Guild Wars 2

A year and a half ago, I made this post about Engineer weapons, specifically Grenade Kit:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/3142684

Ghostpilot.6237:

Grenade Kit’s balance is a complicated issue and perhaps the greatest one Engineers have at the moment. I understand that concessions are made because of the lack of auto-attack and skill involved in its use. However, it is the be-all-end-all weapon for Engineers.

Most Direct Damage: Grenades.
Most Condition Damage: Grenades.
Most Range: Grenades. <-(This is longer true as of June 23rd 2015)
Greatest Area of Effect: Grenades (5 targets per grenade).
Best Underwater Weapon: Grenades.
Best Application of Conditions: Grenades.
Best Application of On-Hit / On-Crit Effects: Grenades.
Greatest Efficiency per Skill Points spent: Grenades. <- (Also, no longer true as of 6/23/15.)

On top of this, Grenades is unrestricted by the user’s line of sight.

No other Engineer weapon option even comes close to the versatility that Grenade Kit provides. This has everything to do with the Grenadier trait, which provides not only 1500 range, but a +50% efficiency bonus on all of its attacks (toolbelt aside).

I do not wish for this to be construed as a rally cry to nerf Grenade Kit, but there was a drastic, hasty balance change to Kits in October 2012 when weapon stats become applied to them that left other kits by the wayside (Flamethrower was the hardest hit).

Grenade Kit was the least effected by this (only receiving a damage decrease to #1) and it has only been improved ever since. The change to Modified Ammo only widens that gap. Even the change to Scope provides the greatest benefit to Grenades as it is the only weapon to have greater than 600 range on all of its attacks (Rifle only has it on #1, Pistol #1-3, Elixir Gun #1 & 2).

While the easiest solution would be to bring Grenade Kit down (which is not my intention), this doesn’t change the fact that other kits and weapons need to be brought up. Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, Tool Kit and Speargun are the ones most in need. With a lesser extent to Rifle and Pistols.

With the latest change has compounded this imbalance between Grenade Kit and every other weapon / kit (even the new Mortar Kit).

Grenade Kit was the only kit / weapon that received any its trait benefits baseline (the extra grenade, which is +50% efficiency) and has the greatest degree of trait synergy in addition to the above.

Every other kit and weapon has lost most, if not all, of the benefits that had previously come from traits (i.e. none were made baseline aside from Grenades). So now Engineers are in a situation where every other weapon is the old baseline competing with a traited Grenade Kit. The previous grenade range was negligible as it was the +50% efficiency that made Grenadier.

As a day one Engineer, it’s disheartening to see an issue that was prevalent then become even moreso now.

From Chaithh’s stream, they still have the blanket cooldown. He said that he hated that about it, and that it’s actually worse than the it is currently.

Hopefully one of today’s streams will be able to shed more light on this since no further information was provided Friday (as a dev posted they would be).

Yamsandjams.3267:

I’ve always thought this would be a good idea, but the devs have indicated previously that they think having access to all those small effects very frequently would be too powerful or not have proper counter play.

Yeah, I recalled a mention of this as well way back when. Though this was also back when it was an Adept trait and before the refinement effects were changed.

The original (Old Kit Refinement, back within a year of release) version of Kit Refinement was, going by memory:

Flamethrower: Player-Based AoE Flameblast (ala Sigil of Fire) that applied a burn and removed a condition from the Engineer. Had a 10 second ICD.

Elixir Gun: Player-Based Super Elixir. 15-20 second ICD.

Grenade Kit: Player-Based Grenade Shower (ala the Explosive Descent trait). 15-20 second ICD. This is the refinement ability that lead to the drastic changes that led to the Kit Refinement we all know now.

Bomb Kit: Dropped Bomb 1 at the Engineer’s feet. 5-10 second ICD.

Tool and Med Kit: Sadly, I can’t recall what the original kit refinement effects for these were.

The original Kit refinement was strong for an Adept trait. Though, even then, it was rarely used outside of one build (the 100 ’Nades build) in PVP. The current Kit Refinement we all know is undesirable even as an Adept trait and it will soon be moved into the Master tier.

Synosius.9876:

Which kit refinement effect is even good?

Of the current Kit Refinement effects? Mmm, Bomb, Elixir, and Med Kit’s are useful in situational applications. Flamethrower, Tool and Grenade Kits has little effect in even ideal situations.

However, in its current form, it is virtually impossible to get value out of those abilities due their hair trigger and prohibitive, blanket 20 second cooldown.

