Holosmith Cool down

[insanemaniac.2456]

@Adamantium.3682 said:Look... I don't know what the optimal rotations or heat management will be but I think it's pretty short sighted to say the Dodge trait will have no impact on heat management. It has 15 heat loss for a reason!

And how does ECSU not change how you play in forge if you have a lot more time in it and an extra heat level you may want to manage?

the 6 sec cd forces you to wait long enough out of pf so you don't explode in it.

ecsu shifts that up a notch without changing it. still gotta play by that paradigm of simply waiting long enough to not screw yourself.

pbm eliminates you caring by making you want to explode.

the dodge trait cuts down on the time you need to be out of pf, but are pf autos good enough to want a condi trait? seems like a mixed message. could be just as appropriate to ask if pf 2 is enough mobility to want to spend more time in pf.

[Adamantium.3682]

@insanemaniac.2456 said:

@Adamantium.3682 said:Look... I don't know what the optimal rotations or heat management will be but I think it's pretty short sighted to say the Dodge trait will have no impact on heat management. It has 15 heat loss for a reason!

And how does ECSU not change how you play in forge if you have a lot more time in it and an extra heat level you may want to manage?

the 6 sec cd forces you to wait long enough out of pf so you don't explode in it.

ecsu shifts that up a notch without changing it. still gotta play by that paradigm of simply waiting long enough to not screw yourself.

pbm eliminates you caring by making you want to explode.

the dodge trait cuts down on the time you need to be out of pf, but are pf autos good enough to want a condi trait? seems like a mixed message. could be just as appropriate to ask if pf 2 is enough mobility to want to spend more time in pf.

That's fair, but this thread is about the cooldown in PF being unfair and should be removed. Don't you think that sort of removes what the Holosmith is all about? In the experience I had with it PF hits harder than anything else (which is the point of it) so the risk of being locked into it for 6 seconds seems completely fair.

I think it's pretty clear the GM traits will change how you manage heat (heat level, cooling down, max capacity, buffs). You disagree, that's fine, but even if you're right and you always drop out of PF in 6 seconds isn't that still a level of management to plan when you can afford those 6 seconds of high damage output? What if you're at 50% heat but low health, do you heal up first or go into PF and risk it? What if you get CC'd? What if you need to have to react to a fractal/raid boss mechanic? I think there are plenty of things that will make it a lot more than basically hitting F5 every chance you get.

EDIT: I now realize I'm responding to a couple different people lol... take "you" as a general "you" :tongue:

[insanemaniac.2456]

@Adamantium.3682 said:

What if you're at 50% heat but low health, do you heal up first or go into PF and risk it? What if you get CC'd? What if you need to have to react to a fractal/raid boss mechanic?

i can take a stab at these...

if you have low enough heat and need to perform an operation generic to both pf and normal forms, its better to enter pf before/as you do it because passive heat generation is essentially minimal and performing that operation eats cooldown time, opening the option for you to exit "sooner". its better for your exit button to open up halfway through your facerolling than 1 sec after you finish.

...and thats part of the reasons i dont feel like the cd is a good design element. on engi. this isnt what engi is about. its what other classes are about.

[Adamantium.3682]

I understand that some might feel it doesn't match the rest of Engi but I kinda like that part of it. I think it's a neat mechanic that gives you something else to manage besides (or in addition to) invisible cooldowns.

[Arimas.3492]

@Adamantium.3682 said:I understand that some might feel it doesn't match the rest of Engi but I kinda like that part of it. I think it's a neat mechanic that gives you something else to manage besides (or in addition to) invisible cooldowns.

Yeah I agree. The cooldown on kits and forge was perfectly fine to deal with when I played it over the preview weekend with every GM trait as well.

[Geisterlicht.6083]

@"Robert Gee.9246" said:The kit lockout period on Photon Forge is to prevent players from circumventing the cooldown on on Deactivate Photon Forge. Swapping to a kit boots you out of photon forge mode, so without the lockout period on kits it would be easy to exit the mode early without using the Deactivate skill.

What if we only could exit the forge mode by using the "deactivate skill"?

That way we could use kit attacks within the forge.To balance this, make it so that the heat keeps building up while using a kit in forge-mode and add additional 2% for every kit skill used.

This change would keep the flow&flexibility that comes with engi gameplay, while giving the feeling of an actual new kit.

[Valfaros.6908]

Elite specializations should open up a new way to play a profession certainly this cooldown prevents enginier from what they have been doing for ages (swapping kits like crazy). --> Goal archieved stop complaining about that it feels different with the cooldown that's what it is about if you dislike it play core.

[coglin.1496]

@leviathan.2148 said:

They are core utility skills.

