Giving holosmith a "proper" trade off

[mortrialus.3062]

What the difference between the capabilities of a core and elite specialization should look like:

Core:Elite:

What the difference between the capabilities of a core and elite specialization look like for far too many elite specializations:

Core:Elite:

Honestly the whole trade off thing, like trade off and tinkering with the profession mechanic can work, but ultimately elite specializations should be expanding the strengths of the core profession while adding additional weaknesses.

The examples I always go to are Druid and Holosmith. Druid, before they ever added the -200 pet stats already had a serious opportunity cost; if you pick druid, because of the way the unique weapon, traits, and utilities were set up meant you could never do as much damage if you picked druid compared to a core ranger, let alone a soulbeast. Even though picking it gives you an F5 with no true trade off, just by being a smarter designed elite specialization it never needed a direct "Lose X Profession Skill" or in the actual case "Lose -200 pet stats."

Holosmith on the other hand, even though it has a "Trade off" in that you lose the Elite Toolbelt skill, taking holosmith gives you; More Burst Damage, More Sustained DPS, More Mobility, More CC, More Stability, More Active Defenses, More Condition Cleansing, and More Healing than a Core Engineer. Sure, Holosmith has a "trade off" according to Arenanet's philosophy, but it isn't remotely genuine trade off that gives holosmith noticeable strengths but also notable weaknesses. Holosmith is just an increase in all the capabilities of Engineer.

While sometimes tinkering with the profession mechanics can help, really the solution is to be more careful, focused, and smarter with how the elite specializations are designed going forward in terms of their weapons, utilities, and especially their traits.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

@"Widmo.3186" said:How to nerf holo? Buff core engi.Noice B)Almost as if an "elite spec" is still using two of the core trait lines or something...

[Chaith.8256]

@"Falan.1839" said:A harder hitting tradeoff without buffing the core lines or other abilities on Holosmith would just give Holo the Chrono treatment, aka deletion from PvP, the difference being that Mes still has other viable specs while Engi clearly does not. The TE is pretty right about how useless kits and generally mose core skills are on Engi rn, and for the vast majority of those it won't change with the coming patch. It's not like this is limited to Kits, most Gadgets and Turrets are equally useless and stuck on a 2012 powerlevel. If anything, the new philosophy of no dmg on CCs, only very limited dmg on instant skills but fairly high damage on the "big hits" is going to hurt the class more, because aside from Grenade Barrage there aren't really any big, hard hitting telegraphed skills on Engi while there are several smallers hits in the toolbelt. PLB probably came clostest, but since it's a CC it also gets the 0 dps treatment.

On Shadowpass I just won't comment anymore, idk how biased and hateful towards a class you can possibly be, all the more while abusing one of the most broken skills in the game right now (Counterattack).

I think the truth about the state of Engi lies between Shadowpass' brutal regime of un-needed nerfs, and your not so hot outlook on the class potential outside Holo.

I was serious when I said Holo is unremarkable, I think Scrapper and Engi have a real shot at doing it better after next week's patch. Yes kits are a bit behind now but wait until everything else gets dropped 33%.

[shadowpass.4236]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@"Xervite.5493" said:Isnt the overheating mechanic and the follow up damage a good enough trade off? Granted its not as brutal as I first thought it would be but it can still down you.

Hey let's give one class an elite spec. Its special mechanic is a single button, no cooldown. If you use it once, it kills everyone on the enemy team instantly. If you use it twice within a 10 second time frame,

your

team dies.

Good tradeoff right? Just play skillfully, don't press too many buttons during the interval and you'll be fine!

Anyways, overheating would be a tradeoff IF it affected the Holosmith 100% of the time. However, any Holo that understands how to dodge won't overheat.

Honestly, Heat Therapy should be reversed while in Photon Forge. Gaining heat should damage the Holosmith. Losing heat it should give health back with half the healing value of the damage per point of heat gained. In other words, if the Holo takes 60 points of damage per heat gained, he'd gain 30 health back per heat lost. It should get min 3s of stab back on Elixir U. That's enough for a stomp or a heal skill and it's the same duration for the cooldown as some other stab skills (around 8.3% uptime base). Also, both stacks of stab from Corona Burst should be moved to the initial hit so it doesn't require 2 defensive skills to prevent giving stab to the Holo, will be stronger upfront and should scale up to 2 targets (max 4 stacks of stab). Holo Leap should get a cooldown increase to 5s. Lock On double proc (on-hit specifically) should get removed.

Who hurt you, bud? People like myself have explained the different dimensions of Holo trade offs before, it seems like you stubbornly ignore.

