Holosmith - Bunker Holo

This is a test build. You may comment and rate it.

Focused on: Control, Direct damage, Bunkering and Support

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on July 20, 2026.

Overview

Bunker Holo is a control-focused direct damage build that sports moderate sustain and some group support. Its versatility allows for a lot of flexibility when it comes to roles, as the build can be quite strong in teamfights but also has 1v1 potential. While it does have some group support tools, it's not a true replacement for a proper support build for the team.

Skill Bar

Mace/Shield

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

For your third slot use a combination of stunbreak + CC:

• Slick Shoes - Low CD stunbreak affected by Adrenal Implant, counters blocks, instant cast, strongest defensive option
• Thumper Turret - High CD stunbreak affected by Adrenal Implant, overcharges twice in short succession for AoE knockdown, strongest CC option that can be used both offensively and defensively
• Flamethrower - Low CD stunbreak affected by Adrenal Implant. It gives you another decap tool, brief reflect, field, blast, boons and some midranged burst damage which sounds great on paper but all of it is inaccessible while in Forge so you need to be extra careful in teamfights.
• Utility Goggles - Provides additional cleanse and counters Stealth but the CC is less impactful and harder to land. Unless you are sure those will be relevant, the above options are usually preferable.

If you expect to be stuck on a sidenode a lot you may want to drop Hard Light Arena for another of these skills. If you pick both gadget utilities in this scenario, consider taking Gadgeteer.

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• If your team has no dedicated support, the support from Healing Turret and Thumper Turret with Experimental Turrets may be more valuable than personal resistance and movement speed. While the reflect is too slow to reflect on reaction, it can be strong for securing downs or resses.

Variants

• Reactive Lenses if you need more cleanse / Resistance
• Lock On against Stealth reliant teams.
• Gadgeteer is worth considering with Slick Shoes + 1 Gadget + Reactive Lenses but Adrenal Implant is so good that even then you may want to keep it. Certainly take it if running more gadgets than that.

Variants

• Crystal Configuration: Zephyr is always viable and the superior option if you expect to get kited a lot but the loss in sustain is not insignificant.

Specialization Variants

Explosives adds vitality, sustain, a reliable Fury source and has a bit more damage than Tools but it lacks cleanse, its Vigor uptime is less resilient against strips, stunbreaks are available a lot less frequently and heat management becomes a bit less convenient. Possibly the better variant for a premade team but less flexible overall and likely to fold to condi pressure when queueing solo.

Equipment

Mace

Shield

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Runes

• Rune of Spellbreaker - Greedier option, going more greedy than this makes you susceptible to burst.
• Rune of Traveler - only if running Experimental Turrets and even then not strictly necessary: You lose your base speed and outside of Holo Leap you have no access to Swiftness, making the extra base movement speed valuable while adding trace amounts of boons and healing.

Sigils

• Sigil of Absorption can be replaced with Sigil of Cleansing

Relics

The relic has to be replaced on the Explosives variant as you don't need more Fury there:

• Relic of the Mists Tide can partially compensate for your lack of cleanse as you have enough fields and leaps available.
• Relic of the Pirate Queen, Relic of the Nautical Beast Relic of the Nautical Beast (unsupported by Relic template?) or Relic of the Scoundrel are good options for more offensive build variants when queueing with a support.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Holosmith grants access to the Photon Forge (sometimes referred to as holo mode) and introduces a new resource: heat. Heat is generated passively while the forge is active and also by activating forge skills. Higher CD skills generate more heat.

• Reaching maximum heat (100) should be avoided as Overheating damages you and locks you out of the forge and your toolbelt until heat goes back to 0. Heat slowly decays outside of Photon Forge but it can also be reduced by dodging thanks to Thermal Release Valve (TRV).
  • Overheat is triggered on a per-tick basis and does not instantly trigger on reaching 100 heat. This means if you have a dodge left and you are at 95 heat, you may be able to use Holographic Shockwave and then immediately dodge without Overheating as TRV reduces the heat from 100 to 85 before Overheat kicks in. It's not reliable so only try this when your death is certain otherwise.

