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Has the firebug lost its luster?

Steeps

Grizzled Veteran
Dec 14, 2010
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USA
This post mainly refers to HoE/suicidal play. tl;dr at bottom

Firebug was never the most commonly played perk, but you would see your fair share of them. Then after the Mac10 update they were everywhere. However, since the xmas update I never see firebugs anymore. The only time I
 
I love my firebug. Just hit level 6 with him yesterday. 9/10 times if I'm not playing medic, I'm playing firebug. But I have similar complaints as you.

I don't think it requires anything more difficult than giving firebugs more ammo. I'm usually fine with ammo supply at anything hard difficulty and under, but suicidal and HOE are tough.

Generally in suicidal and HOE I run out of flamethrower ammo about halfway through the wave. And that is WITH using ammo saving techniques.

You have some good ideas, but I can't really fill in any gaps for them. As I said: I think its as simple as giving firebugs more ammo. There are far too many zeds on the higher difficulty to give us only 4 flame canisters.
 
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Personally I find Firebug fine, his job is to ignite the horde and thin out the crowd so the other classes can beat them back easier. With careful ammo use I find I'm usually good for my supplies, I can typically go a hwole wave on jsut my Flamethrower without even needing my MAC-10.

In the case of a gorefast the FB isn't amazing, but as long as he sees it early there isn't much of a problem. PLus he does soften it up so a teammate can simply hit a body shot to stop it without having to carefully aim for a headshot, or he can jsut use the MAC.
 
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The class is playable, but gets stale VERY quick, seeing as you only have 2 weapons that you're pretty much shoehorned into with very little room for customization. And a pretty singular role in killing Crawlers, Clots, and Stalkers. Add in the fact that you're almost totally useless vs Scrakes and FPs...and you have the makings for a pretty unpopular class.

It has some downright counterproductive things about it, too:

-Zeds on harder levels take long enough to die that they can reach you (Crawlers/Clots/Stalkers excluded) unless you spray flames enough to kill them, thus making you go through your ammo fast.

-The flaming zeds that you don't waste ammo on still usually end up being shot by other players as they close...thus making lighting them up entirely pointless.

-In fact...it's worse than pointless because the ones on fire obscure the ones behind them, so a lot of classes can't see what to aim at!


Thus it's not really an ideal class in most situations now and, IMO, is pretty boring to play. But there are a lot of die-hard Firebugs that rabidly defend it and insist that it's fine. It's not. It's playable, but DEFINITELY needs improvement.

At the moment, Gorefasts are the big problem. They can easily close the distance to you before they burn out and take a decent chunk of fuel to kill outright without waiting for the burn. The problem used to be solved by using the "Fireblade" loadout, carrying a Katana with our flamethrowers. But the Mac-10 seems to pretty much fill out the Firebug loadout, not leaving any extra room.
 
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I never really thought the ammo was a problem, but then again I never really played firebug much, and highly doubt I ever touched the perk on anything above hard.

It just seems to me that firebug is an offensive support role, and the support doesn't quite make up for the man down against scrakes and fleshpounds. I thought about it a little more (key word: 'little') and the first idea I came up with is an alt fire that slows down incoming zeds and as a downside either does half damage or uses twice as much ammo. And maybe an extra fuel canister if that is an issue.
 
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I have found that the commando and firebug are great perks, expecially when L5 and 6. Normaly I have a higher kill toll using these perks than with any other, and that includes the other players. I did farm on suicidal once, I was a commando, the other five were SS's with m14's, at the end of wave ten I had almost 1000 kills, the next highest score was mid 800's. the firebug is great for keeping the line under control, alowing the rest of the team to deal with the larger threats.
 
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The firebug is awesome on lower difficulties like hard, but I haven't used it on HoE sadly (reset before it came out, only level 3 now.)

I always imagined it was the type of perk for masses or waves of specimens coming at your team in a group, where the commando would pick off stray survivors like crawlers and stalkers that got past while the firebug reloaded.

Both perks are very important in a full game imo. Without a commando, most defensible spots on official maps will end up with a lot of single, small mobs harassing your group from behind, which a firebug would burn up a lot of ammo trying to kill.

