Krag.6210

Whenever I swap to my mortar kit as an engineer in on of the queen's gauntlet arena during a 1v1 npc fight, my mortar is automatically swapped out for my default weapons.

There's enough time to land one single skill by spamming like a madman but nothing more.

Thermal Vision was nerfed for power Holo, I guess that makes Pinpoint the better choice in most cases?

The 3 traits are kind of underwhelming for power builds in group content.

I agree, the 3 minibosses are way undertuned and the final boss is fine in my opinion, but falling should be an instant death above tier 2-3.

Harpoon gun is worse than it was pre-update. Scatter Mines is unusable unless you're standing inside the enemy hitbox due to not being able to detonate them whenever you want, skill 5 suffers from similar issues, Skill 3 is better.

If anything, Harpoon gun was made a lot less interesting and interactive than it used to be.

I'm not a fan of the changed underwater skills, there's less interaction now with the mines and net not being activated with a second keypress.

The AA was trash and needed some love but it's also why we have kits in the first place, speaking of which, grenade kit is still ass underwater.

Pinpoint was already one of the weakest class specific auras, it didn't warrant a nerf.

* **Med Blaster:** Increased the healing-power multiplier by 500% on the blaster's base heal. Increased the healing-power multiplier by 80% on its heals per boon. Base healing has been decreased by 33%.

* **Throw Bandages:** This skill has been replaced with Bandage Blast, which fires 5 bandages in an arc ahead of the player, healing and granting regeneration to any allies they strike.

* **Throw Stimulant:** This skill has been replaced with Cleansing Field, which creates a temporary water combo field and removes conditions every second that allies are within the field.

* **Throw Accelerant:** This skill has been replaced with Vital Burst, which heals allies in an area around the player.

* **Throw Antidote:** This skill has been replaced with Infusion Bomb, which throws a bomb that grants several boons to allies when it explodes.

Time to discuss this.

It's been 6 months already, what passed as an oversight back then is getting tiring to deal with as the time goes.

I'm talking about picking up the crystals in Solid Ocean for example, or all those various things you have to throw in story instances.

Same with the mount, I reached a point where I'd rather fight as a handicapped core engi with two traitlines rather than fire up PF for quick fights just to get back on my mount faster.

It's frustrating wasting so much time when core engi was the king of moving around fast and doing everything at once.

All I want is more synergies between Holo and core in PvE.

Right now only the jihad trait has an impact on the rest of the build, Photon Forge is its own class that does everything with little input and when it's over you're left with an engi missing a traitline.

Gone is the active playstyle of condi that let you swap quickly to FT3 for a quick reflect or save someone from being stomped and such.

I would kill for a trait that let me swap in an out of PF like a kit even if it had some awful drawback. The other thing that would save it is heat based modifiers on regular engi weapons, you really made a huge mistake not giving us that from the start, even more so with sword being trash.

Holo really is fucking boring to me.

Engi since vanilla

Professor Zobb


> @"Samug.6512" said:

> I'd say Scrapper needs a rework. It needs to be pointed in a certain direction, like Scourge is condi, Firebrand is support, Holo is damage and Druid is a healer. At the moment, Scrapper has one decent CC, some poor-medicore support (Gyros) and is a Res/Finishing bot.

It used to have decent CC through daze before they destroyed that completely, Scrapper should have been the melee disruption spec.

I also think it could have been the perfect candidate for a barrier based melee support spec but it came out too early for that. They should replace every mention of "Super Speed" with "Barrier" in the traits.

It was supposed to be a melee brawler that gives super speed like a chrono did quickness/alacrity, but it was never really good at it and super speed was never really used for anything. And the melee brawler part would have been fine had the damage not been subpar or mesmers not so efficient at tanking.

Scrapper doesn't really fit any role in PvE.

Does any other long time engineer main feel like Holosmith simply isn't fun?

Core condi engi felt like you always had room for improvement while Holo just feels super straightforward and barely more involved than the core power bomb build.

I can't say they did a bad job since Holosmith managed to bring a lot of new players to the class.

For me though, I can't shake the feeling that Engi lost so much of what made it the only class I enjoyed playing. I deal more damage, sure, but it doesn't feel satisfying.

I wish all GM traits had some kind of interaction with the non-holo related stuff like Photonic Blast does with the damage buff while cooling down.

Photon Forge really lack synergy with the rest of the class, so if we're not getting heat mechanics on core engi weapons, can we at least get some synergy somewhere else?

> @Adamantium.3682 said:

> Sword looks like it's back on the menu now. Should test to confirm but looks like the buffs might be enough to replace bomb auto

It would have to beat bomb plus rifle to be relevant.

In my opinion, Photon forge should have been an Elite kit and Prime Light Beam the Elite Toolbelt Skill.

I want a staff that makes use of electricity and magnetism.

And a mechanic based around dropping pylons that interact with each other to create barriers, damage or buffing areas.

Anyone have had some experience with it?

Here are some random impressions:

From the few runs I've done in pugs, the damage is great but you're extremely squishy, especially against trash mobs and the lack of endurance is very noticeable. It's alright on bosses unless they want to auto attack you. You also really want a healer or AED to stay alive because the combination of being melee and self inflicted damage can really hurt.

It's much better in 100CM since you can avoid everything and you'll have a healer most of the time, cheap damage from adds and AA is what will kill you in the other fractals.

> @insanemaniac.2456 said:

> id want to try grieving with it in addition to zerk, because it would be a very burning only build and its easy to get duration for a single condi without sacrificing a whole lot.

Without tryharding and trying to find the absolute best rotation, I hit about 27K in full Grieving, realistic with burning duration capped, flame turret and FT kit.

They're just not good enough.

If they want Holo utilities to be worth picking over kits, they need to be good by default, and really good when above the heat threshold, instead they made them bad by default and just alright with heat.

There's a difference between a skill that could have been used better and one that just isn't worth using and right now most of the new utilities fit into the second category without heat. The others are already so situational by design that whether you have enough heat when you need them is more up to luck than anything.

> @cgMatt.5162 said:

> Mmm well I am leaning more towards still playing condi Engi PvE for most encounters because of the additional immob from off-hand pistol and Streamlined Kits utility (mostly the bomb kit pull).

That, and it's safer thanks to having a little more range and better endurance regen with the tools traitline.

Holo right now is a melee self-damaging build with limited dodging.

The combo of sword+offhand+heat needs to bring a higher dps than bomb AA so we can use our utilities for something else.

The heart/karma merchants in the Desolation are missing the recipe for the Mordant Mace, they also sell the recipe for Mordant Scutum twice.

> @Aldath.1275 said:

> I repeat, I'd rather be "trash tier" and inside the meta than being Power Reaper or Power Revenant levels of useless.

At least you'd have the option to be something good instead.

> @miriforst.1290 said:

> As for coolant blast it would have been neat if it actually reduced your heat by a chunk (or stop all heat generation under cooling vapor) to allow you to continue using holomode for a while making it the aggressive heal.

Wasn't it like that back in the beta? I always assumed it did based on the name.