Guild Wars 2

>>>Imgur album<<<
Everything was taken from BogOtter’s footage.

Or in this format that I posted on the other thread.

Skills: http://imgur.com/a/G9FZ2
Traits: http://imgur.com/a/A2kpr

Edit: Your version is missing Photon Wall.

Yep a combination of Power and Condition skills which will be useful for players who have Viper Gear.

If I understand it correctly, everytime you activate “Photon Forge” you can’t reach your weapon set or use kits for the next 6 seconds, locking you out of lots of survivability skills. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be too risky to play.

santenal.1054:

If I understand it correctly, everytime you activate “Photon Forge” you can’t reach your weapon set or use kits for the next 6 seconds, locking you out of lots of survivability skills. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be too risky to play.

If you watch Bog Otter’s stream, there’s nothing like that when he activates Photon Forge. It replaces your weapon skills with a different set of weapon skills and you can’t deactivate Photon Forge for a bit. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of. You can still use all your other skills. I doubt very much you couldn’t use kits.

EdwinLi.1284:

Yep a combination of Power and Condition skills which will be useful for players who have Viper Gear.

I don’t know, Holosmith + Condi is looking a little janky. Holosmith’s traits have some support for Condi in the Adept and Grand Master lines, but Sword only does a little bit of bleeding on Skill #2 and that’s it, and only one Photon Forge Mode weapon skill applies a damaging condition (#4 on 10s cd). And only one Utility/Toolbelt skill – Laser Disk/Blade Burst – applies Condi (some decent Bleed stacks it appears, but on a 30s cd). The new Elite applies Burning but on a 60s cd.

I was hoping the Holosmith spec could replace Tools in the current Explosions/Firearms/Tools P/P + Full Kit Viper Condi meta build while keeping the weapon + full kit loadout. But unfortunately it looks like to spec Holosmith you have to trade Mortar Kit for the Holosmith Elite Skill, since that Elite skill changes your F5 to activate/deactivate Photon Forge mode.

So the way I’m reading it is you basically have to trade Tools Spec + Mortar Kit for Holosmith Spec (and additional sources of Burning from its traits) + Photon Forge Mode (basically a kit but with only one damaging condition skill) + Holosmith Elite Skill. Hard to tell just from eyeballing it if that’s a good trade for a Condi build.

Explosions/Firearms/Holosmith might be able to become the new Condi Engi meta due mainly the Adept and Grand Master burning traits, but it’s not clear yet and looks kind of janky so far.

Thank you, Smog and Chaba, for posting these links!

Positives:
1. We have an AOE pull skill that isn’t dependent on swapping to a bomb kit at a fixed time.

2. We have some flashy skills.

3. Hard Light Arena is the take home skill for the Holosmith. I consider that more competitive than Revenant’s Glint legend and I would easily find a spot for that in my skillbar.

Negatives:
1. Skills generally have large cool downs and minimal positives to compensate.

2. Photon Wall only lasts for 3 seconds. That’s way to short and not competitive enough with Bulwark gyro 5s reflect and Toss Elixir U 12s reflect or missile break with far better cooldowns.

3. In general, the other skills are not as good compared to other engineer skills. Healing turret is still going to be meta and I’d take Elixir U over Photon Wall or Spectrum Shield any day.

4. Photon Forge wireframe skin is going to get old really fast and I imagine it’s not going to sit well with some fashioneers.

5. I’m not crazy about the heat mechanic. It’s just one more thing to worry about and stare at that heat bar instead of relaxing and enjoying the beautiful scenery and combat.

6. Sword is ok’ish, but on the surface the hammer is better. Hammer has a more reliable quickness uptime and might stacking. Sword only increases your critical chance. What they should have done instead is increase your critical hit damage by 25% and 50% based on heat level. That would make the weapon far more competitive.

I like how they give us a spec that allows us to use a sword, but all traits are focused on using a form that invalidates that they gave us a sword.

Looks like 100% of the traits are reliant on using Photon Forge, so no variety. I liked that I could use the scrapper line and not be reliant on 1 skill/kit. This one, I have to use Photon Forge otherwise, none of those traits matter.

