basic mechanics of the game, it became pretty clear that chemspray + awareness > extinguisher all day every day.
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Yeah, I'm working on some ways to bring extinguisher back into the fold. More tests coming to dev app in the coming days.
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Galleons, Spires and Mobulas all have the power to go long range and kill any ship with a flamethrower before it even gets close. If any of these ships decide to go close range it comes down to how good their pilots are at predicting and teamworking.
If the flamer would be such a concern in competitive matches I wonder why gat/mortar isn't. It just obliterates anything if it gets the chance and I doubt too many people will give up this power for 1 "ok" flamethrower that might even be ineffective because of chem spray...
Also even on the previous mentioned ships you only need 2 engineers to keep chem spray going enough for infinite until something gets broken by something else (most of the time a carronade).
Every ship can be used in competitive, even with loadouts like 5 harpoons on a mobula. It only comes down to wether the team flying these ships can actually fly them. If it can't it should either choose other ships or practise them a bit more.
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I think you will see just as many spires and galleons as before... mobs weren't really used all that much pre patch...
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The praise is getting a little awkward guys.
Winning a lot doesn't automatically make my opinion about the flamer correct which is why I have been striving to argue from numbers and facts and less from record.
Now concerning the flamer pre-patch in competitive.
Actually dementio, the carro/flamer is exponentially more devastating than just a carronade, or even the dual carronade y'all brought. One carronade alone is enough to bring down a balloon quite quickly, in fact dealing with carronades is more about managing your fall and rebuilding than preventing the fall and repairing. In that light the flamer is vital for the long term paralysis of an enemy ship. When you are being blended and are taking average to severe armor damage, having to chem spray is what makes the flamer shine. The flamer itself doesn't do much damage to a trained a crew because they know how to deal with it. However, it is the dealing with it that causes the overwhelm. When you're under flamer and you are rebuilding your first repair is not the sweet breath of regeneration that comes from a mallet or pipe wrench. Instead it is the preventive chem spray because without that all repairs are useless. The flamer pre patch was still great at putting down fire stacks and any engi can tell you of the frustration that comes from getting that fire stacks the moment after you repair.
Basically the flamer keeps you on that precipe of fragile rebuild and somewhat operational. It keeps you there for an additional three seconds. It keeps your component hardly functional, ready to be dropped by the next carro hit, and it keeps your engi's on babysit. When I was being blended by CSR, I could keep my gunner on guns longer because I could deal with my own ballon as the only tool needed was repair tools. Well, when I say deal with I guess I truly mean, I could cope better than I could if there was a flamer in the mix.
There are many reasons why OVW was the hardest team for us to beat, however that flamer is one of the major reasons.
The Flamer is such a fantastically insidious weapon in this game. Its strength doesn't really come from the damage from its fire stacks, after all, after the inital 8dps each additional stack is only 2 more. It certainly doesn't come from its direct damage. It comes from making everything just a bit worse. It undermines the integrity of ships which makes sense. Even if something isn't literally on fire, heat warps the material and makes it more susceptible to damage, less able to be repaired.
Its a subtle weapon in its competitive application, meaning that was often overlooked.
So hopefully now you can understand why I have been so opposed to this buff. All of its subtle capabilities are still intact. The weakened repairs, and the more busy crew are still there. However, it is now far more do or die with an emphasis on die due to the extreme speed of the fire stack build up. Before if you messed up you were boned because you had 8 stacks of fire eating through your component and now you're forced to babysit until you got the fire gone. Now if you mess up, you're dead because you got 16 stacks and there aint much you can do about that.
Buffing the fire ext would be a bad fix in my opinion because it is only a response to the ridiculous fire stacks of the flamer, as though the flamer were the only fire causing weapon in the game.
I will advocate this until I am blue in the face, the best way to balance the gun is to lower the speed in which it makes stacks. This can be done by either lowering ignition chance or lowering ROF and Clip. I prefer the latter.
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Dementio:
Very good points. It probably shows just how much of a rook I am that I hadn't considered their various long range capabilities :D I officially declare (2B) ANSWERED!
Sammy:
Hah sorry to make you uncomfortable! My point wasn't that you were automatically right because of your record, but rather that your arguments have too much credibility to be simply refuted by things like "that's not my experience"
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I was not oblivious of the damage the flamethrower did to you:
The carronade alone did the trick, the flamer only added disabling power while everybody was busy on the balloon, effectively rendering their entire ship useless if they managed to get the balloon back up without somebody destroying it again.
It's a bit less detail though. Also, incoming wall of text with no summery! Also another warning, there might be a lot of redundancy, for which I want to apologize in advance.
Mind you that the missing flamethrower wasn't necessarily THE reason why CsRy lost to you. It was failed engagements. Your team just picked 1 out of those two pyramidions killing it in an incredible short amount of time, leaving the other to die in a simple 2v1. There was this one successful engagement of CsRy that did a number to you though, you were practically helpless.
Also, the double carronade pyramidion did survive a 2v1 on fjords against you for a rather long amount of time, making your argument of having a "gunner on guns longer" kinda irrelevant since this survivability would have not been possible with only 1 carronade and a flamer against chem sprayed everything.
The flamethrower would have only gotten it's use if the engagement took longer, like the ones OVW had. But this was not the case for CsRy and with flamethrower certainly wouldn't have lasted too much longer since chem spray was still on everything and it was most of the time a 2v1 scenario where it barely matters what guns that 1 ship has.
Also I do not understand why you would think that the flamethrower should not be overwhelming to a crew as it is. Almost no gun is not overwhelming in this game:
- A carronade can keep your balloon down, indefenitely
- A gatling destroys your armor, you can only delay the armors destruction with 1-3 mallet hits, but it WILL go down.
- Same for hades and mercury, however chem spraying against the hades DOES make it seem weaker
- Half of all explosive gun can finish an entire ship in 1 full clip before it's armor is even back up (if only 1 engineer is on it, but how often do you manage to get a second one on it?)
