How to Nerf Tools Holo

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@NotoriousNaru.1705 said:terrible suggestions

propose something better, or do we keep holo utterly broken for longer? along with warrior and fb

Just lost a blowout match against a team with this comp. An utterly oppressive trio of overpowered cheese.

[Leonidrex.5649]

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Chaith.8256 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Chaith.8256 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@gdubze.6015 said:he doesnt care, his spec got nerfed so now hes on the warpath to kill every spec in the game.

These changes wouldn't kill holo.

You can try to prove me wrong if you'd like.

It would kill Holo, and core, Hammer Scrapper would be the scuffed best engi spec in PvP lol.

Think you're underestimating how screwed you are when you have a transformation with a 6s exit prevention, that also prevents your heal, stunbreaks, defensive skills. Entering photon forge would be instant death without the stability trait and landing corona burst. All you'd have to do is immediately pop stability & target the Holo when he transforms - very often it wouldn't be at full health too.

Combine that with all the other substantial nerfs, Holosmith would be worse than Spellbreaker on duels, teamfights, 1vX. It'd join Core add Scrapper in the obsolete but cool tier. Scrapper would be all around better.

all those nerfs would screw over holo for sure.but seriously I always thought photon forge had a large cooldown, and then I saw guy just pop in and out like its nothing.giving it something like 20s CD after exiting forge as a cooldown would be a good start.could make the cooldown lower/higher depending on heat or make you unable to holo untill you have 0 heat.some slight nerfs here and there and we could see how it goes.

PS bruiser like holo should never have access to stealth. EVER.

You can bake self reveals into Holo skills & photon forge because you can't take away Toss Elixir S / smoke fields from Engi, which are core to the class.

It's vent exhaust that allows PF to be online more often. Without that trait the Photon Forge really is on around a 20s cooldown heat cycle, which is still really fun, (try using Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit GM major trait.)

in general, stealth is give to light classes as devensive/offensive tool. defensively to disengaging and offensively to setting up combo/bursts.more often then not light classes have fast cast, low impact abilites that when combined provide decent outcome, while heavy classes have long casttime, big effect attacks.hiding 1/4s casttime in stealth is not a big deal, hiding over 1s casttime ability with stealth, on a class that can sustain in a fight ( thus dont need stealth for defence ) means that they can use it more towards offence/utility.

I want you to play mesmer with mass invis and holo with elixir stealth.and just count how often you can freely use one of those stealths for offence/utility ( rez/stop ) and how ofte you HAVE TO use it to disengage.

adding self reveal to the spec would have to be placed in sooo many places. holo->stealth is not fine. steath->plb is not fine.stealth-> healing turret combos is questionable.I dont wanna make over the top suggestions for holo beccouse i dont play/know much abbout the class to make assumptions.but I do know as someone who pays attention to what my allies/opponents do, that stealth is part of the holo problem.

I think extensive stealth is absolutely a big part of the problem with Holo's over the top sustain/re-sustain and damage. The 6 seconds of stealth every 30 seconds afforded by traited Toss Elixir S enables those nearly full heals anytime the Holo actually gets in trouble. On top of that, the re-sustain gets followed up by a CC plus burst from stealth. Literally top-tier defense plus offense in one virtually uninterruptible mechanic.

I had the joy of dueling just such a Holo the day this discussion opened. Within the course of our perhaps 40 second duel he tossed Elixir S twice, effectively getting two near full resets without ever having to leave. Both times he followed with a CC plus burst from stealth. Nothing about that experience felt fair or fun.

yea remember chasing down holo on power mirage, he was at 20%. invuln pot dodged my burst, then stealth -> healed to full -> took 80% of my hp from stealth -> i broke out of stunes/los/dodge and bursted him down to 30% again, he put up his block, chunked me down from 60-70% to around 10-20%, then fully healed again I had no cooldowns, and its preety much it, he still has his stealth back and entire rifle combo, holo heat almost compleatly down and here i am no cds/hp.

[Leonidrex.5649]

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@NotoriousNaru.1705 said:terrible suggestions

propose something better, or do we keep holo utterly broken for longer? along with warrior and fb

Just lost a blowout match against a team with this comp. An utterly oppressive trio of overpowered cheese.

I just dont like how they can reover almost always as long as they survive intial damage, followed by the fact that they have insane sustained damage from holo and rifle 1 due to quickness and perma might, meaning its on YOU to push the fight along since you will lose if you take it slow.when im on power mirage, if I trade m1 and use power spike again holo m1 i STILL lose the trade, on top of the fact that he has superior sustain.

