22 replies to this topic

[SockSlayer]

I have made many posts on Flamers, and how they underperform compared to many other weapons; a large amount of this has to do with how many weaknesses they have: they match up bad against MG, can't deal much damage, or long range types.

However, since this is posted in Battlemechs: Here are some of my Flamer build recommendations, and lack thereof:

1. For any flamer build: Always extra armor, speed, range, heat reduction, and radar deprivation in the tech tree. You will need these to get the use out of it.

2. Accessory vs. Boating Styles: In accessory, there may be only one to three flamers that work to hold the foes heat up, while many normal weapons alpha the target, in contrast, the boating style (at times this is considered the true flamer player style) means flamer total will out number normal weapons and max I have found to be helpful is 12, past this, burn time will be too short.

-Stormcrow-PRIME (Yes, boating style): Not the first mech I would have thought would work well with this, but its balanced stats of speed and armor make it good for this. Build Involves a fair amount of double heat sinks, 12 flamers (Fired in separate weapon groups for penalty avoiding), and a large pulse laser. If you want to ensure damage, you can drop 6 flamers for small lasers, though I haven't since it is the only design I find you can run with that many. (Update: I dropped 8 of the flamers, and have 4 now, and 3 plasma cannon to stay with the heat theme, it deals abit more damage.)

-Adder-Warthog (Yes, accessory style): using 1 flamer is nice to pair with a 14 hvy mg warthog (ap gauss takes more room, and might not be best for all as you need to have a good aim), this setup up means you can fire the flamer with the hvy mg and really ruin their day.

-Stone Rhino-SR-6 (Actually No or Accessory use only): While in lower tiers, it had some fun with 3 er large lasers, 12 flamer combo, and could score decently, it is very reduced in its effectiveness at higher tiers. Boating will not be beneficial due to low mech speed and short range of flamers. It is recommended it be used with a er large laser, er micro combo.

-Nova-Prime or Breaker with prime arms (Surprisingly, No): While like stormcrow it can boat that many, it doesn't have enough armor and speed to properly last in a battle, short range maps may help to some degree, but if you want to be useful, you have to assume you could end up at Alpine Peaks or Boreal Vault in faction play. Accessory use only.

-Firestarter (For me...also no) While it is quirked for flamer range boost, it isn't enough still when you consider how easy even with high speed it is to kill one of these mechs, not many heat sinks possible either. Maybe once range gets to 150m like it should be...

-Vulcan(Yes, Accessory) Like Firestarter, it is quirked for flamers, but with actually enough armor to save your bacon and pull off some moves. The best one has 130 m flamer range when researched.

-Crusader-14 energy hard-point variant (Sorry, but no.) The reason here is because there is no protection from either structure or armor quirks, no heat reduction quirks, or range boost quirks.

-Orion (Yes, Accessory and Mild Boating) The variant with 4 energy, 2 missile and 1 ballistic does well with a 4 flamer, 2 srm 6, 1 magshot approach. Its crazy high armor quirks make it a tank in general, and works just fine when you got long-term cooking to do. Stay with the group though, its not immortal.

-Direwolf and Gargoyle (No, but works ok with the alternative heat weapon for clans, plasma cannon)(Update: a Gar-D with 12 flamers and 4 sml pulse makes a somewhat punchy brawler).

-Piranha (No) Despite the controversy around this mech, actually not good for flamers either. Before nerfs of exponential overheat and Energy HSL Limits, it actually was overpowered, but after these nerfs, it is just par for the course while many other mechs suffered for it, though vulcan and firestarter flamer range quirks somewhat remedy this, and other mechs have heat reduction quirks and various levels of range boosts.

-Supernova (Yes, Boating and Accessory) While slow, it is possible to put an insane number of heat sinks on this, making it good for flamer and plasma cannon use, it has a small energy range boost on some, and structure boosts too. Like Orion, it will tank some damage, but with additional heat sinks, it can do a long burn. I use the 6 flamer, 1 plasma cannon approach with 49 standard heat sinks, but likely need to do 4 plasma, 3 flamers at higher levels, and may need er ppcs or er large lasers in faction match, ruling out boating.

-Linebacker (Lower tiers only) Although I have done 8 flamers on these, low heat sink capacity will not work in your favor, and it is physically bigger to hit than stormcrow.

These are just some of many builds I have tried: some do work better than others, and it will come down to your own skill, internet, and computer speed.

Many mechs use the accessory style, but very few can get away with boating style, perhaps there is some variant with quirks I have not tried yet...Please share if you know of one.

