35 replies to this topic

[Dino Might]

Flamers are a pure joke weapon.
I prefer using them with Locust 3V - 2 flamers, 2 machine guns.

With range module, flamers get ~150m range. Teammates confirmed that the flames do render out to the full range. It's fun to see. Sadly, my 2 and 3 kill matches have been due entirely to the machine guns. No flamer-only kills....yet.

I have a decent video highlighting how little damage [none] a flamer does to a mech with open internals.

go to about 2:15

Edited by Dino Might, 12 June 2015 - 06:21 AM.

[NephyrisX]

Why can't Flamers be like those in MW4 or MC, where they aren't optimal but is at least a projectile that heats their targets up?

Or even better, attach the MW4's PPC effect to it and partially disrupt HUDs?

[ArchAngelWC]

Ryokens leap, on 11 June 2015 - 06:48 PM, said:

Flamer is anti-personnel, not melee.

you are messing me with me right...
yes flamers are an AP weapon...

That can cause ammo mechs to explode in humerous ways, light forests on fire to provide smoke cover +/- extra heat if the opfor was trying to use that forest as cover lol...

Just because PGI is halfassed...doesnt mean flamers suck...they are one of the most amusing weapons due to the awesome powers of heat in BT ...

[Simbacca]

Another suggestion:

=Still heats up enemy mech as it does now (with no stun lock)
=Reduces speed of enemy mech by 20% for duration of flame hitting, and up to 4 seconds afterwards
=Keeps current level of damage when hitting enemy mech

Edited by Simbacca, 12 June 2015 - 06:39 AM.

[Percimes]

Flamers happen to be the best weapon for making short term art in the snow on Alpine. Best smilies are made due to their precision.

[Deathlike]

Joseph Mallan, on 12 June 2015 - 01:38 AM, said:

So why do you want a weapon that for the longest time did either little damage or little heat on your Mech? I mean teh choice is there. You can either use a flamer and make your opponent warm or you can use a real anti vehicle weapon.

It has to do SOMETHING OF VALUE against mechs. I don't think that's unreasonable. Unless other things that are non-mechs in the game, it is irrelevant to how it should function.

Otherwise, we could have kept the Command Console being the 3 ton doorstop... oh wait, it still is that (useless/ineffective buffs that provide little value).

[Ryokens leap]

It should never have ben added to MWO in the first place, unless it had an Inferno mechanic so as to actually be useful.

Edited by Ryokens leap, 12 June 2015 - 09:33 AM.

[ManDaisy]

A big step to actually making flamers useful would be to fix the heat scale so that mechs slow down beyond a certain heat thresh hold like in table top rules. Then flamers could be used to anchor.

Edited by ManDaisy, 12 June 2015 - 10:40 AM.

[Burktross]

SirNotlag, on 11 June 2015 - 06:58 PM, said:

You know that the equivalent of saying a weapon is alright cause its anti-Unicorn, it works really really well at killing unicorns. But unicorns aren't in the game making the weapon completely useless.

Fix it to work with what is actually in the F***ing game!

I'm saving this quote, okay?

[Kristov Kerensky]

Mudhutwarrior, on 12 June 2015 - 04:05 AM, said:

I posted on flamers a couple of days ago. When you see veteran players spraying you on the pad then burning all the way to the fight you just want to gauss them in the back.

I think PGI should scan to see what players use them the most then send them a set of 13" spinner hubcaps as a reward.

They would look good on your sporty hyunda excels and would go along with the Amp worth more than the car.

I drive a MiniCooper and it has 17" wheels, so please make those spinners the right size and model, thanks!

I've gotten kills with Flamers, not a lot, but it happens. They are a pretty much totally effing useless vision blocker and that's it right now.

Thank you Paul for your wonderful balance work!

[cSand]

I disagree

a lot of the time in a heated battle I am riding the edge of heat shutdown.. a guy with a flamer can be a huge PITA, and even be the deciding factor in that situation

outside of that though it's pretty turdy

[Boris The Spider]

Kristov Kerensky, on 12 June 2015 - 10:56 AM, said:

I drive a MiniCooper and it has 17" wheels, so please make those spinners the right size and model, thanks!

I've gotten kills with Flamers, not a lot, but it happens. They are a pretty much totally effing useless vision blocker and that's it right now.

Thank you Paul for your wonderful balance work!

If you have more drop time with flamers than me I will eat my 4P Although I doubt 13" spinners will fit on my transit van, and I suspect that fleet department may have something to say about company image.

Seriously though, flamers only need a slight buff, perhaps an increased crit chance on exposed ammo internals.