[Dreams.3128]

Alright so we just nerf longbow into the rifle state you suggested and we'll be a-okay.

Since apparently everyone wants to forget Engie only has one weapon, guess it's time to play rifle scrapper so people won't cry anymore.

But oh no, longbow is not broken tho. It's all fine and dandy.

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@NotoriousNaru.1705 said:terrible suggestions

propose something better, or do we keep holo utterly broken for longer? along with warrior and fb

Just lost a blowout match against a team with this comp. An utterly oppressive trio of overpowered cheese.

I just dont like how they can reover almost always as long as they survive intial damage, followed by the fact that they have insane sustained damage from holo and rifle 1 due to quickness and perma might, meaning its on YOU to push the fight along since you will lose if you take it slow.when im on power mirage, if I trade m1 and use power spike again holo m1 i STILL lose the trade, on top of the fact that he has superior sustain.

Nothing about fighting Holo in its current state feels fair. I know there are things I could do better, but I'm sadly at the point where I just try to avoid them. :(

[Leonidrex.5649]

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@NotoriousNaru.1705 said:terrible suggestions

propose something better, or do we keep holo utterly broken for longer? along with warrior and fb

Just lost a blowout match against a team with this comp. An utterly oppressive trio of overpowered cheese.

I just dont like how they can reover almost always as long as they survive intial damage, followed by the fact that they have insane sustained damage from holo and rifle 1 due to quickness and perma might, meaning its on YOU to push the fight along since you will lose if you take it slow.when im on power mirage, if I trade m1 and use power spike again holo m1 i STILL lose the trade, on top of the fact that he has superior sustain.

Nothing about fighting Holo in its current state feels fair. I know there are things I could do better, but I'm sadly at the point where I just try to avoid them. :(

join the dark side of full toughtness condi mirage, you cant kill them. they cant kill you. but you piss them off nicely !

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@NotoriousNaru.1705 said:terrible suggestions

propose something better, or do we keep holo utterly broken for longer? along with warrior and fb

Just lost a blowout match against a team with this comp. An utterly oppressive trio of overpowered cheese.

I just dont like how they can reover almost always as long as they survive intial damage, followed by the fact that they have insane sustained damage from holo and rifle 1 due to quickness and perma might, meaning its on YOU to push the fight along since you will lose if you take it slow.when im on power mirage, if I trade m1 and use power spike again holo m1 i STILL lose the trade, on top of the fact that he has superior sustain.

Nothing about fighting Holo in its current state feels fair. I know there are things I could do better, but I'm sadly at the point where I just try to avoid them. :(

join the dark side of full toughtness condi mirage, you cant kill them. they cant kill you. but you kitten them off nicely !

And become part of the cheese epidemic? I just can't. xD

[alain.1659]

Nothing that core engi uses should be nerfed. Period. Holo can be nerfed to the ground, together with other op specs ofc. But rifle,alchemy and kinetic battery changes are not acceptable from the core engi perspective. Kits are already useless and lets be honest, they will not see a buff or a rework in short time. But holo might see a nerf hopefully.

And in my opinion the dmg İs not the problem with holo, it is the sustain. Cut down the sustain and the rest will not be a huge problem. Class has no teleports or proper gap openers that are immune to damage.

I am repeating myself but best solution would be to limit the traitllines that an elite spec can use. There must be an only core traitline and utility / skill set for every profession. This would make the balance so much easier. We have sacrificed so many core specs to power creep after Hot. Some core specs are nearly a joke compared to their elite counterparts.

[phirefox.2568]

@"shadowpass.4236" said:

3. Even if the base cast time on Hip Shot is .84s instead of .75s, quickness reduces that to .63s. In other words, the Holo can laser you for up to 2k damage just over every half a second.