Kits were designed with the idea of swapping in and of them frequently, hence the lack of weapon swaps on Engineer. And, originally, the Engineer trait design supported this philosophy (the original Kit Refinement, Speedy Kits, et. al.).

Originally, Kit Refinement had separate internal cooldowns per kit (i.e. swapping into Flamethrower Kit triggered Flamethrower Kit’s refinement ability and cooldown, then swapping into Med Kit would trigger its ability and internal cooldown that was separate from Flamethrower’s).

This was synergistic to the design idea of an Engineer swapping kits frequently and gave them something extra if they traited into it.

However, the original Kit Refinement abilities were changed and in addition, a blanket internal cooldown was placed on every kit when one was used (i.e. triggering one kit’s refinement ability placed a 20 second cooldown upon all of them).

This meant that the kit refinements were triggered in inopportune times and were generally on cooldown from being triggered unwillingly. Particularly problematic as Kit Refinement was in the same traitline (Tools) as Speedy Kits, a trait which encouraged frequent kit swapping.

There had been times (in attempts to make use of Kit Refinement), that I felt constrained to whatever kit / weapon I was using when the cooldown refreshed just so it wasn’t triggered unnecessarily.

Now that Speedy Kits and Kit Refinement has been consolidated into a single trait (Streamlined Kits) and moved from the Adept to the Master tier, it all but assures that the Kit Refinement portion will provide little value as it’ll be on cooldown from triggering Swiftness. Kit Refinement has a long, blanket internal cooldown and situational requirements whereas Speedy Kits has an effect that is desirable all the time.

I understand that it is too late in the process for a more thorough solution, but may it be possible to revert the blanket cooldown on the Kit Refinement on all kits to being separate, individual internal cooldowns per swapped kit (e.g. Med Kit’s refinement being a separate internal cooldown from Bomb Kit’s, and Grenade’s, Flamethrower’s, Elixir Gun’s, & Mortar’s). So that while the Swiftness portion was a 20 second cooldown, the various refinements had internal cooldowns separate from one another.

While it wouldn’t fix the lack of synergy from the current state of the Kit Refinement trait, it would go a long way to enabling some value to be gained from that portion trait.

Shame that the Medium and Heavy skins aren’t being redone as well.

I am sure many, many people would gladly pay to be able to use some of the pvp-only armors in PVE, such as:

http://i.imgur.com/B4mP3mz.jpg

Thanks for the replies, John!

Yeah, those threshold changes certainly do help for Blunderbuss. The close-range threshold is still very short, but I’ll take what I can get in regards to that. As an aside, Blunderbusses did produce a lot of smoke.

And when you put it that way about Jump Shot, I understand what you mean. I certainly wouldn’t want the animation time lengthened as it does seem rather long already. Might there be a chance of there being an evade during the leap portion? The engineer still has to worry about getting distance again after the Jump Shot after all.

Also, in regards to Jump Shot, just in case you aren’t aware the Vulnerability portion adds 3 stacks per enemy hit. Meaning that if you hit 3 enemies, each of the 3 gets 9 stacks of vulnerability, 4 = 12 stacks, etc. It’s a pretty cool aspect of the skill as it and makes it more attractive to use, but the tooltip doesn’t reflect the multiplier aspect and thought I should mention it.

Thanks for the prompt response!

Hello Jon, I noticed the change to Blunderbuss and had a couple of questions (well, a dozen really but my other posts were huge so I’ll keep this brief).

• Will the damage / range component on Blunderbuss be adjusted or removed? The change to how Rifled Barrels interacts with it won’t impact it much if one has to get within 100 units of an enemy to get full damage anyway. Any chance of the minimum range being changed to 400 or in that neighborhood. Just seems odd to have to get inside of melee range to get full damage out of a ranged attack. In its current state the risk outweighs the payoff.

• Despite listing Rifled Barrels indicating a 200 unit boost to range, it only improves the range of 1 & 2 by 200, while 3-5 are only increased by 100. The way it interacts with Rifles causes Rifled Barrels to be of questionable use as the short range of the 3-5 skills virtually negates the increased range the trait provides.

Thanks again!

Speargun: An otherwise decent weapon buried by its #1 skill, which is an extra-ordinarily slow moving, easily avoided projectile (even the motion of an enemy attacking is enough movement to evade it), that deals low damage and has a 1 second cooldown. Once again, even un-traited Grenades has 300 more range, more than double the damage, double the attack speed, faster travel and far more AoE than Speargun.

