Ace.1784

I wasn't playing with Tempest, but interesting to see I was on the right track with the rotation I came up with for Pistol Catalyst. When I get some free time, I'll see how it compares to this.

My first use of pistol, I hated it and it was weird. However, I start running it around (this is open world btw) and it's pretty strong. There's a massive DPS difference between my early play of just trying random things and to the rotation I typically use now. All in all, I'm okay with it. I'm playing it with catalyst currently, since Weaver felt a little weird.

Confirming it is the boons, ability to swap to water without losing dps, and the AOE weakness access Catalyst has that makes it much easier to sustain. The heal is also very useful at clearing condi's without the channel penalty of ether renewal. That said, AliamRationem is right about trailblazer weaver being high reward with a lot of extra cushion, especially compared to berserker/power builds.

Ah that's true for sPvP. The build is just a weaver build iirc, but it's definitely adapted for PvE rather than PvP environments.

Isn't there a condi staff build that's pushing like 41k dps? And it's like a 2k dps loss if you don't use burning retreat?

This makes sense, Catalyst has a ton of survivability baked in. I usually only play Weaver if I'm in a role play mood. The weaver specific advice you got here is correct though, if you're having trouble with condis then add a condi clear from either Fire trait (Burning Fire), utilities (Cleansing Fire), heal (Ether Renewal), or sigil (Cleansing Sigil). Don't be rigid, adapt to what you're fighting.

Catalyst is incredibly strong and provides several key boons in various game modes. In open world (without offensive/defensive jade bot buffs), you can critically provide self quickness with damage to speed up those "slow 2 skills". I saw someone mention you may want to drop air sphere, but do note that ALL spheres give quickness now, not just air. You also get aegis, fury, might, vigor, resolution, and protection (PvE), vigor/aegis/protection/resolution helping you avoid damage and fury/might improving your output. I play Hammer Catalyst full zerker in PvE and nearly never go down because of this combined with the self utility (heals, condi clears, blocks) on the weapon itself. Moreover, through these fields, you can get even MORE utility (might, heals, damage reduction). I also play catalyst with sword/warhorn and scepter/warhorn, to much to the same effect. In WvW, Catalyst provides Resistance, allowing you to avoid immob bombs and helps your team escape soft CC effects. In WvW, only air sphere provides quickness, but you can use that on bomb call. Even if you're playing DPS, these capabilities can provide the necessary support in a pinch and if you're playing support, they further augment your ability to provide utility to your team. If you can get these boons from somewhere else, you can align yourself with the snowcrows build; however, it's worth taking the sphere traits if you don't have access. When I started playing this game, I only wanted to use staff (and sometimes, I still do use only staff) because it aligned with what I thought a mage was. However, upon playing D/D, it opened my mind up to what this class could really do. That is to say, +1 to this. Be open to new ideas and explore them. Hammer is easily one of the most fun weapons on Elementalist currently.

It's important to note that the opposite is also true. If ele was the "above and beyond" highest dps class, then players would be punished for not being able to play/perform with that class. If the elementalist DPS is incrementally better, then we have the same discussion as now, where it's not worth it over the "utility". Believe it or not, there are people who do enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it. Personally, the only reason why I play GW2 is because of the elementalist's design and how unique it is to anything else out there. Since the beginning of this game, Elementalist has ALWAYS been advertised as the class where, "you have double the buttons. Individually, they're weaker, in concert, you can pull of some effects". If this idea aligns with you, Elementalist is probably a good class for you to play. This is to say, by design, Elementalist is the class that doesn't have a singular, "i win" button but rather, a sequence of actions. When you view the balance of Elementalist from this perspective, the choices, elite specs, and weapons make sense; moreover, you can then begin to offer feedback inline with the goals of the class. If you don't like these ideas, then it's not a problem of Elementalist being bad game design, but rather, you don't like the goals of Elementalist--and that's okay. The reward is that you play well. To answer the prompt for myself, I think Elementalist shines in situations where flexibility is needed. For me this is most obvious in medium-large scale WvW, where you can alternate between support and damage, strategically identifying when to augment CC efforts, bombs, and recovery/positioning. When I play other classes in WvW, I often feel like I'm not doing anything because of how context specific their actions are. I also notice this in open world PvE, where you can solo various levels of content and can quickly adapt to a situation by swapping traits. Someone mentioned celestial gear as a way to enhance this identity and I agree (but I tend to use a pure offensive setup or mix an offensive setup with some celestial).

Because the goal wasn't to get an unbiased sample on pistol. With the current poll options, one can report "100% of respondents think pistol is ok or worse. Anet failed at making an engaging weapon!11!!!1!!"

