Holosmith - DPS Holo

A power damage Holosmith WvW build meant to do massive damage within melee range, overwhelming the enemies with copious amounts of burst hits, causing great pain and harm to their bodies and souls and health bars, while having no meaningful downtime, unlike their other DPS such as reaper or berserker which struggle outside of 夺魂之幕 and 狂暴.

Variants

Weapon

• Hammer
• Spear

Heal

• more team utility but less personal survivability

Utility

Variants

• - Stunbreak
• - Stunbreak
• - Clears / /

• - over 50 Heat
• - Do not overheat
• - over 50 Heat
• Dodge - for ()

• - AoE
• - Single target
• - Single target

Variants

Stats

• Feel free to use as much Berserker's gear as you can without dying
  • Swap out Dragon gear first
• The given setup aims for maximum Effective Health
  • You can swap Marauder's to Demolisher's to make healing more efficient in exchange for increasing your chance to be spiked from 100%

Sigil

• 超级精力法印 for activating 爆破进击

Consumables

• 黑胡椒粉真空烹调肉排
• 超级磨刀石

Quick Guide

• Holosmith is a short range pure DPS with very high burst

• Set up ticking damage effects to increase your burst

• Aim to land as many of your hard hitting skills within as short a time window as possible while those ticking effects are active

• Use holosmith's exceptional filler skills to finish enemies off

General

• As soon as you get the 25 stacks of 超级嗜血法印 and get out of combat, swap back to the Rifle without it

Surviving

• This build has low passive defense

• This build has moderate mobility skill access

• This build has low active defenses

• Use 自动除颤 when you expect high spike damage to occur inside its duration

  • Let your group heal you instead of using 自动除颤 to heal yourself

Priorities

High

• Burst Damage

Moderate

• Damage

Low

• Superspeed
• CC

Detailed Explanations

Burst Damage

• Holosmith has four different ways to burst, listed here in order of priority:
• The burst:

• The burst:

• The Filler burst:

• The burst:

• If possible you want to combine these bursts into each other as follows:

• The goal is prioritize your higher damage, easier to execute and lower cooldown bursts first, to increase your overall damage and allow you to burst more frequently
• Try to hold your burst and use it at the same time as the rest of your group to more effectively generate down states
• If you can't use the highest priority burst combo safely, move to the next one
  • If you can't use any of them safely, just swap to sustained damage and wait for a good time to burst
• Don't view this as a strict order every time you burst. The key skills to burst around are , , and your Morph skills, as long as one of the them will land effective damage you can go for the burst
• can be added onto any burst, preferably at the start
  • If you don't think you'll have enough melee uptime for to provide value when casting , just hold it and use it before any other combo, ideally the combo
• combines very nicely into other skills due to its travel time, it can be added before any burst combo if you're in range
• If you don't need to get in range for it can be used at any time for a large hit
• Don't be afraid to move the burst above the filler burst in priority if you'll only have limited melee uptime and can land it right away

Damage

• Priortize syncing your burst skills up when possible as described above, but otherwise your priorties are to:

1. Use and as often as possible
2. use ⇒ ⇒ then leave forge
3. Fill with weapon skills and

• In prioritize and for damage
  • In general you should use two before leaving forge
  • Use as needed for mobility
  • Watch your Heat carefully, overheating must be avoided at all costs
  • Keep your Heat above 50 (past the first bar) always, especially when using your Exceed skills
    • is helpful for quickly gaining Heat, even while out of range for its primary effects
  • Around 95 Heat is a sweet spot for entering without overheating
  • You should preheat your before engaging the enemy to around 100 heat when possible
• Use whenever you are sure you are going to be able to sit in melee for a long time
• is best suited for chokes or scenarios where the enemy is pushing at you, since it goes beyond the standard 5man target cap
  • roots you for a while during the cast so be careful to not greed
• Use whenever the enemy group will be in the AoE for multiple ticks, the CD is very short
  • The backwards leap must be canceled by using a Weapon Swap keybind during the animation
• Use before if you don't already have
• During Photon Forge downtime:
  • Use your rifle skills, mainly and for burst damage
  • Use then spam

Superspeed

• gives to an unlimited amount of allies
  • Use in the direction your commander is pushing whenever you use it
  • Cast behind the commander to keep the group together
  • Pair with if your group isn't out of combat on cast

CC

• adds 25% Heat, be careful not to overheat when using it
• and are generally not worth casting
• Use your CC when:
  • Your group calls a spike such as Wells - ()
  • On top of enemy downs (while alive enemies are on top of them)
  • Enemy groups move defensively while your group is pushing