Kitless Holosmith - is this still a thing?

[Legion.4538]

Returning to GW2, was interested in playing a Holosmith. I'm curious if "kitless holo" with sword+pistol/shield is still a thing, and if it's good for open world or casual t4 fractals?

 

Cheers.

[draxynnic.3719]

I think it's still being used in open world and WvW, but in instanced content you're pretty much always looking at having grenades at least in the builds that are considered optimal at the moment. I don't know how much you'd be losing if you traded the grenade kit for something else, though.

[Naxos.2503]

Straight kitless is uncommon, since even in WvW most engineer atleast use Mortar kit. Though some do substract for IMMAFIRRINMALAZOR (forgot the name)

 

Flamethrower is also a frequent keeper for any condi holo. Power holos in general are the only ones running kitless. They replace that with potions.

[Taril.8619]

Open World? Sure. You can do whatever there.

 

Instanced content... Generally you'd be wanting **at least** 1 kit in all Engie builds. Grenade Kit in Power builds, Flamethrower in Condi builds and Elixir Gun in Support builds.

 

The ideal is typically 2-3 kits (Grenade + Bomb for Power, Grenade + Bomb + Flame for Condi, Healkit + Elixir for Support) but for more casual stuff you can get away with just 1 kit no problem.

 

Kitless can be a bit low on the DPS, though for casual stuff you might be able to get away with it. One of the main issues with kitless is not only the loss of that extra set of weapon skills (Which is significant due to Engie's lack of weapon swapping in combat... Holoforge dancing helps somewhat but you're still going to end up with skill downtime where you're auto attacking for several seconds) but also the loss of all the Vulnerability and Ferocity stacks from Explosives specialization that Grenade Kit is necessary to maintain.

 

That said, Static Discharge Tools builds can do surprising amounts of damage. If you run Rifle Turret + Photon Wall + Personal Battering Ram for the low CD toolbelt skills you can be spamming tons of lightning bolts. Of course, such a build is comparable in piano-keyboard-playstyle to kit builds which is worth noting if that's a detractor from kit builds...

[MrForz.1953]

You can have a general purpose build if you run enough Diviners to reach 100% boon duration with the Alchemy traitline boost and the runes of the Pack, go Berserker for the rest (weapons and backpack) and fill your utility slots with elixirs (H, B and U and Laser Disk for the last one).

 

You selfishly get a large amount of boons and boon uptime including the 25 might and almost perma quickness without relying on anyone, the results have you deal a respectable amount of damage, be tanky and slippery at the same time. It's good for soloing all kinds of stuff and has some niche uses in WvW, it might not be too relevant in group content if there's the presence of even 1 boon slave however.