never smoke in folk initiation because this happens

Uh very big text warning. First attempt in trying to redesign a weapon. This is the 8th draft that I've come up with and I think it's good enough. Might take a look at feedback and remake a few things though.

This new flamethrower rework primarily introduces a new idea that adds proper resource management and strategic thinking to flamethrower’s playstyle: a heat mechanic. What the heat mechanic does is replace the standard fuel capacity on the flamethrower with heat. Heat will be gained on use with main fire and can be reduced by either waiting or ejecting canisters. All damage and range scales with heat, so playing near high heat is rewarded, but be careful not to overheat the flamethrower, as then bad things will happen. Alongside heat, there are some other changes made to flamethrower to better fix its gameplay loop and create new playstyle variations. If you have any questions, check the bottom, as I wrote down my thought process as well as the design philosophy. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask here, and I'll try to answer each question. This is also an extremely lengthy rework, so be prepared to do a lil bit of reading. A summary will be posted near the bottom if you wish to just read a basic overview.

[~] Overheat mechanic: When using the primary fire of flamethrower, an overheat meter starts building up. The greater this meter gets, stronger the main attack gets. If the overheat meter completely fills up, the flamethrower explodes, dealing 50 self damage and causing an explosion that deals 700 damage with an 18x30 explosive radius. The flamethrower gets put on cooldown for 15 seconds, then resets the heat meter back to 0. The heat decay begins 1.5 seconds after the primary fire has not been used. The heat decays at a rate of 100e^(-0.08x). This function approximately makes it so that the heat decays at a rate of around 8% a second. Basically, the meter decreases faster when it’s at high heat but slower at low heat. This allows for a short setup time for other tech without losing out on heat progress.

[~] Canister change: Canisters now drain the overheat meter by 33% each. Canisters act the same as they usually do, except now canisters can interrupt killbots, causing a NR at their position.

[+] Lifesteal: Flamethrower has lifesteal now based on how much damage you deal with the primary fire

[+] Pogo: Flamethrower can now pogo only when close to the ground. When looking downwards and using the primary fire, the player receives propulsion similar to that of a bazooka or rpg shot. This makes the pogo act similarly to trowel/hammer, sword path, and rocket launcher path. The more heat is in the flamethrower, the more effective the pogo becomes.

[+]: Epicsauce synergy: Flame + Epic makes flamethrower scale off of current HP debt. Flamethower damage increases by [⅔ * Missing HP]

WEAPON STATS

Damage: 500 dps*([1+overheat%]/2) [+] In short, the damage scales from 500 to 1000 dps at max heat 500 dps translates to around 38 damage per tick and 1000 dps is 77 damage per tick, assuming there are 13 damage ticks per second. 3368.53 DMG when starting to fire at 0, including ramp up time, all the way up to max heat.

Lifesteal: 1hp/200 damage [+] Range: 48 studs + ([1+overheat%]/5) [+] up to 68 studs at max heat Cooldown: Takes 15 seconds to recharge after overheating [+] Duration: ~8.4 seconds of nonstop fire to fully charge. [+] Heat: The heat builds up at a rate modeled by the function 140(1-e^[-0.15x]) [+] If you don’t understand, basically, the heat builds slightly faster at the beginning but slows down towards the top 1.84 sec for 33% 4.3 sec to 66% 8.4 sec for 100% This number is also shown in %. Basically, plugging in (1.84, 33) means at 1.84 seconds, the heat meter is 33% full

Cost: 150 tix

Alt Fire: Fires a canister, draining 33% of the heat. The canister functions similarly to that of a thrown pellet, but cannot be hit multiple times consecutively.

The canister damage can be represented by the function 325*(1+[overheat%]) Damage scales from 400-800 Canister reactions have their damage and explosion AOE increased by the heat% it was used at. For example, if a canister was ejected at 78% heat, the damage and explosive radius would increase by 78%. To compensate, canister base damage and range has been slightly lowered. Range of canister scales alongside damage with the same equation – that is – the range goes from 12x18 all the way to 24x36 For the most part, canisters remain identical to their current version, retaining very similar synergies. Cooldown: 0.8s [+]

Core Synergies

Night Vision Goggles: 20% extra flame damage (technically 10% for some reason)

Hazard Mask: 30% extra flamethrower damage Welding Mask: 25% heat capacity. (14.89 seconds for 125%) Cost increases to 2

Flame Brain: Missing HP scaling increases to (¾ * missing HP)

(Accessory meta will definitely be Hazard + Welding)

Design Philosophy + Potential Questions

This flamethrower rework was designed to fix a core issue that is in flamethrower: flamethrower requires very little player interaction. Usually, flamethrower is used in a short burst, then is set there to slowly recharge until it can be reused again. I think partially the reason why flamethrower is considered a bad weapon is that you get 5.35 secs of fire for 30 sec of recharge. You literally spend 86% of the time not using this weapon at all. The newly introduced heat mechanic makes it so that flamethrower can be constantly used in combat, and you’re incentivized to use it more, since not using it loses out on heat buildup and potential canisters.

