Guild Wars 2

The auto-attack has to be manually aimed. It doesn’t follow the target. Also, I can’t hit anything that is moving or while I’m moving. It says “miss” about half the time even if we’re both stationary. Is the Flamethrower supposed to be this bad or are these glitches?
I really want to like the Flamethrower, but I realized like none of my attacks were hitting and if I or my foe took a step it missed as well.

im using the flamethrower pretty much and noticed some of the things youve mentioned

i found out that when the flamethrower is aligned with the target but your body is turned to the side you will miss the enemy most of the time

also with static targets like siege weapons or different crates you have to destroy for some quest, you have to be veeery close otherwhise youll miss continuously

im not sure but i guss that missing the target while youre trying to spin and move around is intended. just take a look at how far and how many ohter targets you hit while just aiming at the target which is the closest to you
i guess this is all just about to balance the dmg of the flamethrower

Flamethrower doesn’t scale right either. When I first started playing the engineer the flamethrower was one of the first skills I unlocked. I thought it was the best weapon ever. It mowed through low level NPCs like a fat kid eats through cake. I also used the grenade and bomb kits as well to try em out, but I stuck mainly with the flamethrower. I couldn’t understand why people kept saying the flamethrower was bad. Yeah, the miss bug is there, but its not that hard to work around.

20 levels later, the flamethrower is only doing a little bit more damage than it was doing when I first started using it. My bomb kit and grenades are doing TONS more damage than the flamethrower at this point. One grenade (remember, you throw 2, 3 if traited) does the same damage per throw that the flamethrower does in one cycle (2 seconds). Bombs just completely destroy the flamethrower in DPS and since you have to get close to use the flamethrower anyway, I just use bombs.

I switched out the flamethrower for the elixir gun. At least that weapon gives better utility. Elixir gun also does more damage than the flamethrower as well.

I am also noticing quite a lot of misses.. It is dissapointing that you have to blindly guess where to shoot to actually get the damage off.

Can we please get an official reply to this mechanic as it seems to be very frustrating if trying to kite and dodge (as one is supposed to)

Flame thrower is a good AOE and gate defense item. With the invisible bug still plaguing WvW it comes in handy to find your opponents.
One thing i do notice, having rolled a number of characters. The Engineer is total weakling compared to other classes. they do less damage and speed is greatly reduced. and because they can only use medium armor take tremendous amount of damage quickly. The only thing going for them is their AOE abilities.

^ this is what i realized in dungeons and it annoyed me. Our niche is like, 1500 range AoE against stationary targets. woo.

This is why i want a single target damage kit, every skill we have has AoE capabilities, even rifle pierce, and thats why they suck damage wise compared to other classes.

Though on topic, aside from stupid objects, which i think miss because characters shoot their gun upwards at trebs, so we might have to aim upwards, but i have no problems at all hitting enemies.

ya, while i played engineer in pvp, the flamethrower just sucked so much. That and the elixer gun.

If you can’t hit with grenades on a moving target that isn’t anyone else’s problem. Dungeons are really the last thing engis should be complaining about.

More on topic, flamethrower doesn’t fail anywhere near 50% of the time, and the full cycle is 2 seconds, not 5 seconds. You also doesn’t need to be anywhere near melee range to use it.

That said its damage is definitely a bit underwhelming at higher levels compared to grenades. It really ought to burn on each application, or at least for 2 seconds on the final tick, not just one.

Just on the “also with static targets like siege weapons or different crates you have to destroy for some quest, you have to be veeery close otherwhise youll miss continuously” note. My warrior in Orr (I don’t pvp much) finds that the static trebs and catapults and such has to be darn nearly running into the object or I will miss. So I wouldn’t blame the FT on that problem. I hit Hundred blades and its almost all miss, I have to psychically be running into the the object and spamming attack on some of em.

Try changing your targeting options if you’re having trouble aiming the flamethrower. Personally, I prefer it to only fire straight forward and not lock on things, which means I have to change my settings whenever I use it.

Oh yeah I never use auto target so that’s probably part of it. I can imagine it might work badly with auto target. Although it works fine for me both when I target the mob and when I don’t.

Alright, it seems as if most of you aren’t really utilizing the flamethrower correctly. It is a very powerful kit if used properly (PvP perspective). I haven’t had any issues with chasing my opponents either.