Personally disappointed about that. Was hoping to be able to use a sword without having to look candy coated with other weapon graphics as skills.

kurtosis.9526:

EdwinLi.1284:

Yep a combination of Power and Condition skills which will be useful for players who have Viper Gear.

I don’t know, Holosmith + Condi is looking a little janky. Holosmith’s traits have some support for Condi in the Adept and Grand Master lines, but Sword only does a little bit of bleeding on Skill #2 and that’s it, and only one Photon Forge Mode weapon skill applies a damaging condition (#4 on 10s cd). And only one Utility/Toolbelt skill – Laser Disk/Blade Burst – applies Condi (some decent Bleed stacks it appears, but on a 30s cd). The new Elite applies Burning but on a 60s cd.

I was hoping the Holosmith spec could replace Tools in the current Explosions/Firearms/Tools P/P + Full Kit Viper Condi meta build while keeping the weapon + full kit loadout. But unfortunately it looks like to spec Holosmith you have to trade Mortar Kit for the Holosmith Elite Skill, since that Elite skill changes your F5 to activate/deactivate Photon Forge mode.

So the way I’m reading it is you basically have to trade Tools Spec + Mortar Kit for Holosmith Spec (and additional sources of Burning from its traits) + Photon Forge Mode (basically a kit but with only one damaging condition skill) + Holosmith Elite Skill. Hard to tell just from eyeballing it if that’s a good trade for a Condi build.

Explosions/Firearms/Holosmith might be able to become the new Condi Engi meta due mainly the Adept and Grand Master burning traits, but it’s not clear yet and looks kind of janky so far.

how often do you pistol auto? really shouldnt be autoing at all as a condi engi, and if you do happen to on sword itll only be once and then 2 will be off cd to spit out another 3/5 bleeds and mesh better with kit priorities

i think itll be the dps option, mortar is almost worthless for dps but this elite should have like twice the priority rating of ft4 and probably(?) a much more generous dimension… that alone is nothing to laugh at. then theres the random burning from traits too, free dps with no cast time.

insanemaniac.2456:

---

Looking at the skills, Power and Hybrid may favor Holosmith the most due to the Crit chance boost, Decent Direct damage, and condition added on to certain skills.

Pure Condition builds may have to remain kit focus since the Holosmith basic use focus on Power builds with Condition added on to the Power skills as extra damage.

Power and Viper gears will certain get the most out of Holosmith if they aim only to focus on Holo Form and not use Core Profession kits on utility.

insanemaniac.2456:

how often do you pistol auto? really shouldnt be autoing at all as a condi engi, and if you do happen to on sword itll only be once and then 2 will be off cd to spit out another 3/5 bleeds and mesh better with kit priorities

i think itll be the dps option, mortar is almost worthless for dps but this elite should have like twice the priority rating of ft4 and probably(?) a much more generous dimension… that alone is nothing to laugh at. then theres the random burning from traits too, free dps with no cast time.

I never pistol auto, always cycling through kits/weapon skills that do damaging conditions, and suppression as needed. But not following you, I didn’t say anything about pistol auto, where does that come in?

But good observation about Sword #2, looks like it will recharge after two autoattack chains (assuming 1.75s auto chain duration and 3s cd reduction per auto chain, which is what I think the blurry tooltips say). Also, the third strike in the Sword auto chain does an AoE explosion that may trigger Shrapnel (Bleeding). If so that’s going to require a very precise rotation to make sure you don’t miss a third strike while slotting Sword #2 in as frequently as possible.

Regarding Burning traits, I wonder which will be the meta in Grand Master, Vent Exhaust (AoE Burning on dodge) or Photonic Blasting Module (Overheating now blasts its direct damage to nearby foes and no longer at the player).

kurtosis.9526:

Regarding Burning traits, I wonder which will be the meta in Grand Master, Vent Exhaust (AoE Burning on dodge) or Photonic Blasting Module (Overheating now blasts its direct damage to nearby foes and no longer at the player).

Probably will depend upon which will recharge faster, endurance or the overheating, and provide better dps. Energy sigils perhaps? Heh.

