Guild Wars 2

I’m confused. What is better (armor type, runes, accessory, etc) for engi with flamethrower? Because its attacks procs with both of that stats, BUT there is no good stat equipement with both + precision.
What you suggest fellow engis?
I’ve made something like this http://tinyurl.com/m36e4k3 (safe link to gw2buildcraft.com), but still I’m not sure about that, because propably this site doesn’t cound condition damage to overall Effective Power. I don’t have lvl 80 on engi yet, but I would like to know what to focus on.
I hope I’ll find some really nice advices about my confusion.

sorry for my eng.

I’d go for power. Also, toughness is a much more valuable stat to engineer than vitality.

It has good synergy with both when combined with elixir gun. Great offensive and defensive game play. Toughness heal power and condition and precision. I like 0/20/20/30 with heal turret goggles and elixir c. Replacing elixir c with elixir gun in fights that aren’t condition heavy

Hmm… Power, Precision and Condition Damage?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rampager#Triple_attribute

Its not bad at all for Flamethrower, especially if you only get Rampager’s Armor, and do something else with your trinkets. Berserker if you wan’t more direct damage, Soldiers or Knights for damage + defense, or something like Rabid for more condition.

This:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUEZtjEgUU37KSBAa8nCsF-jgxAIMg8XR0YVLYqSA15iq9GFRrGA-e
is an example of how you could mix and match gear. The Knights and Zerker can be switched for things like Rabid or Settlers for a more condition based FT build. Imo, FT lends itself to be a hybrid kit, which affords you 3 damage styles. Full power, full condition, or hybrid.

keep in mind that the might stacks will up your condi dmg also. so you will get better bleeds better burns and poison. egun can be swapped for goggles too since it comes with a stunbreak on the toolbelt with the same cooldown

Power works much better than conditions for flamer damage but the tool belt skill works better with conditions.

Great advices !
now I can see that power might be better choice because of x10 attack + critical chance, and condition damage does not give you crits.

You could consider Power with condition DURATION instead of actual condition damage.
It will keep the burns on longer, still providing the 10% damage boost.
It will also keep the weakness and bleeds tick longer if you use the elixir gun with your FT.

Mind you: it requires trait points, giver’s weapons, runes and food if you want to dedicate a build to this.
Not all necessarily, but at least several of these.

I’m talking about soloings, where ever.

You’ll get most damage out of flamethrower by using Sigil of Earth and mixed gear setup.
It’s not enough conditions to go all out but neither for power unless you mix it with stuff like SD and rifle rotations.

Mixing in Celestial works very well if you add in Elixir Gun. 10/30/0/20/10 or 10/20/0/30/10.
FT/EG/RB+rifle or P/S, healing turret. Constant short reapplying Burning with 3-5 different sources (counters cleansing), medium bleeds with FT1 and EG3, and 1-2 poison sources.
It plays whole different than the usual engi styles so it’s quite fun to play around if you have good balanced set.

Sabull.5670:

I’m talking about soloings, where ever.

You’ll get most damage out of flamethrower by using Sigil of Earth and mixed gear setup.
It’s not enough conditions to go all out but neither for power unless you mix it with stuff like SD and rifle rotations.

Mixing in Celestial works very well if you add in Elixir Gun. 10/30/0/20/10 or 10/20/0/30/10.
FT/EG/RB+rifle or P/S, healing turret. Constant short reapplying Burning with 3-5 different sources (counters cleansing), medium bleeds with FT1 and EG3, and 1-2 poison sources.
It plays whole different than the usual engi styles so it’s quite fun to play around if you have good balanced set.

when I use the FT myself, I more or less do what Sabull describes here.
Always coupled with EG, and Rocket boots simply never leave my bar in WvW…

One question for you Sabull:
from you’re experience with this build, if used with p/s, do you think it has enough damage to kill people 1v1 in WvW roaming?
I very often ended up feeling short of killing my actual opponent.
The fighting was fun, but they don’t die in the end

Oh, and would you consider it viable in a group set up in WvW? Or are bombs and mostly grenades still ruling that one?
You did mention it was for soloings, just curious about the group experience with it.

FT is most definitely a power weapon, not condition. Yes, it has burning. But that burning is used as a boost to the power of FT. Condition duration (or burning duration) are good to keep that burn rolling for added FT power. +cond damage for a single type of non-stacking condition isn’t going to be very helpful. Also, it will keep that aoe blind on your enemies longer.

