Guild Wars 2

Chaith.8256:

Passive Elixir B, S, Healing Mist, Super Elixir, all equate to around 9 conditions removed a minute if spammed on cooldown, it amounts to something.

Just to add: don’t forget that blasting Super Elixir also cleanses conditions now with the light field change.

But just to reiterate, it’s not that Alchemy has zero condi cleanse; it’s just that with zero elixirs on our bar the condition cleanses of the tree are far less impactful than they used to be. It’s true that with the Elixir Gun we gain a lot of condi cleanse, both natively and through traits, but you do get access to most of that condi cleanse without Alchemy, and you can feasibly drop Alchemy entirely out of your build while running the Elixir Gun and still get ~6 cleanses per minute by just using Super Elixir → Acid Bomb in conjunction with each other.

Really, my broader point was just that there are much harder hitters that do the heavy lifting right now: primarily the Healing Turret and the Purge Gyro.

The Purge Gyro removes around 15 conditions per minute all by itself, and on a much more frequent and consistent basis to feasibly challenge condition warriors and mesmers that rely more on sustained attrition than old-school burst builds (e.g., condi engi). Elixirs made sense back when most condi builds were one-and-done, but these days condition builds are designed more with damage over time in mind, and are competitive with power specs (if not superior) in this regard.

The other big contributor comes with the changes to Inventions following Heart of Thorns. With the Cleansing Synergy minor passive, our healing skills now cleanse one additional (guaranteed high-damage) condition on a 10-second cooldown. Its low cooldown is one of the main reasons why, even with Medic Gyro’s superior healing potential overall, the Healing Turret pretty much will never leave our bar in PvP, giving us three condition removals every 15 seconds—further instilling the need to pick up your Healing Turret on every use. At ~12 cleanses per minute, it provides more condition cleanses on its own than the entire Alchemy tree does, on your count.

More importantly, a lot of the Alchemy condition cleanses, without elixirs on your bar, are far too unwieldy or inconsistent to get real “clutch” use out of them. Hidden Flask, even with HGH, still only procs every 32 seconds, and depends on you falling under the 75% threshold to activate. Self-Regulating Defenses, too, requires you to fall to a certain health threshold, and can potentially kill you if it procs at the wrong time in a team fight. Healing Mist, while genuinely good as a condi cleanse, is far more useful as a stun breaker, especially with our current play style of rope-a-doping far point and needing every escape we can get.

As such, as stated previously, the only trait/skill attached to the Alchemy tree that comes close to the efficiency of Inventions/Scrapper is Transmute—a non-conditional passive trait that procs every 15 seconds, or 4 times per minute.

To summarize, it’s not that Alchemy has zero condition cleanse, it’s just that the Purge Gyro and the Healing Turret are really where the majority of our sustain vs. condi damage comes from—with a little help from Adaptive Armor if you take it.

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

I think we’ve gotten away from what the topic actually is about; THE TRAITS. The skills could be the best thing in the world, but the traits are a disservice to those skills.

All you need to do is take anyone of the builds you’ve apparently theorycrafted and ask yourself whether those builds would really be significantly different depending on the traits you selected in the Holosmith line. The answer I’m predicting would be; no.

What you will end up wishing is that you could use the Holosmith with a different trait line other than the Holosmith’s own trait line.

We’ve talked about this long enough. The preview weekend is on Friday. I will revisit this topic after that.

Literally dont have to take alchemy to deal with conditions anymore unless you really want to overkill it on condition removal

You can do that right now. Holosmith doesn’t need to be in the game for you to do without Alchemy.

lemme guess you doit by taking scrapper and purge gyro and this build still uses alchemy and inventions.

Actually I just run tools with Gadgeteer or Kinetic Battery, gaining superspeed from either Rocket Boots or using toolbelts, combine that with 100% swiftness uptime, and with Adaptive Armour, and Rapid Regeneration and you get good passive regen. The toolbelt skill from your Crate Elite gives you a full condi wipe and voila! you can manage condis relatively well. Also Rocket boots allows you to run away and come back which also helps.

so have you beaten many equally skilled players that are using condis with that build befor?

