Firebug (Killing Floor 2)

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Perk Overview

The Firebug perk in Killing Floor 2 specializes in fire-based weapons. They spawn with a Bowie Knife, Caulk N Burn, 9mm Pistol and their grenade is a Molotov. This perk gains experience by dealing damage with Firebug weapons and receives bonus experience for killing crawlers with Perk weapons.

Weapon List

200
5
Caulk n' Burn
650
5
Incendiary Trench Gun
1100
8
Flamethrower
1500
10
Microwave Gun
---
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Fireman's Knife
40
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Molotov Cocktail
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Bonus Experience

The Firebug is awarded bonus experience for killing Crawlers with Perk weapons.

Normal Hard Suicidal Hell on Earth
Bonus experience ? ? ? ?

Perk Stats

This table represents the passive stat bonuses the Firebug receives at level 0 (base stats) and the bonuses they receive each time they level up.

Base Stats Stats Per Level
0% Perk Weapon Damage
0% Perk weapon reload
30% Resist Zed fire damage
25% Immunity to your own fire
5% Starting ammo
+1% Perk Weapon Damage
+1% Perk weapon reload
+2% Resist Zed fire damage
+3% Immunity to your own fire
5/level Starting ammo

Perk Talents

This table represents the active abilities the Firebug has access to. You have the option of choosing one per tier.

Firebug Skills
Level Icon Description
Level 5 Fully Stocked: What it says on the can: Firebug weapons start at maximum ammo capacity at the trader
Level 5 Flaratov Cocktail: Its in the name. Shove a flare in your Molotov Cocktail - you get a Flare that lights up the environment for 30 seconds AND your flame burns for twice as long.
Level 10 Fuse: A nice slow burner. Firebug weapon's burn effect lingers 70% longer adding to damage over time.
Level 10 Heat Wave: Like a Georgia summer. Enemies struck at point blank range with Fire will stumble back.
Level 15 Zed Shrapnel: Zed goes BOOM: Any zed killed by Fire weapons has a 30% chance to explode, causing damage to nearby Zeds.
Level 15 Zed Napalm: Zed on FIRE: Zeds that are burning will set other Zeds on fire when they make contact with them.
Level 20 Range: Increase range of all Fire weapons. Go on - you know you want to
Level 20 Splash damage: Or increase the splash damage of Fire weapon impacts. Decisions, decisions!
Level 25 [[File:]] Zed Time - Combustion: Shrapnel + Napalm = Combustion. Sort of. Any zed that dies from your Fire weapons in zed-time will explode in a fireball setting anything in the explosion on fire.
Level 25 [[File:]] Zed Time - Scorch: You're on fire! Well, not literally. Perk weapons used in zed-time will fire close to real-time speed.

Skill utilisation

Initial skill selection for the Firebug is fairly straightforward. Fully Stocked is beneficial in the early part of each game, granting full ammunition when spawning with the Caulk'n'Burn, and upon the purchase of any new weapon in the Firebug sphere. Once the player has bought all their preferred weapons for this perk, it's no longer required to opt for Fully Stocked, and instead beneficial to switch to Flaratov Cocktail. This skill grants a longer burn time for the Firebug's perk grenade, a weapon which is highly effective at causing the affliction "Fire Panic".

Level 10's skills present another easily deduced choice. Although Fuse might be beneficial in situations where the enemies aren't fast enough to close in on the player, the higher up the difficulty levels a player progresses, the more likely they are to find less damage-over-time benefit from Fuse due to the increasing speed of enemies. Additionally, the generally short range of all Firebug weapons inhibits effective use of Fuse with three of the four base weapons, trench gun excluded - however, the fairly limited ammunition supply of the trench gun doesn't warrant opting for Fuse under most circumstances. Heat Wave, on the other hand, attaches the ability to cause the affliction "Stumble" to any enemy that isn't already on a stumble cooldown. Particularly regarding trash zeds, Heat Wave has a great deal of utility to it, allowing the player to keep most enemies from harming them whilst said enemies continue to take burn damage.

