Guild Wars 2

…And if so, how’s the best way to go about it? Of note, this is for PvE, when playing alone, with a buddy, or hopping into random group events.

Specifically, I’m talking about using the flamethrower kit as a primary weapon, swapping to anything (including normal weapons) for only a brief few moments. Fairly new as I am, I’ve heard it(FT) has been nerfed a bit, but I’m curious if it’s possible to salvage it into something meaningful!

So far, mixed up as I am, I’ve gone full Celestial armor (w/Berserker jewelry and weapons) since the flamethrower itself is a sort of hybrid, forcing really a little bit of everything from straight upfront damage to condition damage.

My build is 0/6/0/6/2:

-Precise Sights, Juggernaut, Modified Ammunition
-Protection Injection, Deadly Mixture, Experimental Turrets
-Speedy Kits

Sigils of Strength and Accuracy,
Full Strength runes (Stuck in wurm for the moment, still poor.)

As-is, I have a 53% chance to crit, and with Fury from my turret, bumped up to 73% which is pretty darn good I figured for the sigils used.

However, I did consider what it would be like if I went for Explosives instead. This part is all theorycrafting:

Notes on Explosives > Alchemy
+ Power, for the power god.
+ Incendiary Powder, which is directly influenced by the +condition duration of the trait-line.
+ Less turret interaction, allowing slightly higher mobility.
- Might duration, making it difficult to amass higher stacks in solo or buddy-play.
- Vitality, making you a lil’ bit squishier.
- Survival traits including Protection Injection and Transmute.

Notes on Alchemy > Explosives
+ Vitality to stay alive longer, especially at its borderline-melee range.
+ Survival traits to help keep you up.
+ Boon Duration, directly complimenting the slew of everything, which is somewhat what this build is dependent on.
- Turrets make this semi-dependent on being in a general area. Good thing its for PvE, right?
- Possibly less overall damage due to the lack of power (sacrificing it for survivability)

So I’m kind of at a fork in the road here, and not sure if anyone else has seen things I haven’t. I love my engi to death, and my little flamethrower too (even if it comes with a horrible fluid-filled hobosack that clashes with my wings), but I want it to be my lifestyle, not just a bygone.

Anything you find fun is absolutely fine for solo pve.

But if you’re looking for an effective pve build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdMQJAqelUUpdrlYxPLseNSaBNq0A6M8i6+5GEgnC-TxhFwADegAAUCaU5HjTEgM1fGt/wF9EBAOAY6AhAUsBA-e

Some things can be changed (EG to rocket boots, infused precision/invigorating speed combo, shrapnel to forceful explosives, short fuse to explosive powder) if you feel them to be better.

Bombs and grenades are just straight up better than flamethrower in every way. More survivability, more damage and more support.

That’s fine and all, but I’m trying to ‘optimize’ flamethrower as-is, trying to incite curiosity as to how to ‘polish a kitten ’ as the saying goes.

http://www.wolfineer.com/ has a power flamethrower build on it that I am going to get around to trying out sooner or later. I’d give that a go. Theres lots of other great engineer stuff on there as well

Flamethrower is actually better than ever. Back when the game was released Flamethrower only did about 1/3 to 1/2 of the damage of Grenade Kit, after some buffs to the Flamethrower (mostly that its #2 can now be manually detonated) and several harsh nerfs to the Grenade Kit its damage is about 2/3 to 3/4 of the Grenade Kit or Bomb Kit.

The reason why even die-hard Flamethrower fanboys are no longer advice to use it is because they eventually learned how to run dungeons properly, and thus realized how bad it is for dungeons.

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Don’t use Celestial gear in PvE.
Berserker gives you a lot more damage, and Soldier about the same damage, but somewhere between 20-30% more survivability.

Your build is pretty much the best you can get.
You need 6 points in Firearms for Modified Ammunition, and 4 points in Alchemy for Deathly Mixture. Thus you don’t have enough points left to reach Enduring Damage (Tools 5), so ECM (Alchemy 5) is the best option.
With only 3 points left 2 are well spend in Tools for perma-Swiftness via Speedy Kits.
The last point can go to Alchemy and getting a random trait from the Alchemy trait line.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

So in case anyone was wondering, under the following conditions:

- Solo
- Strength and Frailty sigils
- Mandatory 4 points in Inventions for Power Shoes (for convenience)
- No might-blasting combos or anything else that would blast mobs away from you
- MF food
- Low-health trash mobs

A 0/6/4/4/0 Rifle/FT engie with Juggernaut might stacking, Strength Runes, and MF food (with boon duration) is within 7-8% DPS of a 6/4/4/0/0 Grenade build and considerably better than a 4/6/4/0/0 Bombs build. Cut out the vuln and bleed stacking since you’re not likely to build up substantial stacks of that on trash open-world mobs and FT is actually a fair bit better than grenades.

So I guess there’s a practical use for FT: clearing open-world trash while being lazy.

I just posted that. The gist of it is that FT works out pretty well in situations where

1) You are killing mobs too quickly for bleed and burn to have a significant effect.
2) You are too lazy to swap constantly to maintain Speedy Kits, so you use Power Shoes instead.
3) Might blasting isn’t worth the time/effort to do because it takes too long and ends up blowing the mob away from you, forcing you to chase it.

A 0/6/0/6/2 HGH build also works pretty well for that purpose, just chug elixirs while running between mobs to keep up might, you should be able to maintain a constant 15-20 stacks of might without too much effort. Much more efficient and practical than stopping to blast might before engaging some random trash mob which you will kill in two hits anyway.