Guild Wars 2

I don’t know about anyone else, but I know I love the idea of a maniacal engineer who spits flames all across the battlefield. His enemies fear him and either run or seek to kill him quickly, due to the large threat he poses.

The reality is quite different. For those who don’t know, flamethrower autoattack, the topic of this thread, is the most stylish autoattack ever. However, it’s quite weak – it spits flame particles everywhere, but actually applies very little burning. It does around 2/3 the DPS of the rifle in the same cast time. It also has a low AoE damage cap, at 3.

If we take a closer look, we can quickly figure out why the flamethrower autoattack is so weak. While on paper, the DPS of Flame Jet is low, it has what’s one of the most consistent attacks in the entire game – Minimal cast time and minimal aftercast for a long, long, multihit attack. It has a moderate range, can’t be reflected, and dodging will only slightly mitigate the damage, since it’s almost always ticking. It’s not easy to kite, since the engineer can freely move while casting. Flame Jet will literally burn through aegis and other single-hit blocks, and stealth is ineffective because the attack has a wide AoE that doesn’t rely on a target to deal damage. Probably the only “counterplay” to Flame Jet is to spam retaliation and facetank. That’s why the autoattack is so weak. If it were stronger, it’d be ridiculous to play against.

If we look at higher dps autoattack abilities like grenade, bomb and rifle, they all have much stronger counterplay options. Grenades are projectiles that travel relatively slowly, so they can be dodged or reflected. Bombs require you to stand in them, and rifle auto is a single attack and targeted, so stealth and blocks work well. All of these are also effectively dodge-able attacks.

Because the flamethrower has so limited counterplay, though, it has to deal less damage. The autoattack can be freely spammed with no cooldown, and has limited counterplay, so it’s weak. If the autoattack was more powerful, something else would have to go.

Personally, I’d like it if they could make the autoattack stronger, but gave it more counterplay options. Say, if you were interrupted anytime during the cast, the skill would go on cooldown for X seconds, but if you weren’t interrupted, you could freely go on spamming it forever, spreading burn everywhere. It would be exceedingly easy to interrupt so it would punish for not doing so. I think weakness to retaliation and weakness to interrupts would be enough to buff the autoattack somewhat. Maybe it’d be on a trait, so that you could still have your ultra-reliable DPS skill if you wanted it.

Or, they could also increase the AoE cap heavily, to 10 or more so that it would be a tool for hitting a lot of opponents at once, which would at least give it a niche role.

Currently, it’s extremely rare for it to actually be worthwhile to spam Flame Jet, since the 2 skill does way more DPS, has a bigger AoE cap, and is still pretty reliable damage. The cooldown is short enough that between healing, swapping to other kits, and using autoattacks from other weapons, there’s very few opportunities for Flame Jet to actually be useful.

Skill 3 (napalm) should be round not rect. Period.

I didn’t have high hopes when I clicked in here but…

Hopefully the use of the word “counterplay” that you use so well grabs some Dev attention. They love that word.

I especially like how you say why Flame Jet sucks. We all know it does, but we didn’t really have a reason for it before. I believe your reasons are great, and show why it hasn’t just been buffed in damage.

really.. just make the flame jet a constant attack, no cooldown and nothing, just continuous flame jet that can be turned off and on by simply pushing the attack button. While the jet is “active” it reduces the movement speed 50% and BAM done. Deadly in its conic aoe, terrifying to look at and the need to fear the slow moving engineer that closes in with an inferno infront of him\her. That way engineers could flank or surround enemies and slowly burn their health away. Just think about how nice that would be

Adamantium.3682:

Hopefully the use of the word “counterplay” that you use so well grabs some Dev attention. They love that word.

I especially like how you say why Flame Jet sucks. We all know it does, but we didn’t really have a reason for it before. I believe your reasons are great, and show why it hasn’t just been buffed in damage.

It did become clear after awhile of toying with it. People in wvw will usually try to escape the wrath of your flames, but still take the majority of the damage even with all their evades and stealths. That majority is still very little though. Smart opponents will just walk up to you and hit you. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem right to me, walking into a flamethrower and just meleeing the guy using it. Perhaps they could increase damage the closer you are to the opponent, so that would be another way to increase risk/reward.

Basaltface.2786:

really.. just make the flame jet a constant attack, no cooldown and nothing, just continuous flame jet that can be turned off and on by simply pushing the attack button. While the jet is “active” it reduces the movement speed 50% and BAM done. Deadly in its conic aoe, terrifying to look at and the need to fear the slow moving engineer that closes in with an inferno infront of him\her. That way engineers could flank or surround enemies and slowly burn their health away. Just think about how nice that would be

I like this idea too. Right now (with speedy kits especially) it feels like you’re just running at people and squirting water at them. It’d be a really interesting playstyle to slow movement speed while autoattacking.

Yea.. would feel like there is some weight behind the attack itself like your engineer actually struggles to not get blown back by the jet. I mean look at the flamer alone with its for this type of weapon gigantic barrel and overall size. As i saw it the first time (as i unlocked the kit and put it on) i was like " deam that thing looks like blaze preprogrammed to happen"…then the first attack with it and i was in the “wut m8” state. Seriosly A-net… whatever you do put some power behind this kit lol

The AoE is capped to 3 afaik which is ridiculous compared to what it visually telegraphs. Should be atleast 5.

Beside that I think a light buff of the direct DPS (10%) would already help and not yet make it too strong. Concerning the burning I don’t think it is little. Just by autoattacking it will be constantly up and the other flameflower skills increase burn even more plus engi already has tons of burning.

