I am really enjoying condition Holosmith [WvW]

[Shroud.2307]

Try it before the February nerfs.

It's quite forgiving with the massive pool of HP and armor but requires some actual timing and thinking with condition application. I enjoy that although it's not the most skill-intensive build out there, you still need to be smart about when you choose to lay out your damage. It has moderate access to cover conditions but in general it's application is quite poor. It is heavily reliant on either; catching your opponent(s) completely off guard or forcing cleanses with constant Burns before rapidly stacking 15+.

With Incendiary Powder and Balthazar runes only 16% Condition Duration is needed to reach maximum Burn duration so I've been using mostly Dire. With such high base condition damage and capped out Burn duration I'm noticing quite often people are downing to just 1 stack of Burn that they couldn't get rid of. The rest take multiple 6 - 8k ticks, ideally while I have them CC'd.

I am not claiming this to be an "OP" or even "good" build, but it isn't half bad either, and super fun. I've only seen a handful of condition Holo's ever so I thought I'd share here in case anyone wants to try something different before it isn't so good ( possibly not even usable ? ) anymore come the end of February.

Also, here's a short .gif of a 7k Burn tick that probably hit 8k after they stealthed.

[schloumou.3982]

Don't know. 5% crit and Incendiary Powder seems wasted. Why not throw in some rabbit gear aiming for something like 30% to keep the procc going? And your only def is X and 2 blinds. Don't you explode under focus? Almost no way to cover your application. You can go for torment and earth sigil to try giving your burn some cover since you need to be in close range for blowtorch anyway.

[PierPiero.9142]

@schloumou.3982 said:Don't know. 5% crit and Incendiary Powder seems wasted. Why not throw in some rabbit gear aiming for something like 30% to keep the procc going? And your only def is X and 2 blinds. Don't you explode under focus? Almost no way to cover your application. You can go for torment and earth sigil to try giving your burn some cover since you need to be in close range for blowtorch anyway.

Incendiary powder now has a cd so i don't know if you really need that precision more. if u have 1 crits every 10 seconds or a intelligent sigil you are ok in any case

[coro.3176]

Int sigil is better than crit chance IMO. You want to be triggering IP at a known time so you can cover it. If it happens randomly, you risk burn being moved to the front of the condi queue and having your opponent cleanse all your burn stacks.

[Shroud.2307]

@"coro.3176" said:Int sigil is better than crit chance IMO. You want to be triggering IP at a known time so you can cover it. If it happens randomly, you risk burn being moved to the front of the condi queue and having your opponent cleanse all your burn stacks.

I hadn't thought of that, though to be honest I've been winning many of my fights just due to sheer health pool and Burn uptime. Decent/good players are obviously a more difficult fight, but I'm at least "decent" myself, so the fights just take a little longer rather than being impossible.

I think if the build were to be more optimized such as by using Intelligence sigil as you've suggested, it could be a little more competitive. As I've currently built it it's sort of half way between meme and legitimately effective.

With that said, I've also learned ways to get additional stacks of Burn on people with proper use of Projectile Finishers and occasionally I can see 10k Burn ticks if all things go right. I can even get up to 20k Burn ticks on NPC Lord's without the Break Bar being down, which is pretty insane. With things like Sigil of Corruption and full stacks as well as Sigil of Bursting you could probably push those numbers even higher.

Anyway, I'm still using this build regularly and it is currently my favorite build, period. It's extremely fun to use and I always get good laughs when I surprise someone with a massive burst, especially Thieves. So far the only thing that gives me a lot of trouble are Dragonhunter's because of Block/Cleanse, and condition Rev's because of high Resistance uptime and transfers.

[XIII.9615]

I use a similar build in sPvP.

I use either wanderer's amulet or deadshot against condition heavy teams. To me the crit chance isn't for the incendiary powder procs, but for sharpshooter procs instead. As was said, the burning should be covered by other conditions, to not be cleansed so easily, so I think being able to stack some bleeding is a good idea.

