So Im writing this from the perspective of a relatively inexperienced ele main who's entire focus has been on pve.
I think that what the catalyst has in its kit is great and can be fixed up with a bit of number tuning/QoL stuff. what my main issue with the catalyst so far is that it feels like everything is in the wrong place. like the jade sphere is a cool mechanic with cool visuals, but it doesn't feel impactful enough to be a profession mechanic, I think it should be tweaked a bit and made into the utility skills.
The augment utility skills are cool and I like the effects and ideas behind them but how they are now feels so passive and bland despite a few of them being fairly decent, I think that the augments would suit a lot better being hammer 3 skills because they are interesting but not suuuuuuuuuuuper interesting and they aren't really flashy or anything like that, they feel like they'd be much better suited to the hammer weapon skills instead of the utility skills. and finally, the hammer 3 skills, the orbit skills. these feel super super awesome and super kitten conceptually. the idea of them is so so perfect for an ele spec and they could be amazing with some tuning, But I think the orbit's would shine the best as the F5 profession mechanic. beef up the dmg, beef up the buff and make them last a lot longer and I think that would make for an amazing specialization.
TL;DR, big changes:
-jade sphere should be utility (in the form of wells)
-Augments should be hammer 3 skills.
-Hammer 3 skills should be turned into the profession mechanic and given some serious buffs.
-rework a few traits to play more into the whole idea of being a super combo focused Espec.
-Rework some traits to add a bit of interaction on the weapon/utility skills.
-add more CC options in the hammer/utilities
-More consistent ways of stacking elemental empowerment.
Some smaller scale changes I'd like to see are;
-remove the casting animation from hammer 3 skills to allow for more fluid orbit stacking.
-Increase the range and duration of the jade sphere, and remove the cd on attunement swap.
-Add an auto attack chain to the hammer 1 skill.
-Increase the duration of the hammer 3 skills immensely.
-add more fluidity and QoL to the kit overall.
