Guild Wars 2

I’ve had a great deal of experience using the flamethrower in high level tpvp. I however, have noticed it being used completely wrong by others in hot joins/ yolo queues. Most people seem to flock to the flamethrower when starting out on engineer because, well, it’s a flamethrower! However, they soon realize that the cleave damage, and even the condition damage is mediocre at best. Eventually, they just drop the kits and pickup HGH because they have no talent and can’t play without being carried by an overpowered build (Lub u ostrich). So… How exactly does one use the flamethrower properly in tournament play?

Well, it’s actually meant to be used as Utility.

What that means is, the flamethrower is by no means a weapon kit used as a weapon. The FT is meant primarily for its number 3,4 and 5 skills. Here’s what I personally have found is most beneficial while using each skill.

The knockback ability is an amazing tool used to stop your opponent dead in his tracks. Whenever I’m playing bunker on my engineer, I always use flamethrower for the fast, relatively low cool down KB it offers. In conjunction with the shield #4 attack, you can get a nuet off an enemy node with relative ease. Also, the knockback is great to CC a target for your team and can help make sure they cannot retaliate and can help your team take them down much quicker.

The flame wall the FT offers is a decent skill at best. Putting the wall can offer a fair DPS increase for your team. When projectiles pass through it, it creates a fire effect, increasing the damage on hit. Not to mention it burns any enemy that walks through it!

Finally, the blind skill is probably the main reason to bring a flamethrower to a cat fight. It’s acts not only as a “Oh kitten” skill to stop burst, but it also can make sure you get that clutch stomp your team needs! Popping this bad boy mid-stomp will blind your downed opponent, stopping their CC ability and getting that stomp!

Overall, the flamethrower brings so much utility to the table and is a viable choice to bring for most bunker/sustain builds.

Unfortunately, the auto attack and napalm are worthless at best, so refrain from using them. Simply pop in between the flamethrower to use the utilities it offers and you’ll realize how much it brings to the fight.

Hope I helped in some way, shape, or form for all you engineers out there.

Good luck and happy nomming,
Vöz

Would you say Juggernaut is not really worth using in tPvP then?

chungiee.8764:

Would you say Juggernaut is not really worth using in tPvP then?

It’s not worth it IMO. It used to be awesome because of the stability it gave, but the extra defense and might it gives isn’t worth it if you’re forced to stay in the kit. You shouldn’t need to trait for the flamethrower for it to be effective.

I remember being super excited when I figured out you can use #5 mid-stomp.

Grackleflint.4956:

I remember being super excited when I figured out you can use #5 mid-stomp.

hahaha same! every since it has to be on my bar >.> pick it over block on toolkit

but yea, if you run a powerbuild #2 can be useful, you can use Flame Blast + Surprise shot(with static discharge) for a strong spammable spike, normally is 8k+ every 8s

Grackleflint.4956:

I remember being super excited when I figured out you can use #5 mid-stomp.

What do you mean?

JubeiTM.5763:

Grackleflint.4956:

I remember being super excited when I figured out you can use #5 mid-stomp.

What do you mean?

FT#5 is a PBAoE blind with 0 cast time, meaning you can swap to FT mid stomp and cast it. Lots of downed state abilities are negated with blind due to a projectile nature. It’s like a weak version of the Elixir S stomp on a shorter CD.

TLDR; there isn’t one,suck it up and read.

disclaimer: this is about PVP, not Wuvwuv or PVE. And for the love of kitten, don’t bother with “well blah blah concept is brokena nd doesn’t work anyway!” (like gadets) .. I don’t want to hear your defeatest, self depricating kitten talk about how nothing we have works. be a winner and think about things in a bigger picture.

First, I would just like to say … where the hell are all of these “wisdom” posts coming from out of you guys as if you’ve all been using the FT like wizards for the last seven months? You haven’t, you’ve been telling ME for seven months how useless the flamethrower is. Now all of a sudden, because a video with Teldo using the FT in his rotation, everyone is an arm chair expert on using the FT.

all dem rude bumbaclots can BUN in fyah. this is the original raggamuffin speakin in your ear now. ’ere it is. big it up!

The wording can be misleading, in the way that Walorx has described things.

