Dispelling Myths

The problems with holosmith are largely the unaddressed problems with core engi, not holosmith. The elite spec just happens to be the best 3rd trait line to use with those core abilities. Photon Forge grants insane burst damage forcing the opponent to go on the defensive. When, however, the holo is close to overheating or otherwise leaves forge, that should be when there should be an opportunity for the opponent to go on the offensive. The problem is, core engineer has incredibly potent defensive skills that easily bridge the forge gape despite having somewhat long~ish cooldowns. While Grenades are not very defensive on the face of it, one of the reasons they are so strong is that the engi can throw them behind them to cover their retreat. It's late and I haven't had time to think of a satisfactory solution; post yours please.

Holosmith "completes" core engi. Without it, you're always lacking something. You can have phenomenial defensive capabilities, but then you're giving up either mobility or damage. You can dish out excellent damage, espeically in teamfights if allowed to free cast, but then your defenses are paper thin. You can be slippery with rocket boots, but then assuming you dedicate the other slot to grenades, you're going to be lacking in defense. Elixir gun is probably your best bet in order to give yourself at least one stunbreak and some amount of cleanse and sustain, but it doesn't manage to cover all three bases on its own.

It's a delectate balancing act in order to fit everything you need on core engi builds.

Holo lets you have sustain without running elixir gun thanks to heat therapy. Damage without running grenades thanks to Forge, might gen, and lazer's edge. Mobility without running rocket boots thanks to Holo leap. Defense without running inventions because it isn't forced to run pistol with shield.

This lets holo take advantage of all the defense, utility, and sustain core engi has to offer without lacking in other categories.

The issue is undeniably Holosmith. Anet's solution has been to nerf all of the benefits Holo got out of core traits and utilities, but the problem is that so much of the power of Holosmith is contained within a single traitline. If you get 60% of what you need just by running holosmith, all core traitlines need to do is account for the extra 40%. If you can manage to do more than that with two traitlines and 5 utilities (spoilers: you can) you've got a powerful spec.

@"Kuma.1503" said:Holosmith "completes" core engi. Without it, you're always lacking something. You can have phenomenial defensive capabilities, but then you're giving up either mobility or damage. You can dish out excellent damage, espeically in teamfights if allowed to free cast, but then your defenses are paper thin. You can be slippery with rocket boots, but then assuming you dedicate the other slot to grenades, you're going to be lacking in defense. Elixir gun is probably your best bet in order to give yourself at least one stunbreak and some amount of cleanse and sustain, but it doesn't manage to cover all three bases on its own.

It's a delectate balancing act in order to fit everything you need on core engi builds.

Holo lets you have sustain without running elixir gun thanks to heat therapy. Damage without running grenades thanks to Forge, might gen, and lazer's edge. Mobility without running rocket boots thanks to Holo leap. Defense without running inventions because it isn't forced to run pistol with shield.

This lets holo take advantage of all the defense, utility, and sustain core engi has to offer without lacking in other categories.

The issue is undeniably Holosmith. Anet's solution has been to nerf all of the benefits Holo got out of core traits and utilities, but the problem is that so much of the power of Holosmith is contained within a single traitline. If you get 60% of what you need just by running holosmith, all core traitlines need to do is account for the extra 40%. If you can manage to do more than that with two traitlines and 5 utilities (spoilers: you can) you've got a powerful spec.

What you say makes sense, but I find that I don't mind fighting holo whatsoever on whatever build if you take away their core defensive options.

I believe you. Holo runs all core utilities. If you can force any build to burn all of its utilities, it's going to be an easy kill.

My solution is to delete engie and barring that rework explosives again lol

It doesn't really seem like an issue anymore

The problem with holo is absolutely holosmith itself.Forge makes up for the weaponswap, an extra set of skills that give you mobility, CC, AoE cleave. Also you get extra sustain through heat theraphy. You can have a kit that just does too many things too well all at once. If a build does everything, it should be equally bad at those things.

My TLDR idea for balancing holo is to delete Heat Therapy. Make it into a glass cannon. Make going in full yolo damage mode worth it. Or speccing into full defense worth it. But hovering between the two should mean you can do neither.

@"Kuma.1503" said:Holosmith "completes" core engi. Without it, you're always lacking something. You can have phenomenial defensive capabilities.