Chaba.5410:

santenal.1054:

If I understand it correctly, everytime you activate “Photon Forge” you can’t reach your weapon set or use kits for the next 6 seconds, locking you out of lots of survivability skills. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be too risky to play.

If you watch Bog Otter’s stream, there’s nothing like that when he activates Photon Forge. It replaces your weapon skills with a different set of weapon skills and you can’t deactivate Photon Forge for a bit. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of. You can still use all your other skills. I doubt very much you couldn’t use kits.

If you read the “Engage Photon Forge” tooltip under the “Utility Skills + toolbelt” (from the screenshots) it says “Disables use of kits for a short duration” (6s) .

The 6 second recharge cooldown (the “you can’t deactivate Photon forge for a bit” thing you see after “Bog Otter” activate’s “Engage Photon Forge”) on the “Deactivate Photon Forge” tooltip is what makes me think that you are not able to reach your weapon set for 6 seconds. The “drop bundle” icon that appears is greyed out so you have to use your F5 skill to deactivate the mode.

santenal.1054:

Chaba.5410:

santenal.1054:

If I understand it correctly, everytime you activate “Photon Forge” you can’t reach your weapon set or use kits for the next 6 seconds, locking you out of lots of survivability skills. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be too risky to play.

If you watch Bog Otter’s stream, there’s nothing like that when he activates Photon Forge. It replaces your weapon skills with a different set of weapon skills and you can’t deactivate Photon Forge for a bit. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of. You can still use all your other skills. I doubt very much you couldn’t use kits.

If you read the “Engage Photon Forge” tooltip under the “Utility Skills + toolbelt” (from the screenshots) it says “Disables use of kits for a short duration” (6s) .

The 6 second recharge cooldown (the “you can’t deactivate Photon forge for a bit” thing you see after “Bog Otter” activate’s “Engage Photon Forge”) on the “Deactivate Photon Forge” tooltip is what makes me think that you are not able to reach your weapon set for 6 seconds. The “drop bundle” icon that appears is greyed out so you have to use your F5 skill to deactivate the mode.

Ah I see. I spent so much time getting the screenshots done and organized that I haven’t been able to squint at them all in-depth yet.

I guess its a bit of a fair trade-off for access to PF and is perhaps an attempt to create opportunity costs for the standard engi fallback on kits. There’s plenty of other skills able to be used as long as you have them slotted. The greater concern is the cooldowns on those other skills, unless other classes are also getting longer cooldown skills equally.

It’s kind of shocking how selfish this class is. I was expecting a dps with some kind of team utility. Barriers, walls and so on. but most of the boons or unique buffs granted here are for the Holo themselves and not their teammates.

Still looks fun to play, but I am a little worried about what their role ultimately ends up being. It’d suck if engineers end up with two elite specs that don’t have a place in endgame pve.

kurtosis.9526:

EdwinLi.1284:

Yep a combination of Power and Condition skills which will be useful for players who have Viper Gear.

I was hoping the Holosmith spec could replace Tools in the current Explosions/Firearms/Tools P/P + Full Kit Viper Condi meta build while keeping the weapon + full kit loadout. But unfortunately it looks like to spec Holosmith you have to trade Mortar Kit for the Holosmith Elite Skill, since that Elite skill changes your F5 to activate/deactivate Photon Forge mode.
.

The minor trait says that your f5 elite toolbelt skill will ALWAYS be replaced by Photon Forge, no matter what the elite skill. You can still run mortars and kits.

Adept Minor: “Photon forge replaces your elite tool belt skills.” from the tooltip

Nate.8146:

1. Skills generally have large cool downs and minimal positives to compensate.

Thats what i thought. Look at Flash Spark as TB-skill. Its basically a Smoke Vent of the FT-kit but with double the CD and maybe not usable when stuned.

Lifelike.5862:

It’s kind of shocking how selfish this class is. I was expecting a dps with some kind of team utility. Barriers, walls and so on. but most of the boons or unique buffs granted here are for the Holo themselves and not their teammates.

Still looks fun to play, but I am a little worried about what their role ultimately ends up being. It’d suck if engineers end up with two elite specs that don’t have a place in endgame pve.

