Grieving Holosmith

[BrokenGlass.9356]

I know. The dream has been dead awhile. Someone out there want to beat this dead horse with me?

How's this look?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAwqlZw0YdsIGKOWL7vbA-zRRYsRTteRIKlRFFRHJiyHERYxsxEwWG13C-e

[MrForz.1953]

Can't judge if it's good, but it's probably pretty close. Seeing your orientation however, I would start questioning the use of the sword instead of a main hand pistol.

To justify the sword being here you'd need to go all out power and direct damage and have the burning be secondary, using Modified Ammunition, Runes of the Flame Legion and perhaps Thermal Release Valve.

[BrokenGlass.9356]

I can't quite justify pistol, as it's direct damage isn't high enough.

Thermal Release Valve is interesting, and needs testing.

But I came up with this while trying to make power primary and burning secondary. There's 2 power traits where I'm taking burning traits instead, and both need testing. Unfortunately in the land of hybrid builds, one has to take the "worse" trait sometimes, in order to make the build work at all without just dropping it for Berzerker or Vipers. So, what I'm hoping for isn't more damage than the existing holosmith builds. Just not so much less that folk will see me on ArcDPS and go "what the heck build is that? Get out of here." I want to do enough damage that folks don't assume anything at all. I want other holosmith to be like, "grieving? Really? I read a thread about that. Oh! You're that guy? It does work? Cool."

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAwqlZw0YdsIGKOWL7vbA-zRZYBhIsFCCb0UrPGxTkKFhtDyIsYOAfMBgk+DLj6bB-e

[BrokenGlass.9356]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAwqlJw0YbsIGKOWLrvTA-zRhYBhIsFCiZ0EshWvMiLRqoIE/gMCdHwYzAJh/WOV0C-e

What if burning is the red herring here? Like.... You can take quite a bit more damage modifiers if we focus on bleeding. And, can keep 100% crit chance raid buffed.... And nearly cap bleed duration. 12sec bleed from a build that spams explosions is not bad at all. And mad king runes line up with prime light beam CD. It's kinda cute.

[Blue Jinjo.2603]

@"BrokenGlass.9356" said:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAwqlJw0YbsIGKOWLrvTA-zRhYBhIsFCiZ0EshWvMiLRqoIE/gMCdHwYzAJh/WOV0C-eWhat if burning is the red herring here? ...

I like where your head is at. However you kinda went overboard trying to max out bleeding duration. The purpose of grieving gear is that you do a mix of physical damage and focus on 1 condition on the side. By taking vipers gear you kind of dilute the build on the whole. Yes, it does benefit burning, but at that point you might as well go full vipers to benefit all condis.

Heres my take on a bleed-grieving holo: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PehAwqlJwkYasEGKOWLrvbA-zRJYsRTfZURi0RRI+scqZF-e

And I'll explain my choices, starting with utility skills:-Hard light arena: Grants aoe protection and fury uptime. As well as a nice pull + CC from prismatic singularity (helpful for cleaving down trash mobs when present). Prismatic singularity also counts as an explosion which seems to be a key feature in bleed-grieving holosmith. A fine alternative here would be Laser Disk for harder DPS if you dont need the utility of a pull\cc\prot uptime assist. Or even alternatively the Bomb Kit for harder CC.-Grenade Kit: Should be self explanatory, it does lots of damage and bleeds via explosions.-Flame Turret: This one is actually build critical - it applies burning for Thermal Vision to work. Outside of holoforge you dont have good burning application otherwise. Dropping flame turret in range of the boss should enable permanent Thermal Vision uptime. (unless the boss moves around and out of range of the turret)

Traits: You'll notice that I elected to take Photonic Blasting Module, I mainly did this because it counts as an explosion. So this may not be the optimal trait. I pretty much agree with all the trait choices here. Using Shrapnel and Crystal Config: Storm is obviously the way to go to produce as many explosions for bleeds as possible.

Gear: The downside to bleed-grieving holo as opposed to the burning variant is that you lose the precious damage modifier from running Flame Legion runes. Additionally theres no bleed duration increasing food like there is for burning (Bowl of Fire Meat Chili). Because of this you dont have convenient means to cap bleeding out without sacrificing damage by adding in vipers pieces. Additionally I've found that with grieving builds you dont necessarily have to max out the side condition you're working with. 90%+ is often sufficient as you get the bulk of your condition duration from your rune set + traits without having to sacrifice anything. As such I elect to leave bleeding duration at 88%. Note that my crit chance isn't capped, but that last 5% can be min\maxed with a piece or two of assassins gear if desired. Sigil of Bursting can be swapped out for Sigil of Earth for a more cost efficient build. Im not sure which is better between the two, but the bursting sigil is a damage modifier so I went with that. And finally the Toxic Focusing Crystal can be swapped out with a sharpening stone if desired. The Toxic Focusing Crystal grants more raw stats but is harder to acquire.

