Firebugs tend to be looked at as the least useful class, and it's rare that they're ever seen on Hell on Earth.
On the other hand, personally speaking, when using the firebug on the easier difficulties (hard or below), they tend to be rather good. Apart from a complete inability to take out fleshpounds, they can kill scrakes, and can kill anything below a scrake rather easily. I'd rank them as the best class to play as for waves 1-5 in terms of survivability and effectiveness.
Ideally then, they need changes which will improve them on harder difficulties, without overpowering them on earlier difficulties.
I would suggest the following changes be made to firebugs, to make them more feasible to play endgame:
I think implementing the above suggestions would go a long way towards making firebugs more desirably again on harder difficulties without overpowering them on earlier difficulties.
Below are my original thoughts, which were condensed into the above list.
Ideas:
Obviously, this isn't a list of suggestions I think SHOULD be implemented, they're a range of ideas I came up with for ways the class COULD be improved. Which are good, which are bad, and any other thoughts on ways to make the firebug a more useful class for higher difficulties?
On the other hand, personally speaking, when using the firebug on the easier difficulties (hard or below), they tend to be rather good. Apart from a complete inability to take out fleshpounds, they can kill scrakes, and can kill anything below a scrake rather easily. I'd rank them as the best class to play as for waves 1-5 in terms of survivability and effectiveness.
Ideally then, they need changes which will improve them on harder difficulties, without overpowering them on earlier difficulties.
I would suggest the following changes be made to firebugs, to make them more feasible to play endgame:
- Speed decrease - When zombies have been set on fire, after a while they crispen up and suffer a movement speed decrease and go into a brief random panic. Could their speed slowly and evenly drop off from normal until they reach their crispened state. This would really help on HoE when the zeds just move so darned quick, but wouldn't noticably impact earlier levels when zeds are killed by initial flame damage, or early DoT damage, and don't have a chance to even REACH crispened state.
- Fairer DoT - Currently the flame damage over time a zed takes will be from the first fire damage it receives, and will exponentially increase over the duration of the DoT. Not only does this seem strange from a logic PoV (a zed is set on fire, and will gradually receive more fire damage as the flames die out?), but it severely reduces the potency of DoTs for a firebug on harder difficulties where the speed of the zeds means they will take very little DoT damage. I would suggest a) DoTs deal even damage per tick - the first tick deals the same damage as the last tick, and b) Every time a zed receives direct fire damage (from flamethrower, MAC10 etc. Not from the DoT) then it renews the number of ticks remaining on the DoT. Again, this would help on HoE where zeds have far more health and aren't killed by the initial direct fire damage.
- The crispening - currently, zeds crispen up 10 seconds after taking flame damage for the first time. This is disappointing, because crispening zeds is one of the things that makes a firebug a team player, but especially on later modes, zeds will have plenty of time to walk to the player and attack him for a couple seconds before the crispening takes effect. On earlier modes, zeds are most often dead from damage long before crispening happens at all. I would suggest that instead of being time-based, crispening happens based on fire damage taken instead. The aim being that if a zed is hit by a flame-based weapon, after the initial damage, plus the 10 seconds of DoT are added up, the damage will be enough to crispen the zed. However, if a firebug really needs, he can continue to hose down the zed with fire to increase the flame damage dealt, and crispen the zed far faster than normal.
As an alternative, perhaps zeds could take more damage from all sources when crispened (perhaps take 110% damage from any source across the board), which would encourage firebugs to set many things on fire and let them crispen, rather than killing individual zeds.
In addition, I would suggest that husk cannons instantly crispen zeds, which would set them apart from flamethrowers significantly, make them more desirable and tie in with their massive ball of fire thing.
Again, this would be of limited use on earlier modes because the zeds die too fast, but would allow players to shoot fire for a little longer at zeds on higher modes to cripsen them up.
I think implementing the above suggestions would go a long way towards making firebugs more desirably again on harder difficulties without overpowering them on earlier difficulties.
Below are my original thoughts, which were condensed into the above list.
Spoiler!
