Guild Wars 2

The more I look at plans for the new trait system I can’t help but fear for my FT engi. FT has not always been the best kit and it tends to be one of the less popular kits to use as a primary but it is my favorite. The new trait system will force us to pick between juggernaut, incendiary powder, and modified ammunition. These traits are all vitally important for any flamethrower build to be a viable damage dealer. My fear is that these changes is going to greatly limit the possibility of using the flamethrower as anything other than the quick utility kit that the meta has often chosen for it.

Will Jugg still have the might stacks or is it just stability? If it’s just stability it’s hardly crucial.

Do you run condi or power FT?
Because modified + IP is pointless on condi.
There are also better options for power based FT.

Yes it doesn’t make sense that firearms grandmaster have two flamethrower related traits. They should increase flamer burning durations baseline.

guildabd.6529:

Yes it doesn’t make sense that firearms grandmaster have two flamethrower related traits. They should increase flamer burning durations baseline.

IP has NOTHING to do with FT. It should NEVER be used in a FT build. EVER. Same goes for modified amunitions.

not using IP I understand but modified amunition is great. WIth my crit build enemies have a fairly constant supply of conditions applied giving me an easy and consistant 6% damage boost. Even more if I don’t just sit in flamethrower.

Terminal Gaijin.5426:

not using IP I understand but modified amunition is great. WIth my crit build enemies have a fairly constant supply of conditions applied giving me an easy and consistant 6% damage boost. Even more if I don’t just sit in flamethrower.

I would love ModAm to be effective, but there are a lot better option right now, would you mind posting your whole build?

I don’t know, I think the moving of stats from trait lines to gear should make FT more viable. Now we don’t have to go deep into the lackluster Firearms and Alchemy trait lines (before you freak out with “OMG alchemy is da best you pleb!” Keep in mind I just said they are lackluster, not useless) at the cost of precision and power. We can keep all our zerker stats and get the traits that make FT’s damage viable, like “Juggernaut” and "deadly mixture. "

Incendiary powder is pretty important to maintaining perma burn which gives a 10% damage boost to flamethrower autoattack. I usually run celestial with flamethrower but even with berserker, you have some ok condi damage from the firearms line and might stacks so IP adds some nice condi pressure as well as keeping up your 10% damage bonus. Not to mention, if you go power flamethrower, you’ll want the power from explosives anyways and there isn’t a better trait to take in that master slot.

I’m sad for flamethrower. It seems pretty weird that the best burning builds on engi won’t use flamethrower since IP does better burning than FT on it’s own and FT is a lot weaker without juggernaut, especially once it stacks stability.

When i first tried using FT i found it slow and unwieldy, but once i got the hang of it i use all the abilities frequently, flame jet probably the least. Anyone who has fought me knows i send out lots of fireballs BOOM!

I use a similar trait set up to braindead afk tag stuff in open world PvE. With sigil of str, runes of strength and fried gold dumplings (or omonom creams for mf), 25 might stacks are a given as you tag like crazy. It’s not bad outside of dungeons.

This is all assuming that the flame thrower auto applies the same kind of burning it does now though. If burning will stack in intensity but be weaker… burning on every #1 tick? I wouldn’t worry too much about the changes.

Here is the basic build I use for GrandHaven. I know it is not an ideal build but it is by far the most enjoyable build i have found for pve.
sorry i dont recal my armor, it is a balance to giving me 18k health i think, and a 65% crit chance with 200% crit dmg. If you really want all the details let me know and i will loot them up.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQJAqelsTpWr9dxdLseRSdBNqoEqdC6AUguKyjEDA-e

Terminal Gaijin.5426:

Here is the basic build I use for GrandHaven. I know it is not an ideal build but it is by far the most enjoyable build i have found for pve.
sorry i dont recal my armor, it is a balance to giving me 18k health i think, and a 65% crit chance with 200% crit dmg. If you really want all the details let me know and i will loot them up.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQJAqelsTpWr9dxdLseRSdBNqoEqdC6AUguKyjEDA-e

65% means you are running assassins.
So your build mostly JUST applies burning, so you are barely making use of ModAmm.
You do however have very short duration poison, bleeding and blind.