[BrokenGlass.9356]

I like this. Though I feel that it should be pretty easy to swap bursting for agony. We should be able to hit max duration that way. Though, I'm curious if that looses too much damage from sigil of earth.

Bursting just isn't as good as force. Direct damage multiplies it's % increases. Where conditions add thier % increases.

But I like that, and you do have a good point.

I do miss the 7% from flame legion runes. But the burning variant has to loose '2% damage per condition' for '34% burn duration and burn on crit'

So I think that cancels out in favor of the bleed version.

Gonna poke as the builder w/ sigil of agony.

[BrokenGlass.9356]

Woah! I was wrong agony overcaps. But malice hits the cap near spot on and helps the burning out a bit.

I'm almost sold on flame turret. If it shot faster.... But I'm almost sold on wrench, bomb, rocket boots, rocket turret, rifle turret, or my current theoretical favorite, mines.

If I read the toolbelt skill correctly, that should be 5 explosions, which... Should be 5 stacks 12 sec bleeding. Scary. And the direct damage adds up collectively to just under 5k. The utility part of the skill hits for a lot more direct. All that and both the skill itself and the toolbelt are super short cool downs for what they do. I just hope it's not an unusable pain in the ass.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAwqlJw0YbsIGKOWLrvTA-zRRYBhIwGN1+FScBSFJRIFg4HExYwAZD8WO11C-e

[BrokenGlass.9356]

Wait, moved some infusions around. Now it's good. I think. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAwqlJw0YbsIGKOWLrvTA-zRRYBhIwGN1+lRFJRIFi4HkRYBwYwAZC8WO11C-e

[Blue Jinjo.2603]

@"BrokenGlass.9356" said:

...Direct damage multiplies it's % increases. Where conditions add thier % increases...

Im not sure what you mean by this. But if you think that the Sigil of Bursting still gives a flat condition damage attribute increase, thats no longer the case. As of the rune and sigil overhaul last year it now improves all outgoing condition damage by 5%. To quote from the wiki:

Since the November 13, 2018 patch this is now a flat increase of outgoing condition damage instead of increasing your Condition Damage attribute.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Bursting

This is why I chose force and bursting as my sigils of choice. However like I said sigil of earth could possibly work better. And looking at it, sigil of agony seems like a fine alternative as well (perhaps even the best option). Now, related to flame turret, allow me to emphasize that outside of holoforge your build has very little burning application. Thermal Vision only procs when you apply a burn (not while the foe is burning) and it only lasts for four seconds which is an extremely short duration. You would have to execute your rotation flawlessly to chain each burn application exactly 4 seconds after the last to achieve a high uptime of Thermal Vision, let alone permanently. The reason for Flame Turret is that, even though it only applies a measly 1-stack 2-second burn, it will automatically attack every 3 seconds. Not only is this frequent enough to permanently enable Thermal Vision, but it automates the build and makes the rotation easier and less punishing for mistiming a burn application. Remember, Bleeding should be constantly ticking throughout the whole fight. And every tick that fires off while Thermal Vision is not active is 5% damage that you miss for that bleeding tick. Its not like a physical damage burst where you can fire everything off all in the space of 4 seconds. You have to constantly keep it active throughout the fight to benefit from it, otherwise you're better off using either of the two other traits in that trait column.

[BrokenGlass.9356]

First off, you've sold me on testing the flame turret. I like anything that automates traits for me.

(aside I just tested with rocket turret, highest I saw with realistic raid buffs on the golem 22.4k)

So, as for modifiers. I'll explain it how it was explained to me. (as an aside, if the patch you mentioned changed this, that's sick. I'm just not sure it did.)

So let's say a power build has sigil of force, flame leigon runes, and a 10% damage trait.That's 5%x7%x10% for the total bonus to your power.

Where as a condition build has sigil of bursting, runes of the berserker, and a 15% condition damage trait.That's 6%+5%+15% for the total bonus to your condition damage.

The idea is that no matter what the numbers are (feel free to plug any numbers into the above examples.) the multiplied bonuses provide a higher bonus to total dps.

The reason this is done, is because conditions stack, and thus the total damage multiplies. Meaning the overall effect is that the condition damage affects a relatively small number. Then multiplies it on the fly. Hence why condi duration is so powerful. It let's you stack higher. Or, enables the damage to multiply more.

Direc damage multiplies up a big number, and let's it loose all at once. Hence more dps.

You're probably right about flame turret. My big question is, is having 100% uptime on that trait the highest dps way to use that utility slot? (that's why I was looking at rocket turret. Automated direct damage and explosions. But bomb kit is probably better, I just don't want that to be true. I'm bad at piano.)