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 Elbows wrote:
Just reduce the cost. They're fine.

Reduce the cost and add an "ignores cover" rule. and they would be acceptable. Still not great, but acceptable.

CplPunishment wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Just reduce the cost. They're fine.

Reduce the cost and add an "ignores cover" rule. and they would be acceptable. Still not great, but acceptable.

This is about all you can do before you get ridiculous ideas like in the majority of this thread.

If that's the case, you might as well take them out of the game. They're worth little more than a standard bolter, perhaps even less depending on the situation.

 Fafnir wrote:
If that's the case, you might as well take them out of the game. They're worth little more than a standard bolter, perhaps even less depending on the situation.

Not everything that uses Flamers uses Bolters

I'm surprised to see so much negativity towards flamers. They're rather popular around here this edition. They basically got a range boost thanks to only needing to be within 8" of a single model to potentially land up to 6 hits. Sure, you don't benefit from enemies clumping up, but clumped up enemies always felt more like a punishment for not wasting time putting your models in perfect 2" coherency. More of a "Got'cha!" thing or the result of a low consolidation roll than any sort of tactic.

Flamers have a higher average and maximum number of hits in overwatch now, and you can shoot them after advancing without penalty without being eldar. This can be especially nice on vehicles that have access to them. Sure, you don't want to advance unless the majority of your squad has them (or are eldar; see fire dragon exarchs), but some people might actually enjoy running squads with lots of flamers in them, in which case the advance and fire tactic is totally legit.

As for not ignoring cover... I've found that my enemies have a tougher time getting cover these days. Not ignoring 5+ and 6+ armor is a nerf, but it's a nerf shared by all AP 5 and 6 weapons in the game. Guardsmen and orkz get a (bad) save these days. Flamers aren't uniquely bad for that.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm surprised to see so much negativity towards flamers. They're rather popular around here this edition. They basically got a range boost thanks to only needing to be within 8" of a single model to potentially land up to 6 hits. Sure, you don't benefit from enemies clumping up, but clumped up enemies always felt more like a punishment for not wasting time putting your models in perfect 2" coherency. More of a "Got'cha!" thing or the result of a low consolidation roll than any sort of tactic.

Flamers have a higher average and maximum number of hits in overwatch now, and you can shoot them after advancing without penalty without being eldar. This can be especially nice on vehicles that have access to them. Sure, you don't want to advance unless the majority of your squad has them (or are eldar; see fire dragon exarchs), but some people might actually enjoy running squads with lots of flamers in them, in which case the advance and fire tactic is totally legit.

As for not ignoring cover... I've found that my enemies have a tougher time getting cover these days. Not ignoring 5+ and 6+ armor is a nerf, but it's a nerf shared by all AP 5 and 6 weapons in the game. Guardsmen and orkz get a (bad) save these days. Flamers aren't uniquely bad for that.

They still need to ignore cover out of principle, and they definitely need a price decrease.

However, you're right there's a lot of negativity in this thread. I hate lots of the suggestions here (someone wanted a RANGE increase of all things).

This whole thread is FAKE NEWS and the greatest WITCH HUNT in Warhammer history.

Ignore cover seems appropriate. I would like a 1 inch range increase, but I'm not sure any of that is even needed. Flamers seem like they are in a pretty good place right now.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm surprised to see so much negativity towards flamers. They're rather popular around here this edition. They basically got a range boost thanks to only needing to be within 8" of a single model to potentially land up to 6 hits. Sure, you don't benefit from enemies clumping up, but clumped up enemies always felt more like a punishment for not wasting time putting your models in perfect 2" coherency. More of a "Got'cha!" thing or the result of a low consolidation roll than any sort of tactic.

Flamers have a higher average and maximum number of hits in overwatch now, and you can shoot them after advancing without penalty without being eldar. This can be especially nice on vehicles that have access to them. Sure, you don't want to advance unless the majority of your squad has them (or are eldar; see fire dragon exarchs), but some people might actually enjoy running squads with lots of flamers in them, in which case the advance and fire tactic is totally legit.

As for not ignoring cover... I've found that my enemies have a tougher time getting cover these days. Not ignoring 5+ and 6+ armor is a nerf, but it's a nerf shared by all AP 5 and 6 weapons in the game. Guardsmen and orkz get a (bad) save these days. Flamers aren't uniquely bad for that.

They still need to ignore cover out of principle, and they definitely need a price decrease.

However, you're right there's a lot of negativity in this thread. I hate lots of the suggestions here (someone wanted a RANGE increase of all things).