Edited by SockSlayer, 26 August 2024 - 11:46 PM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

i don't really play light mechs much and that seems to be where Flamers are most often used. i would imagine that they would pair well with a bunch of MGs or even Magpulse/AP Gauss since those are low heat letting you keep those flamers running longer. use the flamers to keep the enemy hot (lets face it most of the "meta" builds these days run on the hot side) then just chew away with the ballistics. (makes me wonder if putting Flamers on my BJ- Arrow would work well. i can't remember how many energy points it has. i think its just the 2 but still it might work.)

[Horseman]

SockSlayer, on 13 August 2024 - 03:14 PM, said:

2. Accessory vs. Boating Styles: In accessory, there may be only one to three flamers that work to hold the foes heat up, while many normal weapons alpha the target, in contrast, the boating style (at times this is considered the true flamer player style) means flamer total will out number normal weapons and max I have found to be helpful is 12, past this, burn time will be too short

As far as I know, the heat output doesn't scale past fourth added Flamer, but instead you get a Ghost Heat penalty.

[SockSlayer]

VeeOt Dragon, on 13 August 2024 - 10:24 PM, said:

i don't really play light mechs much and that seems to be where Flamers are most often used. i would imagine that they would pair well with a bunch of MGs or even Magpulse/AP Gauss since those are low heat letting you keep those flamers running longer. use the flamers to keep the enemy hot (lets face it most of the "meta" builds these days run on the hot side) then just chew away with the ballistics. (makes me wonder if putting Flamers on my BJ- Arrow would work well. i can't remember how many energy points it has. i think its just the 2 but still it might work.)

Arrow would only have one weakness as I have tried that combo, its speed is slightly too low, but ok for small maps.

Horseman, on 14 August 2024 - 11:07 AM, said:

As far as I know, the heat output doesn't scale past fourth added Flamer, but instead you get a Ghost Heat penalty.

You do get the added heat and damage I believe, but it does get penalty. I do wish the HSL was 6 instead of 4 since most small weapons and even medium lasers are 6 hsl.

[VeeOt Dragon]

yeah even with max engine (LE since the BJ is easy to pick apart) its not super fast. just need patience and sort of stick with the bigger mechs till the enemy gets close. i currently run it with 6 HMGs and 2 ER LL so i snipe a bit until i get close. Flamers and MGs aren't something i use much to be honest since i am mostly a mid range player. honestly i play more TBMs these days than any other weapon system. (i found with its big Quirks that the Kintaro Hero makes a decent LRM platform though).

back to the the main discussion you just have to be patient most of the time with short range builds. it really doesn't pay much to run out way ahead of your team unless you just intend to do some spotting. i find things like Flamers work best when the real fighting starts. since then the enemy is likely already running hot so bringing the flamers to bare then is when they really shine. i have more experience being on the receiving end though. one of the troubles with flamers is that unless you are using the max number (before HSL) then they really don't do much against a mech thats built to run cooler. i sometimes just laugh when i light comes up with a single flamer to one of my cooler running builds because it doesn't do much but be a little annoying. since i tend to shoot for a minimum of around 1.40 heat management (not including things like L-AMS or JJS) Flamers aren't much of a problem. then again perhaps an increase to flamer range might be parented and if more mechs used them perhaps the high heat massive alphas would decrease a bit.

[SockSlayer]

Flamers are a very strange situation, as results strongly vary, as a boating style is only super effective against energy dominant mechs, which grow rarer as there is new gauss, magshot, light and proto ac2 and ac5, 14 hvy warthogs...In addition, they literally quirked night gyr to be Immune against flamers, though they take dismal damage. And they will only work if the following is done, run into a crowd of energy dominant mech or mechs with surprise element, your team all rushes with you, all while hoping your 90m short flamer stays close enough to not be wasted effort. Flamer players work harder than an ugly stripper. And while some agree something should be done, it just doesn't have the focus right now. I personally think they should have more HSL and Range on heavier chassis so assaults can equip them too, and set damage back to 0.3, reduce heat to just 4.0 instead of 4.5. So better scores can result.

[Void Angel]

Flamers are tough to balance because they essentially work by not allowing the other guy to play. Take the tabletop numbers of 3 heat to fire for 2 heat imparted to the target. You're spending more heat than you're dishing out, so on the face of it, it seems balanced - until you realize that 6 of them can keep a Pure Dual Gauss build in shutdown. Sure, it'd take about a minute to get there, but that's one of the coldest builds you can have - forget using energy weapons. Teamwork and range will theoretically take care of that with experienced enemies, but the troll builds would be brutally frustrating for both sides - either you get shut down without a chance, or your teammate is useless the entire match and you have to carry him like a boat anchor.