- Hwacha, being better at destroying all components on a ship and carousel having it's high fire ignition side effect, should not be too strong, else it replaces every mortar/flak in the game. The artemis being more popular for long range disable, although having good explosive damage, but low fire rate too...
- Mines, well, that one is pretty self explanatory. It's greatest weakness is that it has to deploy first before the immense damage kicks in. Good thing gunners have the tools and, combined with good pilot fly, the skill to hit the enemy anyway.
It has been stated before: The flamethrower does everything, but in no category is it better than any other gun in this game. It is ultimately relying on a second gun doing the actual damage. Best choice seems to be the carronade with it's power to get an entire crew to work on 1 component when it comes down to it.
We have talked about the strong points of the flamethrower already, over time it's just too much and wins the engagement. (Why it shouldn't is beyond my understanding. Why have a gun that makes you lose the upper hand?)
Now let's make the weak points of this gun clear again:
- If anti fire tools are used correctly the flamethrower alone is entirely useless.
- If I am not wrong, this gun has the shortest range of all guns in this game.
I mean come on, how hard is it not to fly into it? Also, isn't that what almost everybody said when the triple art Junker was a thing?: "Don't fly headfirst into it!", "Don't try to brawl it!", "Get out of it's sight, cover and more basic anti-long range tactics!". This is exactly the same, only that the flamethrower can't hit at long range!
If you make a mistake and let the enemy get close to you with superior close range weapons (which also applies for gat/mortar) than it's your own damn fault! And don't get a "it depends on the map" argument going. Saying long range on dunes is superior to close range is the same thing as saying the same about gat/mortar on dawn. Although in dawn you do have more cover than on dunes...
What do you do against flamer/carro in dawn? I say what do you do against gat/mortar in dawn! It's the exact same thing! Both gun combination have their advantages in their own category, but they both have the same disadvantages. It isn't the flamethrower that is too powerful for you, I say that you are just too lazy to actually deal with it! And if this were to be true I would even go as far as saying that you think so because carro/flamer is too effective against your precious little Junker than gat/mortar, but that might be a bit more personal and go into an entire wrong direction...
Do you see what I think about the flamer now? It's easy to counter, if you just avoid it! It's even easier to counter than any other gun in the game, because you don't need pilot skillz or the right ship choice to render this gun useless, just let the crew chem everything if you can't be bothered otherwise! But don't just come complaining about it's power if you sit in the flamethrower's fires for 3 hours without it actually managing to kill you the entire time and at the same time having rendered you disabled because you thought it was a good idea to just let the fires engulf you in the first place! Why did you think it was a good idea? Because you have a chemical spray on everything all the time! Screw fires, ain't I right mate?
Seriously. That gun is not hard to beat and certainly doesn't dictate over your ship and loadout choices more than any other gun already does, without you thinking about it. (Why do I need a mallet again? Surely it must be because of fires and not because the gatling is soo good at destroying hull armors!). Every short range counters works for every short range gun. The flamethrower being one of them. Just counter it! It's not impossible and certainly isn't hard.
Maybe it's more psychological bullshit: The longer the gun disables you and does not kill you, the more you see how powerful it is. Or maybe you are just not used to this immense amount of damage, since piercing guns still take their own while to shred the junker's armor and thus you often don't get killed as fast as other ships. Other ships for example are spires which are probably the weakest ships against anything armor destroying, making even simple slow rams kill it, unlike the junker.
And everybody can rebuild even before the hwacha reloaded.
Regarding nerf on that gun: Lowering rate of fire is fine with me, but lowering chance of ignition is a bit more tricky. If it's too low I might just bring a carousel or incendary rounds or even both, since the stacks are why I would want a flamer. This is what a flamer does and why it is as powerful a gun as it is. You said it yourself that the dealing with it causes overwhelm. What would cause this "overwhelm" if not the fire stacks?
Also, I am not fond of decreasing the flamethrowers clip, since I am used to it having an incredible large clip and the image of it having less clip just doesn't want to fit in my head. Also, less clip causes more reload, which can cause a gunner to easily switch between ammounition for different ranges much quicker, where as now the gunner would have to "guess" if greased is ok and the pilot can stay in range. The second he gets out of range the gunner will most likely try to change ammunition to something longer ranged (lesmok) which opens up a window of no damage and the enemy can gain more distance. If the reload happened more often or too often the gunner can estimate if the enemy ship is getting out of range for lesmok or is going to be IN range for greased and switch ammo during the natural reload to something more appropriate. This gives the gun more advantages in the hand of an attentive gunner than disadvantages in general, thus not really nerfing it in that regard. If you however made the reload longer, like almost too long, than the timewindow for counter attacks is much greater.
But I honestly doubt that that is necessary at all.
Regarding the fire extinguisher: It's either buff it or nerf chem spray. But of course you can leave it as it is too, since for certain situations fire ext is just better than chem spray. It's just that most people that learn of chemical spray almost never use fire extinguisher again believeing it is in general "weaker" than chem spray, especially since with chem spray you can fight fires while not having it interrupt with your repair cooldowns. On the contray you would have to use fire extinguisher indefnitely to fight constant fires without ever getting to actually repair anything. But then again, if it comes down to it and a component has more than 3 stacks of fire the fire ext does offer a much quicker solution to the problem...
However, I believe, the weaknesses of these two tools is what makes fire as powerful as it is and as well their strength combined (pipe/fire ext/chem engineer) offer you the power to be completely immune to fire.
As an engineer you give up either
- Best repair & rebuild power (Mallet/Spanner)
- Buff
- Fire immunity
"Pipe wrench/buff/chem spray"-engineer being the best combination of all these things, but it's just not the best at what it does. (Chance of fire overwhelming, less repair/rebuild power)
This should be discussed in another thread though.
I dunno what it is that makes you believe this gun is "too overwhelming", which is total bullshit since all guns are overwhelming in their own aspect and have a right to be so! (#GunRights) Or that this gun adds too many fire stacks, but if it was lowered too much carousel and inc could add more fire stacks and if the number of stacks was lowered just enough people almost wouldn't notice the difference between the flamer and inc carrousel, regarding stacks alone.
