Damage increases over time majorly and takes 5 ticks to reach full damage. For body hits the damage ticks from my staff (with hero power 492) go 75…250…500…725…975…975…975…
75 vs 975 is a pretty huge difference, so clearly you need to hold the beam on things to do meaningful/intended damage.
For head hits the ticks go 175…425…925…1275…1750…1750…1750…
However, due to the dummy’s flinch-spam jerking its head out of the beam and resetting the buildup continuously, in actual practice the head damage goes 175…425…175…425…175…425…175…425…, wayyy less damage than the 1750 i’d get if the no-cooldown-on-retriggering flinch animation wasn’t there, and also less than if i just held the beam on the dummy’s body and ignored the head.
Again, i’m not arguing that the beam staff needs “buffed” or made stronger overall, just that it being more effective to target the body than the head with the beam makes no sense, especially because it makes enemies flinching actually semi-advantageous to them.
I don’t expect fatshark to change the flinch animations, though they could maybe put a repeat delay on them so that enemies don’t spam the animation 5x per second.
If i were to try and “fix” this, i would do it by making the damage-buildup only reset after multiple consecutive missed ticks of damage, instead of just one, giving the player a cushion such that one missed tick because the enemy flinched won’t completely reset their damage. I don’t know the internal tick frequency on hit checking of course, but i would start with needing 2 consecutive missed ticks to reset and then adjust as needed from there.
Also, the buildup resets when you switch from hitting head to body or vice versa on the same enemy, even though you never “missed”. This means a flinch animation that moves the enemy such that your beam hits their body for 1 tick instead of their head resets your damage too, and further discourages the player from aiming for the head compared to just holding on the body because if their hits keep switching between head and body they will never build beyond minimal damage with either. As such I might suggest making damage buildup not be reset when the player switches between hitting head/body on the same target as well.