Firebug Perk refinement
- Thread starter Munk
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Ryno5660;n2268224 said:
I'm pretty sure he hates it because of the massive change from "burn **** to death" class to "distract enemies and have others kill them or waste more ammo to kill it" type of class.
TheTCREngineer;n2268226 said:
Possibly but I won't assume that - Feedback is feedback!
And I gotta say I think it still needs a few more changes, but that's just me. I'm curious of what other people are thinking about it and I bet TW are too!
I will say for the record that I do like it leaning away from "stuff dying immediately when hit by spray" type gameplay, I like 'em running around freaking out and stuff. But simply put I think DoT durations should come with CC effects and shrapnel/groundfire put into more directly damaging roles. One of those trees could certainly "burn **** to death" but with ammo dumping, allowing less ammo usage with smart plays like good ground fires and triggering shrapnels.
Other tree would have long DoT for over-time damage but buys you time with slows, CC and so on. A team supporter with good over-time damage but less spike damage potential than the above shrapnel/groundfire.
For example, Pyromaniac and Inferno. With the current damage tree, Inferno is better since a lot more living things are generally on fire when it hits and you don't need that constant blast in front of you really. The CC tree however benefits more from Pyromaniac because of the ability to constantly apply and spread affliction rapidly.
Meh that's just my humble opinion, I wanted to see what others thought of it really.
Ryno5660;n2268234 said:
I can't check out those changes RN since I reset my perk levels, but I definitely will see what they do later on. Really excited to see napalm working!
TheTCREngineer;n2268237 said:
Yeah I'd say Napalm is king of lv15 skills currently, Shrapnel is the new Napalm if you like!
The video at the bottom of the previous page is a good display of what Napalm can do - Essentially it's a mean AoE at the end of your spray, as long as there are multiple enemies to fuel it!
Ryno5660;n2268243 said:
The only thing I really cared about napalm is if an enemy on fire touches another, he bursts into flame. I would've liked it even more if it came with my own set of ideas for improving napalm. Not sure what thread it's on but enemies lighting each enemy on fire increases the damage and time of fire up to a maximum of 50%(1 zed touches 5 others).
I just gave firebug a spin for the first time since the rework and boy is it ridiculous! Napalm + ground fire means I just tap at their feet and entire crowds die in a second. I'm thinking a nerf will be coming before long. I got top kills without even trying... My main complaint is that ground fire doesn't last nearly long enough. They should increase the ground fire duration for the skill, if not the base duration. I want to be able to draw a line that the zeds must not cross, like a weld but with pain instead of a door. And trench gun ground fire goes away instantly...
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Funnily enough I got the exact opposite impression.
Whenever I spray fire on the ground, all enemies stumble back and evade those pathetic 3 seconds the fire stays on the ground. And no I don't have Heat Wave activated.
As soon as it works, it's indredibly powerful, but I personally am apparently too dumb for this.
I would go for a damage nerf, but a massive duration buff. Is no real ground fire to me...
And the MWG feels...weird. Still not sure, sometimes I instantly kill everything, sometimes I need massive amounts of ammo for a goddamn Crawler.
Whenever I spray fire on the ground, all enemies stumble back and evade those pathetic 3 seconds the fire stays on the ground. And no I don't have Heat Wave activated.
As soon as it works, it's indredibly powerful, but I personally am apparently too dumb for this.
I would go for a damage nerf, but a massive duration buff. Is no real ground fire to me...
And the MWG feels...weird. Still not sure, sometimes I instantly kill everything, sometimes I need massive amounts of ammo for a goddamn Crawler.
This Perk still needs more work. Pretty sure it's completely bugged now. Been playing it a lot as L25 on Hell on Earth.