Since I always have some sheets lying around, let me post a few autoattacks/chains for you, ordered by their DPS:

Long Range Shot (0)----------- 0.7 = (0.7) / 1Crossfire-------------------------- 0.74 = (0.4) / 0.54Long Range Shot (300)-------- 0.76 = (0.7) + (3x0.02) / 1Hip Shot -------------------------- 0.78 = (0.65) / 0.83Long Range Shot (400) -------- 0.78 = (0.7) + (4x0.02) / 1Ricochet--------------------------- 0.91 = (0.8) / 0.88Long Range Shot (1500)------ 0.9 = (0.9) / 1Long Range Shot (1800)------ 0.96 = (0.9) + (3x0.02) / 1Groundwork Gouge------------ 1.00 = (0.4)+(0.42)+(0.44)+(0.88) / 2.14Slash (GS)------------------------- 1.07 =(0.64)+(0.8)+(1.3) / 2.56Slash (S)--------------------------- 1.15 = (0.7)+(0.7)+(0.96) / 2.04

There are only two AAs worse than Hip Shot (in terms of damage) Across Ranger weaponsets: One is Crossfire, which has a laughable difference of 0.04hp/s - on a weapon that's not exactly known to be a Powerhouse for non-condition based builds. The other is Long Range Shot, which overtakes Hip Shot at a range of 400 units in the damage department, meaning it is superior to Hip Shot for 66% of Hip Shots total Range (or ~77% of the Longbows total range). If you are looking for quickness, you can easily get it by using Quickening Zephyr (granting Fury and a 2x-CClear) for sacrificing one of three Utility Slots - As I already went about the Problem with Utility Slots on the Engineer, I will leave it at that for now. If you happen to play a dagger-based Soulbeast build, you get 3 seconds of Quickness and a leap in a 15 (or 12) second timeframe anyway (~5 seconds once in a while if you are using both charges).

I could ask a-net to nerf Ranger sets, simply because Soulbeasts are just as (or, depending on the build, at least almost as) cheesy as Holosmiths, but I would not want that. Especially not after a-net's changes to the previously fun aspects of Sword and Greatsword (things like manually timing the AA steps of Sword for controlled evades, or the tripple-functionality of Counterattack).

[Chaith.8256]

@"shadowpass.4236" said:The adjustments I proposed are very mild and reasonable. If you disagree, feel free to explain why.

You literally ignored my post

"Healing, utility, toolbelt, and elite skills should be disabled when the Holo enters Photon Forge. This is the only transformation skill in the game that allows the player full access to the rest of their non-weapon abilities."

This alone would dumpster Holo if you made no other changes, and I explained why, and you're making me repeat myself:

• It's because the current Holo playstyle would have an extremely high uptime of being locked out of Heal/Utility skills, there's a fundamental difference between not not currently having access to your defensive skills, and often sealing away your defensive skills for 6s.. Photon Forge is different than other transforms - you don't get inherent defensive boosts such as pulsing stability, vitality, toughness, damage reduction, second life bar, and can't leave whenever you want to instantly access your defensive skills. As I explained before, every time a Holo would enter Photon Forge, you could simply focus fire it, it would be dumpstered within the 6 seconds if 2 or more enemies are present and have a brain. Holosmith wouldn't be able to react to any incoming pressure, you'd simply get stunned for 2 seconds and die because you can't stunbreak or defensively react.

I don't really have a strong opinion on any other of your changes, I'm sure ArenaNet will randomly nerf some random things anyway. If I had to comment on these, I'd say that I hope Kinetic Battery gets re-worked so it isn't based on Toolbelt procs, because it's currently utterly useless for Scrapper/Core, and too good an interaction with Holosmith.

If Kinetic Battery catered to Holosmith less, IE, was as crappy as it is now for Core and Scrapper, and you nerf Heat Therapy by 66% as proposed, increase cooldown on Holo Leap by 100% as proposed, and your stability changes to Corona Burst, hat would change way more than you think, those are fairly strong changes, I wouldn't say mild. If Corona Burst's activation timer also was not sped up by quickness which seems like a bug (it's not a cast time) I think that alone would be a fantastic patch.

[shadowpass.4236]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@"shadowpass.4236" said:The adjustments I proposed are very mild and reasonable. If you disagree, feel free to explain why.

You literally ignored my post

"Healing, utility, toolbelt, and elite skills should be disabled when the Holo enters Photon Forge. This is the only transformation skill in the game that allows the player full access to the rest of their non-weapon abilities."

This alone would dumpster Holo if you made no other changes, and I explained why, and you're making me repeat myself:

• It's because the current Holo playstyle would have an extremely high uptime of being locked out of Heal/Utility skills, there's a fundamental difference between not
  not currently having access
  to your defensive skills, and
  often sealing away your defensive skills for 6s.
  . Photon Forge is different than other transforms - you don't get inherent defensive boosts such as pulsing stability, vitality, toughness, damage reduction, second life bar, and can't leave whenever you want to instantly access your defensive skills. As I explained before, every time a Holo would enter Photon Forge, you could simply focus fire it, it would be dumpstered within the 6 seconds if 2 or more enemies are present and have a brain. Holosmith wouldn't be able to react to any incoming pressure, you'd simply get stunned for 2 seconds and die because you can't stunbreak or defensively react.

