Sludge Pump vs Sticky Fuel

bgm is 'Seibu (Strange Dance)' from Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou

[FakeDadRealFriend]

What was done to that Huuli Hoarder was absolutely nightmare fuel. I can’t imagine going out that way.

[dablaire]

Somewhat unrelated, but if you build so it only takes 4 ammo per charge shot, you can charge shoot 7 times with the last shot using only 1 ammo. Very ammo efficient overall

[DrillingInTheNameOf]

Sludge pump is great, and seemingly very misunderstood. Awesome clip at the end. I think the reason I got away from even attempting to light the puddles after awhile was it was so inconsistent for me in the beginning. It all worked initially, then puddles wouldn't ignite, then I wasn't getting puddles at all, then Plasma Burn worked but not charged shots. I don't remember ever in testing noticing flames spread across puddles, which was part of my argument against Goo Bomber Special. Very good to know it seems to be working to great effect now! Rock & Stone!

[greyhound]

I think there are some points you should have included in the comparison.
1) Walls and ceilings: The Sludge Pump has a very difficult time coating walls and ceilings to the point where you often just shouldn't bother trying to coat them. CRISPR wins here for applicability.
2) Range: the Sludge Pump wins on range easily. This is important to consider when you need to cover more ground: ie Escort, slowing down a bulk or protecting your team if they're more spread out.
3) Attention: SF requires very little attention after firing; it reaches full DPS without needing to follow up with EPC shots, and often kills most bugs that attempt to pass through. On the other hand, Sludge requires follow-up, often multiple charge shots, and more careful consideration of influence of the terrain on the shape of puddles left on the ground. If players want to be focusing priority targets/longer range targets in addition to their CC, SF will give them more time to do so.
4) Utility vs. Damage: You already touched on this in terms of dread fights, but any mission in which you can coordinate builds with your team can benefit from specialization of weapons. The immense slow of Sludge can be more useful then DPS if the rest of the team needs more CC to balance out a damage heavy team composition. More so than some added DPS from SF.

Above points aside, very well made video, I appreciate the nuanced perspective on Sludge vs. SF that goes beyond just numbers.

[haveiszalfaroqie]

Sludge Pump is the most AFK weapon ever made.
Usually, in hold-the-point objectives, you gotta scramble and where the enemy is coming, shoot them, look at the other side, shoot, look back, repeat repeat etc.
Sludge Pump is just literally charge, poop. Wait. Grab some drink or snack, poop again when puddles gone, go to the toilet, so on so on.

[GLDNRD]

and now with the changes having baked in the armor break for sludge pump, I think it certainly sits in a spot of its own with a different niche.

[mr]

if you are bringing the EPC into the mix, the sludge pump with slow pairs extremely well with persistent plasma, its a god-tier combo that just erases hordes with very little ammo, the fact that it slows them down so much allows them to stay in the plasma aoe for much longer than sticky flames can hold them there. Also the goot and EPC can shoot much further so getting that death ball aoe set up far away is easy as well

[MasterFustache]

I personally use the Sludge Pump as more of a flak cannon, as the goo chunks seem to hit fairly hard; compared to Sticky Flames, it works a lot better as a multi-purpose weapon, being able to take on just about any enemy, including mactera. I'm not sure why people are complaining about ammo usage; I take neither extra ammo nor charge efficiency and I still never run out of goo.

[darrenvoong]

Great flamer arguments but it can’t beat killing your enemies with your own crap

[greglim]

Love your vids man. Straight to the point with good examples

[eloryosnak]

Nobody is gonna ask about the Bearded Grunts?
Some hanky panky goin on with dwarves and dreadnoughts?

[taktika]

The way you watched huuli hoarder helplessly die in fire, coated in goo, while trying to escape but no success... Oh my God

[slimeinabox]

So in summary: goo is for defense, sticky is for offense.
Goo has more slow and a potentially higher dps
Sticky is laid out faster and can be laid out through hostiles.

[DarkBonesDaku]

I agree it's not fair to say that the entire weapon is just a worse version of Sticky Fuel flamer. However, a build where you focus on the puddles *is* going to be a lot less flexible and less consistent than a Sticky Fuel build. Not *worse*; as you show in this video, if you get the chance to really take full advantage of it, it can do some serious work. But the trade off for those situations where everything comes together is going to be that you end up in situations where you just have to run away. And the latter occurs much more frequently than the former, in my experience with running this build.