Whether holosmith "completes" core engi or in another word "lacking something" is dependent on what other classes can do.

basically, thanks to the mechanical power creep introduced since HoT

you notice it more playing warrior, that warrior has to be stat-wise overpowered to even function in the current game state, that normalizing numbers basically killed warrior entirely and only by buffing so many numbers since Feb patch that warrior shows a slightest come back that will be soon be replaced(healbreaker).(have you seen all the numbers buff warrior got since feb, all adding up with nerfs on other classes it's huge, yet warrior still completely struggles as dps, even the slightest viability of warrior is completely carried by full counter, a PoF mechanic, you can play shoutwar without full counter and you will be destroyed, very toxic imo, keeping warrior 2012 yet also giving warrior a completely busted full counter)

so what are the busted mechanic specs that's been power creeped so hard even with normalized numbers?

daredevil (king of busted mechanics, before hot, core mesmer and core thief had fair share of roaming specs, other classes also have some light on roaming and was even doable to have some fun with glass specs, but after HoT, basically all kicked out by daredevil, either normalize endurance, or delete dash)herald (yes, all kicked out by daredevil except herald, glint is too forgiving, tbh rev in general is just too good, except for hammer and ventari, not surprised for a hot class, like it has medium HP with heavy armor, only comes second to warrior in terms of base stats, you would think the skill mechanics would be close to warrior in terms of simplicity and functions, WRONG, gets multiple teleport, one of the most busted mechanic, gets condi transfer, gets weapon swap with double legend. i main rev in pve/pvp/wvw for almost 1 year now, still amazes me how much better rev as a class is.)mirage (so busted, they had to remove a dodge, yet still very oppressive when the enemy doesn't have thief)holo (mr. i can do it all)firebrand (tomes busted, on top of renewed focus)spellbreaker(full counter, one of the most busted skill of all time can't carry how trash mechanically warrior is at core)

im leaving out ranger/necro/ele because not my class, don't know much.

Holosmith is the problem because it enables Core Engi.

Forge is the weapon set Core Engi needed :

• Good Cleave with good attack range
• CC
• Burst damage
• Boons and when traited, Barrier
• Mobility, and when traited Superspeed

It's not hard to see that Forge is an ultra overloaded weaponset.

And here's the part where it gets absurd :Holo Leap - 2s CDCorona Burst - 6s CDPhoton Blitz - 10s CDHolographic Shockwave - 15s CD

Just using forge for mobility, yu have several casts of Superspeed boosted leaps before Heat forces yu to drop forge.

Just using forge for damage, yu can drop forge the moment Heat gets high, and when yu swap back, voila yur skills are already back up.

The big problems with holo are:

• High heat is very easy to upkeep while avoiding overheating, giving passive damage scaling and passive might with lasers edge and ECSU. There are a lot of easy tricks you can use to maintain high heat and avoid overheating such as using the pulsing heat of corona burst, or using elixir S or X when deactivate forge is on cooldown.
• A redundantly overpowered mobility skill that leaps, does considerable damage, grants superspeed, and removes cripple, chill, and immob when traited.
• Forge skills are all high impact, easy to land abilities with low cooldowns.

The reason nades are so op for holo in particular (without considering damage) is because they have the mobility to endlessly kite most builds with them. Also with engi's utility & traits they have the means to set up low-telegraph burst and contest in melee. When you look at it objectively, holo gains exceptional mobility and sustained damage over core engi.

Solutions to engi/holo are:

• Redesign flashbang.
• 2s cd on holo leap was insanity. 4s cd nerf was no where near a solution. Either get rid of the condi removal and maybe reduce super speed duration on CC:Zephyr, or increase the cd by a lot.
• Make overheating an actual concern, or redesign it

But really, the game is powercrept to hell and no realistic change will ever be satisfactory.

whenever I played holo I noticed that you never run out of cooldowns, and always have some high damage skills to spam, you leave forge you have nades, you use nades you have sword, sword on CD you go forge again, forge has high heat, nades off cooldown again. Maybe they should work on that.Add a trade-off that increases all weapon and kit cooldowns when you play holo by 20%, if that is not enough hit holosmiths healing too.Then you can make core engi into something worth considering without making holo a thing of nightmares.

Some of you say that its completely a holo problem. Holo is milktoast if they can't use shield 4 and 5 between forge as well as elixir S and Mortar/ supply drop blind-spam garbage etc.