Thus you have the current state of Flamers: capped heat generation and ramping heat costs - and you still see troll builds, particularly with Lights that can force the requisite engagement range. It's annoying to see a canon weapon that's underpowered, but the way the weapon system interacts with enemy heat efficiency makes relatively small changes have outsized results.

Edited by Void Angel, 17 August 2024 - 02:21 PM.

[SockSlayer]

Void Angel, on 17 August 2024 - 02:20 PM, said:

Flamers are tough to balance because they essentially work by not allowing the other guy to play. Take the tabletop numbers of 3 heat to fire for 2 heat imparted to the target. You're spending more heat than you're dishing out, so on the face of it, it seems balanced - until you realize that 6 of them can keep a Pure Dual Gauss build in shutdown. Sure, it'd take about a minute to get there, but that's one of the coldest builds you can have - forget using energy weapons. Teamwork and range will theoretically take care of that with experienced enemies, but the troll builds would be brutally frustrating for both sides - either you get shut down without a chance, or your teammate is useless the entire match and you have to carry him like a boat anchor.

Thus you have the current state of Flamers: capped heat generation and ramping heat costs - and you still see troll builds, particularly with Lights that can force the requisite engagement range. It's annoying to see a canon weapon that's underpowered, but the way the weapon system interacts with enemy heat efficiency makes relatively small changes have outsized results.

I agree it can be strong in its element, but that isn't as often as one might think.

Many troll builds don't actually score high even if they manage a shutdown or mutliple.

Personally, I would like if they pushed it a little bit back to the original flamer, like 0.3 damage, and 3.5 - 4.0 heat damage instead of 4.5, just enough where you don't end up with extreme damage disappointment, and where overheating a foe takes skill, as it should be.

Other weapons have all been adjusted repeatedly over time, and this one only needs a small adjustment.

Edited by SockSlayer, 17 August 2024 - 07:02 PM.

[Void Angel]

Well, trolls don't care if their builds are viable, per se. They care about ruining someone else's match; they're griefing. The main difficulty in balancing the flamer is that there is no sweet spot where heat transfer and damage balance. Flamers' effectiveness varies wildly depending on how hot the enemy is - there's no single point where the trade-off between poor damage/heat, heat transfer, and poor dps will balance out. To field effective, balanced flamers, you'd have to try and find some kind of statistical mean based on what builds are in use, and that will go out the window as soon as the meta changes. It's just hard.

I'm not against increasing damage and reducing heat transfer, but... aren't we just designing toward a half-ton x-pulse laser?

[SockSlayer]

Not exactly, as flamers are listed as having a projectile speed, so not quite a laser, its damage would still be way lower then even a light mg, and still hold more overheating ability than any other weapon.

I am suggesting it be finally balanced as the first version had too much damage, but no overheating ability, and the current flamer is the opposite with too much griefing heat and not enough regular damage.

In other words, finally put it in its sweet spot, so that both damage and overheating a foe will take skill. If the devs felt shy about that, they could even do only 0.2 damage and 3.0 - 4.0 heat damage to pull it away from griefing and more towards skill use. 4.5 heat damage was too much, and removing so much regular damage led to this problem (it was 0.7 regular damage). It will take only small adjustment at the most. Too much, and its almost back to original flamer, too little, and the trolling continues. Delicate balance for sure.

Since all this testing, I am trying to be gingerly with the value adjustments, it is hard to see how much of each is needed, but for sure...0.2 regular damage and 3 to 4 heat damage would at least ease the two major issues that I see (Griefing for those who keep getting shutdown too much, and extremely poor scores for those who use the flamers due to insufficient damage).


ER Flamer and Heavy Flamer are also lore, and if they ever show up, flamers will need reevaluation anyway. Plus the meta changes, like you said.

If I had to make a quote, it would be this: "May the flamer continue to be the weakest, but don't let the players using them or being hit by them know that."

Edited by SockSlayer, 18 August 2024 - 07:49 PM.

[Void Angel]

Flamer "velocity" is an artifact of how MechDB parses information. Flamers, like machine guns, may have a velocity stat, but they are hitscan weapons.