No mechanic needs to do anything out of principle. That is a ridiculous statement. 8th is not 7th. Nothing that happened in 7th should have any bearing on anything that exists in 8th. 8th should be built and balanced to be the best it can be based on what it is, not what came before.

If Flamers had d3+3 hits I'd be happier. Or go back to the template. Rolling a 1 shouldn't be possible. It's shooting a massive fireball. It hits an entire area. Also if you combined ignoring cover saves with the new rules I proposed on using cover and for "to hit" penalties against infantry from the front and terrain having toughness and wounds that were destroyable then flamers becomes extremely useful for flushing troops out of cover. As they should be. As flamers would negate those "to hit" penalties and auto hit. Without the need to flank "in my proposed rule if you flanked the enemy unit then you could ignore the 'to hit' penalty"

 Lance845 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm surprised to see so much negativity towards flamers. They're rather popular around here this edition. They basically got a range boost thanks to only needing to be within 8" of a single model to potentially land up to 6 hits. Sure, you don't benefit from enemies clumping up, but clumped up enemies always felt more like a punishment for not wasting time putting your models in perfect 2" coherency. More of a "Got'cha!" thing or the result of a low consolidation roll than any sort of tactic.

Flamers have a higher average and maximum number of hits in overwatch now, and you can shoot them after advancing without penalty without being eldar. This can be especially nice on vehicles that have access to them. Sure, you don't want to advance unless the majority of your squad has them (or are eldar; see fire dragon exarchs), but some people might actually enjoy running squads with lots of flamers in them, in which case the advance and fire tactic is totally legit.

As for not ignoring cover... I've found that my enemies have a tougher time getting cover these days. Not ignoring 5+ and 6+ armor is a nerf, but it's a nerf shared by all AP 5 and 6 weapons in the game. Guardsmen and orkz get a (bad) save these days. Flamers aren't uniquely bad for that.

They still need to ignore cover out of principle, and they definitely need a price decrease.

However, you're right there's a lot of negativity in this thread. I hate lots of the suggestions here (someone wanted a RANGE increase of all things).

No mechanic needs to do anything out of principle. That is a ridiculous statement. 8th is not 7th. Nothing that happened in 7th should have any bearing on anything that exists in 8th. 8th should be built and balanced to be the best it can be based on what it is, not what came before.

Okay but flamethrowers should ignore cover out of principle...

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm surprised to see so much negativity towards flamers. They're rather popular around here this edition. They basically got a range boost thanks to only needing to be within 8" of a single model to potentially land up to 6 hits. Sure, you don't benefit from enemies clumping up, but clumped up enemies always felt more like a punishment for not wasting time putting your models in perfect 2" coherency. More of a "Got'cha!" thing or the result of a low consolidation roll than any sort of tactic.

Flamers have a higher average and maximum number of hits in overwatch now, and you can shoot them after advancing without penalty without being eldar. This can be especially nice on vehicles that have access to them. Sure, you don't want to advance unless the majority of your squad has them (or are eldar; see fire dragon exarchs), but some people might actually enjoy running squads with lots of flamers in them, in which case the advance and fire tactic is totally legit.

As for not ignoring cover... I've found that my enemies have a tougher time getting cover these days. Not ignoring 5+ and 6+ armor is a nerf, but it's a nerf shared by all AP 5 and 6 weapons in the game. Guardsmen and orkz get a (bad) save these days. Flamers aren't uniquely bad for that.

Some people are taking them, but I think the reason why there is no consensus on them is that they fill an otherwise empty hole in certain faction but are a short-ranged-random-overpriced redundancy in others. As a guard player, it is better to buy a plasma gun or save points and keep your lasgun, both of which CAN overwatch deepstriking assault units, or shoot footslogging/mechanized from afar. So what, then is is purpose? What role does it fill? (don't tell me it doesn't need to fill a role).

Technically speaking, they got a range decrease. The template was almost 8.25" and the widest part was 7" away from the bearer, making its optimal targeting range 5-6", varying to some degree depending on how the enemy is set up. What effectively changed was it's optimal range, which went from 5-6" to 1-8". Similarly, it's least optimal range went from 7-8" to 1-8". Yes you can hit six models at 8" now, but you can also hit one at 5", which was the old sweet spot.

The advance and shoot rule is a nice buff, I will concede, but only if you are foot slogging. A transport is the optimal way to deliver flamers right now, which makes this buff a little redundant.

As for vehicles, they mostly get the heavy variant, which is in a much better place statswise. Especially with measurements being from the hull.

