Guild Wars 2

hey guys,

my fingers cant handle the grenadier/berserker build anymore

I was just thinking of a Healing+Bombs+EG build with Pow/vit/thou armor(rune of the forge)+ clerics jewelry

OR a FT build with either the same Pow/vit/thou armor(forge rune) + Emerald OR carrion OR Apothecracy jewelry

Luckily i got 250k Karma: would you get a whispers runed armor or balthazars or dwayna for FT+EG build?
and which stats would be fine : prec/thou/Cond or some healing too?

I hope there many answers for so many questions^^

FT is SERIOUSLY underpowered.

EG is quite good.

Try, p/s, healing turret, EG, Elixir U and Elixir R for mega WvW support.
30 alch, deadly mixtures, 409, fast acting.
20 firearms. fireforged, and rifled barrels.
20 tools. deployable turrets, and kit refinement.

So what do you have?

1200 range EG. Bouncing EG 2. good sniping.
Strong debuffs on it.

Lots of aoe healing, lots of cleansing. (recently nerfed of course.) 2 super elixirs.
2 large light fields. aoe cleanse, or projectile cleanse.
Overcharge on turret. aoe direct heal, aoe cleanse.
Water field toolbelt. Blast for direct heal. (shield or supply drop.)
409 on throw, or self use. cleansing.
fumigate cleanse if you REALLY have to. fumigate is bad.

Blocking/blind/reflecting.
Elixir U throw.
has 3 options. they are not equal 33% each.(or at least dont seem to be to me.)
seems to be 50% chance of wall of reflection. REFLECT projectiles. light combo field. This is amazing, when you get it.
30% chance of smoke screen. blind on target. combo field smoke. (smoke gives blind on projectile, and stealth on blast) Blocks projectiles.
So, throw Elixir U has a good 70% chance to block or reflect projectiles. Not really as unreliable as its made out to be. Block and reflect are similar functions. even if reflect is obviously better. note, it does cleanse conditions and give might with 409/hgh.
20% veil. least chance and least useful amusingly. stealth and light field. As this one serves an entirely different function, its the one you don’t want.
Shield point blank reflect, kb. this makes you immobile, doesnt protect allies. less useful then the throw. Kb and blast however has its use. aoe heal on water field, aoe ret on super elixir, or the U light fields, aoe stealth on the smoke field.
Shield also blocks on you. stunning, or throw for daze.
P3 blind bouncing.

Weaken, blinds, daze, stun, blocks, reflects, heals. you can shut people down.

Quicken. PDV, EG1 will do will. Not grenade 1+quicken… but its ok. This is a mega support build, not a dps one.

Elixir R. probably already knew how good this was. Pulsing cond removal, self rez, ranged ally rez. The nerf to CD was justified, other professions were on 120-160s CDs on theirs. Stun breaker, for you. and cleanse with 409.

Toolbelt recharges at 25%.
Water field, regenx2, elixir U block/reflect, and elixir R and its huge CD, self res. (always up) note, I think this is unreliable. the trait doesnt work on everything, need to test it.

EG2 and 4 scale pretty well with power.

Runes. monk, dwayna, mercy, lyssa, centaur

Mix stats. Power, crit, tough, healing. you are getting some crit chance and damage from your traits. you’ll need more crit to make use of that crit damage, power to make use of both crit and crit damage, and healing for all that healing. And a bit of tough to stay alive.

Just curious why you say the FT is seriously underpowered?

Quiggle.4215:

Just curious why you say the FT is seriously underpowered?

I don’t think it’s “seriously” underpowered. This is mainly from a damage point of view it’s not that great. Bad scaling. It simply will not come close in damage as a pure rifle setup or grenadier build.

There are obvious issues such as the limited range and having to constantly make sure your camera angle is in line with the mob properly. The utility abilities are fine. Flame field has very obvious uses. AoE Knockback & AoE Blind can be lifesavers if mobs are piled up on you or someone. #2 Napalm.. it’s great damage if both components hit but you need to manually “aim” it and even then it really only works well on “flat” surfaces curved terrain will give you a lot of obstructions. With FT Autoattack if you manually aim via camera angle you’ll avoid misses commonly associated with the weapon. It can and does have its uses even in WvW it’s great for burning people through gate doors/columns/walls there also applies to PvE allowing you take safety around various objects to avoid damage while still hitting the target. It’s also worth noting that the toolbelt skill Incendiary Ammo you get by having a FT slotted is a very nice burn even without any kind of heavy+condition gear.

As long as you don’t mind quirky camera angles to mitigate lots of “misses” from the flame thrower and lower damage you do pick up some useful abilities. I occasionally run it with my Grenadier/Rifle build and use it for the situational utility.

Per the info that was just posted:

FT1 1.43p over 10 hits, 2.5cast, 1s burn at end. tooltip lies about 5 attacks/s, 10per 2.5 is
and
r1 .599p, .8as

So, the scaling seems very close, not to mention the condition damage.

Quiggle.4215:

So, the scaling seems very close, not to mention the condition damage.

