Guild Wars 2

Just threw this together and headed into the Mad King’s Labrynth with some good results. Obviously, it’s a tagging machine but I was also able to keep up 15+ stacks of might on myself with ease.

Wasn’t sure about my last 10 trait points so I took Energized Armor in an attempt to squeeze out a little extra offense & defense. Although it was a toss up with Incendiary Powder, I just figured my burns would get covered up in the zerg.

Anyway, can I get your thoughts on it? I’ve never ever played an HGH style build and thought that combined with Juggernaut’s natural might stacking, it’d be a beast and fun to play.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlspyanuSgF1LJyoCdWoCSIIF11dJ6xj1YTGA-jACBYLAkFAJPFRjtIMI1hTjVtATViIq2boIa1A-e

Looks fine, if not a bit on the defensive side of things. If you want to eke out a little extra offense, why not just put another 5 points into Firearms for Target the Maimed? I’d put the other 5 points into Inertial Converter, giving you new toss elixirs at 25%.

I’m just not a big fan of Inventions and what it really brings to the table, but I think it’s viable. Where would you use this?

My only suggestion would be to use sigil of battle on your riffle instead, that way you can get extra stacks of might every tenth second.

I run this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelspyanuyuF17ICoHA2dNiiU8YN2HFs1DC-jgCBYjBkEBgKAM5rIasFhBpMMs1hRTTDWVbIqqbYSBExCA-e

Takes longer but works a treat.
The idea is that 5% more damage against bleeds is better than 1% per boon. It’s pretty much 100% 5% damage increase.

The shield pistol combo makes you tougher, the elixir gun gives you a stunbreaker, condi cleanse and more condis to put on the enemy. Overall it’s more switching for more situations.

The reason for celestial is pretty simple. You condis will be up a lot of the time, its free damage. you have survivability from all the bonus stats. With might stacking in general you will have a lot of power and condi damage and should be at around 17-20 stacks of might solo, 25 easy with others around(guardian or ele) You can get 6 stacks of might from just pressing your heal.

Each auto attack from my FT does around 4-5k damage and my bleeds tick around 120-150 each. 75% crit chance 80% of the time means more procs of condis.

Pistol number 2 and 3 puts stack of condis on and when you switch to them for every condition your poison volley hits 6-7K and poison ticks.

Overall you have control, damage, condis, support and survivability.

@ Phineas & Conflux: made those suggested changes. Good calls.

@ Phineas: for now I’m testing it in the Labrynth zerg. Let’s me get away with design flaws. Ultimately, I want to use it in dungeons. Despite people dissing FT’s damage output, I can’t help but love it. Especially with so many might stacks.

@ Freek: Your build is very interesting. I’ve never rocked a hybrid FT engi, as I’ve always thought that FT works better with straight power. I might give something like this a go at some point but for now I want to mess around with HGH. Also, I don’t feel like acquiring new armor (too lazy).

Build updated

Seras.5702:

@ Phineas: for now I’m testing it in the Labrynth zerg. Let’s me get away with design flaws. Ultimately, I want to use it in dungeons. Despite people dissing FT’s damage output, I can’t help but love it. Especially with so many might stacks.

People diss the Flamethrower’s damage because in-game numbers can be very deceiving. Flame Jet is no doubt a very poorly scaled auto-attack for its duration and something I wouldn’t mind seeing changed. But Flame Blast is one of the most potent damage skills Engineers have. It certainly scales better with Power than Shrapnel Grenade.

I think it also rubs some people the wrong way that Juggernaut forces players to stay within the Flamethrower, something that no other kit has issues with. If they reworked Juggernaut as a passive damage buff rather than stacking Might, I think some would warm up to it better. But ArenaNet seems fixated on the way Juggernaut currently works, probably because we already have Deadly Mixture.

I just wonder where your bombs or grenades are. Do you really want to deal damage with an utility kit? Or is damage not your task? Why do you stack might then? Curious…

FreekPalmer.2839:

The reason for celestial is pretty simple. You condis will be up a lot of the time, its free damage. you have survivability from all the bonus stats. With might stacking in general you will have a lot of power and condi damage and should be at around 17-20 stacks of might solo, 25 easy with others around(guardian or ele) You can get 6 stacks of might from just pressing your heal.

