scerevisiae.1972

I really hate the current version of this skill. It propels you back, except when you are ~600 range from your current target, when it doesn't. Even when it works, this skill is pretty bad TBH, would be much more useful to propel you forwards not back, as hammer has crappy mobility/engage -- your only real gap closer is water #4 but you'd be crazy to be in water attunement and put your water attunment on CD at the start of the fight. The problem with this skill is that it has gotten me killed numerous times because i expected to go backwards on cast but the target came into range at the last moment, or I targeted some other random thing in an attempt to detarget. Notwithstanding all the other bad stuff on hammer (eg: all the #3 skills which look good but are nearly worthless in impact), this skill really needs to be deterministic/reliable.

bumping in the hope that hammer can be made into a real 600-range weapon before Feb. 6 out of 20 skills being ranged means hammer is YAMW: yet another melee weapon

I don't care what the weapon is as long as IT'S NOT ANOTHER MELEE WEAPON. Only 6/20 skills on hammer are ranged: fire 1/2/4, air 1/2/5. Why the living kitten is hammer yet another melee weapon? we already have dagger & sword.

F5 is much improved but energy needs to go. It's pointless and annoying to farm energy on yellow mobs after every respawn. Super annoying and clunky AF. Just get rid of it and re-balance as needed hammer still sucks. Needs more skills to be 600 range, or needs the evades/mobility than dagger/sword have if you want to keep it melee. I hasten to add, literally noone wanted yet another melee weapon -- we already have sword/dagger. all the 5 skills feel like they want to be 600 range, and water/earth 1s should probably also be 600 range, preferably not yet more boring proectiles. augments much improved, I can realistically see myself using the air stunbreak, the heal and the elite the traits are still super boring and don't really change the playstyle. I think it was anothe design mistake to have another aura-based elite spec, seems super lazy.

Agree, hammer is just all wrong. I REALLY HATE that water and earth don't have any ranged attacks. It forces you to go into melee but hammer doesn't have the evades and sustain to melee. At the very least, water 1 and earth 1 should be 600 range to match air/fire I would strongly argue all of the 5 skills should also be 600 range The hammer 3s feel pointless, I don't like them at all. They don't last long enough and don't really do anything useful. The finale skill never seems available when I want to use it. Overall, hammer is just too melee-oriented and the ABSOLUTE LAST thing I want is yet another melee weapon. I think a 600 range *could* maybe work, but hammer does not deliver on this brief. As a WVW player, I'm quite sick of staff being the only real go-to weapon in WVW. After 9 years, I think Anet should have done a LOT better than hammer, and TBH I couldn' really be more disappointed. update 2/11: played hammer for 4hr in WVW yesterday, even in full marauder gear, the damage was pathetic, I couldn't get higher than ~65% of the numbers achieved by "regular" DPS classes, despite high APM and good skill usage and damage-oritented build. Lack of range is a serious limitation but the AOE skills are all also only 180 radius. conclusion: hammer is total trash.

Energy is just a pointless mechanic and it feelsbadman not to be able to cast a field at all (and benefit from traits) until well into the fight. Makes catalyst still feel clunky. Besides pointless mechanic, the UI for energy also sucks. Please just remove energy completely and re-balance as needed so as to remove the clunkiness. I don't want to have to farm yellow mobs for 2min after every respawn. I'm stil super disappointed that hammer is essentially yet another melee weapon because I can see how a 600-ranged-based character could work, but hammer just doesn't deliver on that brief cause still too many melee skills, it feels weird. But by far the crappest thing on Catalyst now is energy and having to pre-farm energy before any encounter. Quite infuriating.

This. Energy is just a pointless mechanic and it feelsbadman not to be able to cast a field at all (and benefit from traits) until well into the fight. Makes catalyst still feel clunky. Besides pointless mechanic, the UI for energy also sucks Please just remove energy completely and re-balance as needed so as to remove the clunkiness. I dn't want to have to farm yellow mobs for 2min after every respawn.

feel free to make your own spreadsheet where you define your own breakpoints as to what constitues "ranged". I prefer my definition - if a skill can apply its dmg/effect outside of melee range, it's a prima facie ranged attack.

yeah i'm also surprised to see mechanist rate so high. pet classes don't appeal to me at all.

actually i was deleting people left and right in wvw roaming on vindator.... i thought it was really fun and strong. agree the 150 dodge is too expensive for its effect but the other 2 dodges were good. yeah there are some issues but nothing too out of place for a beta.

hard disagree. after 9 years i think most players have at least 1 of each class, or at least experience of several classes. not to mention you don't have to be an expert warrior to have a valid opinion on whether the new warrior spec is good or not.

Overall I liked it. Very unique playstyle and I really like how it still felt "thief-y". but: I think Sceptre is a bit too pigeon-holed into being support weapon. sceptre and well dmg felt very underwhelming when played as a pure power spec. I disliked the sceptre sound effects. Doesn't match the animation and doesn't sound "shadow-y" at all. Kind of irritating sound actually. Strong dislike that trickery felt mandatory for the 3 extra initiative. I think you should re-tweak so that baseline ini is higher or the effect of trickery is less. 50% more ini (vs 25% more on other specs) is just too good not to choose every time. eg: 8 baseline, 10 with trickery (still 25%). Shroud skills were overall great but Sceptre was pretty meh.