The fire stacks really make you wanna sacrifice something to effectively have a firefighter on your ship does it not? What do you want to sacrifice: The best repair/-build power in the game? The ability to buff? Or do you really sacrifice the gunner class only because you are not good enough to not get close to flamethrowers? Yes, harsh assumption, I know, but you haven't stated yet that you can indeed keep yourself away from it. But if you can, what's your problem again?
I say once more that the Flamethrower is just right.
It also has the power to get rid of endless buff on really everything. There once was a discussion about how the buff tool does not have any disadvantages compared to anything else in the game, other than the fact that it is timed.
Either way. Either 1 engineer has to be a firefighter or the gunner class gets out of the picture or you just don't get close to that gun. Do you let your crew adapt to fire or do you use basic short range counter and let your crew be optimised for your ship and guns?
It's all up to the captain of the ship.
Yes, I can argument with you about the Flamethrower until Adventure Mode is released! If you want to of course.
By the way, I am Daniel
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One of my problems with the flamer is that the counter to it (chem spray) can not be impediment while you are under attack. Either the ship was chemed up before the encounter or you are screwed. This is not the case with the other disabling attacks Flechette and Shatter. If your balloon gets popped you could fight your way out by drogue chute or sitting on the ground. If your weapons break you could rebuild until you are "one away" and wait for the enemy's reload cycle to finish the job and use the weapon. In both these cases you could turn the tables with a little skill and exploitation of game mechanics. Flame is a different beast entirely, once a ship is enveloped in fire I do not know of a way for the crew to recover the situation. The crew can prolong the inevitable, but until an outside event causes that flame ship to sop shooting, there is nothing the crew can do to turn the tables.
What if we lowered the health of the flamethrower? Making it easier to shoot out a flame thrower would give the defending crew a chance to recover and turn the tables.
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just have heat sink loaded up prior to and laugh at the incoming flames...
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On a some what related note: The Flame thrower is hitting bullets in mid air! Not sure if they deal any damage to the bullets tho.
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I been pondering this over, I think part of the problem is that fire and chem spray both share the same cooldown together with repairs. Which I while reading this thread seem to be a common theme to everyone suggestion. It's hard to pick chem spray over fire ext because you have to pick which of the two you use.
Remove shared cooldown and lower immunity to 1 seconds (fire ext can't be used again on that part for 1-3 seconds), removes a high amount of stacks but not all stacks. Chem spray can still be used at the same time. It should be balanced so that if you hit full stacks on a part, you can't remove all stacks with chem spray + fire ext but at least you can reduce the stacks to a management level that next fire ext cycle and possible chem spray cycle, you can remove it all. This means you could have a "firefighter engineer" build now. At the cost of being able to repair they could deal with fire easily enough.
I actually have to go now, I'll come back to either post more details or edit this post depending. BRB
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just have heat sink loaded up prior to and laugh at the incoming flames...
That is still more of a preparation thing. I look at a heatsink'ed gun as one less thing that I need to chem spray. Until there is a viable strategy for getting a ship out from under flamethrower lock dealing with flamethrowers is going to be a misery.
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I haven't been playing much goi lately however I've been following this thread and have arguably a very deep understanding of this game.
Basdc on all of the arguments being made has anyone considered lowering the % rate fire stacks and the stacks to kick people off of guns?
How about 33% less stacks per second, 6 stacks to get kicked off of a gun.
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I am opposed more because I think messing with things is trickier than anyone thinks at the onset. so because the fire feels like it's in a good spot I don't really wanna mess with it.
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just have heat sink loaded up prior to and laugh at the incoming flames...
That is still more of a preparation thing. I look at a heatsink'ed gun as one less thing that I need to chem spray. Until there is a viable strategy for getting a ship out from under flamethrower lock dealing with flamethrowers is going to be a misery.
again if a pyra with gat mortar jumps you from a blind spot you don't have too much hope (unless they aren't very good) either. close range weapons should feel that way at close range; like a shot gun to the chest at point blank, your fault for letting them get that close. and in the case of flamers you could just take the smallest bit of preparation and render it useless
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The flamer is fine were it is. Go have fun burning things or die trying.
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After having flown with more flamer builds (in the live version, not dev app) my following impression has been solidified:
- the flamers disable powers are in balance.
- the flamers damage to hull and balloon is in balance.
- the flamers damage to the permanent hull is too high.
I still think a reduction of the flame damage to the perma-hull would be the right step to make (along the line with a hades buff to compensate for the change). If that's not possible changing the flamers damage type to flechette, piercing or a combination of both might be an alternative.
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._. maybe a biiiiiit more fire? i can chem-spray a spire and mobula on my own... this is silly!
those are obviously the ships i should have the most trouble on keeping from burning.
just a teeeenzy bit more damage. so small <3
if we make chem spray too solid no one's using the extinguisher anymore.
it either needs more damage to make chem-spraying interfere with my repairs
or chem-spray needs a 2-5second nerf. :s
don't you wanna burn .-.
come on..
.poke.
(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7xf1l9LSL1qae2rq.jpg)
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just have heat sink loaded up prior to and laugh at the incoming flames...
That is still more of a preparation thing. I look at a heatsink'ed gun as one less thing that I need to chem spray. Until there is a viable strategy for getting a ship out from under flamethrower lock dealing with flamethrowers is going to be a misery.
again if a pyra with gat mortar jumps you from a blind spot you don't have too much hope (unless they aren't very good) either. close range weapons should feel that way at close range; like a shot gun to the chest at point blank, your fault for letting them get that close. and in the case of flamers you could just take the smallest bit of preparation and render it useless
Thank you! Exactly what I've been saying.
People need to stop QQing and start piloting again! The heck is a matter with all of you? Gotten so used to flying turds around as engineer pilots that you've forgotten how to be a pilot?
