MCH Flamethrower

Hey there, i just went to level 70 and got my flamethrower; isnt it like half a potency to weak to be even semi interesting ? spreadshot has 60 more potency, can be fired while moving and wont interrupt suddenly

Greetings Atsu

If we’re talking purely potency then flamethrower wins. Flamethrower is a rare case of something that tics every second rather than 3 seconds so for the full 10 seconds it is 800 potency. You would get 5 spread shots in that time which is 700 potency and when you upgrade to scattergun that becomes 750 potency.

But there are other factors to consider as you noted, you can’t move or adjust with flamethrower, you stop auto attacking during flamethrower (which may be a drop in the bucket in AoE but it’s something) and most importantly, you don’t generate heat gauge during flamethrower, those 5 scatterguns instead of flamethrower would be enough to use an auto-crossbow.

Essentially flamethrower is your “afk doorbell rang” button.

My understanding is that, unlike most effects in FFXIV, Flamethrower ticks once per second, and also has an initial tick like ground effects do (which is probably related to whatever nightmare code they cobbled together to create it in Stormblood).

So I think it's doing about 880 potency over 10 seconds, which is still worse PPS than your other AOE tools, but better than your unlimited-spam AOE shot (Spread or Scatter).

You can basically go down the list of options, and if you've used up Chainsaw, Bio, and Hypercharge, you can sit through a Flamethrower for a mild damage gain.

Also, it's fragile as a butterfly, but don't feel too stressed if an AOE makes you cancel it. The gain/loss is mostly trivial when you take into account Heat generation, although Flamethrower does look progressively better in situations where more Spread/Scatters won't be able to get you another Hypercharge before combat ends.

Flamethrower deals damage per second not like a dot.
You'll deal 56 pps (potency per second) + 5 heat with Spreadshot, 80 pps with Flamethrower.

When you get Scattergun, it will be 60 pps + 10 heat.

I'm not sure about it but I believe Flamethrower can't crit and surely can't direct hit.
It also interrupts your auto attacks, so that's to take in account.

Overrall it's roughly the same value using Scattergun rather than Flamethrower and less a headhache.

I don't know what's worse, if it's FT not generating heat or Autocrossbow not having the gauss/ricochet recast time reduced.

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Originally Posted by AtsuGyaku

Hey there, i just went to level 70 and got my flamethrower; isnt it like half a potency to weak to be even semi interesting ? spreadshot has 60 more potency, can be fired while moving and wont interrupt suddenly

Greetings Atsu

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Flamethrower and Scattershot are about equal in damage but Scattershot gives heat so Flamethrower is worthless to use.

Using a dummy with NO 3rd party mods, I count 11 ticks for Flamethrow and it does appear to direct hit and crit hit. The battle logs don't record the ticks however so you'll have to use good ol' pen and paper. FT might eck out just a little extra DPS, you aren't build up heat meaning you aren't charging up AutoCross.