Maybe Juggernaut should give: Flamethrower deals 20% more damage to burning enemies instead of the toughness and we are all happy.

There is a trait in Alchemy that should increase the damage by 15%, Deadly Mixture or something like that.

Flamethrower AA is ideal for crit-proc effects, spread all around in different traitlines.. Also since weapon sigils work with kits, it could trigger some additional nastyness on crit. With the many hits the AA yields, depending on your crit chance and some luck, and the recharge of the crit-proc effects, it should trigger much more often than say, a bomb kit #1

FT engis on wvw large-scale – suck.

what about giving it 1sec of burn in the middle of the cast and one at the end of the cast and changeing the aoe cap to 5.

And about Napalm how about make being circular/square/star/moon/pentagon/hexagon/octagon/diamond/oval/arrow/rectangle/heart shaped(possible choosen through RNG ) AND deal power dmg+apply burn on every tick, like warriors longbow fire field but faster/stronger ticks.. kinda like the fiery greatsword rush but maybe not as much.

One of the possible solutions i btainstormed earlier was to remove burning on last hit, increase power damage by 50% to make up for lost burning. And then give it an 8% chance to cause 1 sec burn per hit. This way traits that power up damage such as deadly mixture have a more noticeable effect .

Its not perma burning like flame jet should be but I think this one is a viable idea too

I didn’t want to make a new thread when we had one already so here’s one more: remove the 10% extra when someone is burning, and remove burn on last hit. Make it so any hit from flame jet burns for 1 second, but only if they aren’t burning yet

imo i don’t think flame jet is as underwhelming as people make it out to be. it could definitely use more tweaks, but adding permanent burning to it would put it over the top. permanent burning on an auto attack for an already immensely powerful condi class on an already powerful kit in pvp seems wrong.

imo flame jet should hit 5 times instead of 10 for 2 seconds instead of 2.25 for a total of 1.5x more damage. the burning on the last hit should be doubled to 2 seconds. keep the 10% bonus damage on burning targets. halving the amount of hits means the huge retal issue that flame jet has is alleviated somewhat. shortening the channel time and adding 1.5x more damage makes it competitive with grenade autos on burning targets, assuming you’re running modified ammo and deadly mixture. lengthening the burn time gives a potential 3 second burn (aka permanent burning) with 50% burn duration, but it adds counter play instead of trying to dodge endless 2.25 second channels of permanent burning.

The main issue i have with flame jet is that it targeting seems to mess it up.

If my target moves, the jet FX moves with them but the actual attack cone seems to stay in place. End result is a disconnect between where the attack seems to happen and where it actually happens.

It seems to snap back into place when i move the camera tho.

Crazy thing is that i don’t recall ever seeing that problem with Fumigate, but then i don’t think that attack tracks the target.

It is one of those weapons that makes me wish that the targeting and camera mechanics of GW2 were more like what you have in Neverwinter.

Round field for napalm is a given.

The targeting, as has been pointed out, needs to be worked on. Firing the flame jet up a slope or at close range can mean constant misses at the moment. I’d also like to see more consisten applications of burning since it IS a fire attack.

I’d also like to see a (slight) range increase to flame jet, to match the actual particle effect. They could tweak the damage a little to compensate for this.

digiowl.9620:

The main issue i have with flame jet is that it targeting seems to mess it up.

If my target moves, the jet FX moves with them but the actual attack cone seems to stay in place. End result is a disconnect between where the attack seems to happen and where it actually happens.

It seems to snap back into place when i move the camera tho.

Crazy thing is that i don’t recall ever seeing that problem with Fumigate, but then i don’t think that attack tracks the target.

It is one of those weapons that makes me wish that the targeting and camera mechanics of GW2 were more like what you have in Neverwinter.

One of the unfortunate things about this is that, while the FT autoattack seems to work best with no target selected, the #2 attack only works with a target. If autoattack can’t be improved to function better with a target, then another option could be making #2 ground-targeted. That way FT users don’t ever need to target an enemy to attack.

I also think that a target cap of 3 for the autoattack is silly. It should be 5 like other AOE weapons, atleast if it is going to be competitive with bomb and grenade kits.

OP is Winrar. He understands balance.

Now the question is, how do we make it more appealing in PvE and dungeons?

fluidmonolith.3584:

One of the unfortunate things about this is that, while the FT autoattack seems to work best with no target selected, the #2 attack only works with a target. If autoattack can’t be improved to function better with a target, then another option could be making #2 ground-targeted. That way FT users don’t ever need to target an enemy to attack.

I would love if FT #2 were ground targeted. As it is, it doesn’t track a target as they move, so ground targeting wouldn’t be a step backward at all. Plus, it’d make that sweet spot where it explodes easier to hit. No more 2-part skill, just make it fly in a straight line to the point of targeting and auto-explode. Fewer button presses (always good for engis) and more accurate in a melee, plus no target needed.

lakdav.3694:

Flamethrower AA is ideal for crit-proc effects, spread all around in different traitlines.. Also since weapon sigils work with kits, it could trigger some additional nastyness on crit. With the many hits the AA yields, depending on your crit chance and some luck, and the recharge of the crit-proc effects, it should trigger much more often than say, a bomb kit #1

This got me thinking…

Anet is reworking all of our sigils. Maybe, because FT is so boss at proccing crits, the new sigil mechanics will indirectly buff the FT autoattack. Higher chances to proc things like sigil of fire or air or even life steal might make FT stronger without actually buffing FT’s numbers. Maybe…

Make FT damage 2 times less…butt…each hit 10s burning. Then it will be come good.

Cause it’s flamethrower!)