Want to beat out a flamer, out pilot it! Mix some chem into that to help but use your heads! Maatakumou!!
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Lets keep the flaming to a minimum... I mean burn them all to the ground but be nice to each other on the forums.
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Clearly I lack the ability to maneuver a ship around. Y'all caught me. I just sit on a side of the map and wait for the enemy to come at me. My ship is a flying turd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CvoIiJ9bBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl7Wy2ZPboo
As I've said many times however, lowering the ROF and Ammo for the flamer doesn't really impair the gun to force people to mind fire stacks. Since damage per stack of fire is loaded towards the initial stack and each additional stack doesn't do terribly much of an increase, additional fire stacks mainly just represent ability to put out fires, not so much actual damage. You don't need to be able to go from 0 to 20 in just a few shot seconds to be able to effectively use the flamer, to be calling people to repairs and causing an engineer problem that can't be ignored. This was true before the patch.
The flamer will always suck alone just as it should. Giving it ridiculous stacks is just a dumb balance. If you want a bufffed flamer increase the amount of time a ship is under flamer. Its why burst flamer rocks, not because of the AOE but the lower ROF
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I was wondering... what if we just lowered the maximum allowed stacks? like instead of 20 it was 15
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so it's even easier to get around with chem?
no. you burn and you burn a lot.
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If you don't do anything to prevent a ship from cheming then your flamer should fail spectacularly.
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it does.
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My opinions :D
Extinguisher is useless unless it is used as a backup to a chem sprayer. This is because the 3 seconds of fireproofing means that if you leave a component to repair another component, the one you just left gets tons of fire stacks :)
I'm not sure how this could be fixed, maybe extending the fireproofing to 5 seconds? Maybe 5-7 seconds of fireproofing would allow an engineer to fireproof a ship under flamed attack by constantly running around (although surely that would make chem obsolete?) To be honest I haven't used an extinguisher for literally months (except the 3 days of pre-hotfix flames) and I have internalized the idea that extinguisher is the "inferior tool" because it is reactionary, versus the perfect immunity of preventative chem spray. Is this intentional?
As far as I can tell, the extinguisher has 2 advantages over chem spray: a 3 second cool down, and the removal of all fire stacks. Since the latter can't be increased, maybe the cool down could be reduced too?
Newbies can't deal with flame throwers, because ANTE (All Newbies Take Extinguishers) and they often get distracted or react too slow. Maybe add a section to the tutorial just for firefighting techniques? Firefighting requires some more thinking than just repairing due to figuring out when to extinguish, when to just save time and smack it with a mallet, and sometimes even when to let the component burn down. Of course newbies are not a big concern of everyone who reads this forum, ha ha :D
In terms of balance, perfect chem spray=perfect immunity, so damage through chem spray is fixed. However perfect chem spray is apparently a lot to ask for (depends on ship IMHO), so the way I see it, this entire forum thread boils down to one question:
How harshly should engineers be punished for missing a Chem spray against 1 or more flamers?
So this thread has two extreme opinions:
Sammy and co: Combining a flamer with a Gatling/Carronade to overload the engineers sharply increases the chance of an engineer missing their Chem spray, so the punishment should be less harsh than now. This means lowering the amount of fire stacks applied per second, and lowering the damage of flames.
Cake and Janeway llc: It's easy to do perfect chem spraying, and the flamethrower has such low range (insert high risk/reward, use range to counter, pilot your way out of the flamer and related arguments), the flaming ship should be rewarded by having the enemy engineers really harshly punished for missing chem sprays.
Can we not compromise? :(
Armchair balancing: Make it so that 1 flamer applies 9 fire stacks to a component in 5 seconds. 9 stacks because it disables guns and requires 3 chem sprays. 1 second for the poor overworked engineer (remember that they are shooting or repairing something else at this time) to realize that they missed a chem spray, 4 seconds to get there and spray it once, which allows guns to shoot again. Chem spray cool down is 5 seconds (am I right? It sure feels that way xD) so that is 15 seconds of chem spray cooldown.
I suppose there could also be some math shenanigans so that a full health balloon can be saved with at least a sliver of HP after the 20 seconds of on-fire time.
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If you don't do anything to prevent a ship from cheming then your flamer should fail spectacularly.
that mechanic already went live a while ago
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I have my crew always take fire ext on mobula and sometimes even squid. Sometimes chem on squid is nice but if there is a flamer I am going to get the hell away from it, since massive engine and armor damage from tools and gatlings does not work well with fire, so fire ext is my only hero.
Another thing would be environments like desert scrap where you have to deal with sandstorms where could components die rather quickly and enemy losing you in the middle of it. Chem is rather inefficient 'cause you have to repair rather often in sandstorms which gets rid of fire immunity and then you would be forced to let the component die.
Also, if your general preferance is fire power instead of survivability you might as well bring flamer and just extinguish the guns and some other components if you have the time. If you manage to kill the enemy ship or disable the flamer quickly with your guns, it might be worth considering having your engis extinguish rather than re-chem everything just before impact.
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There are some tweaks on dev app. Please go look at them and post your thoughts in the stickied dev app thread.
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tbh I am always hesitant to test things in the dev app because I don't feel like you get a good feel for things until it goes live... I know that's annoying but I'm not sure there has ever been a major change implemented without a subsequent hot fix
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That would be because too many people are hesitant to test in dev app. ;)
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it is a sick cycle I agree; and yet...
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Ha, finally a greenhorn voicing his opinion - thanks XtremeNameX!
This... is such a different reception than I witnessed from World of T... some other game's forums that I'm pleasantly shocked to see it. I thank you.