If you don't have either Barbecue or Napalm, DoTs don't seem to work. At all. On the other hand, if you have either one of those Skills active, your DoT and splash damage is through the roof, currently making Firebug arguably one of the best trash cleaners. But only because something is broken: if you spray one target with fire, the Zeds around it will take massive damage and almost instantly melt. Even large Zeds take major damage. I think Napalm actually explosively increases the DoT damage, not the duration as the description would imply—or because the fire damage "bounces" too much in between Zeds, though I'm not sure about that yet. Because a few bursts of even the Caulk 'n Burn with Napalm active will clear out entire hordes of trash.
This makes taking Ground Fire and Shrapnel a terrible choice. Your DPS will be abysmal and you'll have trouble holding a line in Suicidal/Hell on Earth. Shrapnel's 20% chance of explosions does not hold up to the amount of damage Napalm will currently cause 100% of the time.
An excellent choice seems to be Ground Fire, Napalm, and Heat Wave. It gives the Firebug all the tools to play a competent defender for the team by melting a lot of Zeds and giving you a trick to keep Zeds off of teammates.
So it's very difficult to judge if the Firebug is better now, because it's so buggy. On one hand, it feels more like it should now, with Firebug being a competent trash cleaner. On the other hand, I feel like this is so broken that any fix will nerf the Firebug so badly that nobody will appreciate having the Perk on high difficulties again.
Ironically, its current broken state would be the right direction for it to go in because it's finally a good choice for trash cleaning right now in HoE. That said, I think that some of the future tweaks for Firebug should go into making the Perk tankier because its only defensive abilities are a passive fire damage reduction skill (against one single enemy type) and on L20 either Heat Wave or Firestorm are the only active skills that are useful in a defensive sense, but that's just me. Firestorm exposes you less to medium Zeds like Sirens, Bloats, and Husks, while Heat Wave is what's good to hold a line or get Zeds off of team mates. That's it—you still have to facetank a lot of damage, get no extra HP or armor, no regeneration, no damage reductions aside from Husk fire, and you don't even have any speed boosts that help you run faster. This is painfully noticeable whenever you're on a team where the Medic focuses heals on everybody else but you as a Firebug because of the Perk's notoriety as a bad trash cleaner, despite it currently being fairly easy to carry a wave solo even though I can sometimes watch the same team die get wiped out as soon as I die.
The muchly maligned Microwave Gun seems to be working as it should. I think most people don't understand how to use it effectively—set the Zeds on fire first with one two blasts of a CnB, then give them a short spray with the MWG, then alt-fire into them all lined up and that will clear a horde even including medium Zeds. That lets you conserve its ammo at maximum efficiency for whenever you need to push big Zeds away from the team to buy Demos/Sharps some time.
I'd like to see Flaratov's effects return as a passive skill now that it's gone. Especially if the Firebug gets fixed/nerfed from its current state, it would help tremendously.
One way I could imagine the Perk's skillset going is making decisions in between beefing up overall DPS versus defense/durability/debuffs. The whole concept of DoTs kind of needs to go. I like how the DoT skills increase the DoT damage instead of duration, this needs to stay that way. People don't appreciate it nor do they appreciate having a trash cleaner that can't kill things quickly enough.
Even if the current Perk skills were working correctly, the skill tree is not set up well, IMHO.
LV5: Choose between a skill that's only good to open with and then switch to the obvious choice; boosting your damage. I in fact don't even bother with the extra ammo and do fine on HoE.
LV10: Extra damage versus a debuff. A decent choice.
LV15: Damage versus damage. Kind of redundant. Don't 100% understand how the explosions fit thematically, anyway.
LV20: Defense versus defense. One is arguably more self-defense oriented (Firestorm) as it gives you more range, the other one is more team-defense oriented (Heat Wave) because it allows you to get Zeds out of people's faces or clear escape routes.
LV25: High DPS for no ammo use versus a strong debuff. Problem with the latter is that if you don't have extra range from Firestorm, or you have Ground Fire for the reliable speed debuff, it's often redundant. So not much of a choice here.