What you need to take into consideration on the scaling issue is it’s base damage and the fact that you receive 0 stats / abilities from you’re weapon and sigil when it’s equipped which causes it to fall further behind. If you go 100% glass cannon stacking heavy extra crit damage it’ll perform pretty well but given it’s short-range lot of the time with that gear setup it’s suicide even w/juggernaut traited.

You’re better stacking power if you want to main-weapon FT even with the on-crit condition abilities they are not going to amount to much unless you go 100% condition build and even then consideration the life span and duration/stacking issues with conditions you’re going to be hurting yourself dmg wise.

Quiggle.4215:

Per the info that was just posted:

FT1 1.43p over 10 hits, 2.5cast, 1s burn at end. tooltip lies about 5 attacks/s, 10per 2.5 is
and
r1 .599p, .8as

So, the scaling seems very close, not to mention the condition damage.

.599×3 for 3 hits in 2.4s=1.797

Flamethrower is 969 weapon damage.
Rifle is 1205 exotic.

2000 power for both. (we’ll ignore rifle having +170 on gun)

FT1: 1.43*969*2000/2600= 1065 15% trait=1225 over 2.5s 10 hits melee conal
R1: 1.7971205*2000/2600= 1666 *10% trait=1832 over 2.4s. 3 hits piercing 1000 range.
50% more damage. wouldnt call that close at all. and no one claims rifle1 is exactly the highest dps in the game. If we add blunderbuss, and leap 2-3x as much damage.

I am of the opinion that FT should be the #1 damage option at point blank for engineers. To do that, it needs a 70-100% damage upgrade to FT1. (and grenades need to be nerfed of course) Right now, its the lowest. Rifle, pistol, elixir gun all do more damage. Seriously EG out damages FT by quite a bit.

I also feel FT’s blind is half a move. Name one other blind with that cooldown, that is only a blind. It needs a smoke field. and/or a damage component. Engi has blind options from many places that all superior.

Static shot. ranged, bouncing blind. 15s cd. deals heavy direct damage and confuse.
smoke bomb. 25s cd,5s blind, 3s duration smoke field. 240 radius
flash grenade. 10s cd, 5s each duration 150×2 radius, traited to x3.
elixir U. smoke screen. smoke field.

Compared to smoke vent. 20s cd 180 radius 5s duration

Naplam. fire field. Nothing to combo it within flamethrower. 1s burn. no direct damage, no direct burn.

Air blast is good.
Burst is good when it works.

I see, I wasn’t taking into consideration the available base weapon. Thanks

It is a lot of fun in PvE (although for some reason, I’m always the “tank” because most mobs seem to focus me as soon as I use FT) but I wouldn’t use it in WvW except to burn through gates. Though pure rifle does more damage on single target and also seems to do more damage to enemies that have hitboxes that allow you to pierce several of them.
I also tried using the FT for a knockback/endurance bunker build in sPvP but this didn’t really work out. I don’t play much PvP though.

BTW, anyone can recommend me a great thrid utility ability for FT+ elixir gun for PvE? I can’t decide on any and I tried many

Casia.4281:

Rifle is 1205 exotic.

Why does everyone claim the damage as 1205 as if you can assume you will get max damage 100% of the time?

Damage is factually 986-1205 average of 1095.5. That 1095 is a more actually applicable number, and is 100 lower then the one you throw in all of your equations.

Just thought I would point that out for the sake of practicality.

well all of you foucs on FT extremely^^

maybe we can lead teh discussion towards the gear and what karma armor i should take

OR when ft isnt that fine:

would a healer +tank build with pow/vit/thou + apothecracy set (cond heal though)
be a nice way to buff the condition dmg of the EG?

Maybe its even useful to combine Rubicon Karma gear(dwayna runes) with clerics or apothecracy jewelry?

i would replace the ft by bombs then (maybe a bad chocie in wvw because you need to get close..)

got a pistol/ shield for more survivability now

coglin.1496:

Casia.4281:

Rifle is 1205 exotic.

Why does everyone claim the damage as 1205 as if you can assume you will get max damage 100% of the time?

Damage is factually 986-1205 average of 1095.5. That 1095 is a more actually applicable number, and is 100 lower then the one you throw in all of your equations.

Just thought I would point that out for the sake of practicality.

its what the tooltip is based on. and kits we dont know any value other then the max. I should test that. should be able to figure out with the coeffs, and upper/lower bounds. Its a nice easy constant though.
but yes, upper and lower specifically is a better point of reference, as well as average.
In theory a weapon could be like 1075-1090, and would be better then a 950-1200 weapon. A 1083 vs 1075 average.

A pistol is 876-1029. (note 1025 was wrong.)
952.5 average.

Did test EG naked no traits in mist.
129 min, 143 max.
.38 coeff, 961 power, 2600 armor.
This gives a 911 min, 1009 max. That is a 960 average.
Needs more testing. Its possible in kits case, 969 IS the average.
tried prybar. got 933-1046. Heavy golem armor is less then 2600. source of the issue I think. need more work.