1. It provides an almost instant knockback (I use this mostly for interrupting resurrections or finishing animations.
2. An instant aoe blind. This is an amazing ability that can be used while stunned, using your finisher, or just preventing an animation right as you see it.
3. Amazing for on crit effects. The flamethrower attacks rapidly and thus applies on crit conditions very well.
4. Fire combo field. Place this down right before you switch back to your main weapon.

Use the flame thrower in short bursts, try not to use it for a long time. I will typically switch to it and knock my enemy back, blind them, fire once or twice in between, and then place my fire wall for the field and switch back.

I love my flamethrower The best thing is that it down not follow a target. I love hitting large groups at once. The smoke vent also seems to be instant and can be used even while rezzing a player.

Two posters above ^^

Which is why what they did to juggernaught makes no sense. Why have an ability that tries to incentivize people to stay in flamethrower for a long time when the abilities clearly arn’t meant to be used that way?

Targeting/attacking on the flamethrower should work like the rifle/pistol. If 2 pvp engineers are strafing around one another (in range of the flamethrower), 1 with a rifle/pistol and 1 with flamethrower, the guy with the pistol is going to have a 100% hit rate (assuming there is no dodging or avoidance gear) and the guy with the flamethrower will hit WAY less often. When “locked” on to an enemy it should hit if the flame is right on top of them but it doesn’t always work. Don’t know how many times I’ve been killed by circle strafing when I’m out of dodge/endurance using the flamethrower. At least in PvE I circle strafe because the mobs have a hard time landing hits that way.

More on topic, flamethrower doesn’t fail anywhere near 50% of the time, and the full cycle is 2 seconds, not 5 seconds. You also doesn’t need to be anywhere near melee range to use it.

Yeah, you’re right. My bad. I got that confused with “number of attacks” which is 5. Still, grenades do about double/triple the damage in half the time, and they’re ranged. Bombs do even more. And while you don’t have to be right up in melee range to use the flamethrower, you’re pretty darn close. At that point, you might as well just go into melee range and start doing damage that matters.

Disagree completely. Flamethrower has 450 range IIRC. That’s well outside melee and one of the best things about flamethrower is that you can kite melee with it from outside melee range. Flamethrower is indeed bad if you sit in melee range using the auto attack over and over. But that’s obviously not how it’s supposed to be used.

@ zapato , you do realize you miss with flamethrower because they are not inside the cone when the tick fired. If you miss a lot (>20%) you either turning to slowly are arnt far enough away

@Yukishiro 1 juggernaut isn’t for a glass cannon build, it’s a tanky kitten build. Not that i do damage to sneeze at i do about 2/3 what grenades do. and that is without quickness doubling my damage. Plus i get to invest in tanky traits for minimal loses.

If juggernaught is for a tanky build why is it 30 points into a dps tree and why does half of its effect go towards doing damage?

The ability just makes no sense currently. It isn’t particularly tanky, it isn’t particularly dps-Y, and it tries to encourage you to play the wrong way with FT but the reward (5-7 stacks of might, i.e. ~10% damage) isn’t close to large enough.

its taky not a tank build. Notice the 200 toughness and 300 vit. its Jugernaut spec, its all about beings an unstoppable wall for chewing up chump and spitting out win.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcIQFAUlspSXHvSrF17ISoCSIoH1XddXie8YNmlB;TgAA2CtoyxkjIHbOuck5A
thats my build with the exception that i have 18k hp and 3k armor.

Juggernaut makes flamethrower my a primary weapon and rifle my secondary. And with a few seconds i can jump right into my elixir gun support set or elixir gun dps set.

I felt that the might stacks for juggernaut were the compensate for the fact its a power based weapon in a condition tree. However might scales so its not +300 power at level 60, and people can remove might from you which puts your power down for a bit.

Flamer is fine, it has a few niggles at best.

Two posters above ^^

Which is why what they did to juggernaught makes no sense. Why have an ability that tries to incentivize people to stay in flamethrower for a long time when the abilities clearly arn’t meant to be used that way?

I will explain. In the build where I use the flamethrower, I don’t have any talents for it. It still does pretty good damage, but I mainly use it for the amazing utility it provides. Although I see juggernaut as more of a pve/WvW trait, it could still be useful in s/tPvP if used correctly (I just find other builds stronger for my play style).

In my opinion, you should never just stick to one weapon. People tend to think just because they have might stacks occurring that it is bad to switch, it isn’t. You don’t lose the stacks and you should use the cds of another kit or weapon in between.

Only legitimate problem I see here about the Flamehthrower is that it doesn’t scale properly as you level up. I really hope this is fixed soon.

