Guild Wars 2

hey, ive been using the flamer more and more lately its fun and refreshing to use something different once in a while, smoke vent is a fantastic skill and i cant count the amount of times its been overly useful and the same goes for air blast its just great for heaps of situations.

And then i try using napalm, its okay for a bit of extra downed body pressure but that’s it, if you take into consideration how hard it is to blast that fire field whilst mid fight its overall utility is rather limited to throw down at the start of the fight and cleave body’s with it and its that lack of utility which is helping to make flamer less viable then another kit.

Flame blast is also quite a problematic skill to work with, its the old engineer random kitten over again, where will it go this time, now naturally there is a certain level to how bad it can get at times but ive had times where ive stood still and my enemy is immobed in front of me and it flew right into the ground and yea that’s not cool, this problem also makes it alot harder to use it effectively as a dps combo because half the time itll fly into the ground befor it reaches its max range and detonates on its own, now dont get me wrong when flame blast works its an amazing skill it deals some fantastic damage for such a short CD and not to mention that blast finisher.

Now for the AA, its not bad but aint good since retal will destroy you but id be 100% okay with using flamer auto on enemy’s with retal if the damage application was there, like if i used it on that group and took 3k retal damage but they now have 3k of burning to deal with each, id be okay with that, from both perspectives we have a problem and a solution, as the engineer its do i risk eating the retal but gain the advantage of damage or as the enemy do i risk hurting the engineer with retal or avoid the incoming damage and that’s an okay situation in my mind.

The flamer traits also are a bit yea, if its pve then yea i don’t mind camping flamer with and throwing on its traits its really easy to use and while not optimal its still effective but in spvp it just dosent work that way, juggernaut just dose not fit the engineers way of play at all in spvp if i want to run juggernaut im either not going to get much out of the flamer or im going to be camping it to much to do anything effective the reduced cd is pretty good since that 4 1/2 sec cd on flame blast but once again have more opportunity to use flamer skills dosent make the skills any less clunky and hard to use and the damage bonus trait is obviously always going to do something but im not dipping into alchemy for damage especially with what alchemy has to offer.

Unfortunately in a combat setting it is rather difficult to use flame blast and napalm as both damage and utility which i feel is one of the biggest reasons why its not an overly favorable kit at the moment but the more glaringly obvious problem is why the hell does my flamer not do any burning. well ive got incendiary ammo…… why not just take incendiary powder, well the auto has some burning but why not take incendiary powder napalm is a long duration firewall that is pretty difficult to actually burn people with so i guess ill just take incendiary powder.

In short the flamer just cannot bring anything to the fight that cant be done better by something else and whilst it can be alotta fun there does need to be a line drawn between fun and viability, so now its that fun time where i get to list what i think the changes should be and everyone gets to flame me for the bad idears.

[u]The Traits[u/]
Juggernaut – flamethrower skills have a 33% chance to stack 1 second of burning (no cd) in place of 200 toughness.
this gives people much more reason to camp flamer then ever befor, not only will we get the might but our flamer will actually burn stuff and the cost being dipping into the firearms line, and if you take incendiary powder with this trait its is a completely useless overkill.

[u]The Skills[u/]
Napalm – Ring of fire for the love of all that is holy, you can remove the damage and reduce the duration just give me something i can use flame blast with.

Flame blast – Fix its travel issues so it can reliably fly towards its targets or in the direction your character is facing. also i feel like a reduction on the cast time would be a great improvement but if i can reliably aim it then it might be a bit op.

And that’s it, fix up the clunkyness a bit and make flameblast and napalm work easy and effective together for both utility and damage and make it actually burn stuff and itll be a great kit to use and bring some more fun stuff for us to use in spvp.

The only changes I would make to FT are:

• Increase blast radius on detonate flame blast
• Change flame jet from 10x hits at .225 coeff/hit to 5x hits at .45 coeff/hit
• Extend reflect portion of air blast by half a second

The kit becomes viable when flame blast can reliably double hit without hard CCing your target first, and the autoattack not killing you from retal seals the deal. When the auto stops being a liability, juggernaut can be utilized fully as well. Bigger radius on flame blast detonate means it should work a lot more often in napalm, though just raising the hitbox on napalm would have the same effect.

