Half-hearted Heat

I have some issues with Holo. The CD on PF and Kits beeing on top with the lack of fields and finishers but also the half-hearted commitment to the Heat-design. If you limit skilluse this way wouldnt it be logical for PF-skills to have no CD like theif e.g.? That would give you at least some flexibillity. This spec feels so much like driving on rails.

Totally agree. It's like a railroaded self punishing flashy warrior.

Ya they designed way way too many limits and didn't give anywhere near the level of performance to match all the limits. Poor design by ANet again on Engi. Why do we have a heat mechanic AND cool downs AND a lockout period AND self damage to attain dps lower than almost all other classes?

I think all the restrictions make a ton of sense if the class was doing significantly more damage.

Absent that, I would agree that the restrictions make no sense.

I DO like the idea of removing cooldowns and balancing entirely around heat.

I think it was well designed but severely undertuned. Lowest hanging fruit is to give PF the treatment kits got a few years back, scale based on weapon. Next is buff sword damage, I have tested it with heat, using two AA chains followed by #2 with quickness and it's it damaged by simply bomb AA. That can't happen for a pure damage spec.

It may need more than that but those two changes would be a good first step to see how it can compete (when the broken builds are fixed) and nothing needs redesigning.

@Adamantium.3682 said:I think it was well designed but severely undertuned. Lowest hanging fruit is to give PF the treatment kits got a few years back, scale based on weapon. Next is buff sword damage, I have tested it with heat, using two AA chains followed by #2 with quickness and it's it damaged by simply bomb AA. That can't happen for a pure damage spec.

It may need more than that but those two changes would be a good first step to see how it can compete (when the broken builds are fixed) and nothing needs redesigning.

This thread is not about Engi beeing in the raidmeta or not. Can you please substantiate your opinion of the Heat-mechanic with cooldowns on PH-skills is the better design?

@schloumou.3982 said:

@Adamantium.3682 said:I think it was well designed but severely undertuned. Lowest hanging fruit is to give PF the treatment kits got a few years back, scale based on weapon. Next is buff sword damage, I have tested it with heat, using two AA chains followed by #2 with quickness and it's it damaged by simply bomb AA. That can't happen for a pure damage spec.

It may need more than that but those two changes would be a good first step to see how it can compete (when the broken builds are fixed) and nothing needs redesigning.

I made it pretty clear that I don't think there's anything wrong with the design of Holosmith. Removing cooldowns seems like a balancing nightmare on a Profession that already needs balance attention.

It would be nice to get some more interaction with heat on core skills/weapons, although as I play it more you need something to use under 50 heat. If everything is buffed above 50 heat then using any skills below that threshold would be a dps loss and that doesn't feel good either. Still, I think it would be nice to have some better functionality above 50 heat (and 100 given ECSU).

(nearly) taking away cds in pf would certainly be an interesting method of solving the issues pf has right now. i dont feel like balancing it would be all that hard, although several different steps may need to be taken to rejigger it.

One of the main changes that need to happen is having different heat breakpoints.

50% as the only threshold feels bad. Especially for the heal skill.

Actually, there is a couple of interesting changes that I have in mind that may help with this problem. While I don't think we should completely forgo cooldowns, as some skills like Holographic Shockwave could have their impact drastically reduced to compensate for being able to knock lock 5 targets in a wide area, I do believe there are various aspects of the elite spec that could be improved in relation to cooldowns. The solution I propose is moving Photon Blitz to skill 2 and having it behave as an Engi version of Unload, perhaps even making it an alternate auto-attack that behaves similar to the Warrior's traited Dual Shot with a ludicrously short cast time. In both cases it should have the same heat generation rate as it does now.

The primary changes of this would be:

• Holo Leap would move to skill 3, making it align with the leap on our sword (as has been requested).
• Corona Burst would move to skill 4, as far as I'm aware this makes no difference to anything at all.
• Condition builds would have no worry about time they're stuck in the Forge unable to inflict condis as they would have a good auto-attack.
• Photon Blitz would be useful to quickly wrack up heat to the threshold that you need.
• Due to the high heat generation, fighting at mid-range with Photon Blitz simply wouldn't be a sustainable.
• Crystal Configuration: Storm would have less value, as non-Storm builds could always use Blitz as a ranged, Storm generates heat slower and Condi builds would be unlikely to gain value from Shrapnel boosted Storm autos.

Not all skills on the photon forge need to have their cooldowns removed, but Photon Blitz currently behaves as the "condi damage attack" while the basic combo is the "physical damage attack" and this would make that design more apparent. Corona Burst maintains a solid amount of might and vuln (and stab) in its current iteration but would have to change significantly to work without a cooldown and not stack with itself. Holographic Shockwave would be completely ridiculous without a cooldown as it would be an AoE headshot with several times the stun duration.

Only way to make this heat mechanism work is to keep damage the same and increase the maximum heat limit or increase the damage and keep the heat limit the same.

The problem I'm seeing is it looks like they had a bunch of great ideas, but never fleshed them out fully. I've never seen a class or spec with this high a risk and this low of a reward. Our damage is pitiful.

For example, heat bonuses increase past 100% for sword, but not for exceeds? What gives?

The only problem I have at the moment is fluency. For sucha zerky espec with so many restrictions it needs skills which arent hindered by some stupid animation time.ESPECIALLY for engineers where we have so little acitve defenses that also allow us to use skills during the active defenses.It makes 0 sense to have a glassy melee spec thats locked behind such slow and obvious skill animations. All of the leaps have such clumpsy pre/aftercasts it's insane in a pvp environment.

Personally I think the way PF works is fine. The fact that some skills generate more heat promotes less spamming and more situational use. Passive heat generation is also not too bad, since it provides some counterplay in PvP and doesn't make it just another meat-headed mechanic. What I hate about heat is pretty much what most people say: Adjusting only sword abilities to heat level and not the other weapons was half-assing it, especially because engi already has such a limited choice of weapons.

However, what I hate the most is that in PvP we're still pretty much stuck with healing turret. Coolant blast only heals the same amount as HT if you're over 50% heat if you don't count in blasting the water field with your turret. And if you collect Ht after deploying it's even better again. Cauterize is nice if you're running power but is overshadowed by HT again because HT also cleanses 2 condis as well and the HT's toolbelt skill gives you another water field.

In my opinion they should make cooland blast's base healing a little bit stronger, or add the cooling vapor also below 50% heat because otherwise the skill would just be too much of a gamble to run, compared to HT. Above 50% heat you'd get frost aura and maybe a longer cooling vapor duration. And they should add 100%+ heat effects to the exceed skills. Cauterize's 100% heat effect for example could be that condis are converted instead of removed and cooling blasts 100% heat effect could be even more duration for cooling vapor. Or 50% adds frost aura, 100% adds frost aura and longer cooling vapor. Whatever. Just make cooling blast better, I'm tired of using the clunky turret.