I don't really have a strong opinion on any other of your changes, I'm sure ArenaNet will randomly nerf some random things anyway. If I had to comment on these, I'd say that I hope Kinetic Battery gets re-worked so it isn't based on Toolbelt procs, because it's currently utterly useless for Scrapper/Core, and too good an interaction with Holosmith.

If Kinetic Battery catered to Holosmith less, IE, was as crappy as it is now for Core and Scrapper, and you nerf Heat Therapy by 66% as proposed, increase cooldown on Holo Leap by 100% as proposed, and your stability changes to Corona Burst, hat would change way more than you think, those are fairly strong changes, I wouldn't say mild. If Corona Burst's activation timer also was not sped up by quickness which seems like a bug (it's not a cast time) I think that alone would be a fantastic patch.

I said that was an optional change. I'm not sure if I agree with it myself 100% but someone else suggested it and I figured I'd include it in my OP.

I stated that the Heat Therapy nerf was one of the harsher changes but it's just way overtuned right now.

A 4s cooldown on Holo Leap is still very strong.

Corona Burst change makes the attack easier to avoid but also rewards the Holosmith for timing it properly because it would give guaranteed double stacks instead of taking the chance that the 2nd pulse will miss.

I still want Holo to be viable in the meta and a strong choice but the current nonstop chain of high damage/CC abilities on low cooldowns coupled with long stealths, easy reset potential, permanent/near permanent boon uptimes (on strong ones like quickness and stab), and the ability to out-trade everything in melee range simply by spamming PF1 is too much atm. My changes shave certain aspects of the meta Tools build so that there's more downtime between certain abilities/boons and makes it so that they can actually be punished for just spamming skills (and doing stuff like precasting Corona Burst before they are even close).

[Razor.6392]

Nerf this garbage. For 2 straight years EASY MODE on crutches for basic players.

Enough.

[Chaith.8256]

@shadowpass.4236 said:I said that was an optional change. I'm not sure if I agree with it myself 100% but someone else suggested it and I figured I'd include it in my OP.

Nothing in the OP about it being optional, and many posts later you often mention how all your changes are mild and reasonable, so, you're backpeddling hard here. This suggestion is a no-go unfortunately. If the 6s CD on Photon Forge was removed, this could work, because when you got focused you could leave Photon Forge and access your cooldowns, but that opens up a whole slew of other problems, this suggestion should just be deleted.

I stated that the Heat Therapy nerf was one of the harsher changes but it's just way overtuned right now.

I didn't question this change, you don't need to defend it, I think it is also overtuned, my input was that a 66% reduction is a very bold starting point, not a mild 25% reduction or something.

A 4s cooldown on Holo Leap is still very strong.

I didn't question this change, you don't need to defend it, I think it is also overtuned, my input was that a 100% cooldown increase is a very bold starting point, instead of a more mild solution like a noticeable heat cost increase from 7% to 10%, for example.

Corona Burst change makes the attack easier to avoid but also rewards the Holosmith for timing it properly because it would give guaranteed double stacks instead of taking the chance that the 2nd pulse will miss.

Yes, I understand the implications of this change.

Just reiterating, your proposed changes go too far, it's just the ones I mentioned that would be needed. You don't even need to target core Engineer features, except for Kinetic Battery which only has ever served Holosmith

[shadowpass.4236]

@"Chaith.8256"

Yes, you're correct. I stated it was optional in this post.

Even if I target some core engi features, things like Overcharged Shot only seem "balanced" on core because base engi isn't strong to begin with. On Holosmith, you take a solid weapon like rifle and all of a sudden, the nonexistent/low (with or without quickness) cast times and strong effects are easy to observe. Honestly, adding short cast times and visible animations to the skills isn't much to ask for, nor would it push the weapon out of play. Trait-wise, there are some things that just aren't in line with other, similarly functioning traits.

Also, a 25% reduction to Heat Therapy still results in stronger passive hps than Healing Signet (489 vs. 344) and it comes from a minor trait.For Holo Leap, increasing the heat gained wouldn't make that big of a difference. A 2 second cooldown on a 450 range movement skill that hits very hard and is a leap finisher is insane. Even on a 4 second cooldown it's still very frequent and powerful.

