Bleikopf.2491

I've been waiting for more smoke fields on ele for some expansions now. I can see that Cata doesn't get smoke fields, it doesn't fit with the theme that well. That ANet doesn't want smoke fields on ele is sad, and doesn't make much sense either. Ele already has a smoke field. Ice field doesn't make sense. Not only is it taking sustain away, Hammer has only two finisher types: Leap and Blast (E: it has also Whirl and Projectile, I forgot about them). Therefore you'll always get a frost aura when combed with ice field. When you combo in water attunement, you'll get a frost aura as well due to grandmaster minor trait. That's a waste.

I'm happy about the changes. Still, the mood is soured by having castrated the spec first. Hope they'll put some of those changes into PvP/WvW as the orbs are really interesting there.

feel like I should at the very lest link to @LadyKitty.6120's other post in this subreddit: She also has a video on her Youtube using Heal Catalyst against Deimos:

Or 1 attunement with 4 weapon sets! /s

This. Yeah, we got more things to cast. But cast time doesn't work differently for Ele and the cooldown to effect ratio being as bad as it is, there's no reason for our autos to be so sucky.

With all the talk about Bow Ele, I always feel in the minority with Rifle Ele. Fire - Condi Flamethrower, Water - Vulnerability Submachine Gun, Air - Railgun/Sniper, Earth - Shotgun. Although it's more a fun thought than actual viable design prompts. Introduce Ammo system for Attunement swaps as well and we got ultimate chaos. On another note, since we now got Hammer despite one of our conjure Weapons being Hammer, that opens up all the other conjure weapons for main weapons as well. The only weapon I can't believe Ele will receive anytime soon if ever is Torch.

Not in the build editor version. I went on their YT and they did uploaded a raid 5 days ago (Damion? I don't do raids so not good with the names) with the Earth Augment "Fortified Earth" instead of Glyph of Revival. Glyph of Revival is pretty much swappable.

Interesting Build. I can't find Fire Elementals giving Might on the Wiki and didn't know about this prior.

Elementalist Staff or Scepter is the first thing that comes to my mind. Making the core weapons less.. 2012 opens up new playstyle for core + all 3 elite specs. Pretty much don't play other classes so no opinion there.

I can very much only talk about Catalyst spec. The design is unclear and vague. Multiple themes, which isn't necessarily bad, but weirdly unenthusiastically executed. Fluidity of gameplay is mixed. Hammer has its own flow and the sphere having no cast time helps a lot. Hammer 3 is bad though and makes Hammer feel bad. Jade Sphere being 15s cooldown is atrocious. Saying D/D Cata is fluent has pretty much 95% to do with D/D being fluent and fun gameplay.

It's true that we don't know. All we have is indications that they do. The lastes balance patch was talking about Catalyst doing 1/3rd more DPS than other Quickness classes. That fits in with quickness supporters (28k-33k DPS) compared to the DPS Catalyst (44k DPS). In a real fight it's to be expected that Catalyst will drop way harsher in DPS due to the complexity of the rotation and being way squishy. Also, this is comparing a 100% quickness support with a DPS variant with incidental quickness share. The Quickness Catalyst had a DPS of ~38k DPS, which is not quite 1/3rd more than other quickness supporters. So no, we don't know what data they use. But considering what they are saying themselves and how they are balancing, there is strong indication that they are either using golem benchmarks as a consideration in their balancing, or that their internal data is somehow as good as or better than golem benchmarks. Or they're simply lying to us. But in the end, we don't know. That's actually very curious, because Elementalist seems to have one of the lowest playrates overall. Again, I don't have ANets data, I only have community data. People who are invested into end game content tend to use more community services which then go over into community data. So basically, most of the people not in the community data are most likely casuals. If Elementalist has for some reason not as low a playrate as initially assumed, that'd mean the overwhelming playerbase of Elementalists are casuals. Nothing wrong with it, of course, but then I'd also question why ANet keeps making Elementalist into this highly complex class that's simply not casual friendly. Overall, I'm not questioning that ANet has an idea of what they want to do. I'm questioning their implementation of this idea relatively often. It also becomes very hard to see what direction they want to go into. I'll wait and see.

If I'm reading the rotation right, current power catalyst doesn't even use auto attack even once. Pre-nerf simplified power catalyst rotation used up to 1-2 autos in earth because as a filler since the rotation didn't sync up perfectly. Hammer auto attacks are really just there to make you feel bad about them in PvP/WvW.

It's because it's hard to make Elite specs for Ele. One idea behind Elites is to trade out one thing/change their class mechanic. Necro changes how their shroud works. Guardian trades their Virtues. It works more or less, better for some classes than for others. Then there's Ele. The entire class mechanic is a glorified weapon swap. How do you change that in a meaningful and interesting way? Tempest's overloads are only interesting so far. A big part of Tempest's identity is held together by aurashare, which isn't even a Tempest thing since it's technically core ele. Weaver is probably the more interesting as it changes how the weapon swap works on a fundamental level. And now we have a situation where we want to give Ele a Jade Sphere, but can't really trade anything out for it. Makes it feel a lot like Core Ele +1.

