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Realizing that Holosmith is kinda ridiculous


Ourasa.7306

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Alright, I know I’m late to the party and all, and that holosmith was already considered extremely powerful, if not overpowered. This thread was more or less made so that I can gather my thoughts and hear what people have to say about it.

First off, even core engineersrs are surprisely bulky. This is thanks to healing turret, which is perhaps one of the best heals in the game thanks to its cleanses, water combo field, and blast combo finisher. This can be combined with several other combo finishers for very high healing, even if no healing power was invested. Their tool belt skill is also a water combo field too. On top of this is the alchemy trait line, which auto cleanses, grants barrier, and gives a high boon uptime (which can either make you a tank with iron blood, or be a spammable lifesaver with BGH).

Second, engineers is inherently a ranged class. Their only choices at core is a pistol and rifle, and both are not suited for extended durations of melee ranged combat. Rifle is more versatile, capable of spacing/keeping a distance with skill 2, 4 and 5. Those same skills can also be used to create combos, albeit at the risk of losing those options when it really matters. Their engineering kits are also mostly ranged weapons, with the exception of tool kit, which is a meh melee kit with little practicality. However, these kits are often... slightly underwhelming. Bomb is easily avoided, flamethrower is a midranged weapon that’s more about autoattacks, mortar is too slow to be a threat, and the elixir gun is rather unorthodox. Grenade is probably their best kit, with AOE damage, and a strong tool belt burst skill, which has a rather long cooldown. Regardless, the rifle remains as one of their best weapons thanks to its vesatility.

Lastly, despite their boon uptime and bulkiness, they lack multiple consistent burst damage option. Warrior has GS 2 + Arcing slice. Necros can easily stack condi upon condi. Mesmers can shatter with... something. Rangers can rapid fire, and deal hard hitting pokes. In PvP, sustained, but morderate damage usually doesn’t mean much, especially with the healing monster called Firebrand and the amount of escape/mitigation options available. This is what keeps core engineer from being widely used: they can’t really kill someone quickly at all times, only sometimes.

Overall, their strengths lies in high boon uptime, bulkiness, which is used in conjunction to their okay burst options and moderate CCs, while their weaknesses includes having few burst options, and problems with certain melee attackers.

But of course, there’s holosmith, who throws these weaknesses out of the window. The forge kit is undoubtedly one of, if not the strongest melee weapon set out there. A high damage autoattack, a 2 sec cool down leap, AOE damage + stability through Corona Burst, a bursty ranged attack with blitz, and a strong CC with holographic shockwave. Not a single one of these moves can be considered niche, or bad. Because of this overwhelming strength, they no longer need to care much about melee power attackers. In fact, they would LOVE to fight them. The only real exception would be condi builds, but even then holos have an auto cleanse, a heal cleanse, and an exit forge cleanse as well. Heat isn’t even hard to manage, with rolls that can reduce that heat and having the ability to turn it off at will (something that Berserker lacks). They even get additional sustain through heat therapy.

And what did they need to sacrifice? Only one thing: their often times niche elite tool belt skill, which is obviously makes this photon forge a straight up buff. Scrapper on the other hand, need to sacrifice their elite tool belt skill AND their single weapon slot for a hammer if they want to go melee.

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@"Ourasa.7306" said:Second, engineers is inherently a ranged class. Their only choices at core is a pistol and rifle, and both are not suited for extended durations of melee ranged combat.

I disagree with this point. While all of our core weapons are ranged, they are all optimized to do the most damage at melee or mid-range (about 300-600 units). Most of our kits perform best around this range too, suggesting the core class is meant to be melee or mid-range.

Lastly, despite their boon uptime and bulkiness, they lack multiple consistent burst damage option.

This is true. Our core design seemed to focus on "victory through attrition."

But of course, there’s holosmith, who throws these weaknesses out of the window. The forge kit is undoubtedly one of, if not the strongest melee weapon set out there. A high damage autoattack, a 2 sec cool down leap, AOE damage + stability through Corona Burst, a bursty ranged attack with blitz, and a strong CC with holographic shockwave. Not a single one of these moves can be considered niche, or bad. Because of this overwhelming strength, they no longer need to care much about melee power attackers. In fact, they would LOVE to fight them. The only real exception would be condi builds, but even then holos have an auto cleanse, a heal cleanse, and an exit forge cleanse as well. Heat isn’t even hard to manage, with rolls that can reduce that heat and having the ability to turn it off at will (something that Berserker lacks). They even get additional sustain through heat therapy.

The holosmith kit is a rough amalgamation of the best moves from our kits. It is strong, without a doubt.