It’s hard to guage if you’re equally skilled when you’re whooping everyone apart from Dragonhunters who have too much condi cleanse and Necros when you fail to dodge the transfer.

I can say it’s good enough that I put up a good fight against mesmers. Don’t underestimate the power of running away and coming back.

Dirame.8521:

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

I think we’ve gotten away from what the topic actually is about; THE TRAITS. The skills could be the best thing in the world, but the traits are a disservice to those skills.

All you need to do is take anyone of the builds you’ve apparently theorycrafted and ask yourself whether those builds would really be significantly different depending on the traits you selected in the Holosmith line. The answer I’m predicting would be; no.

What you will end up wishing is that you could use the Holosmith with a different trait line other than the Holosmith’s own trait line.

We’ve talked about this long enough. The preview weekend is on Friday. I will revisit this topic after that.

Literally dont have to take alchemy to deal with conditions anymore unless you really want to overkill it on condition removal

You can do that right now. Holosmith doesn’t need to be in the game for you to do without Alchemy.

lemme guess you doit by taking scrapper and purge gyro and this build still uses alchemy and inventions.

Actually I just run tools with Gadgeteer or Kinetic Battery, gaining superspeed from either Rocket Boots or using toolbelts, combine that with 100% swiftness uptime, and with Adaptive Armour, and Rapid Regeneration and you get good passive regen. The toolbelt skill from your Crate Elite gives you a full condi wipe and voila! you can manage condis relatively well. Also Rocket boots allows you to run away and come back which also helps.

so have you beaten many equally skilled players that are using condis with that build befor?

It’s hard to guage if you’re equally skilled when you’re whooping everyone apart from Dragonhunters who have too much condi cleanse and Necros when you fail to dodge the transfer.

I can say it’s good enough that I put up a good fight against mesmers. Don’t underestimate the power of running away and coming back.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HsgqEFbt8mA/hqdefault.jpg

I like this man.
Cannot tell you how many times hit-and-run guerrilla tactics has worked wonders. Just be an annoying pest to a few people, and they’ll split off from the zerg.

Continue being an annoying pest, and they’ll split up more; some will give up on you and try to catch up to wherever the zerg is (Since they’re basically two minutes behind it, since they stopped to try and deal with you), some will keep trying to deal. You’ll eventually be left with one or two highly frustrated players that are making mistakes left and right in their haste to just put you out of your misery.

It really is ingenious. You can almost tell that the stragglers from the zerg that you’re picking on are in Discord servers putting out a call for help when three more show up after a few hit-and-break engagements. Sometimes, if you’re real unlucky, and become the focus of the zerg… you can book it and lead a merry chase and distract them for a few seconds. Time that they’re focused on you is time that they aren’t DPS-focusing your team.

That’s all hinging on you.. you know. Not falling over like a wet noodle. Which is also very easily done.

After watching the Elite Specialization preview on Guild Chat, it seems they’ve taken into account that they only have Photon Forge traits.

Robert Gee says it’s intentional and feels it’s pretty cool. I guess this is where we disagree.

In actuality though, you could have traits that are all Photon Forge but the traits could also have secondary effects that also play with weapons, skills and the old traits we have. You can see examples of secondary effects on traits on every class.

Dirame.8521:

After watching the Elite Specialization preview on Guild Chat, it seems they’ve taken into account that they only have Photon Forge traits.

Robert Gee says it’s intentional and feels it’s pretty cool. I guess this is where we disagree.

In actuality though, you could have traits that are all Photon Forge but the traits could also have secondary effects that also play with weapons, skills and the old traits we have. You can see examples of secondary effects on traits on every class.

I especially liked how Firebrand did upwards to 10K burning damage with 2K auto attacks while still having access to “massive AoE buffs” in each of the tome’s #4/5 skills.

If anything, the live stream only confirmed my concerns. I’ll reserve my final judgment until I play it this afternoon, but I can’t help but see that Holosmith is going to be very undertuned out of the gate for PvE/WvW, with the only real area it looks particularly strong in being PvP.

