Guild Wars 2

I personally feel that flamethrower is the most viable options in terms of damage atm, so I would like to see the range increasing a bit. In dungeons, it almost feels like I’m in melee range and die a bit fast despite dodging and all. Any thoughts?

Either a range increase or a damage increase are probably in order. As it stands now it’s only advantage is the high rate of attacks. Also, some elevation fixes are pretty important for it.

I think the range is fine, but damage should be upped. It should remain more of a med-short range option, but it should have higher damage to compensate.

Doomcaster.5084:

I personally feel that flamethrower is the most viable options in terms of damage atm, so I would like to see the range increasing a bit. In dungeons, it almost feels like I’m in melee range and die a bit fast despite dodging and all. Any thoughts?

I think it is fine and needs to be left alone. Particularly after we have 100 threads on this topic already. Did we really need a new thread on this again?

rizzo.1079:

I think the range is fine, but damage should be upped. It should remain more of a med-short range option, but it should have higher damage to compensate.

I agree with this though. Again, this is suggested on all of the 100 other threads. It always is. Perhaps the devs should take that as a hint.

The damage of the flamethrower is actually fairly poor, worse than a rifle infact due kit stats, its greatest strength comes from the rapid attack which can be abused via nourishment or snake venom.

Ever tried the flamenommer build? its freaken hilarious and fun.

The damage needs upped so you can deal more than you’re taking from retaliation….

Lord Aargadon.4135:

The damage needs upped so you can deal more than you’re taking from retaliation….

LOL, good point.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

The damage of the flamethrower is actually fairly poor, worse than a rifle infact due kit stats, its greatest strength comes from the rapid attack which can be abused via nourishment or snake venon.

A rifle better than Flamethrower? Can you please tell me the build and the stats?

not better, but more consistent damage
its just the standard berserker gear + rifle traits.
based on cooldown you can shoot 2-3 rifle shots within a flamethrower blast.

Here’s the deal… I’ve been having a lot of success with the flamethrower lately. And hardly much trouble with the apparent misses that everyone’s babbling on about. But I understand why people are having a lot of issues with the flamethrower.

It’s one of the hardest L2P weapons in the game, not because of intended play design, but because of how it is aimed.

Key 1 hits a pretty wicked awesome cone. But the problem is that it extends forth from the player’s facing rather than the graphic effect. This is most readily apparent in the rotational axis, horizontally being able to sweep the flamethrower over a wide swath of enemies. Who you’re facing is who you hit. But this also means you have to take the vertical axis into account. Elevated targets require players to tilt the camera up before the start hitting. Also of concern is identifying where the target’s hitbox is. For creatures, it’s fairly visual most of the time, except on big bad guys. But those hitboxes are highlighted for you. On an object, you just kind of need to move around and guess. It’s annoying, but it’s generally set close to the center of volume.

Even then, there’s still some quirks to deal with. But it’s honestly a good weapon. Number 2 is what needs love most. And it’d prefer it if Number 4 was a circular fire patch instead of a line, granted, the line can be used to awesome effect sometimes.

Overall damage increase would be nice too, but who wouldn’t want that on their favorite kit?

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

not better, but more consistent damage
its just the standard berserker gear + rifle traits.
based on cooldown you can shoot 2-3 rifle shots within a flamethrower blast.

Sry but I am a bit new to the game, what exactly are the rifle traits?

@ Wasdclick
I’m in complete agreement with you. The Flamethrower is a great weapon, that once you learn its quirks, can be very effective.
I use it as the primary weapon in my PvE build and I really have no issues soloing 4-5 Risen in Orr, so long as I keep moving and rotating the camera. I understand this play style may not be to everyone’s liking, but that does not mean it is broken.
The ‘cone’ of the weapon is huge (extending far beyond the graphic).
This being said, I feel that it is (atm) a PvE centric weapon. For PvP or WvW there are much better choices of builds out available than to have the Flamer the focus weapon.

… and I agree, #2 needs love. It was once ‘fixed’ for a day of two between two patches and it was working 100%. When the second patch came down, our ability to reliably detonate was lost again. Oh, how those were two glorious napalm filled days.

The thing about the range needs to be addressed because I’ve noticed how the Napalm reaches beyond where the end of the #1 flame blast range ends. This is part of the problem and why so many of us feel that the range needs adjustment. I think personally it’s fine how it is however we need more protection while using this kit. 200 toughness doesn’t really cutit honestly. We need also for the regen kit trait tobe adjusted so that it’s actually affected by the +healing stat on our gear. 120 isn’t much to work with.

They need to improve it on a number of fronts.

Right now, at the end of the blast is when enemies can catch fire. It’s almost as annoying as when you use the discharge trait and hidden pistol toolbelt unload at the same time and have to wait until the end of the animation sequence before the electrical attack is discharged. Burning should be immediate. With the shortened duration on everything it should be 1 application of burning at the beginning and 1 at the end. You are covering everything in chemical flames afterall.

The other thing I’ve noticed is there doesn’t seem to be any indicator of whether this is a pow/prec/crit dam weapon or a pow/condi weapon. It really should be either or not both. It would save on the confusion. I’ve noticed that happens alot on this class. hybriding is not a good enough system to use unless the class is fundamentally changed and the nerfs to both base damage and condi damage are returned to their at -launch scores. This class in pve has yet to recover from the nerfs put forth every patch since launch in the name of balancing pvp.

Also, #5 needs to world like the Black Powder skill of thieves so there’s actually a long enough duration in a single kit without switching of blindness to offer better protection while blasting away.

Right now it’s just weaksauce.

The problem with the cone is that it’s entirely inconsistant from one minute to the next. I can literally be hitting two guys 90 degrees apart with the flame facing the left side of my screen one blast, then the next blast miss both of them when none of us have moved. I’ve found it’s not necessarily where the camera is facing because of this…I can target a guy behind me and spray fire towards the camera and it hits, but sometimes it’ll miss a guy a foot above me when the camera is facing him. It’s fun and effective and I’m not going to stop using it, but if a.net doesn’t up the dam at least they can work the bugs out.

The flamethrower in-game clearly uses liquid propellant and should have a range of 1200 and hit like a truck prior to burning damage. That’s what flamethrowers were made for: destroying tanks and buildings and the liquid propellant continuing to burn on the ground, yet in GW2 they utterly suck at destroying structures in general as well as just about everything else.

Rhinzual.7861:

That’s what flamethrowers were made for: destroying tanks and buildings and the liquid propellant continuing to burn on the ground, yet in GW2 they utterly suck at destroying structures in general as well as just about everything else.

I second it.

since we got tanks (guardians/some eles/ some other mutants) we should have a decent Flamethrower !
where do I sign the petition?

Someone did math awhile ago and found that the flamethrower needs like 20 stacks of might to just break even with rifle dps. It will be even worse now after the kit nerfs.

Damage is fine though, yep.

I sense sarcasm. But it needs to change, range up to the animation(550u) would be nice, and the attack needs to hit faster, harder, deal more burning, and scale better with power, not to mention we still have the retaliation issue. Currently, wearing full power gear and a few stacks of might lets you out do the rifle with FT, although it only hits at 150avg on a heavy golem, you will still be taking twice(at least, more if your enemy is power specced) as much damage back from retaliation and suffers the miss problem while strafing, but it is fairly easy to counter if you zoom in and follow target.

On a side note, I just learned rifle piece and blunderbuss both have a 5 target limit, any other viable targets simply state ‘Out of Range’

Heck I wouldn’t mind if its power got really buffed and was made an elite….