Holosmith in PvE = useless for solo?

I've not played Holosmith yet, I've been looking at the skill set and it looks... well, frankly useless for solo PvE.

It takes away my main source of damage (kits) and replaces it with boon production and protection galore. Rifle is usable PvE but not a great weapon by any means, Pistols are useless for direct damage and all the Holo skills seem to be defensive, not offensive. I also don't like the idea of the heat mechanic, it seems like unneeded complexity which has none of the utility of the kits.

Please tell me how I'm wrong and how this is as good as / any better than Scrapper for solo play. I can't even see the point in trying it right now.

Edit:

Ah it replaced my elite toolbelt skill only, not kits altogether. I mis-read.

Still seems all defence and no offence.

Photon Forge becomes your main source of damage, alongside of Laser Disk. As a solo class in PVE it is actually fairly decent. It has great self-buffing capabilities, getting plenty of might, fury, and quickness. It also has a lot of bar breaking skills. If you take either bomb kit or mortar kit, you still have access to your blind fields, rendering anything without a break bar helpless.

The heat mechanic is only as hard as you make it. Sacrificing only 5% of damage, you can run Photonic Blasting Module over Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit. Heat has no detriments then. You just use photon forge until it explodes, then finish everything else off with your buffed utilities.

You can take three or even four kits for soloplay, without loosing damage as holo, dont worry about that part :)

Other than that, Static discharge works nice with holo: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAsenUUBlIjFJD2UB0ehFSDrf/FAPggzmbz/YMA0ceOA-jxRBABXp8DgHAAe6BW4EAYmSQa2fgS1fAA-eor you can take something more conservative such as http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUhSsYfWwdLQ7FLjI13pkKvSf/OwLMYtkLBAA-jhBEABJcBA2SJIAPAgEV/Jl9HYS5HA-e

Just experiment with stuff and see what works best for you!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAsenUUBVIjFJD2IDcJjl3CrvMmGjjfpgIUAAsDFiSLA-jxRBQB0Y/BzoE8BnAgro8DAPAA8oHIhq/AA-e -- This is my build that I've been using. I just start every fight in PF, build up heat as quickly as possible, and blow all my utilities (I'm usually at ~20 might and they're at ~20 vuln) if it's still alive, use elite. No veteran has survived this onslaught yet. If one does, I just kite until I can go back into PF to do it again.

Holo is great for soloing, you can use kits fine. I suggest starting in forge, you have an extreme amount of damage for soloing, everything dies immediately.

I find the exact opposite. It's too week for raids or fractals at the moment but excels pulling everything in sight in open world

Granted, I take liberal use of the Jackal mount's ability to give me barrier for a few seconds when starting a fight, but I find Holosmith to be incredibly solo friendly. I don't use sword, I put as many pistol conditions as I can before I swap over to forge. Forge just melts everything around me, I have no need for other kits anymore so I can use the Hard Light Arena and Spectrum Shield to up my survivability. Probably not for group fractals or raids, odds are kits are still king there but I am loving Holo for wandering around the new maps.

holo is great for soloing in open world. its fun. you can spike a lot of power damage with instant procs and big hits. its more than enough for solo open world content. and its fun!

...but 7 other classes are even stronger, for some weird reason.

Holo is awesome. I have no idea why you neglected to mention the sword as a usable weapon though.

Just pretend that forge is your new kit and use your sword/offhand pistol after you swap out for a bit. In open world, you'll really just be popping into forge and using a couple skills to kill everything anyways.

Like said before, to me, it's the opposite of what you think it is. So try it out, and then judge again.

It's actually one of the classes I have least problems soloing with, and it's way more offense than defense. Defense is actually the only party I think it is lacking, but it's working out for me. For group PvE content I don't know where it stands, but it's a slight dps increase even when using pre-PoF builds + Holo. But perfectly fits solo play.

He's ok for solo once you slot in Inventions; it has movement speed and boosted survivability, those med kits have saved my butt more than once.

That said with that his damage reaches reaper levels of lame. Wouldn't change the extra power the explosives line gives me, so I end up running explosives, inventions and holosmith.