Guild Wars 2

I’ve been an Engineer since BWE1 and before GW2 launched the first thing I would do as soon as the beta servers went online was rush to the mists and see what they changed with the flamethrower. Losing backdraft hurt and it’s replacement seemed thrown together without much thought, but nevertheless the FT is a little bit better than it was way back in BWE1. It still doesn’t really work as a main weapon though (believe me I tried, reaching rank 20 by BWE3 and having done a ton of tournaments since launch). So I thought I would explain what needs to change and WHY those things need to change.

First we need to accept what the flamethrower is: a close-range offensive weapon. Back in the BWEs I would have said that it was apparently a control weapon, but ArenaNet said that that was not their intention, and it was underscored by the removal of backdraft.

Okay so let’s look at the skills and analyze what needs to change about them:

1. Flame Jet

The damage on the auto attack is too low. Leaving bugs like kits-don’t-stay-on-auto-attack and the tons of times where the spray misses absolutely everything, a full channel is just not worth it, especially in melee range. On solution is to make more ticks proc burning, thus making it less punishing when your spray bugs out and misses several hits. Or, if the missing is fixed, a simple damage buff is needed (10-20%).

2. Fire Blast

A lot of people think this should explode when it hits your target. I disagree. Fire Blast is currently a skill shot that requires precise positioning and a CC setup (usually net shot or air blast). The problem is that it doesn’t do enough damage to reward the player for lining up the skill shot.

Making it auto-detonate on contact would take any type of positional awareness out of the skill and the damage would in fact have to be NERFED to compensate for that. No, I think it’s fine how it currently stands mechanically, it just needs to be more rewarding for landing an admittedly-difficult hit. The travel time is also very slow which makes it dodgeable. This is a good thing. But it means it should do more damage. Not saying it should do Hundred Blades levels of damage, but landing a Fire Blast is currently much harder than landing a HB.

3. Air Blast

No issues with this skill.

4. Napalm

This skill doesn’t synergize at all with the Flamethrower itself, but when used as a quick swap to and from the FT to place a fire field, it works fine. So I guess it depends on your perspective. Skills like this and 3 Air Blast make the FT kit far more useful as a “utility slot” in the typical sense of the word, where you switch to the weapon for a knockback and then go back to using your “real” weapon — the one that actually does damage. I’m fine with this one staying the way it is but perhaps something could be done to make it synergize a little with the Flamethrower itself. Maybe Air Blast should be a blast finisher, allowing you to combo with Napalm. Something like that, maybe.

5. Smoke Thing (me not knowing this skill’s name perhaps shows how much thought went into the designing of this skill, no offense)

Okay so ArenaNet removed the control skill Backdraft (which used to pull enemies to you and burn them) and replaced it with this, a defensive skill — which is a bit weird since the Flamethrower is not what you would consider a defensive kit. The radius on this skill is laughably short however.

It is nice that you can use it while stunned, but since it only blinds once you will get hit by Hundred Blades or Pistol Whip 9 times instead of 10, and you’ll still be dead. I propose changing this skill to drop a smoke field that perma-blinds inside of it for 3 or 4 seconds (you can keep the radius the same if you want). I believe that this would do two things:

- It would give multi-kit engineers a replacement for their lack of stun-removal. Currently you simply can NOT use 3 kits in PVP. You need a stun-breaker to combat the many burst builds that are currently out there. If the FT 5 could drop a smoke field, you could switch the the FT and use it while stunned, negating things like HB or Pistol Whip assuming you haven’t put it on cooldown. Meanwhile, it could still be countered by things like Dragon’s Tooth.

- It would make the 5 skill far more used since you can use the smoke field to combo. Right the 5 skill is alright but so very situational — and even then it is not that effective.

With those changes I think the Flamethrower would be a far better weapon, and one that could be used in PVP. The “armed kits” need a lot of help if their design intention was to be weapons that made up for engineers only having one primary weapon.

Thoughts?

Smoke thingy #5 is good for stomping still, you can use it while casting and make your target miss their interrupt.

Edit: although in its current form, the flamethrower is more of a utility weapon than a damage dealer. Agree on the other changes.

In my opinion,

1. Make the burn last 2 seconds instead of 1. This would boost the damage enough I think.

2. Fireblast should be changed to a combo blast finisher at detonation point. No need to change the damage. This would also fix the issue of zero combo finishers with flame thrower.