I suppose there's a reason I'm playing this game and not that one anymore XD
Anyway, back OT. My first experiences with the flamethrower were truly terrifying. Everything's on fire, the captain is screaming at me, I can't get things under control fast enough... boom :D
Maybe it's because I knew already that I was going to be terrible for my first few matches that I didn't let it bother me and back into the flames I went again and again and slowly (probably too slowly for some teams, my apologies to those I doomed to being roasted to a delicious golden brown) I learned my firefighting techniques and how the equipment actually works (AND THE TUTORIAL IS A BIG FAT LIAR! It specifically states that the fire extinguisher does not start a cooldown). Now I've swapped the FE out for a chemical sprayer and you better believe I keep my boots worn down sprinting through the ship making sure everything's sprayed down once enemy contact is immanent. Things go so much better for us these days, I can only think of one incident in recent times when fire was a deciding factor in an engagement (20 stacks on our hwatcha kind of put us out of the fight... lucky our teammate was right there and on the ball.)
My personal feelings is that while the flamethrower is indeed terrifying to new players I don't think it's OP... but I do think it's a great tool for making sure those engineers stay in top physical shape ;D
take it for what it's worth
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AND THE TUTORIAL IS A BIG FAT LIAR! It specifically states that the fire extinguisher does not start a cooldown
I knew the tutorial could need some tweaking, but are they really this outdated? Oh my, oh my...
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Maybe it is not outdated, but predated foreshadowing, and the next update will remove cooldown for the extinguisher again. Very clever, Muse. I fully support this.
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I think it says something about the state of the flamethrower when you're running into pyramidions using 3 of them and a mortar. The damage needs to be toned down a little more, range needs to be set to 250 and with no way to increase it via ammo types, and fire starting percentage needs to be toned down to maybe 15%.
18%....it doesn't seem like it's even that low when you barely get sprayed by a flamer for less than 2 seconds and have 3 stacks on the balloon/hull.
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Most matches i played today were with pyramidions ignoring both front guns and only fighting with their side flamethrower and galleons also getting the most done with a single rear flamethrower. It may not be overpowered but it is certainly too easy, and not fun to counter. Running "chem cycles" as you call them is not enjoyable.
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Hmm, on the one hand the Squid is now much better at the disable assassin role it is meant to fill.
On the other hand, I have found zero way to get away from a flamer+any gun close range.
If a flamer ship ever gets close, unless the captain has no idea what she is doing with the ship's arcs, you will never escape.
It is simply not feasible to get hull, balloon, engines up to even attempt to escape with a flamethrower on you.
Even so, with a squid on you its not like you can outrun it either.
I'm torn here, on the one hand I love using the flamer. On the other I find fighting against it incredibly frustrating.
I think the baseline range is great, just remove the ability for lesmok to modify its range and you have a great high risk high reward weapon that wins point blank, but cannot be used from nearly gatling gun ranges.
EDIT: I wanted to add that I feel chem spray is a suitable counter to the flamer.
The goal of chem spray is not to keep your ship going for a long, minutes long brawl.
Flamer damage is -okay- but certainly does not compare to any of the major ship killing builds, and my understanding is that should you see a flamer ship coming, you will destroy/disable it before it can train a flamer on you for an extended time. The 20 second fire immunity from chem spray should be long enough for you to empty your clips and for all your components to stay up for that.
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protip: burning engines can be safely ignored, or in general get lowest priority.
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he is totally right! this one time I had an all noob/AI crew and gilders flamer squid CRUSHED me!
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Janeway, do not doubt the Gilder when he runs a squid and you have AIs or newbies against you. And the fire is GLORIOUS, now if only you could choose if one of your ai engineers had chemspray, but did a crap job of keeping everything sprayed.
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o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be; my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...
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o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be; my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...
I would say "laugh" at flamers is an overstatement, as they still do unignorable damage. Furthermore, this is flamers in a vacuum (hah! like that would ever work), and this is something that no other gun necessitates: an entire strategy and gear setup just to combat it.
You always pay a price to have a chem spray rotation, and you pay that through
1. Lowered engineer gun uptime. Not sure if this is prevalent enough if you spray at the right time.
2. Lowered repair efficiency. Since chem lasts 20? seconds and mallet cd is 9, chem is 5, you either respray early and waste 5 seconds of uptime or spray late and risk 5 seconds of downtime.
3. Lack of buff hammer, or fewer buff hammer.
4. Chaos, fires everywhere if you ever mess up your rotation.
I will say heatsink ammo is something I don't see nearly enough gunners bringing, and I think it needs to be buffed to be able to used to douse fires as well, possibly at the expense of ammo count for that reload (10% ammo penalty for each stack of fire maybe?).
Also keep in mind rigorous chem spray rotation is not an option for many captains/crews because many players lack the teamwork (esp pug games) and awareness to do this.
I do not play competitively and I'm sure the flamer is far less useful there, but on pub games (even ones with mostly high level/competitive players), the flamer dominates, and I have yet to find a pug crew who successfully deals with high flamer uptime. Of course you can kill flamer ships before they get close, and good pilots know how to avoid, but actually having a flamer on target is utterly devastating, and I think you'll find in the majority of games the flamer just wins out. Almost every ship I flown on or against has one.
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o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be; my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...
I would say "laugh" at flamers is an overstatement, as they still do unignorable damage. Furthermore, this is flamers in a vacuum (hah! like that would ever work), and this is something that no other gun necessitates: an entire strategy and gear setup just to combat it.
You always pay a price to have a chem spray rotation, and you pay that through
1. Lowered engineer gun uptime. Not sure if this is prevalent enough if you spray at the right time.
2. Lowered repair efficiency. Since chem lasts 20? seconds and mallet cd is 9, chem is 5, you either respray early and waste 5 seconds of uptime or spray late and risk 5 seconds of downtime.
3. Lack of buff hammer, or fewer buff hammer.
4. Chaos, fires everywhere if you ever mess up your rotation.
I will say heatsink ammo is something I don't see nearly enough gunners bringing, and I think it needs to be buffed to be able to used to douse fires as well, possibly at the expense of ammo count for that reload (10% ammo penalty for each stack of fire maybe?).
Also keep in mind rigorous chem spray rotation is not an option for many captains/crews because many players lack the teamwork (esp pug games) and awareness to do this.
