So I absolutely adore the Dragon's Fury and it has completely reinvigorated my desire to play Pyro, which pre-JI I felt had become a gimmicky mess. I've been using Dragon's Fury practically exclusively and playing Pyro a lot ever since I got it. In its initial form, the Dragon's Fury was insanely powerful and required very little effort. This was not greatly noticed, due to the other flamethrowers being even more effortlessly powerful at the time. The Blue Moon update nerfed both situations a bit to address these problems.
However, many feel that the changes to the Dragon's Fury have gone too far. The projectile was made smaller, but more significantly, the bonus damage previously granted on hitting any burning target now only registers if the center of the projectile passes through the target's hitscan hitbox. This requires an odd combination of hitscan style accuracy and projectile style target-leading.
As I said, I love this weapon and find it to be very powerful, even now. However, I only play casual, so I concede that my experiences do not reflect the highly skilled environment upon which balance should be based. That's why I want to dig in to this topic.
I'm willing to accept that the weapon needs a change, but I have a hard time imagining what that change would be. Removing the requirement for center-of-projectile hit without any other change would be a mistake in my opinion. Even a very good scout can only do so much to avoid a 3000 HU/s ball touching their collision hull, and a bonus hit is practically as deadly as a meatshot to light classes- a projectile based meatshot with no clip limit. "Moving unpredictably" is hardly better than a game of chance here.
Keep in mind the following:
The bonus damage on consecutive hits is very high, scoring even one bonus hit puts light classes in danger of death from the few ticks of afterburn applied.
According to the wiki, the projectile travels "3000 Hammer Units per second," much faster than a Direct Hit rocket or even a huntsman arrow. At its range, reactive dodging is not an option, only moving unpredictably.
Consecutive hits increase rate of fire, giving it strong sustained dps as well as decent burst damage.
The weapon has no "clip" to reload. Missed shots penalize you much less than other classes, only removing the rate of fire bonus.
The skill involved with leading a hitscan-registering shot isn't something that the game has required before. It may be that with time people will develop this skill, and it won't seem like as big a deal.
What change do you think can address this weapon's problems? Have I failed to describe what the problems truly are?
Maybe remove the center-of-projectile requirement, but reduce the damage bonus to just a 200% increase, instead of 300%? Make it easier to achieve the bonus damage, but give less of a reward.
Heck, i'd rather go with keeping the current stats, but increasing the damage you get rewarded for hitting the center, just further consolidate this gun as a Direct hit for Pyro, which i absolutely love using as a Soldier, and having some kind of equivalent of that for Pyro is really fun and rewarding in my opinion
It's potential dps needs to at least match the flamer (which itself is ramp up bugged) but I'm all for more aim = more damage.
The damage inconsistency is one thing that really throws me off. A hit should be a hit, like the flare gun, especially now that the projectile is smaller.
I'd say they should increase the duration the player stays aflame when hit by a flame ball by roughly 30% to compensate for the extreme tight room of error players are given using it.
But even without that, it's pretty good at the moment.
if anything, i'd love to have the airblast to recover faster on sucesful projectile reflects/extinguished team mates.
but its truly a fantastic weapon, and its now even more aim demanding that the v1, albeit for the exact same benefits.
Yeah I really love using it, and from a purely selfish perspective I don't want it changed at all. From the posts I'd seen in the general, I thought there was this big consensus that it was bad now and that I was a weirdo for disagreeing.
its not really bad perse, but its a projectile weapon that demands hitscan accuracy, wich is to say the least... off. nr the loch nor the direct hit really demand such thing to reap its benefits.
Noted paragons of good design the loch-n-load and direct hit.
Honestly the original iteration was perfect, but maybe the projectile was a bit too large. I think they nerfed it in fear that it would outshine the default flames after the """fix"""
Honestly the double nerf of a smaller fireball plus having to hit the center feels like too much of a nerf to me, I wonder if just the smaller fireball would have been fine.
The smaller fireball would've been fine IMO. There's no reason for the weapon to be gimmicked so weird: something as simple as "hitting targets consistently deals higher damage" doesn't need additions like "but ONLY if you hit the middle of the tiny fireball". Direct Hit is already annoying enough to use because of that and things like distance scaling.
Smaller fireball alone would absolutely not have been enough. I talk about this in the OP. This would be meatshot-like damage using projectile hitboxes and no clip limit with the fastest projectile speed in the game. There's no reasonable counterplay to that.
Yes, but DF also has the worst airblast of all the flamers, and has a range limit. A DF pyro has no reasonable way to deal with mid to long range targets compared to rockets, and also has a harder time dealing with projectile spam.
