Guild Wars 2

It feels rly fun, yet clunky.

sword nr3 feels way too clunky at the start and landing.
Also the fact that prime light beam makes you stationary feels abit sad too.

editing for more impressions…

I have been testing out some combos and I think for Master Trait Crystal Configuration: Storm is ideal for players if they want to make their Holo Form auto attack do more damage since the range wave attack is a extra hit if you’re at melee range.

Eclipse is best for defensive use and Zephyr is best for when players love to spam their leap attack.

The explosion is not that bad to deal with if players manage their Holo Form. It is always ideal to explode with Photonic Blasting Module GrandMaster trait since the Holoform will automatically turn off after it explodes to keep the player from killing him or herself from burning. It works well with Prasmatic Converter because everytime you explode you also clense yourself and turn the conditions into Boons since you will automatically exit Holo Form after exploding.

so far hollowsmith is the only spec that was disappointing to me

Well damage output is absolutely insane in a zerker build, running no kits feels somewhat exceptable for the moment but time will tell, SD zerker holosmith works quite well can get a great deal of quickness up keep the right traits and just spam out those photon forge skills like rapid fire, even not really knowing what im doing didnt manage to accidentally kill my self with the self detonation, our new elite is just absolutely amazing to use with the photon forges #4 skill, didnt get to thoroughly test much yet but i feel like holosmith is really good.

My first impression is that it’s OP as hell.

Crazy amounts of damage, an extra self heal, and damage mitigation. If you stack boon duration you can have like 75%~ uptime on Quickness with no outside help.

just face it guys, engineer is a high skill class, not noob class, if you want noob class play warrior

The spec has skills that are ripped apart from eachother. The damage however is off the charts.

So far, it does a lot of damage but the Scrapper definitely feels more cohesive.

Is there a bug separating the damage between spvp and wvw? Because im a little bit disappointed with my fancy toothpick hitting for less than hipshot and the super charge laser beam critting for 3.9k.

And seriously i would much prefer if they nerfed holographic arena and made it apply to allies instead.

Okay after just 5 min of spvp, what a difference it is between modes. Much better.

Once again forcing players onto a point is very, very good for us.

The toolbelts are all completely forgettable tho.

Watching chaithh on twitch, holosmith looked extremely fun with a tanky build ie soldiers or something. You just have to make sure you leave pf before you blow up and your damage is fair. Alacrity stacking is amazing. Damage isn’t all that op especially compared to other specs and their condi damage (holo gets kittened on by condi damage). Sure with zerkers may make the damage look good (melee damage btw) but that’s the kind of damage we have been missing for YEARS not to mention how squishy you are full zerkers. One complaint i’m hearing about is sword 2 skill(not pf skill2) and the really low damage from projectiles.

Seeing as sword auto reduces active sword recharges by 3 secs, sword two is fine as is.

I imagine that in any environment with alacrity, the spec is going to be spam city.

In PvE, I am thinking Vipers will work really well to sprinkle some burn on the power damage.

lorddarkflare.9186:

Seeing as sword auto reduces active sword recharges by 3 secs, sword two is fine as is.

I imagine that in any environment with alacrity, the spec is going to be spam city.

In PvE, I am thinking Vipers will work really well to sprinkle some burn on the power damage.

Also, for the heal, both the bonus healing and the aura should be AoE. And cauterize should most likely be on a reduced cooldown. 20 – 25.

First Impression, would definitely be meta for Power Engi.
The damage is so high, and it has group fury/ protection on a big area for a long duration.

When alacrity is put into play, the dps of this specialization will go off the roof.
The Elite also does alot of aoe damage too.

Donnu about pvp yet, but for pve this spec is a big AOE class.

The damage of Photon Forge is absurd in PvP, it’s going to get nerfed eventually (hopefully, that level of damage is not healthy for the game). Otherwise it’s a very fun spec indeed! It’s the one I liked the most actually, but I think it was due to the OPness of the damage lol.

I got bored really quickly with it, I didn’t really enjoy it,basically just another melle build,And in the WvW area, you’ll be removed from group again. It’s like they glued super fun box items together, covered it in gasoline and are teasing you with a match. it’s to,.. hmmmm “lacking it fluent synergy” You have your sparkles and glitter,….

