@@sheffplaysgames The longer duration on AED when traited is pretty good. 8 seconds is forever in a fight, and AED popping at the very last second seems to happen a lot.
BUILD EXPLANATION ---------- Rifle: I feel very strongly about having a ranged weapon for solo roaming. Photon Forge already does great in melee range, and having another melee weapon like sword or hammer feels redundant. I've seen other people use shortbow and pistol, and the idea is the same. Rifle is very clunky and has an absolutely atrocious auto attack, but it has good CC and good damage if it manages to hit. A.E.D: This is not a great heal if we theorycraft winning 1v1s. Good players can just hit stow weapon, or just time their burst/cc so I don’t have an opportunity to use it. The issue is that solo roaming is usually not a series of 1v1s, and a big part of having fun while solo roaming is getting people to actually fight me. When a thief is low and sees someone pop a huge heal, their first reaction is to disengage and reset the fight. However, when a thief sees me sitting at 25% health, the only thing they are thinking about is landing that next backstab or heartseeker that will put me away. The average player isn’t going to think about how my heal animation didn’t actually do any healing, or what that little icon on my buff bar is. It lets me pick up a lot more kills than I would be able to otherwise. It’s also very good versus celestial builds that don’t have the ability to burst me, and can’t stop their condition damage from popping A.E.D. every single time. Rocket Boots: This is one of the best disengage skills in the game when traited. Having a 1200 range leap with 2 charges and then having 2 more charges when going underwater makes me pretty much uncatchable when I position correctly. I can’t win every fight, but Rocket Boots let me choose only to engage when I think I can win. Elixir S: This allows me to secure stomps when outnumbered, is a panic button when I get bursted, and gives me stealth on the toolbelt for engages and disengages. Elixir U: This breaks stuns and gives quickness and stability, giving me a window to burst people down. I could probably replace it with Spectrum Shield, but the quickness on the elixir is very, very good. Elixir X: This isn’t a great elite. It removes my heal and utilities, and is completely random. If I use it at the beginning of a fight, my opponent can often just kite/block/reflect my damage. If I use it in the middle of a fight, I run the risk for getting bursted down when I can’t heal and have no access to rocket boots. What it does do, though, is sometimes win the fight on its own. Tornado and Rampage can completely lock down someone without stability, and force stun breaks. This lets me immediately do a CC chain when I come out of the transformation and burst them down. Lich Form has no mobility and not great CC, but it does a lot of damage that people aren’t prepared for. My usual play is use Elixir S toolbelt to stealth, then pop Elixir X. I come out to stealth transformed, and can usually catch my opponent by surprise. Traits: This is the pretty much the standard Explosives-Tools-Holosmith build, except I pick up Gadgeteer. Traited Rocket Boots is incredible, and it also makes A.E.D last longer. It also gives me Shocking Aura, which helps pause enemy burst after I heal, and helps me win the damage race when people try to trade damage into A.E.D. Relic: I have been using Relic of the Stormsinger since JW launch, and I’ve really liked it. It adds damage to all of my movement skills, including Rocket Boots toolbelt and Rifle 4. When combined with Explosive Entrance and Static Discharge, the build can do damage at range even though Rifle auto attack is horrible. Other relics like Nayos and Rivers are also very good, and it comes down to personal preference. Gear: I use a mix of Marauder and Assassin gear to get enough crit chance so I’m perfectly crit capped if I have Presence of the Keep and all 3 Bloodlust buffs. That never actually happens, though, so it’s perfectly fine to just use full Marauder.
![[GW2 WvW] Gadget Holo solo roaming 1](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xNA_q-aKgtg/mqdefault.jpg)
![[GW2 WvW] Gadget Holo solo roaming 1](/img/tr.png)
![GW2 | [Srge] Perpetual Sunday Evening | Support Catalyst | WvW](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Lwk3rF54bWg/mqdefault.jpg)
I cannot believe you managed to proc the AED at 05:47. That looked completely over.
It happened again in the same fight at 06:08, lol.
@@sheffplaysgames The longer duration on AED when traited is pretty good. 8 seconds is forever in a fight, and AED popping at the very last second seems to happen a lot.
BUILD EXPLANATION
----------
Rifle: I feel very strongly about having a ranged weapon for solo roaming. Photon Forge already does great in melee range, and having another melee weapon like sword or hammer feels redundant. I've seen other people use shortbow and pistol, and the idea is the same. Rifle is very clunky and has an absolutely atrocious auto attack, but it has good CC and good damage if it manages to hit.
A.E.D: This is not a great heal if we theorycraft winning 1v1s. Good players can just hit stow weapon, or just time their burst/cc so I don’t have an opportunity to use it. The issue is that solo roaming is usually not a series of 1v1s, and a big part of having fun while solo roaming is getting people to actually fight me. When a thief is low and sees someone pop a huge heal, their first reaction is to disengage and reset the fight. However, when a thief sees me sitting at 25% health, the only thing they are thinking about is landing that next backstab or heartseeker that will put me away. The average player isn’t going to think about how my heal animation didn’t actually do any healing, or what that little icon on my buff bar is. It lets me pick up a lot more kills than I would be able to otherwise. It’s also very good versus celestial builds that don’t have the ability to burst me, and can’t stop their condition damage from popping A.E.D. every single time.
Rocket Boots: This is one of the best disengage skills in the game when traited. Having a 1200 range leap with 2 charges and then having 2 more charges when going underwater makes me pretty much uncatchable when I position correctly. I can’t win every fight, but Rocket Boots let me choose only to engage when I think I can win.
Elixir S: This allows me to secure stomps when outnumbered, is a panic button when I get bursted, and gives me stealth on the toolbelt for engages and disengages.
Elixir U: This breaks stuns and gives quickness and stability, giving me a window to burst people down. I could probably replace it with Spectrum Shield, but the quickness on the elixir is very, very good.
Elixir X: This isn’t a great elite. It removes my heal and utilities, and is completely random. If I use it at the beginning of a fight, my opponent can often just kite/block/reflect my damage. If I use it in the middle of a fight, I run the risk for getting bursted down when I can’t heal and have no access to rocket boots. What it does do, though, is sometimes win the fight on its own. Tornado and Rampage can completely lock down someone without stability, and force stun breaks. This lets me immediately do a CC chain when I come out of the transformation and burst them down. Lich Form has no mobility and not great CC, but it does a lot of damage that people aren’t prepared for. My usual play is use Elixir S toolbelt to stealth, then pop Elixir X. I come out to stealth transformed, and can usually catch my opponent by surprise.
Traits: This is the pretty much the standard Explosives-Tools-Holosmith build, except I pick up Gadgeteer. Traited Rocket Boots is incredible, and it also makes A.E.D last longer. It also gives me Shocking Aura, which helps pause enemy burst after I heal, and helps me win the damage race when people try to trade damage into A.E.D.
Relic: I have been using Relic of the Stormsinger since JW launch, and I’ve really liked it. It adds damage to all of my movement skills, including Rocket Boots toolbelt and Rifle 4. When combined with Explosive Entrance and Static Discharge, the build can do damage at range even though Rifle auto attack is horrible. Other relics like Nayos and Rivers are also very good, and it comes down to personal preference.
Gear: I use a mix of Marauder and Assassin gear to get enough crit chance so I’m perfectly crit capped if I have Presence of the Keep and all 3 Bloodlust buffs. That never actually happens, though, so it’s perfectly fine to just use full Marauder.