These modest weaknesses do not justify the idea of easy-mode kills.
It's no worse at mid-long range than any other flamer. It can't reflect as freely, but it can rapidly destroy explosive classes who lack the speed to reliably avoid the bonus damage. DF vs regular flamethrowers is a fun complex matchup that is highly determined by skill in multiple ways. A reflect can hurt you a lot, but a failed reflect doesn't touch you and interrupts their dps which they need to be near-constant to keep up with the DF. You don't have to fire ASAP to get a bonus hit. They can potentially dodge your shots, but you have a little more range to work with.
You went from a respectable "I feel like the weapon is fairly powerful but acknowledge I'm not the best source of knowledge because I don't have too much experience" to a ridiculous "The weapon is TOO STRONG and there's NO REASON it needs BUFFS don't EVEN BOTHER arguing otherwise" in the span of 9 hours. If you weren't willing to listen to people who consider the nerfs too harsh for DF, then why even bother making the thread?
And for the record, I have ~5,000 hours of TF2 gameplay and feel that the nerfs/changes that came with the latest update WERE too much for the Pyro. DF being so powerful means nothing if you can't hit anything that isn't a revved Heavy with the tiny puff of flame.
I'm willing to hear what's wrong with it, but this is just utterly and obviously false. It's hyperbole that just makes it sound like you've never tried using it.
Tell me what is wrong or invalid about this claim I made before:
"[bonus damage on any burning target without the center-of-projectile check] would be meatshot-like damage using projectile hitboxes and no clip limit with the fastest projectile speed in the game. There's no reasonable counterplay to that."
My problem with the DF is as it is right now it does require a bit too much aim for what it is.
However I don't believe increasing its damage or reverting changes is the way to make it viable...
During Jungle Inferno DF to me felt like it was far too easy for what it rewarded.
The hitbox for it was insanely generous, the fire rate made it melt heavies in seconds, and the range...My god the range...
I believe the 'increased damage on direct hit' isn't a good thing, yes it increases the weapon's skill ceiling but too far in my opinion.
But plain reverting that stat would be a terrible idea when you would get bonus damage for missing shots, like this...
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/936061908579762366/DDA0DC7C30747BA0B379C18857879317EA5B8D01/
(Sorry for the size, I have no clue how to resize images in newpunch)
To me personally after using the DF a fair bit and fighting against it a ton, all it really needed was a bit of range reduction and the hitbox to be reduced to accurately match the visuals.
...Or since TFTeam just loves to overcomplicate nerfs/buffs. Make the fireball reduce in size the farther it travels from origin point, till it eventually vanishes.
This way CQC enemies aren't stupidly hard to hit but farther away enemies take more prediction aim.
That's all just my opinion though.
To me when the weapon was first announced, I imagined it like a rocket launcher, just throwing fire at a long distance, giving the Pyro a ranged weapon as opposed to his mid range weapon to go alongside the jetpack. I felt like it was the combo of harass others from on high, or be a pain in the ass at a distance and stay on the move to make people chase you. Basically a souped up version of a flare gun that had no drop off.
Much to my displeasure it was just like every other flame thrower but more of a burst fire option, I still enjoyed using it, and I still would love to have a strangifier for my skinned version of the weapon. The changes to the weapon to me seem a bit excessive but understandable, and it's not an impossibly difficult primary weapon to use since it's still a close to mid range weapon, but you just need to aim a bit better with it now. If there was to be any change and we keep the current nerfs, I'd like to maybe have the range on this weapon increased, not to the ridiculous extent of say a rocket launcher, but maybe instead give Pyro the option to keep his distance if the opposite team is heavily fortified without having to resort to using a flare gun. With it's current projectile size/stats, I wouldn't personally see that as being overpowered since being up close would be preferable, but a longer reach could encourage others to play a bit smarter as opposed to rushing in.
it became shit and anyone using v1 seriously switched away in an instant after the nerf. you can try to convince yourself it's still good but eventually you'll have to face non-dogshit players that don't move in a line and know how to fight back.
competitive big names thought v1 wasn't really anything special so it's certainly trash now.
perhaps the people that instantly switched away are the "dog shit players" you are describing eh
I just don't see how aiming it is any harder than aiming a meatshot with the Scattergun. The projectile is way too fast to do any kind of deliberate dodging, so all you can do is "move unpredictably" which still leaves the possibility of getting hit.
If v1 wasn't anything special in comp, I hardly see how v1-but-with-smaller-projectile would suddenly make it good in that setting. It would go back to being ultra pubstomp extraordinaire though, so where's the upside to this idea?