For the 11 years I have played this game, this forum has non-stop complained about ele. In the very beginning, I rolled mesmer on release just cause of the advice, hated it, went ele and it was busted (D/D). When Tornado gave you stats and you could literally solo wipe a zerg with meteornado, I was reading posts on this forum about buffing staff because it lacks damage. When Catalyst came out and was buffed several times, this forum complained about how bad it was when it was, busted (I play PvE/WvW and it was oppressive). Even after the nerfs, Catalyst was still incredibly strong. Some people were advocating for Weaver as the better build. I played it for a bit and it has absolutely none of the survivability catalyst has in solo play. All this to say, you can't really listen to this forum. There are some really great/informed opinions here and there, but an overwhelming majority are not useful.

This is all going to be a PvE context, open world and instanced content There's a flow to maintaining quickness on Catalyst and it's quite consistent. There's several variations of this based on different attunement orders. You'll almost always want to visit air off cooldown because it contains some of your highest damaging skills and utility. I think Hammer is much more interesting weapon than this forum gives it credit for. I think a lot of the issues people have with Catalyst is also based on the core profession. Elementalist has 4 attunements. Each attunement features varying degrees of damage and utility. I would argue that Catalyst is a better personification of the Elementalist profession because it's one of the few builds where it's actually viable to visit all the attunements unlike the other rotations that swap between 2 elements unless Weave Self is off cooldown. One of the biggest let down for other Elementalist especs for me was that going outside of particular attunements was almost always a dps loss (unless for Weave Self, which entire point is to just extend the duration of the relevant buffs, not all of them). To demonstrate, when's the last time you were like, "I need to Weave Self for Woven Water" or "I need to Weave Self for Woven Earth". Air is more relevant now with the damage bonus on top of the movement speed, but Weave Self was primarily for Condi builds until this change. The orbs on hammer are relevant because they A: Generate Energy and B: Provide survivability along with damage. Catalyst is at its best when it's surrounded by enemies to cleave. Energy can be weird when you're only hitting 1 target as mentioned above, but you'll find yourself with more energy than you know what to do with when you have orbs + multiple targets around you. If you'll allow me to shift to a WvW Staff context for a second, one of the most interesting parts of Catalyst is that you're rewarded for setting up your group through CC and if you choose, dodging abilities. The flow of maximizing EE stacks in WvW is quite satisfying, as once you've performed the setup stage, it's typically time to bomb. Weaver often has more damage/abilities than what is necessary for organized play and it's more of a chore to access your CC abilities while also trying to ensure your rotation can maximize your self buffs for the bomb. I've done statistical analysis of the damage outputs, normalizing for some other metrics, and found that the damage difference between Catalyst and Weaver is not statistically relevant (but we can discuss more on that later). Personally, I have no interest in really playing Weaver after playing Catalyst. This is coming from someone who only played Weaver prior to Catalyst. I did momentarily visit it after some buff patches, but Hammer Catalyst just has an overall nicer playstyle and smoother rotation. This forum has been upset with Catalyst for a while, even when it was one of the strongest builds in the game. I've been playing this game for over 11 years now. I've nearly always found Elementalist to be fine (a few cases do exist where this is not true) and I come to this forum and it seems like the sky is falling. There was also a period of time where people had a weird obsession with longbow. Not necessarily accusing you of this, because we've had great interactions in the past, but I feel like the most of the problems with Elementalist is the forum just not giving it a honest chance. --- For some context, Elementalist is not the only class I play. Currently, I'm playing (but have played more in the past): DPS Catalyst (PvE, WvW) Boon Catalyst (PvE, WvW) Boon Herald (PvE) DPS Vindicator (PvE) DPS Herald (WvW) DPS Harbinger (PvE, WvW) Boon Harbinger (PvE, WvW) Strip Scourge (WvW) This list is organized by my favorite to least favorite to play. I want to highlight this because of the comments on other boon dps and I think Catalyst has the smoothest application of quickness outside of the just sit there Harbinger.

Honestly, I think Catalyst is the best and most interesting elite spec we have. I do play it primarily with hammer in PvE and staff in WvW, but it's pretty strong and has always been strong since its release. With no more elite specs, I'm pretty content with the options we have, even though I rarely play Weaver nowadays and Tempest only when I need to alac.

Spiced peppercorn cheesecake is the ascended food that gives this stat combo

With the orbs, the key is to cast them while another ability is channeling, this prevents the accidental shootoff. A delay would certainly make this easier to deal with, but it also removes the burst aspect of grand finale (quickly popping off the fourth orb to spike someone down). I've been pretty much playing hammer exclusively for open world and instanced pve content since it came out (some swaps to staff here and there when needed), and I find it gets easier the more I use it. I hope you try it out again in the future, I think it's the most enjoyable elementalist weapon. I don't think it's weird, I too think Weaver is easier than Catalyst (exception being Condi Weaver), for all the reasons you listed here.