Pyro Spec: A subject of debate

[Megarop]

Flamers are already extremely powerful, if you get rid of fire immunity now things like the tank and pyro spec will just be able to stomp the entire game.

I'd be fine with a fire nerf if it meant queens and ravagers couldn't just walk through fire that the marines themselves can't walk through, it's really frustrating to have a ravager drag somebody into blue fire without taking damage themselves or to be unable to run away from or pursue a queen because somebody tried to use a flamethrower on it and started a fire that denies area to the marines but not the aliens
Besides, if the only way to balance out fire is to make certain xeno types completely immune to it it must be OP anyway, right?

[Pigeon]

People queens ARE immune to high heats for a bit in lore remember, blue flames maybe can hurt regular no way.

[Papa_Pollard]

lmao theres no 'debate' pyro is a shitty under developed spec and is only chosen as a last resort.

[Megarop]

People queens ARE immune to high heats for a bit in lore remember, blue flames maybe can hurt regular no way.

Gameplay should be a higher priority than being lore-accurate, the game is already far from accurate to the aliens movie or any other piece of aliens media so I think it should just give up and do its own thing.


which is to say they should remove acid blood

[Pigeon]

Gameplay should be a higher priority than being lore-accurate, the game is already far from accurate to the aliens movie or any other piece of aliens media so I think it should just give up and do its own thing.


which is to say they should remove acid blood

Booo
Lazy marines want easy PB got to work for those sweet kills. Or join alpha and PB everything; aliens, marines, tank, yourself even

But really without fire resistant aliens you would have them pushed into a corner and cooked. Hell you will see even queens that hate rav gang say ' GET ME A RAV' when the flamers show up to the party.

[Megarop]

Booo
Lazy marines want easy PB got to work for those sweet kills. Or join alpha and PB everything; aliens, marines, tank, yourself even

Taking damage whenever you PB an alien doesn't make it any more difficult to do so, it just makes you have to take Kelotane all the time.

[kooarbiter]

Pyros are worthless till those green or blue flames crawl up your hives hidyhole. Pyros main issue been getting enough of the green/blue flame canisters to do anything, they have to be careful with not running out of there special juice.

Otherwise just too many pyro PFCs make the Pyro spec well somewhat lame.

Also the queen can resist those heats in lore I think, the queen actually is a one man army that should murder a whole platoon like ours like it was child's play. It a 15 ft monster that can brush off bullets and run at 25mph. It can and will murder the shit out of an army. Now the queen can't resist the those heats forever and are meant to get hurt eventually but they are very very tanky and resilient to flames.
https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Queen_(caste)

Ravagers, no word on flame resistance. Instead they would be 15 ft monsters that can probably cut open a tank like it was a can of sardines. It could 1v1 the queen and come out on top. Yea.
https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Ravager

The predalien take note couldnt fight ethier the queen or ravager probably lore wise.

i dont think you realise what the density of bone is, no way they're cutting through a fucking tank with some sharpened bone, or even with their tail


crushes can fuck them up though

[UnwaveringGrey]

Sorry to bring this thread back. I've been meaning to respond for a week but life has been busy. I should be clear too, I wasn't arguing for Ravager and Queen to take full damage from fire. They should be immune to being lit on fire and have heavy resistance to fire damage from standing in fire, just like how other classes of xeno have heavy bullet or explosive resistance. A queen should have to stand in normal flames for like a full minute for the fire to eat through her health pool.

Also, the realism+lore argument doesn't really make sense here considering marines can just take some pills and be fine with IB, ruptured lungs; and how acid damage really doesn't differ from fire damage at all when xenomorph's acid in lore could almost melt through the Nostromo's hull.

You're 100% right. I withdraw what I said about lore. I'm personally irked by the idea of organic things not burning, but it's kinda a dumb argument. Especially if you really think about it.

yall focus on 1v1 TOO FUCKING MUCH. Xenos win 1v1. Get that through your head. XENOS WIN 1v1. That's how the game works. ITS ALSO A T3, T3 ARE FUCKING STRONG. You want your spec to be a 1 man army, well the fucking t3 are the specs of xenos.

