I’m the guy that made the first benchmark for Catalyst, which I have already pushed to 43k dps by now, showcasing its pretty huge damage potential. Lots of people were quick to call out the conjures used here to “carry the damage”, however that isn’t actually true, as conjures are only 3k dps of the build. The real thing that carries the damage of Catalyst is the hammer #3 skill. I didn’t notice this until earlier today, but on a big hitbox while inside the golem, this skill hits the boss up to 11/12 times, whereas when standing outside the golem, it hits only 3-8 times. Here is a video showcasing this phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwIbGipuDfc
We are talking about 9k vs 33k damage per usage here. The issue becomes even bigger on small hitboxes, where, if positioned badly, the orb doesn’t even hit to begin with. The dps difference of the #3 skills on big vs small hitbox is more than 11k dps, which is a huge problem. A logical way to fix this would be to have the orbs rotate closer to your character, or keep the visuals while making the skill a pulsing field. Catalyst will only be viable on big hitboxes and nothing else for as long as this doesn’t get fixed. And when talking about hammer #3 anyway, the skill could use a duration increase from 5 to 7 or 8 seconds until it depletes. This would make the rotation feel less timegated, and people with ping problems would have an easier time connecting the orbs aswell.
The second obvious problem is the sphere. The biggest issue with it is that energy depletes while out of combat. This renders a quickness catalyst build impossible, as you first have to build up your energy for ages in order to supply quickness. The fix is to simply allow us start with 100 energy. Similarly to this, the sphere should also follow the player wherever it goes in order to properly supply boons in any encounter that isn’t stationary.
Furthermore there should most definitely be more ways to upkeep energy, allowing us to permanently maintain the sphere. My suggestion would be that comboing gives us energy.
Lastly the sphere field, since it is not a weapon skill fire field, does not give any stacks of Persisting Flames, rendering the fire grandmaster trait completely useless – just weird design imo.
Other than that I think the spec is quite well done and very enjoyable – on big hitboxes, that is. I really hope these problems can be fixed, as I see huge potential here!