I'll ask again about this suggestion: What if the bonus damage was tied to a limited-range hitscan pellet that fires simultaneously with the projectile? Since its hitscan and lag-compensated, it would preclude the need to lead the shot which is apparently totally unreasonable. It shouldn't bug to deal bonus damage on the first shot, since the hitscan is guaranteed to hit before the projectile due to the lag compensation, right?
I've also got no qualm with just buffing its airblast or afterburn duration. I just don't want it to become effortless to aim again.
I always saw the Dragons Fury as a weapon with some obvious trade-offs. Fundamentally, its more offensive capability for less utility. To expand that, Pyro can deal insane amounts of damage, at the cost of not being able to extinguish teammates as easily. From that, I saw the Dragon's Fury as more or less balanced. Because not only do you lose versatility in extinguishing people, but you are outright garbage against Soldiers and Demomen. Just fire two rockets at a DF Pyro and you are already overwhelming them. So the trade off is really simple. More damage against Heavies, buildings, and even scouts to an extent, at the cost of being less of a counter to Demomen and Soldiers (pyros too if they are good enough to reflect the DF right back at you)
However this nerf the Dragon's Fury got is insidiously bad. The DF already has the quirk of tanking someones (your) FPS when it fires. Now at 5-15 fps, you're expected to then hit them in the middle of their hitbox? The Dragon's Fury also has the worlds largest viewmodel, flames are blinding, and people on fire don't have a silhouette (so how am i supposed to judge where the middle of a player is?) All of that together, and the Dragon's Fury is poopy.
It's all opportunity cost at the end of the day. Why use DF when any other flamethrower can do it's job better? You are seriously neutering yourself by using it. You gain nothing from it that you can't get in, one way or another, from a different primary. Want a ton of damage? Go Phlog. Want to be able to airblast more than once every second and a half? Use literally any other flamethrower. The DF doesn't make much sense in context with other flamethrowers.
v1 was still the best version, and made the most sense. This nerf is overly harsh, and arguably completely ruins an otherwise greatly designed weapon.
There's no way I could do the things I've been doing if I switched to the phlogistinator. The DF has superior range, the ability to kill quickly with no bar-charge/taunt set up, and the ability to airblast in a pinch- which is still a lifesaver even if the time cost is high.
Surely the FPS drop is a bug or a performance issue rather than a balance consideration, right? If you're at 15 fps anytime a DF fireball is on screen, I don't know how you expect to make any realistic analysis of the weapon.
but the phlog, much like any other regular flamer, has higher DPS thanks to it dealing sustained damage over time after the very first hit. plus stock has the ability to work both offensively and defensively thanks to the airblast, wich the DF practically gimps you even more than the phlog since using the DF airblast prevents you from dealing damage for an entire ice age. it should retain the airblast cost, but it should not penalize using it to sucessfully extinguish players or reflecting projectiles in the air.
as i see it, v1 DF seemed underpowered because JI flamethrowers became insanely OP due to the particle bugs, but even then it was the weapon to melt buildings. and was actually extremely fun and rewarding to play. I think that the best way to approach this weapon balance-wise is to keep the small hitbox but ramp up the base damage a bit more, and apply a small rampup on max range. that way dealing damage at max range will reward your with even more damage if you hit your second shot, but wont penalize you if you did the most natural counterplay to a pyro wich is moving away.
The Flamethrower only outmatches the DF in DPS overtime. When fighting light classes such as a Scout, Engie, Med etc. the Dragon's Fury has the upper hand. In general I'd say the DF completely shits on Scouts if you can aim with it because you essentially delete them from their entire existence in two shots, meanwhile the flamethrower requires you to track them perfectly to kill them slightly slower, which wont be an easy feat especially due to the lower range.
And what I saw little people mention is that it deals the damage amount of damage at all ranges, meanwhile at max range the Pyro's flamethrower might still do some damage, but not nearly as much.
actually DF does have a degree of fall off
2 damage is so incredibly little it doesnt matter
The FPS drop was really more exaggeration if anything. The point I was trying to make was that there is a large variety of things that keep you from being able to genuinely determine the middle of a hitbox, and the subsequently hit that middle. It's a bit much to suddenly require someone to do that, given that there is very little to even determine that.
However, the DF particle lags like a motherfucker. I get 200-250~ from my config, and DF makes that drop to 120-130. I have a powerful rig, but imagine that for someone playing on a laptop for instance. Then imagine them trying to hit the middle of a hitbox. It's stupid.
My only complaint with the DF is the huge viewmodel and the fugly bland textures
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