Guild Wars 2

Title says it all.
Flame Blast for the Flamethrower (slot 2) Is the most unreliable piece of #$^& I have ever encountered in any game. 90% of the time I use it, it get’s obstructed by NOTHING. Nothing at all. There’s nothing between me and the target, the target can be up in my face, but even so, it will be obstructed as soon as it leaves the barrel… No BEFORE it leaves the barrel!

What’s up with that?!

B kittenen S

i never get obstructed unless i clip it through walls. Baseless exaggeration only serve to hinder real issue with flamethrower and kits in general

I can see a very deep root of sarcasm in your comment.
YOU AGREE ITS USELESS!

I just don’t like the burning if the last hit hits bit…
Did that make sense, that sentence I made?

Oh, and I never seen that obstructed issue you mention. Not calling BS on you myself, just saying I never encountered it personally.

I think the awful hit detection with Flame Jet is a much bigger issue.

the only beef I have with the flamethrower is its 1 ability is unreliable, you gotta be right on top of objects to even get the damage to register instead of a “miss” or “obstructed”… compared to monsters which it just mists everything near you even its it at the end of the stream

With the 2 ability your suppose to fire it then hit 3 and push the enemies back into the explosion. However I think you should be able to detonate the 2 ability when you launch it.

Gonna have to cut in here and say that, though OP makes it sound WAY more a problem than it is, it is still a problem. It’s been mentioned before on the forums that using 3 quickly followed by 2 (air blast to knock back, flame blast to hit the target at ideal range while they’re knocked back) is bugged and often results in the red “obstructed” text even with nothing between you and the target. I’ve seen this happen myself five or six times, and it never seems completely consistent, but I do often find myself giving it a second or two extra just to make sure the goshdarn thing actually goes off.

He’s not full of crap, it is a real bug that should be addressed. It can be avoided, but in an intense firefight, it can be aggrivating.

Edited for wording that makes sense in the first couple sentences.

GideonWilhelm.5709:

Gonna have to cut in here and say that, though OP makes it sound WAY more a problem than it is, it is still a problem. It’s been mentioned before on the forums that using 3 quickly followed by 2 (air blast to knock back, flame blast to hit the target at ideal range while they’re knocked back) is bugged and often results in the red “obstructed” text even with nothing between you and the target. I’ve seen this happen myself five or six times, and it never seems completely consistent, but I do often find myself giving it a second or two extra just to make sure the goshdarn thing actually goes off.

He’s not full of crap, it is a real bug that should be addressed. It can be avoided, but in an intense firefight, it can be aggrivating.

Edited for wording that makes sense in the first couple sentences.

That might explain why I get it 90% of the time, since I always use slot 3 followed by slot 2, because hey? It makes sense! Those 10% of the time it works is probably when I don’t use 3.

testing that now, but can’t say I can pull out an obstructed message.
Which doesn’t prove you wrong, it might only show that it’s not a general bug, but one that only appears for some.

Only thing I sometimes get is an out of range message, but that’s because the pushback on 3 can be used on 300 while it pushes to 400, added up 700.
While 2 only reaches a distance of… 600!
Who did the path there, I wonder?

Will keep on testing a bit, might be that I do it too slow for the bug to kick in.

I don’t know how people can say they never get obstruction issues with #2, anywhere that isn’t completely flat ground every other shot or more for me gets obstructed.

Shot pathing is -definitely- messed up, and it’s not an exageration to say it can become useless. On rough terrain with textured planes you can find large patches of the map where you literally can’t use it for anything.

Rifle isn’t unaffected either, ever tried killing blossoms in TA explore with it? About half of them are, apparently, surrounded by the toughest grass on the planet, grass thick enough to stop a bullet (and this happens to rifle warriors too, was the case just yesterday). Bows, however, are unaffected on exactly the same path for the shot.