Level 15 is yet another lop-sided choice between Zed Shrapnel and Zed Napalm. Zed Napalm causes zeds that come into contact with already burning zeds, to catch fire also and take damage. The damage that is transferred though is limited and of little value. Zed Shrapnel conveys a 30% chance for a killed zed to explode and damage other enemies, making this skill choice exponentially more effective, particularly against groups of enemies. Additionally, the damage type of Zed Shrapnel is explosive, meaning that sirens will take 2x the actual damage caused by Zed Shrapnel, relative to their range from the explosion.

Level 20 presents a mostly straightforward choice also, depending on the weapons used. Because the Flamethrower has higher impact damage than the Caulk'n'burn, the Range skill [which boosts range of applicable weapons by 50%] is beneficial in keeping enemies at bay. The Splash Damage skill doubles the splash damage of all Firebug weapons [trench gun excluded] which is arguably more beneficial for the Caulk'n'Burn/Microwave Gun loadout. Considering that ground-fire statistics are effectively the same for the Flamethrower and the Caulk'n'Burn, the Range skill grants more benefits for directly burning enemies with either weapon rather than setting fire to the ground.

Level 25 has arguably limited benefits either way. Regarding Combustion, unless a high-level Commando is frequently chaining kills to extend zed-time, it's not guaranteed for a Firebug to be able to kill an enemy in the time it takes for zed-time to finish. Despite this, it's arguably a more effective choice than Scorch, which merely alters fire-time to be ~90% of real-time rates of fire.

Weapons and team strategy

In order to understand how best to use this perk, it's important to understand the function of the weapons, the skills, the afflictions these can cause and how these combine to create particular beneficial circumstances for the team.

The starting weapon is the Caulk'n'Burn. For lower level Firebugs [less than level 10] this weapon will be tricky to use effectively without taking much damage. The Heat Wave skill grants the ability for any Fire weapon to cause the affliction "Stumble" when the zed is within a short distance of the player, vastly improving the effectiveness of the starting weapon. This affliction operates on a cooldown depending on the enemy that suffers the affliction; clot variants can be stumbled almost at will, gorefasts can only be stumbled once every 2 seconds, scrakes can be stumbled once every eight seconds, and fleshpounds only once every 10 seconds, regardless of which Fire weapon is used in conjunction with the Heat Wave skill. The Caulk'n'Burn is highly effective against trash zeds from wave 1 to 10, regardless of the difficulty - assuming the player has access to, and uses, the Heat Wave skill.

The tier-2 weapon is the Incendiary Trench Gun. This weapon has a maximum capacity of 46 rounds, has a penetration power of 2, and is able to create an affliction called "Fire Panic". Other Fire weapons can create this affliction, granted, however the Incendiary Trench Gun is the weapon that is most effective at doing so. Somewhat vexing to Firebugs is the Husk - this enemy has relatively high HP, and causes problems to Firebugs due to its inherent 50% resistance to fire type attacks. The Incendiary Trench Gun can be a solution to this problem in that the ballistic damage is capable of decapitating the Husk with a single point-blank shotgun blast. This is effective on all difficulties excluding Suicidal at >4 players, and Hell on Earth difficulty at >2 players for a level 25 Firebug. Bear in mind that there is only a small amount of head HP remaining after a point-blank shotgun blast to a Husk, and that a small number of 9mm shots can precede or follow this attack. Whilst the Incendiary Trench Gun is often regarded as being a sub-par weapon, its ability to cause the Fire Panic affliction, inflict ballistic damage to Husks and penetrate more than one trash zed with each shell, provides a greater degree of utility to the Firebug than it is generally regarded as having.