Yeah, Celestial is fantastic with the Flamethrower. You’ll have less Power than Berserker, but with the 6-9 stacks of Might you get from Juggernaut, it balances out well.

Forestnator.6298:

I just wonder where your bombs or grenades are.

Believe it or not, there are other ways to play the Engineer than 30 points in Explosives.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Forestnator.6298:

I just wonder where your bombs or grenades are.

Believe it or not, there are other ways to play the Engineer than 30 points in Explosives.

Had to +1 this.

You might as well have asked why I’m not running warrior if I want to dps. I’m pretty sure I’m playing for enjoyment and (believe it or not) I’m actually doing great damage and stacking the crap out of might. Oh yea…and it’s fun!

How? FT #1? Never.

Flamethrower is very good if your goal isn’t to deal good damage but to simply tag mobs for loot/exp, e.g. the “Defeat x mobs” quests in the Mad King’s Labyrinth; it’s just not good for pretty much anything else.

Forestnator.6298:

How? FT #1? Never.

This thread was made by someone asking for advice on their FT build. It is not a thread asking for one liners that offer absolutely no contribution to the discussion. Particularly when it appears your mocking the OP. If you have some way to offer advice do so, if not, do not post at all.

Personally I am a big fan of the bomb kit, but sometimes I just want to have fun with the FT, and it is good for situation when you want to tag mobs, or even for defending or attacking a keep in WvW to just FT through the door.

With the bomb radius buff, I found power bombs to be far, far, far, better, it’s also a utility kit lol.

Especially since some mobs that die too fast you’ll only get maybe 1000 dmg with flamethrower, I can get atleast 3k crits minimum with every bomb on everything that spawns which is guaranteed a tag.

I really really want to do Flamethrower, but it’s just not there…. I don’t know why they won’t just buff the dmg on the auto. It’s show range and forces you to commit to a target, I don’t see how it could be overpowered with a dmg buff.

This is the best pve build i’ve come up with, it tags like a boss and does lots off sustained damage as you will have very high might all off the time.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V;4cPVg0c-gTFx0;9;4T9-J929A0;308-5;0Sc1;3l5Qgl5QgI-ki-M;4VfVj0nXt2-455AwW6s4e0c

it works very well in both dungeons and open world pve.

Dajas.4715:

This is the best pve build i’ve come up with, it tags like a boss and does lots off sustained damage as you will have very high might all off the time.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V;4cPVg0c-gTFx0;9;4T9-J929A0;308-5;0Sc1;3l5Qgl5QgI-ki-M;4VfVj0nXt2-455AwW6s4e0c

it works very well in both dungeons and open world pve.

I play very similar after 3000+ hours evolution on my engineer:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiY3zyuF1LJyoCdGoCAmIF5nl95hc9gQIA-jACBYjChkIBhIAM5rIasVNFRjVVjIqWXDzcORA-e

I use full-Celestial because bombs + grenades profits very well from the offensive stats while vitality/thoughness allows agressive playstyle with bombs and healing power pushs AoE heals very well. I also use precises sights over fireforged trigger. But ofc I do have much more crit chance with my gear.

Well obviously I was hoping for a solid FT build utilizing HGH & Juggernaut to stack crazy amounts of might. I find myself hovering around 18-20 stacks right now and I’m not even optimized with the proper sigils/runes yet. Jugg just makes it so easy.

Apparently, the concensus though is that it doesn’t matter how many stacks of might I’ve got, FT just isn’t going to dish out any kind of desirable damage. And I should switch to bombs. (I refuse to spec grenades again; too boring and carpal tunnel inducing.) How disappointing. Guess if I want to use FT I have to bring the EG too and build for damage + support.

Seras.5702:

Apparently, the consensus though is that it doesn’t matter how many stacks of might I’ve got, FT just isn’t going to dish out any kind of desirable damage.

I think that depends on what you consider “desirable.”

Maximizing raw damage output isn’t the objective of every build out there.

Seras.5702:

Well obviously I was hoping for a solid FT build utilizing HGH & Juggernaut to stack crazy amounts of might. I find myself hovering around 18-20 stacks right now and I’m not even optimized with the proper sigils/runes yet. Jugg just makes it so easy.

With Bomb Kit and some blast finisher every Engineer can give themselves (and their allies) almost constantly 9-12 stacks of Might, that’s why I don’t see why anyone would want to use HGH in PvE.