Can’t count the amount of times I have to switch to grenades purely due to LoS/obstruction issues in my normal day2day playing.
There is a problem, and it’s up there with the silly #1 targeting issues.

Given I like to run rifle/FT/EG in pve, I probably spend half the time cursing at the bugs and having to over-kite or switch to non-ideal kits for entire areas.

Ah, that’s why it works perfect on my dummies here: testing on flat terrain!

On flat terrain with no textured planes or invisible walls it’s perfectly fine. The same night I was going insane in TA I did two paths of CM explore and not one shot in the indoor areas had any issues. And funnily enough, you can blast half the stuff in rooms from a cozy camp outside the room’s walls there.

As an Asuran player, I frequently had my Flame Blast obstructed by the ground when running around, and always when attempting to combo it. The problem, I believe, is three-fold:

1) I’m short. I’m not minimum height, but I’m still shorter than a human. These fireballs aren’t shooting out of my head, so it leaves me thinking this projectile is lower to the ground when I shoot it than when, say, a Norn does. It’s easier to hit a hill, and while that might make sense realistically, this is a videogame and everyone’s hitbox is supposed to be equal and all of that jazz, so this is no good.

2) The camera positioning system. I, like most people, use the right mouse button to rotate my camera and turn my character. I don’t have Turn Left/Right bound to keys anymore, only Strafe. When I’m running around, my camera is tilted towards the ground: it’s not level with the horizon, otherwise I’d never be able to see the stuff I’m running over. I imagine most people play with more dirt on their screen than sky. This is an issue because projectiles take a course on a line from the camera position through the character—meaning about three inches in front of my feet. This is doubly annoying because it means any “manual aiming” of the fireball is probably going to smack the ground unless your camera is level with the horizon, in which case you can’t exactly judge the distance to get a proper fly-through-and-burst, now can you?

3) The projectile tracks the course of enemies at the moment it’s fired. This is normally a good thing, but it becomes problematic when combo’d with knockbacks/downs—one of which we have on our kit. I’m sure everyone at one point has tried to Air Blast to knock an enemy back, then followed it up with Flame Blast in an attempt to roll the shot through them and explode before they can recover. That’s a pretty basic move, right? ..except it won’t work unless you have some serious delay involved, delay that 90% of the time means the enemy is up, running at you, and thus will miss the explosion. What I believe happens here is that when a foe is knocked back and down, and you immediately follow the Air Blast up with a Flame Blast, the heading tracker on Flame Blast sees the enemy falling “down” to the ground, and calculates a path below where they will come to a rest—it thinks they’re going to keep falling, so it fires to intercept them. Except the ground is in the way now. Oops.

It’s so unreliable I’ve sworn off the flamethrower entirely, as Flame Blast was the largest component of the kit’s damage, I thought.

Only problem i have with flamethrower is the fact that Flame Jet is possibly the most useless piece of crap in the history of PvP.

1) Genuinely kitten awful hit detection
2) Does like 10 hits in 1 second, hello retaliation anyone?
(To explain this to the scrubs that have no idea how retaliation works, no, it doesnt reflect 30~% dmg every hit, the damage return is based on the Retaliation’d guys power. So if you’re up against a high power guardian with retaliation and you accidently flamejet ONCE. That’s 10 (Hits on flame jet) 10×350 damage or more.
And that’s from ONE guy. Imagine accidently popping Flame jet into 3 people with retaliation up, bye bye engineer.

Either make it less or kittening fix retaliation.

Flamethrower clearly has issues.

As Smack said, Flamejet is a bad ability. Mechanically it has a lot of issues and downsides, with only one upside that you get to hit multiple people with it. But that doesnt justify the disproportionate weakness to Retaliation, the rather mediocre damage and the hitbox issues.

