I posted this as a comment but just thought I’d make a post to encourage some reasonable discussion on this topic.
So regarding the flamethrower, I understand that all melee attacks are aoe, but should a skill with as much aoe as flamethrower do 100% weapon damage per second as well as give a burst of speed when activated with no cooldown? I think at least one of these things needs to be changed.
Also, in this game where dodging with limited stamina is a major mechanic, I think attack speed is very important. A 50% faster attack speed with 50% reduced damage (on attacks) is actually stronger than normal attack speed with normal damage because if you dodge one of my attacks, you’re only mitigating 50% weapon damage whereas if I dodge one of your attacks, I mitigate 100% and under the condition that we both have the same amount of stamina, the person with 50% faster attack speed and 50% less damage will have a big advantage, in my opinion. Hopefully it doesn’t take much imagination to apply this line of reasoning to flamethrower.
While I don’t think flamethrower needs to be nerfed into the ground, the raw damage should probably be toned down a bit (maybe 40-45% weapon damage per half second instead of 50%) so that you need to hit at least 2 targets for at least say 50% of the time you use it to get value out of it or maybe it needs at least a little bit of a cooldown to allow for some counterplay (right now if you stagger someone out of flamethrower, they’ll just go right back to using it). If I can hit one person with an aoe ability and still find that myself on equal ground in terms of dps, then that aoe ability better be hard to hit or you’ll have balance issues (I think pillar of fire is a good example of a fairly balanced aoe skill). Flamethrower is perhaps a bit reminiscent of the old GA lunge; while flamethrower doesn’t have grit or make your character lunge forward, it does have a much longer range than even the old GA lunge whilst also giving you a speed boost on activation through both perks and skill points.
Love to hear some points for or against what I’ve got so far.