What I'm trying to get at with Flamers is that there may not be a good balance point without a major redesign of the weapon system. It's a lot like Rogues in World of Warcraft. Every PvP season, Rogues would start to cry bitter tears: "waah, waah, we can't kill people!" What was happening was that as people started to obtain the Tier 2 PvP gear for that season, overall time to kill was increasing throughout the season, but Rogues (if you didn't know) relied on a cycle of stun cooldowns to deal unanswered damage (similar to flamer trolls.) As TTK increased, their victims were starting to be able to play the game and fight back. But as soon as the Rogues started to get Tier 3 gear, they would start surviving long enough for that stunlock cycle to finish its cooldowns.

What I'm getting at is that any Flamer with significant heat transfer has a similar - though not identical - problem: its effectiveness is going to scale wildly with how well enemies can deal with that extra heat. If they can deal with it, you've got an inferior half-ton xpulse or beam laser; if they can't, you're effectively just not letting them play.

What you're suggesting could be a good direction, but I'm not sure how effective it can be given current design constraints.

[SockSlayer]

That is a reason why I am still testing them, because even my initial gut reaction was like "always weak", where it has now moved to "slightly underpowered". I originally was thinking 0.35 regular damage, but after reanalyzing, that was too much, thus my current 0.2 damage value.

A large issue is how scoring works, griefs, self-destructs, are not adding to score very much, meaning they can't really be used past low tiers very well. But at the same time, flamers are not a damage weapon, but maybe a hint more can be allowed.

Since griefing is still an issue, just soften the heat damage ranging between 3.0 to 4.0, this value I need to closer analyze to determine where it seems like it should be, though at the moment I am pretty sure on the 0.2 regular damage, better to make small changes to not overshoot the sweet spot.

Update: Tried a 3 flamer arctic cheetah, it did overheat mechs a little more often then what I expected, so 0.2 damage and 4.0 heat damage is my official suggestion. It will ease the griefing issue, and actually allow a somewhat better score since overheating mechs and self-destructs don't count. I think it isn't a large change, but maybe enough to lessen the unease the weapon has.

Edited by SockSlayer, 21 August 2024 - 08:03 PM.

[SockSlayer]

Another Update: If I remember right, engines heat sinks are twice as effective...so bigger engines can manage heat possibly better, meaning heavies and assaults may not be able to chase with flamers, but they certainly can fire them the longest. I failed to fully notice this effect, and really big engines have a noticeable effect.

Edited by SockSlayer, 25 August 2024 - 12:22 AM.

[Void Angel]

No, that changed a while back. Integral engine heat sinks function normally now; it's part of why the current meta is what it is.

You've also been told the urban-legend version of the old "true double" bug. It's not the heat sinks "in" the engine that were doubled, but the ones that were part of the engine. Essentially, if you could see it on the mechlab paper doll, it wasn't a true double, meaning that the benefit capped out once you hit 250 engine rating. Assaults with flamers can simply pile on more heat sinks for a higher engine cap.

Edited by Void Angel, 25 August 2024 - 09:53 AM.

[SockSlayer]

I see...it is strange though, I ended the 12 flamer, 1 large pulse laser stormcrow, in favor of 3 plasma, 4 flamers. Then made the gargoyle I had 12 flamers, 4 sml pulse for close range brawling. It seemed to be able to handle the heat better, -7.5 heat quirk is on it, but it felt more than that which is nice.

[Void Angel]

Heat generation quirks are more powerful than you expect them to be - like cooldown, before the meta moved to high-heat alpha builds. The reason in both cases is that the quirk grants increasing returns.

Consider a hypothetical weapon - a Heavy Flamer. Our fictitious meme weapon will do 10 damage every second for 10 heat, at that's not important meters. So that's 1 Damage per Heat. If we quirk the weapon for 10% heat reduction, it will do 10 damage for 9 heat.. which is 1.11 DpH. Double that heat reduction to pay 8 heat... and your DpH rises to 1.25. Note that the increase in DpH is not linear. If we double the reduction again to 40%, DpH rises to 1.67 - 50% higher than 10% and a 67% increase in actual weapon efficiency for a 50% increase in quirk.

Now, these numbers are hypothetical, but you're still getting a decent amount of heat reduction from the skill tree, and that 7.5% quirk stacks on top of that, so I'm not surprised the 'mech runs cooler.

I think the guy posting above was right and there is a cap on how many flamers can be effectively used at once, though. Check it in the testing grounds on a target 'mech. If your 12 flamers are actually adding heat, you should be able to see the difference in how long it takes you to shut them down - use the match timer as a stopwatch. I'd do it myself, but I'm limited in my interwebs right now.