Flameblast is bugged aswell, no doubt about it. It happens particularly often after using 3. Almost as if the weapon points down when you fire and fire into the ground. It also obstructs with minor terrain clutter (little pebbles for instances) and when it connects with terrain it doesnt explode or anything. It just disspates.
Its only worthwhile damage if you get the target hit by the explosion, personally id vote to see it completely reworked. Shoot a ball of magma at your target, it explodes on impact creating a pool of burning magma. That damage/burnes anyone in it.

Napalm isnt special either. Its usefull as a combofield, but applying 1tick of Burning to anyone who walks through it (about 600dmg in cond build) isnt much of a deterent or area control. And easy to avoid. Why such a cooldown for a rather weak ability?

AoE blind isnt halfbad, prefer the pull tbh. But it can be used pretty much in any circumstance. Which is nice. But its range is small, and the cooldown is long. Not especially powerfull either.
Would much rather see it make a Smoke combofield and linger for a bit. To give Engineers with Flamethrowers a bit more of a substainablity considering how close they must get to their enemies, relative to the quite squishy nature.

I kept asking myself why i couldn’t let go of my flamethrower in my testing builds.
The answer seems to be:

1. a knock back on a rather low cooldown, much lower than the shield, which is of course better because of the continuous projectile reflecting first.
the flamethrower seems difficult to use as a projectile reflector…

2. the also rather low cd on the blind, but there I wonder if the bombs blinding field isn’t better because the flamethrower doesn’t seem to refresh the blind, where i think the bomb does.
is this correct?

Those are my 2 main reasons, and as you can read: I sort of doubt both of them already…

I’ve gotten obstructed a few times, maybe 5% of the time.

Try using battering ram instead of #3 to combo with #2 – more damage, more reliable hit, and usually never obstructed.

@Gorgewall
i believe you hit the nail on the head as the saying goes.

also at point blank range for example, if im trying to shoot through the enemy and hit a crowd behind him with #2 it will usually shoot into the ground as well.
to be more clear, if im targeted on the enemy that is point blank but i intend to shoot through and hit a group at the proper distance behind the point blank enemy #2 will almost always shoot into the ground in my experience.

just to add i was actually confused the 1st time i used #2, because i was mashing #2 again trying to detonate it. i figured it was a skill like the the #2 on the engineer harpoon gun.
so my 1st impression was “WTF this thing is broken it wont detonate” LMAO anyway just thought i would share my newbie story there.

if they fix the issue with the pathing of the shot, i hope they add detonating of #2 because it just makes sense.

I get obstructed 90% of the time, even when it hits the enemy. Talk about irritating.

Switched out my flamethrower for grenades…
The frustration is gone… Only nuisance now is that I have to aim my attacks, but that’s nothing to complain about.

Now that I run a Juggernaut build and stay in FT most of the time, the obstruction seems to be pretty frequent.

Flame Blast obstruction does happen a lot after Air Blast even on flat terrain. My friends and I think it’s a combination of my characters short height (Asura) plus the possibly lowered height of the enemy when they’re knocked down placing the targetable center of the fire path slightly below ground level…thus giving us the “obstruction” of firing at the ground as far as the coding is concerned. It also could explain why we often don’t even see the flame ball travel and just get the Obstruction message a split second after firing.

Either way, this should be addressed because it significantly lowers our DPS and wastes time.

I agree. But isn’t slot 2 napalm ball?
I sure think napalm ball is a useless skills, it provides less damage then the regular attack, and it misses ALL the time!

The blast needs to go off when it hits the target. What giant rock do you know of goes right through people and explodes on nothing? It just makes more sense that the rock or lava ball or whatever it is explodes on contact. I see people saying make it detonate on a second button press but I still think thats unrealistic. What is there like a detonation device in the lava rock ball you just shot and like have a button that activates it? kinda weird. My vote: explode on contact.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

I agree. But isn’t slot 2 napalm ball?
I sure think napalm ball is a useless skills, it provides less damage then the regular attack, and it misses ALL the time!

