Making FT more desirable

So I don't know about you, but I think FT is probablty the most fun kit Engis have. I want it buffed but I also don't want it to be OP compared to all the other kits. Of course, one of the biggest sticking points is how to handle FT's autocast. At the moment, it's mostly a power-based channel with a fairly weak burn tacked on to the end of it. Boooooooring. And not particularly in character for, you know, A FLAMETHROWER. It's supposed to be a burninator. But it's not.

So, I'd like to propose the following changes:

1. Instead of a 100% chance to burn on the final tick of the autocast, give it a 10-20% chance to burn per tick. This will improve the flavor of the flamethrower (you know, burning things) while also spreading out the damage.
2. Increase the burn damage of the autocast's burn by about 10-15%. It's just not a particularly powerful burn for, you know, a flamethrower.
3. Juggernaut looks like it's supposed to be the premier trait for flamethrowers, but it's just not that great. Here's how I'd change it: First, leave the stability alone. That part's fine. But instead of might, give it an increasing chance to burn per tick, per stack of burning. Somewhere in the area of 10-20% per stack. This will not only increase the burn damage done by the flamethrower, but also give a skill-based increase to the flamethrower's use. Better players who can juggle more burning stack will be able to increase the burn damage far more than lesser-skilled players.

Just some ideas. Let me know what you think.

@Trollocks.5084 said:

1. Instead of a 100% chance to burn on the final tick of the autocast, give it a 10-20% chance to burn per tick. This will improve the flavor of the flamethrower (you know, burning things) while also spreading out the damage.

over the past 6 years, if there has been 1 common concept that every engi has wanted to have less of, its rng

@insanemaniac.2456 said:

@Trollocks.5084 said:

1. Instead of a 100% chance to burn on the final tick of the autocast, give it a 10-20% chance to burn per tick. This will improve the flavor of the flamethrower (you know, burning things) while also spreading out the damage.

It's not this kind of rng though, this could be fine tbh

You don't need to add RNG or special rules to the Flamethrower burn damage. If the problem is the backloaded nature of the burn, you can just split the burn up into multiple portions like the first hit, the halfway point (5 hits) and the end for a more consistent flow while increasing duration if needed.

Also, that trait will really quickly loop on itself and create a perpetual 10-stack burn from just auto-attacks.

They already nerfed the power aspect of it. Just go all the way and put 1s burn on every tick. We already do like 5x more dmg than we used to so now they can do so since it won't break anything. Can't break what's already broken. Perma quickness burn engi will fit right in with the rest of the garbage balance.

@Ruufio.1496 said:They already nerfed the power aspect of it. Just go all the way and put 1s burn on every tick. We already do like 5x more dmg than we used to so now they can do so since it won't break anything. Can't break what's already broken. Perma quickness burn engi will fit right in with the rest of the garbage balance.

Then you'd get permanently 5 stacks of burning on three targets.So, say you take carrion stats, with bursting and corruption sigil, maybe berserker rune, firearms with chemical rounds, thermal vision and juggernaut... with explosives and tools you might get another 2 +10% dmg modifiers, but depends on the rest of the build. Now you get something like 3k condition damage with +15% condition damage increase. burning inflicts 130+15.5% condition damage at lv80, which is 595 + 15% = 685 per stack and second, so 3400 damage for 5 stacks per second.

So, it's not even overpowered.

You must keep the enemy in your cleave attack constantly to do this damage. Even using baltharsa-runes (+50% burn duration, but loss of 5% condition damage) and incendiary powder (+33% burn duration, but no might/stability on FT) you can maybe go up to 9 stacks, which is 5.8k (might stacks provided), but still requires a full second of flame-blast hitting to ramp up and is gone without reapplying after 1.5s... while making the build more specialized to burning and somewhat harder to play...

Somehow I think a burn-guard or a condi necro can still do better burst without being meelee and applying conditions every 1/5s to avoid damage loss...

Think back about the time where kinetic battery was resetting toolbelt skills. incendiary ammunition of Flamethrower was then used twice with a few other traits and rune effects and you got 12 stacks of burning on enemies instantly. Back then it was a bit overpowered, but still had major drawbacks. Only one condition was used for the damage, the bomb cooldown was pretty long and you had to play a very glassy build at almost meelee range.Compared to that, having 1s burn on every FT-1 tick is pretty tame.

@Trollocks.5084 said:So I don't know about you, but I think FT is probablty the most fun kit Engis have. I want it buffed but I also don't want it to be OP compared to all the other kits. Of course, one of the biggest sticking points is how to handle FT's autocast. At the moment, it's mostly a power-based channel with a fairly weak burn tacked on to the end of it. Boooooooring. And not particularly in character for, you know, A FLAMETHROWER. It's supposed to be a burninator. But it's not.