The Flamethrower is a highly effective but often overlooked weapon. Both the Flamethrower and the Caulk'n'Burn generally use 4 units of ammunition per "burst". However, the Flamethrower's total ammunition capacity is 33% higher than the Caulk'n'Burn, each "magazine" is twice the size of the Caulk'n'Burn, and the impact damage itself from the Flamethrower has a base level of 25 against the Caulk'n'Burn's 10. In all, the Flamethrower is a superior weapon, boasting substantial benefits that outperform the 2 extra weight carried. Using the Range skill with the Flamethrower allows the Firebug to keep most trash zeds under control almost indefinitely if the ammunition is used diligently. The one problem that arises in the minds of most players is that the use of the Flamethrower precludes the use of the Microwave Gun - the tier 4 weapon for Firebugs.

The Microwave Gun is a peculiar weapon to the Firebug. This weapon operates on the Microwave damage type, rather than specifically Fire type. This weapon is best used directly against an enemy's body at lower levels, and best used when pointed at the ground close to an enemy at higher levels when using the Splash Damage skill. In all instances, however, it is beneficial to tap-fire the weapon as the damage continues for a short period of time after the weapon has stopped firing. This tactic of tap-firing with short gaps in between allows for less ammunition consumed for effectively the same result. The splash damage of the Microwave Gun has a fairly large radius, meaning that aiming at the ground at a particular enemy's feet will still damage other enemies inside that attack's area-of-effect. This is especially effective for dealing with large groups of weaker enemies, with the bonus of not requiring the player to aim precisely in order to achieve good results. Microwave damage is 2x effective against scrakes. However, as the player moves up the difficulty levels, scrakes have substantially larger health pools - this makes the 2x bonus against scrakes progressively less and less effective. Considering the amount of ammunition required to kill a scrake on Hell on Earth, 6-player HP values, a player might only have enough ammunition to dispatch approximately 5 scrakes in a wave. This excessive use of Microwave Gun ammunition renders the Firebug less effective in clearing trash zeds, which is the most efficient and productive use of its ammunition.

The Firebug does well to understand how important their role really is. Although being the most efficient and effective killer of trash zeds in the game isn't the most glorious of roles, it is arguably the most important. As such, Firebugs that forgo the short-term glory of attacking scrakes, will dramatically increase their team's chances of survival by dealing with the more numerous and dangerous-in-numbers weaker enemies. Firebugs that possess a degree of lateral thinking and forethought will consistently be able to keep trash zeds away from the team's position, simply by circumventing scrakes and fleshpounds, and concentrating on the other, weaker, enemies.

Two common loadouts will be centred around the level 20 skills - Range and Splash Damage. Splash Damage offers considerable benefits for players opting for the Caulk'n'Burn/Microwave Gun loadout. Range on the other hand, is arguably more beneficial for the Flamethrower, as this weapon's splash damage value and radius is no better than that of the Caulk'n'Burn. Flamethrower loadouts with either the Caulk'n'Burn or the Incendiary Trench Gun allow 1 spare unit of weight for use of the HMTech-101 Pistol: a helpful addition to the arsenal of any team-oriented player. Its capacity to heal other players at range, and its base damage of 20 - which can decapitate most trash zeds in one shot - cannot be underestimated.

If the team has decided that body damage to scrakes is the method they will choose to kill them, then the Firebug does well to cause the "Fire Panic" and "Stumble" afflictions previously mentioned. For Firebugs not using the Incendiary Trench Gun, Fire Panic can still be achieved by using the Molotov perk grenade. These afflictions are capable of causing incapacitation to scrakes [particularly when used in succession] for periods long enough to kill them outright.

By contrast, if the team has decided that they will kill scrakes by decapitation, then Firebugs do well to observe this team idea by avoiding the scrake entirely. Because Fire weapons cause body HP damage almost exclusively, most attacks upon scrakes with Fire weapons won't assist in achieving a decapitation due to the difference in head and body HP pools. In actuality, using Fire weapons to attack scrakes that result in "Fire Panic" and "Stumble" afflcitions, will negatively impact a team's ability to smoothly decap a scrake. As such, it is important for the team to discuss their intentions and make their roles clear so that the chances of survival for all players on the team is maximised.