7 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

I figure one more balance thread isn't going to harm anything and while my primary concern sure isn't the flamer, well, hell - it needs to get brought up.

The Good:
- I like the idea of it building more heat with successive contact.
- I still love the visual effects
- The 90% heat cap was a brilliant move to allow it to cause heat without turning entirely to cheese.
- They're annoying a good way to be hit by.

The Bad:
- It's range is still awful and the visuals don't seem to reflect it.

The Ugly:
- It still does horrendous damage
- The heat transfer doesn't even appear to be working at all now, and if it is, it's not workable in a practical environment
- For a ton, it should be outputting a far, far better mix of damage & heat
- The one heat generation that does work with it is for the user.. get ready to BBQ!

-

I'm not really going to offer a suggestion how to balance it, as there's tons of options from raising the damage to making the heat have a heavier impact. However my first concern is fixing it so it actually transfers heat in a practical environment and does maybe at least the DPS of a SL in the process.

Either way, the buffs made to it are absolutely terrible at best, and outright broken at worst. I seriously cannot even tell if the heat transfer is working at all - I think it's not even doing any heat period - in a combat scenario, both as the user and receiver.

True story: I got harassed by a 6 Flamer Cicada the other day and originally thought it was going to be a problem. After 30 seconds of nothing I finally just ignored him entirely and went about my business killing his teammates. I was running a PPC 'mech that was in no way cool. If any heat was transferred to me, I sure didn't notice.

[keith]

i had a theory about this last night on comms. haven't had a chance to test it yet in game. if u try flamers it can do dam through panels. go into training grounds and hit a mech from the front then the side. u will notice u can dam ever panel of the mech arms to arm, if in the right line. crazy question to be answered if u do that in a live game, will the heat out put be times 5 for hitting 5 panels? if the answer is yes flamers got a huge buff pilot skill is just lacking.

[Roland]

I did some testing with flamers. Findings:

1) They do impact heat on the target, but this is heavily influenced by the heat capacity of the target. A 4 flamer Jenner, running a 300 engine and a bunch of DHS will only bring a Highlander to around 18% heat, while pushing the Jenner's own heat up to 90%. However, against a centurion, it was able to make the Centurion's heat about the same as the Jenner's.

2) While not able to really heat up the Highlander from zero to 90, it WAS able to make it so that he didn't really cool down at all. So, in many ways, it was kind of possible to prevent him from firing his weapons, after a bit. (this was on tourmaline, a very hot map)

3) As they stand, they are kind of better, but still not weapons I would choose to bring.

4) Be advised that when you are testing in the test grounds, you will see TOTALLY different results than in a real game. In the test grounds, even prior to the recent buff, you could shut down any mech in the test grounds with flamers.

A side point to #4... I think they really need to make the test grounds work the same as the real game. Otherwise, testing becomes pointless. You can't trust any of your findings in the test grounds.

In terms of how to better balance it, I think that the flamers just need to do far less heat to the person using the flamers.

If this was changed, then they could actually be reasonable weapons, I believe. You'd still take a LONG time to heat anyone else up, but at least you wouldn't be heating yourself up just as bad.

[Deathlike]

In summation:

New Flamer Changes -> Practically Like the Old Flamers

Overheat Self > Overheat Target

[Lukoi Banacek]

Deathlike, on 28 May 2013 - 02:30 PM, said:

In summation:

New Flamer Changes -> Practically Like the Old Flamers

Overheat Self > Overheat Target

I had a huge "duel" with a Catapult carrying flamers the other day in my zombied centurion......it lasted what seemed like an eternity and the flamers he carried never increased my heat at all. I think he was testing things because he hardly fired his ML's at me (his only other weapons) and I never once approached shut down...eventually a teammate killed the Cat (I was taking forever with 2xML's).....given the length of the brawl, even with me having just 2xML's I expected to see some kind of impact from the revamped flamers....but nada.

[HarmAssassin]

Personally I'd prefer if flamers do zero damage, and only inflict heat. The reason they "Seem" to inflict more heat on the person firing them than the mech they hit, is that the mech you are hitting has more heatsinks than you do.

Flamers against a mech that only has a few heatsinks will do A LOT of heat. Flamers against a mech with 30 double heatsinks isn't going to do squat (nor should it).

I like them just as they are.

[Lukoi Banacek]

HarmAssassin, on 28 May 2013 - 03:03 PM, said:

Flamers against a mech that only has a few heatsinks will do A LOT of heat. Flamers against a mech with 30 double heatsinks isn't going to do squat (nor should it).

I like them just as they are.

I had 11 DHS...one more than required to drop. So...it did NO appreciable increase to my heat. So, are you sure it's working? I really don't think they do much of anything (and I'm not a flamer fan or proponent).

[Hammertrial]

So tested flamers against my catapult buddy.

I have 13 DHS and 5 flamers, he has 14 DHS.

All 5 put onto his legs, I'm at roughly 10% before his heat even starts to increase. I hit 100% at the time he hits 70%.

Doing more testing and posting results as I go along.

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EDIT: 2nd Test

D-DC 17 DHS, fires 2 LL, 3srm6s and ac/20, with flamers on chain fire, he cooled off normally according to him and stayed at 0%.

Fired again, this time all 5 flamers were put on him. I shut down before he reached 80%

Tested again:

He fired 3 times with his weapon set while being flamered with 5 flamers and I STILL SHUT DOWN before he hit 90%.



Conclusion: only stupidity will ever make an enemy mech reach 90% using flamers in their current state. The user will ALWAYS overheat before making an enemy hit the cap unless the enemy fires 2-3 times while you are heating him.

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But how about the heat on me?

5 Medium lasers, shot 5 times to 85% heat, cools down to 0% while standing still in ~18s.

5 Flamers, 12s to 85% heat, cools down to 0% still in about 18s

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Single vs chain fire:

Does not appear to do any difference. Even with "exponential" Heat retention, the heat for target or self never increases past 0. Even when firing he cooled down normally.


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In summary, heat gained for user and target appears to be about equal, but due to heat cap being substantially higher on heavier mechs than lighter, you will NEVER achieve 90% lock down without the opponent being a moron. But if your opponent was a moron he'd be shutting himself down with high alphas anyways, so the flamers are at best, a blinding tool, a troll weapon, and generally god awful compared to the MG which actually has an intended purpose (crit seeking) and does that extremely well, while flamers purpose (generate heat) is fully incapable of doing so.

I truely do not believe that a 3 flamer spider could ever even begin to heat up an atlas in the current flamer state (anything less than 4 seems not worth even trying).


Furthermore, if you aren't dedicating at least 8-10s of flamer fire to the target (and your heat levels allow for it) it's not worth doing. The ramp up time on flamers is god awful like the rest of the changes. The opponent only starts heating up after 3-5s of burn time, and only ramps up near the 8-10s marker. Of course, in my case as above, I would have to wait 18s before attempting to heat again, in which case the enemy insta kills me with ppcs or streaks.



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In summary, Flamers are useless as long as they do the same heat to both user and enemy. It also needs to be compeltely independent of the heatsinks of either. If you're going to have an exponential growth, it needs to be EXPONENTIAL. If 1 flamer is used it should take a long period to heat up, BUT IT STILL SHOULD DO SO