Guild Wars 2

I looked through the thread mentioning if Flamethrower is broken or whatnot and I saw too many tangents and too much discussion not in regards to my thoughts. I you don’t feel like reading even though your’e on a forum, skip to the bottom and read my questions.

I want to raise the question whether or not you feel like the attack 1 skill for flamethrower should have its damage output increased. I spent about 3 hours last night putting together a build that would spec as much damage as possible into using the flamethrower and still found it greatly lacking in high damage output comparable to other classes.

I was hoping that we could create a flamethrower build that was similar in damage output to the currently bland and overused berserker GS build for Warrior; even if we do just close the gap some and not make them exactly the same.

The base damage on attack one for flamethrower is 490 damage at 10x hits, for a total base damage of 4900 if your target gets all 10 hits. The base damage for the 2 skill on GS Warrior is 1,624 at 8x hits for a total of 12,992 base damage assuming all hits connect. This automatically puts the GS at nearly 3X’s the damage of flamethrower between the 2 skills.
A fully traited GS warrior with exotic gear easily averages 15,000 damage using 100 blades, a skill with an 8 second cooldown; while speccing with identical gear and 2,000 power and full Flamethrower trait lines, the attack 1 skill tops out at about 5,000 damage. So we don’t look at these skills in a vacuum let’s examine the GS auto-attack and the Flame Blast.

Flame Blast has a base damage of 244 and an additional 569 when detonated, while the GS auto-attacks deal a base damage of 259. So the GS attack can be spammed and does similar damage as the roll on Flame Blast. The finisher for the GS auto deals a base of 333 damage, dealing about 60% of the damage of the blast damage from Flamethrower, an aoe skill like the GS but with a 6 second cooldown.

The point I’m making here, is that the Flamethrower dramatically under performs
the GS in dps, dealing a third of the damage, while with little more survivability than the GS, using as identical builds as possible for the 2 classes. I wish to give the Engineer equal footing to other classes in combat roles without breaking the skills or the class.

Do you think buffing the attack 1 damage from the flamethrower would make it more viable and therefore encourage players to welcome a wider variety of classes in dungeon runs? Do you think doubling the base damage on attack 1 to have it deal 66% of the damage of 100 Blades would be too much, not enough, or the right amount of damage increase for the Flamethrower?

Well, FT1 can be used while moving, but does not damage strafing targets well. 100 blades is stationary, but works on anything in melee. The basic notion that restrictions placed upon powers such as (stationary, or poor v. strafe) should allow those powers to do more than powers that are unrestricted. Next comes the consideration of whether professions with a large degree of multi-function should DPS as hard as other professions with a more limited range of abilities. Engineer is more of a Jack of All Trades, but one can argue that choosing deep builds to maximize DPS does in fact narrow the class focus to that of a more limited non hybrid.

So it is complicated. I love FT, but it was really hard for me pulling off in a WvW situation. I did try a 30 explosives, 30 firearms, 10 tools build to use grenades at range, FT close up, but the basic problem I had there was similar to my bombs/grenade mix. One can maximize ranged and melee damage, but if one is going to be in melee, one also needs to be rugged…melee glass cannon is a no no. So I can not really see using FT outside of a dedicated FT build, and I am inclined to agree with you that it should be buffed to make it viable.

It doesn’t need a DPS buff, I think. The cool part about the flame thrower FT1 is that it can go through walls and hit multiple targets at once. I don’t think it’s for straight up stationary melee as much as I think it’s good for handling multiple targets while kiting and flanking just inside of mid-range, or landing attacks in varied terrain. You can be out-strafed though so it might be better against slower or immobilized targets. I traited extra combat speed and vigor buffs so I’m really just lighting a fire and roping enemies into it. That kit is so diverse and I think that’s the point to it beyond DPS. I kind of do think that FT1 should immediately apply flame conditional damage, but I’m sure the devs thought of that already. Only other thing I tried out was adding the flame sigil in my pistols for even more fun, since the FT kit will use the sigil as well.

