Holosmith: It only does EVERYTHING

Holosmith is probably the absolute worst example of a Core+ style elite specialization still existing in the game, at least in a Top 3 Builds style way, to such a degree it highlights how terrible the entire "Trade off" philosophy has been devised and implemented since it's inception.

For taking holosmith Engineers lose access to their one elite toolbelt skills. As a result of taking Holosmith engineers loose access to Toss Elixir X, Med Pack Drop, and Orbital Strike. In the grand scheme of things none of these skills, while potentially strong truly outweigh the tangible value of Photon Forge in literally any capacity, hence why Holo has consistently been one of if not the most consistent top tier builds since PoF released.

Meanwhile Holosmith is considered "balanced" by Arenanet by their definition because of the fact that since it at least loses access to the elite toolbelt skill it is considered "balanced" and holosmith has as a result never once been brought up as part of any classwide review the way Scrapper, Berserker, Mirage, Druid, and others were.

Even with the loss of any of the three elite toolbelt skills let's look at what Holosmith provides the player;

• More damage through both Photon Forge and Traits and several of the Exceed tootbelt skills.
• More active mitigation frames through the use of Utilities such as Photon Wall.
• More straight durability and face tank through utilities like Hard Light Arena and Spectrum Shield.
• More mobility through forge abilities like Photon Leap.
• More sustain through things like Heat Therapy.
• More CC through Forge, Utilities, and traits.
• More condition cleanse through traits like Prismatic Converter.

There is a serious question what ISN'T Holosmith better at? There is no reason right now to run a core engineer over a holosmith. Holosmith just gives you more of everything layered ontop of the core traits due to the way it is designed. And while you can make scrapper builds that bunker harder than Holosmith, holo still bunks well enough in relation to it's inherently high damage it has consistently muscled scrapper out of the meta entirely outside of the short window after Gyros were reworked into Wells.

A lot of this comes from it's utilities and traits. Why is Holosmith's trait line providing condition conversion, passive healing, as well as it's utilities providing high access to block and protection and straight damage mitigation on TOP of it's high damage modifiers?

I have never personally minded Holosmith being the YOLO DPS spec but the spec has been a never ending problem due to it's capacity for top tier damage as well as inheriting Core Engineer's inherent sustain and excellent healing skills as well as just having better access to every niche you can imagine than core engineer on top of it.

That's why, similar to how I proposed Mirage suffer a -300 vitality debuff inherent to the spec, Holosmith should suffer a -25-33% healing penalty for taking that elite spec.

Running holosmith should force the player into a high risk high damage spec that needs to play very correctly because it's capacity to resustain and recover after a serious mistake is significantly less than core engineer and especially scrapper. Also overtime the sustain and defense orientated traits and utilities in holosmith should be phased out. This should open up capacity for the other Engineer specs to shine without hitting core traits directly; Core Engineer being the all-rounded, Holosmith being the extremely volatile glass canon, and Scrapper being the super defensive variant.

Running holosmith should force the player into a high risk high damage spec that needs to play very correctly because it's capacity to resustain and recover after a serious mistake is significantly less than core engineer and especially scrapper. Also overtime the sustain and defense orientated traits and utilities in holosmith should be phased out.

As I have said before, if core specializations look like this;

Then Elite Specializations should be doing things like this;

In Holosmith's case in specific, it should be pulling defense and healing to add to damage and mobility, rather than just overlaying everything Holo has to offer on top of core engineer and calling it even because of the elite toolbelt skills.

pretty much

first nerf more core engi traits and then pull all toolbelt skills into chronos gravity well

As long as the nerfs stay confined to pvp its all good, because its qq threads like these that nerf specs in pve too. (Holo's hammer knockdown radius for eg)

Let me fix this statement for you:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:Holosmith is probably the absolute worst example of a Core+ style elite specialization still existing in the game, at least in a Top 3 Builds style way, to such a degree it highlights how terrible the entire "Trade off" philosophy has been devised and implemented since it's inception.