Currently playing with a build using the Photonic Blasting Module grandmaster, mostly to sit at 70% heat so that all the sword and utility skills are getting buffed without dancing in and out of photon forge. Current combo has been to use Hard Light Arena → Prismatic Singularity → Laser Disk → Blade Burst → Holographic Shockwave → Overheat Blast, with orbital strike kicking in.

Traits have been Explosives 2,1,1 / Inventions 1,3,2 /Holo 1,1,3 (mostly for quicker heat gen)

Still sword feels a little off atm, I think its skill 2 & 3. Works well with shield if focused more on power though pistol would work better for hybrid/condi (as we thought it would). Kinda feel that there should be something heat based that works with the base engi weapons, just to present another weapon option.

Laser disk is currently my favourite skills, though I suspect in a zerg its going to be a retaliation magnet like flamethrower or grenades are.

Hard Light Arena feels it should be applying the bonus to allies on +50% heat (hence the increase range).

Spectrum Shield is a decent stun break + damage reduction, need to see if it’ll reduce Heat Overload’s damage.

Haven’t played much with Photon Wall

Prime Light Beam is a godkitten giant laser beam, whats not to love about it?

Heal turret remains the best heal (more so with inventions due to minor condi cleanse trait)

So far liking it, just have to experiment a bit outside of the default explosives/firearms/holosmith build you’re given on character creation.

It has nice synergies with explosives and inventions. I like the whole style and heat management thanks to Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit. It turned out quite nice for my first playtime in WvsW.
I hoped i could make a cool bomb yourself build with the photonic blasting module, but that grandmaster trait is completely useless. Once you overheat you have to wait 17 seconds until you can use the Photon Forge mode again and that’s making it completely obsolete… There goes your Chance of 74%/75% devs.

To be honest, the only thing I like about Holosmith is the mobility. I find this whole heat and suicidal self explosion thing annoying. I always use tanky/survivability builds in games (that’s the reason why I’m not meta) and I will never use skills to damage myself, that’s not my style at all. For gameplay, I still prefer my P/P kit Engi. I will never switch unless we get some kind of “kitmaster” spec in the future.

The GM traits seem really build-defining. I’ve been playing a bit with Vent Exhaust, which seems to be usable with high endurance-recovery builds to keep you in almost perma-forge and you can do a lot of damage by dodging. I tried it with a burn build, but a Minesweeper build might work too.

Next I tried Enhanced Storage Capacity with direct damage, trying to stay above 100% heat most of the time. This really buffs the sword. I tried it with static discharge, rifle turret, and photon wall (which has a 7-8 second toolbelt instant-cast projectile to trigger static discharge). With two sub- ten second toolbelt projectiles available now, static discharge can get pretty crazy.

Why aren’t there Heat mechanics effects for base profession weapons and kits? This is seriously bad.

Heat should definitely affect base weapons, but not kits.

The Holosmith works pretty well with kits. Swapping to a kit takes you out of Photon Forge which is nice. Holosmith also works well as either power or condi, though just about all of the burns that Holosmith provides have a pretty short duration.

Holosmith still needs to rely on core skills for condi removal, because on it’s own it is really weak to condi damage. The damage is pretty awesome though and the Holosmith can handle direct damage pretty well. Mobility is also really nice.

Holosmith feels very good when in Photon Forge. It has substantially better damage output than the Scrapper, and Holographic Shockwave (#5) is deceptively powerful.

But outside of it, I can’t help but say the experience is mediocre, if not kind of bad. Just comparing the Holo sword vs. the Scrapper hammer, the hammer absolutely edges out as the better weapon. It has a stronger auto-attack, a better leap (and on a shorter cooldown), and stronger defensive upsides than most of our options. While the shield is a particularly strong off-hand option for PvP/WvW, the sword just doesn’t have enough oomph to it. It’s a clear downgrade over the hammer, and it just doesn’t feel as impactful as a weapon as the Scrapper’s did.

I think with some adjustments Holosmith could be a pretty fun specialization to play, but outside of Photon Forge it feels pretty bland and ineffectual.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Holosmith feels very good […] but outside of Photon Forge it feels pretty bland and ineffectual.