• Engage Photon Forge is used to activate the forge, after which your weapon skills will be replaced by 5 new ones. You can't exit the forge for 6 seconds, so think twice before reentering with high heat levels. Be careful when entering it above ~70 heat as you may risk overheating.

• Both Engage Photon Forge and Disengage Photon Forge count as toolbelt skills and will work with related traits. Both skills can proc weapon swap sigils too.

• Be very mindful about when you exit Photon Forge. Adrenal Implant triggers at the end of your dodge and affects the cooldown of Engage Photon Forge, reducing it from 1 to 0. This means that if you exit at the end of a dodge you may accidently exit and reenter Photon Forge with a single button press which is often lethal.

General

You lack the mobility for decapping but otherwise your role is flexible and changes based on your own team, your enemy team and your exact loadout.

The primary features of the build are huge amounts of lockdown and control alongside moderate damage on top of self-sustain, defensive tools and area boons that let you (and your team) survive long enough to land your lockdown and generate downs or hold points.

The Inventions traitline grants you a huge amount of bonus stats through Energy Amplifier which can be kept up permanently and amplifies your damage while helping to drive your sustain.

Damage

• Hitting an enemy with a disable triggers Relic of the Midnight King for offensive boons and Bunker Down for damage and Vulnerability once per second - even if they have Stability. You have a lot of them:
  • Rocket Fist Prototype
  • Magnetic Inversion
  • Static Shield
  • Throw Shield
  • Holographic Shockwave
  • Prime Light Beam
  • Prismatic Singularity
  • Slick Shoes (if taken)
  • Flashbang (if taken)
  • Air Blast (if taken)
  • Thumper Turret CC is attributed to the turret, not to the player, so it unfortunately does not trigger them :-( pls fix anet

• All your Photon Forge skills deal solid damage, note that the second hit of Corona Burst hits a lot harder than the first.

• Prime Light Beam deals solid damage but is hard to land, use it to punish blocking enemies, extend a CC combo or disrupt stomps/resses.

• Energizing Slam hits quite hard on a low cooldown and has a big impact area.

• Although Bunker Down triggers regardless of Stability, don't just blindly slam all your control into stability and instead try to pressure with your low cooldown non-CC skills like Mace 2 and Forge while it's up.

• Be mindful about hard mitigation like Blocks, Evades and Invulnerability as they deprive you of most of your benefits. Note that while Slick Shoes is unblockable as well, it actually requires the opponent to move so it is ineffective for disrupting blocks like Crystal Hibernation that force the enemy to remain still. Prime Light Beam is often the more accessible option.

• Thumper Turret has a small delay between being placed and performing its overcharge and can be destroyed in that time frame so only place it within multiple enemies if you are sure it will go off. Following up the first knockdown with another CC assures that the second knockdown of the turret hits as well.

• Pay attention to your opponent's stunbreaks so you can lock them into a killing CC chain. In chaotic team fights landing Prismatic Singularity is the ideal setup for catching multiple enemies in a devastating combo.

Sustain

• Most variations of this build run no stability and only a single stunbreak, making you very susceptible to lockdown. Don't present yourself as the natural target!
  • If you find yourself focused in teamfights, use your mobility to kite away and don't hesitate to use hard mitigation early so you don't have to immediately resort to your stunbreak.
  • Photon Wall is your only hard mitigation while in Forge and can cover defensive utility skill casts if you orient the shield right. Utilize your in-combat mobility from your Leaps to run away and make it difficult to get their melee abilities in

• Regeneration and Vigor are the primary drivers of your sustain. Energizing Slam provides both to you and nearbly allies while also granting 640 barrier (to allies too!) and dealing solid damage. Use it as often as you can! Insanely broken skill.

• Regenerating Mist is another great contributor to your regeneration uptime on a relatively low cooldown. Combo the water field with Energizing Slam or Holo Leap for extra healing whenever you are not at full health.

