I'm still experimenting with the Catalyst, and have not even begun to read the prior comments in this thread so I'm going in relatively blind. Hammers in general are usually seen as slower heavier hitting weapons. So I was expecting heavy hitting damage moves that had bonus buffs of some sort tacked on.
I really dislike how little the jade sphere seems to affect, anything. It probably should just have the ability to move it, and just have it active all the time within a range of the player. I think the minigame with the orbitals is interesting, but perhaps not quite enough to dedicate an entire button for. (Perhaps the way the Tempest used to Overload would be a better way to handle that.) I know that the Elementalist build is normally all about switching between different elements, but it seems kinda weak to have a whole button, on every attunement based on summoning the orbital.
Being Melee is fine I think, I've played weaver since it was released and I finished the track for it and I think melee isn't a problem when it comes to mages. I think that the hammer is maybe not the best choice as it seems like it's too slow. (I have only been experimenting with it for a day or two as of this message though) I wonder if it would have made more sense for the orbitals to be able to be shot with the hammer, like golf or something. to give a better ranged option, with the rest of the moves being melee.
I'm sure that there are people complaining about the catalyst (that seemed to be the thing several months ago when it was beta'd) but it seems to me like the catalyst doesn't have a very set identity like the Weaver or Tempest. it just sort of seems like a core elementalist with a very minor bonus that doesn't seem to always matter. And maybe that's enough, but I think there's an expectation that with the Tempest and the Weaver, that the Catalyst would have a, bigger oomph to how it worked. It is still fairly new content, especially to me, so if there are problems to it then there's still time for patching to affect cooldowns, numbers, and whatnot. But I don't think that the Catalyst will be as popular as the Weaver or Tempest without some sort of large changes.