The problem with it isn't necessarily the damage though. The problem is the sustain provided by heat therapy and prismatic conversion. If you remove either of those, you end up with a relatively weak player in the melee game. There are no evade-frames built into the holo kit, no teleports, and the stability from corona burst is short. The result is that we are very vulnerable to the CC that flies around these days and have difficulty disengaging from fights. Without these heals/cleanses, scrapper would be a better melee class because evades, blocks, CC, and reflects are built into the hammer.

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I think the ability to basically stay in forge mode permanently is one of the biggest things that makes the class OP. I've been thinking about what it would be like if they added a cooldown to vent heat.

If/when they nerf holo, I hope it is with nerfs to holo and not engi at its core, because core engi is extremely weak in my opinion.

The nerf to overheating was silly in my opinion. Severely hurt the pve build (I was very sad about that) and didn't really do much against the pvp or wvw builds. Oh well though, the balance teams dart board decisions dont really surprise me anymore. I am pretty confident that none of them play the game.

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@"knite.1542" said:If/when they nerf holo, I hope it is with nerfs to holo and not engi at its core, because core engi is extremely weak in my opinion.

The nerf to overheating was silly in my opinion. Severely hurt the pve build (I was very sad about that) and didn't really do much against the pvp or wvw builds. Oh well though, the balance teams dart board decisions dont really surprise me anymore. I am pretty confident that none of them play the game.

I'm going to tell you not to be naive. Because when they decide to nerf holo hard, they're going to make the core class worse.

They genuinely don't seem to have a clue on how to balance engineer. Take scrapper for instance. It's been through 3+ reworks and its still only "viable," and pretty close to trash tier. Core engi has languished for a really long time. Holo has been the bandaid for the profession, and when they rip it off, it's going to sting.

The sad thing is that it wouldn't be all that difficult to bring holo into line with other e-specs in conquest:

  • Nerf heat therapy. This is a massive source of sustain. The impact in PvE would be negligible.
  • Increase cooldowns by a second or two on forge 2, 3, 4, and 5. (PVP ONLY)
  • Increase cooldowns on select Exceed skills by a few seconds (the ones that get overused -- spectrum shield, HLA, and photon wall). Again, PvE impact is negligible.
  • Make Prime Light Beam reveal on activation. PvE impact = negligible.

That's about it. All of these are slight numbers changes (plus the reveal). They wouldn't break the spec, just bring it into line.


The spec has other unaddressed issues which I suspect won't get fixed for at minimum 3 years:

  • While it was designed as a hybrid in mind, holo simply doesn't perform well as a condi applicator.
  • People will always choose CC: Eclipse over the other two options because they're garbage by comparison. CC: Storm needs to do something condi-related. CC: Zephyr should offer group buffing capabilities beyond superspeed (which is iffy at best in PvE).
  • PBM is just bad right now. It should ignore the overheat toolbelt lockout.
  • Light Density Amplifier just pales in comparison to the other two options.
  • Heat does not apply to any of the other weapons besides sword. This is just downright depressing because core engi only has 3 different weapons.
  • There are no 100%+ heat benefits to exceeds.

All of engineer's e-specs look hastily thought out and implemented, because of oddities like these. Even core engineer feels slapdash because of how janky some of the skills are.

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CC: Storm needs to do something condi-relatedTo be fair it counts as an explosion which procs shaped charge and shrapnel, very helpful for condition holosmith, and it is a ranged auto attack which lets holo add pressure in forge

holo simply doesn't perform well as a condi applicator.Not sure how you mean this: PF4 adds burning, SFL adds burning, Afterburner adds burning on activation deactivation and overheat, and CC: Storm (if traited alongside shrapnel) adds bleeding; thermal exhaust vent adds burning, and PBM adds burning, plus PLB adds ridiculous amounts of burning and even Laser Disk adds bleeding. It's maybe less conditions, slightly, than you get between grenade kit, flamethrower, pistols, and bomb kit, but bottom line it actually does as much DPS as power holosmith. I still think there may yet be a viable grieving build though.

Light Density Amplifier just pales in comparison to the other two optionsWhile I realize the build itself is a meme, this is what you run with healer holosmith. The idea is that, out of forge, you heal as much as a heal scrapper, but when you need to tank something, you go into photon forge, tank it out, and build up to 50+ heat ASAP to drop a HLA, then dodge off all your heat using a sigil of energy and Elixir R so that the dodge roll healing from thermal exhaust vent, in concert with the protection and regen from HLA, make up for the temporary drop in outgoing healing. Other than that people might run it in open world to try and solo a champion, maybe.