Patch coming out in one week that'll remove traited stability from Corona burst

Holosmith is an incredibly unremarkable spec. Your nerf suggestions are all overkill, Holo use will already sharply drop after next week's patch.

Okay so my proposal to give Holo stronger stability through longer durations on a 32s cd traited utility skill that also gives quickness + vigor + stunbreak + toolbelt super speed and double stacks on hitting the first strike of Corona Burst would kill the class right?

Lock On has been busted and it has two identical proc effects that do not share their 25s cooldowns on a passive trait that has a 48% reveal uptime + fury and almost max vuln stacks that isn't even hard to proc. Remove the on-hit proc and it would still be one of the strongest reveal skills in the game for the cooldown.

Maybe take a look at how insane Holo was, how much worse it got after nerfed stab too hard, and think, "Hey, my spec could maybe be a little more skillful than instant hard cc's in melee range, low cooldown + cast time high melee + ranged damage + mobility, perma quickness, perma vigor + swiftness, 6s duration stealth reset every 30 seconds from Toss Elixir S (bonus utility you get for free just by taking Elixir S) with a heal that casts too quick for anything without an extremely low cast time ranged interrupt to reliably CC."

Oh, but receiving a tradeoff that actually affects your spec, nerfing a single overperforming trait, and buffing 2 other skills to compensate is overkill, right? /s

[Chaith.8256]

@shadowpass.4236 said:Okay so my proposal to give Holo stronger stability through longer durations on a 32s cd traited utility skill that also gives quickness + vigor + stunbreak + toolbelt super speed and double stacks on hitting the first strike of Corona Burst would kill the class right?

Putting Elixir U from 2 to 3 seconds of stability, I just kind of ignored this. The stability is going away on Corona burst.. so let's not pretend that's a realistic option anymore. ArenaNet never EVER directly reverts the philosophical direction of a patch

Lock On has been busted and it has two identical proc effects that do not share their 25s cooldowns on a passive trait that has a 48% reveal uptime + fury and almost max vuln stacks that isn't even hard to proc. Remove the on-hit proc and it would still be one of the strongest reveal skills in the game for the cooldown.

Lock on is awesome for the game. It's really only the on-hit stealth reveal that does anything - usually the on CC reveal goes on cooldown randomly hitting a pet, clone, or just during the an attack rotation. You've went on a LOT over the last few months about how it's too much reveal, only citing the reveal duration and cooldown, but the on CC reveal is unreliable and highly ineffective at countering stealth. It wouldn't hurt this trait one bit if that was removed. Anyway, have you seen the prevalence of stealth lately? Sadly I think it will be harder to run Lock On after the patch, explosives seems like it will be higher priority.

Oh, but receiving a tradeoff that actually affects your spec, nerfing a single overperforming trait, and buffing 2 other skills to compensate is overkill, right? /s

Buddy, don't come at me with this. You're talking about making Photon Forge have twice the negative effect of Heat Therapy when you gain heat. So instead of gaining 4500 health for venting 150 heat, you'd be losing 4500 health. That's a 9k health difference every Photon Forge cycle. iT's jUsT a tRadEoFF, except you don't know anything about intra-Engineer class balance, Holo would simply be what Core Engi was 2 years ago, invisible.

[Burnfall.9573]

what i don't get is, what is all the talks of 'trade off'? Does everything requires 'trade off'? Hey, life is not fair and same goes for changes. Not every changes requires everything in return...it's just is

Not everything you lose is replaceable

At the moment; all professions need hard nerfs with no exceptions including Thief Profession needing the most out of it than the other professions. Toxic mechanics- skills need to be either completely removed with no trade off or to be completely redesigned with healthy competitive fairness design

Nerf is Nerf

Toxicity can not be negotiated, it is what it is

Bad Design is Bad Design

Gimmick is Gimmick-Clown Fiesta is what it is

Remove and Nothing else to it

Simple as that!!

[shadowpass.4236]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Okay so my proposal to give Holo stronger stability through longer durations on a 32s cd traited utility skill that also gives quickness + vigor + stunbreak + toolbelt super speed and double stacks on hitting the first strike of Corona Burst would kill the class right?

Putting Elixir U from 2 to 3 seconds of stability, I just kind of ignored this. The stability is going away on Corona burst.. so let's not pretend that's a realistic option anymore. ArenaNet never EVER directly reverts the philosophical direction of a patch

Lock On has been busted and it has two identical proc effects that do not share their 25s cooldowns on a passive trait that has a 48% reveal uptime + fury and almost max vuln stacks that isn't even hard to proc. Remove the on-hit proc and it would still be one of the strongest reveal skills in the game for the cooldown.