- The “miss” issue is because you’re autotargeting with an AoE based attack

• You can resolve this issue with a little angling with the camera while you strafe side to side
• Or you can disable autotargeting and aim, but this means you can’t properly fire targeted skills

- And some discussion about inadequate traits

• This is more of a matter of style in my opinion.
• From what I can tell. ANet wants Flamethrower users to be innately tanky. That’s why Juggernaut exists and why the +15% damage trait is in Vitality.

My personal concern is that it feels like Flame Blast should be an AoE target skill like Napalm.

The blast radius is 240 while the range is at 600. So it’ll hit stuff that stay within 360 to 840 range.
The problem is, very few mobs or players do that. Most are either a) Melee, staying within 200, or b) ranged, usually being over 900 distance away.

This means half the time, you’re not making use of the blast damage, which is a massive drop in DPS. We should be able to control where we want to lob the napalm ball for the blast damage.

EDIT: I’ve been told that the flamethrower doesn’t scale because it does not benefit from equipped weapons. This sounds like a bug, but the person also mentioned that the Flamethrower is suppose to be a condition-based weapon.
shrugs Hopefully, they’ll fix it to scale on its own soon.

Yup, I kind of shy away from the F.Thrower. It reads good on paper, but I don’t see results in combat.

DreamOfACure.4382:

My personal concern is that it feels like Flame Blast should be an AoE target skill like Napalm.

You’re always around 400 to 500 range to attack, yet the blast damage can only be achieved at 600+ range. Feels like a lot of DPS that’s not being utilized. We should be able to control where we want it to explode.

Exactly! When I first used the skill I pressed twice on the key to make it explode, but to my surprise it never did. Then I looked at the skill bar to see if the skill changes after I launch the ball and it didn’t. It only explodes at it’s max range, and I doesn’t work if don’t have a target. I would like to see it behave as the orb on the guardian’s staff, that once it’s launched you can trigger the explosion when you want or like a targeted AoE attack.

Another thing I found out. The Flamethrowers main attack can only hit up to 3 targets max. I really think it should be like every other AoE and hit up to 5 targets.

Kravick.4906:

Another thing I found out. The Flamethrowers main attack can only hit up to 3 targets max. I really think it should be like every other AoE and hit up to 5 targets.

Really? The AoE limit is 5?

I think Flamethrower deserves more for being a cone and needing to be in 425 range.
If there are 8 to 10 mobs scrunched together close enough for Flame Jet to hit them all, then they ALL deserve to burn for bad positioning!

DreamOfACure.4382:

Really? The AoE limit is 5?

I think Flamethrower deserves more for being a cone and needing to be in 425 range.
If there are 8 to 10 mobs scrunched together close enough for Flame Jet to hit them all, then they ALL deserve to burn for bad positioning!

I agree, but yes, the limit is 5. The exception to this rule are ground fields, which inflict their burning/poison/frost effect to anything that is standing in it, but any initial impact is limited to 5 targets.

@ Berkles Yeah I understand that. My point is that juggernaught as a talent right now makes very little sense. If it was in the same tree as the +15% damage talent it would at least make a little sense as a tanky trait. But again, if it’s a tank trait, why have it stack might? Flamethrower used in a tanky way involves rapid switching, not staying in FT for long periods of time.

The whole talent just makes no sense currently. The might stacking was obviously just a badly thought out bandaid to try to make the stability nerf not feel quite so bad. But it left juggernaught as a talent without a clear identity and flamethrower as a weapon seemingly designed one way but talented another way.

Yukishiro.8792:

@ Berkles Yeah I understand that. My point is that juggernaught as a talent right now makes very little sense. If it was in the same tree as the +15% damage talent it would at least make a little sense as a tanky trait. But again, if it’s a tank trait, why have it stack might? Flamethrower used in a tanky way involves rapid switching, not staying in FT for long periods of time.

The whole talent just makes no sense currently. The might stacking was obviously just a badly thought out bandaid to try to make the stability nerf not feel quite so bad. But it left juggernaught as a talent without a clear identity and flamethrower as a weapon seemingly designed one way but talented another way.

I could not agree more emphatically. I feel that if they made Juggernaut provide something to the flamethrower that the class doesn’t otherwise have access to in large amounts (like a moderate sized aoe daze on swap with an internal cooldown, or a stunbreak/short duration stability on swap on an internal cooldown), they gave napalm a detonate, and they fixed the collision bugs, the FT would be perfect.