Tried out the 'nerfed' Flamethrower. It's still good?

[zatgeneral]

I've played quite a few games to see what hand why people are complaining about the flamethrower and I can't say I see it. Even from the front, if you aim at the ground, you can still have the flames lick the underside of a charger, setting it on fire. Dive to the side and set the charger's rear on fire.
The flamethrower is still great at dealing with chaff. Its excellent area denial is still there and tbh, killing chargers with AT weapons was always the way to go anyway.
I really don't see the issue aside from the visuals. I 100% agree that the new visuals aren't as good as the new ones.
So like, aside from just being able to W M1 one's way through the bugs, what's so bad about the 'nerf' to the flame thrower? Last I checked, this was Helldivers, not TF2.

EDIT: August 14
Flamethrower is still good. Cleans up chaff as its supposed to and keeps hunters from bothering my teammates. In turn, the recoiless guy can reload without being harassed and takes down chargers from a safe distance.
The impailer is the only real thing that throws a wrench in our coordination and makes long range AT really necessary if stratagems aren't available.

EDIT: August 26
Flamethrower still seems fine around difficulty 7. Though some changes make it and my beloved HMG not so useful against Dif 8 and higher for bugs. Playing around with the airburst was a good time but seemed to be effective in the fight hands? Jumpjet and flamethrower seem to be a necessary pairing at very high difficulties! As usual, strategems and AT are carrying the charger spawns for us but the flamethrower's fantastic clearing is much appreciated as a delaying tactic for AT reloads.

[Tahla]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Netaris:

No, you haven't get it, as I've avoided to use the most OP weapons. I handicap myself when I find things too easy and I like to change the weapons I use to keep things new and interesting, I also love to learn about some hidden mechanics of the game. I also like to beat the highest difficulty with beginners weapons and stratagems, just for the laugh. I don't try to "remove the ladder" for others, I try to plead for some variety in game. As I've said, peoples are different, they don't love the same things and that's normal. It's normal that casuals and beginners can learn the game in lower difficulties, facing less chalenges and sometimes I go in lower difficulties to help new players to learn about the game. I want everyone to improve and "git gud" and you don't "git gud" if you cheese your way through.

I want more peoples to join me in higher difficulties, but I want it to be legit, no cheese, no brainless tricks. If you're unable to play your difficulty after one little nerf on a few weapons, it mean you don't belong here and need to reconsider your actual level in this game. That's how I think about all this.

You want people to get good on your terms not theirs. Why is it your right to tell them how to play and what to find fun? What is cheesy about going into near melee range against the melee faction, against enemies that can outrun you and crush you in one hit? What's more skillful and fun, going in close with a flamethrower or shooting a rocket launcher from 100 meters away and the thing just dies?

[Netaris]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Tahla:

You want people to get good on your terms not theirs. Why is it your right to tell them how to play and what to find fun? What is cheesy about going into near melee range against the melee faction, against enemies that can outrun you and crush you in one hit? What's more skillful and fun, going in close with a flamethrower or shooting a rocket launcher from 100 meters away and the thing just dies?

Like I've said, different difficulties for different peoples. Casuals need their own space, beginners too and the tryhard like me need one for them. As I don't argue that lower difficulties aren't difficult enough, I'll appreaciate if you can stop speaking about higher difficulties being too hard. Beginners are legitimate to judge the lower diff, casual are legitimate to judge the medium diff and tryhard are legitimate to judge the higher diffs. It's as simple as that.

Previously, difficulty 9 on the bug side was very boring and the real "difficulty" was the bad teammates taking silly decisions and doing questionnable things. Diff 10 now is way better from my point of view. All I ask is for you to don't interfere with my fun the same way I don't interfere with yours. I'm totally fine with lower difficulties being available, but if you want to climb, you'll have to do it the hard way, no cheese.

[Tahla]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Netaris:

Like I've said, different difficulties for different peoples. Casuals need their own space, beginners too and the tryhard like me need one for them. As I don't argue that lower difficulties aren't difficult enough, I'll appreaciate if you can stop speaking about higher difficulties being too hard. Beginners are legitimate to judge the lower diff, casual are legitimate to judge the medium diff and tryhard are legitimate to judge the higher diffs. It's as simple as that.