Basically two more years of being a side-point duelist and being in gutter groups in WvW raids.

Sojourner.4621:

kurtosis.9526:

EdwinLi.1284:

Yep a combination of Power and Condition skills which will be useful for players who have Viper Gear.

I was hoping the Holosmith spec could replace Tools in the current Explosions/Firearms/Tools P/P + Full Kit Viper Condi meta build while keeping the weapon + full kit loadout. But unfortunately it looks like to spec Holosmith you have to trade Mortar Kit for the Holosmith Elite Skill, since that Elite skill changes your F5 to activate/deactivate Photon Forge mode.
.

The minor trait says that your f5 elite toolbelt skill will ALWAYS be replaced by Photon Forge, no matter what the elite skill. You can still run mortars and kits.

Adept Minor: “Photon forge replaces your elite tool belt skills.” from the tooltip

Am I silly for being happy I can use Racial elites and not miss out on the tool belt skill?

The holosmith will probably be very different to the actual engie because he want to keep the heat level high to do more damage but while you’re outside the photon mode you will lose heat very fast 5-10% every 3 sec and when you enter the mode you have the kit disabled for 6 sec, also we need to know if using a kit will make you exit the mode or you can use kits in photon mode(I doubt it).

It possible to switch from viper to the new grieving stat POWER, CONDI DAM, precision, ferocity as the sword skill give a lot of passive crit chance and the firearm line give us even more crit plus bleed and burn on crit.

Also if i understand correctly the new Laser Disk skill can stack a debuff that make enemy take up to 24% more damage(2% x 12 pulse) for 6 to 9 sec on a 30 sec cd, that huge if you think about a raid boost a shame I don’t see a trait that reduce exceed cd.

Another shame to me is that to me power engie mean static discharge but holosmith toolbelt skill have more that 30 sec cd that a lot.

So as a trait line we’ve got holosmith, firearm+ explosive if we can use kits or tool if we can’t for static discharge (and with the info we’ve got now it tell nothing about cannot using turrets).

I’m totally hyped can’t wait to test it.

Lifelike.5862:

It’s kind of shocking how selfish this class is.

TBH it isn’t shocking to me at all. It’s normal for engineer. Anet has always given engineer poor group support and hard-to-synergize traits and skills.

I much rather would see a recharge cooldown on the “ENGAGE Photon Forge” instead of the current 6 sec deactivation cooldown on “Deactivate Photon Forge”. This way you can still decide to instantly bail out of Photon Forge Mode if you require a skill from your kits or main hand weapon. The current cost: loss of different F5 skills, locking you out of your kits and main hand weapon for 6 seconds , locking you into a possibly self destructive transformation mode for 6 seconds plus the loss of many reactive playstyle possibilities for 6 seconds makes this engineer elite spec verry unintresting for me.

I guess the reason you can’t bail until after 6 secs is so you that if you go super hard building heat for 4 secs you can’t just escape the overheat mechanic.

kurtosis.9526:

I never pistol auto, always cycling through kits/weapon skills that do damaging conditions, and suppression as needed. But not following you, I didn’t say anything about pistol auto, where does that come in?

thats kind of my point, that pistol auto is something to be ignored and not used, and with such a complex build its np to forget you even have an auto.

lets say you tryhard with bombs/ft/nades. then about half of the time youre putting out dps, youll be pushing each kits 2. that alone is nearly enough to require only 1 auto chain from sword to refresh its 2. lets say you do a combo like sword 2 → pistol 4 → 3 kit 2s → sword 1 chain.

at the end of this combo, sword 2 will have something like .5 sec left of its cd. if it puts out 5 bleeds, theres really no way it can possibly be worse than pistol autoing 3-4 times instead of using the sword auto. it might be a little less condi dps if it only gets 3 from your heat level. but you also get 2 long vuln and better power damage.

so all you lose by giving up pistol is a blind, and you gain a situational (maybe) filler attack and a gap closer. the dps should be similar to pistol at least. what im not sure on is if sword autos can beat nade autos. they might be tuned to be in line, but that statement assumes things about the balance team, things i dont have confidence in yet. gotta play to see.

overall, on pistol, 1 is a never touch, 2 is filler, and 3 is must use for dps. on sword, 1 is situational at minimum, 2 is must use, and 3 is situational at minimum. sounds like a strictly better weapon to me. here we go again.

