I think burn damage gets affected by defence at least a little (or maybe only on flare gun)

Everywhere on the forum I hear people saying that burn damage goes through shields, however when I use my flare gun, with its damage per second of 26, it sometimes does as little as 1 or 6 on the first hit against shooters or defenders. Thankfully defence doesn't seem to do that to all of the fire damage ticks.

If everybody already knew that, and that's what they mean by defence not affecting burn, there's no difference between this and how defence affects every other weapon in the game. Because my flare gun does 26 damage over 13 seconds (rare perk +1 second) which is 278 damage. If the first fire tick is reduced to 6 damage from 26, then my damage goes down to 258 damage over time. Compare this to say the cannon, which here does the same amount of damage, 278 per shot. Minus 20 from defence, and it does 258 damage.

I think the burn damage (at least from a flare gun) is affected just as much as all the other point damage and area damage weapons.

Or if anybody has any other reasons as to why this happens, please tell me

 

Click on defense and it will tell you straight up that it will not affect burn

 

The 1st hit will almost always do the least damage. Even when shooting at a speeder with no shield points.

 

As everyone else has already said, that first hit does less damage regardless of the target's defense. I'm not sure why, it's probably something with how the damage is calculated relative to how long the burn effect lasts. Compare that to a weapon like the Carronade, where every tick of it's damage is reduced by their defense stat. The weapon's total damage is not taken into account so that it will only reduce on one pellet, like you think it does for flares.

To test it yourself, use a flare on a Defender and then use it on any target that's not a Defender. With a mid-level flare, using your system, the first one or two whole ticks of damage should be completely negated, especially against a defense-spec Defender , but that isn't the case and never happens (I shot a Mk 4 with a Carronade that had over 5x50 damage, he took a total of 2). Shooting the Defender will make the first tick do 2 or 6 then continue to do regular damage. You can then turn around and shoot a Speeder and it will do that same 2 or 6 damage then continue to regular, just like it did with a Defender.