Guild Wars 2

I find myself playing a flamethrower engineer and being very disapointed due to the numerous miss’s that occur while using it on any target that is moving making you deal 1/2 of the possible damage, if not more than half, you could otherwise be doing. Does anyone know if they plan on fixing the hit/miss very glitchs weapon. =/

There has not been any confirmation on fixing this issue. But Kits in general are supposed to be getting some attention in the patches to come, At least to provide more utility.

This is usually caused when targeted foes is just outside the actual range of the attack cone. However, the Flamethrowers Flame Jet damage essentially has two paths, one where the visual fire effect is and an additional path where your screen is aiming. There for you can actually hit two targets at the same time with proper screen aiming.

Another problem could be the pathing issue several abilities have when targeting foes at different elevations. This appears to cause the attack path to fire into the ground. Flame Blast can also suffer from this seeing as it doesn’t actually follow across the ground. (Like the Necromancers Death Shroud ability Dark Path that travels over obstacles to hit opponents)

Wolf.5816:

There has not been any confirmation on fixing this issue. But Kits in general are supposed to be getting some attention in the patches to come, At least to provide more utility.

This is usually caused when targeted foes are just outside the actual range of the attack cone. However, the Flamethrowers Flame Jet damage essentially has two paths, one where the visual fire effect is and an additional path where your screen is aiming. There for you can actually hit two targets at the same time with proper screen aiming.

Another problem could be the pathing issue several abilities have when targeting foes at different elevations. This appears to cause the attack path to fire into the ground. Flame Blast can also suffer from this seeing as it doesn’t actually follow across the ground. (Like the Necromancers Death Shroud ability Dark Path that travels over obstacles to hit opponents)

It’s difficult for me to describe in words how it works, but for some reason FT doesn’t work like every other ability in the game. *Edited out a bit which was conflicting with what nakoda says below, which is correct. I don’t want to be confusing.

Basically, when an enemy runs by you, you have to move your camera much quicker to keep hitting them than you do with other weapons. Make sure the enemy is somewhere around the center of your screen, and you’ll have a much higher hit rate.

The FT is extremely dependent upon facing and strafing directions. Your FT will always fire in the direction that your avatar is facing, REGARDLESS of where your camera is pointed.

This means that you cannot run in circles, you have to strafe and face inwards on large groups. Up and down hills is the only tricky part because range gets FUBAR (slopes reduce effective range because of Anet’s elementary level geometry and lack of real calculus) such that you often end up firing over people’s heads or into the slope because the weapon always fires STRAIGHT forward.

Flame Blast also always required a target unless you are above your opponents or standing on a slight upward slope, else-wise the fire ball just falls in to the ground.

See my sig for a link to more in depth FT discussions.

For the record, there are no more miss issues outside of what I have described above. Any misses you accrue are due to poor aim. Stationary objects no longer evade the FT, and the cone and hit box detection on FT 1 were fixed two patches ago.

I find that FT works a lot better if you turn the auto-targeting off and just fire without having a target.

Mizstik.1736:

I find that FT works a lot better if you turn the auto-targeting off and just fire without having a target.

Turning off auto-target is always a good idea. No matter the class.

However, you do want to target at least one person in range for Flame Blast.
See here:

Flame Blast also always required a target unless you are above your opponents or standing on a slight upward slope, else-wise the fire ball just falls in to the ground.

To be completely honest, the Flamethrower Kit is the only reason why I play my Engineer. Grenades, Bombs, etc. and the normal weapons/sets are pretty meh to me.
It takes a little while to used to the things you can with the camera, but very worth it, imo. I am not even sure I would want ANet to improve/fix it.

also, it can be useful to rebind tab from “target next” to “target nearest” when you have auto aim disabled.

I actually have little to no trouble with the flamethrower hitting, though I tend to circle-strafe just out of old FPS habit so I may be “doing it right” without knowing it. If you’re using the Juggernaut/HGH type might build, you can probably stand a LOT closer than you think to “regular” mobs, though for Champion and Boss level ones be careful obviously.

Slopes and Dragons have major issues. I can hit Shatterer and Claw of Jormag, but I cannot hit Tequatl’s foot for the life of me with the flamethrower. I just get misses standing next to it.

replicacloned.2809:

Turning off auto-target is always a good idea. No matter the class.

I personally think auto-target isn’t that bad. Only FT has any real trouble with it. Engineers tend to be button-heavy with all the kit swapping and instant-pickup healing turret and everything else, so not having to tap target-nearest after something goes out of range is a big help.