Ah gotcha. Yeah this is gonna be complicated to figure out, will have to see what the dps spreadsheets eventually say about it.

complicated is so engi

The only thing that disappoints is I thought there would be more explosive abilities considered explosives.

Additionally I’m quite surprised that many of the light attacks don’t do more healing effects and/or more boons when activated. Maybe that’s in the traits?

I wonder about the ways of lowering heat. I presume that there will be a deterioration of it after some time of not being in fight but I have found only 1 active way of getting rid of heat – dodging and that’s based on equipping a trait. Some of the traits are dependent on lowering heat (i.e. trait that heals you when the heat decreases) so I wonder whether I missed something and there are more active ways to decrease it or if it decreases itself also in fight.

when you “deactivate photon forge” there is a 3 sec delay then you lose 5% heat per sec and then at some other threshold (time? another 3 sec?) you lose 10% heat per sec. dunno if that includes leaving photon by say dropping weapon (or if thats a thing, will find out this weekend i guess, not really into streams any more).

additionally the heat therapy minor suggests you lose heat after exploding, probably quickly if rumble is an indicator for this games heat mechanic.

Bog Otter’s Holosmith footage got posted on his YouTube channel in 1080p so we’re able to get readable text now.

Here’s the traits: http://imgur.com/a/g9slT

Doing skills next.

Chaba.5410:

TBH it isn’t shocking to me at all. It’s normal for engineer. Anet has always given engineer poor group support and hard-to-synergize traits and skills.

This isn’t entirely accurate. Engineer for years was brought into high end fractals and dungeons as the only class that could stack might and vulnerability, cleanse conditions, and provide stealth all under the same build. Obviously other classes were far more efficient at fulfilling each of these specific purposes, but that’s the drawback to being a jack-of-all-trades. It wasn’t really until Heart of Thorns where engineer became a DPS-only class, leaving it with very little class identity save being an amalgamation of needlessly obtuse skill rotations.

Unfortunately, it appears ArenaNet wishes only to double-down on this mistake, giving a once-jack-of-all-trades profession a bunch of utility skills that are either weaker variants of gyros or merely provide damage.

After reviewing the weapon skills and utility skills, I have to admit I’m a bit baffled that this is what they could come up with. It literally provides ZERO utility for a group and only contributes damage—something that the core engineer already offers more than plenty of.

I’m sure it’ll still be a fun build to play in PvE, but I just don’t see it being all that effective in PvP. Scrappers take the elixir gun and double gyros not by choice but by necessity, and I don’t see how a Holosmith is going to really win many 1v1s by loading up their bar with a bunch of damage utilities when damage isn’t our problem in WvW or PvP currently.

I’ll probably take the Holosmith as a raw damage gain with the transformation, but I don’t really see myself touching most of these utility skills. I really wouldn’t be surprised if, after the dust settles, Scrapper is still the best specialization for the engineer in PvP by a long shot.

Higher resolution skills: http://imgur.com/a/GjDEG

Kenshi Maru.5489:

Am I silly for being happy I can use Racial elites and not miss out on the tool belt skill?

No. But they nerfed the hell out of the really good Sylvari Racial Elite that gave really good bleeds so I’m kinda sad.

So who else plans to test Holosmith out using the Power build and the new Grieving Build.

Grieving Stats is Power (High), Condition Damage(High), Precision(medium), and Ferocity(medium).

Grieving is probably going to benefit the Holosmith the most next to power if players want to utilize both the condition and power damages since Holosmith already have a natural Crit increase chance on Sword.

It may be very useful for the Sword/Pistol combo.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Chaba.5410:

TBH it isn’t shocking to me at all. It’s normal for engineer. Anet has always given engineer poor group support and hard-to-synergize traits and skills.