Was I right? or was I right?

Dirame.8521:

Was I right? or was I right?

Nope, once we get the xpac holosmith will most likely be the highest dps in pve using a hybrid build, so thats 1 down, for wvw it dosent really matter since scrapper has only one viable build and the rest are sub par and you arnt running the viable build and seem to be kicking kitten sub par holosmith builds should be right and for spvp every class has 1 meta build a bunch of viable builds and then a crap ton of but i like it builds just depends on whos playing and who there playing agienst.

Im not sure what your trying to be right about anymore tbh, the play style is new.and refreshing and based on how things look we are going to have viable buildss across the board and theres not much anet can do with the holosmith outside of altering numbers if they want to balance the holosmith so its either we are top tier dps and viable or not top tier dps and not viable.

Is it just the fact you dont like the idea of being forced to use photon forge to make a viable build for holosmith after all these years of being forced to take a kit, because i wouldnt argue with you on that.

ukuni.8745:

for wvw it dosent really matter

Why the heck does it “not matter” that Holosmith brings nothing to the table? Firebrand and Scourge both just bring more condi garbage to WvW, and Holosmith is just another roaming spec.

As someone that spends 90% of their time in WvW these days, this expansion really doesn’t seem like a good purchase at this point. I’ll be waiting to see what they say following community feedback from this weekend before I make my choice, but the outlook isn’t looking very good.

Phineas Poe.3018:

ukuni.8745:

for wvw it dosent really matter

Why the heck does it “not matter” that Holosmith brings nothing to the table? Firebrand and Scourge both just bring more condi garbage to WvW, and Holosmith is just another roaming spec.

As someone that spends 90% of their time in WvW these days, this expansion really doesn’t seem like a good purchase at this point. I’ll be waiting to see what they say following community feedback from this weekend before I make my choice, but the outlook isn’t looking very good.

I was cracking a joke at dirames arguments hes used, but in the case of WvW solo roaming holosmith will be strong since we wont need to take as many kits to deal the damage anymore so that opens up some nice options there, small group roaming assuming our damage is still up there we can run with a high burst build with some power support hybrid players and we will be an absolute beast, in pug zergs well this is interesting we really hve no way of getting into a fight without backup to dish out our damage without getting wreaked but ill have to do some testing there to, in a gvg we will have to see we can bring a mobile wall and a spastic amount of aoe damage add in the other new skill that reduces damage we might just make it gvgs as the class with the best tank to damage ratio but once again we are left to the mercy of the final numbers.

ukuni.8745:

I was cracking a joke at dirames arguments hes used, but in the case of WvW solo roaming holosmith will be strong since we wont need to take as many kits to deal the damage anymore so that opens up some nice options there, small group roaming assuming our damage is still up there we can run with a high burst build with some power support hybrid players and we will be an absolute beast, in pug zergs well this is interesting we really hve no way of getting into a fight without backup to dish out our damage without getting wreaked but ill have to do some testing there to, in a gvg we will have to see we can bring a mobile wall and a spastic amount of aoe damage add in the other new skill that reduces damage we might just make it gvgs as the class with the best tank to damage ratio but once again we are left to the mercy of the final numbers.

First of all, no one is disputing that Holosmith will be a great small-group/solo roaming specialization. The issue is that we already have this with the Scrapper. But more importantly: who cares about how good it is at roaming? Our primary need is something that fills a role desired in WvW raid groups, and Holosmith brings even less than the Scrapper does.

Second of all, you’re really reaching here. Guardian already brings a “mobile wall” in their shield, which is larger, lasts longer, and can be traited to have a shorter cooldown … with a build that already provides AoE might, stability, condi cleanse, and now also resistance. And it’s not like other PoF specs like Firebrand and Scourge, which actually offer quite a bit of team utility, don’t also contribute a significant amount of damage themselves to a raid group.

tbh i think holo is burst build while scrapper is pretty tanky and less damage

also holo can actually build for burn build

Phineas Poe.3018:

ukuni.8745:

I was cracking a joke at dirames arguments hes used, but in the case of WvW solo roaming holosmith will be strong since we wont need to take as many kits to deal the damage anymore so that opens up some nice options there, small group roaming assuming our damage is still up there we can run with a high burst build with some power support hybrid players and we will be an absolute beast, in pug zergs well this is interesting we really hve no way of getting into a fight without backup to dish out our damage without getting wreaked but ill have to do some testing there to, in a gvg we will have to see we can bring a mobile wall and a spastic amount of aoe damage add in the other new skill that reduces damage we might just make it gvgs as the class with the best tank to damage ratio but once again we are left to the mercy of the final numbers.