2 shut downs and one kill in 3 games (discounting kills with primary weapons). Kills through damage are rare though, get more by overheat but you don't get credit they appear as suicides.

Edited by Boris The Spider, 12 June 2015 - 11:36 AM.

[Moldur]

What I find most humorous is that the logarithmic heat scale on Flamers makes your mech overheat faster than the enemy's if you hold it down for too long. It's like they created the smallest smidgen of a useful feature and then reversed it to make it utterly useless.

In any case, I'll go ahead and equip 12 flamers on my nova and conduct science.

Edited by Moldur, 12 June 2015 - 11:42 AM.

[Boris The Spider]

Moldur, on 12 June 2015 - 11:41 AM, said:

What I find most humorous is that the logarithmic heat scale on Flamers makes your mech overheat faster than the enemy's if you hold it down for too long.

For the first 10-12 seconds flamers generate 0 heat. Timing is key. I use them when my primary weapons are causing me to overheat, thus preventing my enemy cooling down. Yeah, I cool down slower, but not as slow as my target does.

[Nick Makiaveli]

FupDup, on 11 June 2015 - 06:58 PM, said:

So are you saying that MWO has infantry, and that those infantry pose an extremely powerful threat against battlemechs? That those infantry can and WILL kill an assault mech unless that assault mech equips Flamers to defend itself? And that if that assault mech tries to use any weapon EXCEPT Flamers on those infantry, that the infantry will just shrug it off harmlessly and proceed to utterly destroy that battlemech?

Oh, wait...


There are mindsets like this in every other MWO thread, and it's the reason why we can't have nice things.

Sarcastic nonsense is neither relevant nor constructive.

Flamers exist in MWO because they are part of the lore. If you don't care about lore, then ignore them like any other borderline useless weapon and move on.

They were included on mechs because most used plasma and thus cost nothing to use. Why waste ammo on infantry? Second, mechs were extremely rare (Locusts were the most common and were less than 10K of them if I remember correctly.) Which means that the vast majority of battles did NOT involve mechs. When they did, the defenders would throw everything they had into the battle. Infantry could affect mechs, SRM2 launchers, MGs etc. The Grey Death Legion had specialized anti-mech infantry.

Question for you. If they aren't being tweaked, then how exactly does it affect us getting other things?

[FupDup]

Nick Makiaveli, on 12 June 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

They were included on mechs because most used plasma and thus cost nothing to use. Why waste ammo on infantry?

Why waste a hardpoint on a Flamer when I can rake a laser beam over the troopers and kill them just as quickly? If a human gets hit by a 1 ton Medium Laser, he's pretty much going to die. Since lasers are DoT in this game, I can drag that beam over several guys for each trigger pull. The Clan ER Large, with its 1.5 second beam, would probably be super good for that purpose. This isn't TT where we can artificially set a laser to kill only 1 or 2 guys maximum per turn...I can kill as many as I can rake that beam over.

The only way to stop that would be to make the lasers not instantly kill the little guys they hit...but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense would it?

And even if we solve that issue, then there's the issue of mounting multiple Flamers. What benefit would having, say, 4 Flamers have over 1 Flamer, if all Flamers did was kill meatbags? If 1 Flamer can kill a meatbag quickly, 1 Flamer is all you'd ever need. And if 1 Flamer wasn't able to kill a meatbag quickly, then that really would be stupid for a weapon labeled as "anti-infantry." Using multiples would be completely useless, even though there are many stock mechs that come default with multiple (like the Firestarter that everyone hates so much). That's because I can actually AIM my Flamer at individual guys at whim in MWO, whereas a TT Flamer just magically did 4d6 damage to meatbag squads.


Seriously, they need to have some kind of utility against mechs, because the whole anti-infantry thing is a cop-out that doesn't even work that well in a real-time game where we can't set weapons to do magic damage values like 4d6. It doesn't have to be raw damage, but it damn well has to be something, like actually overheating people, setting the environment on fire, or some crap like that.

Nick Makiaveli, on 12 June 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

Second, mechs were extremely rare (Locusts were the most common and were less than 10K of them if I remember correctly.) Which means that the vast majority of battles did NOT involve mechs. When they did, the defenders would throw everything they had into the battle. Infantry could affect mechs, SRM2 launchers, MGs etc. The Grey Death Legion had specialized anti-mech infantry.

SRM2s and MGs aren't even a threat to a Locust, especially because those little dudes can't carry a whole lot of ammo for those guns...

Nick Makiaveli, on 12 June 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

Question for you. If they aren't being tweaked, then how exactly does it affect us getting other things?

It doesn't?... What's the point of that question?