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I think their problem lies within lackluster flamer profile and general inferiority when compared to common boys.

As with most Ork tools, the burna proves extremely useful in battle. When used as a flamethrower it is ideal for flushing out enemies hiding in ruined buildings and woods, especially when several Burna Boyz combine their firepower into a searing inferno.
Pyromaniacs: if at least 5 or more Burna boys models have fired a Burna during shooting phase or overwatch, use D6 instead of D3 when determining amount of hits.

...To this end, their burnas are modified with special nozzles and valves that allow the weapons to force out a fierce blue tongue of fire instead of a cloud of orange flame. This ‘cuttin’ flame’ is powerful enough to slice through anything up to a metal bulkhead.
Field disassembly: any unmodified to Wound roll of 6 against <VEHICLE> during combat phase causes a Mortal Wound.

What do you think? How much would you price this unit?

honest answer, screw squad size unlocks for abilities.
Give the burna a propper flamer profile instead from the get go at the price point it has.

the lower ability should be only in melee right?
( may bee an issue due to the fun design of the ork dex, cough jump, cough tellyporta, cough cogh cough) maybee ad +1 to wound instead against vehicles so that they wound up to t8 vehicles on 4 plus?, that seems more sensible then just flat out spamming mortals and ignoring defences of vehicles.

Replace the d3 rate of fire with a flat 4 shots. That would at least make their flamers interesting to use. The melee rule curently is useless for taking out vehicles (wich is supposed to be their task fluffwise).
Maybe make them s7 and d3 dmg in melee so they can actually hurt vehicles. Special mortal wound rules would just further push them towards engaging heavy infantry.

Raging inferno; if this unit numbers 10 models or more equipped with burnas, when rolling for the number shots made by each model during the shooting phase or overwatch, add +1 to the roll. If the unit numbers 15 or more, add +2 to the roll.

As far as melee goes; how about that if they attack something with the Vehicle keyword, or a unit with a 3+ armour save or greater, the burna boy can replace all of its attacks with a single attack using the power klaw profile.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
Raging inferno; if this unit numbers 10 models or more equipped with burnas, when rolling for the number shots made by each model during the shooting phase or overwatch, add +1 to the roll. If the unit numbers 15 or more, add +2 to the roll.

As far as melee goes; how about that if they attack something with the Vehicle keyword, or a unit with a 3+ armour save or greater, the burna boy can replace all of its attacks with a single attack using the power klaw profile.

First suggestion sounds annoying. If unit dies down to 9 models they are useless again. Why is the rule based on unit size? And even at 15 models they would get 3-5 shots only. As soon a sone ork dies they get dramaticly worse.

Second suggestion, lets say 15 burnaboys charge a rhino transport. Then they would get 15A->7,5hits->5 wounds->4 unsaved->8dmg
That means a large unit with anti tank melee gear cant even kill a basic transport. Sounds about as bad as their current rules.

Disclaimer: Not an ork player.

Buffing their flameyness based on unit size feels pretty orky, but it's a bit iffy as solution for burna boyz that want to ride in a vehicle. Burnaz seem like a unit that ought to work well inside of the humble truk.

As for boosting their melee, just how good should burnaz be at hurting vehicles exactly? Isn't that sort of stepping on the tank bustaz' toes?

If you just gave them a flat number of shots (3 or 4 is comparable to the average of a normal flamer) and gave their melee weapons good AP (which iirc is what they do now), then burnaz would be the expensive-but-reliable ork unit. Their shooting would be relatively consistent. Their melee wounds would stick better than the average boy'z. Is that not a decent niche in an army full of swingy dice rolls?

Why not make them more like they used to be:

D6 shot flamer, or good AP in CC, but not both in the same turn.

I agree that abilities due to squad size sucks.

If their concern is overpowered flamers due to having lots of them in 1 squad, why not make it so the first flamer does D6, and each subsequent adds D3, so at least they get a bit more punch.