There are much better trait setups you can take.

Drath.4750:

Incendiary powder is pretty important to maintaining perma burn which gives a 10% damage boost to flamethrower autoattack. I usually run celestial with flamethrower but even with berserker, you have some ok condi damage from the firearms line and might stacks so IP adds some nice condi pressure as well as keeping up your 10% damage bonus. Not to mention, if you go power flamethrower, you’ll want the power from explosives anyways and there isn’t a better trait to take in that master slot.

I’m sad for flamethrower. It seems pretty weird that the best burning builds on engi won’t use flamethrower since IP does better burning than FT on it’s own and FT is a lot weaker without juggernaut, especially once it stacks stability.

You really do not need IP for condi pressure on an FT build.

GrandHaven.1052:

Drath.4750:

Incendiary powder is pretty important to maintaining perma burn which gives a 10% damage boost to flamethrower autoattack. I usually run celestial with flamethrower but even with berserker, you have some ok condi damage from the firearms line and might stacks so IP adds some nice condi pressure as well as keeping up your 10% damage bonus. Not to mention, if you go power flamethrower, you’ll want the power from explosives anyways and there isn’t a better trait to take in that master slot.

I’m sad for flamethrower. It seems pretty weird that the best burning builds on engi won’t use flamethrower since IP does better burning than FT on it’s own and FT is a lot weaker without juggernaut, especially once it stacks stability.

You really do not need IP for condi pressure on an FT build.

Flamethrower on its own can’t provide perma burning. Incendiary ammo is too long a cooldown and flame jet gives less than 50% uptime on its own even if spammed, and it can’t be spammed because number 2 needs to be used as often as possible. Without IP you don’t get close to perma burning and miss out on a lot of damage from both the burn and the 10% damage modifier. And in the current state of things, it’s too important to go into explosives for the power and condi duration and IP gives much better damage than the extra might from performance enhancement. Just test it on the dummies in HotM. With IP you maintain a constant stack of burning while spamming #2 on cooldown and even switching to rifle for jumpshot+blunderbluss. And you don’t overstack. Without IP you can’t maintain constant burning.

Since we’re talking about the new world of traits though, IP is even more important for burning uptime since the durations don’t stack. But being mutually exclusive with juggernaut, flamethrowers will always prefer the stability and might, and the best burning build will be p/p+bombs with short fuse and IP which is ironic for a class that has a freaking flamethrower.

You do realize GT has 2 other methods of applying or extending burning right?

You cannot have this conversation in the context of flame jet alone.

I mentioned Incendiary ammo, which is great but is a 45 second cooldown. I didn’t mention napalm because it’s a long cooldown that in good cases gives 2 seconds of burning but more often gives 0 or 1 second because no one stands in the line of fire. Air blast is used for CC, not burning uptime and even with all of that you don’t come close to perma burning. IP is one of our strongest traits right now and even using all the flamethrower burns you still don’t hit perma burning which means you’re getting the full effect of IP. The only reason you wouldn’t take it is if you were doing perma burn without it, making it redundant. But you don’t come anywhere near it.

And the thing is, I’m talking about a theory crafted ideal scenario for FT. The more average scenario is you don’t spend much time using flamethrower even with juggernaut. You are often swapping to rifle or other kits just using the high damaging skills on cooldown.

But this keeps getting beside the point of the future world where burning stacks intensity and flamethrower applies burning which means you’ll want both IP (+ burning duration and extra burns on crit) and juggernaut (might,stability, toughness) for flamethrower builds but can’t have them both. It’s possibly the right way to balance since FT might have been overpowered then, but it’s just unfortunate you can’t have both.