**This was exactly said in the patch** [**PATCH 01.003.000**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/PJUEFL5Sjq)

**Fire and Flamethrowers:** This update aims to better balance fire damage between direct hits (like those from flamethrowers) and burn effects over time, while also introducing scaling of fire damage depending on the size of the enemy. Previously, burn damage didn’t scale well against larger enemies, making putting them on fire feel less effective in those encounters.  
Now, the larger the enemy, the more damage they take while burning. However, bigger enemies will also be slightly more resistant to ignition. Additionally, direct fire damage now scales with enemy size—so large enemies like Chargers will still take roughly the same damage as before, while smaller enemies will take slightly less.  
We have also increased the magazine capacity of the FLAM-66 Torcher and the FLAM-40 Flamethrower because putting stuff on fire is fun!

**Damage**

* Burning damage now scales with enemy size and will do more damage over time to larger enemies
* Fire direct damage also scales with enemy size. The base damage of direct fire hits has been lowered as compensation. This means that large enemies will take roughly the same amount of damage as before, while smaller enemies will take slightly less

**Time to ignite**

* Larger enemies now take longer to ignite
* Robotic enemies are harder to set on fire than organic ones
* Incendiary Ammunition and Lasers are now less effective at igniting enemies, but once they do, the resulting burn damage is more impactful thanks to the new scaling system

For example, please tell me how much harder it is to set an enemy on fire for cookout  
Please tell how much the direct fire damage was lowered by for the flamethrower  
How much damage will I do to heavies when they catch on fire   
Nowhere does it state what exactly changed

What really changed in this patch

**Flamethrower**

* **Reduced status strength from 10 to 2**
* **Reduced particle damage from 4 to 2**
* **Burn damage increased from 50 to 100.**

What this means is that it is 5x harder to set every enemy on fire  
Your direct fire damage went from 300dps to 150 dps  
Dot damage went from 50 dps to 100 dps

torcher

* Reduced particle damage from 4 to 2
* Burn damage increased from 50 to 100.

Much the same as the flamethrower, except the status strength is 5x higher than the flamethrower

cookout

* Reduced status strength from 100 to 0.6
* Burn damage increased from 50 to 100

You know they said less effective on lighting enemies on fire not a 166x reduction in effectiveness   
Breaker Incendiary

* Removed fire element from pellets.
* Reduced status strength from 100 to 0.6
* Increased burn damage from 50 to 100

But surely the new scaling on heavy enemies makes up for these massive nerfs so they made any fire-based weapon that lights a big enemy on fire will have the heavy burn effect applied instead of the normal burn effect

Heavy Burn was also changed this patch was nerfed from 400 damage to 200, and durable damage was increased from 80 to 200 ap2 to ap4 this is a buff

but heavy enemies die slower than before for flamethrowers because they relied on direct damage to kill them

The cremater, the new heavy flamethrower, can melt enemies and cleave through heavies and hordes. It's really good now, realize the old flamethrower did more damage than the cremator 

Cremater has 225 dps of direct fire and 100 dot dps. 

The prenerf flamethrower had 300 dps of direct fire 50 dot dps; 

 The nerfed flamethrower is 150 dps of direct fire and 100 dot dps 

I had multiple people on a recent post where I listed every undocumented change, saying the fire changes were documented, even though the patch was misleading. The patch is framed like fire was going to be largely the same against smaller enemies and do more damage to heavys, but what happened was that it was weaker against every enemy 

And before some says why bring up old changes i like to point out that all these changes still effect fire based weapons 

the biggest undocmented nerf