What attributes are best to buff for flamethrower engineer?

[Rise.8259]

Power, condition, expertise, or something else?From a math standpoint I'm not sure what gives better returns, maxing flat damage output or burn damage+duration.Obviously if I could get an item that gave all three stats equally I'd take it, but if I have to choose one I'm not sure which to prioritize.

[Wolfb.7025]

If my still fresh and noob perspective helps you in some way, it depends on how much do you want to swap kits and what kind of main weapon will you use. Flamethrower has good damage scaling on skill 1, but the rest of its skills just applies more and more burning, my bet is to go for condi damage and swap to dual guns and grenades off cooldown to take advantage of the extra poison an other conditions, zerker stats would be good too but spamming flamethrower skill 1 its just so boring IMO

[starlinvf.1358]

Its not really advised to try and build around flame thrower for damage, because of how badly it scales on the high end. Most people who would even use it, would go with a standard power damage build, put FT in place of the damage kit for tagging, and fall back on a second kit or Rifle when more damage is needed. The FT is unparalleled for mass tagging in trash heavy events, but its damage potential is too low to be considered for any damage focused build.

The only other practical build concept for the FT is a Juggernaut build. But classically this was done to pre-stack Might, and swap out of the kit when entering combat. But its no longer needed because the skill/trait revamps since HOT give us good access to stability and might in other, more practical areas. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sanguine_Array alone is enough to maintain around 6-8 stacks of might, and goes higher with boon duration enhancements or HGH based builds.

If you're looking for a brain dead build: go with Knights armor, Zerks trinkets, Firearms/Explosives, and get your sustain from Inventions, Alchemy or Tools. Inventions for Bunker down and Mecha Legs (take Healing Turret), Alchemy if you run elixir heavy builds (or Elixir gun), or Tools if you want if you want a more active build. If you have Scrapper, you could go with that for Bulwark Gyro and Trait synergies.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

The damage of FT skill 1 is not good. It is a chain-attack, which means the damage numbers just add up. For example on every hit, you do 100 damage straight. Flame Jet, what the skill is called, has 10 hits. So at the end of round one, you did a total of 1,000 damage. If you do not wait, the next attack-chain adds up, starting at 1100, 1200, 1300. You see the numbers and think "wow, I am doing so much dps" but you still do 100 damage per it. There are a few skills in the game with a similar effect. Especially for new people it can be quite confusing and disappointing.

The FT has never been a good power-kit. There was a time it did acceptable damage, but that is long gone. One day ANet proudly decided to make the FT a condition-only weapon. There are a few options to utilize the Flamethrower nowadays:

a.) Might chargingIn combination with the Juggernaut trait from Firearms, you can get a nice might-stack in no time. The more points you have invested into boon/might-duration, the higher the stack will be. There are a few builds around, which do just that. Equip the Flamethrower until the might-stack is full and then switch to your preferred weapon/kit and start the battle. If you are running a scrapper-build, you can combine use the Mass Momentum trait to overpower the Juggernaut, which drastically increases the might-stacks.

b.) stun-breakerThis also requires the Juggernaut trait. Aside from the might-stacks, you also gain one charge of Stability. If your boon duration is a little improved, those can stack up to 2-3. The overall-duration is not very long. But you can equip the FT when you are knocked out/back/down or feared. The instant the stability triggers, you break out of the control effect and are back in the fight. It can be very helpful in bossfights where you have to deal with a lot of CC attacks.

c.) conditions/burnsIf you take a look on the table, you will easily notice that burn is the 2nd best damage-condition in the game. Only confusion (against NPCs) is better. As I said above the FT is a condition-only kit nowadays. Except for skill 5, everything applies burning to your enemy. So focusing on burning works quite well.

There is however a little problem you should be aware of. Condition damage works best, the more stacks of a condition are applied to your enemy. Applying condition-stacks takes time. So killing trash-mobs with conditions is tedious and quite annoying. It works, but it always feels a little boring. Against tougher mobs, champions or bosses condition damage is king. The longer the fight takes, the more stacks you can apply = the more damage per tick you deal.