Anyway, the fact that you can switch so quickly between weapons while some FT attacks are active is kinda crazy. I’ll throw a napalm ball and chase it with handgun 3 skill confusion shot that’ll hit multiple targets, glue ball or rifle skills 3 through 5. if you aim the FT4 skill close to your feet, it comes out really fast, and you can combo-field it for decent damage. And that air blast FT3 skill has earned me many many karka shells quickly. The properties on it are kind of amazing and not as restrictive as using a shield in combat, I think. Add to that the fact that you can FT5 smokescreen at just about any point (knocked down, during evasive roll, etc.) and I just about fell in love.

The Flamethrower kit is so good dealing with mobs and champs and working conditional damage that buffing it beyond what they have now would make me feel kind of greedy. ( I’ll never say no to a buff though ;] )

@Lepew, you make good points. While I first felt last night that increasing the FT1 skill to equal 100B would be good, I believe differently now, largely for the points you raised.

And yes; the Flamethrower certainly needs some buffing in terms of dps to make it a viable weapon in and of itself. I feel like Bomb Kit and Flamethrower are more novelties or only useable in a secondary combat role right now.
I’m no programmer so I can’t say what’s best, but I think that bringing the base damage on Flamethrower FT1 up to double its current damage (making base FT1 980) would make the Flamethrower a useable weapon without making it OP.
Something I like about most of the classes is the ability to fill any role on the battlefield with the right build, and hope making this change possible would round out the Engie.

Edit for grammar

WulfKaiser.7920:

The base damage on attack one for flamethrower is 490 damage at 10x hits, for a total base damage of 4900 if your target gets all 10 hits. The base damage for the 2 skill on GS Warrior is 1,624 at 8x hits for a total of 12,992 base damage assuming all hits connect. This automatically puts the GS at nearly 3X’s the damage of flamethrower between the 2 skills.

NO NO NO NO NO. That damage listed, which you got from the wiki, is the total amount of damage it deals. It does not deal 4900 at 490 per hit, but 490 at 49 per hit. Same for GS.

Back on topic, GS is a berserker weapon. It contains little to no survivability and utility options compared to flamethrower’s blind, fire field, and knockback. They are really apples and oranges, and can’t be compared with damage alone.

Ah, yes, you’re correct about the damage totals Jusanden. I applaud your deft introduction of single word, all caps reply.

The point still remains very much the same, as GS is an 8 attack chain; the damage out from FT1 is still only 33% of the GS 2.

The GS is popular as a “berserker” weapon as you put it because 100 blades has very high damage output. GS 3 and 5 are meant for movement, and GS 4 is a line AoE cripple.

The Flamethower’s knockback has some use, no argument there; but the firewall has a 30 second recharge that only causes burning and no raw damage.

If you actually took the time to read my whole post you would have noticed that I am making a plea to increase the damage, perhaps to 66% of the GS 100 blades base damage, BECAUSE the Engineer has a little more flexibility with the skills than the Warrior does.

I got the damage amounts in game without gear on each class. Why? BECAUSE Warrior is my main, and Engineer is my 2nd most played class. Save a mistype with the hit tallies I made no mistake and I know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Furthermore, you made absolutely no comment as to whether or not increasing the damage for FT1 would be a good choice in making the Flamethrower a viable weapon rather than a novelty kit.

I don’t want to really comment either way (I believe FT1 could do with a mild dps buff), but my comment is comparing FT1 with GS2 is .. flawed.

FT1 being an auto attack, and GS2 being an attack with cooldown being the first problem.

(and the otherwise pointed out, movement during FT1 vs no movement GS2 being the other obvious flaw in the comparison).

Finally, FT is not our “dps” weapon, whereas GS is the DPS weapon of the warrior.

All that said; while the comparison is flawed; the conclusion isn’t wrong. FT1 is a bit weak; but I don’t necesarily think it should be buffed to some large-proportion of GS2.

MeateaW.3519:

Finally, FT is not our “dps” weapon, whereas GS is the DPS weapon of the warrior.