Pretty much this, the Photon Forge and its heat mechanic are cool, but once you out of it, you’re just a core engi with a missing traitline and not a ton of interactions with the new one. The sword should have been just that but in its current state it’s not worth using in my opinion, I find the rifle a much better option.

Its sad how many ppl relate not being used to something with clunky

Daerian.6523:

Why aren’t there Heat mechanics effects for base profession weapons and kits? This is seriously bad.

I think probably the simplest fix would be to change Laser’s Edge so that it also provides 10% damage buff when you’re not in Photon Forge but still have more than 50% heat. So you’d get 15% damage buff in Photon Forge and 10% buff when not using Forge, as long as heat is > 50%.

I constantly need to look at the bar to check the heat level which is bad.

I don’t like the third hit of the 1h sword animation, it takes too much time to hit and the animation (rotating the sword like that) is just stupid.

While trasnformed the leap is on 2, while with sword and hammer is on 3..just put it on 3 too so that I don’t accidentaly fire another skill since I’m used to hit another button with 2 other weapons please.

The pistol skills has 600 range, should be 900.

Photon Forge is SO GOOD that it makes all other engi skills feel lacklustre.

It’s not really sacrificing anything to get PF, so it’s sort of a strict upgrade on base engi. In other words, it’s power creep. That’s bad, and I feel like it’ll get nerfed a few months later if it comes out in its current state (after they’ve sold all the exps, naturally).

The heal trait is pretty nuts too if you pay attention and don’t overheat. That will become second nature after a few days getting used to the class.

Utility skills: really fun and well designed, but I hate waiting 30s-1m to use them. Sticking with kits because I hate giving up a slot that could be toolkit or egun.

EDIT: Upon testing the other elite specs, I’ve found some of them are equally OP. This does not bode well for the expansion. Elite specs should be balanced with the regular classes.

Really loving the skills though. They’re fun.

I really enjoyed Holosmith. Photon forge and the dynamic workings of the traits create a lot of fun ways to play around with your weapon skills. They finally succeeded at making a spec that benifits from running less kits. 1 Kit is plenty, and you can run without, since Photon forge provides all the offense you need.

I still haven’t taken it into pvp (I actually think it won’t be great in pvp, especially after they nerf the damage). The holosmith is a high risk character or a self destructive character (with traits), but I had a lot of fun playing him. I was running a vipers, sword/pistol, overheating build stacking burns. Again, this was just fooling around in heart of the mists. But the skills were fun and felt impactful. I love the trait choices too!

So I like the holosmith so far. Dmg seems a bit crazy but most of the new elite specs seems to be like that so hopefully after a few months they will all be brought in line to the old specs.

Sword feels not worth picking, rifle seems to be a better option in all cases. Sadly it doesn’t have any synergy if the heat mechanic.

New heal is not worth picking aswell heal turret is still by far the best option to pick. Really here I was actually sad that I still have to run the turret. Kinda jealous what spellbreaker got just a plain good heal.

Crystal Configuration: Storm; I first thought it will add an projectile to my meele attack which would have been very strong and therefore a hard choice between it and Crystal Condiguration: Eclipse. It’s still fun to pick but very lackluster since there is so much projectile hate/reflect. Therefore eclipse will be preferred on most cases which is sad I like to have hard picks to choose.

Grandmasters: Great work guys every pick there feels like playing a different holosmith that’s how it should be.

Photonforge 2: Dmg is nice but the leap is too slow you are barely quicker than just walking. I would recommend to make it as quick as the guard gs leap so 1/2 instead of 3/4.

I like the mechanic that photonforge disables kits for 6s giving the spec a real drawback to the crazy dmg it seems to have.

+Spectrum Shield: Nice stunbreak intressting way to shorten cd but toolbelt of it. Really? Other utilitys have so nice tb skills and this thing is just bad. Preferably I’d like to have a condi remove on it since holosmith is hardly forced into alchemy esp with all the new condi flying around. It would be nice to be able to jsut not pick alchemy but I’m happy with any rework of this toolbelt.

Bleh. Only interesting thing was the Photon Forge, and this is marred by having to constantly watch that heat every time, along with the ranged skills not being ranged enough. New utilities are flash but meh, with mostly useless utilities.

I mean, it looks cool, but that’s about it. And in PvP, with no new reflects or decent ways to deal with conditions, might as well just die.

