So you buy into the KF2 early access, start it up, and see a class that uses the flamethrower, your favorite weapon of all time. Now you're super excited to get in game and start spraying fire everywhere with reckless abandon.

Calm yourself.

First a few things you should know.

The flamethrower is not a primary damage dealer, meaning you don't just shoot it at enemies like how you shoot any of the bullet weapons at enemies.

Yes the flamethrower and caulk&burn do damage on impact, however their main source of damage comes from DOT (Damage Over Time). Meaning you light your enemies on fire, and let them burn.

The 2 also happen to create small pools of fire on the ground for about 2.5 seconds. This fire also does damage on impact and ignites other zeds.

For now the Caulk&Burn and flamethrower are mostly identical other than the flamethrower having longer range, more ammo, and 15 more impact damage (which is not a lot in killing floor)

Now onto actually using them.
The proper method of cooking zeds is to burst your fire dispenser with a single pull of the trigger. This will use 4 ammo, impact 4 times, and create 4 pools of fire.
You CAN just aim at the same zed and burst the fire at it.
BUT, you can also use this knowledge to spread the fire out and hit even more of them by sweeping your aim while the 4 ammo gets used.

Now if we take it even farther. You may think that aiming at the center of mass of the zeds is the smartest thing to do.
You're wrong.

Aim at their legs. This will give you the impact damage and splash damage, hit crawlers, AND more importantly, create pools of fire on the ground on top of all this, INCREASING your DOT.

Doing a little statmath.
A full load of flamethrower ammo can do at minimum, a maximum of 40,000 damage.
And the caulk&burn can do at minimum, a maximum of 25,500 damage.
This assumes each burst of 4 ammo hits 4 zeds and pools of fire on the ground aren't taken into account.

If you think the caulk&burn and flamethrower don't have enough ammo.
You aren't using them right.


TL:DR, aim at the zeds' feet and tap.