This isn’t entirely accurate. Engineer for years was brought into high end fractals and dungeons as the only class that could stack might and vulnerability, cleanse conditions, and provide stealth all under the same build. Obviously other classes were far more efficient at fulfilling each of these specific purposes, but that’s the drawback to being a jack-of-all-trades. It wasn’t really until Heart of Thorns where engineer became a DPS-only class, leaving it with very little class identity save being an amalgamation of needlessly obtuse skill rotations.

Unfortunately, it appears ArenaNet wishes only to double-down on this mistake, giving a once-jack-of-all-trades profession a bunch of utility skills that are either weaker variants of gyros or merely provide damage.

After reviewing the weapon skills and utility skills, I have to admit I’m a bit baffled that this is what they could come up with. It literally provides ZERO utility for a group and only contributes damage—something that the core engineer already offers more than plenty of.

I’m sure it’ll still be a fun build to play in PvE, but I just don’t see it being all that effective in PvP. Scrappers take the elixir gun and double gyros not by choice but by necessity, and I don’t see how a Holosmith is going to really win many 1v1s by loading up their bar with a bunch of damage utilities when damage isn’t our problem in WvW or PvP currently.

I’ll probably take the Holosmith as a raw damage gain with the transformation, but I don’t really see myself touching most of these utility skills. I really wouldn’t be surprised if, after the dust settles, Scrapper is still the best specialization for the engineer in PvP by a long shot.

You just confirmed what I was fearing. I’m so incredibly sad.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Unfortunately, it appears ArenaNet wishes only to double-down on this mistake, giving a once-jack-of-all-trades profession a bunch of utility skills that are either weaker variants of gyros or merely provide damage.

After reviewing the weapon skills and utility skills, I have to admit I’m a bit baffled that this is what they could come up with. It literally provides ZERO utility for a group and only contributes damage—something that the core engineer already offers more than plenty of.

I agree with you a lot now that I’m looking at the traits more closely, but I feel that the changes that need to be made in respect to this issue should probably be done with the base Engineer and its traits rather than the Holosmith. Better Inventions and Alchemy traits or improvements to the ones there would be nice all around.

Seeing Holosmith now, and thinking back to the original design of the Scrapper, I feel as if the elite specs the Engineer has been getting have been along the lines of “Well, the Engineer is ‘Jack of All Trades’ so what if the Elite Specs are actually the Engineer ‘specializing’ in one?” Scrapper was meant to be a Control Specialist. Hammer reflects, blocks, stuns, longer stuns, recover from stuns faster, Gyros dazed on end, etc. It’s just that… you know, it’s good at damage. Here Holosmith seems specifically designed for selfish burst damage with some mild upkeep.

So MAYBE we’ll get Support in two more years, eh? EH?

Nilix.2170:

I agree with you a lot now that I’m looking at the traits more closely, but I feel that the changes that need to be made in respect to this issue should probably be done with the base Engineer and its traits rather than the Holosmith. Better Inventions and Alchemy traits or improvements to the ones there would be nice all around.

Neither Alchemy nor Inventions need any changes. They’re the only two core trees that actually keep engineer relevant in WvW/PvP. It’s Explosives, Firearms, and Tools that need some serious review.

The problem is that the engineer for as long as I can remember hasn’t been able to run a combination of two of the three trees in competitive content. It has pretty much always been Inventions/Alchemy/______, and the big reason behind that is the lack of sustain core engineer suffers from.

Scrapper as a tree is quite excellent at what it does, especially when it comes to filling out that lack of sustain—and I don’t think it’s a problem if Scrapper remains relevant in 2018… but it is a bit of a backhanded slap to the engineer community to give us a specialization that doesn’t address any of the gaps in the profession it’s currently suffering from and, given the context that engineer is already relegated to be a roaming class once again in WvW and is currently only surviving as a “1v2” fishing side-point duelist in PvP, they end up just giving us another one-dimensional, selfish build that provides zero utility to WvW raids or mid-point teamfighting in PvP.

It’s almost comical. As I said here or in another thread, Holosmith will be a welcome change of pace from the Scrapper, but it is not filling any hole in the profession; to use a common aphorism, they made swiss cheese of our profession in Heart of Thorns, and they’ve only left it to mold in Path of Fire.