Imo it would become viable if 5 was a stunbreak. That and a slightly better autoattack.

Also it just sucks because engi got gifted with a trait that puts burn on everything. This is why grenades dominate so much (they get the burn of other kits anyway). Bomb kit which is also not so bad also suffers from that.

Sins.4782:

The only changes I would make to FT are:

• Increase blast radius on detonate flame blast
• Change flame jet from 10x hits at .225 coeff/hit to 5x hits at .45 coeff/hit
• Extend reflect portion of air blast by half a second

The kit becomes viable when flame blast can reliably double hit without hard CCing your target first, and the autoattack not killing you from retal seals the deal. When the auto stops being a liability, juggernaut can be utilized fully as well. Bigger radius on flame blast detonate means it should work a lot more often in napalm, though just raising the hitbox on napalm would have the same effect.

Napalm and Smoke Vent also really need a buff. Napalm shouldn’t be a wall, it should be a circle with a decent radius(240 or so) to give the kit some utility and to make it easier to get blast finishers with it. And the damage on it is just pathetic right now for a skill with a 30 second cooldown- if all 10 hits connect, it should do at least the same damage as Flame Jet or Flame Blast+Detonate FB, if not more damage. And Smoke Vent really should stealth the user in addition to blinding the enemy, it would make the kit much more viable in sPvP and WvW.

Stealth on smoke vent would ruin it for spvp. Losing a cap because you needed to blind a big hit or safe stomp an engi/war/ranger/necro/guard/rev would be terrible.

Napalm is fine where it is as well, minus the field height, because the burning and might you can combo off it are so strong. It’s quite nice on top of downed bodies as well. The uptime isn’t as high as ele fields, and the physical damage sucks (though the burning is strong with might/condi dmg), but the kit makes up for it with the low cooldowns on flame blast and air blast. It does take some forethought and combo field knowledge to make good use of the skill, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We are engineers, after all, complicated combos are kind of what we do.

ANort.1425:

And Smoke Vent really should stealth the user in addition to blinding the enemy, it would make the kit much more viable in sPvP and WvW.

yea stealth is a big nono, the fact that its a activate anytime blind makes it really strong as is

Sins.4782:

Napalm is fine where it is as well, minus the field height, because the burning and might you can combo off it are so strong. It’s quite nice on top of downed bodies as well. The uptime isn’t as high as ele fields, and the physical damage sucks (though the burning is strong with might/condi dmg), but the kit makes up for it with the low cooldowns on flame blast and air blast. It does take some forethought and combo field knowledge to make good use of the skill, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We are engineers, after all, complicated combos are kind of what we do.

except the bomb kit can stack more burning then flamer, easier to stack might in a combat situation and has access to much better utility and damage output with the only thing flamer having on bombs is clutch playability, bombs are alot better with might/condi damage since it has multiple conditions and power stacks very well with the bomb auto, using BoB in fire bomb not only stacks might it also does alot of damage or forces enemys to dodge or get out of the way opening up some breathing room and stacks burning on enemys that dont get out of the way fast enough which does what air blast/flame blast/napalm with 2 skills except flame blast has to be used in the direction of napalm instead of dealing damage and even if you do land it for the might stack and the damage there is no way you will get the chance to do that again and you have a good chance that you wont give yourself any extra breathing room or bait a dodge provided they see it coming, napalm is easy to avoid after the first second or 2 and has longer cd, sure you can argue that its just as easy to get out of firebomb but it covers a better area and it stacks more burning from 1 tick in the fire field, you dont have problems with retal in bombs, you have better control over a point in bombs, you can aim the bombs alot more easily and while they dont have range they do have the ability to allways work the way you planed for them to work even if your enemy managed to avoid it, do i need to point out how glaringly obvious it is in the vast difference between 2 kits, one provides huge amounts of control/damage/support over the other with flamer only having smoke vent as a clutch blind (which i love as is atm) and air blast as a reliable kb.

the only real argument you can make is how changes to napalm into a fire field or a reliable flameblast could be over powered with other kits because by its self its over shadowed by everything else.

p.s camping flamer for auto might stacks is not a viable option in spvp, can it be fun sure, but it is not viable by its self.