Guild Wars 2

So this skill has always been useless, at the moment its at 20 sec cd, blinds up to 5 targets at 180 radius. I have always found it useless, its not enough to keep you alive while an enemy has stun/daze/knockdown’d you, it also does little to nothing on a break bar in pve. So what does it do and what makes it worth a 20 sec cd and a 5th skill on a kit? nothing imo.

Change for it is long overdue, i suggest making it a smoke field, kinda like bomb kit 4 – smoke bomb. afaik thats the only source of smoke field an engi has, which is in no way op, but would make Flamethrower 5 more useful and sync better with flamethrower 2 – flame blast(which is not even easy to use and even with practice i miss blasting it 1/3 times during fights). Its not a huge change, but it would make the Smoke Vent worth using, as i never have ever felt it was worth using in any rotation the past 4 years.

thoughts?

I’d be happy with just a radius increase, tbh.

180 may sound small, but its as large as mortar 1 skill radius, which is good imo, even if your make it a whopping 300 radius it wouldn’t make the skill any better.

I always think it’s a stun break. And then it’s not. And then I’m dead. It should , at least, get a stun break.

It’s used as a safe stomp in the pvp condi build when used at the right moment, at least, other than that, yeah not very worth it as a defensive option :/

the only + thing it has its that its insta casted, so it never hurts your dps.

Granada Garuda.8391:

i suggest making it a smoke field, kinda like bomb kit 4 – smoke bomb. afaik thats the only source of smoke field an engi has…

The toss on elixir U creates a smoke field, the smoke screen skill that theives have (or the guardian skill – wall of reflection depending on rng).

I use it sometimes to blind mobs when I run Leroyjenkingly into dense crews. It is fun and works for a bit. But, truth needs to be told, I use it mostly to add cool special effects to my tiny Asura robot dance…

A smoke field on it would be simply amazing.

To be honest, I feel like Flamethrower is just a weak kit in general right now. Mainly due to bugs, honestly. Air Blast is bugged so if you accidentally cancel the ability during the cast time, or you get interrupted, it goes on full cooldown. The 2 ability STILL gets sucked into the ground half the time and just does nothing.

Tack on the fact that the 1 and 4 abilities are generally, fairly worthless in PvP, the fact that incendiary ammo almost never lands anymore (evasion/reflect/block uptime has gone up dramatically with the release of HoT) and Flamethrower kit just becomes a product of a bygone era.

I do think Flamethrower, among MANY of the engineer’s utility skills, could use some love. If they added a bit more functionality to it, it could be competitive. It doesn’t have to be on the 5 ability, but I think your idea is reasonable.

That said, I think the 5 ability is decent. It’s an instant-cast AoE blind on a moderate cooldown. You can pop a blind while in the middle of executing another ability, which is fairly good utility. Or…well, it used to be good utility, until HoT power creep came out, and a single blind didn’t cut it anymore, at least in PvP. I actually like the ability, but it probably fell behind a bit with the power creep of the expansion.

Aegael.6938:

To be honest, I feel like Flamethrower is just a weak kit in general right now. Mainly due to bugs, honestly. Air Blast is bugged so if you accidentally cancel the ability during the cast time, or you get interrupted, it goes on full cooldown. The 2 ability STILL gets sucked into the ground half the time and just does nothing.

Tack on the fact that the 1 and 4 abilities are generally, fairly worthless in PvP, the fact that incendiary ammo almost never lands anymore (evasion/reflect/block uptime has gone up dramatically with the release of HoT) and Flamethrower kit just becomes a product of a bygone era.

I do think Flamethrower, among MANY of the engineer’s utility skills, could use some love. If they added a bit more functionality to it, it could be competitive. It doesn’t have to be on the 5 ability, but I think your idea is reasonable.

That said, I think the 5 ability is decent. It’s an instant-cast AoE blind on a moderate cooldown. You can pop a blind while in the middle of executing another ability, which is fairly good utility. Or…well, it used to be good utility, until HoT power creep came out, and a single blind didn’t cut it anymore, at least in PvP. I actually like the ability, but it probably fell behind a bit with the power creep of the expansion.

The issue is, pve wise incendiary ammo and napalm carry the whole kit godlikely (and air blast its now part of the dps rotation thanks to his recent buff), and also, isnt his aa in a good spot considering the amount of projectile hate that currently exists?

Well the point is, if the kit exceeds the desired parameters in at least 1 gamemode (in pve for example: dps), i’ll be very unlikely that anet will do positive changes if in one area its doing it great, with that being said, buffing skill 5 would definitely not be a problem imo unlike the rest of the skills :P

You’d think that Flamethrower auto is in a good place with all the aegis, shields of wrath, and projectile denial flying around, but the issue is that you just can’t trade hits with people as an Engineer. It’s a long channel with low damage, and any class that just decides to sit in your Flamethrower and auto you while you auto them is going to win that trade almost 100% of the time. Which IMO is really, really sad.

I think the main problem with FT is if you build a proper build focused on camping it, it’s VERY strong in a general sense. No, not the highest damage, but lots of other things to make up for that. I’m afraid any more buffs to the kit itself would be significantly exploited at some point. If it gets a buff, then dare i say, more damage would be the least significant way to do it.

Aegael.6938:

You’d think that Flamethrower auto is in a good place with all the aegis, shields of wrath, and projectile denial flying around, but the issue is that you just can’t trade hits with people as an Engineer. It’s a long channel with low damage, and any class that just decides to sit in your Flamethrower and auto you while you auto them is going to win that trade almost 100% of the time. Which IMO is really, really sad.