FYI, core utility skills are just utility skills of a vanilla engineer. Tool belt skills are the professional mechanic. If you are going to attempt to correct posters, please make certain you know what you are

@Robert Gee.9246 said:The kit lockout period on Photon Forge is to prevent players from circumventing the cooldown on on Deactivate Photon Forge. Swapping to a kit boots you out of photon forge mode, so without the lockout period on kits it would be easy to exit the mode early without using the Deactivate skill.

@Ardid.7203 said:

@Robert Gee.9246 said:The kit lockout period on Photon Forge is to prevent players from circumventing the cooldown on on Deactivate Photon Forge. Swapping to a kit boots you out of photon forge mode, so without the lockout period on kits it would be easy to exit the mode early without using the Deactivate skill.

I don't think limiting an unrelated thing is the way to solve a problem. IMO there are many other, better ways to control that "early PF exit" without obstructing the use of kits.

Example:Activating a kit freezes PF. You don't gain or lose heat while you are in the kit. Changing to another kit keeps the freeze. Leaving the kit puts you back in PF with the heat as you had it before. This answer the problem you are pointing without interfering with other mechanics.

To be clear:IMO it IS OK if you consider the 6 second cooldown is needed to

specifically limit the access to kits

from pf.It is NOT OK if you only want to control PF leaving and you

slow kits as colateral damage

.In other words, if you consider that using kits in rapid succession with PF is BAD, please say so. If you don't, please improve this solution.

I think you basically hit the nail on the head here.

We have spent YEARS being told trait X or skill Y was changed or limited to compensate for kits having no cooldowns. We have spent years with the profession being designed more around kits then the tool belt skills, which are the professions, actual professional mechanic. We have been refused weapon swap and more weapon options because of kits for this reasoning as well. Now, after all of that, we are seeing kits limited by another function, all the while, still having those previous limitations based around kits having no cooldown left in place.

[Vagrant.7206]

@coglin.1496 said:

@leviathan.2148 said:

They are core utility skills.

FYI, core utility skills are just utility skills of a vanilla engineer. Tool belt skills are the professional mechanic. If you are going to attempt to correct posters, please make certain you know what you are

@Robert Gee.9246 said:The kit lockout period on Photon Forge is to prevent players from circumventing the cooldown on on Deactivate Photon Forge. Swapping to a kit boots you out of photon forge mode, so without the lockout period on kits it would be easy to exit the mode early without using the Deactivate skill.

@Ardid.7203 said:

@Robert Gee.9246 said:The kit lockout period on Photon Forge is to prevent players from circumventing the cooldown on on Deactivate Photon Forge. Swapping to a kit boots you out of photon forge mode, so without the lockout period on kits it would be easy to exit the mode early without using the Deactivate skill.

I don't think limiting an unrelated thing is the way to solve a problem. IMO there are many other, better ways to control that "early PF exit" without obstructing the use of kits.

Example:Activating a kit freezes PF. You don't gain or lose heat while you are in the kit. Changing to another kit keeps the freeze. Leaving the kit puts you back in PF with the heat as you had it before. This answer the problem you are pointing without interfering with other mechanics.

To be clear:IMO it IS OK if you consider the 6 second cooldown is needed to

specifically limit the access to kits

from pf.It is NOT OK if you only want to control PF leaving and you

slow kits as colateral damage

.In other words, if you consider that using kits in rapid succession with PF is BAD, please say so. If you don't, please improve this solution.

I think you basically hit the nail on the head here.

We have spent YEARS being told trait X or skill Y was changed or limited to compensate for kits having no cooldowns. We have spent years with the profession being designed more around kits then the tool belt skills, which are the professions, actual professional mechanic. We have been refused weapon swap and more weapon options because of kits for this reasoning as well. Now, after all of that, we are seeing kits limited by another function, all the while, still having those previous limitations based around kits having no cooldown left in place.

It's almost as if core engineer needs to be rebalanced...

[goldenwing.9654]

Please, I would actually like to play a non-kit Engi for once.

[schloumou.3982]

@Valfaros.6908 said:Elite specializations should open up a new way to play a profession certainly this cooldown prevents enginier from what they have been doing for ages (swapping kits like crazy). --> Goal archieved stop complaining about that it feels different with the cooldown that's what it is about if you dislike it play core.

@goldenwing.9654 said:Please, I would actually like to play a non-kit Engi for once.

IMHO artificially crippling kits is a bad way to take for that goal. It further limits build diversity. Why not give valid alternative choices via skills, traits and synergies?

[Arimas.3492]

We should just change engineer to get rid of toolbelt skills and make kits into our class mechanic. Boom all problems solved!/s

But I think the Holosmith cooldown should be tested more before everyone starts complaining. I didn't have any issue with it on the weekend.

[Yagudo.6759]

I kinda like the cooldown. I like having the option to play an Engineer without hurting my hands/wrists by spamming kits all the time, so having a single elite spec that puts a bit of a limit on that is a good thing IMO.