Flamers should have a distinctive purpose, whether it is 7th or 8th matters not. The weapon itself is great for flushing entrenched units from cover, so why not make the 40k version an abstraction of that? They would be a great tool for clearing entrenched units out of bunkers, cover and objectives. Every opponent I've faced so far has wanted terrain in abundance. You can't honestly say units struggle to find it. Yes, it is harder to gea save now, but it is not ws rare as you say.

Thus far I haven't seen a single suggested profile that makes them ap-1, because we have all accepted the 7th-8th ap transition. (Then again, I now suddenly benefit from these strange things people call "armor saves" and I like it. So I might be biased).

I was thinking about how hordes came back and flamer were supposed deterrent to massed inf. Maybe they could be a smaller version of the grav canon rules:

1d6 + 1d3 per tranch of 10 figs in the units.

avrg vs 10 /20/30 is 5.5 / 7.5 / 9.5


They would become a solid anti horde weapon.

Ignoring cover and price drop (as compared to 0 cost for many basic weapons) would be good enough.

Flamers tend to be designed to do two things: hitting units in cover and hitting hordes of units. I think there's a pretty reasonable way to balance this that doesn't make it abundantly unrealistic or over/underpowered.

It would require some fine tuning for the flamers individually, but simply make all flamer weapons ignore cover and change the d3/d6 attacks. Instead they attack a number of times equal to the number of models in the target unit up to a maximum number.

Let's say a Heavy Flamer would be changed to something like Assault 8. This would mean it would do up to 8 attacks, based on the number of models in the target unit. You hit a unit of 30 boyz, you get 8 attacks. You hit 3 Crisis Suits, you get 3 attacks. You hit a special character, you get 1 hit.

This makes it substantially better at killing larger units, which is what is lacking with the absence of templates, and makes it a little underwhelming for smaller targets. It puts a flamer weapon in a specific niche that would be great when used for its intended purpose without making it an all-around better weapon. This also goes hand-in-hand with the concept of 8th edition making everything streamlined. It's easy to tell if you have enough targets to exceed the maximum number of attacks.

It's not making it good vs horde, 8 figs is not a horde. 8 hits is roughly the power of 4 heavy bolter or a twin AC wich cost 35 pts. It would make them auto include everywhere.

8 hits MAX. if you read what they said, it does either their attack number OR the number of models in a unit, whichever is lower.

So against a blob of 50 Conscripts or 10 Guardsmen, you get 8 hits.
Against a 5-man Tac Squad, you get 5.
Against a Daemon Prince, you get 1.

I think Imperial (and CSM) flamers suffer from the problem of accessibility.

3 Bikers with 2 flamers, a combi-flamer and 3 combi-bolters cost 110 points in Codex SM and CSM. That's 10.5 flamer hits on average and if you did not advance, 1 hit extra from the combi-flamer-bolter and 8 hits from the combi-bolters. That's 20 hits for 110 points and I think that is fine. Not because flamers are good though. Any buffs to flamers would make these units pretty overpowered against hordes.

But pretty much any other unit is not efficient at infantry shreding wih flamers. You can't put enough of them on other jump infantry and the ways to deliver them are not good either since deep striking doesn't work and Veterans in Rhinos are expensive enough to shoot at them.

Trollbert wrote:
I think Imperial (and CSM) flamers suffer from the problem of accessibility.

3 Bikers with 2 flamers, a combi-flamer and 3 combi-bolters cost 110 points in Codex SM and CSM. That's 10.5 flamer hits on average and if you did not advance, 1 hit extra from the combi-flamer-bolter and 8 hits from the combi-bolters. That's 20 hits for 110 points and I think that is fine. Not because flamers are good though. Any buffs to flamers would make these units pretty overpowered against hordes.

But pretty much any other unit is not efficient at infantry shreding wih flamers. You can't put enough of them on other jump infantry and the ways to deliver them are not good either since deep striking doesn't work and Veterans in Rhinos are expensive enough to shoot at them.

Something worth pointing out: Compare just bringing Combi-Bolters to bringing that Combi-Flamer. The biker squad leader costs 9 points less if he brings the Combi-Bolter instead of the Combi-Flamer, and instead of getting 8 hits he's getting just under 6. That's a difference, but it's not a massive difference considering the much lower cost.
Also, consider that this amount of firepower stays consistent at much longer ranges - You get those hits at 12", and you get half of them at 24", instead of getting the good hits at only 8" and getting fewer hits otherwise.