I don't think Catalyst will be viable in any role as it currently stands. I hope this patch will be followed up with more balance patches, I really do. I don't think they should have started with nerfs alone. Nerfs + QoL fixes would've been preferable. This is probably what got most people riled up. Yes, peopel will always be a bit whiny. But most people are agitated because it doesn't seem like ANet understands the current issues of the class or is not willing to fix them. Also, Catalyst looks like a DPS/Support hybrid. It's because of the Hammer. The Hammer is the designated Catalyst weapon, and it has absolutely no support skills at all. It's a completely selfish DPS weapon. So are the Utilities and the Elite skill. The only thing that's supportish about the spec is the Jade Sphere. Which is now nerfed to 15s cooldown. So you now only get to apply your Quickness - the whole reason your build exists - on a 12s cooldown, as a stationary small circle your party has to stand in for for 5 seconds. That's clunky. Nerfs are fine. Catalyst overperformed. Most reasonable people don't disagree with that. They disagreed with the way the nerf was handled, because even for the goals ANet seems to have set, it was a bad nerf that did more harm than good.

I'm the same.

That makes it worse, actually. Yes, there should be a trade off. The implementation is horrible, though. It'd've been healthier in the long run to simply move the Quickness to the (Grandmaster) Traitline so there would be a meaningful choice between taking a DPS trait and quickness-sharing. Now DPS variant is hit even if they don't care about sharing quickness.

DPS of a Support, Utility of a DPS.

What Catalyst needed was some design polishing and QoL. Move Quickness to traits, make the rotation actually playable by someone other than Roul. 43k+ DPS and giving Quickness is too much, I can totally agree with that. But that's not a realistic approach at all and standing out of hitbox gave around 38k DPS I believe? Now they stomped the DPS version to 33k DPS. Quickness-Support will be even lower than that. The Elite mechanic is a joke now: 15s cooldown to get a small, static field that still requires a horrendous energy mechanic. What's frustrating is not that we lose damage, or that we aren't meta. It shows a clear lack of understanding of what is problematic about Catalyst and a tunnel vision on playing whack-a-mole with the ban hammer. DPS Cata is dead with this one. Let's see if Support will achieve something.

WvW you're either looking at Aurashare Tempest or Weaver backline for Zergs. Aurashare plays a little easier and you actually play in a party, backline it's a bit more demanding because you're made out of paper and don't get any party support. Roaming there are more nuanced builds and it basically depends on what you want. They can be more demanding or a bit more laidback. Celestial is usually a good stat for most ele roaming builds. PvE I don't know too much. Play what's fun? Unless you're actually invested into the class a lot and know what you're doing, I don't see how you would contribute much in fractals and raids. Of course Ele can play some roles there. But it's usually more demanding and less effective than alternatives, considering you already have so many other classes at level 80. I don't know if you have a static group with which to play those with. I wouldn't recommend Ele for instanced content unless you have the time to invest into getting good at the class. Open world is a different topic. You'll probably have the easiest time with some tanky condi gear on Tempest. But also, play what's fun. I won't have as much fun on Tempest as on Weaver for example, so I'm not going to play Tempest in OW. The only thing I'd avoid right now is Catalyst. It's having some design flaws that are crippling the spec and ANet seems only interested in nerfing it atm. Maybe they'll do it justice in the future, but for now you're probably better off having fun with specs that simply work better. Edit: Words are hard.

Some of us are still naiv. At least I was. I could've seen some damage adjustments, sure, that's fair. Overall, Catalyst had a lot of stuff that needed polishing. I also expected QoL buffs to happen first before any meaningful balance could be implemented. Simple stuff, like preventing Hammer 3 double tap, increasing Hammer 3 duration by even just one second. Fixing anything about energy, at least that you don't lose everything when you're downstate. I don't know what the code looks like, but that should be really simple stuff to do. I'm not asking for a big rework of the energy mechanic, a new UI for the energy bar, adjustments that needed more in-depth coding like combo finishers or bigger design choices like moving traits around. That's not something you can just do in the first two weeks of an expansion drop. Just really, really simple things. To make it feel less like my Ele is trying to swing a Hammer around while not having any arms. And there was a complete tunnel vision on nerfs. Nerfs that wen't totally over the top, considering how bad the QoL actually is. This just broke something in me. Any respect, really, I had left for ANet balancing. It's not always easy, and neither me nor the Devs are all-knowing so balance will never be perfect. I still don't think that ANet hates Eles. "Never attribute to malice which coul be explained by incompetence." This balance patch seemed to have no thought put into it. Just "see big number, nerf" like a trained pet. And while it's really not my style to lower the discussion to this niveau, I'm just a little bit more convinced now that Ele balancing is handled by a pair of crackhead monkeys.

Ele as a DPS/Support hybrid: Damage of a Support, Utility of a DPS.

Considering how the story develops in EoD, it fits quite nicely actually.

I'll definitely give up on this thread as well. Even if most changes for Catalyst take a lot more investment, simple QoL stuff like a small cooldown for grand finale so you don't misclick it so often would be soo easy to implement and go a long way. They tunnel vision'ed on nerfing it and nothing else.

To set us up for more nerfs later on.

It's weird to have unstable conduit as a major and not a minor trait. It feels like an auto pick. Apart from balance, design wise it'd seem more interesting to swap it with gathered focus. Also, why do we keep talking about Catalyst in a Tempest thread?