I feel like P/S offers more utility than P/P in sPvP. Engineer is quite squishy, no matter how much toughness or vitality you stack, so I like to have multiple options of "active" defense, like Static Shield and Elixir S.

I use multiple kits, because I like the spammy playstyle. I used Toolkit before, because I liked the idea of not only having burning, but also confusion for burst damage. Also Gear Shield is another instance of "active defense" and Magnet can be nice for team fights, where I would keep my distance to not get burst down instantly, then try to pull an unsuspecting foe, to 1v1 them, which is what this build is good at.I use Elixir Gun now, because it's better at applying multiple unique conditions, which makes it harder for the opponent to cleanse the burning. I also think that the condition cleanse of Elixir Gun is better overall than Gear Shield, but this might depend on team composition.

Flame Thrower is a staple. Napalm deals a lot of damage. The only problem is that the fire field is quite small and most people aren't just going to stand around in it. I use it to combo with Photon Blitz to stack burning, when I know that my opponent ran out of cleanses. But even if the burning is cleansed, it deals a lot of damage in a short time.

I use either Prismatic Converter against Necros, that can apply a lot of unique conditions in a short time, or Solar Focusing Lense, because I think it's important to have many different ways to apply burning.

[Shroud.2307]

@"XIII.9615" said:I use a similar build in sPvP.

I use either wanderer's amulet or deadshot against condition heavy teams. To me the crit chance isn't for the incendiary powder procs, but for sharpshooter procs instead. As was said, the burning should be covered by other conditions, to not be cleansed so easily, so I think being able to stack some bleeding is a good idea.

I feel like P/S offers more utility than P/P in sPvP. Engineer is quite squishy, no matter how much toughness or vitality you stack, so I like to have multiple options of "active" defense, like Static Shield and Elixir S.

I use multiple kits, because I like the spammy playstyle. I used Toolkit before, because I liked the idea of not only having burning, but also confusion for burst damage. Also Gear Shield is another instance of "active defense" and Magnet can be nice for team fights, where I would keep my distance to not get burst down instantly, then try to pull an unsuspecting foe, to 1v1 them, which is what this build is good at.I use Elixir Gun now, because it's better at applying multiple unique conditions, which makes it harder for the opponent to cleanse the burning. I also think that the condition cleanse of Elixir Gun is better overall than Gear Shield, but this might depend on team composition.

Flame Thrower is a staple. Napalm deals a lot of damage. The only problem is that the fire field is quite small and most people aren't just going to stand around in it. I use it to combo with Photon Blitz to stack burning, when I know that my opponent ran out of cleanses. But even if the burning is cleansed, it deals a lot of damage in a short time.

I use either Prismatic Converter against Necros, that can apply a lot of unique conditions in a short time, or Solar Focusing Lense, because I think it's important to have many different ways to apply burning.

I never PvP anymore so I can't say how it performs there, but it's cool to see others playing condi Holo. It feels like a unicorn among unicorns with how rarely I see it, yet it's quite strong.

Shield does seem like a valuable choice in PvP and even in WvW. I feel like Blowtorch misses quite often because even if you're dead on, sometimes terrain says nope. Glue Shot is also pretty situational and the Immobilize doesn't last long enough to give it much use. Still, I think I do prefer offhand pistol over shield myself.

I was also experimenting with Bomb Kit in place of Flamethrower for a while but found it too difficult to fiddle with in the heat of battle. The recharge on Fire Bomb syncs up nicely with Photon Blitz and Blowtorch and has a larger field than Napalm which makes it easier to combo with Photon Blitz. It also has a nice option for Stealth combos, can be used to compliment Glue Shot with Glue Bomb and can apply additional Confusion. So it has a lot of nice synergy but again, is unfortunately difficult to fiddle with.

Also just because I want to share, here's a screen of a 15k Burn tick. This was before the lord break bar was down, 20k was post-break bar. I was solo for this so I had no incoming sources of Might or other buffs other than what I provided myself.