High precision and high crit dmg are great for FT since it has such a high number of crit-able attacks. FT auto is like a machine gun so with 50%+ crit chance you’ll be proccing any and all on-crit effects very often, as well as dealing more crit dmg.

Juggernaut gives a free +200 toughness, so you shouldn’t need to stack any extra on your gear. Stick with vitality if you want more survivability.

Sigil of Accuracy. A couple pieces of Altruism Runes for might stacking on MedKit quick swaps and some boon duration will keep your might stacks at around 10-13 with almost no effort. Remember to blast that long-lasting fire field.

Oh yea, and EG synergizes quite well with FT. You get a stun break, healing field, blast finisher, cripple, poison, and weakness. Couple that with your +condition duration and your enemy will be worthless.

FT is absolutely a power weapon. I use it for WvW and I think it’s great. My build if interested:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0pyanvSyF17IyoHd2EuZgUoX3lIFVWjB-jkzAYLEMGAVAIBWEN2aaR0YVLYqSYlLg2NqqXEDOiNXQ1bg5OglBgdJA-w

Yes, free 200 toughness from Juggernaut, then you have to stay in FT all the time to benefit if you don’t have a good base toughness.

Engineer has good healing to mitigate lower vitality, especially if you are using EG or Backpack Regen and Omnomberry Pie, which you’re using to mitigate the way retaliation punishes FT #1 (yes? yes?).

Chaba.5410:

Yes, free 200 toughness from Juggernaut, then you have to stay in FT all the time to benefit if you don’t have a good base toughness.

Engineer has good healing to mitigate lower vitality, especially if you are using EG or Backpack Regen and Omnomberry Pie, which you’re using to mitigate the way retaliation punishes FT #1 (yes? yes?).

Ya gonna need more than just the pie to mitigate that damage, there are 10 procs in 2.5 seconds, and only 2 of those will heal you with the 1 second internal cool down.

I am not a fan of the FT 1 skill in wvw, I typically turn off auto attack and just use it as a push, a fire field, and a blind. I may use it through the door of a keep, but only if there are no arrow carts.

FYI – It works AWESOME with the perplexity runes.

I listed more then pie. Ensure you have your regen buff up too.

How tanky can a Engi FT running juggernaut really be? Tempted to spec it but not sure how it compares to other classes.

ChumbaWumba.8253:

How tanky can a Engi FT running juggernaut really be? Tempted to spec it but not sure how it compares to other classes.

Plenty, if you go for a Power build and run P/V/T gear. FT benefits from power more than condition damage anyway, so it’s decent synergy. Run Rifle + FT + BK + TK for success.

I have been running a 0-20-0-30-20 setup with FT/EG/RB and Healing turret or MedKit for quite some time now using a mix of knights and berserker gear and altruism runes and i have to say it offers good survivability decent damage and quite respectable utility.

It may not be the most damaging setup an Engi can use but its great fun to play and can be used without a lot of modification in open world PvE ,dungeons and WvWvW (just beware of that nasty retaliation)

Sabull.5670:

I’m talking about soloings, where ever.

You’ll get most damage out of flamethrower by using Sigil of Earth and mixed gear setup.
It’s not enough conditions to go all out but neither for power unless you mix it with stuff like SD and rifle rotations.

I’d really like to see how you’re coming to this conclusion. Static Discharge, Blunderbuss, and Jump Shot are all negligible, considering they’re not related to the Flamethrower at all. But you’re right to say that using that stuff with a Power FT build just makes the distinction more obvious.

The question is: Do you gain more stacking for Power to increase Flame Blast than you gain stacking Condition Damage to increase burning? And the answer has always been in favor of Flame Blast and stacking Power.

And how do you figure that Sigil of Earth is the best sigil for the FT? It’s literally one stack of bleed every Flame Jet. You’re adding, at most, 100 DPS to your build.

100.

Compared to something like Sigil of the Night, which increases your damage output by 10%, I don’t see how you can conclude that mixing Condi/Power + Sigil of Earth is best in slot for an FT Engi that (1) stacks bleeds horribly on the whole and (2) deals with burns entering a queue.

With Berserker + Scholar runes, your Flame Blast will dish out over 10K damage between both hits.

Sabull.5670:

Mixing in Celestial works very well if you add in Elixir Gun. 10/30/0/20/10 or 10/20/0/30/10.
FT/EG/RB+rifle or P/S, healing turret. Constant short reapplying Burning with 3-5 different sources (counters cleansing), medium bleeds with FT1 and EG3, and 1-2 poison sources.
It plays whole different than the usual engi styles so it’s quite fun to play around if you have good balanced set.