The problem with the Flamethrower is that it’s auto attack deals so little damage, to get most out of the Flamethrower you have to swap out of it ASAP which makes the Juggernaut trait useless. Both the Bomb Kit and the Grenade Kit give you more damage, more support and more survivability than the Flamethrower so you need a high pain tolerance to force yourself to use it.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Seras.5702:

Apparently, the consensus though is that it doesn’t matter how many stacks of might I’ve got, FT just isn’t going to dish out any kind of desirable damage.

I think that depends on what you consider “desirable.”

Maximizing raw damage output isn’t the objective of every build out there.

Um, well, when you’re talking about a flamethrower-focused might stacking build that usually means trying to push out as much dmg as possible.

Not just throwing flamethrower on as a utility kit for any random build.

Knote.2904:

Um, well, when you’re talking about a flamethrower-focused might stacking build that usually means trying to push out as much dmg as possible.

Not just throwing flamethrower on as a utility kit for any random build.

Some players just happen to like the play style of the Flamethrower and they want to maximize its damage potential, whether or not it is ideally the highest damaging kit we have.

If you enjoy spamming 41111121111111121111114211111 then by all means I recommend utilizing the Grenade Kit. I think players should first and foremost use weapons they actually enjoy playing with, because ultimately what playing video games comes down to is having fun.

I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, but some people don’t actually want to use the Grenade Kit or Bomb Kit and don’t find them fun to use all the time. Instead of supporting him on his choice, you instead beat him over the head how much better you think the Bomb Kit is, whether or not that’s actually the kind of play style he wants to utilize.

Seras.5702:

Apparently, the concensus though is that it doesn’t matter how many stacks of might I’ve got, FT just isn’t going to dish out any kind of desirable damage. And I should switch to bombs.

I just read stuff like this and shake my head.

We are getting to far off topic here. NO one is suggesting FT is the optimal damage kit, but it is very fun to use and a solid kit for damage. No need to get into a arguement comparing kits here

Phineas Poe.3018:

Knote.2904:

Um, well, when you’re talking about a flamethrower-focused might stacking build that usually means trying to push out as much dmg as possible.

Not just throwing flamethrower on as a utility kit for any random build.

Some players just happen to like the play style of the Flamethrower and they want to maximize its damage potential, whether or not it is ideally the highest damaging kit we have.

If you enjoy spamming 41111121111111121111114211111 then by all means I recommend utilizing the Grenade Kit. I think players should first and foremost use weapons they actually enjoy playing with, because ultimately what playing video games comes down to is having fun.

I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, but some people don’t actually want to use the Grenade Kit or Bomb Kit and don’t find them fun to use all the time. Instead of supporting him on his choice, you instead beat him over the head how much better you think the Bomb Kit is, whether or not that’s actually the kind of play style he wants to utilize.

Seras.5702:

Apparently, the concensus though is that it doesn’t matter how many stacks of might I’ve got, FT just isn’t going to dish out any kind of desirable damage. And I should switch to bombs.

I just read stuff like this and shake my head.

I know, and I desperately want flame thrower to be a good dmg option. I wish Anet would just give it a flat dmg boost, it needs one.

It’s just hard to justify using it over the other kits for dmg. =/

I was trying a FT build too.

I was thinking about FT with HGH o with SD.
HGH gives more might, but with SD I can still keep a good ammount of might and clear utilities and traits for other things.

I did this one: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUl0pyaX7STF19IxYGdm0gZA47KSR+bMA-jQCBYfBhEBI5pIas1hhtyJaVQBRXDT5iIq2erIa1A-e

I can keep about 15 might stacks without effort and can bring it more with blasts on fire field.

can stack lots of vulnerability on target and got nice dmg bonus from traits (15% for FT, 10% for endurance full, 5% if tgt bleeds)

Perma swiftness vigor and -almost- fury (with healing kit and googles)
Tons of discharges for more dmg with toolbelt skills.

good control with riffle and flamethrower

I´m not sure HGH benefits can be better than SD benefits (trait allocation and utilities) when using the FT… I´m still trying, but so far, I like SD better…

As a reminder to everyone participating in this topic, please remember to stay on topic and do not derail the ongoing, constructive discussion.