As I've stated before, it's possible to nerf core aspects to fix elite specs whilst simultaneously buffing actual features that get utilized in core-only builds. (ie. kits)

[Ouk.5914]

No. They gotten a lot of nerfs lately and no gutting them isn't going to help.

I'll like to see thief corrected before we started nerfing the only real viable build holo has at the moment.

[mortrialus.3062]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@"shadowpass.4236" said:The adjustments I proposed are very mild and reasonable. If you disagree, feel free to explain why.

You literally ignored my post

"Healing, utility, toolbelt, and elite skills should be disabled when the Holo enters Photon Forge. This is the only transformation skill in the game that allows the player full access to the rest of their non-weapon abilities."

This alone would dumpster Holo if you made no other changes, and I explained why, and you're making me repeat myself:

This wouldn't dumpster Holo. It would just make them actually think about risk and reward when using photon forge rather than the ludicrous faceroll spam fiesta the spec currently is now.

@Chaith.8256 said:

I didn't question this change, you don't need to defend it, I think it is also overtuned, my input was that a 66% reduction is a very bold starting point, not a mild 25% reduction or something.

Heat Therapy just shouldn't exist. The trait should be removed and replaced with something else. It's completely unfitting for Holosmith's intended purpose as a high damage glass cannon, high risk and reward specialization. It's like having a Scrapper minor trait provide a 50% increased damage buff for 5s after it absorbs damage with Barrier, or giving Mirage a minor trait that gives them 500 vitality. It just doesn't make sense for the design and role of the build and what it's strengths and weaknesses should be.

[Chaith.8256]

@shadowpass.4236 said:@"Chaith.8256"

Yes, you're correct. I stated it was optional in this post.

Even if I target some core engi features, things like Overcharged Shot only seem "balanced" on core because base engi isn't strong to begin with. On Holosmith, you take a solid weapon like rifle and all of a sudden, the nonexistent/low (with or without quickness) cast times and strong effects are easy to observe. Honestly, adding short cast times and visible animations to the skills isn't much to ask for, nor would it push the weapon out of play. Trait-wise, there are some things that just aren't in line with other, similarly functioning traits.

Also, a 25% reduction to Heat Therapy still results in stronger passive hps than Healing Signet (489 vs. 344) and it comes from a minor trait.For Holo Leap, increasing the heat gained wouldn't make that big of a difference. A 2 second cooldown on a 450 range movement skill that hits very hard and is a leap finisher is insane. Even on a 4 second cooldown it's still very frequent and powerful.

As I've stated before, it's possible to nerf core aspects to fix elite specs whilst simultaneously buffing actual features that get utilized in core-only builds. (ie. kits)

You don't have to keep repeating your justification on the heat therapy, or holo leap suggestions. I was just pointing out they are significant nerfs, and I agree with them, when I referenced what "mild" nerfs would look like, I actually was not suggesting for Holosmith to get mild nerfs, more so I was trying to get you to understand how aggressive your suggestions actually are, contrary to what you believe.

And that optional suggestion to lock out defensive skills when in Forge, if you forgive me for joking around, that's like making a list of housekeeping chores for your day and then adding an optional task at the end: "burn the entire house down, idk, maybe".

However it seems a lot of your reasoning is based on "similarly functioning" mechanics are not good as sole reasons to justify nerfs/buffs, it's too narrow a context, good asymetrical balance is more of a whole package, big picture context. For example, you just now compared Heat Therapy when venting max heat against Healing Signet numbers, which are complete apples and oranges because Healing Signet has the ability to pulse every second as long as you don't need emergency resistance, whereas Heat Therapy max venting requires you to have spent time building heat, and then have exited Photon Forge for at least 5 seconds, and have your Photon Forge sitting idle in order to be at a point of comparison. Simply comparing the numbers and concluding there should be more parity between them is actually absurd if you don't even look at the realistic up-time.

Edit:

@mortrialus.3062 said:This wouldn't dumpster Holo. It would just make them actually think about risk and reward when using photon forge rather than the ludicrous faceroll spam fiesta the spec currently is now.

