Flamethrower

He always had a passion for setting things on fire. Now he can indulge in his habit!

## Base Stats

###  Speed

* 5 (base)
* 8 (ability)

## Firing Pattern

### Reloading Period

* 2.5s (base)
* 1.9s (Cap's ability)

## Unlock Requirements

### Price

Obtained by purchasing the SWAT bundle for 925 money

**Flamethrower** is a masked soldier wielding a flamethrower willing and ready to set the world ablaze.

## Functionality

### Basics

Flamethrower is a shotgunner, meaning he will launch a cone of damage upon firing and excels at dealing with weak hordes and single tanky enemies up close.

Flamethrower is a lumbering and frail unit despite his military grade equipment, with meager health (the second lowest among all units in the game), abysmal speed, and low damage, though his ranged attacks deal damage in a quick succession. His courage cost is rather high, although his preparation time is surprisingly low for a ranged unit.

Flamethrower spews incendiary attacks from his weapon, scalding enemies who are not resistant to fire and dealing constant damage over time. Each flame particle can hit anywhere from one to three times randomly. While not being a traditional shotgunner unit, his flames can pierce targets within its relatively short range. He has a long delay between flame bursts.

### Perks and Abilities

As mentioned above, Flamethrower’s ranged attack deals fire damage and will reduce enemies to ashes, preventing them from reviving or transforming further. This makes him great against threats like Sapper, Sergeant and Undead, but ineffective on enemies that are immune to fire, since he can't damage them.

Flamethrower is immune to poison, and has 90% resistance to bullet damage. However, his abysmal health and damage type makes him a poor choice against enemies he would have countered. The only enemies that inflict poison, Epidemiologist and Slob, are fire immune. He will also struggle to reach ranged enemies like Robber and Biker if unsupported.

His fear resistance is particularly strong, making it difficult for almost any amount of enemies to inflict the fear debuff.

As a TMF unit with volatile equipment, Flamethrower will not turn into a zombie when killed, instead producing a damaging explosion and a fire pool on the spot.

Upon reaching level 13, Flamethrower's special ability can be unlocked, granting him 3 additional points of movement speed. This bonus makes Flamethrower move a bit quicker at a max base movement speed of 8. Improving his low speed has its merits, but as it offers nothing more, he is still of limited use.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

Admittedly, Flamethrower is a somewhat niche unit since his weapon deals pure fire damage, and as such, he's usually effective only on missions that generally lack fire-resistant enemies but will be of no use otherwise.

His slow speed is also a serious problem. Though a frail unit would be wise to stay behind, sometimes he can barely contribute to fights. When switching targets above or below him, he may find himself directly facing his enemy and will be unable to deal with it. Because of this, he works well alongside Cap, as Cap's inspiration perk helps to somewhat negate his slow movement speed issue. As Flamethrower and Cap are both in the Swat bundle, players shouldn't worry about their accessibility either.

Another one of Flamethrower's major drawbacks is his abysmal health, one of the lowest in the entire game and the actual lowest among all ranged units. Due to this, he requires constant support in order not to get easily killed. This can be seen in missions where Insectoid appears. Once Insectoid pounces on Flamethrower, he can be killed rather quickly before being able to properly retaliate. In these situations, other ranged units can help support Flamethrower from a distance, potentially saving him from a quick, painful death as they might be able to kill Insectoid before it could even attack. It's highly recommended to bring the Medkit along in order to help keep Flamethrower alive as he is generally very vulnerable.

All these drawbacks mainly prove to show Flamethrower's lack of versatility, as in reality, he proves to be very powerful in certain other situations. Although his initial damage isn't good, he can benefit greatly from upgrade items that boost his damage by flat values. When supported properly, enemies who aren't resistant to his flames will be torched quickly, even for the towering Crank.

Missions with rainy weather will merely prohibit enemies from suffering burn damage over time. It does not affect Flamethrower's ability to attack and harm enemies directly. Missions hit with a sandstorm will reduce his range by half, allowing him to target the barricade. However, he isn't useful in sandstorms due to the presence of other, more adequate units that will adapt better.

Flamethrower can be considered as an offensive version of Dr. Norman. Both are ranged units with penetrating attacks and low speed. While Dr. Norman's ranged attack ignores all kinds of resistance/immunity with slowing effects, Flamethrower's DPS is considerably higher against viable targets. Dr. Norman has fire resist and much more health, while Flamethrower's poison and bullet resist combine with his death explosion to nullify associated threats. In missions where enemies generally lack enough fire resistance, Flamethrower may be recommended over Dr. Norman as his attacks can finish enemies quickly.