Then again.. this is assuming you don't go with a ton of berserkers, or a team with multiples.
 
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Is there already something implemented like this?

Something like:

Zeds that are on fire have a multiplier applied to the damage they take from being hit in general.

If not, maybe that's the added "support role" that FBs can have applied to them. This way, you can have the FB spray down a Fleshpound with flames. Then, any damage the Fleshpound receives is multiplied by, say 1.2 or 1.5, etc.

Just throwing ideas around.
 
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In order to save ammo, good fire bug only tap their mouse. So everything is burning, not dead. Even crawlers will burn for a few seconds on suicidal and HoE. So the problem comes to gorefasts. It actually take quite some ammo to take down. And he WILL BE ABLE to hit you even you keep backing off after lighted him. So you NEED to flame him down. And 6-man gorefasts will not die from just one burn. Light him again or flame him to death is the way.

Ok, so now we have some burning gorefasts getting close. And what a support do? A good support knows where to shoot to kill a line of FULL-HEALTH gorefasts. So, all those ammo used on all of the gorefasts is wasted. Bloats? You wait till he get close to see if that bloat explode first or youget puke on first? Any one will put a bullet in his head and gun him down, or, just hunting shotgun his from medium range TOGETHER with a bunch of gorefasts/clots/crawlers/stalker. Also, if you decap a bloat, he just drops. If you burn a bloat to death, he explode.

So, you should not be wasting ammo on ANY gorefasts, bloats, and most clearly, not husks too. And basically you dont do enough to kill scrakes and feshpounds. So, all you can shoot is clots, stalkers, crawlers and sirens.
That's why I agree firebug is outclassed by other perks.
 
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I believe it takes a special kind of person to play the Firebug class. Someone who appreciates just watching things burn.

It's my most played perk...I just enjoy it. Good old fashion roast.

I like how a player's chosen perk says a few things about their personality. :IS2:

Also, I can agree with everyone who says playing FB can get pretty stale over time. It's like working in a factory or something.
 
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People who play FB, are normaly not worried about kills. They weaken the zeds making it easier for the rest of the team to deal with them. Someone in this post said not to shoot Gorefasts, Bloats, skrakes. this is wrong, the idea is to weaken and slow them, wich is what the FB does. there are certain perks that require more skill than others, and the FB is one of them.
 
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I agree that firebug DOES have a role and understand how it's supposed to be played. It's just that in the game's current state the firebug's role doesn't seem to be as important as other perks' roles. Right now 'offense' seems to be more valuable than 'offensive support', which is why I suggested that the firebug gets more of a support role.

I have seen people use them effectively and do believe that they can serve a purpose. With that being said, I never see them on HoE/suicidal servers anymore. Perhaps the class is stale and that is the reason, but I have a hunch that it also has to do with their diminished role since the last update. If the former is the case, perhaps he needs another weapon or benefit to spice up the role a bit. If the latter is the case, then he needs some type of ability to increase his usefulness as an offensive support role.
 
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People who play FB, are normaly not worried about kills. They weaken the zeds making it easier for the rest of the team to deal with them. Someone in this post said not to shoot Gorefasts, Bloats, skrakes. this is wrong, the idea is to weaken and slow them, wich is what the FB does. there are certain perks that require more skill than others, and the FB is one of them.


You simply dont need to.... what? weaken gorefasts and bloats? If a support is beside you, every shot you use on them is going to waste. (good support of cos) As for comando... he decap bloats once he saw one, and let him drop after a few seconds. And you brun it, that bloat WILL EXPLODE. Gorefasts... after a decap it doesn;t really matter if it is on fire or not.. decap already stun them for a few seconds...

Sharpshooter instan-kill both bloats and gorefasts. So...

Scrake... really? Scrakes seems to be the zeds who will most likely survive long enough for that "deeply burn" animation. And this will resulting in berserker and sharpshoter fail to hit the head. And you are gring him dangerously close to rage without doing enough damage to him. I dont see a reason for FB to burn scrakes, AT ALL. I would say the only time you should flame the scrake is when he is already raged. And at this point you should be continously flaming the scrake. Letting the scrake burn do nothing good for the team.
 
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