[WvW] Has anyone played with Photonic Blasting Module?

So I recently learned that this skill has a Power coefficient of 5.0 which is farking insanity. I've known this skill could do a lot of damage for a long time, but because no one ever uses it, I didn't realize how much potential it had. Under the right circumstances a skill like that should be able to hit like... 30 - 35k?

Anyway, I put a build together that I'm going to try out next I'm out and about. I haven't yet made it in game, so if you have any experience using this trait, please let me know what it's like.

Build here.

It has plenty enough mobility to poke and hard kite people until it's the right time to burst, and A.E.D. ensures that if used properly health will be regained from the damage of Overheating. On paper it looks completely usable to me and only semi-meme tier. It has a major gimmick but it has enough options for defense and mobility that it can survive/escape if it needs to.I'm very curious to try this and to know what other people have done with this trait, whether they made a similar build or something totally different.

EDITOkay I made the build in game and it was a mistake, LMAO.I think the coefficient is nerfed in PvP/WvW? I'm not sure what the deal is but I seem to only crit 5 - 7k tops, so there must be something going on that I wasn't aware of.

i was testing out a zerg spike build a while ago with this trait and got 14k on a zerg guard with prot. might be a stealth nerf from megapatch and wiki never updated it.

Pretty sure you can pop off 20k hits with it if you stack modifiers well, the issue is more the range and skill lockout

Some time ago people were oneshoting each other from stealth with this but it was a troll build that was food when you failed.

It's pretty stronk on paper, but in actual practice, the penalty for Overheat heavily outweighs the "hee hee damage" yu get for blowing up in yur target's face.The worst case scenario is also pretty severe : Yu don't land the explosion, yur toolbelt is locked, yu get dabbed on because yu can't use those utilities.

In other words : it's a pretty meme trait which capitalizes on failure of resource management, and in the case of Holosmith, yu don't ever wanna fail to manage Heat.

I may have spoken too soon.

Seems I didn't give the build enough of an honest try because I had a lot more success with it recently. As I'd said in the OP, you basically have to play it as core Engineer until the right time to burst presents itself. I found the best percentage of Heat to be at before combat is 90% as it is enough to get off a Corona Burst and/or Holographic Shockwave before Overheating which you can follow up with Jump Shot. If you combine Jump Shot, Corona Burst's second attack, and the Overheat all in one it will be a multi-hit of well over 30k.

There may be better ways to build it for better damage, but I think what I've made offers enough utility to consider it an actual (non-meme) build.

I'm going to keep playing with this for a while to see what it can do because as of right now I feel it has a lot of potential. If anyone else has played/is playing something similar please chime in with your experiences and thoughts. I'm really enjoying this and would like to brain storm with others.

So I haven’t tried this in WvW or sPvP. I have tried this in PvE. I didn’t realize that this trait holds your heat when not in forge mode, thus all our holo abilities that receive buffs from having high amounts of heat will keep those buffs permanently, theoretically. This is very useful for pve, imo.

@"scorekeeper.6524" said:So I haven’t tried this in WvW or sPvP. I have tried this in PvE. I didn’t realize that this trait holds your heat when not in forge mode, thus all our holo abilities that receive buffs from having high amounts of heat will keep those buffs permanently, theoretically. This is very useful for pve, imo.

Yes that's correct, but do note that it kinda ruins any form of "rotation based" gameplay yu can achieve with Holo because the heat doesn't drop due to the trait.

That means yu are playing around the idea of using Forge till High heat and not being able to use Forge anymore if yu wanna keep the High Heat benefits, which can result in a bigger loss of DPS simply because yu aren't using the Forge mode to its fullest.

It's just a really awkward trait in general, which kinda bends the intended gameplay of Holo onto itself to provide a sort of "reward for failure" in exchange for ignoring Heat management.

I agree it is awkward for sure and antithetical to the idea of swapping between in and out of forge. However if you wanna run around and do a lot of damage in open world pve without having to think so much, it’s a trait to try out.

Oh people are getting this much out of that trait? I played around with it a bit, and while I never got that much damage out of it, it did feel fun to actually strive towards overheat and then go all "DETONATE!!!" on the enemies =) But it's awesome to see you lads combine this with jumpshot for some insane burst damage. You're taking things people call trash on their own, comboing them in clever ways and getting RESULTS. And that is what this class has always been about. Try adding grenade toolbelt on top of that combo and see what you can reach.

PS: I better see some videos in the future of someone jumpshotting into a WvW blob, detonating, and then using a grenade barrage. Oh my god, the amounts of people you could down xD

@"Oxstar.7643" said:Oh people are getting this much out of that trait? I played around with it a bit, and while I never got that much damage out of it, it did feel fun to actually strive towards overheat and then go all "DETONATE!!!" on the enemies =) But it's awesome to see you lads combine this with jumpshot for some insane burst damage. You're taking things people call trash on their own, comboing them in clever ways and getting RESULTS. And that is what this class has always been about. Try adding grenade toolbelt on top of that combo and see what you can reach.

PS: I better see some videos in the future of someone jumpshotting into a WvW blob, detonating, and then using a grenade barrage. Oh my god, the amounts of people you could down xD

Although I wasn't using Grenade Barrage, I did manage to down 5 players all at once by diving in to them with Jump Shot -> Forge -> Corona Burst -> Overheat -> Gear Shield -> second burst from Corona Burst + Overheat = everyone downed.

That was the only time I managed to do it so effectively though. Every other time I'd only manage to down one or two players or none at all when jumping in to a small group. Can be tricky to pull off when there are so many random CC's and Conditions you can be hit with when YOLOing groups alone.

That is still an epic for the ages. Keep rolling, brother!

I used the build in PvP. I call it Kamikaze Holo. The most high risk, high reward build in the game I suppose. Therefore the most fun to me

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Holosmith_-_Kamikaze_Holo

I focused on getting high critical damage and turrets because thumper provides some aoe cc and rocket provides high burst from the toolbelt and sustainable pressure outside of forge. Thumper also has a stun break on toolbelt.

Using thumper may help you guarantee those surprise attacks you do on groups.