So, I'd like to propose the following changes:

1. Instead of a 100% chance to burn on the final tick of the autocast, give it a 10-20% chance to burn per tick. This will improve the flavor of the flamethrower (you know, burning things) while also spreading out the damage.
2. Increase the burn damage of the autocast's burn by about 10-15%. It's just not a particularly powerful burn for, you know, a flamethrower.
3. Juggernaut looks like it's supposed to be the premier trait for flamethrowers, but it's just not that great. Here's how I'd change it: First, leave the stability alone. That part's fine. But instead of might, give it an increasing chance to burn per tick, per stack of burning. Somewhere in the area of 10-20% per stack. This will not only increase the burn damage done by the flamethrower, but also give a skill-based increase to the flamethrower's use. Better players who can juggle more burning stack will be able to increase the burn damage far more than lesser-skilled players.

Just some ideas. Let me know what you think.

Sure it gives it more DPS, but that doesn't fix boring. One of the things I would like to see changed is that Juggernaut be useful for more than just FT so you don't feel like you lose out on a GM trait if you don't camp it. The trait is not inline with swapping kits to optimize engi play and I think that does address boring FT because no one wants to camp a weapon on a class so loaded with cool, swappable things to do.

To be fair, I don't lack DPS on a properly built FT camping build. It's also going to be difficult to balance because it scales by # of targets like an AOE. It's more likely the 'fun' buffs it gets are going to be more inline with filling out its theme of providing hybrid DPS. Unfortunately, I think the last change to it already accomplished that theme-filling.

Basically, I think FT is done, or so close to it that any changes are going to be really minor.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Trollocks.5084" said:So I don't know about you, but I think FT is probablty the most fun kit Engis have. I want it buffed but I also don't want it to be OP compared to all the other kits. Of course, one of the biggest sticking points is how to handle FT's autocast. At the moment, it's mostly a power-based channel with a fairly weak burn tacked on to the end of it. Boooooooring. And not particularly in character for, you know, A FLAMETHROWER. It's supposed to be a burninator. But it's not.

So, I'd like to propose the following changes:

1. Instead of a 100% chance to burn on the final tick of the autocast, give it a 10-20% chance to burn per tick. This will improve the flavor of the flamethrower (you know, burning things) while also spreading out the damage.
2. Increase the burn damage of the autocast's burn by about 10-15%. It's just not a particularly powerful burn for, you know, a flamethrower.
3. Juggernaut looks like it's supposed to be the premier trait for flamethrowers, but it's just not that great. Here's how I'd change it: First, leave the stability alone. That part's fine. But instead of might, give it an increasing chance to burn per tick, per stack of burning. Somewhere in the area of 10-20% per stack. This will not only increase the burn damage done by the flamethrower, but also give a skill-based increase to the flamethrower's use. Better players who can juggle more burning stack will be able to increase the burn damage far more than lesser-skilled players.

Just some ideas. Let me know what you think.

Yeah, I think that if they change the Juggernaut trait, they should make it to where they gain the benefits after swapping to, or from, the flamethrower. If they're going to keep it as a "camping" type of option, then they need to put some defensive things into the trait as well (increased health, flat % damage reduction, pulsing protection, flat defense increase) to help it out since you'll want to be in the ft kit as long as possible while using this trait. I think either of these changes would be good for the trait to provide it with its themed (maybe) approach, being a juggernaut, an unstoppable powerhouse. The unstoppable portion would come from the defensive + stability, and the powerhouse would come from the might gain, putting it in a duelist kind of role (if built right for it).Currently, using the juggernaut trait with the ft and having a high crit chance makes its auto attack pretty damaging if you can land off all of the hits from it, and it works even better when adding quickness to it, but the kit itself requires you to be pretty close to your target, and with the lack of defensive options, it can be dangerous doing this. swapping to a longer ranged option (or any of your main-hand weapon options) if running a sustained damage carry kind of build can help but then you lose your benefits from the trait because you're outside of the flamethrower. This can spell disaster for you as you don't have the right kind of tools to get off the damage you need to do. I can understand this if this was the previous metas, but with the metas how they are now, it's an extreme disadvantage and makes the trait meaningless to take at all.I also like the previous poster's idea about giving the autos a small chance to burn with each hit, through I don't think Juggernaut should increase burn proc chance at all as it would pose a possibility of consistently having too much burning on a target, though with this current meta it wouldn't be so bad since everything bursts everything down within seconds.These are just my few cents.

I would love to use flamethrower with my condi build, but a few things keep me from choosing it.