Rifle: I saw that you mentioned that Firearms was a line that felt as though it was lacking, which is great news to hear acknowledged. In the case of Rifle, there are 5, arguably 6, traits for Rifle.

• Traits such as Hair Trigger and Rifled Barrels are hard pills to swallow when Warriors have Crackshot that is essentially the equivalent of both of these traits in one. Especially when Rifled Barrels provides noticeably less benefit to Rifles due to the wide range variance in skills.

• Rifle Mod is one of those boring traits that offers nothing to gameplay but is too essential to Rifle’s damage to go without.

• The risk to reward ratio on Blunderbuss is disproportionate. In order to get the full damage out of Blunderbuss, one must be within 100 units of the target (at this point the weapon model nearly clips with the enemy) and even then its damage is behind that of a Warrior’s Arcing arrow, which can be performed up to 1000 units away (untraited) and is a blast finisher with the same cooldown.

• The snare wipe on Overcharged Shot is puzzling, as it is essentially trading a 1.5 stun to removing less serious movement penalties. The snare wipe would make more sense on a skill such as Jump Shot.

• Jump Shot shares Blunderbuss’ unfavorable risk/reward ratio. It’s often just too dangerous to use this skill in many situations and the damage is only worthwhile if the takeoff and landing both connect. It is also easy to avoid / interrupt / interfere with movement impairing conditions.

Pistol: As a whole, Pistol isn’t bad. Main hand pistol only has the issue with the random spray on #2, while offhand #5 has the severe range/effectiveness issue that Blunderbuss shares. Its traits are also lacking in harmony in only applying to a small section of its skills.

Finally, as I have gone on for far too long already, one last issue that is fairly unique to Engineer is in regards to the Kit Refinement trait.
Speedy Kits directly interferes with the use of Kit Refinement as the former will cause the latter to trigger at inopportune times while the lengthy global cooldown prevents it from being there in the situations when one would need it.

Furthermore, the global cooldown that replaced the individual cooldowns cripples the usefulness of this trait as it, along with Juggernaut, runs counter to the design idea of an Engineer switching their kits often.

I realize it is a lot, and I am very thankful to finally have a platform of voicing some of these concerns in a way in which they will be heard. Thank you very much for opening the floor to a dialogue with the community.

Flamethrower Kit : This kit was the hardest hit in the couple months before and after release.

• The clever, useful and visually appealing Backdraft (5m56s) was replaced by Smoke Vent, which feels like an under-performing placeholder skill.

• The knee-jerk change to the Juggernaut trait (which replaced Stability and a move speed reduction for Might stacks) is incongruous to a core design element of frequent kit swapping (or, for that matter, using anything other than Flamethrower all of the time).

• The power scaling on Flame Jet was heavily reduced in the patch of October 2012 which gave weapon stats to kits. Flamethrower with every available trait, damage boost and 25 might stacks trails behind an unmodified Grenades and Bombs. Puzzling with something that has a very long channel, only provides a burn at the last hit of that channel, has a low target cap (3 vs the usual 5), substantially less range and, thus, far greater risk. It is also shut down hard by the Retaliation boon.

• Ironically, Flamethrower is the worst applicator of Burns that an Engineer has. With only having a 1 second burn at the end of Flame Jet and a 1 second burn per second spent in the narrow, un-damaging Napalm wall. Not only does it take no less than 100% Burn Duration for there to be any benefit to Flamethrower’s ability to apply burns, but it cannot even take advantage of the 10% damage to burning enemies that was given to Flame Jet without the use of Incendiary Powder (which will now be harder for FT builds to obtain) or Incendiary Ammo toolbelt and its lengthy cooldown.
  Bomb Kit’s Fire Bomb, Pistol’s Blowtorch and any attack using Incendiary Powder does a better job of applying burns than Flamethrower Kit does by a wide margin. It is even trumped by a Guardian’s un-traited Virtue of Justice passive.

• On top of poor direct / condition damage, short range, a long channel and low number of targets on its #1 (Flame Jet has a cap of 3 vs the usual cap of 5), Flamethrower is the only kit that cannot be used underwater.

• In short, Flamethrower sacrifices more than any other weapon and has little to show for it.

Tool Kit: A great utility kit held back by the slowness of the #1 skill’s animation and light trait support. It shares the issue with Elixir Gun in that no one would ever consider building around it as a main kit.

