In defense of Flamethrower:
Flamethrower is a weapon which has a cooldown unaffected by how aggressively you play which allows for more passive and safe gameplay, flamethrower is NOT a good weapon for going fast, but if you want to win its a very solid option and i would say it even gives Slingshot competition on high mod
DPS: Slingshot while using the main fire / off cooldown absolutely wins this but if you arent playing aggressively your SOT will become unable to be used and then very quickly the overall damage falls behind Flamethrowers consistant 1k per 3 seconds (also i thought it did 3k until now what was i TALKING ABOUT 😭)
Safety: Slingshot has WAY better lifesteal then Flamethrower but due to how aggressive the weapon is used it usually ends up falling behind Flamethrower if you arent playing like literal god
Difficulty: Flamethrower is way easier to use which makes it so you can focus on movement and surviving more, this part doesnt matter very much as you should be able to manage your weapons efficiently before even considering speaking on weapon balance (this part DOES matter fyi, just no where near as much as everything else)
Also notes for the video shown on this post: This was my first attempt of rocket arena x8.75 with flamethrower, i did this run before doing my slingshot attempts, the reason why slingshot isnt shown here is that i couldnt get to King with a slingshot build, idk if this is me having a bad build or having a lack of knowledge on using the slingshot but it ended up going horribly compared to Flamethrower