Previously, difficulty 9 on the bug side was very boring and the real "difficulty" was the bad teammates taking silly decisions and doing questionnable things. Diff 10 now is way better from my point of view. All I ask is for you to don't interfere with my fun the same I don't interfere with yours. I'm totally fine with lower difficulties being available, but if you want to climb, you'll have to do it the hard way, no cheese.

Nice deflection, I never said higher difficulties are too hard, I said you want to keep people from entering them and ruining your game by not knowing what they do or you want them to play the way YOU want them to play (by not using "cheese"). If you are as good as you claim to be, then helping those that struggle shouldn't be a problem for you.

Helldivers 2 isn't a game for try hards, it's so easy it's boring sometimes. I'm soloing super helldive and think it's too easy since the only thing they added is the mega outpost. I don't really feel a difference between helldive and super helldive to be honest.

[GoreTiger]

Opprinnelig skrevet av zatgeneral:

I've played quite a few games to see what hand why people are complaining about the flamethrower and I can't say I see it. Even from the front, if you aim at the ground, you can still have the flames lick the underside of a charger, setting it on fire. Dive to the side and set the charger's rear on fire.
The flamethrower is still great at dealing with chaff. Its excellent area denial is still there and tbh, killing chargers with AT weapons was always the way to go anyway.
I really don't see the issue aside from the visuals. I 100% agree that the new visuals aren't as good as the new ones.
So like, aside from just being able to W M1 one's way through the bugs, what's so bad about the 'nerf' to the flame thrower? Last I checked, this was Helldivers, not TF2.

Careful, You're breaking through the brainrot herd mentality that plagues this forum currently. The herd won't like that.


You're 100% correct tho. Took the flamethrower tonight for a spin, Killed a few chargers with it. Watched a squadmate kill a charger with it. Thing feels fine. It's a massive skill issue at this point when people complain about a "nerf"

[Frost Spectre]

It is still good, medium armor is nothing to it, heavy armor now pretty much immune. Heavy armor enemies are pretty much not meant for the flamer.

Reasoning why the fire won't hurt chargers armor, is that the armor has heat insulating layers, usually air bubbles. Their armor won't heat up fast enough with basic flames, thus not affect the soft tissues.

[GoreTiger]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Frost Spectre:

It is still good, medium armor is nothing to it, heavy armor now pretty much immune. Heavy armor enemies are pretty much not meant for the flamer.

Reasoning why the fire won't hurt chargers armor, is that the armor has heat insulating layers, usually air bubbles. Their armor won't heat up fast enough with basic flames, thus not affect the soft tissues.

If you're facing a charge from the front, Aim at the ground under it. The flames will bounce off the ground and cook it's exposed underbelly. Killed two chargers earlier doing this. Also most of the time you can flame the underbelly of their tails this way also.

[Netaris]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Tahla:

Nice deflection, I never said higher difficulties are too hard, I said you want to keep people from entering them and ruining your game by not knowing what they do or you want them to play the way YOU want them to play (by not using "cheese"). If you are as good as you claim to be, then helping those that struggle shouldn't be a problem for you.

Helldivers 2 isn't a game for try hards, it's so easy it's boring sometimes. I'm soloing super helldive and think it's too easy since the only thing they added is the mega outpost. I don't really feel a difference between helldive and super helldive to be honest.

Well, I don't get what you're pissed about in that case. It's not a solo game you know, it's a coop game and the teamplay is an important part of the skills you need to devellop. And it's often easier to go solo than to deal with bad teammates too ...

My opinion is the highest difficulties shouldn't be that easy to solo to begin with. I hope they'll add additional ones for those who enjoy a chalenge. I've eard about difficulties up to 12 in the future. But I don't know if they'll go as far as the 15 difficulties they had in the first game.

[Hara]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Frost Spectre:

It is still good, medium armor is nothing to it, heavy armor now pretty much immune. Heavy armor enemies are pretty much not meant for the flamer.

Reasoning why the fire won't hurt chargers armor, is that the armor has heat insulating layers, usually air bubbles. Their armor won't heat up fast enough with basic flames, thus not affect the soft tissues.

I'd argue it worked not by heating up the armor, but by way of saturating everything including all the joints and unarmored parts. It's not perfectly encapsulated in armor since it needs to be able to move.

[Tahla]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Netaris:

Well, I don't get what you're pissed about in that case. It's not a solo game you know, it's a coop game and the teamplay is an important part of the skills you need to devellop. And it's often easier to go solo than to deal with bad teammates too ...

