Noob Question: Why do people hate flame throwers?

I've leveled to 50 with a flame thrower kit and turret build that I just kind of made up and it seems pretty awesome but every guide that mentions it poo-poos the flame thrower.I've tried the other kits and they seem super-lame compared to the flame thrower. I can just stand there and do a fire dot that jumps magnitudes of damage per-tick.

I don't get it.Why would I choose a weapon or any other kit when my flame thrower ramps up to do so much damage?I've got it as high as 8K a tick on some vets before they die. (With the best animation ever)Added bonus, it's a cone! I can cook 3 mobs at once.Soooo... why all the hate?

Because guides for endgame (I'll use pve as example) use the most effective setup for dps. FT is only good for condition based builds due to lots of burning uptime. Power builds dont use it since other kits provide more damage output over time.

You say FT does 8k dmg on auto, but over what duration? You can cast 2-3 other skills at the same time, which could result over 15k damage and then some more with condies and traits. It's not that people hate it, it's just a worse option for dps.

The flamethrower is a neat kit when leveling up.The damage of 1 is moderate, you get croud-control, a burst & blast finisher and a burn ticking firefield. With juggernaut you get permament stability and with steamlined kits you get perma swiftness. some builds use alchemy and elixirs in addition, other gadgets. Due to its duality in damage you won't have any trouble with the green/blue stuff you pick up while leveling.I also leveled up using a flamethrower variant.

For endgame content, PvP or WvW other builds offer far more offensive, utility or crowd control.

The damage you see popping up is the total damage over all your ticks, not the damage per tick.

I think what you are seeing is the combined damage of the ticks, it fools you into thinking you're doing way more dps than you actually are.That 8k is the total damage of the channeled skill you cast, not per tick.

FT isn't used much at endgame because the condition spec that gains any use out of it is very hard to play with, it juggles between a few kits and requires a lot of skill to pull of well, and it's usually easier to get that same job done better as some other spec.

Sorry that I probably made you feel very weak compared to when you posted this, that damage counter sure is confusing.

While I'm not the biggest fan of the flamethrower when it comes to game modes like PvP and WvW, it is useful for core condition engineer in fractals and raids and it can be a really fun kit to use for new players in open world PvE (though I wouldn't new players the engineer as their starting profession).

The reason why the flamethrower works well with core engineer is because of the burning condition. It's the highest damaging condition than any other condition. The problem with core engineer and why most players tend to stay away from it and prefer to play holosmith is because of the complexity that comes with core engineer. Ask any core engineer main (myself included) and they'll tell you just how many rotations you have to remember in order to deal the highest damage possible not only for the profession, but the highest out of every profession in the game.

Even condi engi only uses the skill 4 on the flamethrower and then switches to bombs or grenades. The other skills just don't ramp up conditions and even the auto-attack (the only other skill that applies damaging conditions at all) only generates a single shortlived burn stack. So yes, most builds avoid flamethrower, because compared to the other kits it's just too weak.

Though Flamethrower really shines in open world zerg content. When your sole aim is tagging as many mobs as possible to get all the loot you can get, there are very few attacks that can consistently tag as many mobs as the flamethrower auto-attack. Add some towers and for example an Istan farm-map will shower you in loot.

Its not as much damage as you think it is. FT 1 is a pretty long channel for a TOTAL 8k damage that you're seeing and one stack of burn. You'll do more damage with a Pistol 4 and other attacks, since you're not locked into a channel, in the same amount of time.

Traits like Juggernaut also try to convince you that its worth staying in the FT kit, but you're best dps is going to come from swapping kits and landing the heavy hitters in each.

Is it easy? Sure. Is it awesome? Matter of opinion. Is it the best dps? No.

If you like condition damage, try pistols and bombs. If you like power damage, try rifle and grenades.

I will say this, it may not be the most OP weapon but it is one of the more enjoyable kits that Engineer has.

I used flamethrower with juggernaut and the scrapper trait that gives might with stability for map completion. Felt like I was in Vietnam toasting dudes. Even works for massive wvw blobs because you have permanent stability.

It's just terrible for end game content and most pvp situations.

It'll give decent dps for low fractals and dungeons. Think back when I did this for the memes in wvw I was averaging like 7-10k dps on lords.

Obviously that's not near the 40k raid builds are pushing, but it's still great dps. By power burst builds averaged like 8k dps.

Play the game how you want to play it. Just be prepared to play meta if you want to do end game content.

I used to run Flamethrower casually, got to a point that It became monotonous and boring just standing there auto attacking. But yes, the concept itself is cool, I loved playing with it and was fun while it lasted.

Oh, and I remember, long ago just went to test my former casual PVE dumb build on the Raid golem before going into something more serious, core engi with rifle, flamethrower, grenade kit and battle roar (because f** yes) [and a default setting of boons for raids] I got to 15k dps, pretty nice if you consider its from someone casual.