We have NO dps weapon, which is why so many people complain about the engineer. good reason.

granades btw is the closest to be a dps weapon, but then again noone in pve or spvp needs 1500 range and stupid multishot, which is the tradeoff for it beein inferior to GS and other stuff. especially since it requires 30 traitspoints for it to become USEABLE at all.

GS2 has 8s cool down, does 1600 damage, FT1 is 490 damage over 2-3 seconds? That means you can roughly do 3 attacks per 1 GS2, that is 1600 damage.

I fail to see an issue aside from the targeting problems with FT1

No more damage is really needed. It is not really a damage kit, it is a support/utility kit.
At least not enough to make it equal to grenade kit.

How bout a Trait that has a chance to cause Flame Jet to apply a 1 sec cripple on each hit.
That would be nice and fitting.
Now by burning ppl you are also forcing them to use dodges or cleanses.
And it would make it less appealing for ppl to just stand in your fire.

@WulfKaiser.7920

100B has its cons, warriors have to stand there for the whole duration, we can kite, sure they deal their damage but that’s because it’s their #2 skill, as you should have noticed by now #2 skills ARE DPS, and in fact our #2 is quite a reliable DPS now that it got fixed (even thought not entirely), it alone can deal a huge 4-5k damage even without cr.dmg, that IS nice indeed, and it’s on a 4-6s CD too.

But making #1 skill a DPS is simply wrong, it is the reason #1 grenade got nerfed, if you truly want FT to be on par with other weapons I think devs should make kits ACTUALLY scaling with weapons, as of now they won’t match the power of exotics, I roughly lose over 200 attack when switching, which is that 15%+ damage we’d need to get on par.

Only thing what FT needs is this: 1 sec burning every sec of channel FT1
Because, jesus, its fire and have you ever seen fire from flamethrower that did not set you on fire? Something like yeah, he was grilling me for 2 secs,but in last quarter second i managed to evade so i am not burning.
Do you know what avarage FT temperature is?
We need 1 sec burning every sec of channel

I could bring up a WW2 reference, with how the Marines used FT’s during the island hopping campaign, but I think that wouldn’t be appropriate at all.

Suffice to say, burning needs to be applied to the basic attack. What Hule mentioned is certainly more than enough, and maybe dps bumped to 980. I’d be happy with burning applied when hitting FT1, because you can apply burning right off if one wanted to, then spam FT1 and the other abilities when needed.

I trust that when Anet is able to get to working more on the classes, that a lot of issues will hopefully disappear for the betterment of us all.

Huh?
This thread doesn´t make any sense to me.
We already have tons of “up the flamethrower damage threads”. Because that is what this is, I can see that What I don´t see where and why did you pull the warrior greatsword comparison?
Warrior and Engi are two very different classes with different purposes in the game. You have to take into comparison other weapons, traits etc. You can´t just take a lawnmower and compare it to a shovel and say “gee shovel here don´t cut grass just as well”.
But you don´t dig with a lawnmower that easily either!

kismet.5347:

Huh?
This thread doesn´t make any sense to me.

What I don´t see where and why did you pull the warrior greatsword comparison?

Warrior and Engi are two very different classes with different purposes in the game. You have to take into comparison other weapons, traits etc. You can´t just take a lawnmower and compare it to a shovel and say “gee shovel here don´t cut grass just as well”.
But you don´t dig with a lawnmower that easily either!

^this

/thread

kismet.5347:

Warrior and Engi are two very different classes with different purposes in the game. You have to take into comparison other weapons, traits etc. You can´t just take a lawnmower and compare it to a shovel and say “gee shovel here don´t cut grass just as well”.
But you don´t dig with a lawnmower that easily either!

On the one hand, true, comparing warriors and engies is a bit of an odd way to go about this subject. However, given the flamethrower requires 3 traits for the similar bonus to the greatsword’s 2 traits, it is not difficult to think that the two should be comparable in power. As it stands currently, you have warriors with gs+another weapon, taking 2 20 point traits to receive cooldown, might buffs, and flat damage increase, while the flamethrower gets the same plus 200 toughness in three, needing to fully invest into one tree to do it. Both are dps weapons, there is no denying that. The problem is, flamethrower does a fraction of the greatsword’s damage (off topic, technically any number is a fraction, even 1/1, though here it is referring to a significantly lower amount). Why should we have to invest more into being a dps weapon to get weaker results?