Elixir Gun: The Skale Venom consumable hinders this kit, as it is a superior method of applying Weakness to its #1 PvE. #2 is a slow projectile that has a tendency to miss, loses effectiveness at range and has unpredictable behavior. This could be a great kit if there was an incentive to build for a support role and better trait support (it’s quite a stretch to take Deadly Mixture for Flamethrower, much less Elixir Gun).

(One more post!)

Hello Jon!

Let me start off by saying thank you for offering this opportunity to directly interact with the community in regards to the upcoming balance patch. While most of my concerns are not with the changes listed in the preview, there are still a number of things that I’ve been wanting to express for quite some time now.

Overall I do like the changes to the Engineers, although an aspect of my build did receive a nerf (in regards to Speedy Kits and Vigor). I am, however, of the opinion that 20 skill points, two major trait slots, and the effort of constantly switching kits is an acceptable cost for on-demand vigor (especially when others can achieve perma-vigor with as little kitten skill points). Something that should be weighed in a class’ ability to do something is the cost required to do it.

The change to Modified Ammo is a minor, but welcomed change to most builds but the benefit it provides to Grenade Kit is enormous.

Grenade Kit’s balance is a complicated issue and perhaps the greatest one Engineers have at the moment. I understand that concessions are made because of the lack of auto-attack and skill involved in its use. However, it is the be-all-end-all weapon for Engineers.

Most Direct Damage: Grenades.
Most Condition Damage: Grenades.
Most Range: Grenades.
Greatest Area of Effect: Grenades (5 targets per grenade).
Best Underwater Weapon: Grenades.
Best Application of Conditions: Grenades.
Best Application of On-Hit / On-Crit Effects: Grenades.
Greatest Efficiency per Skill Points spent: Grenades.

On top of this, Grenades is unrestricted by the user’s line of sight.

No other Engineer weapon option even comes close to the versatility that Grenade Kit provides. This has everything to do with the Grenadier trait, which provides not only 1500 range, but a +50% efficiency bonus on all of its attacks (toolbelt aside).

I do not wish for this to be construed as a rally cry to nerf Grenade Kit, but there was a drastic, hasty balance change to Kits in October 2012 when weapon stats become applied to them that left other kits by the wayside (Flamethrower was the hardest hit).

Grenade Kit was the least effected by this (only receiving a damage decrease to #1) and it has only been improved ever since. The change to Modified Ammo only widens that gap. Even the change to Scope provides the greatest benefit to Grenades as it is the only weapon to have greater than 600 range on all of its attacks (Rifle only has it on #1, Pistol #1-3, Elixir Gun #1 & 2).

While the easiest solution would be to bring Grenade Kit down (which is not my intention), this doesn’t change the fact that other kits and weapons need to be brought up. Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, Tool Kit and Speargun are the ones most in need. With a lesser extent to Rifle and Pistols.

(Included in the following post due to length).

And additional piece of information about the Jump Shot / Rifled Barrels Bug. Some of you may have noticed that your landing damage is substantially lower with the trait going. This is because in addition to the bounce after Jump Shot, it inverts the damage ratios; i.e. the damage for take-off and landing is reversed when Rifled Barrels is active.

Speaking of Rifle, I appreciate that they’re giving it some attention with some new traits to mess with (Modified Ammo, the new Sitting Duck, etc). However there is an issue in that there are 5 rifle traits and only 3 slots. In reality, it amounts to 2 slots since Rifle Mod is essential to any build that uses Rifle. Might it be possible to fold Rifle Mod’s damage into Rifle itself to allow for more variety?

It would be nice if the range / damage component was removed from Blunderbuss, as it is already less than half of the range of Rifle 1 and 2 before factoring the proximity increase (which puts you inside of melee range) and even in ideal situations does nearly half of Volley (which has 1200 range).

In regards to Overcharged Shot, it seems odd to exchange a cripple, freeze or immobilize for a 1.5 second stun. The clear on movement-impairing conditions seems like it would be more befitting to Jump Shot.

The increased area on Jump Shot’s landing is nice, but it doesn’t address the primary issue of the skill: its use is more likely to kill the Engineer. It shares the issue with Blunderbuss in the risk being substantially higher than the reward. The skill could benefit from a built-in evade during the leap akin to Whirlwind Attack.
Or, alternatively, an AoE blind upon landing to give the Engineer an opportunity to escape the danger the skill puts the Engineer into through its use.