My opinion is the highest difficulties shouldn't be that easy to solo to begin with. I hope they'll add additional ones for those who enjoy a chalenge. I've eard about difficulties up to 12 in the future. But I don't know if they'll go as far as the 15 difficulties they had in the first game.

I'm not pissed, I'm just pointing out that something doesn't add up with your reasoning. You say you want a challenge in a co-op game, yet you don't want to help people that struggle that would give you that challenge and team play. You also don't want other to use whatever you consider "cheese", whatever that may be, is using anti tank rockets cheese since it's so much easier than whatever the flamethrower did?

The problem with the difficulty in the game is that the devs don't even know how the game really plays on higher difficulties, just increasing the number of enemy spawns doesn't really make it that much more difficult, it just make it go slower and overstay it's welcome. If they wanted difficulty they could give us say a carry item that we can't drop or that if destroyed will fail the mission. They could add dynamic events to the map like priority missions that temporarily overwrite your main mission. For example an SEAF column is transporting supplies or a weapon across the battlefield and you have to defend it before you can go back to your real mission now putting you under time pressure.

[Netaris]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Tahla:

I'm not pissed, I'm just pointing out that something doesn't add up with your reasoning. You say you want a challenge in a co-op game, yet you don't want to help people that struggle that would give you that challenge and team play. You also don't want other to use whatever you consider "cheese", whatever that may be, is using anti tank rockets cheese since it's so much easier than whatever the flamethrower did?

The problem with the difficulty in the game is that the devs don't even know how the game really plays on higher difficulties, just increasing the number of enemy spawns doesn't really make it that much more difficult, it just make it go slower and overstay it's welcome. If they wanted difficulty they could give us say a carry item that we can't drop or that if destroyed will fail the mission. They could add dynamic events to the map like priority missions that temporarily overwrite your main mission. For example an SEAF column is transporting supplies or a weapon across the battlefield and you have to defend it before you can go back to your real mission now putting you under time pressure.

You're not supposed to magically get through armor with a flamethrower, and the trick to obliterate a charger's leg with it wasn't normal. It was cheese from my point of view, as chargers normally can't be dealt with that easilly.

You seem to reason on quantity, as you argue that more peoples may join higher difficulties if given better weapons. I reason on quality, I want to have good teammates and it take time and efforts to become good. I want the higher difficulties to be a real chalenge and the peoples playing in those difficulties to deserve their place.

I want peoples to join higher difficulties, when they're ready for it. If you rely entirelly on the breaker incendiairy or the flamethrower charger leg's cheese, then I prefer that person to stay at a lower level of difficulty as he's not quite ready for more.

The flamethrower nerf isn't nearly as brutal and unjustified as the railgun nerf back in time. I find this nerf really reasonnable and I don't think it change much, outside of removing a way to cheese chargers. Especially as this very update also bringed a lot of buffs nobody seem to talk about here ...

Also, using anti-tank isn't easier to deal with chargers, mainly because of the ammo management. You can deal with several chargers in a very short time with the pre-patched flamethrower. Even the Quasar request more efforts to deal with several chargers than that. I've seen peoples able to delete in seconds 3 or 4 chargers with their flamethrower and that's not normal. If you want to kill a lot of chargers in one go, you're supposed to lure them, block them in place and launch a stratagem at those. What's not easier at all than just burning their legs from the front. This nerf is totally justified from my point of view.

[Malidictus]

To be honest, the Flamethrower was never that good at crowd control even before the nerfs. It could do work if you managed to pull bugs through a choke point, since you could burn through the lot of them in a single stream (before it bounced), but that's it. The flamethrower itself does fairly little direct DPS, the burning DOT does a lot of total damage but with fairly low DPS and the weapon has no stagger. So much of the time, tougher bugs would just walk through your stream and hit you before dying, probably causing you to catch fire in the process.

I really wanted to like the support flamer. I tried using it so many times. And sure, it could be situationally reasonably effective. I never shook the feeling that I could do just as well with a machinegun, though.

[Faaxen]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Malidictus:

To be honest, the Flamethrower was never that good at crowd control even before the nerfs. It could do work if you managed to pull bugs through a choke point, since you could burn through the lot of them in a single stream (before it bounced), but that's it. The flamethrower itself does fairly little direct DPS, the burning DOT does a lot of total damage but with fairly low DPS and the weapon has no stagger. So much of the time, tougher bugs would just walk through your stream and hit you before dying, probably causing you to catch fire in the process.