[SockSlayer]

Well, that heat reduction quirk gives quite abit more time, and against medium or large laser builds, its really is severe in its effectiveness...often causing death. Part of the issue is up against 14 hvy mg warthogs...granted it serves its purpose against energy types. Guess the root issue I have with them, is shutdowns and self-destructs don't pay out, and if no special reward for those, the easiest fix is slightly reduce heat damage dealt, and raise damage to 0.2 at least. Light MGs will still have 4x more firepower even with that.

A new thought comes to my mind...flamer heat dealt should be kind of like trying to deal damage to heavy mechs...not too quick to die from damage, or to overheat from heat damage. Quick enough to add suspense, but not instantly as flames don't work that way.

Truthfully, just like flamers have exponential heat generation, it should work that way for heat damage and regular damage too, especially if you hold a flamer in the same spot, but that would be more code...so probably not.

[Void Angel]

Flamer's effectiveness against heat-capped alpha builds like This One comes from the fact that the target is applying the heat for you - the Flamers just screw with their ability to cool down again. It's also the main reason the weapons are how they are today: if significant heat transfer was sustainable, flamers would become oppressive against anyone who was overheated, while remaining useless against cool builds. This isn't conjecture; heat transfer was tested (or implemented? been a while) and the results were... not good. The ramping heat cost is the fix for that - it's intended to allow flamers to still impart significant heat without being able to lock people down forever. Ramping flamer heat up with its heat costs defeats much of that purpose.

[SockSlayer]

You are right, they did test them, and it was bad. That is why they put in the 90% heat cap, along with all the nerfs to date...so all flamers actually do is get you to 90%...They never overheat anything.

I think there is a way to make them better for all players, the way they are now are barely fun for flamer players or those getting hit by them.

-For user, its no fun trying to kiss your foe with 90m range while getting punched out, and get a poor score. The only reason pirahna worked is a skilled driver didn't get hit, simple as that, poor basis for other mechs.

-For foe, it still will spike your heat insanely, sometimes too quick for reaction.

-Truth is, flamers are just so...variable, a ton can be done with them in implementation, but how to make them work for all...I feel like they never have hit that balance...why else do I rarely see them being used seriously?

-In general, they need more range and regular damage, while keeping the emphasis on being a heat weapon.

Even ECM was nerfed to 90m, and they voted it was too small on its range and increased it back to 120m, that is how the flamer players feel about the range right now.

I have tried every imaginable use of them, from a single burner, to multiple use, in all cases they end up hotter than er ppcs and er large lasers...that's just wild and broken, and even with 50 heat sinks, you will still only have a minute to use them...which means waiting a whole minute before using them again. No other weapon in the game has such a large disadvantage. The only other weapon I can name is IS LRMs that has to be 180m or further, and even that won't be an issue on faster mechs. At the very least, the devs need to relook at the flamer, especially on IS side where they are dramatically weak, except on firestarters.

Edited by SockSlayer, 01 September 2024 - 08:39 PM.

[Void Angel]

They don't technically force people to overheat - but they can force you to accept overheat in order to fire any of your weapons. Essentially, Flamers shut down every hot build, but have a markedly reduced impact on cold ones. So for any noticeable degree of heat damage, you have a weapon that interferes with the balance factors for literally every weapon in the game, but to a different degree based on build. How do you balance that against player responses? If you find the exact middle ground where Flamers are exactly as strong against hot builds as they are weak against cool builds, you're basically flipping a coin to see what kind of enemies you get. On the other side, players who aren't running Flamers are going to gravitate away from hot builds when they get melted down by their own lasers. When that happens, Flamers become weaker in practice than their theoretical degree of balance - and if we start adjusting Flamers to balance between the new mix of builds, we're locked into chasing a target that we're moving ourselves.

Of course, Flamers are hyper-short ranged and very light weapons (which is why they're so unfun to play against; 2 tons of gun and some heat sinks, negating an entire build) so they're not going to suddenly dominate the battlefield - but the effect they do have can make the game better, or worse...

The reason Flamers are hotter than any weapon on the planet is that their heat ramps up, of course. Remove the need for that balance constraint, and you'd be able to run them much more easily. But we'd have to solve the oppositional balancing problem in order to get to that point. I think in order to do that you're going to need to make Flamers a damage weapon with a heat sideline.