In PvE: It's just okay, but as others have mentioned, very suboptimal dps except for quickly switching to it to drop Napalm and blast the fire field.

In PvP: You will get murdered if you pull it out. It has some utility with the pushback, but doesn't do enough. It's easily played around by most opponents.

In WvW: You will die to retaliation. The autoattack hits so many times per second, you'll be taking more damage than you're dealing due to the way retaliation works.

FT is fantastic in open world, for tagging and just for getting FUN. It also have a couple utility skills and traits that can be incredibly valuable when properly used. It is simply awesome.BUT the more serious dps depending parts of the game (Mostly Raids and PvP) usually require more than simply tagging and moderate burn damage over a fixed zone. Every moving boss is a great frustration to napalm users, every single foe that can evade or kite your autoattack in a sensible way is a huge risk for flame dealers, every kitten retaliation user is your guaranteed death incarnate if you rely on the FT.That's why FT doesn't appear in the meta builds. It is not that good against serious endgame bosses or against living players that know what they are doing.

@Tiilimon.6094 said:I think what you are seeing is the combined damage of the ticks, it fools you into thinking you're doing way more dps than you actually are.That 8k is the total damage of the channeled skill you cast, not per tick.

FT isn't used much at endgame because the condition spec that gains any use out of it is very hard to play with, it juggles between a few kits and requires a lot of skill to pull of well, and it's usually easier to get that same job done better as some other spec.

Sorry that I probably made you feel very weak compared to when you posted this, that damage counter sure is confusing.

Yeah, that is disappointing but not terribly unexpected. I knew something must be off. I mean why wouldn't everyone be using it if it was as good as it appeared to be, right?

@Dace.8173 said:I will say this, it may not be the most OP weapon but it is one of the more enjoyable kits that Engineer has.

I know! And that seems to be the opinion of almost everyone. It's a shame you have to give up fun to play the end game content. That seems like a design failing.

@DotDotWin.4357 said:

@"Dace.8173" said:I will say this, it may not be the most OP weapon but it is one of the more enjoyable kits that Engineer has.

It's pretty boring, as said you can use it as a condi build and that's good dps but it won't be you using the "Flame Thrower".To run events open world with it that's enjoyable and if you focus your build on support a bit not too bad. I still noticed that holo adds enough stab, enough cleave and way higher dps. Yes i know blabla its open world but you aren't alone doing events and unless you add some support for the team you could sa well do decent dps instead of being gs auto attack necro.

PS:to answer it very cleary. People hate players that play builds and equipment that make them, the team, take way longer to clear content and therefore wasting their time without a good reason. Nobodz expects you to run a raid dps rotation and it would'nt work anyway but if you want to be the best you can for you team some no kit variant holo is really strong and easy enough to watch tv while zerging. If you put less effort than that it's why people hate it.

Eh, I would say FT AA is more Power than Condi. You can quickly stack 25 might and perma stab with FT. I guess it would work fine with a Viper build, but it's fine damage wise on Power too.

I do agree with all other posters tho, it's not very good in the long haul. It does very well for open world and tagging. Retaliation can kill you so fast with the AA. Also, lots of the skills are hard to target or hit and miss ? FT 1-2-3 have this problem, same with many engineer skills like Blowtorch.

FT is a go-to for the last boss in volcanic fractal. Combined with elixir u, you can remove that shield bubble so fast.

@archmagus.7249 said:FT is a go-to for the last boss in volcanic fractal. Combined with elixir u, you can remove that shield bubble so fast.

There is an internal cooldown on the stacks. Playing ft there doesn't do anything except of being a burden for your team.

@Wolfb.7025 said:Oh, and I remember, long ago just went to test my former casual PVE dumb build on the Raid golem before going into something more serious, core engi with rifle, flamethrower, grenade kit and battle roar (because f** yes) [and a default setting of boons for raids] I got to 15k dps, pretty nice if you consider its from someone casual.

Not really when you can get 18k+ without food and just pressing bomb 1 + bomb 2.

@Remix.2086 said:I used flamethrower with juggernaut and the scrapper trait that gives might with stability for map completion. Felt like I was in Vietnam toasting dudes. Even works for massive wvw blobs because you have permanent stability.

I strongly advice not to use FT-1 against zergs in WvW!You can do this in edge of mists or with inexperienced zergs, but if their setup is more or less fine, they have a high retaliation-uptime on most players. Retaliation often comes from guards without power, so the damage 133 + (0.05 1000)=173 does not sound bad. However, FT-1 attacks up to 3 people 5 times per second, so you get 15173=2.6k damage per second from retaliation.And if the retaliation comes from a power-based spec, you get 60% more damage per second. It's similar to the granade-issue where you can kill yourself by retaliation...

