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With the focus on Soulbeast, did we forget about Holo?


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@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"coro.3176" said:If Holo gave up
all
its toolbelt skills, that would be a serious tradeoff, and would be more in line with the power increase PF currently adds on top of core engi.

Alternatively, if heat was actually difficult to manage (currently, any competent holo will never overheat unless they choose to), it could make the spec actually risky to play. That would be a real drawback. Maybe PF skills could add some % more heat than they currently do.

I'd rather see something like Photon Forge requiring a 10s cooldown to before you have the option to exit.

The main problem with holosmith aside from its overloaded self healing and resustain for 0 stat investment is how spammy it is, photon forge especially. Photon forge is technically a trade off since you lose the elite toolbelt, as hilariously minor as that loss truly is.

The overheat mechanic is supposed to be the inhibitor to counter how spammy Photon Forge can be and how crazy high the skills on it are tuned. Right now heat as an inhibitor is basically a dead mechanic. With a 5 second timer to exit you're always able to leave and never forced to consider holding back on certain skills because of your heat threshold.

The current CD is 6seconds btw (5 1/4 is due to tools). And playing holo I always consider holding back on skills to not hit the threshold. It is not a dead mechanic, it works as intended. What could be talked about is CD of skills (leap could do with 3 or 4 seconds) and why entering
and
leaving PF count as TB skills for all traits. Other than that holo just needs some number shaving e.g on heat therapy heal and corona burst's might + vuln application (also damage, and maybe even the traited barrier..., idk, stab is more than fine now but that single skill puts out too much pressure).

10sec is harsh when you assume people actually use (or even "spam") the PF skills. That'd be 20 heat from passive (30 with LDA), 25 from shockwave, 16 from blitz, 10 from corona, 7 from leap and 6 per auto chain. Assuming two auto chains that's already 90%(100%!) but then you don't get to do anything anymore other than that for the rest of the time (the rotation through all the abilities +autos is done in about 6-7sec without quickness, which coincidentally comes close to the current CD). Yes, you can lose heat with exhaust but that depletes another resource, can be prevented (cc) or slowed (weakness). And If you're chilled that'd be up to about 16seconds to exit forge while you can't exit it without damaging yourself. Compare that to weapon sets that can still attack, use skills with <10sec CD again and can be kept active longer if needed without any downsides.

Without feat support a full heat cool down from 100% takes about 15 seconds. With vent exhaust a dodge shaves off 1,5sec of that, more only if you don't give it time / you haven't generated enough heat (which basically means you spent a considerable part of PF time not using its skills) to reach the faster cooling. If you dodge whenever you can and have perma vigor (~1 dodge / secs) that heat cooling period will be about 12 seconds. Which is still a bit more than normal weapons and results in the holo not being able to make proper use of the low CD of some PF abilities.

What I'm trying to say is: there's a lot less wiggle room for heat and more down time & holding back involved in heat management than some think. To be flexible with entering PF sooner again you have to hold back on your big hitters (#5, #4) and heat generators or burn dodges for vent exhaust even when you'd rather keep the endurance for enemy attacks, or hold back with all skills in PF in general for periods of time. A holo that generated a lot if heat, left PF and reenters it too soon will NOT be able to make full use of it. Chill's a pain for holos almost as much as it is for eles (and can pretty much kill it indirectly) and weakness / cc cripples vent exhaust. Entering PF at 40-50% heat left and getting cc'd or chilled might mess up the heat management and prevent the holo from using shockwave for example. Or leave him running around for a few secs not even being able to auto attack because that'd cause overheat.

To put this into perspective, in the two years since Path of Fire and the 2k+ ranked and unranked matches I have played with holos represented in nearly 100% of them I have never, not even once, ever seen a holosmith over heat in a conquest match. This incudes the couple dozen unranked matches where I have played holosmith and avoided overheating despite literally no experience with the specialization.

Heat is not even remotely a punishing mechanic.

It's not necessarily punishing but
it is limiting
, which is what it is there for. PF isn't meant to make holos overheat by default (only when screwing up / taking the risk), so I don't see the absence of overheating as evidence that the mechanic isn't working as intended. Increasing the CD as you described would mean being forced to stay in PF while not being able to use its skills much more often, which doesn't make sense imo, which is why I argued for different approaches.