The DPS is substantially higher than auto attack when you hit both parts of the skill. It’s particularly good as an opener. Open with that then run forward hitting with number 1.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

I agree. But isn’t slot 2 napalm ball?
I sure think napalm ball is a useless skills, it provides less damage then the regular attack, and it misses ALL the time!

The explosion at distance does good damage.

But comparing damage with flamethrower slot 1 (flame jet) there´s probably a popular trap: damage-numbers from flame jet are not per tick, they always show the added damage from all ticks.

Personally I find the flamethower to be generally meh anyways outside of the utility / control aspects and frankly, I can get that with nades (that I already have for damage) and a battering ram or even just my base rifle. I really don’t see the upshot to using flamethrower unless the damage is boosted to make up for having to be so close to be effective (vs nades that do more damage and have more range)

Oh, I agree that FT isn’t as optimal as LOLnades or other set-ups. I just don’t think that sub-optimal choice should have anything to do with this bug we’re getting. I’d like to think that how you choose to level can also be a reflection of your characters personal story. I personally like having a little white mouse running around with a flamethrower. I’m not asking for buffs or some type of balance. Just fix the problem that’s already there, ya know?

It looks like Jason King has responded to this issue over in the Ranger forums:

Jason King.2647:

I think some further clarification on this might help, as there can be a couple different causes for the “obstructed” message to come up. But first, let me clarify that this is not a profession specific bug – it can happen to any profession.

There are two scenarios (that I’m aware of) that can cause your attacks to become obstructed during combat:

1. When attacking a stationary “gadget”: There’s a known issue that when attacking objects, your attacks can become obstructed. We’re currently investigating this, but it’s a widespread bug, so it may take us time to get a fix in. We understand that this bug can make some fights more difficult, and thank you for your patience while we work this one out.

2. When attacking a creature: If you get an obstructed message when attacking a creature, the problem is most likely caused by the map. In this case, it’s something that we have to fix on a case-by-case basis. If you come receive an obstructed message while fighting a creature, please let us know your exact location (screenshots are a big help!) so that we can investigate it further.

I hope this clears things up!

I agree the FT is glitchy as hell. Flame jet has horrible hit detection and Flame Blast get blocked by a blade of grass or the slightest incline in terrain.

But I still use the flamethrower all the time if you can manage to actually get a Flame Blast off at the right distance it can be pretty devastating.

1. The need to make it either explode on contact or explode on each contact just smaller damage.
or
2. Make it a second activate skill like the thief bowskill so you can detonate it in mid air.

But the FT has alot going for it. You can use the smoke bomb at anytime, like even when you are gathering or immobilized OR while you are casting another skill like a Golem in the middle of battle, that is pretty awesome in itself. It has a blowback so paired with the rifle and/or PBR the enemies is constantly at a distance. And the flame wall is an easy way to snag at least 9 stacks of might in a few seconds and all you need is a thumper turret. Not to mention in WvW you can fire through gates knocking back and annoying enemy siegers.

Its buggy and needs a fix but if you take sometime to work around the faults its a pretty sweet tool.

No no no, it’s unreliable all the time. It screws up 90% of the time. There’s a subtle yet important difference, OP.

As for the skill itself, I find its most serious of flaws is that it really badly needs a target to work properly. Whereas the slot 1 skill really really badly needs not to have a target to avoid streams of ‘miss miss miss miss miss’ every time it shoots. It’s awfully contradictory.

Also, has anyone else noticed the #1 skill and flame turrets are both incapable of aiming up/down? I used to think it was just the animation, but they actually don’t seem able to change direction vertically.

After the last patchnotes i think they dont have a dev working on the engi, they have absolute no clue about this class so much is broken but they cannot see it, there are many buglists but they dont care.

So your problem with the flamthrower will not be fixed as all the other broken thinks on the engi. They even cannot fix the stats kit problem since Beta, says all.

LameFox.6349:

Also, has anyone else noticed the #1 skill and flame turrets are both incapable of aiming up/down? I used to think it was just the animation, but they actually don’t seem able to change direction vertically.