Overall, kinda bad, mainly because the spec mechanics and traits don't work very well with existing weapon sets, which is key to overall satisfaction with a spec long-term. Things I liked: individually-controllable pet skills is good but it's a net loss unless we can select one or more of the skills to be auto-castable. the cooldown-reduction traits/skills gave the spec a unique feel/playstyle hammer felt good in PVE but terrible in competitive modes because of the 0.01 coefficient slapped onto all CC skills (IMO one of your worst balance decisions...) Things I didn't like: a pet-based spec means it's going to be bad in WVW, the only game mode I really play/enjoy * "pet return to me" needs to be keybindable. Hammer has no gap closer. I don't think you should have to take the teleport utility on every hammer spec to be viable (mandatory utility == bad design) condi-cleanse-on-unleash trait should prob clear 2 condis not 1, unless you want Survival to be mandatory on all untamed specs I think there was a missed opportunity for a skill (or grandmaster trait) that swapped your location with your pet's location as a novel engagement/disengage Perilous Gift (the heal cantrip) is really bad in its current state Exploding Spores felt very undertuned, either the areas should be larger or the dmg/effect stronger Vow of the Untamed - i don't think you should take a percent-based extra portion of damage when unleashed - remove or maybe change to +/- stats? Bugs aside, I think I would have been a lot happier with Untamed if hammer has a decent gap closer or block. As it is, hammer is hands-down worse than greatsword.

Rate the elite specs

hard disagree. Vindicator was one of the best new specs and greatword is awesome. Catalyst on the other hand, was as bad as bad gets.

It's a fair point of discussion but at the end of the day, you can execute the skill at range, so IMO it's still a ranged attack, just *you're* the projectile instead of a spell projectile. Hard disagree that 600+ is min for ranged though, I think catalyst being a mid-ranged caster is fine, just... that it's not, according to the data. It's my sincere hope they add more range to hammer, cause even at 600 range, with 1 gap closer, a 1single attack block and no swiftness/superspeed, it's going to be total garbage in wvw.

^this. It should be a fixed duration (maybe extendable by traits). The whole concept of energy as a resource is really dumb IMO. It's not even original - it's functionally the same thing as adrenaline, only with warrior you gain access to powerful burst skills, with catalyst you get to make your boring field a couple of seconds longer. Omega-bad.

The more I mull over catalyst skills & traits, the less likely I think it can even be made good. 600 range is going to be really awkward with minimal mobility, no stab, no reflect, no way to reset attunement CD and only a single attack block.... it's so so bad. The last thing I want is catalyst D/D that plays exactly like core ele D/D plus a boring F5 field. Anet please raeassure us you're making serious changes.

water jade sphere doesn't heal allies either.

updated with evade comparison

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/102004-rate-catalyst/ 260+ votes /is/ statistically relevant for the likely population of catalyst players in the beta.

yeah I think hammer needs big improvements, it doesn't have a niche. Range needs to be extended or mobility needs to be increased a lot. It was so bad in WVW. I also think there should be at least 1 ranged skill in every element at a minimum. It would be nice if there were a couple of skills with 900+ range, eg: air #2, fire #4 and the #3 finale skills. Personally I thought the #3 skills were gimmicky and weren't worth the time to cast either due to weak effects and would prefer they were totally replaced but I can't see that happening.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18YPpHisLo2kstuM--8BtTozGat-kYp7PZO_XEPex9ss/edit?usp=sharing I defined ranged as anything with 400+ range. Summary: hammer is ~60% melee / 40% ranged (6 / 20 true ranged skills, 2 mobility skills, 12 melee skills) sword is ~90 melee / 10% ranged dagger is ~70% melee, 30% ranged So if you were feeling like hammer had no real niche or identity, well, according to the numbers, you'd be right. Hammer and dagger share nearly the same profile of melee/ranged attacks. Clearly, hammer needs more range (or more ranged skills) if it is to have any unique identity over the space that sword/dagger already fill. Also: hammer has 0 evades (though there is a single attack block) sword/dagger has 3 evades dagger/dagger has 3 evades

yeah i think this is on the money. rework F5 for sure. needs to be a separate field per element (seperate CDs), moveable, or recastable. Personally I'd prefer F5 just has a regular 10sec CD, and the field lasts 3-5sec (3sec base, 5sec with traits). remove energy mechanic completely. normalise _most_ but not all hammer skills to be 600 range, with a couple of 900-1200 skills so hammer is not useless in WVW. Beta hammer was WAY too similar to sword and dagger. Make it unique please. utilities were really really bad. Just god-awful, no exaggeration. Rework completely to address the weaknesses of hammer -- mobility, condi clear, field generation, lack of block/evades/reflects. Utilities should actually provide utility, right? At least, those would be the iterable improvements I'd be hoping for, but honestly I'd prefer a version of Catalyst where the utilities each provide a specific element field (call them wells) and the class mechanic is something entirely new. Make the elite grant 1200 range to all ranged skills for 5 sec, something like that. If they don't make big changes after the near-universally negative reception (just look at the poll), then there's something majorly wrong.

Overall I liked it. Blades instead of clones is definitely a good new direction. Didn't like dagger much at all, the #3 skill is waaaay too slow moving and #2 was a bit meh. i really think the #2 or #3 should have been a movement skill. The utilites were good, though the damage felt very undertuned. The elite skill is really bad, numerous times it missed all targets even though it looked perfectly lined up from my perspective.