Setting aside the argument of Sticky vs Puddle for a moment, I do think the sludge pump in general has some worthwhile builds compared to the flamer in general:
1) A fragment build focused on spreading *just* the direct dot with Hydrogen Ion Additive, rather than trying to combine puddles and direct dot, can be very freeing as you can just fire a charge shot and then forget about those bugs and go back to mining. Compared to direct damage or heat radiance flamer builds, it has the advantages of range and flexibility in terms of your positioning versus that of the bugs, plus you still get 8 seconds of puddle duration even without speccing for it at all which can be useful in niche situations.
2) Sludge Blast and Volatile Impact Mixture are very interesting to me because they represent an entirely different playstyle for the driller, one focused (relatively) more on single target damage rather than killing large groups. Sludge Blast with T5 slow is my go-to build for Elimination now, it reminds me of the old days of Sticky Flame Slowdown vs dreads with how much harder it becomes for the classic dreadnought to chase you. VIM on the other hand, has quite a lot of single target damage efficiency; sure you can't hit weak points with it, but what you *can* do is hit two targets with one normal shot, which provides the same amount of additional value. I haven't played enough of these builds to seriously evaluate their strength (I've been mostly playing Gunner and Engineer recently), but at the very least, they are *interesting* because they represent something *qualitatively* different from the flamethrower, which the glue gun otherwise struggles to provide.

Disperser Compound and GBS however, I fear at least for me, are doomed to lurk in Sticky Fuel's shadow until the weapon receives some buffs. Sticky Fuel already borders on too high commitment for me in some situations; the idea alone of playing around one sludge puddle for 16 or 24 seconds sounds agonizing. Add to that the lack of flexibility in terms of where you can place your puddles and the fact that it also requires high secondary slot commitment (leaving you vulnerable to mactera among other enemies) and it just doesn't seem worth it in Season 1. Here's hoping for changes in Season 2!

By the way, knowing what I know now about puddle flame propagation, AG Mixture kinda seems like a net negative compared to no OC for charge shot builds.

[timothygooding]

I prefer the sludge pump mainly because the puddles are much larger, a line of flame can be crossed quickly even with slowdown, and the flamethrower's single target damage is abysmal
The sludge pump both covers a larger area easier and has longer lasting DOT since the goo isnt dependant on resistances or heating & cooling stats that mess with the flamethower and cooler respectively, its a flat duration.

True downside to the sludge pump for me is that it obscures the weakpoints of large bugs, especially spitballers. that and no temperature shock but oh well

faster charge time works very well on gunner's minigun for me but the instant single-shots on SP makes it so the charge shot's time really isnt a downside especially with all the area it covers

[drillboyjenkins]

While the points mentioned in the video are correct, some important points are missing. And all of them combined bring us to the reality of goo being a direct downgrade of flammer with 5s+ flames lifetime.

1. Sticky flames can be set right under the first line of the grunts with obvious benefits if both putting flames and hitting bugs with stream at the same time. Sludge cannon can't do that: your shot/fragment either hits a bug or turns into a puddle.

2. Long lifetime often is excessive. There are cases when you can make a full use of it, but then there are cases when you don't want to (example: rushing aquarqs objective) or can't (overwhelmed with non-trivial enemies and forced to leave the location). Even w/o the SF OC, flames playstyle works fine, as long as you have 5s of flames lifetime, so everything past 8s likely is an overkill that you are not really willing to pay much for.

3. If any other teammate with fire source interacts with the puddles, small and medium-size bugs likely are already dead since the fact of teammate shooting them, with no puddles being required to kill the targeted pack in the first place. Otherwise, if you are asking someone just to ignite the sludge, burning hell and phosphorous shells likely are the only resource that is reasonable to spend on sludge ignition. Or EPC.TF.PB - giving TCF up definetly is a big deal.

4. You have spent all your "runtime" on luring the bugs into the puddles. Because the sludge cannon's puddles are really inflexible and you can't set the exact surface of puddles with exact shape needed. Or (ref point 1) initiate with "flames-thru" and have them all dead regardless what you do next (head away for an objective, revive a scout or dodge mactera swarm shots).

5. You have spent 12 charged shots = 48 ammo >= 96 flammer ammo (flammer has twice the ammo at the very least). For a swarm of grunts. Being dependent on fact there is no threat to make you abandon the deathtrap that will fail working or need a yet another EPC re-setup. Even with the charged shots ammo abuse it won't go lower 70 ammo, almost 3 full SF OC tanks. Insanely expensive.

[zerozanmato]

Enemies flying about like popcorn when dying to fire amuses me.

[vfeagins]

This is the video I've been waiting for

[glebkutepov]

YES ANOTHER NEURODIVERGENT MATH VIDEO ON WEAPON STATS!

[bobertbolero]

This made my jaw drop, I'm excited to unlock the goob!