Honestly they could be d6 shots without the requirement at the current points and they'd still be fairly mediocre.

footfoe wrote:
Honestly they could be d6 shots without the requirement at the current points and they'd still be fairly mediocre.

i am in favour of flat flamer hits to be honest.

Flamer is 3 + x, whereby x is the size of the target unit, where 5 dudes in it generate an additional hit.

Burna Boyz: 10PPM

Give them 2D3 shots each, next, give each "Burna Boy" a 4+ Save.

Still makes them relatively squishy since T4 4+ isn't exactly hard to kill, but they are cheap enough that its not a huge loss, and you can spam up to 3 squads of them if you really wanted to. More importantly from a balance perspective, they are still unable to do much off the teleport since they cant shoot, however, this makes the idea of them running around in a transport a bit better, especially since they can then get out, kill something in the shooting phase (10 Burna Boys would average 40 S4 hits which would kill about 6-7 Space Marines a turn) and then assault something with a bunch of S4 -2AP attacks.

Make all flamers that currently fire D3 or D6 shots 3+D3.

Get rid of the swing.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Make all flamers that currently fire D3 or D6 shots 3+D3.

Get rid of the swing.

Why not just fix it at 4? Get rid of an entire extra step of rolling and counting up d3s.

Because it's a flamer. It's not going to hit exactly 4 people very time.

Blast Markers and Flamer Template weapons should have some sort of variance now that makers and templates are gone. The problem is that they're far too swingy (you can hit 1 person... or 6!). Something like a flame thrower should be a little more consistent, but not always hitting the same amount.

This is why D3+3 makes more sense. It removes the super-swingy, but still allows for the vagaries of a weapon that you don't so much aim as you do point at things.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Because it's a flamer. It's not going to hit exactly 4 people very time...

But we need random variance at three places (number of hits/number of wounds/saves) instead of two places (number of wounds/saves) because...?

A full squad armed with d6 flamers is pretty devastating and a massive target magnet. SoS can all take flamers and they will trivially delete guard squads; of course, they always die the next turn.

I'm afraid d6 shots would be a disservice for da boyz, it would get them killed too fast. Maybe d3 shots +1 when it targets a unit with 5 or more models and +1 when it targets a unit in cover. These are not exclusive, so it is possible to get 5 shots per boy. It is also more consistent than d6 and better plays to their strengths. They will probably get a +1 more often than not.

And melee is a simple problem, make them do d3 damage against vehicles in melee.

I feel that given how crappy burna boyz are right now in terms of literally being worse than shoota boyz at anti-infantry shooting wise, and crappy CC wise even compared to power stabba Nobz, that they should be a glass cannon that opponents should worry about. I'm a supporter of making burnas D3+3 shots. To address the vehicle issue, you could have them get +1 to wound and become D2 when attacking a model with VEHICLE keyword. Makes it so they wound things pretty consistently without them being overboard against everything else. Hell, give them a stratagem where for 1CP, the D3 of their shots is a flat 3, so they get 6 shots per guy.

I'm not sure about giving them more shots than a normal flamer. Maybe the math works out just fine (haven't run it), but is there an explanation for why an astarter flamer is less good at burning things than a cobbled together ork burna?

SemperMortis wrote:
Burna Boyz: 10PPM

Give them 2D3 shots each, next, give each "Burna Boy" a 4+ Save.

Still makes them relatively squishy since T4 4+ isn't exactly hard to kill, but they are cheap enough that its not a huge loss, and you can spam up to 3 squads of them if you really wanted to. More importantly from a balance perspective, they are still unable to do much off the teleport since they cant shoot, however, this makes the idea of them running around in a transport a bit better, especially since they can then get out, kill something in the shooting phase (10 Burna Boys would average 40 S4 hits which would kill about 6-7 Space Marines a turn) and then assault something with a bunch of S4 -2AP attacks.

This is the best idea I've seen presented so far.

IMHO, not only burnas but also tankbustas and lootas should have a 4+. Or at least, a 5+