• flame blast isn't ground-targeted. you really want to be able to aim this thing into a group, but that's difficult with the awkward target locking. Firing it without a target requires some painful camera spinning to make sure it doesn't just shoot into the ground and I'd rather not do that either.
• it doesn't burn enough. Realistically, landing the last hit of its auto just isn't going to happen in a pvp situation
• its toolbelt skill is on a ridiculously long cooldown. 43-50s is too long to wait when you need to be hitting those toolbelt skills to proc traits. It could probably do with half the cooldown and not be too OP given the amount of cleanse in the game these days..
• it's predictable and has limited range. Unlike grenades, an opponent can easily kite flamethrower and dodge the slow moving flame blast + last auto hit
• retaliation sucks. The auto hits like a million times a second. That's great until you're taking more damage than you're putting out.

@coro.3176 said:I would love to use flamethrower with my condi build, but a few things keep me from choosing it.

• flame blast isn't ground-targeted. you really want to be able to aim this thing into a group, but that's difficult with the awkward target locking. Firing it without a target requires some painful camera spinning to make sure it doesn't just shoot into the ground and I'd rather not do that either.
• it doesn't burn enough. Realistically, landing the last hit of its auto just isn't going to happen in a pvp situation
• its toolbelt skill is on a ridiculously long cooldown. 43-50s is too long to wait when you need to be hitting those toolbelt skills to proc traits. It could probably do with half the cooldown and not be too OP given the amount of cleanse in the game these days..
• it's predictable and has limited range. Unlike grenades, an opponent can easily kite flamethrower and dodge the slow moving flame blast + last auto hit
• retaliation sucks. The auto hits like a million times a second. That's great until you're taking more damage than you're putting out.

So much your first suggestion, I see pop up often and I wholeheartedly agree it needs to be changed to ground targeted.

I've said it countless of times in the past but here we go again:Just Let the damage of the auto scale off condi damage instead of power. Easy fix.

Aside from that, 15% RNG is a horrible option. Right now, it gives at least some play potential. You want to dodge the final hit from the auto at most, because thats where the damage is it. From the other side, it gives predictability for the engi to try and play around it.

First of al, either give Engi a minor trait that reduces retal damage by 50% (this could help to make Granades and Mortar less punishing) and/or make Flamethrower auto 2-3 hits instead of what it's now.

How about:

1. Add a 20% cool-down decrease to Juggernaut.
2. Revert the might change and replace it with "Gain 2 seconds of protection whenever you are hit by a burning foe (2 second cool-down)".
3. Make Flame Blast a ground-targetted skill and/or have it detonate automatically upon reaching its destination to allow for more reliable blasts/damage.
4. Reinstate the power component of Flame Blast without reverting the burn buff so it serves the hybrid role better (currently it's worthless for power builds).
5. Spread out/buff the burn on Flame Jet from 4 seconds on the tenth hit to 2.5 seconds on the fifth /and/ tenth hit.
6. Change Thermal Vision to "Cauterize your enemies on a critical hit, removing a boon if they are on fire (8 second [?] cool-down /per/ target). This should help with retaliation, the general lack of boon control on engineer and the fact that Thermal Vision and Pinpoint Distribution compete for the same goal to a certain degree.
7. /Maybe/ turn Smoke Vent into an instant cast smoke field which pulses blind twice over the course of 2 seconds (immediately and again after 2 seconds) to allow for more combo shenanigans. This also would grant Flame Thrower campers more defense by granting them the opportunity to stealth everyone now and then.

Actually, the recent change to Kinetic Stabilizers makes FT extremely desirable. Making the switch to Scrapper was a no brainer now. The real problem with FT is that there is no middle ground with it; you either camp it with Juggernaut or you have little reason to use it at all. If the situation needs to be fixed:

1. Reduce benefit to equipping FT and increase general benefit in Juggernaut; I would make 'gain might' baseline in that trait.
2. Increase reason to use FT as a swapping kit, not a camping one. So far you get a blind and a knockback on it. I would add a cripple or slow to #3.

@Obtena.7952 said:Actually, the recent change to Kinetic Stabilizers makes FT extremely desirable. Making the switch to Scrapper was a no brainer now. The real problem with FT is that there is no middle ground with it; you either camp it with Juggernaut or you have little reason to use it at all. If the situation needs to be fixed:

1. Reduce benefit to equipping FT and increase general benefit in Juggernaut; I would make 'gain might' baseline in that trait.
2. Increase reason to use FT as a swapping kit, not a camping one. So far you get a blind and a knockback on it. I would add a cripple or slow to #3.

yeah, i am experimenting with a kinetic stabilizers build with my ft, and so far it's really nice. I also agree with number 2 of your suggestion, or if they want to keep the juggernaut trait a kit camping playstyle, put in some extra defense in there like increased health, toughness, or a gain of protection at intervals.