So it seems you disagree with me, perhaps I will do a little twitch stream challenge where using any other skills while in Photon Forge, incl. stunbreaks is prohibited. In reality, it would not force the Holo to think about risk and reward, it would give the enemy team a 6 second window to aggressively push, stun and neutralize any defenseless Holosmith who can't block, invuln, stealth, heal, rocket boots, stunbreak. Surviving focus fire in this 6 second window is not possible if your opponents understand the mechanics.

[Vagrant.7206]

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

The rest of the nerfs are either based on a misunderstanding of the spec, or the core class. For example:

• Kinetic Battery is actually not that strong on the core class. It's strong only in conjunction with holo because activating and exiting photon forge adds a stack. Remove that functionality, and kinetic battery is back to a relatively normal state.
• Holo leap is not a 450-range leap. The attack itself is 450 range. The leap is only 300.
• Hip shot is chip damage. Why you think it's a laser gun is beyond me. Unless you get a crit on it, its damage is usually in the 800-1000 range. Also, please note that the actual cast time is 0.84 seconds, not the tooltip time of 3/4s.
• Net shot reduced to 1 second... this is a joke, right? The skill is verging on bad as it is for core engineer.
• Blunderbuss is fine as is.
• Overcharged shot currently knocks engineer back or eats a stack of stability as a drawback. Additionally, the projectile is actually pretty slow and easy to dodge if you're over 600 range away. If you want a windup, then don't let it knock us back/eat stability.
• As far as weapons go, engineer only has 3 core weapons. One is completely in the gutter, one is niche, and you want to nerf the most viable option.

1. Kinetic Battery still gives 5s of super speed and quickness every time it procs with no ICD. With boon duration, Holos can get permanent quickness with this trait and 5/7 uptime on super speed. If removing the Engage/Leave Photon Forge functionality helps solve this issue, that's fine by me.
2. Why does the range on Holo leap get shorter and shorter every single time someone defends it. The tooltip on the skill says the range is 600. Someone else told me that the attack itself is 600 range but the leap portion only moves them 450 range. Now you're telling me the attack is 450 range but the movement is 300?? LOL
3. Yes and the meta Tools Holo build has 57% base crit chance which gets bumped up to 77% crit chance with fury. Apparently all of the tooltips on engineer are wrong! Anet should fix them.
4. A 1s immobilize is more than enough time to set up other combos. A 2 second base duration, 22% uptime on immobilize with no cast time is too strong. The immobilize on Muddy Terrain for rangers got nerfed to 1s and it had a 20s cooldown. In comparison, Net Shot is objectively stronger and more frequent.
5. Blunderbuss needs an animation. 5-6k on a skill with an almost nonexistent tell is OP.
6. Overcharged Shot is impossible to react to in melee range. It doesn't have a cast time and you won't have enough time to see and react to the projectile. Elixir U can also be used right after using R4 to stunbreak the knockback. In team fights, Corona Burst gives a massive amount of stability so Overcharged Shot won't self-CC anyways.
7. I want better animations and cast times on rifle. Adding short cast time increases and clearer tells will not kill the weapon.

Again, this is another case of someone being overly dramatic about these changes. The base damage and survivability of Holos will remain almost entirely the same. I'm mainly proposing slight increases to cast times/animations and decreases in boon uptimes. Traits like Heat Therapy and Lock On

are

deserving heavier nerfs though.

1. The ICD is the toolbelt skills themselves. Seriously, read the text for the trait. There are two "fast" cooldown toolbelt skills measuring at 8s. They are
   Surprise Shot
   and
   Particle Accelerator
   . You can also hit every skill on your toolbelt to activate it quickly, but then you have to wait for each to cool down, and you burned defensive skills for offense. The problem is that photon forge counts as a toolbelt skill for kinetic battery. It shouldn't. If you want to nerf kinetic battery, nerf that interaction.
2. Oh, nevermind. You were right on the original statement. My bad.
3. So you're complaining about chip damage getting crits... so it's stronger chip damage? I'm still confused on this one.
4. Consider the ramifications of what you're saying. One sec immob is a decent setup time for holo, but not core engineer. Rifle is a core engi weapon, and nerfing immob shot would hurt core way harder.
5. It does have an animation. Also, Blunderbuss only does that that kind of damage point blank on a crit.
6. You can pretend it doesn't have a drawback all you like, but it does. If you want to throw on an additional animation for no reason, now you're just being biased.
7. Uhhhhh you act like rifle's the problem with holo. It's not. Again -- core engineer has only 3 weapons. Pistol is outright trash, shield is niche (for prot holo mainly), and rifle is the most viable weapon.