@Leonidrex.5649 said:whenever I played holo I noticed that you never run out of cooldowns, and always have some high damage skills to spam, you leave forge you have nades, you use nades you have sword, sword on CD you go forge again, forge has high heat, nades off cooldown again. Maybe they should work on that.Add a trade-off that increases all weapon and kit cooldowns when you play holo by 20%, if that is not enough hit holosmiths healing too.Then you can make core engi into something worth considering without making holo a thing of nightmares.

Always having something up is by design. Both Engi and Ele are like that across all specs. You could increase cooldowns by 50% and they'd still by able to cycle through everything. It would by clunky as hell, but when you've got 5 different weapon sets (Nades, Forge, Mortar, Egun, s/s) that's to be expected.

Core got around this issue the same way Ele does. Kit weapon skills are all low impact. Even the infamous nades when you don't have Holo's free might Gen and lazor's edge to carry their damage into absurdity.

Holo turns all of these skills into burst skills thanks to its might gen and damage modifiers. Anet should put some of this offensive power into firearms. Make Holo run Explosions/Firearms as it's core lines if it wants to burst hard with everything.

You kill thee birds with one stone. You buff core. you buff scrapper, you make holo sacrifice sustain from elixirs if it wants to be a dps powerhouse. Best of all, you could make this change game-wide and it would improve the diversity of engineer specs in PvE. Raid Holo runs Firearms anyway so it wouldn't feel much different.

@Kuma.1503 said:

@"Leonidrex.5649" said:whenever I played holo I noticed that you never run out of cooldowns, and always have some high damage skills to spam, you leave forge you have nades, you use nades you have sword, sword on CD you go forge again, forge has high heat, nades off cooldown again. Maybe they should work on that.Add a trade-off that increases all weapon and kit cooldowns when you play holo by 20%, if that is not enough hit holosmiths healing too.Then you can make core engi into something worth considering without making holo a thing of nightmares.

lazor's edge works only when you are IN forge, so at best you can do barrage.Or thrown nade and enter forge, that technically might work too.But I disagree, couple stacks of might alone does not make the difference THIS big. And it boils down to the issue of high sustain.If you do 50k dmg over span of a fight and someone heals for 50k you did nothing, but increasing your damage by 20% suddenly makes you go from " did nothing " to took over 50% hp from someone, and this is the case with holo due to extra reliable hard hitters in the form of corona burst, leap and 4.

@Ovark.2514 said:Some of you say that its completely a holo problem. Holo is milktoast if they can't use shield 4 and 5 between forge as well as elixir S and Mortar/ supply drop blind-spam garbage etc.

The only reason Holos swapped out from using Rifle was because Rifle was dumpster trucked.

If Rifle was still as strong as it was before, they will still use Rifle for range pressure/Immob/ burst damage.

Now that Rifle's range is a bb gun, and the burst damage is garbage, there is literally no point in using it anymore, that's why Holos go back to Sword/Shield which still has great damage.

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:whenever I played holo I noticed that you never run out of cooldowns, and always have some high damage skills to spam, you leave forge you have nades, you use nades you have sword, sword on CD you go forge again, forge has high heat, nades off cooldown again. Maybe they should work on that.Add a trade-off that increases all weapon and kit cooldowns when you play holo by 20%, if that is not enough hit holosmiths healing too.Then you can make core engi into something worth considering without making holo a thing of nightmares.

Ok, you're going to get a kick out of this. I was curious just how big/small the difference would be between the burst of Holo vs Core.So I did a few golem tests, nearly pulled my hair out several times because grenades just love giving me inconsistent numbers.

I did find out one amusing tidbit. For you holo mains out there, you'll want to know this because this has huge ramifications for how you should be bursting.

SO

After the recent round of nerfs grenades took...

Shrapnel Grenade hits harder than grenade barrage.

Consistently! Without even factoring in the bleeds. It's about ~400 more damage than nade barrage even if your opponent instant cleanses the bleed. If you get the bleed to stick, it's ~1200 more damage.

Best of all, you can guarantee all hits crit with intel sigil. Nade barrage made me want to chuck a grenade at my computer screen because I could not get all 6 hits to consistently crit, even with an intel sigil. I was running the meta set up. Explosives, Alchemy with Zerker/Revenant. I could have gone firearms, but that would have resulted in unrealistic numbers.

So yeah, if you're still using nades after the patch. Shrapnel grenade is your hard hitter. Prioritize it over Barrage unless you're in forge.