In it's current state Catalyst feels very clunky and unrewarding to play, there are too many competing priorities and hoops to jump through for payoffs that are way too situational and unrewarding. I will try my best to sum up why each component of the specialisation makes me feel this way...
Spheres:
Having to build up energy plus having a cooldown is a big investment and payoff is nowhere near worth it, as the sphere can be made totally redundant by my enemy simply deciding to move away, which also then impacts the effectiveness of my hammer, augments and traits.
Recalling loses all energy and puts the skill on full cooldown, why would I ever choose to do this? I can't meaningfully re-deploy it either because now I need to build up energy again.
Having no way to generate energy once the sphere is deployed also feels bad.
Sphere being the only way to generate fields given all of the above is also frustrating.
Hammer:
Skill 3 - the orbs and related buffs disappear too quickly, you can't get much use out of other skills to disable my enemy or combo fields to generate auras (which is what my traits want me to do) because then I won't get the full payoff of Grand Finale, I feel like I have to pick one or the other.
I wish hammer had more fields and finishers, my traits are asking me to generate auras and the only way I can do that is via my sphere which is so limited (see above).
Utilities:
Augments don't feel impactful at all, being linked to spheres mean they are too easily affected by their flaws. It's too easy for the sphere bonus to be negated because 1) the fight has moved away from where the sphere was placed 2) you're low on energy and now need to build it back up to re-deploy another sphere 3) you're in the 'wrong' attunement (probably because you're trying to get the most out of hammer 3) to that of the augment.
Traits
I like how the top, middle and bottom lines synergise with each other, but they don't appear to synergise well with hammer, spheres and augments. Not enough fields, finishers or auras on hammer and augments to make them consistently effective.
I really want to try and describe the problems I'm feeling rather than coming up with solutions... but I feel like if the sphere followed you (or you could re-deploy it at much less cost), you were able to generate energy whilst the sphere was deployed and the hammer 3 skills stayed active whilst you had energy, this spec would be way less clunky and the different components would synergise together much better. Maybe that would make Catalyst too OP, nerf the numbers if you need to, but the spec needs to be fun to play first and foremost.