If you don't have either Barbecue or Napalm, DoTs don't seem to work. At all. On the other hand, if you have either one of those Skills active, your DoT and splash damage is through the roof, currently making Firebug arguably one of the best trash cleaners. But only because something is broken: if you spray one target with fire, the Zeds around it will take massive damage and almost instantly melt. Even large Zeds take major damage. I think Napalm actually explosively increases the DoT damage, not the duration as the description would imply—or because the fire damage "bounces" too much in between Zeds, though I'm not sure about that yet. Because a few bursts of even the Caulk 'n Burn with Napalm active will clear out entire hordes of trash.
This makes taking Ground Fire and Shrapnel a terrible choice. Your DPS will be abysmal and you'll have trouble holding a line in Suicidal/Hell on Earth. Shrapnel's 20% chance of explosions does not hold up to the amount of damage Napalm will currently cause 100% of the time.
An excellent choice seems to be Ground Fire, Napalm, and Heat Wave. It gives the Firebug all the tools to play a competent defender for the team by melting a lot of Zeds and giving you a trick to keep Zeds off of teammates.
So it's very difficult to judge if the Firebug is better now, because it's so buggy. On one hand, it feels more like it should now, with Firebug being a competent trash cleaner. On the other hand, I feel like this is so broken that any fix will nerf the Firebug so badly that nobody will appreciate having the Perk on high difficulties again.
Ironically, its current broken state would be the right direction for it to go in because it's finally a good choice for trash cleaning right now in HoE. That said, I think that some of the future tweaks for Firebug should go into making the Perk tankier because its only defensive abilities are a passive fire damage reduction skill (against one single enemy type) and on L20 either Heat Wave or Firestorm are the only active skills that are useful in a defensive sense, but that's just me. Firestorm exposes you less to medium Zeds like Sirens, Bloats, and Husks, while Heat Wave is what's good to hold a line or get Zeds off of team mates. That's it—you still have to facetank a lot of damage, get no extra HP or armor, no regeneration, no damage reductions aside from Husk fire, and you don't even have any speed boosts that help you run faster. This is painfully noticeable whenever you're on a team where the Medic focuses heals on everybody else but you as a Firebug because of the Perk's notoriety as a bad trash cleaner, despite it currently being fairly easy to carry a wave solo even though I can sometimes watch the same team die get wiped out as soon as I die.
The muchly maligned Microwave Gun seems to be working as it should. I think most people don't understand how to use it effectively—set the Zeds on fire first with one two blasts of a CnB, then give them a short spray with the MWG, then alt-fire into them all lined up and that will clear a horde even including medium Zeds. That lets you conserve its ammo at maximum efficiency for whenever you need to push big Zeds away from the team to buy Demos/Sharps some time.
I'd like to see Flaratov's effects return as a passive skill now that it's gone. Especially if the Firebug gets fixed/nerfed from its current state, it would help tremendously.
One way I could imagine the Perk's skillset going is making decisions in between beefing up overall DPS versus defense/durability/debuffs. The whole concept of DoTs kind of needs to go. I like how the DoT skills increase the DoT damage instead of duration, this needs to stay that way. People don't appreciate it nor do they appreciate having a trash cleaner that can't kill things quickly enough.
Even if the current Perk skills were working correctly, the skill tree is not set up well, IMHO.
LV5: Choose between a skill that's only good to open with and then switch to the obvious choice; boosting your damage. I in fact don't even bother with the extra ammo and do fine on HoE.
LV10: Extra damage versus a debuff. A decent choice.
LV15: Damage versus damage. Kind of redundant. Don't 100% understand how the explosions fit thematically, anyway.
LV20: Defense versus defense. One is arguably more self-defense oriented (Firestorm) as it gives you more range, the other one is more team-defense oriented (Heat Wave) because it allows you to get Zeds out of people's faces or clear escape routes.