It's actually explicitly there to punish bad, spammy play. If you watch the original Path of Fire trailers, the original developer talks and live streams about the specializations, heat is a mechanic explicitly there to make Holosmith one of the "more challenging professions to play" and make "every skill in photon a serious calculation" as to whether you can afford it or not, and that they were looking forward to how skilled holosmith players would play with this mechanic (A.E.D. and deliberately overheating was explicitly mentioned). It's not there to make every holosmith explode when they use Photon Forge, but it is there to make Photon Forge a high IQ mechanic.

Right now Holosmith is one of the least skilled, most spammy professions in the game. Even players who are known for being really good, like Boyce and Sindrener, on the last TeaTime both agreed even if Holosmith's design might be more fair than say Scourge, Deadeye, and Mirage, it's also significantly more thoughtlessly spammy.

@mortrialus.3062 said:Here are some changes that should really happen to Engineer. Some general goals:

Maintain Holosmith's flavor as a higher risk, higher reward alternative to engineer and scrapper. Trim aspects of holosmith and core engineer that significantly over powered compared to other skills and traits:

Photon Forge
Photon Forge and heat need to be adjusted to make Photon Forge a more skill intensive, less spammy mechanic. Whether it's increasing the cooldown on Exit Photon Forge, adjusting the heat gain on the skills. I personally would like to see Exit Photon Forge be bumped up to 10 seconds baseline.

It does punish bad play. If you spam the Holo skills your time in PF is severely limited and you have to wait a longer time to re-enter it. Or you overdo it and overheat, but people just hardly ever play it that badly anymore because they learned to use the mechanic. But maybe it'd be best what you consider spamming, because I don't think using the skills available when appropriate (need a CC -> shockwave, need to close gaps -> leap, need the medium range -> blitz, need stab, barrier, might -> corona, want to pressure in melee while you're in your melee kit -> AA) is "spammy". Other than blitz (and shockwave vs stab), it's likely any of those skills will be good to use in situations within those 6sec of minimum (even more so if you increase it!) transformation time. And speaking for myself, as already mentioned, when you aren't taking the time and need one of the PF skills before your heat is mostly depleted you quickly enter "I can only use a few skills and might not even be able to keep attacking with it anymore for some more seconds" territory. I already illustrated that "just using everything" gets you to full heat fast. And any more CD on exiting the forge will just make it so that you always have to wait for all the heat to deplete (to dangerous otherwise with chill affecting the CD) and the decision "is entering the pf now with xx% heat still present or will it cripple me too much" won't rarely come up anymore. You also won't be pending to stay in PF longer for another leap or corona, because by the time you can exit, you likely already want to exit... Taking away the flexibility of forge doesn't make it less spammy, it might just lead into the opposite direction. If you aren't forced to stay in forge longer and by saving the shockwave use for example, you could re-enter it 5sec later because now there's a better opportunity to use it. If you force people to build more heat and cool it down more before they might enter forge again, what with your suggested changes might be well over 15sec, it makes no sense to keep the skill off CD for future use.

@mortrialus.3062 said:Heat TherapyHeat Therapy Stacks should be capped at 5. Now that Berserker has crossed that threshold, Photon Forge should have a drawback built into one of the minor traits. Something akin to -300 healing power while in Photon Forge, similar to the Berserk Mode Toughness penalty.

Simply capping it at 5 would solidify vent exhaust as trait choice. It could build up slower but then become faster, which could bring ECSU back as a viable pick.

@mortrialus.3062 said:Toss Elixir SNeeds to be nerfed from 5 seconds base 6 seconds traited down to 2s base 2.4s traited. 5 seconds base has always been outrageously out of line for a utility skill, let alone a toolbelt skill. 2 seconds is actually very generous, putting it on par with dedicated stealth utilities despite only being a Toolbelt skill.

Eh, half a sec cast (+aftercast) for 2sec stealth that does little for you since you can't instantly port like thief or Mes would be quite underwhelming. The traited 6s are a bit too much, 4s or at least 3s as base duration would make more sense. About that "only a tb skill": it's supposed to be the class mechanic and roughly speaking engi sacrifices a second weapon for that. Those things are hard to compare but arguing for it being supposed to be sub par because it's not placed on a utility slot is not enough reason for it to be cut more than half. It should at least be comparable to a weapon skill. Look at Prestige: instant cast 3sec stealth, blind, burn, damage, cond remove, 30sec CD, blast...

@mortrialus.3062 said:Healing Turret30% nerf on the base healing and regeneration duration, 30% increase in the water field duration. Healing Turret has always been very overtuned for a healing skill, significantly overperforming most heals by a significant degree before you even start accounting for how much value the field itself applies. Healing Turret initial healing per second should be brought down to be more inline with similar healing skills and the field duration should be increased so that skilled and thoughtful engineers aware of their ability to combo in fields can still get more value out of it.