I do not play competitively and I'm sure the flamer is far less useful there, but on pub games (even ones with mostly high level/competitive players), the flamer dominates, and I have yet to find a pug crew who successfully deals with high flamer uptime. Of course you can kill flamer ships before they get close, and good pilots know how to avoid, but actually having a flamer on target is utterly devastating, and I think you'll find in the majority of games the flamer just wins out. Almost every ship I fly on has one as well.
Heatsink has been buffed, and it does douse 3 stacks of fire when loaded into a gun. =)
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Heatsink has been buffed, and it does douse 3 stacks of fire when loaded into a gun. =)
Oh thats awesome! =D
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Heatsink has not been buffed.
This is merely a test on Dev App. It's just lucky that the repair effect also works on ammo. We don't know the full implications of this until further testing. Again, it's just kind of lucky that it worked.
If you'd like to join Dev App testing, shoot an email to keyvias@musegames.com
sorry ignore this.. huge case of
(http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/derp1.jpg)
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Heatsink has been removing 3 fires in live since the hotfix :P
also keyvias totally ignores his emails I've been waiting for my dev game items for seemingly ages now! bad keyvias!
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oh was it?
Must be remembering something else.
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Woops. yeah just forget i said all that.
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o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be; my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...
I would say "laugh" at flamers is an overstatement, as they still do unignorable damage. Furthermore, this is flamers in a vacuum (hah! like that would ever work), and this is something that no other gun necessitates: an entire strategy and gear setup just to combat it.
You always pay a price to have a chem spray rotation, and you pay that through
1. Lowered engineer gun uptime. Not sure if this is prevalent enough if you spray at the right time.
2. Lowered repair efficiency. Since chem lasts 20? seconds and mallet cd is 9, chem is 5, you either respray early and waste 5 seconds of uptime or spray late and risk 5 seconds of downtime.
3. Lack of buff hammer, or fewer buff hammer.
4. Chaos, fires everywhere if you ever mess up your rotation.
I will say heatsink ammo is something I don't see nearly enough gunners bringing, and I think it needs to be buffed to be able to used to douse fires as well, possibly at the expense of ammo count for that reload (10% ammo penalty for each stack of fire maybe?).
Also keep in mind rigorous chem spray rotation is not an option for many captains/crews because many players lack the teamwork (esp pug games) and awareness to do this.
I do not play competitively and I'm sure the flamer is far less useful there, but on pub games (even ones with mostly high level/competitive players), the flamer dominates, and I have yet to find a pug crew who successfully deals with high flamer uptime. Of course you can kill flamer ships before they get close, and good pilots know how to avoid, but actually having a flamer on target is utterly devastating, and I think you'll find in the majority of games the flamer just wins out. Almost every ship I flown on or against has one.
this argument always cracks me up because the onto thing that is ever talked about is what my ship has lost by brining fire prevention what is never talked about is what the poor fool who brought the flamers to a chem spray fight lost... MY ship loses dps due to lack of buff hammers? think of the loss of dps the flamer ship has suffered due to my chem spray!!! now I'm not going to give you all the pro tips but spoiler alert: there is no need to lose buff hammers or rebuild powers due to chem spray!!
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oh and the damage the flamer is doing is VERY ignorable compared to the dps output my gat mort you came into range of is doing
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You bring up a pretty good point, which is if you're speccing into combatting flamer, why don't they spec into not having a flamer?
After all if you are saying you can get your entire crew to work together to make a fireproof ship, it seems easier for them to just switch out a gun spot.
Is that what higher level games involve? How many of them have brought flamers? Have the flamers been successful? I guess those are questions that need answering, or perhaps have been answered, I didn't dig through 11 pages of posts D=
I mean if you build a counter to a strategy...well that counter better work, right?
I think the point I'm trying to make is, if high level players are to the point where it is always countered with like you stated no loss of efficiency, then I'm going to assume noone ever uses them in high level games to any effect.
Whereas in lower and mid level games, flamers = complete domination of the enemy.
It seems like your strategy will require the entire crew to cooperate, which is my entire argument, that in pug games which are 90% of the games on GOIO, it is an extremely powerful weapon that is frustrating to fight against.
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I have never been one to argue for the ballance of games that involve players that don't even know what the ballance is. pick up matches with lower level players is always frustrating no matter what weapon load out I'm fighting with or against. you know what ship is real frustrating at low levels? backward flying squid. would I fly it in competition? hell no.
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Well, if this gun isn't used in competitive play (is it? you seem to have a pretty good case that it is easy enough to counter), then doesn't that defeat the point of the buff (or rather, fix) that was deployed?
And so if it has no use in the competitive scene, then isn't the pug game scene the primary place where its use should be considered?
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Well, if this gun isn't used in competitive play (is it? you seem to have a pretty good case that it is easy enough to counter), then doesn't that defeat the point of the buff (or rather, fix) that was deployed?
And so if it has no use in the competitive scene, then isn't the pug game scene the primary place where its use should be considered?
It's being used in competitive scene.
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Weird, still haven't stumbled upon one.
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Weird, still haven't stumbled upon one.
Cake obliterated TAW with a flamer/carro pyra last week in Hephaestus league.
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Weird, still haven't stumbled upon one.
Cake obliterated TAW with a flamer/carro pyra last week in Hephaestus league.
yup they showed that sure all flamer is easily countered but flamer + another synergizing weapon is effective which puts it in the same field as every other well balanced weapon.
now to be fair if I saw cake running at me with a flamer caro I would not be afraid because of my crew and my particular play style but if I was a snipe team and cake was able to close the distance I would be very nervous of a flamer which is how it should be.
tldr: flamer is both counterable and is useful as a counter making it well balanced yay muse!!!
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Also before the flamer was buffed recently it was also competitive when synergized with a carronade as we saw with OVW. Was it not balanced then or is Redria simply godly and using a crap gun as a handicap?
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Also before the flamer was buffed recently it was also competitive when synergized with a carronade as we saw with OVW. Was it not balanced then or is Redria simply godly and using a crap gun as a handicap?
Redria took risks and it payed off. It's rare in the competitive scene.