Nilkemia.8507:

I mean, it looks cool, but that’s about it. And in PvP, with no new reflects or decent ways to deal with conditions, might as well just die.

shield 4 is reflect and Photon Wall over 50 heat is reflect too. Minor trait Prismatic Converter converts conditions to boons after leaving Photon Forge Mode. toolbelt 1 removes up to 4 conditions and if combined with that trait you lose the self inflicted burn fast.

For me as a player that usually doesn’t like playing engi (I dislike the kits) this felt awesome. I find the heat mechanic to be very interesting, especially in how the utility skills and the traits interact with it. From all the new specs I played so far (6), this is the one that feels the most completed and in sync to me.

The only issue I see is the damage. The holosmith on Marauder amulet + Hoelbrak runes did more damage than the Weaver on Berzerker + Scholar. The damage ouput of the Weeaver’s sword is underwhelming obviously, but the one of the holosmith might be a little too good.

I agree with how it feels clunky in some areas. Sword 3 feels off, like it has a before and after cast on it. Same with Forge #5 the Shockwave, you can’t move while casting it and if you are moving and cast it it takes extra time to go off it seems.

As for the skills they are all pretty decent. I’d like to see a lower CD on cauterize and flash spark and maybe make flash spark reveal because right now it’s the worst skill ever.

Overall a good dps class and I bet it will do well in PvE but scrapper brings too much utility over Holosmith in WvW. The function gyro although seemingly lackluster has help me win so many fights I otherwise wouldn’t have because I get a stomp off, even when I’m downed sometimes.

While in the mist I found if really good i tryed some rotation both condi and power.

Condi i feel it still need to use kits: you charge up the heat when you’re charged up leave photon forge for sword(pretty underwhelming)/pistol and use laser disc, then go bomb/grenade/flamethrower because we don’t have many other way to apply condition outside kits and rocket boots toolbelt, but it feels pretty smoth and you can have some option that need a golem to test, especially grandmaster trait 1(3 burn on dodge) vs 3(let yourself explode to have benefit when you’re cooling).

Power feel awesome in the mist but when you go in pve/wvw you realize that the key feature of the elite spec, the photonforge mode, suffer the problem all the transformation skill have: they’re attack is based on a 772 weapon so you autoattack go from 1k/strike to 670/strike that’s still worse than the bomb kit and to me put a dent on the pve viability of the spec unless some number change or the fixx it so it scale with the weapon rarity like kits do.

Before the weekend began, I expected to make Deadeye my main for the expac. I played all the new elite speccs at least 30 minutes per.

I came away a Holosmith-to-be. It’s like a Swiss Army knife…something for every situation.

And it’s a lot of fun! I was grinning from ear-to-ear while playing…both in PVP and WvW.

Really looking forward to playing this again in the Crystal Desert…and beyond.

I’ll see you all out there!

Photon forge certainly seemed powerful.

But I’m more a fan of ranged than melee combat so both the sword and forge aren’t so appealing to me.

And the thing I like most about engis is being able to freely change between kits. Holosmith nerfs that.

I found by the time you did whatever you activated forge to do, it’s been 6 seconds and your kits are off cooldown. I haven’t had an issue with being locked out – maybe for 1 second tops.

coro.3176:

I found by the time you did whatever you activated forge to do, it’s been 6 seconds and your kits are off cooldown. I haven’t had an issue with being locked out – maybe for 1 second tops.

Same here. I’m actually loving how well this new spec blends in with kits.

Shaogin.2679:

coro.3176:

I found by the time you did whatever you activated forge to do, it’s been 6 seconds and your kits are off cooldown. I haven’t had an issue with being locked out – maybe for 1 second tops.

Same here. I’m actually loving how well this new spec blends in with kits.

On the opposite side of the spectrum ive been enjoying no kit builds immensely

DemiGodKlvus.2648:

so far hollowsmith is the only spec that was disappointing to me

You played soulbeast? lol…

maybe you’re a masochist.

