Hi
As most of us know the flamethrower is AoE damage, and it applies burn to the targets. However the AoE damage it deals is limited to 3 Targets, Therefore if you are attacking a group of let’s say 6 Skritts, and you are using flamethrower you only hit 3 of them. Even though the 3 other Skritts were within the attack range and the visual flames, they are not being hit, To me it seems somewhat obscure that a “FlameThrower” have limited targets, it’s a bloody flamethrower.. Now a Warrior with Greatsword using will hit 3 Targets as well, even though it’s AoE, but with greatsword it actually make some sense. Because as you swing the sword, you have some power behind the swing and the more obstacles you hit the more power you lose, and therefore it does not have enough power behind the swing to hit more than 3 targets. That is if you have to put some logic behind the limitations and balance. However the warrior attack Whirling Axe are not limited to 3 targets, it goes above the limitation.
The flamethrower are also limited to 3 targets, and it makes no sense why that is. The flames do not lose power until they vanish into thin air. So I do not see any reasoning why that is, surely it cannot be for balancing issues, the flamethrower is considered rather weak, and several people have already suggested to increase the damage output of the flamethrower. Not to mention that you do not apply burning to targets unless they were hit by the last damage tick from the flamethrower, and then it is only 1 sec burning.
The 1 second of burning goes off before you start the animation to attack with the flame thrower again(AutoAttack 1).
If they added 1 sec of burning at the first hit, then it would make sense they they are actually “on fire” when you spraying flames all over their body.
I do not suggest to increase the over all damage of the flamethrower, however I do suggest to remove the target limitation of flamethrower, since the damage range is rather low, and for this to make actual sense. Also add at least 1 sec of burning at the first hit, as well as the current last hit. Since the attack animation lasts about 2sec that should leave 1sec where the target is not actually burning even though the flames clearly incinerate the target. This would mean that the target takes 2sec burning damage each time you press Attack1. I would even suggest that it should be 3sec of burning in total with a duration of 1sec each, instead of 1 sec on last tick.
But applying the “Burn” condition when the target is actually lit on fire, would make sense to me. =)
Please keep in mind that this topic is about the target limitation and the burning condition. Rather than the visual travel distance on the flames, which is a bit off on some races, Charr for instances.
Flames travels further than the range in which the actual damage applies. And this topic is not mean for that discussion. But the target limitation and burning condition.
I would like to hear what other people think about this, please note that the flamethrower on low level is rather strong compared to the damage output on high level, it is not up to par. So please do not make an assumption based on your low level flamethrower engineer.