On my condition build, which is not outmaxed for dps, I can get up to 12-16 burn stacks during a peak. I cannot maintain the full stack, it fluctuates around 8-10. If your condition damage stats are decent, you can deal some good damage just from burn stacks. But while you camp on Flamethrower, you eventually notice that the skills have a little cooldown and sooner or later you end up waiting/just using flame-jet.

And that is the beginning of the condition-engineer. Out of boredom, you begin to switch to your pistols or another kit and try to build-in some other conditions. We have good sources of poision and bleed. The table says those are bad conditions (damage wise), but if you take them as a bonus to the already high burn-damage, it feels like a small buff. The end is what we call piano-play: constantly switching between kits and weapons to get the maximum out of our condition-build. This is what most people scares away from engineer. Mostly because, if you compare the damage output to any other class, it is average at best. Even if you manage an ultimate rotation of skills, most classes will do better damage with less effort.

tl&dr: Flamethrower does most of its damage through burn-stacks. If you really want to go with that kit, investing points into condition-duration/burn-duration & condition-damage might be a good option.

[Josif.2015]

@Rise.8259 said:Power, condition, expertise, or something else?From a math standpoint I'm not sure what gives better returns, maxing flat damage output or burn damage+duration.Obviously if I could get an item that gave all three stats equally I'd take it, but if I have to choose one I'm not sure which to prioritize.

It may seem like a difficult choice, but condition damage and expertise are the best attributes for the flamethrower. The reason for this is because core engineer benefits the most from conditions unlike the Scrapper or the Holosmith. Kits being the most essential weapons to the engineer require a lot of cooldown and rotation memorization in order to put out the highest possible damage, possibly than any other profession in the game.

[Rise.8259]

I've been going the firearms route and building condition related stuff into my equipment with all this in mind. I switch between duel pistols and flamethrower right now.Then I spam turrets on top of that.

My only question would be: if all this effort only makes the engineer average in damage, then why do people play the engineer?

[Josif.2015]

@Rise.8259 said:I've been going the firearms route and building condition related stuff into my equipment with all this in mind. I switch between duel pistols and flamethrower right now.Then I spam turrets on top of that.

My only question would be: if all this effort only makes the engineer average in damage, then why do people play the engineer?

Engineer is the most difficult profession in the game, that is if you play core engineer. Core condition engineer has the highest skill ceiling than any other profession and the damage can outperform tremendously if played right. And that's the problem many players have with core engineer; you either spend hours, days, weeks or even months trying to learn how to play the profession properly, memorizing skill cooldown and kit rotations or you switch to the dumbed down Holosmith.

[Eros.6801]

Assuming you are talking about open world farming because flamethrower only good at that. There is a thing called damg threshold, in a zerg where everyone killing everything in the matter of seconds you need to deal enough damg to get loot from champs and mobs.

So i suggest go full power with berserker stat Power/Pre/Fero because condi won't help you and before you can ramp up all that condi the mobs or champs already dead.

Outside of farming i don't use flamethrower at all, also Holosmith is easier to play than core condi engi and pretty good overall in fractals you will have some montrous burst damg with holosmith.

[Biff.5312]

Most comments are going to be based on 'endgame' content requirements, but for general play I focus on power/precision/condi for a FT eng. Running ArcDPS, I found that in the Lake Doric leather run I was consistently in the top 6 of about 30 players for dps the entire trip. The 'meta' is all based around specific fights/game areas like fractals, raids, wvw. If you are more of a casual player, you can mix and match to a much greater degree.

[Coyote.8391]

Berserker's or viper's gear might be good if you can afford it.

[Rise.8259]

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@Rise.8259 said:I've been going the firearms route and building condition related stuff into my equipment with all this in mind. I switch between duel pistols and flamethrower right now.Then I spam turrets on top of that.