Well so far i love it, its doomsday of dps, sure.. nothing “complex” or really new but it does what it does extremely well, bringing on the paintrain. Having all traits revolve arround the forge is…weird to say the least, but the synergy with the explosive line and firearms is there nonetheless, specially cause you can trait the forge auto to be an explosive projectile. Heck the “build your own kit” trait stuff going on is super fun the longer i think about it. While beeing equipped with a sword i personally rarely found myself using it, building more on the forge and using it till i explode on purpose for a last “thank you and good night” before jumping (with my elixir gun) back and going “semi” ranged, gonna try to use a rifle or pistol with it tomorrow prolly pistol\shield should do what im aiming for, cause i sure do like the shield skills. The utility skills are nothing too special imo, but i sure do love their power increase at 50% heat, the ult tho… yeap, having a frigging death star laser is a 10\10 from me

After i dropped my engineer and former main with the advent of the scrapper (long story short this spec kittenes me off for too many personal reasons to count) it feels good to be back and i cant wait for sep 22 to finally dust off my engi.

After testing almost all of the new Specs, I can say without a doubt that I’m going to main a Holomancer during PoF and a long while later if they don’t change it in any drastic way. It’s just so much fun to hit Forge-Mode, see that awesome overlay on the character, jump right into the thick of battle and cause mayhem with these shiny skills. It seems to be the Power-Oriented speck I was hoping we would get this expansion and even tho it’s on Engi, not on ele which was what i was expecting, I’m just happy to have found it.
Nothing more to say, I love it and will totally be switching classes for this one.

I don’t think we need to be afraid of nerfs.

ANet said they want it to be high risk high reward dmg elite spec. I for one welcome DMG build that doesn’t rely on juggling multiple kits.

For world stuff like events, levelling, pve I like Scrapper a lot but sometimes miss that OOMPH! which I get out of Holosmith

As a engi kit lover I find the disable of kits to be too long. Atm I used the holosmith as a 4th kit. I went in, used skill #3, skill #4 then I would have to fill out the remaining time with one full atuo chain then two atuos before I was able to leave.
Idm if you leave the holosmith cd at 6sec as I can fill the rotation with kits while I wait although can the holosmith disable kits for 4secs instead? (the amount of time it takes to do skill #3, skill #4 and a atuo chain unbuffed with quickness/alcharty)

Yes the damage is high atm too and needs toning down. It’s like when mortar first came out and that atuo was super strong

Killyox.3950:

I don’t think we need to be afraid of nerfs.

ANet said they want it to be high risk high reward dmg elite spec. I for one welcome DMG build that doesn’t rely on juggling multiple kits.

For world stuff like events, levelling, pve I like Scrapper a lot but sometimes miss that OOMPH! which I get out of Holosmith

What’s the risk though? Compared to base engi, you’re getting way more damage for free. On top of that, you also get a ton of sustain from the healing trait and some good cc/utility from the PF skills.

coro.3176:

Killyox.3950:

I don’t think we need to be afraid of nerfs.

ANet said they want it to be high risk high reward dmg elite spec. I for one welcome DMG build that doesn’t rely on juggling multiple kits.

For world stuff like events, levelling, pve I like Scrapper a lot but sometimes miss that OOMPH! which I get out of Holosmith

What’s the risk though? Compared to base engi, you’re getting way more damage for free. On top of that, you also get a ton of sustain from the healing trait and some good cc/utility from the PF skills.

Core Engi is not melee, you’re right in the clusterfudge with Holo. Overheating is a devastating risk too, sometimes you have to overheat to pump out enough hits to rally a teammate or something

Core Engi is at least sort-of melee. Many of its high damage skills (both power and condi) want you to be in melee range to maximize damage: Blowtorch, Pry Bar, Jump Shot, Blunderbuss, etc.

I mean, I’d argue Holo is maybe a bit more melee than those because it tempts you to stay in melee range whereas Core Engi would probably disengage after landing its burst.

Holo doesn’t force you to stay in melee range though. If you want, you can play holo just like a core engi, except with access to huge relentless burst damage and some nice sustain from Heat Therapy. Holo offers you the option to stay and burst until you (almost) overheat, but only if you want to.

Also, I don’t think overheating is a risk. I hardly ever overheated accidentally during the test weekend and I was just getting used to the class. When I did, it’s because I was getting carried away in a big zerg fight in WvW, or accidentally fat-fingered the PF button.Given a few weeks of practice, heat management will be second-nature to most holo players.

Personally I dislike the color scheme chosen for holosmith. I think that yellow/light brown is ugly.