The Great Al.2546

this doesn’t make sense, and is totally random. Why would I need an arcane shield when I use my elite? Do I now have to save my elites for strictly when I need an arcane shield?

This sounds amazing! 1. Does this mean that nerfs to Catalyst will get reverted? 2. Are there going to be any changes to the existing philosophy that higher difficulty or riskiness of play doesn't generally result in higher damage output?

The changes are certainly positive. The next set of changes I’d make would be: 1. Remove energy completely 2. add back damage to hammer 3, that pulses every second or so, to avoid the hit box issues.

Either give this damage or not, why does it do 1 damage? Harbinger shroud basically melts everything without having to press a button, why can’t Ele have any passive damage? Just make the damage pulsing instead of circular to avoid the hit box issues.

There were so many new unnecessary mechanics introduced to this spec that very egregiously have no synergy with any other existing traits or mechanics.

Now they just have to remove the energy mechanic, revamp the augments to do something meaningful if the augment + sphere match, and throw out almost all of the traits and actually have them feel inspired and actually impact gameplay, like holosmith line.

No, it's not possible to conclude those things; if they wanted to give Catalyst those things they would have.

What is wrong with having top damage when you have no sustain, no cc, no real gap closers, no reflects, no base health? Why would a melee spec with no inherent sustain and lowest health pool not have top dps? anyway, the 5 to 15 second nerf on the sphere is enough for me to stop playing the class. So glad I didn’t wind up picking the hammer as my aurene legendary. It’s not even about the dps numbers; the class just isn’t fun when you only have access to one combo field every 15 seconds.

Just tried the Kaineng one and the visual noise was insane. I agree that it was impossible to see the mechanics.

If it makes you feel better, they don’t do anything in PvE either.

Catalyst is nothing without hammer. It’s literally an extra combo field plus a min/max stat trait line.

I strongly dislike just about everything about Catalyst. I wouldn’t say Auras are totally useless, if you take earth trait you basically get permanent protection, which is nice for solo/open world builds. But I’m definitely worried that Catalyst is basically going to be worse Tempest.

Catalyst hasn’t been fixed. Aspects of it are improved but unless you are just playing against DPS golems the survivability isn’t there. I just started playing around with WP’s D/W Tempest, and Catalyst is a complete downgrade in terms of survivability in close range. I won’t consider Catalyst to be ‘fixed’ until the Sphere, orbs, and augments actually make thematic and mechanical sense, and there is a niche that this fills that makes it feel intrinsically different from other Ele playstyles (I.e. not relying on Auras again)

With 25 stacks of might the autoattacks still do no damage. Meanwhile on Rev you press 5 and everything dies.

Dps benchmark vs a golem is no indication as to what a ‘non speed clear’ player can do. The devs needs to figure out how to lower the ceiling but raise the floor of this class. Each aura and stack of empowerment should have a higher % boost and defensive reduction, and remove the min/max grandmaster trait of doubling the boost from having 10 stacks. That solves many of the problems mentioned.

Yeah I’m not sure why they are afraid of the spheres doing any nontrivial amount of damage. In their current state their only use is for the catalyst for combo fields, and for quickness

One thing that I always thought was weird about overloads was that they were centered around the caster, but for Tempest you'd primarily be ranged, and have to go into melee just to drop the offensive overloads. What if overloads were placeable and stayed in that location, and jade spheres always centered and moved around with the caster (Similar to engi mechanic). Obviously these two mechanics are mutually exclusive, so in theory one could be done without the other, but to me this seems like a more logical way to use both mechanics. I also am aware Tempest has been around for a long time, and is unlikely to get a major change at this point.

This is not a made for PvE spec, what PvE content needs bruisers?

Ele needs to have PBAoE cleave on hammer in order to make it feel different from the existing melee options. Something like, if you hit someone inside the sphere, everyone else in the sphere also takes some percentage of that damage.

Catalyst has one gap closer that you need to save because it has a massive heal, it otherwise has no mobility.

Yeah, that's what I'm struggling with. If I wanted to be an Auramancer I would've stuck with Tempest. Earth line would've been fine if they hadn't taken away 'aura on signet proc', that was the OG auramancer back in the day. I don't understand why there are so many different ways to be an auramancer in this game. What they need to do is turn the 2% damage reduction on aura into a 10%, so you don't need to take protection on aura. 2% is ridiculous as it stands.

Just have the elemental summon up and let it do its thing. The elites are all terrible, that one will at least take some aggro away from you in PvE.

if you want protection, you have to make sure you combo for auras, and take earth for protection on aura. I kind of hate the rest of the earth trait line but it's unavoidable.

agree with every single point you made, you said it better than I could. Devs needs to see this post.

I feel like Ele is just destined to be the high skill ceiling class; if you play it absolutely perfectly you may be top tier, but anything less than that is incredibly punishing, especially in this elite specialization. It's crazy to think that for all the attunment swap that Weaver had, this has even more. You literally can't stay in an attunement for more than a few seconds because if you do, you lose out on your orbs, or you can only combo aura once every 10s in that attunement. I think Tempest is a really poorly designed spec (it's probably the least ambitious 'profession mechanic' out of any elite spec) but at least it's playable by someone who doesnt memorize every possible rotation.