• Healing Turret provides a wide area cleanse, heal, regeneration and water field.
  • Combo the water field with Energizing Slam and/or Holo Leap every time
  • In certain scenarios you will want to also combo with Holographic Shockwave
  • Reconstruction Enclosure has no internal cooldown and activates on both placing the turret and overcharging, granting a full 6 seconds of AoE Protection
  • Reactive Lenses has no internal cooldown and activates on both placing the turret and overcharging, granting a full 6s of personal Resistance and cleansing 2 conditions + blind.
  • If using Experimental Turrets it grants AoE Vigor and spawns a reflect bubble after 1 second. The bubble immediately disappears on picking up or detonating the turret.
  • Detonate the turret for additional AoE healing or pick it up for cooldown reduction.
  • Due to the amount of beneficial effects that only apply upon placing, pick it up if you think you can get away with it instead of detonating it.

• Every dodge heals you for 600 through Heat Therapy unless you are out of heat. High Vigor uptime, Adrenal Implant and Energy sigil ensure you can do it often.

• Corona Burst grants you 1800+ barrier if you can land the first hit. Opponents will rarely dodge this on reflex as they prioritize avoidance of the second hit of the skill.

• Hitting with a disable causes Bunker Down to drop a Bandage in front of you that heals you for 648, cleanses a condition and applies Regeneration. It also applies Weakness through Sapping Device which makes you less susceptible to power damage until it is cleansed. If you are pressured very hard, this can make your disables save you even if you hit into stability. Just make sure you avoid hitting into hard mitigation!

• Hard Light Arena is great to use in team fights when above 50 heat for the extra barrier and to support your allies. It is however also a strong personal defensive skill that you should not hesitate to use when under pressure even below 50 heat. The Protection helps you against power damage but it also provides a Light field that you can combo with Energizing Slam or Holo Leap for 5s of Light Aura which in turn grants you Resolution when hit for a total 40% condi damage reduction. Blasting it also removes conditions in an area.

• Holographic Shockwave is a strong defensive tool as the evade combined with the CC gives you a brief moment to line up your next skill.

Dealing with ranged builds

• Energizing Slam and Holo Leap both make okay distance, you can chain them in a Mace-Forge-Forge-Mace combo for considerable chase potential.

• If you don't run Crystal Configuration: Zephyr it is usually not enough to catch up to mobile snipers like Galeshot unless they somehow let you hit Mace 3 on them. You primarily rely on reflects to fend them off.

• Most of your reflects have too much windup to pose a true threat. Magnetic Shield (engineer) and Air Blast are the only skills that can reliably reflect high priority skills on reflex such as Bluster, Hawkeye and True Shot. Don't use them preemptively as the users all have access to unblockable projectiles as well and can simply punch through your block / reflect if they see you use it.

• Photon Wall when cast above 50 Heat also reflects but the extra requirement makes it unreliable for this purpose.

• If taken, the reflects from Experimental Turrets act more as area denial while you destroy the sniper's teammates but if you track Galeshot's Wind Force, you can anticipate Hawkeye and reflect that with a turret as well. Even if they dodge the reflected projectiles, getting turret reflected will shatter their mentality and make them afraid.

Support Overview

Numbers assume that Energy Amplifier is active.

• Regenerating Mist grants 6s of Regeneration in a 480 radius

• Healing Turret heals for 2645, cleanses two conditions and grants 8s of Regeneration in a 480 radius
  • It triggers Reconstruction Enclosure twice for 6s of Protection in a 360 radius
  • It triggers Cleansing Pulse once for 4s of Regeneration and 1 cleanse in a 360 radius
  • If taken, it triggers Experimental Turrets for 3s of Vigor in a 600 radius

• Thumper Turret with Experimental Turrets grants 3s of Protection in a 600 radius.

• Energizing Slam grants 641 barrier, 3s of Vigor and 3s of Regeneration in a 360 radius

• Relic of the Midnight King grants 3s of Fury and 8s of Might in a 300 radius once per second on hitting a disable

• Hard Light Arena grants 4s of Fury, Protection and Regeneration to allies in a 240-360 radius

Overall you grant effectively permanent Regeneration around you which ticks for 161 health every second. With Experimental Turrets you can achieve >50% uptimes on Vigor and Protection on top of the general disruption you bring.