Didn’t realize that. But I know that Flame Jet (slot 1 skill) seems to be big enough that it will hit targets above you. The graphics doesn’t seem to change, but the cone itself does seem to.

Haralin.1473:

After the last patchnotes i think they dont have a dev working on the engi, they have absolute no clue about this class so much is broken but they cannot see it, there are many buglists but they dont care.

So your problem with the flamthrower will not be fixed as all the other broken thinks on the engi. They even cannot fix the stats kit problem since Beta, says all.

Their coders were obviously working on the new halloween stuff, not on fixing bugs. It’s not just engi. Ranger got no changes at all.

I’ve found the #2 ability to work fine. Even after using #3, as long as I dont run backwards while doing it. Try it out sometime, it’s still a bug, but a little adjustment and it’s much more reliable.

Xocolatl.6890:

LameFox.6349:

Also, has anyone else noticed the #1 skill and flame turrets are both incapable of aiming up/down? I used to think it was just the animation, but they actually don’t seem able to change direction vertically.

Didn’t realize that. But I know that Flame Jet (slot 1 skill) seems to be big enough that it will hit targets above you. The graphics doesn’t seem to change, but the cone itself does seem to.

In most cases it will, say if you’re on a slope or something, but I don’t think I’m able to reach its maximum range that way. And the flame turrets I’ve seen just fire over the target’s head and do nothing whatsoever.

Tbh I wish they’d just remove the piercing component and let it explode on contact and then burn those it splattered on. I mean why does a massive ball of napalm (a jellied liquid) go through mobs anyway?

Flame blast could use ground targeting, to make sure that it won’t pierce the ground and explode somewhere under the map. Also it would make possible detonation in range shorter than 600. As for such changes it could even get increased cooldown (up to 9 seconds), I don’t really care, just make it something better than just fight initiator

It says (in the tooltip) that it rolls along the ground. A fire-trail (that’s not as good as skill 4 perhaps?) after it and exploding on contact would probably make this a much nicer skill. Thing is, when it hits, it can really do some damage, especially if both parts crit.

Orissa.1872:

Flame blast could use ground targeting, to make sure that it won’t pierce the ground and explode somewhere under the map. Also it would make possible detonation in range shorter than 600. As for such changes it could even get increased cooldown (up to 9 seconds), I don’t really care, just make it something better than just fight initiator

^This.
Make it ground targetted with the option to detonate early. Basically the same as the Thief SB skill. If you dont detonate than heavier single target damage, if you do detonate lesser AOE damage. Or something.

Thought OP was exaggerating.

Started trying to use flamethrower regularly and flame blast hit maybe 1 in 15 times if i was lucky. (Yes I knocked them back first)

This is pretty broken lol.

It has to do with elevation. If your target is at a different elevation than you the fail rate is very high. If it’s more or less flat the fail rate is very low.

In my experience it breaks often even on level elevation, forget even trying if the target is slightly above or below you.

This is pretty annoying. Grass, flowers, small bushes, random non-interactable objects (things that you can walk through) obstruct flame blast a lot.
I remember doing soloing this particular veteran giant crab (result of some hylek trying a potion and the crab taking too much) and that area that you have to fight the crab is horrible. Was getting obstructed so much there, even a couple of times where there was nothing between the crab and myself.
Projectile should be a bit faster IMO, if the mob doesn’t have reduced mobility they tend to recover from 3 fast enough that the AoE blast from 2 simply doesn’t connect. Not an issue with slower enemies but pretty common with faster ones. That or the knock back giving a 1s cripple/immobilize (maybe even .5s) would help this combo quite a bit.
Having to rely on the belt skill for “guaranteed” burning with a flamethrower seems a bit silly as well but eh that’s more of a balance issue I suppose.

It really is WELL and truly broken.

On a side note, after the FOV changes due to the Mad King bug, it seems to work more?