Guild Wars 2

is this skill meant to be a joke?
70 base damage power scaling so low that with marauder gear it goes up to 150 damage
and crits for a whopping 250

a perfect 100% heat kitten strike lands 1250 Crit damage total
thats not even 3k damage combined with the main direct attack on what should be a high risk burst skill

this feels like a cheap imitation of
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precision_Strike

except 6 times weaker

“Strike at foes in front of you and launch a blade of light at your target. Launch extra blades based on your heat level. Each blade inflicts conditions.”

Maybe because it’s meant to be a hybrid / condition skill?

>on what should be a high risk burst skill
What makes you assume it’s high risk?
only has 0.5 sec cast time, and hits quite often, so you can strip aegis spam & blind with it, and in case you run firearms, the bleed grants you 10% more crit chance for any other skill following it…
And given all the other dps skills on forge, I think it works as a decent setup for actual burst rotas coming after it.
Sure, a wasted half second for PvE dps-rotas, but for PvP / Roaming I think it’s fine as it is.

And when it comes to dps in general, the holosmith is certainly not lacking in that department.^^

i do run firearms but that makes the skill all the more useless as firearms grants bleeding on crit

but yeah i guess its ok if i ran hybrid
for power builds i can just ignore it and focus on spamming quickness and auto

and mostly forge mode

well the explosive shockwave works with explosions trait so thats nice to cripple and bleed with autos( shrapnel) if you’re willing to give up stability