Heyo Anet, happy holidays or whatever, depending on when you read this.
This is my attempt on feedback, mostly around Catalyst. Already had a full 4 pages of Catalyst feedback written down but never posted it, depending on if you read this, I decided to post this one. Now I took the time to rewrite the whole thing and didn’t just post the last one cause honestly, you really fixed some of the big issues, so let me start off with a “good job”. Feedback will be only considering PvE since that’s the only thing I feel confident giving feedback on, since it is what I play personally and have played catalyst in (raids and strikes mostly). I often found myself wondering how much people actually played the class when reading their feedback: I believe I played like 10-15 hours of Catalyst in the 4th beta. Will try to sort my feedback in Categories. Also since I’m aware this is really long I added some TL:DRs after each paragraph… so… lets go.
I don’t really know where to start, so I will at least keep my old order…traits:
Going to talk more about all them as a concept since there isn’t really too much choice in pve, which can be considered bad, but honestly there rarely is anyway and I could see myself swapping to bottom traits in one or even every trait line, depending on if you lack certain boons in unoptimal groups. So, what do I think overall? I like the idea: I Like Allstats on Ele, I like to keep them up with combo finishers. I like the perfect upkeep reward with the grandmaster trait. I liked the idea of the added synergy with aura tempests for example, at least before you made them easier to upkeep, but honestly making it more reliable is probably better, so overall a good change. Would kinda love an aura rework on a more unrelated note since elemental epitome gives them but only frost really seems useful at all in pve, but not too big of a deal. Now after a lot of things I liked, here comes sth I think actually needs some changing: Since the buffs to the sphere in beta 4(great changes) quickness catalyst is a thing. I will more go over the actual sphere later but to play it you would choose the grandmaster trait “Sphere Specialist”. Turns out the trait is so strong, you didn’t need any boon duration on gear to make Quickness catalyst work, making it rather (too) strong. Now maybe you would want to just nerf the base duration of the boons, and honestly that makes sense, but I would rather at least have you (also) nerf the trait. Instead of 50% maybe make it like 30%? 35%? Not quite sure since you wouldn’t want to make it an inferior choice to “Empowered Empowerment” on the quickness build, but I would also hate for the regular dps-catalyst to lose all its comfy boons just to nerf the Quickness version either. Also feel like this trait is REALLY boring. Just duration is rather lazy. Now again I love most other traits but this one… not so much. I would suggest an additional effect. For me, making the Wells bigger comes to mind. Now hopefully pvp balance doesn’t interact with this too much but for pve, some AoE is not only fun (like in other games where you would love to invest in AoE for big and powerful animations) but this would also help out the quickness version with some reliability. Not that it really needs it, but compared to scrapper wells or now fixed(thank you so much Anet) firebrand mantras, it requires your team to be positioned rather well (hehe, does that count as a pun?). Other than that, once again, really like the two stacking buffs you want to keep up through different means and the free survivability from all stats for ele.
TL;DR: I like the traits, but “Sphere Specialist” is numerically (too) strong while being rather boring. -> lower numbers and give it something else like AoE for the wells.
As already promised, some feedback on the sphere:
Now I was theory crafting some possible changes after beta 2 and honestly you came up with a solution better than any I could have thought of, making a player once again realize that most of the time, you really come up with the best decisions for your game. I guess thank you for that :p
Heard some feedback that this change makes the energy mechanic useless, but I have to disagree. Right now, in a “meta” rotation you can put 3 wells down, usually being 2 fire wells and one air well for dps and 2 air and one fire well for quickness. (Fire for Persisting Flames, Air for Quickness). I have to admit I’m not completely sure how the energy mechanic works (apparently hitting foes), but this way you have options. It feels good to get the energy, especially like hammer air 2 gives a lot of it and the choice to optimize when you spend it felt great too. Camping fire a little to maximize dps, or air for quickness, or if you don’t want to bother with that, having the option to give some protection for your subgroup, heck even resolution on something like Soulless Horror, really good stuff. Now to be fair, a cd system would probably also work, making them an ammunition system, having about 3 to spend in the duration of a loop, but I think the energy system does not only feel more impactful, but also has some balance considerations, like If you can’t hit foes for example. Which ever way you want to go with it, I don’t mind too much to be fair, but just like with traits there is one thing I REALLY want changed: Please make us start encounters with full energy. Right now, you are kinda making yourself unpopular in your squad when you won’t give your sub quickness for the first seconds of the fight. The only way to get energy before a fight right now is like swapping traits to “Energized Elements” and running into sloth poisons at the start, swapping attunements. That doesn’t only look silly but also feels just bad. You made an amazing change to Celestial Avatar for druids not too long ago, please just give catalyst the same treatment (and honestly, although I’m not trying to advocate for Scourge buffs, lifeforce as well. Killing off minion after minion at the start of combat, although thematic, isn’t really peak gameplay either). But, to once again finish on positive feedback (kitten I’m nailing the good, bad, good feedback thing so far): Beautiful animations on the well’s creatures (sorry if I’m butchering lore). Will be getting to more animation feedback later but these for sure are stunning and even as somebody who couldn’t help himself but smile when most of the mechanist feedback was: I want to color my golem and be able to have numbers in its name, these things really are important and keep us playing the game.
