Flamers vs Spores

StixNStonzStixNStonz Join Date: 2006-11-06 Member: 58439Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Balance tweak</div>TL;DR: Flamers should kill spores faster and more easily, using less fuel.

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Hey,

I absolutely love how flamers and spores work together. It's great counter-play. BUT, it feels like flamethrowers should massively counter spores, whereas right now, they just help against them.

A lerk flies through your spawn and spores the hell out of it. Marines are in trouble. But if you have a flamethrower, can you counter it? Not really. You can burst fire and hit a lot of it, but it seems like you have to use a full gas can and even more to clean up everything. By then, the lerk is easily on his second run, and you have to reload. So not only are you spending all of your flamethrower time on gas, you're not even really countering it; it's still greatly damaging marines, blocking their sight, and making them hide in corners rather than be productive.

We had a game with 10 marines and six flamethrowers. Obviously that's terrible play (you need max 2 flamers for a team that big), but the lerk could still keep our spawn fully gassed, and we couldn't get rid of it all fast enough. That's insane.

I feel like spores likely share their damage-hitbox with their can-be-flamed-hitbox. I believe the later should be way larger. Let a flamethrower burst take out a ton of spores, not just that exact cloud that you have to aim for. It should clear a room with half a tank.

Thoughts?

Comments

  • Ellen RipleyEllen Ripley Join Date: 2012-11-06 Member: 167803Members
    I don't know what to say. I've never had a problem countering spores with the flamer. A quick 360 spray typically clears the near vicinity, and when I have a flamer I don't think I've ever personally taken damage from spores.

    Many people say they think the flamer could use a slight range increase, and they may be right. I don't think it would be good for gameplay to make the flamer too effective vs spores though (ie. a short puff clears an entire room or some nonsense). A good counter should require effort and attentiveness to be effective. Most of the time you can step out of the way of the spores before taking too much damage anyhow.

    That said, I really don't know how six of you were incapable of clearing a room of spores from one lerk. I'd like to see video of that.
  • maD maXmaD maX Join Date: 2010-01-28 Member: 70347Members
    Wouldn't mind seeing flame light the entire gas cloud on fire (poof) maybe doing damage to the lerk if the lerk is still gassing, maybe doing a bit of damage to everyone in the burning cloud.
  • l3lessedl3lessed Join Date: 2010-06-07 Member: 71977Members
    It does damage lerks now, but I would like to see a little more emphasis on the chain reaction so spores, if left in a continual trail, can ignite each other. The lerk could easily counter this by just doing short burst with a very short delay between each burst. Again, upping the depth and play options.
  • StixNStonzStixNStonz Join Date: 2006-11-06 Member: 58439Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    I like the chain reaction idea. If a spore is hit with a flame, it'll take out the previous and the next spore in the chain, but stop there. That would make the flamer be much more effective against spores in quick bursts, saving fuel and time but requiring patience and aim.

    Ellen, I think the issue stems from what feels like a very small hitbox for Spores. It seems like there's a small sphere inside the cloud, and you have to hit that to light the spore. I'd love to see a video as well, but you can't test it yourself and it's a fairly infrequent situation in a game. It just feels like I need to burst fire each individual spore cloud to effectively remove it; if I spray all around, it seems to miss many of the spores, which lets them keep most of their effectiveness (damage, blocking vision, hampering movement).
  • eliotmateliotmat Join Date: 2002-12-01 Member: 10350Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Sorry to ressurect a dead post. Feel free to close if neccessary.

    Has anything changed in regards to flame vs lerk spores since Dec 2012?



  • CrushaKCrushaK Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167195Members, NS2 Playtester
    The balance mod has a slight range increase for the flamethrower, so that makes it a little easier to hit spores with it, i guess.
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