Just remove the regeneration from the turret and the TB skill. It's not stacking in effectiveness so it becomes pretty useless in team fights anyway and ramps up for too much over time when you're solo. Keep the direct healing. Water field duration reduction would be fine. I think however, this nerf should happen in the context of also nerfing other (passive) sustain sources.

@mortrialus.3062 said:Anticorrosion PlatingIs seriously out of line, making holosmiths and scrappers that take Alchemy and Inventions functionally hard immune to condition damage as an archetype. It deserves a 5 second internal cooldown. Probably higher.

That trait change is still just stupid. It made inventions + alch amazing but only when paired together and with holo or scrapper (frequent prot access). It needs a design (functionality) change.

@mortrialus.3062 said:Prime Light BeamCasting Prime Light beam should also put revealed on the Holosmith, similar to Deadeyes and Death's Judgement. It's especially unfair considering it isn't a projectile and thus has no travel time, and it's an unblockable very high damage blowout.

I've never had much problems with it considering the cast time, CD and rooting animation but I can see it being frustrating to be hit by out of stealth. Still, when a CC+dmg combo gets you from stealth and you have no stun break / not enough health to be able to react and fight back you'd also be in a lot of trouble vs other stealth openers which aren't reliant on a high CD elite skill. I'd say it would be fair to see parts of the origin of the animation from stealth (e.g. light vortex being "sucked" to the engineers position) so you can still surprise unaware people not looking that direction but can't just deny reaction based dodges when stealthing in front of the enemy.

@mortrialus.3062 said:Drastic Cool down increase on Elixir XHopefully Arenanet have been brainstorming what to do about the Rampage Elite on Warriors and Engineers because it's absolutely out of control right now. Frankly Rampage and Elixir X deserve to be pushed up to 180s cooldowns for how impactful they are.

Given that you have to make do with what you get and have less trait support/synergies (for rampage) the CD should at least match the one of the original skills. But Elixir X 's randomness was never a good design and I'd support changing that. I'd still say tornado's rarely OP and generally you want to get rampage every time. Which considering the complaints about rampage, might be more of a rampage problem than an Elixir X one.

@mortrialus.3062 said:There's probably a few more but these are the easy and obvious changes. I think this list is eminently reasonable and should be uncontroversial.

Probably, but that's already plenty. Some suggested changes are over the top and in need of some revisions, I hope you can see some reason in my suggested changes to your suggested changes :)

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Stupid literal "supersoldier" class that has EVERYTHING. Class has every single offensive utility in the game, ridiculous sustain, boons, stealth, hard cc tied into burst. All able to be managed by a 3 year old.

It's stupid and out of control and a nerf to anything in their toolkit would be a good start. This nonsense is the kind of imbalance that results in unenjoyable gameplay and leads to people quitting.

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@Zexanima.7851 said:Holo is pretty busted and scrapper isn't far behind with their sustain capabilities. They need to buff core engineer and nerf the other two. Some goes for a lot of other core vs e-specs though

Yeah, kind of the rub, right? I love core engineer. I would play it in PvP if I didn't have to play 5x harder than everyone else just to get average results.

Scrapper is boring, I don't enjoy being just a tank.

So I only play holo in PvP right now.

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@Mbelch.9028 said:

@Mbelch.9028 said:It is not drastically OP. Move along.

Some people say that about Soulbeast but hey ho everyone wants to kill the pew pew.

You only snipped part of my quote. Fixed that for you.

I snipped only that quote for a reason. And that's because Holo is exactly the same as Soulbeast but people wanna murder Soulbeast like it's the literal devil of PvP

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@"Moirg.7560" said:Stupid literal "supersoldier" class that has EVERYTHING. Class has every single offensive utility in the game, ridiculous sustain, boons, stealth, hard cc tied into burst. All able to be managed by a 3 year old.

It's stupid and out of control and a nerf to anything in their toolkit would be a good start. This nonsense is the kind of imbalance that results in unenjoyable gameplay and leads to people quitting.

You forgot:

  • Reveal
  • Full heals itself like a Druid, without running any heal stat

If anything, it needs its heal potential dropped down to 3/4ths of what it is now, at the least.

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:Holo still needs to be toned down.

What don't they have?

I don't know, but I do know what they have.

  • Great healing
  • great armor
  • great mobility
  • great damage
  • invuln
  • stealth
  • boon fart extraordinaire
  • multi foe sustainability
  • unblockable
  • blocks
  • superspeed (same trait drops movement impede like thief grandmasters, even tho its mid tier)
  • stability and stability access
  • mega might stacking
  • They are also CC machines.
  • oh and then they got photon forge

I mean, c'mon....