They genuinely don't seem to have a clue on how to balance engineerIronically, and I've just been testing this for a day or two so the numbers have room to improve still, power core engineer actually gets around 27500 DPS sustained on the raid golem, and I saw an opening burst as high as 34.1K DPS. Poor scrapper on the other hand only gets around 24K DPS unless you add stability in the training arena; then it gets 26K. You think maybe the specialization that was designed to make engineer a viable melee class should maybe, idk, get some ACTUAL buffs yet?

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The class is underpowered and needs buff for PVEIts OP in PVP and maybe WvW

They could have fixed it by disabling Toolbar abilities when entering forge modeBut noooo they had to nerf PVE and they disabled the trait that requires you to let you end forge mode with a blastby disabling toolbelt skills when waiting for the forge mode to recover...

Still salty about that change..Engineer is not OP in PVE! but Its OP in PVP (WvW)....

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It is. You're right. The one and only reason I have one holo is solely the ability to use sword, and only the sword.I detest holo mode and everything about it, it seems like all of the other professions rejected skills got put in a can and thrown into holosmith; and the only US I use is photon wall, just for the sake of saying I use at least one of holo skills.I made a post about replacing alchemy, but I'm going to edit it and write as a replacement for holo entirely.

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@Kahrgan.7401 said:Holosmith can sustain 25 stacks of might during a fight, and almost perma-quickness. No class should be able to do this WHILE pumping out CCs, self-stab, and burst.

Its not even close to perma quickness. More like 35%. Guardian has 18% but for the whole group. A lot of builds can sustain 25might. Holo's dmg isnt the problem. Sustain with heat therapy and heat losing trait vent exhaust are the problem.It's already trash tier in pve dont nerf it further. All it does is damage but it only does average damage unless you exploit heat resets. It doesn't have good cc unless you sacrifice most of your dmg. It can't give boons. Burst is average, damage is average even with hefty pve buffs.

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@Nephalem.8921 said:

@Kahrgan.7401 said:Holosmith can sustain 25 stacks of might during a fight, and almost perma-quickness. No class should be able to do this WHILE pumping out CCs, self-stab, and burst.

Its not even close to perma quickness. More like 35%. Guardian has 18% but for the whole group. A lot of builds can sustain 25might. Holo's dmg isnt the problem. Sustain with heat therapy and heat losing trait vent exhaust are the problem.It's already trash tier in pve dont nerf it further. All it does is damage but it only does average damage unless you exploit heat resets. It doesn't have good cc unless you sacrifice most of your dmg. It can't give boons. Burst is average, damage is average even with hefty pve buffs.

Nerfing the boon output is not a real PvE nerf though. You get your boons from supports anyway. It would probably be better for holosmith in PvE if boons were a bit harder to get, but base dps was higher to compensate.

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@Kahrgan.7401 said:Holosmith can sustain 25 stacks of might during a fight, and almost perma-quickness. No class should be able to do this WHILE pumping out CCs, self-stab, and burst.

I hate to be that guy, but I've played holosmith for awhile, and I don't generate anywhere near 25 might. Please explain where all of this might is coming from.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493In PvE, you periodically generate might while over 100% heat using ECSU. Corona burst also generates 10 stacks and only has a 5 second cooldown. You can also do things such as blasting the fire field from flamethrower or bomb kit, or if you are running alchemy despite being in PvE, you can use some elixirs to augment this might generation.

@Nephalem.8921I don't know why everyone is saying holosmith is trash in PvE. It really isn't. We handle our own might, we have a self-rez every 30 seconds through AED, we probably have more CC at any one time than almost any other build, and we have sustain with heat therapy, so you don't have to pay as much attention to us as a support, and at the same time, we do 34K DPS; even dragonhunters only do 33K. In my static I'm constantly at the top of arcDPS during our raids, unless it's Samarog where I have to gimp my damage by running shield and battering ram and holding back on PLB because if I don't do a third of his CC bar the teammate dies, despite there being 9 people on the team to do CC.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Kahrgan.7401 said:Holosmith can sustain 25 stacks of might during a fight, and almost perma-quickness. No class should be able to do this WHILE pumping out CCs, self-stab, and burst.

I hate to be
that
guy, but I've played holosmith for awhile, and I don't generate anywhere near 25 might. Please explain where all of this might is coming from.

If you use durability runes and some diviner (or other boon duration gear) it is normally easy to get to 25 on an elixir holosmith.

5 from coronoa burst (recently nerfed, used to give more)1 from every dodge roll (assuming you are using the dodge roll food)If you have the HGH trait, every elixir use (including passives) will grant 2, so that means:-Hidden flask passive gives 7 total (procs when struck below 75% health)-Lesser elixir c gives 2 (procs when you get 2 conditions on you)-Elixir U, Elixir C, and Elixir S all give 2 (as well as their toolbelt skills giving 2 each)[Emergency elixir does not seem to be affected by HGH]

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@Ganathar.4956 said:Nerfing the boon output is not a real PvE nerf though. You get your boons from supports anyway. It would probably be better for holosmith in PvE if boons were a bit harder to get, but base dps was higher to compensate.

