reagents.2064

Ok, this is a weird one, but I have video evidence and have tested it on multiple accounts. Herald facets stop pulsing their boons if you jump in the water in Bay. Your active boons just fall off and do not re-apply, despite the facets being active. Weirder yet, this only seems to happen in the water inside the outer walls in Bay. You have to swap out and back into Glint for the boons to continue pulsing, and going back onto land does not refresh them. In other bodies of water in WvW, facets continue to pulse boons normally. Other WvWers (namely Firebrand with their mantras) know that you want to have the skills in your "Aquatic" build set to be the exact same order as your "Terrestrial" build, so that when you jump into water, the transition effect that occurs from standard to underwater doesn't cancel your mantras and force you to recharge them. The same goes with Revenants: you want to have your legends in the same positions on the UI in both build formats so that when you jump into water in Glint stance, you stay in Glint and the boons remain pulsing. If your legends are in opposite positions, you will jump into the water and force a legend swap (assuming it's off cooldown). So, I'm assuming the bug has something to do with this. However, it's very weird that this would only happen in the water in Bay. Has anyone ever heard of this?

The question is, what is the point, though. Why not just play Core Necro and spam 1 in Shroud for equivalent - or better - results. ANet created a complex class with a high skill cap, but there is no payoff for mastering it.

Exactly, this is what Catalyst looks like. The other problem is that it's too defined by the Hammer. If you take away the Hammer weapon, you just have a worse version of Core Ele. Why play staff or D/D Catalyst when you can drop it and run Arcane?

The Catalyst has a severe identity crisis. In ANet's seemingly relentless quest to keep the Elementalist class tightly reigned in, ever-vigilant to ensure no aspect of the class is one-tenth of a point out of line, they've missed the mark on nerfing this ESpec into meaninglessness by comparing raw numbers in a vacuum. There is nothing Catalyst can do that you can't do on Weaver or Tempest. Now, with reduced damage, there is no reason to play DPS Catalyst in PvE (the only game mode where the Hammer was viable). Ok, so what about boon support? Tempest already is one of the best specializations in the game to provide support through boons and direct healing. The Jade Spheres are clunky, have a cooldown and cost energy, and have nothing on the elegant synergy built into Overloads and the massive support potential with shouts and auras. The Catalyst can provide quickness, yes, but the class certainly wasn't designed with this as its identity. The Catalyst pales in comparison to Tempest regarding boon support, and now the developers have committed to the idea that the class cannot be and will not be a damage-dealing specialization. So, what can it do successfully?

It's just very weird (I don't recall this ever happening before?) and not a good look to completely drop the ball and have absolutely zero communication around it whatsoever.

The topic has already been beaten like a dead horse, but yeah, the Catalyst is way undertuned as-is. I do think the concept has potential, but the devs need to loosen up and allow the class some more access to powerful abilities and weapon skills that complement its core idea. It seems like the Devs consistently approach designing the Elementalist with a high degree of restraint. It's like there are so many inherent handicaps built into the design so as to prevent them from being too powerful that the end result is just not fun and needlessly complex with underwhelming results. Why master the optimal rotation on Catalyst for mediocre DPS when you can just auto attack on Revenant or face roll and win on Scourge? Elementalist has always been a "thinking person's" class, and that's evident in the mastery required for Weaver and even some Tempest specs, but there needs to be a payoff for achieving expertise over the mechanic, and I don't see that yet for Catalyst with the way it looks right now. This fact is compounded with the totally uninspired trait line and utility skills. Where the other trait lines have loads of flexible synergies with each other, the Catalyst traits are blunt, linear, and offer minute variations on one particular playstyle. The jade spheres are underwhelming on all fronts. Again, the devs seem to have overestimated this mechanic and loaded the mechanic up with handicaps. Not only do the F5 skills have a rather long cooldown, it's shared across elements, it costs its own unique energy, has a cast time, and the fields aren't particularly big or long-duration. There is little in the way of meaningful support here; for all this build-up, you're getting a water field with 1 second of Resolution. I would like to see the Devs loosen up a bit on the Elementalist and give the Catalyst some more power. There is a place for a class that can drop big, powerful combo fields on allies that are fortified with blast finishers and attunement-aligning, but if that's the concept, let it be that.

Has anyone found a way around the latency issues? After all my years of playing GW2 it's never been this bad. Immediately after logging in I get multiple pop-ups of the "Log in server" error, and then the game just inevitably loses connection; it either crashes to character select or the world "freezes" in perpetual motion forever. I gave up trying to pvp because I keep losing connection in the map and getting flagged as a deserter, and any PvE just leaves you dead. So... I'm going to have to shelve the game for a while until this gets addressed. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Has anyone found a way around the latency issues? After all my years of playing GW2 it's never been this bad. Immediately after logging in I get multiple pop-ups of the "Log in server" error, and then the game just inevitably loses connection; it either crashes to character select or the world "freezes" in perpetual motion forever. I gave up trying to pvp because I keep losing connection in the map and getting flagged as a deserter, and any PvE just leaves you dead. So... I'm going to have to shelve the game for a while until this gets addressed. Does anyone have any suggestions?