I’m not saying that the flamethrower should be 1:1 equal with the greatsword in damage, as it does have a little bit more versatility than its metal friend, but right now it’s like we’re trying to cut grass with a hedge trimmer while other people have a lawn mower. And before anyone says go trim hedges with it instead, I ask, how will you cut the grass then? Go reroll for a lawnmower?

(Also, it’s late, I’m drunk, I won’t remember this in six hours.)

Creld.8702:

I’m not saying that the flamethrower should be 1:1 equal with the greatsword in damage, as it does have a little bit more versatility than its metal friend, but right now it’s like we’re trying to cut grass with a hedge trimmer while other people have a lawn mower. And before anyone says go trim hedges with it instead, I ask, how will you cut the grass then? Go reroll for a lawnmower?

Thats the point.

And while comparisons are never 100% accurate, this one barely gets close. people keep on saying we’re versatile, just because it’s written on the hompage, but seriously, we’re not. we have the worst movement/escape skills, our ability to selfprotection is based on enemy movementcontrol and 2 shielding skills, which dont make us neither tankish nor damagedealer. roll a good guardian, he can be a better tank, damagedealer and a better supporter while still needing less effort and knowledge to play.

in tradition of trying to find proper comparisons i’ll end my post with:
Engineers are like the notebooks of these days. people use it, but there’s the tablets, smartphones and ultrabooks which are more mobile and about as fast as notebooks, and desktop computers, which are way faster and cheaper to use. we’re a dying class.

I have played an Engineer since Beta 1. I have put many hours in-game and still currently play engineer over alts. I love my engineer, and despite the amount of nerfs or buffs will continue to play Engineer, this is my class.

Now I agree that Flamethrower is not a bursting kit, we can get might stacks and 200 toughness, along with push-back and an aoe blind. I have used Flamethrower builds to try and up the damage and it works slightly, yet casting #1 and dodging because I am more squishy isn’t the most fun, i’d rather bring utility and toughness and some vitality and be more tank base than do some DPS and die.

I agree that we can improve flamethrower, the #1 skill could apply Burning for a bit longer, the Toolbelt skill is a 60sec cool down, that applies burning on 3 hits, not the greatest and i’d be all for it changing, perhaps 3 hits are increased in damage or grants might to allies, yet it’s a toolbelt ability so I’m not expecting jesus powers from it.

Yes, Elementalist can be more versatile. I can heal, throw up buffs on allies and damage withing seconds and still live. Guardians can tank/heal/do damage, yet nothing plays like my Engineer. If it’s a notebook, it’s a mac book. Not widely used, and mostly for flash.

My biggest problem is in saying we are the gods of versatility, and that has been beaten to death by every player yet still stands. A-net states it doesn’t want us doing mad burst damage, as we are so versatile. I am okay with this IF they improve bugs, and our versatility.

There are still numerous of bugs to fix with our class, Flamethrower I hope is the first start of fixes and changes to come. I am tired of seeing “fixes” or as some call them “nerfs” nearly every patch, while one or two things will get changed for the better. Yet A-net admits they want to buff and tweak things slowly, rather than go in with a blizzard mentality and just make something godlike and have to change it right away. The gear I have changed, bought, and farmed for is growing in my bank at the moment in all honesty.

I’m all for more post, and thoughts on Engineer improvements, In reality it’s all we can really do, unless you just want to reroll a boring Guardian (no offense). Viva la Engineer.

Adding utility is an option. I mentioned a few tweaks in another thread that i dont BLEIEVE would send the FT flying over into the OP zone.

Flame jet (skill 1) – Apply burning at start of attack, not the end.
SKill 2 detonate is blast finisher.
skill 3 air blast – knock down instead of knockback (doesnt knock them as far to compensate)
skill 4 napalm – faster cast perhaps a circle instead of a wall.
skill 5 – breif combo field much like our toolbelt skill on healing turret.

Atleast 2 of these would really help.