Now that we got that out of the way. Pyro isn't just for damage. Its for crowd control. If you make everything take damage from fire then nothing can attack when pyro/flamers put down fire. Why do you think xenos just sit on the other side of fire looking at you? Cause it does a billion damage to run through it. If you make it where no xeno can go through fire to stop the retard flaming then A: it completely shuts down all xeno pushes making marine retreats free and making fob impossible to break and B: it lets marines push xenos back cause they can just flame, wait for flames to go out move a few tiles flame again over and over until xenos are pushed into a corner. Everyone who complains about ravagers doesn't play xeno. Yall have no idea what removing fire immunity would do to the balance of the game.

The only person who said anything about 1v1 in three pages of forum posts is you. I don't think that anyone is so 100% unga-brained that they think that any single marine should be able to 1v1 a non-bald xeno, let alone the hive as a whole. Even the most prolific marine supporters that I've seen on the forum don't argue for anything more than even odds in XvH rounds.(And the complete removal of xenos from the game. You know who I'm referring to.) Claiming that this is an argument for 1v1 is a strawman fallacy.

If every Xeno were to take damage from flames, the damage from pyro would have to be nerfed substantially. I have played multiple rounds as a Xeno, matured to the point of Ancient Defender, a class well and truly capable of tanking entire magazines, but have been wiped out in ten seconds flat because I walked through an orange flame and couldn't retreat quickly enough to put myself out. And that's without any marines pelting you. Unless the sheer amount of damage they're capable of causing is addressed, pyro needs a hard counter.

Perfect. Maybe it's time to take a look at the role that fire plays in this game though. Let's theorycraft. Currently, if flames could damage ravs and the queen it would really be a big buff to the tank. The secondary flamer is regarded as mandatory, and for good reason. If the queen and ravagers could burn too then it would make it so thattheir HP is constantly draining while they're fighting the tank, which makes the tank even more survivable. But the tank is a known problem, and other forum threads have made it clear that it's being looked at. I suspect that the tank's secondary flamer might not survive any reworks that are done to the tank, since it's simply way too powerful of a defensive/zoning tool given the tank's massive health pool.

But for the sake of argument let's look at game effects that don't involve the tank. Flames are the scariest thing in the game to xenos, except for possibly SADAR. Hell, I've had a praetorian tell me "f*-k y#@" and run off because I lit him on fire three times in a row with a flare gun. I learned really quickly as a runner to always keep track of the nearest water source and nearby allies, and to never go anywhere near marines unless I'm at full health. If a runner is at 80% health or less and they get set on fire there's a good chance they'll burn to death before they can get to water unless they're fighting near river on LV or on half of Trijent. I say this from experience.

So, given all of that, what is the role of flamethrowers, what do we want that role to be, and what is it currently? I would think that it should be zoning. That's what the tank uses it for, that's what the general consensus is that the pyro spec should be for, and that's what most marines tend to use it for. It doesn't do any zoning currently for Queens or Ravagers though, and it doesn't do any real zoning anywhere near water since xenos can put themselves out immediately. I've seen some high health xenos ignore it to drag marines into it before retreating to be put out by friendlies.

So what's the best way to make fire a zoning tool? I think that if it did more damage while you're in it but less dot damage over time it might zone a little better. A flanking runner or lurker who gets lit on fire wouldn't be receiving an immediate death sentence if they moved out of the flames quickly and then fell back. A spray of fire from the pyro spec would make marines and xenos alike think twice about fighting in the flames, but a ravager or queen could still chase pretty effectively unless they were forced to fight while actually standing in the fire. Even something like a runner pouncing from one side of the flames to the other or a crusher charging through them wouldn't take so much damage that they couldn't chase. Someone charging through flames would have to think about how many ticks they're going to be in flame tiles, and if it's worth it to take the damage. I know I've seen marines run through fire to escape, either hoping to burn to death to avoid capture and being dragged off into the abyss or to make it through and put themselves out with a pocket extinguisher.

Would it possibly backfire if the in flame damage was increased and the dot damage was dropped though? If the dot is dropped low enough that all xenos can just ignore it and run through the flames then fire ceases to be a zoning tool or a killing tool. It would still be useful to keep xenos off of barricades, but it wouldn't do anything to help cover a retreat. I still think it would be a positive thing, but what's everyone's thoughts?