It also has reveal.

It literally has everything that every other class has.

It at least should have its heal potential dropped to about 3/4ths of what it is now. It shouldn't be healing itself like a Druid while running no heal stat.

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@Arkantos.7460 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@"Moirg.7560" said:Stupid literal "supersoldier" class that has EVERYTHING.

Perfect description. Holo and Herald are wild right now.

herald got his separate own nerfs last patch .....Herald's nerfs were a joke.

@Mbelch.9028 said:It is not drastically OP. Move along.

Some people say that about Soulbeast but hey ho everyone wants to kill the pew pew.

You only snipped part of my quote. Fixed that for you.

Holo is exactly the same as Soulbeast but people wanna murder Soulbeast like it's the literal devil of PvPNot really the same at all, cos Soulbeast is already on very shaky ground in the meta.
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@"Moirg.7560" said:Stupid literal "supersoldier" class that has EVERYTHING. Class has every single offensive utility in the game, ridiculous sustain, boons, stealth, hard cc tied into burst. All able to be managed by a 3 year old.

It's stupid and out of control and a nerf to anything in their toolkit would be a good start. This nonsense is the kind of imbalance that results in unenjoyable gameplay and leads to people quitting.

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@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Crab Fear.1624 said:Holo still needs to be toned down.

What don't they have?

I don't know, but I do know what they have.
  • Great healing
  • great armor
  • great mobility
  • great damage
  • invuln
  • stealth
  • boon fart extraordinaire
  • multi foe sustainability
  • unblockable
  • blocks
  • superspeed (same trait drops movement impede like thief grandmasters, even tho its mid tier)
  • stability and stability access
  • mega might stacking
  • They are also CC machines.
  • oh and then they got photon forge

I mean, c'mon....

It also has reveal.

It literally has everything that every other class has.

It at least should have its heal potential dropped to about 3/4ths of what it is now. It shouldn't be healing itself like a Druid while running no heal stat.

I did the math on this a while ago and yeah, while Healing Turret has always been overturned it's actually shocking how over tuned it is.

To preface this, healing skills tend to come in a handful of basic models. In intense fights you can expect to have to be activating your healing skill close to on cooldown depending on the situation, so you look at the healing the skill provides divided by the cooldown to determine the Healing Per Second. You can also expect heals to provide less self healing in exchange for splashing heals out to your allies as a general principal. If you know the game you can skip the next section down to where I start dissecting Healing Turret itself.

  • On the bottom tend to be heals that also do damage in and of themselves or heavily facilitate damage through something like reducing cooldowns, or some other extremely obvious combat utility like Block. These include Arcane Brilliance, Enchanted Daggers, Signet of Vampirism, Signet of the Ether, Bloodfiend, Shelter. They' provide deliberately under tuned healing per second as a result of them being balanced with their theoretical damage utility in mind. They tend to range between 120-200 healing per second.
  • Next up tend to be general purpose healing skills that are good in nearly every situation and are instant active heals with minimal requirements. These include Withdraw, To The Limit, Signet of Mercy, Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Mirror, Hide in Shadows. They're very pop and forget, very forgiving to use. They tend to range between 200-280 Healing Per Second. Healing Turret actually falls into this category, but we'll get back to that.
  • Next up tend to be heals that happen over longer periods of time, gradually. These include Troll Unguent(339 hps), False Oasis(324 hps), Healing Signet(344 hps), Medic Gyro (281 hps but also heals team), Well of Blood (282 hps but also heals team). They're tuned to have higher healing per second as a result of being gradual healing over time. These tend to range between 280 and peak out at 344 with warrior's Healing Signet.
  • And finally you have healing skills with very specific requirements or costs to getting the most out of them. These are typically the most powerful heals when used correctly by a serious margin, as their costs or requirements can be considerably more tricky and costly in the context of a fight. These include A.E.D., Defiant Stance and Infuse the Light, Natural Healing, Litany of Wrath and Blood Reckoning, Ether Feast, Skelk Venom, Mantra of Restoration if you include the full channel. The Healing Per Second is very high, the best in the game usually, often reaching 400-500 HPS or more, even incalculable levels of healing per second in theory.

Now onto Healing Turret itself.

If you just account for the healing, the regeneration, the over charge healing and regeneration, and the only benefit from the field being Detonate Healing Turret, which even beginner Engineers who don't understand the value of the field are going to get, it adds up to 7400 on a 20 second cooldown.

