Do you like Holosmith? Please tell me why.

[raykor.6723]

Not trolling. I'm trying to learn Holosmith and find the main mechanic annoying. I don't enjoy having to constantly watch my heat level to avoid doing thousands of points of damage to myself. I'm just talking PvE here. If I miss hit the button, or get knocked down by a mob, any sort of delay at the wrong time and bam. Also, the sword itself is pretty meh. I just don't get this specialization.

[Kodama.6453]

I first didn't really like it mostly because of the thematic. It felt a bit over the top for me to throw lasers everywhere.

 

But after a while, I started liking it. Watching for my heat is actually something I really enjoy, since it is just different from what other classes have. Other classes build up a ressource to use their mechanic for a limited time (celestial avatar from druid or death shroud from necromancer for example), but holosmith is the other way around. Using the photon forge builds up the ressource and you have to watch out to not overuse it or eat the punishment.

 

And all 3 grandmaster traits help with heat management in their own way.

Enhanced capacity storage unit enhances your heat bars, allowing you to have more leeway and stay a bit longer in photon forge, while also getting increased heat benefits.

Thermal release valve allows you to get rid of heat by dodging (15 heat points per dodge).

And photonic blasting module goes as far as making you not really watch out that much for heat in the first place by making you overheat on purpose, while decreasing the punishment (5 seconds toolbelt cooldown instead of 15 and less self damage).

 

I think they handled the heat system pretty good here, there are different ways to approach the heat management through these traits, so everyone should be able to find one that suits them.

[santenal.1054]

The sword skills and utility skills are boring (kits ftw!) but the acces to photon forge is (in my opinion) an upgrade to core engineer (depends on your playstyle). (core has gotten too many nerfs for me to still be effective and enjoy the class).

 

You can deactivate photon forge while being hard cc'ed.

Edited June 11, 2021 by santenal.1054

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I was never a huge fan of it. It brought out the worst of our class and lead to a lot of unnecessary nerfs for Core Engineer. The traitlines basically say YOU GO PHOTONFORGE OR NOT TOUCH THIS SPECIALIZATION - while every other elite-specialization in the game has passives in the traitline that support alternative approaches. Especially with the Engineer profession, which is the most flexible in the entire game, this was a slap in the face with a sledgehammer. I was so angry.

 

After a few months I decided to take a real look at the Holosmith and got frustrated right again. The sword was the only weapon with heat-tiers, literally no other weapon had the mechanic. Looking at Elementalist (Weaver), they got dual-attacks for all of their old weapons - not only sword. Warrior (Berzerker) got primal bursts for each of their countless weapons. But the heat mechanic for the Holosmith is SWORD and nothing else. We do not even have that many weapons anyway.

 

After that cooled off, I gave it yet another try. Burn/Power hybrid with full Grieving stats. It worked! It died from the windblow of a fly's wing-flap, but it worked. But it basically played like a Warrior or Thief, so I got bored and decided to scrap the entire build.

 

FT Scrapper became the new farm-meta. Was never a huge fan of that either, so I challenged myself with: Make an FT Holosmith that can compete with the FT Scrapper. Took another look at the Holosmith, heat-tiers of utility skills this time. The basic skills were quite underwhelming, but above 50 % heat, they performed surprisingly well. However after one elemental test, I realized one hillariously annoying mini-bug: heat-tiers trigger only at 52 % heat or above, although the tooltip says 50 %! Seriously? I have reported it right away, it was never touched until today /shrug.

 

At that point I hesitated. Would I find even more broken things if I dared to put the Holosmith to the acid test? And how the kitten did I never hear of that bug before. The Holosmith fanbase must have noticed it right away? Right? On the other hand, 99 % of them play PBM and only run Photon Forge for the sake of reaching overheat. Yeah, they probably just don't give a kitten at all ^^. Ok, back to the sketch-board.