I like to use it for fun in PvE but when shit gets real, the bomb kit comes out! Even without traiting into explosives, it does goes further in PvE.

@Dediggefedde.4961 said:

@Remix.2086 said:I used flamethrower with juggernaut and the scrapper trait that gives might with stability for map completion. Felt like I was in Vietnam toasting dudes. Even works for massive wvw blobs because you have permanent stability.

Yeah I mean obviously you're not gonna run it in comp'd zergs. But map queue versus map queue it's pretty fun. Especially for bags and clean up. Once the heavies, necros, and eles down people flamethrower is great for cleaving downs. Doing 10k+ a channel on a stack trying res hurts a lot.

And if you're running alchemy (standard engi spec) auto elixir s so you wont kill yourself.

I tried for about 20 hours to make flamethrower work for roaming Haha. But the cone is too small. An enemy only has to side step at close range to get out of the cone. Only way to ensure your channel follows is to stand still. But it's not like rangers rapid fire that deletes people lol.

The only way I got a good channel to land is immob from rifle to flamethrower. Overcharge puts them out of flamethrower range lol. The knockback from flamethrower also is next to impossible to land. It's only good if someone is trying to res without stab.

the problem with Flamethrower, is you have to sacrifice so much for it to do decent output. you can hit some hard hitting autos on burning targets with high might, full crit chance, and high ferocity. but most builds with that kind of stuff often needs you to sacrifice survivability, or the ability to crit. FT also works when you have a lot of quickness uptime, cutting your cast times in half with autos, but again, the output is just not on par as with other options on the engineer's utility. It's sad for me, considering I love the flamethrower kit as well. it's definitely one of the things out of many that need love on the Engi's arsenal.

Yeah, the more I learn about this game the less I want to keep playing it.

For me, the idea of games should be fun but this feels like if I want avoid being a laughing stock as a player I need to get a bachelor's degree in Gw2 game mechanics so I understand them well enough to follow what's going on when I hit cap and I get to choose from 3 very strict meta builds with very strict rotations that if I don't master I might as well not even bother with end game content.

This game starts off fun but ends up feeling a lot like a data entry job as all the fun is slowly sucked out of it while you level.

It wouldn't be so bad if you could change your UI and move around abilities but I never learned to play piano so my fingers can't dance well enough to pull off some of this crazy stuff these builds require.

Swapping weapons mid-fight to get a whole new set of abilities to use sounds great until you realize those abilities are scattered all over the keyboard and you can't move the ones you actually want to use to a reasonable location.

@DotDotWin.4357 said:Yeah, the more I learn about this game the less I want to keep playing it.

For me, the idea of games should be fun but this feels like if I want avoid being a laughing stock as a player I need to get a bachelor's degree in Gw2 game mechanics so I understand them well enough to follow what's going on when I hit cap and I get to choose from 3 very strict meta builds with very strict rotations that if I don't master I might as well not even bother with end game content.

This game starts off fun but ends up feeling a lot like a data entry job as all the fun is slowly sucked out of it while you level.

It wouldn't be so bad if you could change your UI and move around abilities but I never learned to play piano so my fingers can't dance well enough to pull off some of this crazy stuff these builds require.

Swapping weapons mid-fight to get a whole new set of abilities to use sounds great until you realize those abilities are scattered all over the keyboard and you can't move the ones you actually want to use to a reasonable location.

To put some things straight:-gw2 is a very easy game.-engineer has an easy no piano build with no kit holo.-the proper raid build is only slightly harder to play. If you manage to tie your shoes while standing you will learn it no problem. But u need to learn it.-you can and should change keybinds.there is.good advice on YouTube. Using esdf is awesome,in general, for any similar game in the future and for gw2.-did I mention how easy gw2 is?it really is which is why people get mad at the horrible 2k DPS players in the open world and why they kick 15k DPS of raid pugs.

@DotDotWin.4357 said:Yeah, the more I learn about this game the less I want to keep playing it.

For me, the idea of games should be fun but this feels like if I want avoid being a laughing stock as a player I need to get a bachelor's degree in Gw2 game mechanics so I understand them well enough to follow what's going on when I hit cap and I get to choose from 3 very strict meta builds with very strict rotations that if I don't master I might as well not even bother with end game content.

This game starts off fun but ends up feeling a lot like a data entry job as all the fun is slowly sucked out of it while you level.

It wouldn't be so bad if you could change your UI and move around abilities but I never learned to play piano so my fingers can't dance well enough to pull off some of this crazy stuff these builds require.

Swapping weapons mid-fight to get a whole new set of abilities to use sounds great until you realize those abilities are scattered all over the keyboard and you can't move the ones you actually want to use to a reasonable location.

you can rebind all skills on your keyboard/mouse.luckily for you gw2 does offer very little endgame content where a bachelor degree is needed.you can FT autoatack the rest oft he game.