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Also before the flamer was buffed recently it was also competitive when synergized with a carronade as we saw with OVW. Was it not balanced then or is Redria simply godly and using a crap gun as a handicap?
my bad did he win?
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Most of the time they brought that build they seemed to win. During sky league we only beat it once while playing on our best map
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oh doesn't sound like redria's was godly then... I'm gonna go with ovw is really talented and even they couldn't quite get the flamer to work because of how underwhelming it was
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My argument wasn't that Redria was godly, my argument was that it was an effective and balanced weapon before the buff which we see due to the consistent high quality play when Redria brought his carro flamer.
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but sammy, not all off us are people who have consistent performance at the highest level of play, so it doesn't chalk up to be as well balanced as you are claiming it was before the buff. Also, the buff made the current flamer better at working together with certain weapons.
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The main thing the current buff did was make fire stacks harder to manage as there are now more done quickly and chem has a 5 second cool down. The flamer doesn't need fast stacks to be effective but instead persistence threat of stacks. Therefore I don't buy the argument that the fast stack flamer somehow makes it better suited with more weapons.
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Sammy did you know that back in beta there weren't even stacks? that a set fire automatically knocked a gunner off? did you know me and spud and zill still dominated against flamer squids "somehow"?
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The only thing I know less is your point.
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my point is flamers were even more powerful at one point. there was a time that a flamer squid ACTUALLY struck fear into ones heart and even back then good players with good crews could counter it. so now with the new "buff" which is more of a return to the original flamer but still weaker I promise you it can be countered
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I find it well enough balanced that it makes for a viable build. Also, Sammy, shouldn't you not be the one complaining, as you always have everything chem sprayed to perfection? It seems that those who should be complaining are those who don't have such a consistent coat of chemical spray on their everything.
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Jane,
So let me get this straight your argument.
A long time ago when the game was so completely different that it bears little similarity to now, the flamer was really good therefore the flamer is fine now?
Mac,
As has been said keeping up chem cycles is itself a limitation. Yes drilled teams are affected less by this buff but just because good teams can deal with the flamer better than bad teams in no way makes a gun balanced.
Believe it or not, I don't think the game should be balanced around what works for me. Otherwise you'd see me railing for carronade nerfs.
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the point is even when the flamer was more powerful back then similar strategies were employed and effective that are available to you now.
now if someone wants to make the argument that it makes the game less fun for the main engi to that I can't comment but as far as the ability to mitigate and counter the flamer it is easy to do
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Flamer buff makes my chem spray hull extinguish achievement easier to do. (59/70 for that; for the gun rebuilds that come with the achievement, only 55/70, heh.)
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First of all, let's establish that I am not currently a competitive player. Let us secondarily establish that I have read through this entire thread, have been playing since the approximate beginning of the thread (perhaps a bit after the hotfix) and have flown with both noobs and experienced crews.
The primary argument against the current state of the flaming damage and counter has not been actually addressed since it was stated. So let's try and keep this short while speaking directly to the topic at hand:
Balance of a specific element or tactic within a game is determined by the relative trouble that one must go to to counter said element or tactic. RTS and certain strategy games are constantly looking at this particular equation when it comes to balance overall and GoI is no different in that regard. Thus:
To counter a specific weapon or weapon combo in GoI one must either develop a piloting tactic to avoid taking damage from said weapon or their crew must be able to manage the damage from said weapon. We will examine what it takes to counter some things and gauge the relative balance based on what is required for that specific combo and how it applies against other possible dangers (i.e, a tactic effective against long range, getting in close and out of arc, being effective against another ship that is also close range). Let's examine a few specific cases in brief. For the sake of understanding, we'll examine guns other than the flamer initially, including combinations, before moving on to the flamer itself.
1. Gat, Mortar. To prevent damage, one stays out of range, one does not get within arc of the guns themselves or one disables the guns before any damage is sustained. To counter damage taken by the guns, an engineer/crew must have a tool or two that can quickly rebuild and repair the hull, probably spanner/mallet.
2. Hwacha. To prevent damage, one stays out of arc (range is less a factor here as Heavy Clip vastly increases the accuracy and range) or one disables the gun before any damage is sustained. To counter the damage, an engineer/crew must have a tool or two that can quickly rebuild and repair the armor/equipment on the ship, probably spanner/mallet.
3. Carronade. To prevent damage, one stays out of range, out of arc or disables the gun before any damage is sustained. To counter the damage, an engineer/crew must have a tool or two that can quickly rebuild and repair the balloon, probably spanner/mallet, and the pilot should either watch their altitude during the initial engagement or be prepared with a tool that can slow the fall while repairs are underway, such as the Drogue Chute.
4. Merc/Hades, Echinda. To prevent damage, one stays out of arc or disables the gun before any damage is sustained. To counter the damage, an engineer/crew must have a tool or two that can quickly rebuild and repair and damaged components, probably spanner/mallet.
5. Flamer. To prevent damage, one stays out of arc, out of range, disables the gun before any damage is sustained or flame stacks applied, an engineer/crew chem sprays all equipment on board within a 25 second rotation or uses heatsink ammo to counter all potential flame stacks. To counter the damage, the crew must have tools which first remove the stacks of flame from any equipment and then repair the damage done/negate further stacks of flame from being accrued. The latter two items are, initially, mutually exclusive from one another.
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Everything has a counter. Everything. The question is for us, as players is, "Can I counter this" and the answer is "Yes". The question for the sake of balance, however is not "Can I counter this" but "To what degree must play be altered for this to be countered". The examples given above demonstrate, quite clearly, that a flamer, a single flamer, takes significantly more work than any other weapon in the game to both prevent and counter the damage from.
Yes, to Janeway, if your crew is 100% immaculate, the ship is coordinated perfectly and your rotations are flawless, you can essentially ignore flame damage. If any one of those pieces is not present, you cannot ignore flame damage and it will become quite frustrating.