First of all, no one is disputing that Holosmith will be a great small-group/solo roaming specialization. The issue is that we already have this with the Scrapper. But more importantly: who cares about how good it is at roaming? Our primary need is something that fills a role desired in WvW raid groups, and Holosmith brings even less than the Scrapper does.

Second of all, you’re really reaching here. Guardian already brings a “mobile wall” in their shield, which is larger, lasts longer, and can be traited to have a shorter cooldown … with a build that already provides AoE might, stability, condi cleanse, and now also resistance. And it’s not like other PoF specs like Firebrand and Scourge, which actually offer quite a bit of team utility, don’t also contribute a significant amount of damage themselves to a raid group.

If the holo leap trait dosent have a max limit for applying the swiftness wouldnt yoh be able to bring 2 engis that could provide perma super speed for an entire guild?

ukuni.8745:

If the holo leap trait dosent have a max limit for applying the swiftness wouldnt yoh be able to bring 2 engis that could provide perma super speed for an entire guild?

It has a max limit of 3 targets.

Phineas Poe.3018:

ukuni.8745:

If the holo leap trait dosent have a max limit for applying the swiftness wouldnt yoh be able to bring 2 engis that could provide perma super speed for an entire guild?

It has a max limit of 3 targets.

Well look we just found something they could change to make engineers betteer for potential gvg squads, on another note tho 20 holosmiths only holosmiths, everyones viper and some trait for might stack start out with a stealth stack might and then 20 prime light beams, what ever dosent die will get knocked down and 20 stacks of burning a second will kill anything without an invuln trait and what ever is left can get zerged down by 20 engis boom problem solved hahahahah, i wanna see this happen atleast once

Also not trying to argue with you personally about engis place in a gvg it would be good for it to have a place there and a seprate thread for it wouldnt be a bad idea mostly just commenting on this thread to point out to dirame that holosmith wont have just one viable build for holosmith like scrapper only having bunker scrapper in spvp unless anet wants us to which based on how the spec is looking so far i very much doubt

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

Was I right? or was I right?

Nope, once we get the xpac holosmith will most likely be the highest dps in pve using a hybrid build, so thats 1 down, for wvw it dosent really matter since scrapper has only one viable build and the rest are sub par and you arnt running the viable build and seem to be kicking kitten sub par holosmith builds should be right and for spvp every class has 1 meta build a bunch of viable builds and then a crap ton of but i like it builds just depends on whos playing and who there playing agienst.

Im not sure what your trying to be right about anymore tbh, the play style is new.and refreshing and based on how things look we are going to have viable buildss across the board and theres not much anet can do with the holosmith outside of altering numbers if they want to balance the holosmith so its either we are top tier dps and viable or not top tier dps and not viable.

Is it just the fact you dont like the idea of being forced to use photon forge to make a viable build for holosmith after all these years of being forced to take a kit, because i wouldnt argue with you on that.

I was right about the fact that the traits don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you pick for the Holosmith traits, it doesn’t affect the build no matter if it’s condi or power.

The skills matter way more than the traits when they should be relatively equal.

Dirame.8521:

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

Was I right? or was I right?

Nope, once we get the xpac holosmith will most likely be the highest dps in pve using a hybrid build, so thats 1 down, for wvw it dosent really matter since scrapper has only one viable build and the rest are sub par and you arnt running the viable build and seem to be kicking kitten sub par holosmith builds should be right and for spvp every class has 1 meta build a bunch of viable builds and then a crap ton of but i like it builds just depends on whos playing and who there playing agienst.