I really wanted to like the support flamer. I tried using it so many times. And sure, it could be situationally reasonably effective. I never shook the feeling that I could do just as well with a machinegun, though.

It's almost as if you're meant to gain said stagger from other options when using the flamethrower

[GoreTiger]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Malidictus:

To be honest, the Flamethrower was never that good at crowd control even before the nerfs. It could do work if you managed to pull bugs through a choke point, since you could burn through the lot of them in a single stream (before it bounced), but that's it. The flamethrower itself does fairly little direct DPS, the burning DOT does a lot of total damage but with fairly low DPS and the weapon has no stagger. So much of the time, tougher bugs would just walk through your stream and hit you before dying, probably causing you to catch fire in the process.

I really wanted to like the support flamer. I tried using it so many times. And sure, it could be situationally reasonably effective. I never shook the feeling that I could do just as well with a machinegun, though.

I've been taking the new warbond flamer for a primary, With the machinegun as my support strat and then the autocannon if I need a big boom cannon. Having a blast on T9. Warbond flamer is fun, you just can't stand still when using it.

[Malidictus]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Faaxen:

It's almost as if you're meant to gain said stagger from other options when using the flamethrower

I'm not sure what options I'm supposed to gain stagger from while using a weapon which locks my controls, but that's not the point. I can get stagger from using an LMG while getting very similar crowd-clearing capability. It's not like I'm claiming that the flamethrower was trash. It was a decent weapon. It just wasn't all that good at the one thing it was supposed to excel at.

[Tahla]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Netaris:

You're not supposed to magically get through armor with a flamethrower, and the trick to obliterate a charger's leg with it wasn't normal. It was cheese from my point of view, as chargers normally can't be dealt with that easilly.

You seem to reason on quantity, as you argue that more peoples may join higher difficulties if given better weapons. I reason on quality, I want to have good teammates and it take time and efforts to become good. I want the higher difficulties to be a real chalenge and the peoples playing in those difficulties to deserve their place.

I want peoples to join higher difficulties, when they're ready for it. If you rely entirelly on the breaker incendiairy or the flamethrower charger leg's cheese, then I prefer that person to stay at a lower level of difficulty as he's not quite ready for more.

The flamethrower nerf isn't nearly as brutal and unjustified as the railgun nerf back in time. I find this nerf really reasonnable and I don't think it change much, outside of removing a way to cheese chargers. Especially as this very update also bringed a lot of buffs nobody seem to talk about here ...

Also, using anti-tank isn't easier to deal with chargers, mainly because of the ammo management. You can deal with several chargers in a very short time with the pre-patched flamethrower. Even the Quasar request more efforts to deal with several chargers than that. I've seen peoples able to delete in seconds 3 or 4 chargers with their flamethrower and that's not normal. If you want to kill a lot of chargers in one go, you're supposed to lure them, block them in place and launch a stratagem at those. What's not easier at all than just burning their legs from the front. This nerf is totally justified from my point of view.

You know how heat transfer works and that it "magically" spreads through an object and that small objects like say charger legs require less heat energy to heat up? You don't need really high temperatures to make your proteins congeal and your muscles denature. At the very least it should make the charger unable to... charge. But like I said, Arrowhead only likes realism if it works against the players. You also seem to conveniently forget that higher difficulties have more chargers, more behemoth chargers and as you yourself pointed out the ammo economy of AT weapons is abysmal against them. Also there certainly aren't any bugs in the game that when your 500kg sticks into a charger it sometimes comes out without a scratch. If you're suppose to lure and block chargers, then I guess stun grenades are the next cheese you will not want people to use, or EMS.

And yes I absolutely want more people to enjoy the game at higher difficulties, even though there's absolutely no point in playing higher difficulties because there are actually less rewards to find there (lower SC rates and all that). Good team mates don't grow on trees, they're not magically ready for super helldive if they never get to play it until some random on the internet tells them they may enter. If they unlocked it, they're eligible to play and learn.

If you wanted the higher difficulties do be a real challenge you would want newer people playing with you so you could do more work. If you really wanted team play you'd show them how it's done. To me it sounds like you want to be carried by good players or you hate playing with others and only do it because it's more efficient.