the Flamethrower Staff seems far too weak compared to pretty much any other Weapons, i got over 30 hours on Psyker only, tried it on various levels, most recent one at 30 with item score 411.
It takes 3 to 4 left click Blasts to kill regular Trashmobs, 5-7 on regular armored ones, and its pretty much impossible to kill Specials with it, even with a fully charged attack it takes about 3-5 of those to kill a Special. While somehow the charged attack does not apply stagger, so by the time those would kill a Special you are simply dead or interrupted 10 times.
While it does work ok on big Hordes of regular Trashmobs, it could definately use some tweaking, maybe by giving it a stronger Stagger, like the Lighting Staff or Enemy Flamethrowers, to keep things from just straight up walking through the Flame to hit you, or a Big Damage buff.
Yes it has a huge AoE, but its weaknesses just don’t make it very practical, using it is more of a nerf to your self than anything, compared to almost any other Ranged Weapon option.
I agree, it is really really quite awful. I’ve used the zealot flamer and it does a lot more damage while using almost no ammunition at all, and has much less wind up time along with no risk of blowing yourself up. I’ve tried every combo of talent combination and level 30 and there’s just no way to make it useful. Full on soulburn builds just don’t do much in general, and the flame staff doesn’t add much synergy to that. I think that the purgatus staff should do more damage than the zealots flamer, as it has way more downsides, and for it to directly synergize with soulburn talents better, i.e. give the 10% chance to generate warpcharges on its direct hit kills and make it work better with wrack and ruin even.
Unsure how you guys are thinking the Purgatus staff is weak. I use it even on T5 and it kills all elites and mobs quite fast (other than Crushers). It’s also the only way to consistently build warp charges without having to use BB. The staff is also in many ways stronger than the zealot flamethrower just from the fact it doesn’t need ammo and doesn’t have a wind up to instantly use for CC. I have around 80 hours of Psyker throughout every difficulty T3-T5. So far I’ve found Force Sword with the Purgatus staff combined with Ascendant blaze, Kinetic shield, and Warp Absorption have made it a ridiculously strong combo. Nearly always max toughness through entire encounters, high damage, strong special damage and horde clearing. the left click blasts are more useful as instant CC imo as you can instantly swap to the staff with a left click out and swap back to melee or even just left click one and then charge a bit with right before continuing your flame.
The utility of this staff is almost unmatched. Since we have BB for snipers and targets that are typically hard to rush to or deal with, we don’t usually need another staff to do the exact same thing. This opens up opportunities for the Purgatus staff that would otherwise require you to use a different staff or gun.