Another bump to flame throwers damage on skills 1-2 wouldnt exactly hurt either, you have to fully trait to get all the bonus damage on this kit to even consider using it for its damage as it comes with the downside of flame jet being channeled AND can end up hurting you bad from retaliation specs (which may be an intended counter, but all the more reason it should be better at what it does to compensate).

Flamethrower needs some tweaks, but the addition of detonate allows you to make it compete with most other stuff in the game.

-My changes.-

1. Remove Deadly Mixture and increase the base flamethrower damage by 15%. Replace Deadily Mixture with a trait that decreases the length of the channel by of ft1 10-20% without decreasing damage. Put this anywhere but the alchemy tree.

2. I’d turn smoke vent into a gap closer. The smoke vent shoots you forward leaving a trail of smoke behind that blinds those that you pass through.

3. Rework incendiary ammo because it is pretty bad atm.

4. Add some synergy between charzooka and flamethrower. For example, when a char engineer uses charzooka, allow them to swap back and forth between charzooka and flamethrower until charzooka runs out.

Change Juggernaut from ‘Stack of might every 3 seconds’ to ‘Might on crit’. Boom, grandmaster trait-worthy (alongside the 200 toughness). Although the damage does still need to be increased a bit anyway, 2.5 second channel for even 6k damage is kind of a joke.

Oh and one final suggestion that is kind of a biggie.

Make legendary weapons effect all kits in some manner. Whether it is a slight damage boost or addition of something to the kit skills or even some bs cosmetic appearance change, I don’t care what. As it stands, if your a primary flamethrower user, it makes legendaries pointless to you.

no engineer that uses kits (thats 90% of all) is affected by weapon visuals. actually, all kind of visual individualization (because of huge backpack). its the only class to be punished in that way that much. one of the reasons this class is not perfect.

Another suggestion i’ve been throwing around, is to give the flame thrower increased damage at 100 yrd range like blowtorch or blunderbuss.

Flame thrower has no intimidation factor because it requires you to get dangerously close to enemies to use it, and since most enemies that will let you that close WANT to be next to you this can be a problem. Because every other profession with a mellee weapon will out damage you.

This would keep it balanced at the 450 yard range when chasing down ranged fighters, but give you a fighting chance vs mellee fighters….sure iven if it was a 30% increase at 100 range, they’d still out burst you in most cases, but atleast you would be punishing for wanting to fight you at that range. (just like smoke vent was designed to allow you to fight at mellee range)

i made a glassy HGH flamer build which combines massive might stacking and quickness, in short, it kills.
its very glassy though so its just for glassheads who prefer high kill count to survival.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRR;2Z-Vv0k5FQFx0;9;49T-T-4;047A;116A;1OR;4F-03F-035BQ

its a stupidly simplistic build too, no fancy weapon swapping or tactics, just keep flamer out the entire time and spam elixirs to keep might high (the thrown elixirs grant aoe might where they land too), pop elixirB and U and then blow things up

(i use Pack runes because i like the extra bit of crit, but its really up to you)

Kamahl.3621:

Change Juggernaut from ‘Stack of might every 3 seconds’ to ‘Might on crit’. Boom, grandmaster trait-worthy (alongside the 200 toughness). Although the damage does still need to be increased a bit anyway, 2.5 second channel for even 6k damage is kind of a joke.

I’m not too sure about that. At the moment (with runes and such) I have a constant 9 stacks passive.

And knowing ANet, if they would change it to On-Crit they’d throw an icd of 2s on. So I’d only be able to get the same number of stacks after at least 18-20s.

As you might imagine, I’d rather start the fight with my 9 stacks instead of having to wait 18-20s before I’m at the same number.

Juggernaught isn’t as important to the flamethrower build as many would think it is. If you are going into battle using only flamethrower and utility skills it won’t come out well for you. PvPwise that is.

Aveneo.2068:

I’m not too sure about that. At the moment (with runes and such) I have a constant 9 stacks passive.

And knowing ANet, if they would change it to On-Crit they’d throw an icd of 2s on. So I’d only be able to get the same number of stacks after at least 18-20s.

