Flamewave Staff has Inconsistent Stagger

So I accidentally entered a QP with a red Flamewave Staff equipped and while I found it overall effective and enjoyable to use, it had one glaring issue that I found spoiled my enjoyment of it: I couldn’t count on the flames to reliably stagger things when it mattered most. When we get hit by enemy flamethrowers we get violently blasted through the air by the slightest touch. When we hose an enemy with a full charge Flamewave blast, they may or may not get staggered. The random nature of it is dangerous and forces you to ere on the side of caution when we shouldn’t have to. Considering this weapon is extremely limited in its range, it seems inappropriate for it to do such a poor or random job of controlling nearby enemies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. That SV about to cleave me? Sometimes the flames’ll CC it and other times it’ll laugh em off and chop you in two. I can understand not CCing CW but everything else should be, at minimum, staggered throughout contact. Sometimes even slave rats seem to be able to shrug it off.

I bet it’s because of crits. If the flame crits, and it crits pretty often, you get the stagger, otherwise you don’t. And because crits happen so often, you start relying on them. But they’re still random.

Ah, yeah I don’t like that then. I don’t expect it blow stuff through the air like enemy flamers but it should be a reliable stagger. Flamewave already handycaps the player to only being effective w/i a ~15-20ft radius so it shouldn’t have such a major drawback relative to other staves that don’t have that problem.

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LMB stagger is pretty strong. Staggers pretty much everything, except for HookRats, monks and maybe CWs.

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Yeh but say you’ve got a long blast going and something walks into it laterally, it should be staggered. Like… it’s 3ft away eating a torrent of magical inferno to the face.

i’m a strong advocate of the flamer and the stagger is very consistent for the LMB attack. it should always stagger stormvermin (i believe even through their heavy overhead attack) for chaos warriors, only if they are not currently doing any attack animation. for maulers and berserkers, i believe 3 blasts will knock them down.

the RMB will only stagger things if they are close range (also: test this on a dummy, more damage at close range) and if they aren’t doing any attack animations (SV overheads won’t get staggered by RMB attacks)

generally: LMB is for stunlocking and clearing space in a jiffy, RMB is for mass slaughter. don’t use the RMB for stagger if you REALLY need to stagger.

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Yeah that’s my finding with it too, you can really only stagger with the LMB, and even that doesnt stop zerkers or bigger things. Meanwhile LMB on conflag and fireball staggers just about everything.

To make it truly worth using despite its obvious limitations, it needs a lot more stagger on RMB. Or at least the LMB stagger needs to stagger anything and everything.

I’ve found this to be true since beta, not a big user of flamethrower weapons yet but have played em plenty to know they have their use case, the lmb due to its stagger is very effective in peeling specials for this reason.

While I understand @Avar 's points I do disagree with extending this to rmb since it’s prone to abuse cases then as it would generate an invincible wall so to speak, while its more meant to be a consistent horde cleaver. Your allies need to step up in that case and peel elites off of you, otherwise we may well end up seeing double flamethrower groups breeze through stuff more rapidly than normal groups.

Not saying it’ll happen, but I’d fear having a onetrick pony ranged weapon (even with its range) might lead to it, and yes I understand FF is a thing but in experienced groups it’s hardly an issue! Besides, the quick lmb puffs can be a lifesaver already which is a great niche the weapon has!

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I dunno, the fireball for instance can delete hordes at any range, And staggers everything that isn’t a boss.

For flamethrower to make up for its incredibly short range and limited use, it should at least have lots of stagger.

It wouldn’t hurt if RMB was a constant stream either, not requiring the tedious and somewhat non-inuitive charge up.

This. I usually LMB spam to stagger one elite and vs more than one I get some range and use charged because it’s more efficient. Just hope for crits.

You can spam solo stagger a rat patrol by spamming LMB too.

Where I haven noticed inconsistent stagger is when an enemy gets too close and isn’t hurt or staggered by flames. FS know about this bug though.

That’s dumb though. First, the weapon is already severely hamstringed by being short-ranged. Second, what’s the logic to it? My strongest, fullest blast to the face doesn’t phase it at all but a weaker, smaller spurt pushes it? It’s immersion killing and clunky. Shouldn’t have to interrupt your attack to do a smaller attack that should, at best, have the same exact stagger potential.

Edit: I’m not saying this staff is bad at all and it still does great as a horde clear specialist it’s just the fact that this issue requires a major suspension of disbelief and, from a balance standpoint, it already has shortcomings in the range and lethality vs specials/elites department, so I feel it should handle more smoothly.

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Flame staff is really strong as it is. You just need to learn to use it, just with any other weapon.

Strong is irrelevant. I know exactly how to use it and use it to max of its potential, its just dumb and illogical from every standpoint. A lil fire fart can stagger but your roided out torrent of deathfire doesn’t. The initial spurt of the roided out torrent of death fire can stagger but the torrent itself doesn’t. It’s lame, takes me out of the game immersion, breaks the laws of physics, feels wrong, and is just silly overall. Like, “oh a stormvermin walked into my torrent mid-blast? Better restart the exact same blast so the physics applies to him cuz reasons.”

If, in real life, one was to experiment with a torrent of air, water, or fire, they’d get pushed regardless of where in the torrent they interjected. The blast, in its entirety, has force.

It would just be too strong if the charged shot did continuous stagger. The stagger it has is already great as it is.

I feel like they could balance it so it didn’t utterly break the laws of physics though. Imagine shooting an enemy with an arrow for it to not react whatsoever.

That’s subjective. Just create a topic, asking fellow players what they think about this, like I did with Glaive, and then you can come to some empiric conclusion

If the blast was strong enough to push an enemy away, it would also push a dwarf with the same speed in the other direction in accordance to Newton’s 3rd law.

Luckily this game is not realistic, and dwarf can still push away hordes of smaller enemies without being knocked down himself.

Arrow and shotgun impact is videogame/film cliche. Yet again, Newton’s 3rd law.

But this is the only weapon like this. I’m not saying they have it blast them across the room but there should at least be an animation and a slight stagger akin to what CW do when shot in the armour.

It’s not subjective that it’s the only weapon that does this. Every other weapon elicits a physical response.

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