For taking Holosmith, Engineers lose access to their weaknesses. As a result of taking Holosmith, Engineers become Saiyans.

The reason why holosmith has stuff like protection, blocks, sustain is because these things enable the spec to do it's job.

I don't know if you are familiar with the terms of the game league of legends, but I could explain it best with their terminology.Holosmith, translated in the class terms of LoL, is a skirmisher.

That class is focused on melee dps, they are primarily damage dealers, just like holosmith. Now if you are looking at the kits of champions in that class, you see that alot of them have healing, blocking effects, damage reduction and other defensive stuff.

Because they are supposed to be squishy damage dealers in melee range. Without these tools, they simply can't work, because they are getting in danger by having to melee in glassy builds. They need tools to stay alive while going in to deal dps.Holosmith is exactly this, a class supposed to build glassy stats (like they currently do, as I keep reading holosmith is using berserker stats in PvP), while using active defenses to stay alive.

The problem with holosmith seems to be that damage is too low currently. Holosmith is supposed to have the same weakness like skirmisher's in LoL. Bait out their defense (block, damage reduction, etc), then burst them down without giving them the chance to heal back up.With the lack of damage, it's hard to burst them down while their defense is down.

@Kodama.6453 said:The reason why holosmith has stuff like protection, blocks, sustain is because these things enable the spec to do it's job.

I don't know if you are familiar with the terms of the game league of legends, but I could explain it best with their terminology.Holosmith, translated in the class terms of LoL, is a skirmisher.

That class is focused on melee dps, they are primarily damage dealers, just like holosmith. Now if you are looking at the kits of champions in that class, you see that alot of them have healing, blocking effects, damage reduction and other defensive stuff.

Because they are supposed to be squishy damage dealers in melee range. Without these tools, they simply can't work, because they are getting in danger by having to melee in glassy builds. They need tools to stay alive while going in to deal dps.Holosmith is exactly this, a class supposed to build glassy stats (like they currently do, as I keep reading holosmith is using berserker stats in PvP), while using active defenses to stay alive.

The problem with holosmith seems to be that damage is too low currently. Holosmith is supposed to have the same weakness like skirmisher's in LoL. Bait out their defense (block, damage reduction, etc), then burst them down without giving them the chance to heal back up.With the lack of damage, it's hard to burst them down while their defense is down.

So basicly trade holo def from more damage, well scrapper should trade damage otput for support and defense, so i always imaged hole would be the oposite, but both should complete each other when playing together.

But where would core engie stay to make it still an avaliable class?

If some core stuff are making some elite specs to strong, why not Anet makes Core elite specs ?

Its odd that you talk about Holosmiths utilities as if theyre incredibly amazing when the current meta holosmith doesnt run a single holosmith utility. Theyre worse than core utilities. So already we can cut more than half of your "what Holosmith provides" bullet points. The truth is that people severely overestimate Holosmith. Yes, it provides more damage than base Engineer thanks to enhanced heat capacity unit, and yes, you get a free mediocre kit in the form of photon forge. But that is, simply put, not that much.

As for your suggestion, lets reword it. "Lets make Holosmith unplayable in PvP". Its only slightly ahead of core engineer, so a nerf this massive, well lets just say it chronos the spec. It also is just poorly thought out. The problem with Holo right now isnt Holo itself. Its that as a result of the catastrophic february 25 patch, damage is far too low. Holosmith is not actually very tanky in a vacuum. But damage is so low even a glass cannon like Holosmith is unkillable, despite actually providing close to no sustain or defense at all (seriously, its got Heat Therapy, which is an average 50-100 healing per second. Thats just ... not much).

Can't disagree, Holo feels extremely powerful when a good player uses it. Almost impossible to 1v1 because the CC and durability is just through the roof.