 

Red Pirate is basically a mockery of the Holosmith meta. You charge up Photon Forge to 52 %, leave it and forget it exists ^^. You mostly camp FT, but can also switch to Sword & Shield. With the shield-skills, the heal-skill and Hard Light Arena, you can maintain 100 % group protection uptime, which is hilarious for a farm build XD. The synergy with Anticorrosion Planting makes it an insanely powerful counter to condition-spammers (e. g. Yanonka). The pull of the Hard Light Arena is amazing for farming, Laser Disk works great for tagging and damaging. I've tested it in all kinds of large scale meta-events, but it works amazingly well in Drizzlewood Coast south-meta. With the medizooka equipped, you can even climb large obstacles without fearing to lose heat due to mounting. The Radiance Rune enhances the heal-skill and extends the duration of the ice-aura (= -10 % incoming damage). This is the first and only Holosmith I enjoy playing. I like it and I will definitely keep it. But it was a long an painful way to get there. For non-farming content, I still prefer my Scrapper though ^^.

Edited June 12, 2021 by HnRkLnXqZ.1870

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Not a big fan of it, to the point i'm in no rush to unlock it after trying it in pvp. But learning recently of it having nice defense options i gained some respect for it. I guess it feels a lot like ranger's soulbeast - your core profession "plus" rather than a new role and purpose like with druid or support scrapper.

[Infusion.7149]

Holosmith has big cleave in PVE with typically sufficient CC. If you want to be extremely lazy you can run PBM and just reach near maximum heat and drop photon forge or run PBM with a rifle and bomb kit with overheat, but it's nowhere near as effective as ECSU builds that drop in and out of forge as well as grenade kit.

In PVP it has been a staple since its inception ; in WVW it can be used against anything that isn't a large group to great effect. In a group scenario right now scrapper is stronger due to quickness.

Before holosmith my engineer didn't get nearly as much play as it could have even though it was a launch day character. Scrapper til gyro rework was rather unhelpful in all modes. While core engineer is fun it became tiring if spamming grenades is the most effective damage.

It may be a highly effective class, but similar to chronomancer, weaver, and renegade it requires proper cooldown and resource (heat) management to extract maximum performance.

So yes, I would say holosmith is an invaluable asset to the engineer class.

[raykor.6723]

Thanks for the comments. I enjoy reading your opinions.

[Wolfb.7025]

I fell in unconditional love for engineer even before starting to play the game (I made my own research and watched showcase videos to find which class to pick). And since then i've been pretty adamant into learning almost everything the class has to offer.

 

Once I unlocked Holosmith, i thought it was pretty neat being able to "summon" holographic weapons, the only thing I still don't like much about the elite spec is that photon forge covers you completely on a holographic texture.

[ZeroSkitzo.5403]

After playing all 9 classes and elites, nothing held my attention like holo (across all game modes too). At first, it was rough playing it in pvp and managing beat, etc. but once you stick to it and learn the class, it’s extremely rewarding!

 

I also love the theme of the forge and while you loss your armor skins, you keep all infusions and legendary trinket effects which I love and makes the forge pop even more. 
 

As others mentioned, it’s also meta in all game content (wvw is roaming but not zerging- that’s for scrapper).

 

if I were you, I’d give it a little more time and effort but at the end of it all, if you still don’t enjoy it, move onto something else and come back to it later! This game super alt friendly so don’t feel like you have to force yourself to enjoy a spec. 
 

Good luck out there!

[Kuma.1503]

It's not my favorite elite. It's vanilla dps. It hits things until they die. I'd love it if Engineer's new elite allowed them to bring utility on the same level as FB/Ren/Druid, ect. 

 

Strides have been made with scrapper, but we're not quite there yet. 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Kuma.1503

[Pablo.3259]

I don't really like Holo, the spec feel too restricted gameplay wise.

I tried some wierd build with holo support or utility but scrapper offer just more variety.

I hope that the new engi spec will not just bring an other system, but also synergize with the previous existings specs.

 

Altought, I still play holo for the damage because it has the highest dps output imo, and I'm an engi main.

Do I enjoy it ? No.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Pablo.3259

[medivh.4725]

I enjoyed holosmith for its high dps, forge transformations, it being different, has neat combos, ideal for fast takedowns of static enemy. Maybe even better if transforming in and out of forge is slowed or more elaborative so people can notice the transformation. Always thought the transformation process was pretty fun to look at. 