Nerfing healing turret AND heat therapy together would be more than enough to send holo to the B or C tier. Not that I agree with your idea for healing turret, but all you have to do is ding the sustain to keep the spec unique without rendering it useless (and core with it).

1. Mechanized Deployment reduces the cycle time on Kinetic Battery to 7 second on meta Tools Holo. If you don't want to increase the maximum stacks required to 10, placing an ICD of 20 seconds on the trait would suffice.
2. Np.
3. Even if the base cast time on Hip Shot is .84s instead of .75s, quickness reduces that to .63s. In other words, the Holo can laser you for up to 2k damage just over every half a second.
4. Muddy Terrain's immobilize from Soften the Fall got reduced to 1s and it has a 20s cooldown. One second is more than enough time for core engi to setup a followup skill.
5. It's a very minor animation even without quickness. Quickness makes the .5s base cast time into .375 which is just over the average human's reaction time to visual stimuli.
6. You can pretend like it's not easy to cover the drawback all you like, but it is. You think I'm biased for wanting a clear animation on a short cooldown, long duration CC skill? LOL
7. Uhhhhh you act like I only suggested changes to rifle. There are a multitude of overtuned things that make Holo OP.
8. An increase of a quarter of a second to the cast time on Healing Turret is a very, very minor change.

1. Yes, but you know how I mentioned surprise shot and particle accelerator having the lowest cooldowns? You still need to hit 5 of those to activate kinetic battery. Since most players won't carry rifle turret into PvP, that's still a lot of other cooldown timers you have to contend with. I'll say it again: Kinetic battery is not a strong GM trait in non-holo builds. The problem is its interaction with holo -- specifically photon forge on the F5.
2. You can make a pretty similar statement about most of the other weapon autoattacks when they crit. I'm still failing to see your point here.
3. Muddy terrain also has lots of other useful things that go with it. Cripple and slow are not insubstantial. It also has a pulsing field. I don't think there's much comparison here -- muddy terrain is way more powerful than net shot, thus deserves a longer cooldown.
4. The average human reaction time to a stimulus is 1/4 of a second, not 3/8 of a second. And again, in order to do the damage you're talking about with blunderbuss, you need to crit from point-blank range. If you can't see that... I don't know what to tell you.
5. Point Blank Shot and Overcharged shot are roughly equivalent, but with a different set of drawbacks. If you want to add more drawbacks to overcharged shot, you'd have to justify how it's particularly different from point blank shot. The CC is large, yes, but so is PBS.
6. Again, rifle is a part of core engineer. What part of that don't you understand?
7. In order to get the full heal from heal turret, the turret needs to overcharge. This places the timing at around 1.5 seconds, not 3/4 of a second. You would adjust it to 1.75 seconds in order to hurt holo. As I said in my above post, removing or rendering heat therapy much weaker should be enough to ding the sustain without hurting the core class.

[Chaith.8256]

@mortrialus.3062 said:Heat Therapy just shouldn't exist. The trait should be removed and replaced with something else. It's completely unfitting for Holosmith's intended purpose as a high damage glass cannon, high risk and reward specialization. It's like having a Scrapper minor trait provide a 50% increased damage buff for 5s after it absorbs damage with Barrier, or giving Mirage a minor trait that gives them 500 vitality. It just doesn't make sense for the design and role of the build and what it's strengths and weaknesses should be.

I would be fine with that. I somewhat agree, but somewhat disagree. It depends on what would take Heat Therapy's place.

I also understand why ArenaNet included some sustain to Holosmith. Right now core Engineer is overall quite a stationary, glassy class, dependent on kiting. If you slap a melee elite spec on, the kiting aspect goes out the window, and you end up needing a way to sustain yourself to fuel your aggressive melee positioning. I think Holosmith has too much healing sustain right now, but it may need some other kind of defense to be palatable to players.

[Ryan.9387]

How about something not ridiculous:

1) Holo 3 must land its initial damage tick to generate might.2) Kinetic battery charges expire once the holo leaves combat. Maybe increase stack count by 1.3) 1s or 2s ICD on purity of purpose.4) Remove some sources of protection.5) Rework the swiftness -> vigor alchemy trait. Make it do something else aside from giving vigor.

You've brought down the effectiveness of rifle turret static discharge, prot holo, and the elite spamming holo all at once without butchering the class.

[Falan.1839]

Some of the suggestions make sense, all taken together however it would pretty much delete Engi as a whole.