Tried to use the Catalyst in wvw. My observations and thoughts so far:
* f5 felt useless, too stationary for defence or to kite people around. And it was dealing negligable damage (probably intended?) hence had no offensive use. I'm not even talking about energy cost and mandatory field type change due to attunement.
*Hammer was ok but apparently it is not intended for WvW. Too clunky with no payoff, damage also felt weak.
*Tried to make a working staff build but nothing worked. Its minimal synergy didn't save the traits low uptime. It was weaker than weaver staff or even tempest staff. Not sure, but maybe even core staff, haven't compared the later.
*Utilities felt weak and too restrictive, I couldn't justify geting any of them over core skills that do the same thing better. Only exception was the fire utility with %15 dmg boost but it has a really short window of usage and clunky weapons like staff & hammer can't use it properly. The Elite was the worst of them all, with its internal CD, it didn't even allow a synergy with multi hit, or skill chaining. And 90 second cd. I felt like I'm not getting something crucial about it and made me feel stupid trying to understand its intended use. In the end, I ended up swapping it for a FGS.
*Haven't tried a d/d build yet, but I suspect it might be better than a hammer catalyst. I'll try another day.
Overall, it felt too underwhelming, clunky, and sadly uninspired. As an ele main that normally doesn't post comments on the forum, I felt I needed to explain my observations since I do believe the developers are reading these and maybe my post would make a difference.
My solution? None I can think of other than some rework, I just want to see a range weapon(staff) build work properly.
Yes, YES, the mount licences should definetely rotate more often, I have been sitting on my gems all throught the march sales and couldn't buy the mount skins I wanted, as well as the mursaat backpack/glider combo. The latter was on sale during previous march sales so it was a huge letdown. :(