Overall, it would be welcomed to see Engineer Rifle to have more depth akittens intended range than merely its 1 and 2 skills and for 3-5 to have a greater payoff for the increased risk involved in using them.

I don’t have time to elaborate further at the moment, but Static Discharge will work properly on any toolbelt skill that targets an enemy on skill use. Curiously, this property applies to skills you wouldn’t think it would. Here’s a list of those I recall off the top of my head.

Utility Goggles
Throw Mine
Personal Battering Ram
Tool Kit
Rifle Turret
Rocket Turret
Net Turret
Rocket Boots

Otherwise, the Static Discharge will fly in whatever direction the center of the camera is facing. So it’s possible to manually line up shots with it on skills that lack enemy targeting, but it’s really just more trouble than it’s worth.

Last night I updated my video card (7970 Ghz) and while it was an improvement, I was surprised at how little of an improvement it was.

This morning I messed with things a bit and changing the window from Windowed Fullscreen to Fullscreen netted me a 10-12 fps gain. Also, it appears that the frame limiter is bugged; setting it to 60 fps puts your frames at 50 (and 30 sets it to 25). It’s better to have that disabled at all times and use Vsync instead (or just run things un-throttled).

Now I run at an average of the high-60’s, low-70’s with max settings aside from Anti-Aliasing, Depth Blur and Native Render Sampling (personal preferences).

i5-2500k @ 4.3ghz
16gb PC1600 ram
160gb SSD
Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 GE

Olba.5376:

None of the weapons in the game change the skills that you use in any way.

Incorrect. Several weapons change the appearance of weapon skills, as the case with Quip, Predator, Dreamer, Pop Gun and others. However, they only change the cosmetics of some skills, none of the mechanical attributes.

The cosmetic features these weapons change are by skill by skill basis, however.

Minefield’s back to having a clean bill of health; thank goodness! I was honestly not expecting to see it addressed until the end of June at the earliest. Big thanks for knocking it out quickly!

Hopefully between this and the upcoming fix for Scope this’ll be the beginning of addressing Engineer’s long-suffering issues.

Since we’re speaking of Minefield, any chance of a set (or less random) mine placement? Just food for thought.

From the patch notes:

Throw Mine and Mine Field skills: Certain friendly NPCs no longer detonate mines.
Scatter Mines skill: Recharge is no longer impacted by the Rifled Barrels trait.

These present new issues with mines that are greater than the original issues.

Mine Field no longer explode when enemies cross them and can only be detonated manually. Furthermore, when the Rifled Barrels trait is active, the mines not only no longer explode, but they trigger a 20 second cooldown on Mine Field whenever any creature (ally, enemy or yourself) steps on them (regardless of Recharge Rate reduction from the Tools line). This cooldown resets whenever any creature crosses them (thus making them unable to be even manually detonated) in a perpetual loop.

It gets better. The mines from Mine Field (Throw Mine’s toolbelt) no longer detonate when an enemy crosses them.

If you are running the Rifled Barrels trait, they instead trigger a 20 second cooldown (despite it being a 14 second cooldown with my 30 in Tools) that resets whenever any of them are crossed (whether it be by friend, foe, or yourself); thus turning what should be a 14 second cooldown into an endlessly-looping cooldown that prevents you from being able to detonate the mines manually.

It’s especially frustrating with as I’d find a groove with it in my Rifle build and know that it won’t be fixed until July at the earliest.

Mine Field (Throw Mine’s toolbelt): The mines no longer detonate when an enemy crosses them. Instead, they trigger a 20 second cooldown (despite it being a 14 second cooldown with my 30 in Tools) that resets for every mine that is crossed (whether it be by friend, foe, or yourself); thus turning what should be a 14 second cooldown into a potential 100 second cooldown that prevents you from being able to detonate the mines manually.

^^^ You’re right. I skipped a step there: Base* .3 (i.e. 120 *.3 = 36. 120 – 36 = 84).

If they were to change the formula it would not only make it more intuitive, but bring it in line to how the cooldown reductions are handled globally (e.g. Crack Shot, Fireforged Trigger, etc).

It seems like it would not only be an easy fix, but a substantial one for about half the classes; kinda makes me wonder why it hasn’t happened yet.

Edit: What Kamahl said.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

It’s not a bug, it increases rate not decreases time.
Interval = 1/Rate
Divide the cooldown by 1.3 and you will get exactly what you find.

In which case the tooltips are substantially off as they reflect a percentage reduction of the base recharge (i.e. base *.3) and not an increase to recharge rate (base /1.3).