[Twigifire.8379]

If kits would be allowed in photon forge mode then there would need to be some re-balancing for it. I think it's nice how they added a high-risk high-reward elite spec where in photon forge you'll have heaps of damage but should essentially put a target on your head at the same time whilst you're locked into it so you'd need to time when to use it. Scrapper wasn't about swapping through heaps of kits either yet that worked out fine as well.

[schloumou.3982]

@Twigifire.8379 said:Scrapper wasn't about swapping through heaps of kits either yet that worked out fine as well.

Right, but because his mainweapon was made so strong and miles ahead of other engi weapons (great utillity, short CDs, build in def in 3/5 skills) so you didnt need many kits. But that way you kept the option to make a p/p condi scrapper or sd rifle scrapper or what ever with kits even if not that strong. Why limit us even further in choices?

[Twigifire.8379]

@schloumou.3982 said:

@Twigifire.8379 said:Scrapper wasn't about swapping through heaps of kits either yet that worked out fine as well.

Right, but because his mainweapon was made so strong and miles ahead of other engi weapons (great utillity, short CDs, build in def in 3/5 skills) so you didnt need many kits. But that way you kept the option to make a p/p condi scrapper or sd rifle scrapper or what ever with kits even if not that strong. Why limit us even further in choices?

For balance reasons, and making it high risk vs reward. Photon forge is also insanely strong which means you don't need to take kits. There's nothing stopping people from taking kits. Tool Kit and Elixir Gun are very strong with it and are definitely more than viable choices, same goes for flamethrower in a hybrid/condi variant. It's not a case of not being able to use the kit -full stop-, you just can't use it for a minimum of 6 seconds which means you just need to think and plan a bit more before committing into it. In regards to build choices, I'd say dis-allowing kits, has, if anything, increased build diversity as if it the CD wasn't there, TK and EG would be too good and become staples, potentially leading to unnecessary nerfs.

[SirPrizeBartSachs.4670]

Side question here, but are the current skill coefficients of photon forge's AA chain on the wiki accurate? That is, 1.25 / 1.25 / 2.0? That's a pretty powerful autoattack, even more so than bomb auto, it sounds advantageous to spend as much time as possible in photon forge mode just to be able to use the AA

[kaesebrezen.3104]

@SirPrizeBartSachs.4670 said:Side question here, but are the current skill coefficients of photon forge's AA chain on the wiki accurate? That is, 1.25 / 1.25 / 2.0? That's a pretty powerful autoattack, even more so than bomb auto, it sounds advantageous to spend as much time as possible in photon forge mode just to be able to use the AA

As much time in forge as possible = only use auto-attack. If the Forge auto-attack is too strong, your optimal gameplay for maximum (power) dps is to just auto-attack in forge. Corona and PB just have extremely poor damage/heat efficiency (PB only in a power build)

Power holo Gameplay: Go in forge and auto-attack until overheat (with boom trait), then switch to bomb and auto-attack.

[schloumou.3982]

Another problem i see: It will take a week or so and everybody knows we are not only locking our selfs out of mainweapon Def but a lot of utillity Def and as soon as we go yoloform eveyone just CCs and nukes us to bits because our "shroud" doesnt come with any HP or Def mechanisms like necro has. I think we get way to predictable with that discoformlimitations.

[HotHit.6783]

I don't think it's an issue. There are two factors that add up to Photon Forge needing to disable kits.

• If Photon Forge didn't have any kind of commitment to it Heat (among other risks) would be a non-issue, as you could just leave the moment you hit 99% Heat.
• Photon Forge likely uses the same bundle system as kits, so swapping to another kit would take you out of Photon Forge and I'm unsure how complex that subsystem is. There is always potential that Anet could rework the system to equip kits while in forge, but does that really add to Espec design?

It isn't that the Forge is locking you out of kits, it's that it's locking you into the Forge as you're also locked out of your standard weapons. The biggest issue with the disable mechanic is that when your Forge detonates you're back to normal gameplay, but kits remain disabled. There is an argument for the extended disable being an extra cost, but at the very least Photonic Blasting Module should undisable kit swapping when you explode and also Mechanized Deployment should reduce the duration of the disable. Those changes would simply make the Forge lock consistent among all of its effects.

It's clear that Anet have been wanting to make Heat more than just a resource, if Heat were freeform to use, the Forge would be no different to Death Shroud. The only difference would be that you have the option to not pay attention to your resource use and explode. In the current iteration, it plays an inverse game where you build a resource through use that you don't want and are locked into building that resource, as opposed to using up a resource and being locked out of it. Because Heat punishes you for using the Forge too much instead of stopping you from using the Forge too much, that enables interesting and risky decisions, such as responding to an opportunity to burst an opponent by entering Forge early (despite that commiting you to an overheat).