 

Build wise I am on holosmith runes, full berserkers and I struggle with the defense or its substainability. I generally try not to bring in a toolbelt as I already have them on engineer and also scrapper. Only rocketboots seem a worthly keep that I bring over from my engineer. My holosmith is bad with human players and keeps dying. Does anyone have same problem? I tried alot of other tools avaliable, I tried condis and other elixirs but my elixir boost are just 6s. Also there should be more ways to extend and mitigate heat build ups so the character stay longer in forge mode.  There not enough little heat loss gadgets to tap on. The boons are relatively short, like whats with the 2s vigors with 10% damage? - It stack? My headlight area offer 2s of protection, 2s of regen, 2s of fury. My spectrum shield is 4s of 50% incoming damage. Other tame defensive elements are like 2s protections of just 33%? 4s frost aura? I have since swap out all these short short boons for more damages to take out my foes even quicker. Of course that won't work on human players because they row about dodge around and will pew pew me to death and not give a care of my cool forge themed animations

Edited June 22, 2021 by medivh.4725

[Scolix.4879]

No.

In fact i tried to enjoy engineer as a whole as it is a class that i tend to gravitate to in every game that has one but in this game it never really clicked to me might be that the things that i like about engineer style classes are all crap in this games engineer mainly the turrets.

[Perceptor.7189]

No.

Only use holo because of fractals and the "use the meta build" stuff.

 

I hate it, every other spec/class with a resource management mechanic have some punishmet, but most of the time it's based on locking some skills, but holo it's the only spec with double punishmet, one big hp loss and losing your toolkit abilities. Not to mention, the persisten bug of forge canceling your skills, the fact that i can't pick things on the ground while in forge mode, losing all my stored heat once i hop on a mount, and the list go on and on and on...... 

 

[cyberzombie.7348]

I liked the concept and enjoyed playing it at first with the prime light beam being my most favorite skill in the game, but the holoforge made it feel more like a warrior than a engineer. The feb patch also didn't do any favors, nerfing beam's to negligible damage which was the final straw that made me stitch back to core.

[Telgum.6071]

 Holosmith is what Berserker should have been: a special mode that synergizes with your entire build when you use it AND REMAINS rewarding you when you exit said mode.

While Holo empowers you with high heat after exiting it, Berserker is like "Ok now you only have two trait lines". This is terrible design specially for competitive modes where competent enemies won't ever bother to fight while you are in Berserker mode. But that doesn't apply to Holosmith.

 

So yeah, I do like Holosmith over Scrapper and Core (I don't like core Engi at all). IMO Holo is a very well designed xpec, but I understand that many Engi mains don't enjoy the heat system or the warrior-like combat.

Edited July 4, 2021 by Telgum.6071
Typo

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

holo stupid op. pls nerf

 

[SkyCake.4216]

Eh, it's okay. I respect what it brings to Engineer. Its DPS and Defensive options are really strong. It is kind of "boring" for an Engineer spec, but so is Scrapper. It's at least better put together than Scrapper in my opinion. It doesn't feel like a last minute idea that has been reworked over a patch with mechanics changed. The theme can be a little harsh on personal characters with the scifi feeling. I do try to avoid it when making a new build though since I've grown bored of the idea. I also appreciate the two traits that change how the spec plays and think those are wonderfully designed traits, Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit and Photonic Blasting Module. I'd like to see more traits like those in the future. 

 

So! Well-designed spec in my opinion. Just doesn't really mesh with what I would personally want from an Engineer mechanically and thematically. It definitely has some bugs and kinks to work out, though. I feel like Engineer tends to be bottom on the "to-do" list. Everyone feels that way about their favorite class. 

 

I'm really hoping EoD's e-spec brings a bit more creativity to Engineer. Th engineer-archtype is my favorite in games. And, overall, I do think GW2's Engineer is totally fine. But, it really often feels like the ideas for Engineer don't really match the potential for the archtype. Please, don't let EoD's Engineer e-spec be just like a bar you fill and can use a bigger attack kind of thing with traits that are "[x] attack deals more damage". 

 

I'm just kind of ranting at this point. Sorry, lol