Guild Wars 2

Instantly inflict 0.5 seconds of burning per shot on targets not on fire.
On burning targets, add 0.5 seconds of burning per shot to the stack with the least duration, but don’t add additional stacks.

With this, Flame Jet immediately sets a target on fire, who will burn for a single stack of 5 seconds after a full shot. This will also extend any burning that is about to expire, equalizing, increasing, and maintaining existing burn stacks.

At the moment, sweeping with the flame thrower will only utilize your Power stat, leaving Condition damage out of the loop until the last shot is fired.

I don’t know about this specific approach, particularly in terms of actually programming it to work that way, but I agree that it needs to incorporate Burning on every tick instead of just the last one.

Weylin.6478:

At the moment, sweeping with the flame thrower will only utilize your enemy’s Power stat, leaving Condition damage out of the loop until the last shot is fired as you proc a zillion ticks of retal.

Fixed that for you

According to the wiki, the goal is to have 4 seconds of burning for a 2,57 seconds cast.
How about this:
Damage (5x): 890
Burning (5×1s): 655 Damage
Attacks per Second: 2
Range: 425

only let it tick 5 times (for double the power dmg per tick), each time applying 1 second of burning per tick. Also would greatly improve our issues with retaliation.

Obviously this would mean that you tick for 2 stacks per second on average (untraited), but even with a 100% duration bonus, you’d reach 4 stacks with this auto for 2 ticks per auto at max, before it falls off rapidly again.
So on a wanderers pvp build with balthazar runes, you’d end up with 344,5 burning dmg per stack per second, so if we simulate the whole buffed attack:
this means a stack tick of 1+2+3+4+4 (channel ends)+3+2+1
so we get 344,5+689+1033,5+1378+1378 (channel ends) + 1033,5 +689+344,5 == 6890 dmg
now we divide it by 2, since we calculated with 0,5-seconds steps
and therefore reach 3445 burning-dmg spread over 4 seconds, for the price of a 2,5 sec channel AA on a fully burning-focused pvp condi-build. Add to that the 890 power dmg, and you get a total off 4335 dmg per AA against enemies with 2,6k armor.

In comparison, on the same build, the current auto would apply a single stack of burning for 8 seconds, giving us 2757 burning dmg spread over 8 seconds, and a total dmg of 3647…

Big buff (~18%), but lets face it, this auto was garbage since its inception.
And I don’t think these numbers would be too OP…

btw, besides the wiki, this was the build I simulated it on:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhatYfXw+KQ7FLsF1YOOG1G4HWiBgYHNFPBA-TJxHQBN8EAMh9H6WZAA8AAAA

Increasing either the burn duration or the hits which trigger burn, would significantly boost the FT in a positive way. I use an earth sigil, combined with the trait of firearms, so the attack is basically a blood-jet, not a flame jet. The only way I ever outrun the bloodstacks, when I use the FT toolbelt when unloading the flamejet.

In the previous updates, the devs pointed the FT into a condition direction. The AA-retaliation issue is common knowledge by now. They could make the flame-jet 100% condition. Only placing a burn stack with 0.5 sec duration per tick, but deal 0 direct damage. This would increase the burn-stacks, favorize the condition-builds and erase the retaliation issue at once. But the FT would be a real condition-only kit. In return they could replace the burn & poision effects of grenades/bombs with vulnerability and make them power-only kits.

I’m actually not a fan of going even more condi biased on the flame thrower. All of the kits should have a good mix of both power and condi damage. Personally, I think removing the large power damage hit from Flame Blast/Detonate was a mistake. It basically removed a kit option from power builds.

My suggestion for Flame Jet:
• Reduce the attack to 1s channel; remain as 5 attacks per second; final hit remains unchanged (applies burning, base duration will need a shave down from 4s)
• Remove ‘10% bonus damage to burning target’

The overall damage is similar but you get the burn application on the 5th hit and would eat a lot less retaliation procs to get to the burning application. This lets you setup or chain into Air Blast more easily within the kit itself (i.e. not have to rely on Incendiary Ammo, RNG Incendiary Powder proc, weapon swap Blow Torch) which makes the kit a bit more enticing to power and power/condi hybrid builds. The 10% bonus damage vs burning is pretty irrelevant as it only applies to direct damage on Flame Jet (which is already pretty low). I’d say remove it for now but its a line item that should be addressed at the same time as a rework to the Juggernaut trait because they both encourage a play style of camping flame thrower and auto attacking.