LV25: High DPS for no ammo use versus a strong debuff. Problem with the latter is that if you don't have extra range from Firestorm, or you have Ground Fire for the reliable speed debuff, it's often redundant. So not much of a choice here.
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Wratts, I notice something is wrong with firebug too. The damage is not adding up, the perk is extremely weak right now.
Pros:
Caulk and Burn is a Mac 10 and its perfect where it is.
Cons:
The idea of ground fire being necessary to play firebug is a huge turnoff, its pretty much mandatory to clear Sirens and Scrakes and the Microwave Gun is more toaster than death ray.
Fallout NV: The Toaster's Mood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kp4zBF-Rc
Caulk and Burn is a Mac 10 and its perfect where it is.
Cons:
The idea of ground fire being necessary to play firebug is a huge turnoff, its pretty much mandatory to clear Sirens and Scrakes and the Microwave Gun is more toaster than death ray.
Fallout NV: The Toaster's Mood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kp4zBF-Rc
Oh well, this might be in this topic already, but I just add it here anyway:
Give Firebug passive or skill bound ability to inflict fire damage and set zeds on fire for the 9mm Beretta (and maybe with some SMGs too, literally "Incendiary Rounds"), similar to the Medics "Acid Rounds" skill.
Give Firebug passive or skill bound ability to inflict fire damage and set zeds on fire for the 9mm Beretta (and maybe with some SMGs too, literally "Incendiary Rounds"), similar to the Medics "Acid Rounds" skill.
I dont know, for me firebug was close to perfect before this nerf, now its just bugged as hell.
sp1vey;n2270172 said:
Ground fire is not necessary my fire bug is set to all left side skills, and the microwave gun can solo 3 scrakes on 6 man hell on earth with alt fire and a bit of switching to c n b for added dmg whilst punching them back.
my tactic is to use cnb for trash.
Husks and Sirens are mwg after a small spray of cnb, scrakes get the alt fire on mwg, mixed with molotov to keep away pesky trash as your taking it on.fleshpounds are alt fire on mwg with and bit of normal fire.there's nothing a good fire bug can't take out.sl
It's the same as before the updates but now with more power and ammo to do these things.
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At this point I have lost all hope for this perk. Either they don't want to make a fun FB or they have no clue how to. Sooooo frustrated as this was my favorite perk in KF1 and really want to have a FB in KF2. At this point they should just remove it until they know what they heck they are doing.
At the moment I find that firebug is so bad for dealing damage to big zeds that I actually take this loadout:
CnB - general trash clearing, fear, panic.
Trenchgun - stumbles, long distance damage/panic.
Katana - to parry big zeds, trash clearing to save ammo.
Med pistol - to decap fps... fine, it's to heal people.
Pretty much all I do is clear trash and protect people from big zeds by giving them more time or tanking. It's kind of the ultimate support role, well it's the best I've come up with. I find that the MWG doesn't do enough damage considering its weight, cost and T4 status, and considering the fact that it does body damage and can't help with decaps. The flamethrower seems like a bigger CnB with more damage and range. But it's not better than the CnB by enough for me to fill up the rest of my inventory with it.
Does anyone else play firebug in an unconventional way? I find that it is not all that good for playing normally. You'd be much better off as another perk.
CnB - general trash clearing, fear, panic.
Trenchgun - stumbles, long distance damage/panic.
Katana - to parry big zeds, trash clearing to save ammo.
Med pistol - to decap fps... fine, it's to heal people.
Pretty much all I do is clear trash and protect people from big zeds by giving them more time or tanking. It's kind of the ultimate support role, well it's the best I've come up with. I find that the MWG doesn't do enough damage considering its weight, cost and T4 status, and considering the fact that it does body damage and can't help with decaps. The flamethrower seems like a bigger CnB with more damage and range. But it's not better than the CnB by enough for me to fill up the rest of my inventory with it.
Does anyone else play firebug in an unconventional way? I find that it is not all that good for playing normally. You'd be much better off as another perk.
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