Lock on is awesome for the game. It's really only the on-hit stealth reveal that does anything - usually the on CC reveal goes on cooldown randomly hitting a pet, clone, or just during the an attack rotation. You've went on a LOT over the last few months about how it's too much reveal, only citing the reveal duration and cooldown, but the on CC reveal is unreliable and highly ineffective at countering stealth. It wouldn't hurt this trait one bit if that was removed. Anyway, have you seen the prevalence of stealth lately? Sadly I think it will be harder to run Lock On after the patch, explosives seems like it will be higher priority.

Oh, but receiving a tradeoff that actually affects your spec, nerfing a single overperforming trait, and buffing 2 other skills to compensate is overkill, right? /s

Buddy, don't come at me with this. You're talking about making Photon Forge have twice the negative effect of Heat Therapy when you gain heat. So instead of gaining 4500 health for venting 150 heat, you'd be losing 4500 health. That's a 9k health difference every Photon Forge cycle. iT's jUsT a tRadEoFF, except you don't know anything about intra-Engineer class balance, Holo would simply be what Core Engi was 2 years ago, invisible.

1. Elixir U currently has a 1 second duration on the stab, not 2 seconds. Also, the higher the base duration the higher it scales with boon duration. So with 6s base the duration got bumped up to around 9 seconds on the meta build meanwhile 3 would scale to around 5s. For a utility skill that gives you extremely important boons on a 32s traited CD, 5s of stab with alc minor + leadership is very strong.
2. 48% reveal uptime on a passive trait that also gives fury and vuln is insane. I would love to have that on ranger or any other class simply because I'd be able to prevent them from disengaging with stealth almost indefinitely. Against stealth classes I could literally just spam autos on any ranged weapon or hold onto a cc for when I see them about to stealth. It doesn't matter if they stealth as long as the actual cc hits them after they stealth.
3. The damage numbers were hypothetical. Reducing the damage taken to around 3.5k for a full photon forge double bar of heat with 1.75k gained back while removing the ability to overheat would be more of a tradeoff than what holo has atm. Currently, the tradeoff does nothing. It never affects Holos as long as they keep dodging so the spec might as well not even have a tradeoff atm.

[Ten.2617]

A history:

[Ten.2617]

What is the point someone to activate projector that generate a holographic armor and utilize holographic constructs with the porpose of increase offensive and defensive capability, if the same holographic armor and constructs decreases his offensive and defensive capabilities?

Looks some one that want reach on next city to survive an incomming ice age (will reach on all world in half day). Let's call him for Engineer.

Engineer can reach on next city in 1 day if just walks... On Engineer's currently position, some ones can reach on next city in half day, others in 1/4 day, and others can reach on next city in 2 days... If all them just walks!

Ok! Everyone on current Engineer's position toke a car and now all them can reach on next city in max 1/2 day, half them can reach in 1/4 day. But our poor Engineer has a car that help him to reach to next city in not less than 1/2 day, and his car can't stay working for much time because overheats the engine, putting the car on fire and on innutilizable state until the engine to cool. Of corse, our Engineer was severity damaged by the fire and can't more walks at same speed that bofore cnd can't more go as far that could before.

The ice is comming!

What's Engineer can do to not die on ice?

• He could try reach on next city walking like some ones that can reach on next city in 1/2 or 1/4 day?
• He could take a car that can reach on next city in 1/2 day but do not overheats the engine?
• He could take a car that can reach on next city in 1/4 day but do not overheats the engine?
• He could take a car that can reach on next city in 1/4 day but can overheats the engine?
• He could keep with his currently car that can reach on next city in 1/2 day but can overheats the engine?

This may be the currently balance state until the next update release reaches...For now, it look unfair remove capabilities from Engineer's car while some others can, just walking, reach on next city faster than Engineer with his car.

[Chaith.8256]

@shadowpass.4236 said:Currently, the tradeoff does nothing. It never affects Holos as long as they keep dodging so the spec might as well not even have a tradeoff atm.

Elite Toolbelts like AoE Moa Morph? Or AoE full condi cleanse and 8k worth of medkits, well if you insist that's no loss, sure. Great. Oh and the ability to use kits without cooldown ever.

Very disingenuous.. Also you talk about boon duration runes being so great and concentration from alchemy so powerful a synergy with an extra 2 seconds of stability on an elixir. You realize both of those boon durations are getting destroyed in a week right. I know you do, which makes your logic even more disingenuous about your buffs for holo

[shadowpass.4236]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Currently, the tradeoff does

nothing

. It never affects Holos as long as they keep dodging so the spec might as well not even have a tradeoff atm.