As you might imagine, I’d rather start the fight with my 9 stacks instead of having to wait 18-20s before I’m at the same number.

The first thing is that, even with 25 stacks of might, the flamethrower’s auto attack (it’s defining feature) is pretty god-awful. Second thing is that warrior GS has no internal cooldown, so maintaining 20+ stacks is no issue, 25 is easy if they’re against a wall. I know comparing one class to another isn’t entirely fair, but I’m simply pointing out some facts as they exist.

FT doesn’t need direct damage as it needs something else.

Burning is a good idea, but think about what’s happening to the enemy. He’s bathed in flames; he isn’t going to see so well. Why not apply a 1 second blind on the 5th and 10th hit to enemies?

This would help against people who are willing to sit in the weak flames and swing a sword.

Kamahl.3621:

The first thing is that, even with 25 stacks of might, the flamethrower’s auto attack (it’s defining feature) is pretty god-awful. Second thing is that warrior GS has no internal cooldown, so maintaining 20+ stacks is no issue, 25 is easy if they’re against a wall. I know comparing one class to another isn’t entirely fair, but I’m simply pointing out some facts as they exist.

Ah, alright.

Yes, if it would offer Might without an icd; it could be potentially more viable for a Grandmaster trait in addition to the +200 Toughness.

However, the Might stacks offered by ‘Forceful Greatsword’ crits only have a base duration of 5s/crit; compared to the ones granted by ‘Juggernaut’ passive having a base duration of 15s/3s. But I guess the 10-attack pulse offered by FT#1 combined with a high (40%+) crit rating would ensure a steady and continuous application of new stacks.

(I’d still prefer the ‘old’ Juggernaut though where it granted Stability at the cost of movement speed)

WulfKaiser.7920:

The base damage on attack one for flamethrower is 490 damage at 10x hits, for a total base damage of 4900 if your target gets all 10 hits. The base damage for the 2 skill on GS Warrior is 1,624 at 8x hits for a total of 12,992 base damage assuming all hits connect. This automatically puts the GS at nearly 3X’s the damage of flamethrower between the 2 skills.

It’s 490 damage over 10 attacks, meaning 490 damage—not 4900. I’ve had my Flame Jet hit for 4900 before, of course, but that was with 25 stacks of Might, 25 stacks of Bloodlust, and Vulnerability applied on the target. Our base damage with Flame Jet at level 80 is closer to around ~2000 with standard gear before Might and Bloodlust start kicking in.

More importantly, though, you’re comparing an auto-attack skill (Flame Jet) to a skill with an 8-second cooldown (Hundred Blades). Naturally Hundred Blades should deal more damage.

WulfKaiser.7920:

Do you think buffing the attack 1 damage from the flamethrower would make it more viable and therefore encourage players to welcome a wider variety of classes in dungeon runs? Do you think doubling the base damage on attack 1 to have it deal 66% of the damage of 100 Blades would be too much, not enough, or the right amount of damage increase for the Flamethrower?

I think Flame Jet as it works is perfectly fine. It offers enough crit consistency for Sigil of Strength and other on-crit procs. I think Flame Blast, too, works perfectly fine; it averages around ~4500-5000 damage for me between the “rolling” tag and the detonation. On a 4.5 second CD that’s pretty remarkable damage, especially with its radius.

Where I think the Flamethrower should be improved is in its #3-5 skills: Air Blast, Napalm, and Smoke Vent—more specifically Napalm.

Napalm needs something done to it. Either buff the hell out of it, add a cripple to its effect, or shorten the cooldown. Even with Fireforged Trigger you have to wait 20+ seconds for it to be ready again. It’s just way too long for what it currently offers.

Just look at a Warrior Bow’s Combustive Shot. It’s true that it has much shorter duration but it works much more efficiently with what you need out of the Bow than Napalm does with the Flamethrower—personal opinion.

One final note, in regard to your line of questioning: this may differ from guild to guild and server to server, but I have never been dismissed from a dungeon group for how I build or gear my Engineer—or for being an Engineer to begin with.