Ronson WP Flamethrower

The Ronson WP Flamethrower is a fully-automatic flamethrower that has been introduced in. As a flamethrower, it is short-ranged, but its unique 2 second damage over time and burst property makes it ideal for walking through hordes of zombies. It is also useful for finishing off a boss or taking into Last Stand on multiplayer when cornered by a boss. Each shot of the flamethrower deals 200 damage over 2 seconds, which is doubled for the version.

Obviously, since the Ronson WP Flamethrower is a flamethrower, its attack range is limited, making tasks like engaging a powerful zombie more difficult. Its movement modifier, -30%, makes the Flamethrower quite hefty to wield, not making it suitable for rushing on missions like Vaccine. The 15 rps, high stopping power and high pierce of this weapon make it very useful for mobbing or handling even Fiery Skin zombies, also making it a useful weapon to stall in Nightmare if cornered. While this weapon does fire fast, one does not need to worry about ammunition thanks to a large clip count and rather high damage over time (unless Overclocked has been acquired), and it can make short work even of the likes of a Bloater with only a few bursts. However, ammunition costs $160 for a hundred rounds (or ten times that money for a Flamethrower), so the Ronson WP Flamethrower will eat through a player's funds relatively fast if used carelessly.

Prior to the update on December 10, 2014, the Flamethrower's shots actually have a burst effect like what you would expect from a rocket launcher (though a small one); this can be increased by 50% with a Level 5 Flamethrower mastery. This made the Ronson WP Flamethrower exceptionally ideal for dealing with Shielders, since the "explosion" effect from the Flamethrower penetrated both the riot shield and the physical resistance of the Shielder.

However, after the weapon and armor expansion update on December 10, 2014, the Ronson WP Flamethrower got buffed and tweaked. The main aspect of the Flamethrower that changed is that the "bullets" shot from the Flamethrower no longer "explode" as they hit a zombie. Instead, the bullets behave like shots fired from Assault Rifles, LMGs, etc. This means that the shots fired from the Flamethrower actually penetrate zombies until they hit their pierce cap, which is 6 for the Flamethrower. The Flamethrower prior to the update shot bullets that stopped in their path as they hit the first zombie they came into contact with, "exploding" right there. Now, the Flamethrower has significantly better crowd control it can now hit zombies in a straight line. However, this update also means that the Flamethrower will no longer penetrate a Shielder's riot shield. Still, the raw stats of each shot stack well with the high rate of fire with the Flamethrower, making the potential damage of it much higher than it seems.

There are quite a few options for augmenting a Ronson WP Flamethrower. Since most of the Flamethrower's damage comes from damage over time, Tenacious would be a better augment than Deadly unless if it were augmented for increasing damage on impact for quicker kills. Getting Overclocked on a Flamethrower would increase instances of both damage over time and impact damage, making it seem like the best augment for increasing damage, but that also means going through ammo quickly and depleting the massive clip more quickly. Since the Flamethrower has a huge clip size and a rather long reload, it would be better to get Capacity than Race Modded since Capacity allows for very long bursts with the Flamethrower.

Mechanics

 * The flames used to be considered like rocket projectiles, exploding on contact with anything. However, it is now similar to regular bullets, where flame will pierce through zombies like bullets according to the pierce.
 * It has blast radius, where is hits any zombies around (inside the blast radius), which counts as 1 hit regardless of how and where.
 * Enlarged augment, previously only increased the blast radius after the impact, now increases the width of flame and the distance flame travels, which is how Flamethrower mastery level 5 works.
 * It can only damage minion eggs when the player is "hugging" them, otherwise the flames will bounce off harmlessly

Trivia

 * It may be a reference to the Ronson system, a flamethrower used in World War II that was mounted on vehicles such as tanks. It was improved by the US army who named it the "Satan" and was used in the battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific and other operations. It could also be a reference to the M4 Sherman tanks, which were nicknamed "Ronson"s after a brand of lighter because they used gasoline instead of diesel and tended to ignite when hit.
 * "WP" stands for "White Phosphorus".
 * The Black version is one of the few weapon with colors other then black, grey and white.
 * This is considered by many players as one of the best guns in the game.
 * This is one of the few guns that can be augmented with anything, another weapon being the Luftplatzen.