6 Snipers?
6 Crushers and 6 Bulwarks?
12 hounds and 6 mutants plus 6 tox flamers?
All that and so much more.
There’s no reason for DOTs, Finesse or anything other than RAW FECKING DPS in the game at this point. It’s merely a matter of survival, which is why the Bolter or twin linked slug chunker is king of the hill.
Oh Want to go AOE DOT? Unless you have three other teammates willing to shoot mobs off of you for the entire mission, you’re a waste of a slot. Melee sloggers inevitably round the corner and get taken out by a disabler while multiple bombers create an exclusion zone so you watch them die.
Yeah… your dedication to authentic cannon fodder 40K really isn’t suited to a FPS.
Maybe if I was controlling a 1000 man unit, it would be a better fit.
Not true. Flamer psyker is incredibly useful in HI+STG and maelstrom.
For example, it clears all the trashmobs and staggers them, so that others can focus down the elites/specials that are mixed in (if they are smart enough to do so, instead of focusing all of their damage on the already controlled and dying horde).
When stacked up, the dot also deals pretty good dps to monsters (about as much as spamming BB with regular cast speed). Since it can relatively easily be stacked up on multiple monsters at the same time, it is actually pretty good boss damage.
Bolter is great, but especially when a flamer psyker is on the team, an ogryn using a machinegun, is usually dead weight (although the guy gets a lot of kills by poitlessly shooting already burning hordes).
You can dodge while burning down your enemies.
You are more mobile while meleeing, than while shooting.
Being in melee, is no excuse for being taken out by a disabler.
If you feel overwhelmed by the top difficulties, try something easier.
They’re not dead. They are on fire. Or alternately, whatever soul blue sizzle equivalent the psyker does. They’re still killing you. Unless you want to sit there blocking for the 5 - 15 seconds it takes for a poxwalker to burn to death. DOTs are useless for survival.
You can dodge while burning down your enemies.
Sure… you can run around and dodge and scream and duck to avoid the damage from enemies you already targeted and fired on… while other damage methods are already engaging new enemies.
You are more mobile while meleeing, than while shooting.
Being in melee, is no excuse for being taken out by a disabler.
It’s got nothing to do with being mobile. No matter HOW mobile you are, when you’re thrown into a mass of 18+ disablers melee isn’t as good at avoiding it as a ranged class who can reach out and remove the potential threat.
If you feel overwhelmed by the top difficulties, try something easier.
Ahh the old, “get good” argument. Kudos. Clap clap.
Because a game with a dwindling player base is so fun.
Hell lets speed the disablers up to 100% more than now, throw in multiple 36+ spawns of elites, and then watch everyone “get good”.
Or get gone.
I’m not playing the top difficulties Narf. I’m an average player, wanting to have fun.
And the game, is not fun in the current state.
I’m a filthy casual you evil elite bastard.
I can’t get my friends to play, because they constantly say, “What’s the Fecking point, there’s no progression because you just die all the time”.
Guess they were right. Thankfully, Baldur’s Gate dropped. Have fun soloing.
Not dead yet, but on fire (=dying) and staggered. Staggered enemies are not a danger to anyone (unless they explode upon death).
When under „fire“ from fire, poxwalkers die pretty quickly.
If you actually use the flamer and stack the dots a little bit (not just quickly sweep over the enemies once), it does not take 5-15 seconds to kill them.
It does not even take 5 seconds. And that is on Damnation (diff 5).
The spawns that you described above, do not happen unless you play some of the most crazy modifier combinations on a higher difficulty.
There is a broad spectrum of difficulties available.
Unless you are playing on the lowest possible difficulty (which it seems like you are not, because the situations you described above, simply do not exist there), and still struggling, you can simply choose to play on a lower difficulty than you did in the situations you complained about above.
Despite i play either purgatus or trauma myself, surge psyker is the strongest, especially on Maelstrom with specials+mutes waves affix. Surge = significant difficulty drop, surge+bolter=almost faceroll. But surge is the most boring staff.
Imo it is best to have two psykers.
One with flamer and AB, one with surge and KB.
When a lot of elites/specials are around (maybe mixed in with bosses), a surge psyker is of incredible value.
But when the elites/specials are mixed in a horde, the surge staff can’t do all that much against them. In that case, it is best to have someone who can burn down and stagger the trash, enabling others to clean up the big boys.
The two staffs have great synergy.
My original point was not, that the flamer is always the best pick for the hardest difficulties, but that it is definitely not useless (which is what OP claimed).
A lot of the time they’re not staggered though, they’re just on fire and obstructing everyone’s vision with bloom effects while they continue to attack. The dot effect itself takes forever to kill anything unless you stack them hard.
Stacking dots on them with the flamer+soulblaze and focusing them until they’re dead is one thing. Dropping a dots on everything all at once and waiting for them to die is quite another. I think it’s the latter that OP is talking about.
Which sounds like pretty universal dislike of flamers and dots to me, and not like “bad players are bad” (which would have absolutely nothing to do with dots themselves).
It should be 100% obvious to absolutely everyone, what kind of case i am talking about, here.
When saying that something is useful, i obviously do NOT mean the case that someone does absolutely nothing with it.
Guy said “it is universally bad and should not be used”.
I said “when used good, it is good”.
Your rebuttal is “but when used badly, it is bad”.
Dots are not universally bad.
Everything is performs badly, when used badly.
Yes, you’re just not talking about the same thing OP is. It should be clear to you that he’s talking about something else, since, as you say, dots work just fine when used as you describe.
Not everyone is one of the pro elite Auric/Maelstrom gaymurz like you and me.
OP is telling us “casual players think dots should be effective without having to stack a ton of them onto a single target”.
And I don’t necessarily disagree with them. I came to the same realisation they did way back when I tried the same tactic. Small amounts of dots really are useless. Outside of big balls of enemies where you can apply a ton of stacks to a ton of things at once, you really are better off taking a more immediate source of damage.
Given the rest of their post, I’d say that was hyperbole.
Sure… DOTS = Aggro that you cannot mitigate with more DOTs.
Because burning zombies can still damage you.
Sure you can use stagger with the DOT spam pulse flamer/purgatus.
But it just adds more and more aggro. God forbid you have a Psyker talent that then aggroes more enemies with a tickle, or an elite that explodes and gets the horde’s attention.
This is why I see so many gun Psykers at Damnation levels, and so many priests that eschew flamers.
It’s not enough DPS to deal with the aggro you will attract during a horde.
Sure, I can (and do) swap to melee to deal with a horde. But at that point you are pinned, and can only affect the engagement in a limited area. Which means eventually you’re stuck trying to wade towards a disabled teammate, only to get there too late.
Ever tried to use DOTs to save a wounded team mate? You could have done it better, with a bolter, or a grenade, or even a Voidstrike staff.
You can get very high dps out of dots, but you need to stack a ton of them onto the thing you want to die.
Hordes are one of the few scenarios where flamer/dot builds actually shine, and that’s only because you can stack up a whole bunch of individual enemies with heaps of stacks all at once.