Elite Toolbelts like AoE Moa Morph? Or AoE full condi cleanse and 8k worth of medkits, well if you insist that's no loss, sure. Great. Oh and the ability to use kits without cooldown ever.

Very disingenuous.. Also you talk about boon duration runes being so great and concentration from alchemy so powerful a synergy with an extra 2 seconds of stability on an elixir. You realize both of those boon durations are getting destroyed in a week right. I know you do, which makes your logic even more disingenuous about your buffs for holo

You get like 10 utility skills as an engineer based off of the nature Toolbelt Skills.

Losing one of those isnt much of a tradeoff regardless of their effectiveness. Holo has 16 non-weapon skills in the base kit (11 extra).

Soulbeast is losing 7 skills from getting one of our pets removed as a tradeoff.

Considering boon uptimes are going down across the board, any increase to the base durations becomes infinitely more valuable. A 3s base duration on a 32s traited Elixir U will exceed the uptime on stab from SLB' DS after the 20s cd nerf.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

Not being able to equip kits as fast and the core elite toolbelt skills should be tradeoff enough.

Core elite toolbelt skills just need a bit of improvement so the tradeoff is felt more.

• Toss Elixir X is already very powerful. A polymorph that lasts 3 seconds and affects 3 targets. Maybe reduce cooldown to 90s if core engineer needs a little more oomph.
• Med Pack Drop could use being replaced by something else. Skills that require allies to see and walk over small things on the ground are really bad in the heat of battle.
  • I'd change it into something else. For example, a skill that produces a chain reaction version of Cleansing Burst. It would heal, remove conditions and give regeneration. Each ally affected by the effect for the first time would have another happen around them after 3 seconds that would chain again on any allies that were not hit by the effect before, until up a number of allies have been affected. The number of allies would be balanced based based on the healing, regen and condition removal of the effect, the lower the values set for the skill, the more max times it be set to chain. It could also be split in between and PvP, making the PvP version chain less but heal more, and the WvW version chain more but heal less, spreading more the healing.
• Orbital strike is easy to avoid and deals moderate damage, making it mostly a slow blast. I'd like to make people more afraid of this skill and increase its effect in PvE against stationary enemies like world bosses a raid bosses.
  • I'd change the skill to have an increased cooldown of 90 or 120 seconds, and make the strike take longer to happen, from 2 to 4 seconds, in exchange for the delay:
    • The pillar of light would deal 3 pulses per second of small damage and 1s burning to up to 3 enemies in contact with it (small 120 unit radius from the pillar, up to 12 strikes total per enemy).
    • The pillar would chase the closest enemy at the speed of a player in combat without speed boosts or conditions.
    • Small strikes will happen every 3 times a pulse hits at least 1 enemy. They would deal 1/5 or less of the damage of the final strike. These will not be unblockable, but they will cause a combo blast.
    • The base damage for the final strike would be increased to 2.0 coefficient, and the damage of the strike will also increase based on the number of times a pulse hit at least one enemy by about 0.1 coefficient per pulse (max 1.2).
    • The final strike will cause knockdown and be unavoidable with evades on top of being unblockable.

[bravan.3876]

@Chaith.8256 said:People like myself have explained the different dimensions of Holo trade offs before,

Btw i got now what you meant with kit lock out, you mean the little cd you have after going into Holo mode. Rofl, that was a little misunderstanding. I mean it obiously is also good to create some harder decision making so the player needs to be sure he doesn't need any kit or weapon skill the next 5 secs (and for only that the clunkyness would overshine the skill ceiling effect it adds) but i think the main reason for that cd is not adding skill ceiling, it is, that you cannot permanently switch in and out of Holomode using 1-2 skills and drop out with never having any remarkable heat generation. So i would subsume that under inherent costs of heat and not a second trade off or a second cost. It is directly linked to the heat mechanic.

[Chaith.8256]

@shadowpass.4236 said:Considering boon uptimes are going down across the board, any increase to the base durations becomes infinitely more valuable.

You have that backwards. With big boon durations, any increase to base durations become a big deal.

When people will be running 8-20% boon duration, 2 seconds is 2 seconds.

[shadowpass.4236]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Considering boon uptimes are going down across the board, any increase to the base durations becomes infinitely more valuable.

You have that backwards. With big boon durations, any increase to base durations become a big deal.

When people will be running 8-20% boon duration, 2 seconds is 2 seconds.

No, I don't have it backwards.

At 1s base stab, 20% additional boon duration won't even give you a full second. 50% boon duration won't even give you a full second, nor 90%. An increase from 1s to 3s is effectively 300% boon duration post patch on Elixir U.