My only question would be: if all this effort only makes the engineer average in damage, then why do people play the engineer?

Engineer is the most difficult profession in the game, that is if you play core engineer. Core condition engineer has the highest skill ceiling than any other profession and the damage can outperform tremendously if played right. And that's the problem many players have with core engineer; you either spend hours, days, weeks or even months trying to learn how to play the profession properly, memorizing skill cooldown and kit rotations or you switch to the dumbed down Holosmith.

Well, if the payoff is there for the effort that's one thing... but some here claim the payoff isn't even there if you do it right, so I don't know which is true.

[Wolfb.7025]

Guys, he's asking for which stats to use for Flamethrower, he's not asking if FT is viable or not.

@Rise.8259 said:I've been going the firearms route and building condition related stuff into my equipment with all this in mind. I switch between duel pistols and flamethrower right now.Then I spam turrets on top of that.

My only question would be: if all this effort only makes the engineer average in damage, then why do people play the engineer?

My suggestion is play whatever you like and want to play, Flamethrower is a cool weapon and makes you feel awesome just going around burning foes. It DOES underperform against other meta choices, but if you're playing casual PVE you shouldn't pay much attention to that. Just take in consideration that if you want to start playing some end game content like Fractals T4 or Raids you should consider using something more effective (or if you got nice guildies to play with you could even go to T4 with a peanut build and still have fun). Personally I used to play with Flamethrower + Grenades, but after a while FT felt so boring because I often just stood there not pressing keys and letting my Skill 1 do some damage between times.

And seriously, play whatever you want to play, optimal builds and meta is only for high level endgame play.

[Khisanth.2948]

I would go with Grieving if I was going to do that myself ...

[crepuscular.9047]

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@Rise.8259 said:Power, condition, expertise, or something else?From a math standpoint I'm not sure what gives better returns, maxing flat damage output or burn damage+duration.Obviously if I could get an item that gave all three stats equally I'd take it, but if I have to choose one I'm not sure which to prioritize.

It may seem like a difficult choice, but condition damage and expertise are the best attributes for the flamethrower. The reason for this is because core engineer benefits the most from conditions unlike the Scrapper or the Holosmith. Kits being the most essential weapons to the engineer require a lot of cooldown and rotation memorization in order to put out the highest possible damage, possibly than any other profession in the game.

not really if you are going flamethrower, the tool tips pretty much already tells you what attribute you'll be running flame thrower

Skill 1 - only apply 1 stack of burn at the end of the channelRest of skills - although apply more than 1 stack of burning, but the cooldown is too long

Trait: Firearms > Juggernaut - Gain might and stability while wielding a flamethrower.

so pretty much points towards Power build because burning stacks is difficult to build up solely on the kit

[Rise.8259]

I have wondered if running a full power build with juggernaut would be good. I realized there's no point in running juggernaut with a condition build so I haven't been doing it.

I've been doing full precision/condition items with firearms build that focuses on conditions and critical damage at short distance.

It seems to do pretty good. I mean, it's better than my double pistol firearms build.But I don't know how it would compare with a rifle or other weapons.

The only downside to it is that in group events I am forced to switch to my turret build and pistols in order to just not die. I can't survive close enough to bosses to actually do damage with a flamethrower.

[DeanBB.4268]

@Rise.8259 said:I have wondered if running a full power build with juggernaut would be good. I realized there's no point in running juggernaut with a condition build so I haven't been doing it.

Might benefits both Power and Condition Damage, so Juggernaut is still good with a condition focus.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"Rise.8259" said:I have wondered if running a full power build with juggernaut would be good. I realized there's no point in running juggernaut with a condition build so I haven't been doing it.

I've been doing full precision/condition items with firearms build that focuses on conditions and critical damage at short distance.

It seems to do pretty good. I mean, it's better than my double pistol firearms build.But I don't know how it would compare with a rifle or other weapons.

I recommend you look into the builds here and read the additional info (rotation explanations etc.).