IF you only use the FT for it’s utility as a supplement to other builds, then Juggernaut is a waste.

However, speccing to use Juggernaut is … not.

What you have to understand about the FT kit is that, yes, it is a utility kit, but that is only half of the picture.

People need to stop kittening about the old Jugg trait.

IT SUCKED .. There, I’ve said it for all you e-peaning fanboys. The old Jugg sucked. So did the old Luigi’s Mansion vacuum attack. They were nifty utilities, but they were not balanced utilities, and they did not function the way that the kit was intended for.

Hohoho, let’s take a weapon that is designed to keep foes at bay and give them an ability to pull them closer, and THEN slow you down on top of it, but it’s okay! Stability! … honestly, if you thought this was the be-all-end-all of game play, you need to l2p and stop being such a close minded one button hero. The seven months of misconception about FT dps and melee dps etc etc is crap because it was only a relevant argument with the old set up where all you could do was pull enemies right in to your face .. like downed #2 … you needed front end DPS to make up for the of pulling your foes closer. If you don’t like what I just said about the old Jugg, it sucks to be you because clearly the Devs think the same way I do.

The new knock back from air blast and the tough/might changes to Jugg turned the weapon into something DIFFERENT than what it was. And frankly, what is is now is FAR better than what it was.

It is high time we had a discussion about just what the kitten and engineer is supposed to be doing in combat.

things we complain about:
- lack of over all dps fairing builds, gimicky solutions that get nerfed month after month
- lack of straight up tanking builds, reliance on oh snap buttons and dodge mechanics
- turrets that die too fast
- elixirs that “make no sense” to the “theme” of the engineer (as if a fantasy game needs a rubric carved in stone)
- the mythical versatility tax

So, what we have then is this leftover jumble of utility skills and kits that everyone seems to think that the only possible way to use them is to spec fully in to them and nothing else (and on this point, Walorx’s advice is actually very sound, there is no NEED for juggernaut, but that doesn’t make it worthless … read on). People who think there is only one way to do things are wrong. Period.

We have the nade spec, the HGH spec, the HGH nade spec, and … a bunch of derivative crap that has spilled out from these builds by the plethora of cookie cutter copiers who have no capacity fo compile their own construct of traits and abilities.
The Engineer is not and never has been designed to be a high falluting dps burst profession like warriors and thieves. Just because we CAN do it with a lot of hard work doesn’t mean that dps was the intent. And yet, constantly here on the forums people bash their heads against the keyboards mewling about how other classes can do XYZ with Button A instead of just getting to do X with buttons ABC asking and pleading to be given back over powered traits and abilities so that we can pew pew with the big boys.

mew mew.

At the same time, this crusade of yours to find some uber best dps spec in the game (which, ironically, I believe engies DO have, at the end of the day, but that part of the post is coming later …) STIFLES the ability for new players to experiment with stuff and have fun doing it which COULD lead to the discovery of a whole bunch of new stuff (even my tirades about the FT end up stumping out some creativity I am sure, that is the rub of giving advice).

What new stuff?

Well, let’s take a look at what the engie CAN do (and, please keep in mind, I don’t give a fat rat’s amputated left testicle about what Karnie Karl or any of the Jon’s have to say about what Anet wants the class to be, this profession is in OUR hands now, and like any piece of literature, once it is released for public consumption, deciphering authorial intent is an exercise in stupidity and redundancy … so stop being redundantly stupid, this is a plea to the community as fellow gamers, not nak being angry ole bear on the forums)

1)
Engies have the fastest and most reliable and predictable set of applications of group wide buffs thanks to our wide variety of combo fields available. But Nak! We lack finishers to use them! Yes, we do, but that, I believe, is the point. This game is not like other MMO where positioning is critical or millisecond timing is critical, which is one of the reasons why PV kitten o fun, it is less micromanagement, more pew pew than many other games.
- this makes our combo fields ridiculously valuable because once they are on the ground, ANYONE can activate it. Now, when a water field goes down on a point and a team that is coordinated says “water field down!” on vent, the whole team (if there) can start dropping blast finishers and healing the whole point for a couple seconds
precisely because the combo fields are just there for anyone to use, the UTILITY of the engineer profession is to CONSTRUCT the field of combat for your allies.