3. Personally I’d rather this be changed to a pull. If it has to be a push back then at least attach some sort of cripple to it. This is the fastest recoverable CC I’ve seen.

4. I’d personally like this to be changed to a PBAOE persistent fire field effect. The very low range and awkward positioning of the wall is extremely troublesome in pvp and pve alike.
With a pbaoe effect you can at least guarantee mobs and players on yourkitten will get hit by it.

5. Smoke Vent is ok. But a single blind on a 20 second CD is just really meh to me. If this also caused 5 seconds of poison that would be worthwhile.
That or reduce the CD to 10 seconds.

Airblast

The Smoke Vent range is extremely frustrating. Have been toe to toe with a mob and no effect at all. Your other comments I’m liking.

I like to use 3 then 2 together, seems to work fairly well. The FT really needs a finisher of some kind.

Those are great ideas.
I especially like the change you made to smoke vent. I’d love to be able to use the smoke field + rocket boots jump back stealth combo without needing bomb kit, a pathetic turret or relying on random skills.

smoke vent’s melee aoe is really annoying, and it doesnt really synergize with the rest of the skills as all. This should definitely be changed or buffed imo, i cant think of any other skill that does nothing except a blind at melee range (compare to pistol #3 skill or bomb #5 smoke bomb)

i like your idea to make the fireblast a combo blast, it would be interesting because its somewhat difficult to land since you have to be the right distance away from the field. fireblast is a really interesting skill and well designed since it really forces FT to be “mid range” for max damage. it does have some issues though, if they are moving around it misses all the time, just strafing sideways and not even dodging it misses. also, i am an asura and i think i set my character height to the smallest possible, so when i shoot this thing it rolls across the ground like im bowling with a flaming bowling ball. then when there is a small bump in the terrain it hits it and just straight out dissapears (no explosion at all). I think if i was a tall norn this would be way less of a problem (any tall engineers out there want to comment on this?). if so it’s really bad design for your race to have any impact on this kind of stuff. at the very least it should explode when it hits something instead of dissapear.

I think the main thing is that a 3 kit build is fundamentally not viable do to a lack of stunbreakers and condition removal. If the 5 skill on the FT was a blind area it would solve the former; perhaps buffing the condition removal on the Elixir Gun would solve the latter. And no, having a 20% chance to remove a condition is not condition removal. Making the Elixir Gun #3 remove conditions from yourself as well as allies would be HUGE.

I like the idea of Smoke Vent. When you’re wading through multiple enemies with the FT, having a quick “blind everyone” is useful; you’re not going to get by on burns and Toughness alone.

However, I hate the implementation of Smoke Vent. The radius is so small as to be useless. When you have multiple enemies on you, it only hits them if they are all melee and stacked right on top of you… and even then, it doesn’t always work. Simply increasing the radius out to 250-350 would work just fine; a smoke combo field would be excellent, but I suspect that would be giving the FT too much usefulness on such a short cooldown.

By the way, I think you missed a massively important aspect of the FT: “we need to accept what the flamethrower is: a close-range offensive weapon”. Yes, but it is a close range offensive weapon for multiple enemies. The point of an on-the-move channeled cone of fire is not to circle around a lone bad guy, but to toast an entire field of enemies. The point of an explosive AoE 2nd skill is to nuke a group from afar. And (part of) the point of having the key 4 combo field burn anyone who crosses it, is to let you drop it beneath the feet of a group.

The reason you don’t like the Flame Jet’s damage is because you compare it to the quick shots of a rifle/pistol. In actuality, one FT attack will do more damage than a Hip Shot to one target, but it will do it over a longer period of time, which lowers average dps… unless there are more than one target in that cone. Get 2-3 enemies in that cone of fire, and your dps starts racking up faster than if you somehow managed to line them all up for a Hip Shot with piercing.

To be honest the biggest problem with FT is not its design, it is the perpetual bugginess. Flame Jets missing close-by enemies, and Ball of Napalm firing into the ground instead of straight ahead, are effectively massive nerfs to the 2 damaging skills in the kit.

Well in TF2 (which the GW2 FT is supposedly based on), the Flamethrower is also aoe but it does HUGE single target damage as well. You’re forgetting that most melee weapons (greatsword for warriors, for example) do huge aoe damage. Saying that the Flamethrower should have low damage because it’s aoe just doesn’t match up with other close range weapons in this game.

I can only say one thing about flame blast: “Obstructed!”