Lets see the standard pvp condi engi aa’s, you have pistol aa, tool aa, and flamethrower aa, wich one would you use to fill when your damage skills are in cd?

• Pistol? safe range, would use this aa more often if projectile hate wasnt a big problem.
• Tool? prob the worse damage aa option, doubt that using the full chain its worth at all in a condi build.
• Flamethrower? long aa, but, it doesnt have to deal with projectile hate, and melee range isnt so mandatory, also, multiple hits!, you can trigger your incendiary ammo in 1 aa for sure, blinded?, will probably just affect the first hit of the 10 hits the aa deals per use.

If im saying ft aa is good its not becuase its amazing by itself, but becuase its the most doable option to use.

i agree with a lot of the comment about ft being underpowered for the most part, but overhauling it has been on request since gw2 came out, and almost little to no changes have been done to it.

flame blast is not dependable during fights as it bugs about half the time, air blast fails and goes on cd without doing a thing, and yes smoke vent is instacast but its so underwhelming as a skill 5, i agree with OP about making it a smoke field as it makes perfect sense the fact its named smoke vent, and it doesn’t even do a smoke field is just pointless. A stun break maybe to much, sounds good tbh but may turn out to be too good a change for a dev to add.

Flamethrower has its uses like for camping and tagging mobs and enemies in open world and wvw, but for me skills 2 and 5 feels the most clanky and deserves a change.

it should be a field been saying this since ft was first reworked

J envy.5270:

i agree with a lot of the comment about ft being underpowered for the most part, but overhauling it has been on request since gw2 came out, and almost little to no changes have been done to it.

flame blast is not dependable during fights as it bugs about half the time, air blast fails and goes on cd without doing a thing, and yes smoke vent is instacast but its so underwhelming as a skill 5, i agree with OP about making it a smoke field as it makes perfect sense the fact its named smoke vent, and it doesn’t even do a smoke field is just pointless. A stun break maybe to much, sounds good tbh but may turn out to be too good a change for a dev to add.

Flamethrower has its uses like for camping and tagging mobs and enemies in open world and wvw, but for me skills 2 and 5 feels the most clanky and deserves a change.

I specially agree with changing skill 2,its very inconcistent, having to care about where your char is looking when not having a target its annoying, specially when it clips trough underground!

A good fix for this is that it should detonate automatically the moment it hits with something, enemy, floor, wall, etc.

About skill 5, if we change it as a smoke area, they should delete his instacast no?, otherwise bomb skill 4 would be more worse now

FT 5 saved my life countless times. The blind duration could be longer, the radius could be larger. But the way it works is good so far. We still can use it while knocked out, which is nice. Even with permanent stability and stunbreakers, it is a nice addition in case the other stuff is on cd. I’d like to have an additional effect, to dodge projectiles with the cloud. That would be amazing and serve the infamous “purity of purpose” the devs focused on the last patch. Because you cannot hit something you cannot see.

The FT is one of the kits which received nearly no nerfs so far, and some minor boosts. Either none of the devs play engineer, or none of them loses against FT engineers. Luckyly they focus a lot on PvP, so my favourite kit remains unharmed most of the time.

The improvement of the FT 2, as blastfinisher was a little weird. Yes, the explosion. Explosion = blast. Ok. It is a bit difficult to aim with it, especially if you shoot it across two or more fields and want to trigger a certain effect. But it helps. FT3 could be a blastfinisher as well (imho).

Every patch the FT remains untouched is a good patch. Every patch it gets slightly boosted, it is a miracle. I just fear the day they gonna nerf it too :S

HnRkLnXqZ.1870:

FT 5 saved my life countless times. The blind duration could be longer, the radius could be larger. But the way it works is good so far. We still can use it while knocked out, which is nice. Even with permanent stability and stunbreakers, it is a nice addition in case the other stuff is on cd. I’d like to have an additional effect, to dodge projectiles with the cloud. That would be amazing and serve the infamous “purity of purpose” the devs focused on the last patch. Because you cannot hit something you cannot see.

The FT is one of the kits which received nearly no nerfs so far, and some minor boosts. Either none of the devs play engineer, or none of them loses against FT engineers. Luckyly they focus a lot on PvP, so my favourite kit remains unharmed most of the time.

The improvement of the FT 2, as blastfinisher was a little weird. Yes, the explosion. Explosion = blast. Ok. It is a bit difficult to aim with it, especially if you shoot it across two or more fields and want to trigger a certain effect. But it helps. FT3 could be a blastfinisher as well (imho).

Every patch the FT remains untouched is a good patch. Every patch it gets slightly boosted, it is a miracle. I just fear the day they gonna nerf it too :S

Fortunately i doubt that, ft is a key component for our condi engi builds (either pve or pvp), and a big one, nerfing it without a good reason (for example, a new trait, skill that synergizes well with ft, etc.) would be declaring their incompetence and ignorance about engie’s situation :P

When I run the FT for a condi build my main use if the F2 skill however the 4 skills is ok if they are stupid enough to stand in that small aoe area. Also the 3 push back comes in handy and now it will apply fire if they already have it. Also the skill 5 smoke is very close however I usually change to ft when stunned and use the smoke yo help negate that damage. also I think it was mentioned earlier in a PvP/WvW situation it can be used in place of stab for a downed player blinding them to finish off.

You know what I like about #5? You can use it when you are incapacitated. It’s a situational but effective Save your Behind skill.