I agree that Celestial does work very well for the FT/EG combo, especially when roaming in WvW. But it’s definitely a damage loss compared to full Berserker, especially when you factor in Acid Bomb from the Elixir Gun. For PvE, I just cannot in good faith recommend wearing it.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Sabull.5670:

I’m talking about soloings, where ever.

You’ll get most damage out of flamethrower by using Sigil of Earth and mixed gear setup.
It’s not enough conditions to go all out but neither for power unless you mix it with stuff like SD and rifle rotations.

I’d really like to see how you’re coming to this conclusion. Static Discharge, Blunderbuss, and Jump Shot are all negligible, considering they’re not related to the Flamethrower at all. But you’re right to say that using that stuff with a Power FT build just makes the distinction more obvious.

The question is: Do you gain more stacking for Power to increase Flame Blast than you gain stacking Condition Damage to increase burning? And the answer has always been in favor of Flame Blast and stacking Power.

And how do you figure that Sigil of Earth is the best sigil for the FT? It’s literally one stack of bleed every Flame Jet. You’re adding, at most, 100 DPS to your build.

100.

Compared to something like Sigil of the Night, which increases your damage output by 10%, I don’t see how you can conclude that mixing Condi/Power + Sigil of Earth is best in slot for an FT Engi that (1) stacks bleeds horribly on the whole and (2) deals with burns entering a queue.

With Berserker + Scholar runes, your Flame Blast will dish out over 10K damage between both hits.

Sabull.5670:

Mixing in Celestial works very well if you add in Elixir Gun. 10/30/0/20/10 or 10/20/0/30/10.
FT/EG/RB+rifle or P/S, healing turret. Constant short reapplying Burning with 3-5 different sources (counters cleansing), medium bleeds with FT1 and EG3, and 1-2 poison sources.
It plays whole different than the usual engi styles so it’s quite fun to play around if you have good balanced set.

I agree that Celestial does work very well for the FT/EG combo, especially when roaming in WvW. But it’s definitely a damage loss compared to full Berserker, especially when you factor in Acid Bomb from the Elixir Gun. For PvE, I just cannot in good faith recommend wearing it.

Your argumentation is from point of view of what is highest DPS. In spirit of what gear should I use for CoF1. Which is berserker obviously.
I’m not writing from that perspective at all. I’m taking concideration the general survivability and thinking about a hard small scale wvw roaming situation, guess I could have been more specific on that. Where good burn and poison coverage makes biggest part of the work.

I would not recommend all out celestial either for PvE unless you want to play around with bomb healing or something.

And rifle rotations are extremely relevant for going full out berserker with flamethrower as FT power part simply is not enough to warrant that. Flamejet not good enough. That’s what makes it work.

I’ve ran similar style with full berserker too and it’s great but I prefer condi.
Anyway I don’t wanna argue about pvp preferences.

Sabull.5670:

Your argumentation is from point of view of what is highest DPS. In spirit of what gear should I use for CoF1. Which is berserker obviously.
I’m not writing from that perspective at all. I’m taking concideration the general survivability and thinking about a hard small scale wvw roaming situation, guess I could have been more specific on that. Where good burn and poison coverage makes biggest part of the work.

I would not recommend all out celestial either for PvE unless you want to play around with bomb healing or something.

And rifle rotations are extremely relevant for going full out berserker with flamethrower as FT power part simply is not enough to warrant that. Flamejet not good enough. That’s what makes it work.

I’ve ran similar style with full berserker too and it’s great but I prefer condi.
Anyway I don’t wanna argue about pvp preferences.

Argumentation…nice, i like it.

Anyway, the initial question was power vs. condition and, as Phineas stated, it’s a power weapon, not condition. If you want the utility of poison (namely healing reduction) you don’t need to build for +cond dmg. FT works great (trait-wise) with EG, so use EG for poison & weakness sure. But don’t go pow/cond hybrid cuz it gives no benefit.

Are you planning on killling with conditions? Which in particular? Proc bleeds, EG poison, and FT field burns aren’t gonna cut it. You need powwa!!! lol

As for gear, yea Zerk for dungeons. PvP is all about your personal survivability preferences.

Sabull.5670:

Your argumentation is from point of view of what is highest DPS.

I was under the assumption that was what the OP was looking for.