“Controlling” the battlefield is about more than putting down a turret and expecting it to win a fight and cap a point for you, controlling the battlefield is about turning the battlefield into a safe zone for your allies and protecting that place.

2)
Engineers are capable of spreading conditions faster than any other class. But Nak! You have to trait super deep and spec in only a certain way to make your condis last longer than someone elses, or keep them from getting over written! Yep, you do, but regardless of how you’ve traited, you can still spread those conditions like peanut butter on toast, hot, oily, and oh so salty. Conditions are something that have to be dealt with, which means that regardless of the condi potency, as soon as you unload on someone, they are going to say, “oh snap” and start looking to clear condis…the mere THREAT of HGH condi specs is enough to make people clear condis.
- THIS IS A FORM OF POINT CONTROL because you are dictating the actions of the people around you and leading them in to actions you want them to do.

3)
Engies have access to the widest variety of crowd control and enemy lockdown (barring Rangers specced in to traps) in the game. Again, our control options highlight the versatility of the engineer in combat because, regardless of traits, we have myriad options for positioning our opponents where we want them, rifles, glues, turrets, gadgets etc. The only thing we don’t have is Fear. I don’t want to get repetitive, so the point is CONTROL.

Now, certainly the engie does more than this in a great many ways, but IMO, these three things - combo fields, conditions, and crowd control - are the “flavour” of the engineer, and when used together, turn the engineer in to an incredibly fun profession that views the field from “above” and reacts to threats as they occur, just like maintaining a big machine .. sit back and watch the gears spin, if something looks out of whack, tweak it .. or hit it with your wrench …

Alright nak, so wtf does all this have to do with your beef about these FT threads? … read on, padawan.

Y’all fight the notion of mid-range combat as if it were some world ending semantic juggernaut (pun intended) that was trying to destroy your vision of ranges vs. melee. Like it or not, mid-range combat exists, and has existed … well forever. Just because the game does a poor job of implementing this role for us does not mean that the role is nonexistent.

Coming back to Walorx’s post, if you can filter out the e-groupie rhetoric, we find some solid advice on using the FT for point control, knock back, blind, flame blast (it makes people move, even if it misses, that is a wasted dodge teammates can exploit).

But the puck stops there, it never crosses the line to really look at what control means, and so it goes on, like so many broken records on this forum, to say that speccing in to a kit is worthless (unless it is the grenade kit, the implication weighs heavy).

But now we have to talk about mechanics, and complexity, and swapping etc.

Because we have instant (GCD constrained) weapon (kit) swapping, we have access to an exorbitant array of abilities on reasonably short cooldowns inside the kits, which is why our utility skills are on such high cooldowns (likewise for the toolbelt in many cases) Now, this isn’t the place to argue about how long/short cooldowns need to be (many need to be made much shorter), the point I want to make is that if you have 2 kits equipped, you are setting yourself up for, generally, a 3-6 second retention of each kit at a time.

Unlike weapons which would restrict us to 10 second intervals, weaving 5 skills in with 3 utilities and the odd F skill mechanic (class depending), your 2 kit engie has, within that same 10 second window, access to 10 weapon skills, two utilities, and four belt skills. Within the kits, cooldowns on the most useful abilities are SHORT (Super Elixir traited to 16 seconds? Yes please; 4.5 second fire blast? Yes please; and so on). The reason for this is that our gameplay is meant to be spent swapping kits frequently to chain together long combinations that can be altered on the fly rather than predefined combos that only work one way. This could be seen as restrictive ONLY IF YOU THINK FROM A PURE DPS BURST PERSPECTIVE.

What this enables for the Engineer is the capability to frequently cycle through crowd controlling and group supporting skills which allow the Engineer to control the pace of combat.

But! An Engineer cannot do this alone! You are right, for the most part, gearing and speccing for this supportive playstyle leaves you lacking on both the burstiest end dps and tankiest end bunkering. It leaves you solidly in the middle … kind of like our attack range.

When paired up with an ally, however, or when bunkering, the engineer shines because of their ability to quickly and intelligently adapt to the skirmish and unleash a constant steady supply of buffs, heals, and crowd control which, thanks to our short cooldowns, are always at hand.

The engineer is always fully prepared.