I will buy Path of Fire, but as someone that has mained engineer for five years, it’s only because the elite specializations of necromancer, warrior, and guardian actually look much more fun to play over their current Heart of Thorns iterations.

tl;dr: In 2018 we’re still going to be a profession only brought for DPS (no matter how much more fun Holosmith is over core engineer), and we’re still going to be relegated to roaming in WvW and side-point duels in PvP. Gadgets are still useless, and gyros are far superior to exceed skills. This elite specialization advances the profession in no tangible direction in any aspect of the game.

what do you mean no tangible direction
it takes kit engi to a new extreme

insanemaniac.2456:

it takes kit engi to a new extreme

What’s your thinking on Holo kit engi now? It still seems a little janky, with kits being locked out for 6s after using Holo mode, and kits not building up heat, among other things. Does the extra Burning and damage from Holo skills outweigh the ~2500 dps from Tools?

Chaba.5410:

Higher resolution skills: http://imgur.com/a/GjDEG

Am I the only one who thinks Gleam Saber’s 3s cooldown reduction on sword skills is powerful? Doesn’t this effectively make the 2 and 3 skills a 4 and 6 second cooldown respectively (obviously that depends on you using AA exclusively while they are on cooldown).

Not fully understanding the heat meter mechanic doesn’t help, but am I wrong in thinking this results in 100% quickness uptime? Something is wrong with my logic here.

kurtosis.9526:

insanemaniac.2456:

it takes kit engi to a new extreme

What’s your thinking on Holo kit engi now? It still seems a little janky, with kits being locked out for 6s after using Holo mode, and kits not building up heat, among other things. Does the extra Burning and damage from Holo skills outweigh the ~2500 dps from Tools?

i need to play it first (tomorrow right), idk how the elite or that photon kit cd specifically works.

if, as the tooltip implies in my mind, lazor leaves an uncomboable fire field that produces tons of burning in a fairly large area, then yes that alone should be worth dropping tools for a condi build. then you tack on photon 4 being a useful condi in the vein of poison dart volley and sword 2 doing anything and the 2 gap closers in places that were previously useless/nonexistent and exploding occasionally and thats bonus. condi wont be all that dependent on using photon unless it can use 4 and generate a little heat.

for power, all i can say is most likely. sword 1 is a power skill at heart and i wish bog otter / others would have also provided a rifle/bomb/nade auto tooltip to compare against, but the quickness on 3 looks really good and sustainable (and fills in gaps at a minimum) and photon has good power damage on 2 and 3 (and 1 can be an explosion, helps a lot too) for heat maintenance, heat also comes with a bunch of personal free might stacking. so.. you have might and quickness and crit chance in a build that likes autoing when the few bigger skills it needs to use are on cd. theres really nothing better unless youre raiding and its all given to you (gl if you pug lol).

but it may still have survival issues compared to other classes. which is why i usually dont bother bringing my engi to fractals these days. youll give up blinds for damage (you dont have to but breakbars, dps.). there arent really good ways to work in a bunch of damage mitigation while keeping dps nearly optimal because kits/specs distribute damage amongst themselves instead of a build coalescing around a single kit/spec. its ok cuz its a design choice, but a 2nd health bar, 8 secs of infinite blocking, 15 secs of evades, being ranged with high base health, etc etc are all stronger and more easily baked into builds for their respective classes in a breakbar environment.

i dont think it looks that janky though. just a more extreme kit engi. i think itll play pretty well. ill try to follow this comment up after the preview. i could be wrong.

Tyaen.5148:

Chaba.5410:

Higher resolution skills: http://imgur.com/a/GjDEG

Am I the only one who thinks Gleam Saber’s 3s cooldown reduction on sword skills is powerful? Doesn’t this effectively make the 2 and 3 skills a 4 and 6 second cooldown respectively (obviously that depends on you using AA exclusively while they are on cooldown).

Not fully understanding the heat meter mechanic doesn’t help, but am I wrong in thinking this results in 100% quickness uptime? Something is wrong with my logic here.

i feel this way too