Ideas:
- Damage resistance - Everyone knows the firebugs wear those really big, padded flame retardant clothing. Is it so surprising that they take less damage than other classes? They also tend to get up close and personal, so it'd really help them out. I'm not sure if this should be a flat out damage reduction (berserker) or an armour-based reduction (medic).
- Speed decrease - When zombies have been set on fire, after a while they crispen up and suffer a movement speed decrease and take more damage from other sources. Could they instantly suffer a speed decrease when set on fire (perhaps their speed slowly drops off from normal speed until when they reach crispened state). This would really help in HoE when zombies just don't have time to take any significant DoTs before they reach you.
- Crispens faster - The crispening is basically what makes firebugs such a good supporting class - slowing mobs down and letting your allies deal more damage to them is awesome. However, I believe at the moment mobs crispen at the 10 second mark (never timed it, but I think that's about when it happens), which is a devilishly long time to wait. Especially on HoE. Maybe reduce this time, either on higher difficulties only or across the board.
Alternately, make subsequent fire damage dealt decrease the time it takes to crispen a zed, ie. if it currently takes 10 seconds for a zed to crispen, every time it is hit by a MAC10 shot, 0.2 seconds of that is reduced. Every time it is hit by a flame particle, 0.1 seconds are reduced. Every husk shot reduces the time by a second. {Murphy} - Random panicking - Currently when zombies reach the crispened state, they go into a momentary panic, moving haphazardly and flailing about before resuming what they were doing. What about if zombies had a random chance to go into this panic at any point while they're on fire, and this chance INCREASED with difficulty setting? While this could be annoying as hell if you're trying to draw a bead on a zombie and he starts panicking, if a fleshpound in mid-rage starts panicking and resets his rage counter, you'll be super-glad the firebug came along.
- Auto-panicking - Or how about if a mob takes X fire damage in Y seconds, he will automatically panic. A bit unsure about this one, because while it would be awesome for a firebug to be able to run after the fleshpound hosing him with fire to intentionally set off a panic, I don't want to make the only way to deal with the larger mobs is to have a firebug run at them and hose them down.
- Damage increase - Enough with these namby-pamby things. Just give the firebug a flat +X% damage increase to all fire-based weapons on later difficulties. Other obvious ways to improve the firebug are faster DoTs (so the DoT will deal the same damage, but in a shorter duration), or that the afterburn is more powerful.
- Husk launcher auto-crisps - Using the husk launcher to fire a fully-powered shot will auto-crispen the target (panic for a few seconds, slower movement speed, subsequent shots inflict more damage) This wouldn't affect the lower modes that much (husk canon instakills most stuff anyways, and stuns scrakes on lower difficulties. But it would give it an advantage on higher difficulties).
- Constant DoT - Currently, the afterburn inflicted on zeds increases in intensity the longer they burn for - the first tick of damage deals way less than the final tick. How about if the total afterburn inflicted the same amount of damage, but each tick deals constant damage throughout the afterburn period. {Suggested by Aze}
- Flame damage slows - While being actively burnt, specimens move slower. This probably wouldn't fit with other speed debuff ideas, but perhaps while the firebug is actively hosing specimens down, they slow down, and when he stops they speed up again. I can't see this being an overpowered problem, because tbh if a fleshpound is being burnt, it's not like anyone else can actually attack it.
- Husk cannon - The husk cannon sucks atm. I rarely find anyone who likes it, and even rarer find anyone who likes it and plays firebug often or well. Most people would prefer it to act more like the husk's cannon rather than the current rip-off. Ideas: Infinite ammo, energy-based recharge rate (ie. it can fire say 4 shots in a 15 sec period. This can be one shot every 3.5 seconds, or 4 shots in 4 secs and 11 secs doing nothing), insta-crispens mobs, larger impact damage, all damage dealt is fire-based, cheaper gun (most people prefer the flamethrower... which is free at L5 compared to a hella pricey weapon).
Obviously, this isn't a list of suggestions I think SHOULD be implemented, they're a range of ideas I came up with for ways the class COULD be improved. Which are good, which are bad, and any other thoughts on ways to make the firebug a more useful class for higher difficulties?
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