Now, in my experience of using nothing but the flamethrower for months is that as a bunker, toughness is, by and large, the single most important stat to stack. The 6 stacks of might, additionally, mitigate the versatility tax and make your FT formidable enough that people have to pay attention to you. The FT is not so weak that if you just ignore an FT user, you will be fine. Most good groups realize you have to kill the FT first. With the extra 200 toughness, and with protection traits (shield and injection) and with runes which increase protection like Forge or Earth runes, and with amulets that add toughness like Soldier or Rabid or Shaman, the FT becomes much less skittery and much more punchy because you can chase foes and get up in their face if you need to, without worrying about being burned down super fast.

By taking traits that work with immobilization, you also turn the FT into a primary focus control weapon, which can pick a foe and lock them down indefinitely. This returns us to the concept of cooldowns. Personally, I think that more than two kits (not counting healing medkit) cripples you not because of lack of options, because you bring too much to the table. With traited cooldowns on the FT, combined with the rifle and a net turret, you can have unlimited nets available on demand at (nearly) every moment.

…….

Anyway, the whole point of these walls of text is to educate you that there are MULTIPLE ways of using things.

Yes, you can use the FT as a supplement in other builds, without Juggernaut .. that is wicked, and I am glad that people are finally coming to terms with the kit instead of puking all over it on the forums. But take your mittens out of your kittens and stop telling people that speccing for the kit is a waste. If the FT playstyle isn’t for you, that is too bad, but the FT traits are not worthless.

Read my guide.

I respect your opinion and the time it took you to make that post, but for the flamethrower in particular, I still don’t believe it’s necessary to trait for it. The cool downs are all fairly short and you can get much more benefit from many other trait lines. I honestly don’t see any circumstance where a shorter cool down knockback would be better than a shorter cool down pistols or more protection/vigor.

Walorx.5129:

I respect your opinion and the time it took you to make that post, but for the flamethrower in particular, I still don’t believe it’s necessary to trait for it. The cool downs are all fairly short and you can get much more benefit from many other trait lines. I honestly don’t see any circumstance where a shorter cool down knockback would be better than a shorter cool down pistols or more protection/vigor.

That is because when you use pistols, you do your best to stay as far from the combat as your skills allow, and so you need to be able to strike more often while moving about, whereas with the FT you tend to stay closer to the fray (thus the need for toughness) and, thus, having access to Air Blast more frequently and used with intelligent timing mitigates damage for you and your entire group because it can spread multiple foes around (and off) of the point.

The whole point of my “well thought out post” is that there are multiple ways of doing things.

You don’t “get” juggernaut, and so you don’t use it, and you do well without it; that’s fine. But to call it “worthless” is misleading and misinformative to the community at large.

Walorx.5129:

So… How exactly does one use the flamethrower properly in tournament play?

Walorx.5129:

just drop the kits and pickup HGH

edited for clarity.
(sorry couldn’t resist <3)

hackks.3687:

Walorx.5129:

So… How exactly does one use the flamethrower properly in tournament play?

Walorx.5129:

just drop the kits and pickup HGH

edited for clarity.
(sorry couldn’t resist <3)

Hahahahaha this is amazing. Actually can’t stop laughing irl. +1

Small point I’d add: took me a while to realize that napalm is very useful when fighting near-infinitely stealthed thieves.. drop napalm and dance.. they have no choice but to get burnt if they want to hit you.

Also, personally I’d slot air blast with the improved recharged as a lone utility in certain builds if I had the option.

hackks.3687:

Walorx.5129:

So… How exactly does one use the flamethrower properly in tournament play?

Walorx.5129:

just drop the kits and pickup HGH.. /faceroll pubs and get smashed by good players because you bring nothing but damage to the table.

edited for clarity.
(sorry couldn’t resist <3)

edited for clarity.
(sorry couldn’t resist)

Punkins.2087:

hackks.3687:

Walorx.5129:

So… How exactly does one use the flamethrower properly in tournament play?

Walorx.5129:

just drop the kits and pickup HGH.. /faceroll pubs and get smashed by good players because you bring nothing but damage to the table.

edited for clarity.
(sorry couldn’t resist <3)

edited for clarity.
(sorry couldn’t resist)

you’re not doing it right.

-1