Im not sure what your trying to be right about anymore tbh, the play style is new.and refreshing and based on how things look we are going to have viable buildss across the board and theres not much anet can do with the holosmith outside of altering numbers if they want to balance the holosmith so its either we are top tier dps and viable or not top tier dps and not viable.

Is it just the fact you dont like the idea of being forced to use photon forge to make a viable build for holosmith after all these years of being forced to take a kit, because i wouldnt argue with you on that.

I was right about the fact that the traits don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you pick for the Holosmith traits, it doesn’t affect the build no matter if it’s condi or power.

The skills matter way more than the traits when they should be relatively equal.

How do the traits not matter? From what I’ve experienced so far, the traits completely change in what way I utilize the Photon Forge.

Dirame.8521:

ukuni.8745:

Dirame.8521:

Was I right? or was I right?

Nope, once we get the xpac holosmith will most likely be the highest dps in pve using a hybrid build, so thats 1 down, for wvw it dosent really matter since scrapper has only one viable build and the rest are sub par and you arnt running the viable build and seem to be kicking kitten sub par holosmith builds should be right and for spvp every class has 1 meta build a bunch of viable builds and then a crap ton of but i like it builds just depends on whos playing and who there playing agienst.

Im not sure what your trying to be right about anymore tbh, the play style is new.and refreshing and based on how things look we are going to have viable buildss across the board and theres not much anet can do with the holosmith outside of altering numbers if they want to balance the holosmith so its either we are top tier dps and viable or not top tier dps and not viable.

Is it just the fact you dont like the idea of being forced to use photon forge to make a viable build for holosmith after all these years of being forced to take a kit, because i wouldnt argue with you on that.

I was right about the fact that the traits don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you pick for the Holosmith traits, it doesn’t affect the build no matter if it’s condi or power.

The skills matter way more than the traits when they should be relatively equal.

What traits did you take then? And for reasons can you state if you were running a power condi bruiser bunker or hybrid build.

ukuni.8745:

What traits did you take then? And for reasons can you state if you were running a power condi bruiser bunker or hybrid build.

For Power; You can take anything and it doesn’t change how you play in any drastic way.

For Condi: You can take Solar Focusing Lens and Release Valve, but again, you could take any other things and it wouldn’t feel much different.

For Hybrid: Same same, no difference.

If you guys disagree then, cool.

Dirame.8521:

I was right about the fact that the traits don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you pick for the Holosmith traits, it doesn’t affect the build no matter if it’s condi or power.

The skills matter way more than the traits when they should be relatively equal.

I dunno, Ceimash. Holosmith plays very differently depending on which grandmaster trait you take. I agree that there’s a lot of weak traits in the setup overall, and I’m sure numbers will be adjusted to make some of them more attractive, but you can’t seriously tell me that Photonic Blasting Module doesn’t change how you manage your heat; it totally encourages you to brute force the entire mechanic, intentionally overloading to deal massive damage around you.

I really encourage you to try Thermal Release Valve as well, as it actually addresses a longstanding issue with the condi engineer in that it was far too reliant on Blowtorch. With a few tweaks and some longer theorycrafting sessions, I genuinely think Holosmith will make condi engi a legitimate thing again—and not just a one-and-done Kinetic Battery burster with double Incendiary Ammo. Sword/pistol had some genuine strength behind it, and I didn’t even have to run the Flamethrower.

Heck, there is some real possibility that you could even run the rifle with the Carrion build, as High Caliber and Hematic Focus both have real synergy with the Holosmith. 20% crit chance isn’t great, but it’s more than enough to proc No Scope and maintain a great deal of Fury with the help of Hard Light Arena and Reactive Lenses. It’s a bit obtuse, but it does work, and it does help maintain Incendiary Powder procs with a baseline 0% crit build without the use of an Intelligence sigil.

As I said before, I have a lot of issues with the specialization, especially as it pertains to its real lack of WvW utility, but I think you’re being unfair here.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Dirame.8521:

I was right about the fact that the traits don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you pick for the Holosmith traits, it doesn’t affect the build no matter if it’s condi or power.