TL;DR: I like the spheres/ wells. I like the energy system and the choices which come with it. But please make us start combat with full energy just like you did with druid’s Celestial Avatar.
So, with the catalyst’s traits and class mechanic out of the way, here comes the catalyst’s weapon:
In my first version of the feedback, I went over every ability and while I feel like there are small things to improve, I will focus on the bigger things to keep my feedback simple enough to make realistic changes off of it, if, of course, anet agrees with it.
Now, I read a lot of hammer is bad because its just half ranged, but as you might have seen coming, I really disagree :P I don’t like being full melee without any ranged options, there will be situations where you feel completely useless and your best option is to just stand there and wait, I don’t like that, I think nobody really does. (Obviously there is a space for that as well to bring variety into the game but you get the point) Now there are a very few specs which are (almost) fully ranged, at least when it comes to somewhat meta spes: Scourge comes to mind. Apart from troch 4 and plaguelands all your skills work, best shown on Qadim the peerless. I think, once again there is space for that, but this is a big factor why scourge feels a bit simple. Which is fine, but I personally like my sword holo where I can still throw nates if I can’t get closer, I like to stay a little longer on shortbow as condi renegade to maximize dps uptime, even though I should swap to mace if I can be melee to optimize my rotation. I like to just auto on scepter as firebrand even though those little projectiles really don’t do much. So, I like the hybrid melee experience, basically if you are familiar with the raid encounter Xera, everything which can take a button has the amount of ranged capabilities I like. Now I will say while I really don’t mind not being fully ranged and actually enjoy it that way, there is room for the Archon Longbow ele elite spec, but the catalyst aint it. Also, while I appreciate being able to do some things at range, I must agree that with the hammer 3 skill being as powerful as it is, it really is only a small portion of your dps you can deal at range. All of that is completely fair critique but the whole “being a little ranged but not fully ranged feels even worse” argument, doesn’t really make sense to me. Options are great, why do you not want them?
Also on another more general note: I really like that you have to use all attunements to optimize catalyst, not really the biggest fan of the only fire and air rotation of power weaver, so really appreciate being able to use all of the 20 skills more or less.
Now for the hammer skills individually, trying to not go into too much detail since, as you can tell, this is already way too long:
Following the range argument, hammer autoattacks in Fire and Air are a little simple, this is fine, ele gets 20 skills from 1 weapon. I also love that you don’t have to auto much anyway since the rotation is so fast, BUT if you really have the time left and want to please people being upset about the ranged capabilities, maybe add a little power and flavor to those two autoattacks in air and fire. You have done a great job time and time again, I’m sure if you have the time to change this you would figure out something way better than I could suggest anyway. Another little note to show appreciation: After the second beta I suggested to add utility to hammer earth 2 since there was no use for it on the power build. Now you went ahead and also buffed its damage, which is fine. But the projectile deflect it now offers would have been a suggestion of mine and I it makes me happy to see you come up with it as well.
Now once again I have one thing, I REALLY would like to be changed :P
The animation of hammer air 5. With the amazing animations of air 2 and 4, why is 5 barely even there. Now I’m sorry if there is somebody who put a lot of work into this or really likes it, but once again, you can’t even really see it. To me it looks unfinished and usually the 5th skill is the big one for ele. It is just an animation, and I can obviously live with it the way it is, but since it is a blast and you have added so many cool “from the sky” animation which would fit this ability very well, I would suggest you reuse the siege turtle attack animation or the “mechanist golem shooting from the sky while it isn’t there” animation for this ability. Just recolor them, they look fantastic, I’m sure nobody could mind the reuse of that animation.
Now hammer 3 is missing here but it is so unique it gets its own paragraph. See you in a sec.
TL;DR: I like the hybrid ranged hammer. I like that it is worth to cycle through all 4 elements on hammer. Ranged autos could use a little buff to power and flavor but I don’t feel strongly about it. I think hammer air 5 animation really could use some love.