This is the difference between ok'ish and meta. Stack dhs or pChronos and you dont even need a support anymore. Stack holos und you get nothing. It's playable but even condi weaver isn't in meta right now while having a 39k bench because of this reason. Holo is just really selfish without offering anything besides dmg and cc like reaper but reaper has way better sustain and selfbuffs.

@Aooogah.1673CC: AED: 200, Shield 5: 100, Shield 4: 150. Total 450.Total with massive hit to dps with using PLB to cc: 682.Basilisk venom on base thief is 750 alone and he doesnt lose anything for taking it. Even fresh air weaver has 552 breakbar damage. Berserker and Renegade have more than double of Holo cc.Personal battering ram costs you more than 2k dps. Holo cc is average at best without sacrificing a dps skill. Its better than average when sacrificing lots of dps but there are way better professions for cc than holo which don't lose so much.New dragonhunter sword bench is 34.7k btw but you need an outside retal source for that.The problem is not holos damage but what you have to sacrifice to take one. In fractals what can you even replace? Can't replace slb because spirit and stance share. Can be played instead of weaver but how do you give fury and might to the group then. Force warr to run fgj to tank his damage or ren to run pack runes while fighting the berserker for dps who plays a banner build.In raids it works as long as you don't care about meta and bring boon chronos or qFB but I can be top dps in most pugs on reaper aswell then.Holo isn't even that overloaded but the rest of core is so undertuned that it feels overloaded. Imagine if all skills on kits would be designed like weapons instead of 1-2 usefull skills and rest niche utility.

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Engi is overall on the weak end. Core traits and skills are simply outdated. Any nerf to these is like kicking unconcious beaten down person.The only acceptable nerfs with no negative impact on Core/Scrapper are nerfs to Holo traits/spells. Therefore, I suppose the most logical would be to nerf some of the below:

  • Heat Therapy
  • Prime Light Beam (so it reveals from stealth on use)
  • Holo Leap (cd increase)
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@Aooogah.1673Most cc out of any build? Sorry that made me laugh hard. As Nephalem already stated, you have 450 cc every 20-25 seconds or so (excluding plb because delaying that for too long just wastes DPS). Weaver does more cc, more damage and what else.

Apparently you still have the good memories of the better holo version which was PBM rifle. 868 cc on demand, almost twice as much as this abomination of a build which is sword holo. Also you had a lot more Soft cc and an actual burst! But yeah for whatever reason it was too strong. Strange that sword Benchmark is already 2-3k higher than builds before the reworks, oh well. Just wait for more trade-offs that will hurt PvE again instead of PvP and WvW (more clunkiness and less utility yay).

Doing a third of sammys cc would Interest me though. Thats 1333cc. Show us which skills you used for that. (Rifle holo with plb and holo 5 could have done that yes.)

Also a lack of might should never be a thing. Supports overstack it enough already, just like heals. Thats why heat therapy isnt even worth mentioning either imo.

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If I swap rifle turret to battering ram, pistol to shield, and run AED, that's 150 + 100 (shield skills) + 232 (one ram) + 100 (launch ram) + 200 (static shock) + 232 (PLB) + 232 (forge 5) for a total of 1246. I could go even further and swap grenades to bombs for a further 332 totaling 1578. It isn't ideal and yes I lose a fair amount of DPS, but there's well over a third of his bar. Or I could just run rifle/bomb holo like before, and truthfully only lose around 10% of my DPS (it benches at 31-31.5K/s) instead of the above solution which costs around 25%.

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@Aooogah.1673 said:If I swap rifle turret to battering ram, pistol to shield, and run AED, that's 150 + 100 (shield skills) + 232 (one ram) + 100 (launch ram) + 200 (static shock) + 232 (PLB) + 232 (forge 5) for a total of 1246. I could go even further and swap grenades to bombs for a further 332 totaling 1578. It isn't ideal and yes I lose a fair amount of DPS, but there's well over a third of his bar. Or I could just run rifle/bomb holo like before, and truthfully only lose around 10% of my DPS (it benches at 31-31.5K/s) instead of the above solution which costs around 25%.Power ren has 1350 with 20sec cc and more dmg than your build and provides alacrity for 10 with more than 50% uptime. Ye holo can have decent cc if you completely kill its dps and plb is 60sec cd. Forge 5 not always usuable and aed + shield have 30sec cd. Like I said, there are way better options if you need cc, or dps or anything. Engi or holo is still master of none in pve. Its ok if you dont do speedrun strats or dont play fractals without a healer.

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