Currently, the only time Flamers beat out equivalent Volume-of-fire weapons, point for point, is during overwatch.

People are saying Flamers are not good against Horde?

So what are people proposing?

d6, If opponent unit has 10 or more models this weapon becomes 2d6

From a realistic point of view, I think a stacking mechanic would be a nice thing, since flames are harder to dodge when there are more around you and when they last longer.

Something like for all flamer weapons:
"After shooting this weapon, the targeted unit is assigned a flamer marker for each weapon with this special rule.
This weapon gets +x for each (y, rounded down) flamer marker(s) on the targeted unit when shooting (up to a maximum...).
Small flamers could stack more hits
heavy flamers could stack more strength and AP and Flamestorm Cannons could stack AP and DMG.

Trollbert wrote:
From a realistic point of view, I think a stacking mechanic would be a nice thing, since flames are harder to dodge when there are more around you and when they last longer.

Something like for all flamer weapons:
"After shooting this weapon, the targeted unit is assigned a flamer marker for each weapon with this special rule.
This weapon gets +x for each (y, rounded down) flamer marker(s) on the targeted unit when shooting (up to a maximum...).
Small flamers could stack more hits
heavy flamers could stack more strength and AP and Flamestorm Cannons could stack AP and DMG.

Way to make an incredibly simply mechanic as complicated as possible!

yeah, flamers are already pretty good already. There's nothing wrong with them.

Maybe for big flamers, like bale flamers or heavy incinerators, maybe a make it a minimum of 3 hits.

But do I think your standard flamer should have a max of 9 hits? No.

If anything, I think flamers need a bit of a nerf. In particular, it's a little silly that you can advance and auto hit, shoot at flyers and auto hit, and still auto hit with no reduced effectiveness in overwatch. Think it should go back to D3 hits, not D6 hits, in overwatch.

I would be 100% fine with flamers ignoring cover saves, though. That honestly makes sense.

I still think the 'One hit per model in the unit, up to a maximum number of (x) hits' is the way to go. Possibly with the clarification that you only count models in range - So if it's a 30 boy horde, but you only have one of those boys in range, you only get one hit with the flamer.

Waaaghpower wrote:
I still think the 'One hit per model in the unit, up to a maximum number of (x) hits' is the way to go. Possibly with the clarification that you only count models in range - So if it's a 30 boy horde, but you only have one of those boys in range, you only get one hit with the flamer.

I do quite like that method as well. Maybe monsters and vehicles get counted 3 times, and anything Titanic counts for 5? That way they have SOME effectiveness against big stuff, even if they pull better horde duty.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
yeah, flamers are already pretty good already. There's nothing wrong with them.

Maybe for big flamers, like bale flamers or heavy incinerators, maybe a make it a minimum of 3 hits.

But do I think your standard flamer should have a max of 9 hits? No.

If anything, I think flamers need a bit of a nerf. In particular, it's a little silly that you can advance and auto hit, shoot at flyers and auto hit, and still auto hit with no reduced effectiveness in overwatch. Think it should go back to D3 hits, not D6 hits, in overwatch.

I would be 100% fine with flamers ignoring cover saves, though. That honestly makes sense.

They're worse than bolters. Like... standard bolters.

Just a reminder: In 7th edition, flamers could easily get eight or ten hits automatically, and with good placement could always get 4-5 even against well spaced enemies, and that ignored cover, and were considerably cheaper than they are now. I realize there's a bunch of differences in how that edition played compared to this one, but that was certainly a much stronger version of flamer than what we have now.

I don't know why everyone is so pissed about the missing "ignore cover" rule. Cover was totally different in 7th, it was much better for those who were supposed to be flamer targets.
Hell, you don't even need it, just move the models that shoot the flamers onto the base of the terrain, your <8" away anyway.

p5freak wrote:
Flamers suck, they should ignore cover. You cant hide from fire.

This is true. Well know fact. Thinking about ducking behind a stone wall? Don't, absolutely useless. Fire eats right through stones. Thinking maybe if you're in the woods, flame might catch on trees and other plants, but because of the intervening terrain might not actually reach you in an effective enough burst to hurt you? Crazy talk! Everyone knows fire only burns people, and will go around everything to do so.

Sorry man, but flamers ignoring cover is what didn't make sense.

AnFéasógMór wrote:

p5freak wrote:
Flamers suck, they should ignore cover. You cant hide from fire.

Sorry man, but flamers ignoring cover is what didn't make sense.

There are some Japanese soldiers who served in the Pacific who would like to speak with you.