And after checking around, it seems that Thieves, Mesmers and any other class that shares a rate increase to their unique skills share this discrepancy. Either all the applicable tooltips are correct and the formula is incorrect, or vice versa.

I’m inclined to think that the 30% reduction to cooldowns was more the intent as it produces cleaner numbers and more noticeable results for the investment.

Base / 1.3 (i.e. 120 seconds / 1.3 = 92.30769230768231)
vs.
Base * .3 (i.e. 120 seconds *.3 = 84).

The “Increase Recharge Rate” portion of the Tools line applies less than what is listed. It appears to be shorter by approximately 9.1% at 30 (Toss Elixir R with a 30 in Tools should have an 84 second cooldown as listed in the tooltip, however it is actually closer to 93 seconds). Meaning that your 30 points in Tools is actually only giving you about 21 points worth of Toolbelt Recharge.

I’ve filed a bug report and they were supposed to focusing on bugs soon, so we’ll see what happens. But for now know that if you are invested in Tools for the toolbelt recharge rate, a good chunk of your trait points aren’t contributing to that at all.

Scope works, it just doesn’t display on the character sheet (same with Sigil of Accuracy and the Target the Weak minor trait).

Please, dear heavens return Backdraft to Flamethrower. Here’s a demonstration of Backdraft and what it looks like in a fight. (A glimpse of a pre-nerfed Napalm as well.)

At present Smoke Vent, which replaced Backdraft, feels like a placeholder. Especially compared to any other #5 skill.

It’d be wonderful if Flame Blast could be manually detonated and if Napalm pulsed damage in addition to applying a longer burn. Or, alternatively, if Napalm dealt no direct damage as it does presently, but burn patch (ala Bomb Kit’s Fire Bomb / Longbow’s Combustive Shot).

In its current form, Napalm instead is a ignorable wall that merely applies a 1 second burn for every second anything is foolish enough to stand in it. As it stands now, Napalm is not a deterrent of any kind and is scarcely useful as a fire field.

Please, dear heavens return Backdraft to Flamethrower. Here’s a demonstration of Backdraft and what it looks like in a fight. (A glimpse of a pre-nerfed Napalm as well.)

It’d be wonderful if Flame Blast could be manually detonated and if Napalm pulsed damage in addition to applying a longer burn. Or, alternatively, dealt no direct damage as it does presently, but be a patch (ala Bomb Kit’s Fire Bomb / of Longbow’s Combustive Shot instead of an ignorable wall that merely applies a 1 second burn for every second anything is foolish enough to stand in it..

KirinDave.6451:

What sort of blows my mind is that the Engineer community is so abused that they’re calling a quick string of 3k crits on a glass cannon spec with no diversity in its utilities “good burst damage.” This is not good burst damage. Then someone posts a very simple warrior video where a single button press greatly exceeds that burst to demonstrate how mediocre this burst actually is, and people complain about his lack of skill.

People need to realize what’s going on here. They need to disentangle their sense of investment in the class with the efficacy of the class. They probably need to play some other classes so they realize that very few classes are the “easy mode” that they’re so proudly claiming Engineer isn’t.

Thank you. Finally someone that gets it.

It’s hard to pump crit chance with Engineer, but it is possible to get over 100%. It’s very difficult (some other classes, Signet Warriors in particular, can reach this pre-Fury without maxing Arms, with Precision as a only minor stat on gear and no Precision runes).

If you went full Rampager’s, full Precision main stat runes, full Firearms, 20 into Tools for Scope (10% to crit while standing still), used Accuracy Sigil on your weapon (5% to Crit Chance) and had the Fury (20% crit chance) boon, you could hit in the neighborhood 110% at 80.

But this would be for as long as Fury lasted and as long as you stood still, after which it’d drop by 30% (to 80%). This is assuming a rifle (dual pistols or pistol / shield would get about 8%-9% with a pair of Accuracy Sigils): the best you could get away with using a kit would be substantially lower due to the loss of weapon stats.

Them’s the breaks, but it’s possible.

Just to add a bit of perspective to this as a former Engineer (from launch) who finally got the hint and rolled Warrior, here’s a Rifle Warrior.

Flamethrower #5 used to be another (much better) skill called Backdraft.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backdraft

It was changed at some point in beta into the terrible placeholder skill that Smoke Vent is presently. Hopefully they’ll change this again at some point, because presently it’s an abysmal #5.