I had the opportunity to duel a very good holo the other day in WvW. It’s not 100% related as to SPvP but I think it’s worth mentioning. I also saw him duel a few other people.

First, everything he did hit hard. He had multiple cc abilities. His range pressure (mortar) was very high. Obviously, his melee was even stronger. He used stealth regularly and he had healing that was extremely effective at bringing him from low to full.

Which doesn’t mean I want this spec gone. I really enjoyed fighting him because it’s really fun to face a build that can do good damage from melee or range as the case may demand. That’s an optimized setup in my mind and some sustain makes the fight more complicated and fun to fight.

Rather than cut the heal, I’d make the stealth access a little shorter. Holo has a lot of really short cooldowns. Stealth combined with the invulnerability skills is often a full reset on several crucial cooldowns and lets holo wear down his opponent’s cooldowns with less risk.

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

@"saerni.2584" said:I had the opportunity to duel a very good holo the other day in WvW. It’s not 100% related as to SPvP but I think it’s worth mentioning. I also saw him duel a few other people.

First, everything he did hit hard. He had multiple cc abilities. His range pressure (mortar) was very high. Obviously, his melee was even stronger. He used stealth regularly and he had healing that was extremely effective at bringing him from low to full.

Which doesn’t mean I want this spec gone. I really enjoyed fighting him because it’s really fun to face a build that can do good damage from melee or range as the case may demand. That’s an optimized setup in my mind and some sustain makes the fight more complicated and fun to fight.

Rather than cut the heal, I’d make the stealth access a little shorter. Holo has a lot of really short cooldowns. Stealth combined with the invulnerability skills is often a full reset on several crucial cooldowns and lets holo wear down his opponent’s cooldowns with less risk.

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

How ... how did he "access stealth regularly". Holo only has 1 stealth skill, and its on a 45 second cooldown. I mean, sure, you can toss that nerf on them, it just doesnt really do much.

Herald is the same thing. Coincidentally, it and holosmith are the two best PvP classes.

@saerni.2584 said:

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

Engineer should lose all access to stealth outside blasting smoke fields.

The developers need to figure out if they want Holosmith to be a bruiser, team fighter, roamer, or bunker because right now it's all those things at once. If it's going to be all those at once, it needs to lose power in every role and be on the same level as Elementalist - taxed HEAVILY for hybridization.

Throughout last year and this one, all suggestions, often made by engineer players, using Anet's tradeoff logic, intending to cut some sustain/damage/CC potency off the very spec itself (in order to save scrapper and engineer) were ignored, hell I've seen some suggestions of self damage to gain more damage I could almost get behind. Maybe it's not as easy as one may think, or maybe Anet truly doesn't read even if someone in this thread had the ultimate means to balance the game but there's no point in preaching to the choir right now, it's dull.

The engineers here argue solely either for damage control in case of zeal or witch-hunt or don't want their other, much worse specs being even worse.

@Shiyo.3578 said:Engineer should lose all access to stealth outside blasting smoke fields.

Why.

@Shiyo.3578 said:Herald is the same thing. Coincidentally, it and holosmith are the two best PvP classes.

@"saerni.2584" said:

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

Thats literally just Toss Elixir S. What do you suggest we replace it with?

The developers need to figure out if they want Holosmith to be a bruiser, team fighter, roamer, or bunker because right now it's all those things at once. If it's going to be all those at once, it needs to lose power in every role and be on the same level as Elementalist - taxed HEAVILY for hybridization.

It isnt. The problem is that, with how low damage, the term "bunker" has become meaningless. Every class, including thief of all things, is now a bunker. Every class is now a bruiser. As for roamer or team fighter, again, mostly on the same level as all other popular sidenoders, except maybe Ranger.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Herald is the same thing. Coincidentally, it and holosmith are the two best PvP classes.

@saerni.2584 said:

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

Toss smoke field.

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Herald is the same thing. Coincidentally, it and holosmith are the two best PvP classes.

