Chem Spray needs a buff

[treseritops]

Hey, so with the new Hades I've noticed fire is running rampant. (Which is really cool) The problem is there is no good way to counter it, other than "chem spray" which is really just an *awful* fire ext.

Cool Down- Fire: 3sec vs. Chem Spray: 5sec.

Ext. Power- Fire: everything vs. Chem Spray: 3 stacks

Prep- Fire: None vs. Chem Spray: 20sec

So you get a *longer* cool down for *less* ext power in trade for a worthlessly short buff. Either Chem Spray should have a short(er) cool down, or at least make the buff last a reasonable amount of time. Yesterday I sprayed the hull, ran over to tap the engines during kerosene and spray the balloon and by the time I got back the hull had run out, we got shot by a hades and all the ridiculous running around had been for nothing.

One stack of fire can ruin your buff. Takes 5 seconds to spray, if you continue to take damage from weapons you probably need a mallet hit which takes 7 seconds (12 total so far) and then you have to either respray and wait another 5 seconds to repair again (12 seconds of not repair the hull is awful) or you hit the hull again and have gone 19 seconds since your chem spray was applied and you absolutely *have* to spray in the one second gap or risk starting the whole ridiculous process again. (at that point if you respray it's been 7sec since you last repaired, and then 5secs of spray cool down= 12secs of hull damage, why even spray?)

That doesn't even begin to address the counting of time at hull vs. time running around fixing engines. A trip around the pyra takes about 7seconds so you will have surely lost your buff on the hull at that point (1 spray+2 repair circles=21secs) or you sit at the hull for 5secs first and let the engines take 12secs of damage before your next run. And the kicker is that your hull will go 14secs without repair at the end of every third trip.

If that was still not enough convincing keep in mind that this is assuming you are a hull/engines baby-sitter and *only* fighting fires on the hull. Imagine if one engine catches fire. The entire house of cards comes flying down. Even just adding in the cool downs of trying to make sure the engines stay sprayed would ruin your ability to just be a mediocre engineer (half of the engines down, letting hull hang by a piece of thread).

[James T. Kirk]

As an avid fire user, I find Chem Spray more of a party pooper than extinguishers.

With an extinguisher, fire damage is still going on between cooldowns, with chem spray, my main damage type is being almost completely nullified.

So yes, I believe near complete immunity to an entire damage type should have considerable drawbacks.

[Captain Smollett]

I've mentioned this thought to Eric already but I'd thought I'd throw it on the forums to see what everyone thinks about this:

With the addition of a new fire weapon, the increased viability of existing fire weapons and the nerf to gattling resulting in overall longer engagements; does the chem spray need a buff?

Frequently engagements will last beyond 20 seconds making even the most diligently chem sprayed ship erupt into flames in the middle of a fire fight (no pun intended).  Should the chem spray duration be extended to 25 seconds or even longer to give engineers a chance to prophylactically protect their vessel (ok that pun might have been intended)?

Just going to go ahead and quote myself but I think a longer duration for the chem spray inoculation may be in order

[RearAdmiralZill]

I've always thought its higher cooldown then extinguisher is silly.

[Squash]

I'm of the belief it should last much longer, but applying it is the same process as the buff hammer, being effectively a progress bar to complete the chem inoculation.

[Gryphos]

I'm of the belief it should last much longer, but applying it is the same process as the buff hammer, being effectively a progress bar to complete the chem inoculation.

That's not a bad idea, I'd be open for that.

[Wundsalz]

I like your idea, Squash.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

It just needs to be returned to it's 1.1 state. 40% reduction to ignite and the ability to spam it. Since they changed it chem has been shifting constantly between OP and terrible. There was no reason to mess with it before, or even mess with fire. Took us this long to finally get back to fire being a good thing to have.

[Echoez]

I'm of the belief it should last much longer, but applying it is the same process as the buff hammer, being effectively a progress bar to complete the chem inoculation.

Lasting longer is something I'm pretty sure must happen for Chemspray, it needs it to be effective, but being applied like a buff meter would make fire stacks absolutely useless since you could Chem, pre-Chem and re-apply Chem right when a hull is brought back up, something you can't do now or you risk the 5 second repair cooldown, I do not agree on that since it would make Chem more of a reactionary tool, like the Extinguisher currently is, than a preventative one.

[Saull]

What if you couldn't contribute to the progress of the "buff" while there are fire stacks on a component?  The chem spray would work more or less how it does now on a component that has stacks on it making it not great during a fight but when's there's a lull it can be useful as a set up tool for the next engagement

[Echoez]

The problem here lies in that inbetween repair cooldowns, you can keep applying to the Chem spray meter, hence being able to keep anything indefinitely sprayed, which means Chem spray pretty much counters any fire till your hull goes down at least once, while right now, you have to spray at the right moment to get the most out of the spray and make sure the engagement doesn't last forever, Chem spray now can't be applied inbetween repairs (well it can, but it will be at the cost of a 5 second repair cooldown) which is why fire can be as effective as it is and it's why it should remain like it is.

I agree that it does need a duration buff though, if it was 30 seconds instead of 20, maybe.

[Zenark]

Yall just fear the Cake clan!

... That said, I agree that the immunity could last a tiny bit longer, or even negate a specific number of stacks. Say it protects against 20 stacks of fire for 30 seconds, once 20 stacks have been resisted, the next stack with connect until it is sprayed again. Of course these are example numbers.

[James T. Kirk]

There's an idea....

[Spud Nick]

It should have a longer repair cooldown if the effect is increased. 30 sec for a 9 sec cooldown maybe?

[treseritops]

It should have a longer repair cooldown if the effect is increased. 30 sec for a 9 sec cooldown maybe?

That technically makes chem spray worse (or at least those numbers). 30/9= ~3secs of buff/sec of cooldown vs. 20/5= 4sec buff/sec of cooldown.

The underlying problem is that the time it takes to use chem spray (not repairing the hull/component) negates its usefullness. I truthfully don't know the math for fire damage but the idea is that at some point chem spray *is* useful (let's assume the hull was about to absorb like 20 stacks of fire and that does more than 250dmg/5sec) but while I don't know the exact number I'm sure the number is at least 10+.