2520+390+2520+650+1,320 (blast) = 7400

7400 healing on a 20 second cooldown is 370 healing per second.

This out performs all of the gradual healing skills while still being an instant acting healing skill. And we haven't even properly factored in the benefit of the field. It's trivial, between jumpshot and Holographic Shockwave and Holo Leap for a holosmith to not at least get 1-2 finishers out of this heal every time. I mean heck, what's the first thing a holosmith is going to do once they heal up? They're going to go into photon forge and reengage 3>5>2>, 90% of the time. That's another 1,320 or 2,640 added on top of the healing skill. Now we're looking at potentially 436 healing per second or 502 healing per second. That's mental. That's better than Natural Healing with none of the downsides like removing all your boons. That's almost as good as A.E.D. (554 healing per second) with none of the unreliability or need for prediction.

Even if you completely removed the field so that they can't get a blast finisher from the turret itself it's still over tuned for what it is at 304 healing per second. That's better than any other fast pop healing skill like that even still. And it cleanses conditions. And it splashes out heals to your allies and gives them a field to leap and blast in too.

And that's just how much Healing Turret is over tuned. It's always been this way. There's a reason why you never ever see Holosmiths run Elixir H, or Coolant Blast despite those being very fine heals well tuned for what they are. It's all right there, in the math for everyone.

And we haven't even talked about the Toolbelt, which is nice 1,158 healing in regeneration and another Water Field to leap and blast in, or Heat Therapy which is very, very, strong and with vent exhaust turns your dodge rolls into 786 heals, or Compounding Chemicals (36 health per boon received) which adds up to a ton of healing when Holosmiths and Scrappers average something like 7 boons per second. It's why when you fight a holosmith you might be able to dodge all of their abilities, their CC, their burst damage, and then counter burst him back for most of their health, but then have to deal with him being immediately full health again without having to completely disengage from the fight they way a lot of builds would have to. Often 2-3 times until either they finally make a big enough mistake to die or they eventually wear you down and kill you.

Serious question: Does Sage's SD Weaver even have this level of ability to instantly heal to full on the level of a Holosmith? Does Mender's SD Weaver?

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@Burnfall.9573 said:

@"Moirg.7560" said:
Stupid literal "supersoldier" class that has EVERYTHING.
Class has every single offensive utility in the game, ridiculous sustain, boons, stealth, hard cc tied into burst. All able to be managed by a 3 year old.

It's stupid and out of control and a nerf to anything in their toolkit would be a good start. This nonsense is the kind of imbalance that results in unenjoyable gameplay and leads to people quitting.

Why you posting WvW vids in PvP?

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@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Crab Fear.1624 said:Holo still needs to be toned down.

What don't they have?

I don't know, but I do know what they have.
  • Great healing
  • great armor
  • great mobility
  • great damage
  • invuln
  • stealth
  • boon fart extraordinaire
  • multi foe sustainability
  • unblockable
  • blocks
  • superspeed (same trait drops movement impede like thief grandmasters, even tho its mid tier)
  • stability and stability access
  • mega might stacking
  • They are also CC machines.
  • oh and then they got photon forge

I mean, c'mon....

It also has reveal.

It literally has everything that every other class has.

Teleports.Non-projectile ranged attacks.Weapon swap.

We also only have everything every other class has if you give us some kind of super-mega-build, wherein we have access to both scrapper and holo at the same time. For example, we can only reveal if we have scrapper + sneak gyro. But only unblockable if we have holo + prime light beam.

Also, complaining about having everything other classes have is kind of a moot point in the first place. Engineer has ALWAYS been a jack of all trades.

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@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"Crab Fear.1624" said:Holo still needs to be toned down.

What don't they have?

I don't know, but I do know what they have.
  • Great healing
  • great armor
  • great mobility
  • great damage
  • invuln
  • stealth
  • boon fart extraordinaire
  • multi foe sustainability
  • unblockable
  • blocks
  • superspeed (same trait drops movement impede like thief grandmasters, even tho its mid tier)
  • stability and stability access
  • mega might stacking
  • They are also CC machines.
  • oh and then they got photon forge

I mean, c'mon....

It also has reveal.

It literally has everything that every other class has.

Non-projectile ranged attacks.

Blunderbuss. 900 range, can't even be line of sighted.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blunderbuss

For example, we can only reveal if we have scrapper + sneak gyro.

Core and Holo have revealed. It's a very common pick, too.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lock_On

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invisible_Analysis

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Controlled_Analysis

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