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TLDR; Countering the flamer takes a disproportionate amount of preparation, in game coordination and attentiveness to exactitude in comparison to every other weapon/combo present within the game. You cannot expect that level of play from everyone. The problem isn't with the flamer itself, it's with preventative/counter-measures.
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Yes the flamer may need more to counter than the average other gun. But lets figure out the impact of one flamer which rly isnt to high.
In a competetive or equally high skilled match maybe. But surely not in the average pub game. I face flames alot in those and even if i fail a cycle cause im lazy i can easily use the next chance and still survive and kill the enemy.
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So what you're saying is:
1. Yes, it takes more to counter.
2. Yes, in a competitive match or high skilled match a single flamer could be very impactful due to the difficulty in countering it.
3. In lower skilled games, where you can win a match with a full AI crew, a single flamer doesn't have a lot of impact, usually.
I think practically everyone here has played a pub game or two where the flamer utterly shut down an entire ship. Granted, we've all played pub games where someone went double harpoon Pyra and that somehow worked really well. Yes, if you fail a cycle with the chem spray and get some fire stacks and then you race out of arc and get repairs back underway, sure, you'll be fine. You also actually have a cycle with the chem spray, which is a skill that a lot of pub game engis don't have and the fact that you'd even have to learn an entire skill set with a specific tool for every layout of every ship being different to counter a single weapon speaks precisely to the problem.
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What i say is that you get more chances than one to counter a single flamer and thats what alot of guys cal imbablance on the flamer.
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5. Flamer. To prevent damage, one stays out of arc, out of range, disables the gun before any damage is sustained or flame stacks applied, an engineer/crew chem sprays all equipment on board within a 25 second rotation or uses heatsink ammo to counter all potential flame stacks. To counter the damage, the crew must have tools which first remove the stacks of flame from any equipment and then repair the damage done/negate further stacks of flame from being accrued. The latter two items are, initially, mutually exclusive from one another.
TLDR; Countering the flamer takes a disproportionate amount of preparation, in game coordination and attentiveness to exactitude in comparison to every other weapon/combo present within the game. You cannot expect that level of play from everyone. The problem isn't with the flamer itself, it's with preventative/counter-measures.
Staying out of range is much easier vs the flamer than any other weapon in the game because it has the shortest range. That being said, my problem with the flamer is that it is a gun that does everything. It:
- Kills every component with fire stack damage
- Disables guns
- Forces repair cooldowns to put out the fire
- Still gets bonus damage vs the red hull
Then again, you know what other gun does this? The Hades Light Cannon. I would suggest
- Reducing fire stack damage (not its base damage) by 33-50%
- Upping fire extinguisher anti-fire time to 5s from 3s so it can almost keep 2 things iced
This makes it just fine as a disable tool while not giving it good damage vs every component on the ship. In addition, if you can't put out your guns fast enough, you're not going to be able to just let them die and rebuild. They are slowly going to burn and be useless. This gives the extinguisher a much more important use and prevents the flamethrower from wrecking hull armor, engines, and balloons so quickly.
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Guys, remember, the flamer is one of the few guns in GoIO that is not ship-build-dependent in order to counter.
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The flamethrower is too good at everything, frustrating to face and fool proof.
(because my comments add a lot to the discussion :p)
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I have to say after learning how to spray effectively, the flamer presents an interesting challenge but its completely shut down by spraying.
Flamer+gat or flamer+carro is something I am not quite sure how to prioritize however, but vs a kill ship it shouldn't last long enough.
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I think my only complaint about flamers is that the skill that it takes to shut it down using chemspray cycles is much higher than what it takes to force the chemspray cycles.
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Dont think thats different for any other weapon ...
Gat/Mortar is much easier shot than countered. Carronades are easier shot than countered ...
Its the same. Flamers just outstanding cause it has an own mechanic and needs a own tool to be countered ...
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Dont think thats different for any other weapon ...
Gat/Mortar is much easier shot than countered. Carronades are easier shot than countered ...
Its the same. Flamers just outstanding cause it has an own mechanic and needs a own tool to be countered ...
Gat/mortar takes much more skill for two reasons:
1) Takes two people shooting guns. Means less people working on other stuff on the ship.
2) Mortar timing is essential. You know how much pug games don't hold their mortar shots, no matter how much you tell them to wait.
Carronades might be a better example, though I counter with the fact that it takes carronades a long time to murder with, and are almost completely negated depending on the map.
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And Chem negates flamers. Tbh i dont see the reason. Yes a flamer is annoying and it feels like you just died a horrible death when a flamer managed to catch you offguard once. But id rather have a flamer catch me offguard than a carronade.
Mortar timing ok ...
But then lets use a different thing. Mines. How hard is it to shot a mine compared to fighting against it? Id say its easier shot than fought.
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And Chem negates flamers. Tbh i dont see the reason. Yes a flamer is annoying and it feels like you just died a horrible death when a flamer managed to catch you offguard once. But id rather have a flamer catch me offguard than a carronade.
Well right, but my point is that keeping all your vital components chemmed, knowing the optimal routes through all the various ships to do so with correct timing is certainly something that requires a lot higher of a game knowledge/player skill.
Mortar timing ok ...
But then lets use a different thing. Mines. How hard is it to shot a mine compared to fighting against it? Id say its easier shot than fought.
It's easy to shoot mines. It's harder to shoot mines in a manner where the ship you're firing at is going to be hit, you have to gauge distances, know what ammo types to use, where to throw a mine which will surely get run into... You don't see a whole lot of newbie ships with mines able to do what more veteran players can accomplish with them.
Honestly I don't have a problem with flamers all that much, but that's because I know what I can do with chem spray. On several occasions I have joined games where the other team has just been romping around with flames, and then we end up winning easily but we basically take no damage from a proper chem rotation... but it takes a while for newer folk to realize this and learn how to optimize it. Much longer, and much more skill than it takes for someone to learn how to use a flamethrower, and while I generally don't have any gripes about flamethrowers, if I had to, that would be the only one.
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I still think the range should be reduced.