### Skirmish

In League, Flamethrower, on paper, proves to be a lot of enemy melee units' worst nightmare, particularly Turbo, the only unit that possesses full bullet resistance. His death explosion also usually guarantees whoever does manage to kill him in melee range get taken down with him. However, his slow speed and very low health proves to be his biggest disadvantage and makes him a rather easy target when dealing with enemy ranged units despite his bullet resistance. His short weapon range can also prove to be a detriment as he may sometimes fire his weapon just shy of hitting his opponent, giving enemy ranged units fortunate enough to encounter this situation all the time needed to slowly shoot Flamethrower down, assuming everyone else on his team has been eliminated. Rarely, should two Flamethrowers encounter each other, they may find themselves in a permanent stalemate, firing at each other just outside of one another's reach until the player decides to quit the match and heavily reconsider using another unit. Given Flamethrower's high courage cost, which could hinder team composition, it may be best to consider other less situational units.

### Item Sets

Flamethrower benefits most with the Military set, as it can allow Flamethrower to activate more of the continuous damage of his attack, this is a similar case with Dr. Norman who also holds many similar traits. The Firefighter set also benefits Flamethrower as it increases his overall damage by 30% though it requires the unit to actually set the target on fire first in order to deal the bonus damage. Other sets such as Swissmade will not work effectively because of his low damage value, but if the item bonuses are included then Swissmade can be quite consistent in its bonus despite how minimal it is.

Because of how insignificant his stats are, it becomes mandatory to invest on upgrading his health and damage, with the former being more preferable. Both of such stats best accompanied with +Flat items rather than +Percentage items. Upgrading his critical damage and chance can be beneficial, although it is strictly optional. Unlike most shooters, Flamethrower actually greatly benefit from range increasing items, which can greatly increase his survivability by staying further away from his targets.

## Skins and Synergies

Flamethrower is a part of the following team: Toxic Lab Military Forces (TMF)

 Team

Despite his glaring flaws, Flamethrower is actually able to get the full use of the 2/2 power. Having a 50% chance to avoid explosions is highly beneficial, greatly increasing his survivability in the late game progress, as well as in Skirmish. This is particularly noticeable when he is put against Putrids, and an enemy Grenadier's grenade, as Flamethrower's range is too low for him to avoid threats and his fragility issue is easily resolved against them. The 3/3 and 5/5 powers, however, are largely inefficient due to the former activating only once per mission, and the latter's inefficiency is largely caused by bad unit rotations in the team, both of which he can't do much about.

### Pros

* Moderate preparation time.
* 90% bullet resistance.
* Immune to poison.
* Fear resistance.
* Explodes on death (75 damage).
* Sets enemies on fire. Flames torch corpses on the floor.

### Cons

* Only available in a unit pack for a large amount of money.
* High courage cost.
* Extremely low base stats
* Unusable against fire-resistant units.
* Death explosion can damage friendly units.
* Less effective on missions affected by rain and sandstorms.

## Trivia

* Flamethrower is one of the five members of the Toxic Lab Military Forces, the others being Cap, Soldier, Swat, and Rogue.
* According to Flamethrower's deleted backstory:
	+ His name is Murdock, which is a reference to character H. M. "Howling Mad" Murdock from the action-adventure TV series "The A-Team."
	+ Flamethrower is a part of the A-Team along with Cap and Soldier.
	+ Both Flamethrower and Soldier hate each other, according to *Soldier's* backstory.
* Like the rest of the TMF Squad members, Flamethrower was once available for purchase with coins.
	+ Flamethrower's requirement was level 10 and his price was 7,500 coins.
	+ In Quarantine his price was 9,000 coins.
* In Dead Ahead: Quarantine, Flamethrower was the only TMF unit in the game and used to cost 12,500 coins.
* Flamethrower used to have the second lowest health among all units in the entire game, only being slightly healthier than Welder until the 3.8.8 update which buffed his health.
* Flamethrower and Specops are the only units to be negatively affected by a sandstorm other than its unit movement speed decrease.
	+ In the case of Flamethrower, it adheres to associated physics where strong air currents can easily displace his flames, in most cases crippling his effective range to a bare minimum.

 Humans
 TMF Squad