Guild Wars 2

Allow me to preface my following statements with the fact that the flamethrower is the reason why i chose to play an engineer, I think the visuals are terrific and l love the whole “kill it with fire” vibe. In concept it could be a really fun mid-range tanky type build for PvE and PvP.

In its current state Flamethrower is horribly broken and needs an entire redo, while I am encouraged about the sigils/adding weapon states, these changes are not going to make much difference.

1. Damage – Is subpar. For a weapon that has a range is slightly larger than melee (you have to get up close) the damage is pathetic. you will do 2-3 times the dps at that range with a grenade build. Damage needs to be buffed massively (or the skill coefficient needs to be reworked) on skill 1.

2. Skill 1 doesn’t land. Skill 1 requires you to center the camera, an even then you get a lot of random misses, especially on siege machinery. It is incredibly finicky to use in high mobility PvE and PvP fights causing you to lose even more of your subpar dps.

3. Skill 2 is equally buggy, and often times does not detonate.

4. Skills 3 and 4 are pretty good, they should stay.

5. Skill 5 is OK in certain situations, but seems a bit underpowered for a 5 skill. I think it should be a field, but I can understand folks who disagree.

6. Retaliation/reflection will destroy you. One of the few advantages of a flamethrower build is the ability to shoot through doors (which a guardian does better with a staff, but anyway….). however the prevalence of retaliation, especially on mesmer illusions, will cause you to slaughter yourself as every proc of your gun will cause you to take 340+ damage PER ILLUSION. I’ve done over 2000 dps to myself shooting through doors that mesmers put illusions on. Many classes have retaliation abilities and even if they upped the damage on skill 1 you would still be running against this hard counter.

7. One of the other advantages of flamethrower is the quick attack speed that would allow many “proc on crit” abilities to synergize well with the build. however A net has put internal cooldowns on practically all of these abilities (I think the only one without an internal cooldown is the bleed proc on the first tier of the firearms tree). Any class will proc just as often as you will with a decent crit chance because of these cooldowns.

8. Juggernaught is lackluster. Stacking might is meh, especially because the damage coefficient on skill 1 is so low. the difference in damage in negligible. Toughness is literally the worst stat in the game due to the fact that it doesn’t scale to overcome the massive crit/bonus to crit damage that people stack (and has no effect whatsoever on condition dsmage).

9. DPS and utility traits are stuck in 2 entirely different trees requiring you to spec heavily into alchemy/firearms (this is a problem to a lesser extent with EG as well). Grenades only require a 30 point investment in explosives to be viable with pretty much anything else.

Basically you have all of the disadvantages of a melee weapon and all of the disadvantages of a ranged weapon (and none of the advantages) in a single weapon, with very little to compensate.

These are many of the complaints I have stated against flamethrower.

Although I would disagree on Juggernaut. Its quite good.

Deadly mixture and fireforged trigger.
15% damage, and 20% cooldown. someone a while ago, suggest they be broken up and swapped. Deadly mixture being 15% damage and 20% cooldown to EG, and fireforged trigger being 15% damage and 20% cooldown to flamethrower.
Forcing FT to be 30 firearms, and 20 Alch doesnt make any sense.

The burning on Flamethower does need work as well.
Incendiary ammo is awful. Compare to grenade barrage, big ol bomb, throw wrench. It does not compare.
It needs a 20s cooldown. or needs to be party based. or something. in general, a MASSIVE buff is called for.
Naplam kindof the same deal. Bigger, longer, add a direct damage component, or longer initial burn, then the field.
FT itself cant even make use of the fire field, since it doesnt have any hold cc, nor finishers.

Apart from the miss bug, I think the biggest quality-of-life change would be making skill 2 ground-targetable or detonate on impact. I really can’t think of any good in-world reason why an engineer would have the fireball be able to travel a certain distance before exploding, no more, no less, and it’s so awkward to set up.

I have been using FT lately and its got a lot of potential but its incredibly awkward to use when the enemy gets in your face and your FT auto attack doesnt fire unless you have them lined up correctly, then the #2 ability is terrible for CQB situations, good damage but near useless when they are in your face, it should be able to be exploded after you fired it. #3 needs a longer knockdown so i can use #2 after knocking them down correctly