@saerni.2584 said:

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

You gotta elaborate. AoE blinding field? Projectile denial? What does it do?

Pulsing blind would be more fair.

@Shiyo.3578 said:Pulsing blind would be more fair.

Yeah, see, with how people react to Flashbang already, Im not sure most would really agree.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Pulsing blind would be more fair.

However, I don't think holosmith should have access to toolbelt skills. Forge should replace them.

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Pulsing blind would be more fair.

Then we need to buff up Photon Forge hard. Also massively improve their utility skills. That would be the biggest downside any elite spec ever had in the entire history of elite specs (far bigger than chronos even), and nothing Holo provides is currently anywhere near good enough to justify it.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Pulsing blind would be more fair.

big ooof shiyo. random suggestion without putting any thoughts to it. expected more from an old forum warrior. toss pulsing blind smoke field... lel

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Herald is the same thing. Coincidentally, it and holosmith are the two best PvP classes.

@saerni.2584 said:

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

You want to replace the stealth with a utility that would allow the holosmith to stack even more stealth?

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"saerni.2584" said:I had the opportunity to duel a very good holo the other day in WvW. It’s not 100% related as to SPvP but I think it’s worth mentioning. I also saw him duel a few other people.

First, everything he did hit hard. He had multiple cc abilities. His range pressure (mortar) was very high. Obviously, his melee was even stronger. He used stealth regularly and he had healing that was extremely effective at bringing him from low to full.

Which doesn’t mean I want this spec gone. I really enjoyed fighting him because it’s really fun to face a build that can do good damage from melee or range as the case may demand. That’s an optimized setup in my mind and some sustain makes the fight more complicated and fun to fight.

Rather than cut the heal, I’d make the stealth access a little shorter. Holo has a lot of really short cooldowns. Stealth combined with the invulnerability skills is often a full reset on several crucial cooldowns and lets holo wear down his opponent’s cooldowns with less risk.

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

Regularly just means he got to use it multiple times because his other sustain meant he could last that long. The issue isn’t the stealth access it’s the duration of that stealth combined with shorter Holo cooldowns.

I’m not suggesting we gut Holo. That’s why my suggestion is a fairly minor scale back of one particular defensive tool.

@knite.1542 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Herald is the same thing. Coincidentally, it and holosmith are the two best PvP classes.

@saerni.2584 said:

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:Pulsing blind would be more fair.

Toss smoke field, Magnetic Inversion/Holographic Shockwave, achieve stealth while blinding people. Or make an invisible retreat with Acid Bomb without requiring the Bomb Kit. Direct Stealth almost pales in comparison.

@saerni.2584 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@saerni.2584 said:I had the opportunity to duel a very good holo the other day in WvW. It’s not 100% related as to SPvP but I think it’s worth mentioning. I also saw him duel a few other people.

First, everything he did hit hard. He had multiple cc abilities. His range pressure (mortar) was very high. Obviously, his melee was even stronger. He used stealth regularly and he had healing that was extremely effective at bringing him from low to full.

Which doesn’t mean I want this spec gone. I really enjoyed fighting him because it’s really fun to face a build that can do good damage from melee or range as the case may demand. That’s an optimized setup in my mind and some sustain makes the fight more complicated and fun to fight.

Rather than cut the heal, I’d make the stealth access a little shorter. Holo has a lot of really short cooldowns. Stealth combined with the invulnerability skills is often a full reset on several crucial cooldowns and lets holo wear down his opponent’s cooldowns with less risk.

So maybe make the Holo trade off include -50% to duration of self applied stealth effects. Thematically it makes sense because they glow brightly and balance wise it cuts from their sustain without touching core.

Well, thats the thing, its already only 3 seconds iirc. Its not really a long stealth duration.

I’m not suggesting we gut Holo. That’s why my suggestion is a fairly minor scale back of one particular defensive tool.

Yeah I suppose thats fair.