The big hammer 3:
There has been feedback that this skill should be the class mechanic or on the attunements or whatever. Now for this I can’t really simply disagree, but I think that’s a big ask and I don’t expect you to design the needed 4 more hammer skills and add a lot of complex UI and gameplay, giving ele even more skills. I’m fine with them being on hammer. Honestly, I don’t like core weapons, or rather main hands on ele too much anyway, so I want to be using the hammer, but I can see options being “always” good, kinda was my argument before after all, so I get why people ask for it. Now, to move on, I like what you did with the range of hammer 3, definitely a huge improvement to beta 2. The skill looks and feels amazing and is probably (one of) the main reason(s) you would want to play catalyst. But there are still some issues to fix: Hitbox still really impacts this skill, as you might have seen, you want to stand directly inside the enemy’s hitbox to have hammer 3 deal damage two times, making your damage range from I think about 50k to 42k depending on whether you can pull it off and stand directly inside the boss. I think it would be best to just make it only hit once, regardless of the hitbox. It would make the gameplay easier and not as… I don’t know… clunky? Sweaty? Silly? camping in the hitbox. I like the idea of hitbox reliant damage in general, but I think ele already has enough of it with glyph of storms and lightning hammer. To achieve it not being able to hit more than once, maybe you have to make it just an AoE that procs ever so often? I have no idea but I’m sure you will find a solution.
With that out of the way there are also some gameplay issues with the usability of hammer 3. These can be worked around by player skill, BUT I don’t think they have to be. There are 2 big ones:
First of all the duration of hammer 3. I have read statements like “you can only cast one skill with hammer 3 and you have to swap attunement right after”. While that’s just wrong and may be caused by the second point, I will discuss right after, the duration could use some increase. I don’t even think it would change the rotation or the gameplay, it would just make it more forgiving. Having it be insta cast already did that a little, but I really don’t see any downside to increasing the duration by like 2 seconds, making the class more accessible for newer players or just players with higher ping etc.
The second point is a little different and has to do with the way skills work in the game and might be one of the biggest reasons catalyst is frustrating, not only for experienced but also for less experienced players which probably don’t even know what is actually causing the frustration. With the nature of hammer 3 putting you on a timer you want to do your thing; your rotation rather quickly. That’s where guild war’s skill queueing comes in handy generally. That’s why you press one skill and most players (at least I for sure do that) already press the next skill while one is still channeling, often not only once, but quite a few times just to not lose any time. With the way hammer 3 has two versions, one to activate the swirly thing, one to throw it at your enemy, if you press the skill not exactly once but twice or more, you will instantly throw it away, messing up your 4 circular projectile combo you were going for and costing you not only a LOT of dps but also probably hair. Now after about 5 hours of practice on the golem I kinda figured it out and only did it every once in a while, simply being very aware to press my 3 button only once but I don’t think there is a need for the mechanic working like that, and as mentioned, this is causing a lot of frustration without even realization what causes it. The duration while not THAT long isn’t really short either, if you always find yourself breaking the combo, I think this mostly causes it. So, my suggestion is: just add an as low as 0,25 sec, but honestly also 1 sec works, cd for the reactivation of hammer 3’s “grand finale”. This wouldn’t cause any downside as far as I can tell and would for sure improve the quality of life AND amount of hair a catalyst player has.
TL;DR: Hammer 3 not being tied to hammer while cool is a little unrealistic and unneeded in my opinion. Hammer 3 probably should only hit once, making it not hitbox reliant which it still was, even though the changes made in beta 4 were great. Increase the duration of hammer 3 by a little bit (like 2 seconds probably) to make it more forgiving and not ping or boon reliant. Please add a short cooldown for hammer 3’s second activation “grand finale” since I’m sure the accidental double tabbing of this ability caused a lot of frustration and confusion, breaking the catalyst’s “hammer-3-combo” sometimes not even noticed by the player.
Eyy we made it through. If you read the whole thing, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time and being probably as passionate about ele and catalyst as I am. To end the whole thing, just a few thoughts: While I want catalyst to be as powerful as it can be, it obviously was too powerful in the 4th beta. If you were to make hammer 3 only hit once we are looking at a 42k benchmark, with a few more little tweaks (probably to the sphere’s damage since you now have 3 instead of like half a sphere per loop in beta 2) we can be close to a healthy spot. I feel like the boons, the dps version provides can be seen as a payoff for the complex, fast and punishing rotation, although balancing around something being hard to play isn’t without issues. The quickness version probably needs to lose a little more dps compared to the dps version, a nerf to the grandmaster trait would be my suggestion as mentioned before. This would make it require some boon duration gear, therefore lowering the dps. Lastly, and I know this isn’t really that related: could we get some love for weaver. I’m sure there has been enough feedback on this already and don’t worry I’m not getting into it, but I fail to find a reason to pick weaver over like anything else. BUT if that is what ele has to pay to have a powerful catalyst elite spec coming with eod I will take it, especially since I actually prefer catalyst over weaver. Hope to see all of you “Catalyst mains since release” when the expansion comes out.
Happy Holidays and once again, thank you for reading!