The skills matter way more than the traits when they should be relatively equal.

I dunno, Ceimash. Holosmith plays very differently depending on which grandmaster trait you take. I agree that there’s a lot of weak traits in the setup overall, and I’m sure numbers will be adjusted to make some of them more attractive, but you can’t seriously tell me that Photonic Blasting Module doesn’t change how you manage your heat; it totally encourages you to brute force the entire mechanic, intentionally overloading to deal massive damage around you.

I really encourage you to try Thermal Release Valve as well, as it actually addresses a longstanding issue with the condi engineer in that it was far too reliant on Blowtorch. With a few tweaks and some longer theorycrafting sessions, I genuinely think Holosmith will make condi engi a legitimate thing again—and not just a one-and-done Kinetic Battery burster with double Incendiary Ammo. Sword/pistol had some genuine strength behind it, and I didn’t even have to run the Flamethrower.

Heck, there is some real possibility that you could even run the rifle with the Carrion build, as High Caliber and Hematic Focus both have real synergy with the Holosmith. 20% crit chance isn’t great, but it’s more than enough to proc No Scope and maintain a great deal of Fury with the help of Hard Light Arena and Reactive Lenses. It’s a bit obtuse, but it does work, and it does help maintain Incendiary Powder procs with a baseline 0% crit build without the use of an Intelligence sigil.

As I said before, I have a lot of issues with the specialization, especially as it pertains to its real lack of WvW utility, but I think you’re being unfair here.

I’m not lying when I say I play every single edition of the builds with the same mind set. I’ll concede that Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit allows you to stay in Photon Forge longer therefore, gameplay change! but it isn’t drastic. I’ve never felt a drastic shift from gameplay to gameplay when it comes to trait choices.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Dirame.8521:

I was right about the fact that the traits don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you pick for the Holosmith traits, it doesn’t affect the build no matter if it’s condi or power.

The skills matter way more than the traits when they should be relatively equal.

I dunno, Ceimash. Holosmith plays very differently depending on which grandmaster trait you take. I agree that there’s a lot of weak traits in the setup overall, and I’m sure numbers will be adjusted to make some of them more attractive, but you can’t seriously tell me that Photonic Blasting Module doesn’t change how you manage your heat; it totally encourages you to brute force the entire mechanic, intentionally overloading to deal massive damage around you.

I really encourage you to try Thermal Release Valve as well, as it actually addresses a longstanding issue with the condi engineer in that it was far too reliant on Blowtorch. With a few tweaks and some longer theorycrafting sessions, I genuinely think Holosmith will make condi engi a legitimate thing again—and not just a one-and-done Kinetic Battery burster with double Incendiary Ammo. Sword/pistol had some genuine strength behind it, and I didn’t even have to run the Flamethrower.

Heck, there is some real possibility that you could even run the rifle with the Carrion build, as High Caliber and Hematic Focus both have real synergy with the Holosmith. 20% crit chance isn’t great, but it’s more than enough to proc No Scope and maintain a great deal of Fury with the help of Hard Light Arena and Reactive Lenses. It’s a bit obtuse, but it does work, and it does help maintain Incendiary Powder procs with a baseline 0% crit build without the use of an Intelligence sigil.

As I said before, I have a lot of issues with the specialization, especially as it pertains to its real lack of WvW utility, but I think you’re being unfair here.

Photonic blasting module also lets you maintain your heat reserve, meaning that skills that benefit from heat, you can cook yourself up on photon forge mode then start bursting your skills with added heat benefits.

On the side note, Holosmith seems to have good sustain with Heat therapy where you’ll have to know when to use Forge mode and encouraging heat management.

Not sure if i can say that all of the traits doesn’t really synergize well with the core traits, but i can see some that does

for example: Adrenal Implant (Tools), Thermal Release Valve(Holo), and Minesweeper( Explosives) for DPS, dodge, and condi

Enhanced Storage Capacity (holo), Light Density Amplifier (holo), and Iron blooded (Alchemy) with hard light arena can make you a soak up damage.