With concentration in the game, let's compare a 5s to 6s base stab duration with 100% boon duration. That 5s turns to 10s and the 6s turns to 12s. So, investing extremely heavily in boon duration will give a marginal increase with similar changes to base durations.

In the first scenario, increasing the base duration by 2 seconds with 0 additional concentration gives the same amount of additional stab as a 1s base duration increase with 100% boon duration. Hence, base durations become infinitely more valuable at low scaling when concentration is harder to come by.

Now, where boon duration outperforms base duration increases of a few seconds are when base durations are extraordinarily high. However, at extremely high base durations, boon duration isn't even necessary anymore as permanent uptimes would already be able to be maintained without it. In other words, you'd be wasting stats in concentration that would and could be better spent elsewhere.

Similarly, concentration becomes less efficient with lower base boon durations. To elaborate, with 100% boon duration, a base duration of 1s would only receive a 1s increase. So ALL of those stats you poured into concentration wouldn't make much of a difference at all.

I'm in aerospace and mechanical engineering, literally doing rocket science and I'm planning on getting my masters in BA for economics after I graduate. I understand the math man.

[Arkantos.7460]

a 10 sec cd to yoloholo mode is a good tradeoff

[Chaith.8256]

@shadowpass.4236 said:I'm in aerospace and mechanical engineering, literally doing rocket science and I'm planning on getting my masters in BA for economics after I graduate. I understand the math man.

I'm speechless. Yes, with +0 boon duration, Going from 1s to 3s of base stability is +2 seconds. Or an impressive 300% increase as you liked to word it. Agreed. For some reason I can't comprehend, with the 100% boon duration scenario, you choose to compare going from 5s to 6s base stability. If you compare the same scenario of 1s to 3s base stability, *and then adding 100% boon duration, it's obvious the impact is much higher in real performance, having a 6s stability instead of 1s. You're going to get a 600% increase in output from the before and after with the same scenario and logic. We're talking about a 1s stability going to 3s. No need to needlessly debate irrelevant things

[Stand The Wall.6987]

imo the only type of trade off that makes sense is a new mechanic that replaces the old one, not a direct upgrade but a modification. well actually that's basic design so nvm.

example of how fb could have been: each gm gives you only one book. so if you wanted damage you would grab justice and only have that book.

[Chaith.8256]

@shadowpass.4236

You are a very very very smart person

[shadowpass.4236]

@Chaith.8256 said:@shadowpass.4236

You are a very very very smart person

Thanks!

While we're being sarcastic, an increase from 1s to 3s base duration with 100% boon duration is a 600% increase.

[Undo.5091]

Kits definitely need some love overall. Personally, I’d like if a stunbreak could make its way into either med kit or tool kit, but I’m biased here because I want to have a penta-kit build to meme around with.

Also, I think the maths in this thread are slightly off.1s to 3s is a 200% increase, as is 2s to 6s.Can we drop percentages anyways? They’re likely going to be fairly irrelevant to most classes in sPvP post-patch. The theoretical stability increase would definitely be a buff to the skill, but it’s an incredibly unlikely change.

[shadowpass.4236]

@Undo.5091 said:Kits definitely need some love overall. Personally, I’d like if a stunbreak could make its way into either med kit or tool kit, but I’m biased here because I want to have a penta-kit build to meme around with.

Also, I think the maths in this thread are slightly off.1s to 3s is a 200% increase, as is 2s to 6s.Can we drop percentages anyways? They’re likely going to be fairly irrelevant to most classes in sPvP post-patch. The theoretical stability increase would definitely be a buff to the skill, but it’s an incredibly unlikely change.

Ah yeah that's correct my terminology was off. I meant it was 300% of the original value. A 200% increase would be from 1 to 3 or 2 to 6, ty.

[Kuma.1503]

@shadowpass.4236 said:

1. So if a Soulbeast is merging with their pet with good timing and foresight, they're playing well and should be rewarded, not punished. But one of their pets is getting removed even though they already lose pets while merged.

For what it's worth, I don't agree with Anet's stance on Soulbeast. It's another spec that is meant to be versatile without being top dog at any one thing. You had two pets which let you adapt to whatever situation you found yourself in.

The nerf makes sense from a thematic standpoint. You forge such a strong bond with one pet that you gain the ability to merge, but if we're speaking strictly in trade offs, Soulbeast already had one.

They lose their pet while merged. That's about as natural of a trade off as it gets.

[Dantheman.3589]

This was very educational ty.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I stopped reading at "No tradeoffs for Tempest", which is barely even played compared to Weaver. Continuing on to read your thoughts about Engineer, while somewhat valid, was pointless beyond this because you don't seem to understand other classes.