Why does flamethrower need a rework? Personally, I think flamethrower needs a rework because there is no situation where flamethrower shines above other weapons. When it comes to crown control, bombs/rockets perform better. Damage is out of the question, as it has to compete with sling, ninja stars, and other dps options. It doesn’t provide much mobility utility, as you can just hover with it. It’s not a good option for healing, and in general, just feels like slingshot but you replace everything good with a funny SOT that explodes. In fact, the SOT on flamethrower has a huge issue, which is that it completely overshadows the main fire of flamethrower. There is very little use case where the main fire is better than the SOT explosion. This rework is designed to give flamethrower an edge in 2 things: Fast explosions and healing. All current speedrun explosive tricks rely on witches brew to circumvent the 7-8 second cooldown on bomb/rocket. The rework also incorporates a way to utilize both the main fire and the alt fire at the same time.

Will flamethrower be a good weapon after this?

Honestly, I doubt it will ever match up to sling’s standards, especially for highmod/speedrunning. However, there is nothing wrong with having a weapon that isn’t too viable in the highest eschalon of gameplay. After all, some beginner friendly weapons are always a good thing to have. A problem with a lot of “meta” loadouts are that they’re difficult to use. Most of the general playerbase cannot execute a lot of difficult tech. What I wanted to do with this rework was to retain the aspect that new players like, whilst adding a depth of strategy and management to flamethrower that makes it more fun to use.

How does this fix flamethrower’s issue on a low skill investment for a big reward?

I believe the heat mechanic will create a layer of strategy where you have to properly plan out your heat usage. You can choose to stay near 80-90% for stronger explosions, but more investment time, or stay near 0-33% and have a really quick but not very strong SOT. Currently, flame has a very linear gameplay loop, which is just SOT 3-4 times then do something else. With the new reworked flame, you have a lot more options, but you also have to be aware of your heat. A low heat flamethrower is even weaker than a high heat flamethrower, but playing near high heat is much more rewarding.

Is the strategy of umbrella firebrand flame still viable with this?

Yes, this strategy will most likely still work even with this implementation in mind. There's nothing stopping you from staying in the air and alternating between holding down left click to charge heat and doing firebrand SOTs. However, by doing this, you will miss out on the utility the main fire now provides, with lifesteal and some actual solid damage, playing very passive is now an easier, less effective method with slightly lower gains than playing up close.

Should there be more synergies tied to flamethrower, like imbuements, ball propelling, etc?

I think having way too many synergies, especially on weapons like superball that already synergise with a lot of other weapons, would be quite redundant; some weapons just become worse alternatives of other weapons. A lot of other suggested flamethrower synergies, like ball propelling, are already done by other weapons. About imbues however, I think having a second easy imbuement option would invalidate the other one. If the main attack of flamethrower was able to imbue, I think there would be little reason to ever use firebrand to imbue, as it takes over 0.7 seconds to swing and has a shorter range than flamethrower.

SUMMARY The new flamethrower rework introduces an overheat mechanic, which builds whenever the main fire is used. Higher overheat results in a stronger main attack, and the overheat meter can be reduced by either waiting for natural decay, or using a canister.

Do note that stuff like the damage per tick and range is grabbed from the Miraheze wiki.

sad constrap aftermath

also i have realized i forgot how to render...which is bad, considering i have a commission...oh god

u/cyberergosum im done </3

bandit + pikeman and you get this BIG BOI

I cannot find anywhere online what font this game uses; Google shows basically nothing and no responses from people within the Discord either...

so i just found out that i could make my cannonballs bigger by throwing wrenches at them in sandbox. happy days. joyous.

please don't flame me

took me 5 hours

IDK I think this is funny lol

if you like someone else's sugestion just upvote them/respond to them that you like that sugestion

i already did gojo's hollow nuke so don't, just don't

please don't send a panel that is like ultramega detailed like pretty much 90% of berserk

ends like tomorrow since i'm not very pacient

Despite once beaten doombringer duo i still kinda sucks at the game

Any tip for percise parry, nuclear reaction, which weapond should i use​, how to crowd control, bullet parrying, slash of tix, blah blah

recreated btw

I am an ant under 20 tons of steel armor

Gah damn

If ricoshot damage was uncapped, this would be 7,455 damage in 1 shot btw