Alradab.5491

So I've been working on testing the new catalyst training, trying to see how much quickness I can keep up. I gave myself boons other than the one I was interested in, alac, stab, ageis etc, and noticed that I wasn't keeping up as much quickness as the tooltip says I should be getting. I eventually realized the problem, when the raid area gives you boons it shortened the length of quickness(and any other boon for that matter) I would be getting. when I turn off the boons the issue goes away. its not game breaking but it is very frustrating when I'm trying to test builds.

personally i would prefer a larger duration, because i dont like the idea of having all your energy generation going into only one kind of sphere. a shorter cooldown on the sphere incentivizes using more of your limited energy on air spheres, pushing catalyst away from its ability to be a dps class with strong defensive boons in addition to quickness. idk my biggest problems sphere wise is the lack of energy generation while a sphere is active forcing you to use hammer for its superior energy generation, and lack of readability on the UI. 19 energy looks too similar to 20 energy while also being very different because of the way that energy generation works (also that guardian symbols give more boons/tick, and have much less gating for use)

the sphere really isnt that bad! like true you cant move around and the boon duration is a little low atm. basically hit enemies to get energy. spend energy to put down aoe fields. the bot does small amounts of damage and gives boons if you stand in it. fire and air bots give offensive boons, water and earth give defensive boons. so stand in it to either to more damage or take less damage once the patch hits, hopefully the dps issues will be fixed, and fingers crossed like .25 extra seconds on the boons. like catalyst has a lot of problems but the forums kinda amplify people who are big unhappy with it, so i would still recommend just playing with it a bit and seeing if you enjoy it, especially after tomorrow's patch

ok, controversial opinion: after playing with it a bit... I love the sphere changes? the increased sphere cooldown sounds really bad but actually i think its one of the best changes catalyst could receive. sphere could either go the rapid fire, shoot as much as you have energy route or the swap to refresh, only one sphere per element route. the rapid fire route encouraged you stay in air to maximize quickness uptime, leaving only for a fire field and to generate energy. this meant that quickness per sphere had to stay low to make sure you invested in boon duration, and required sphere specialist to have small numbers. By taking the route of one sphere per attunement per "cycle" is what gives sphere specialist the room to be 100% and makes sure that boon Catalyst uses 1 fire 1 air and 1 water/earth sphere. This means you are encouraged to bring defensive boons into your group instead of quickness only and sacrificing everything else for dps. i still think the boon duration and energy generation is a bit low which makes the boons tighter than they need to be, but this seems to be a step in a solid design direction this definitely isn't the balance change we need but its helping to shape Catalyst into something that feels a bit better to play Edit: ive reevaluated stuff, i didnt realize how bad the dps nerf was. like 33.5k doing selfish dps? on a class that already struggles on non golem encounters? anet why? I love this class and i was just starting to get the hang of the really idiosyncratic rotation and things. i was already really sad that tempest got its only positive point slashed in comparison to other healers; my main build cut down in its prime. i tried to fill that void with catalyst, and even doing my best to enjoy it and find the good things in the spec, but of course now i know that my initial instinct to drop the class and learn specter was probably the right one. ele has always been the black sheep of the heard, not really having a place in most pve content, and being crowded out by engi, for condi clear and heals, or any other dps, for not being as glass, in wvw. Im genuinely starting to believe that maybe anet hates ele, or just doesnt care or lacks vision as to what an elementalist really means, like as a class. idk im just going to take a break for a few days

im really not saying the spec isn't good, like i know its good. with hammer, energy really isn't a problem, but it comes with the trade off that managing the orbs makes your rotation fragile in the face of cc or the boss moving in groups that aren't super coordinated and have plenty of stab. there is also the double tapping issue you mentioned. i think the hammer is a beast that kinda is the way it is because of the way catalyst works with 1 hit = 1 energy. first off, are you ok? like this isn't supposed to be a heated discussion and I really don't appreciate the snark second off I cant find that anywhere in the two videos? and if we are trying to do the big dps why would we trade 15% increased strike damage, and 300 power on fire for, on average 14% increased damage and marginally faster attunement swaps on arcane? as i mentioned earlier, i seriously dont care about benchmarks. its good to keep in mind but depending on a number of factors benchmark numbers can be really far off from standard encounters. condi players should know this well; bosses that phase a lot will drop your conditions frequently making you fall behind benchmark. mele classes also feel this, times where your walking to the boss or to a mechanic also causes dps loss. very complicated rotations are also hard to start and keep going in the middle of a hectic fight, which is a bigger dps loss for them compared to simpler rotations because its harder to start the flow again. this is why double tapping hammer 3 accidently is a problem; a huge portion of your damage comes just from upkeeping the orbs. if you hit grand finale early not only is it now on cooldown so you loose the 4 orb finale, but youve also lost X orbs that would be ticking, doing damage and conditions, and giving bonus damage/crit. i am primarily a PvE player so shrug. i can feel that hammer probably wont be the best in pvp/wvw, but like pve is one of the pillar game modes. i dont mind there being traits and stuff that are specific to pvp, like you'll never see me complain that there's a tempest trait that give a free stun beak. probably not bringing it in pve but still it has its niche. i will say that the 13s or however long cool down on sphere in pvp modes feels really weird to me, but im not a pvp god so im not going to judge like i dont mean to be rude, but swiftness is never an issue. there is always SOMEONE who has it, its just how the game is set up, everyone incidentally brings a smidge of quickness. and i dont think there are any classes that can keep 100% stab or want to. like object in motion is almost always at 10% if your running quickness and once in a blue moon you get 15%. like in my eyes what makes scrapper good is the stability of rotation that it comes with. its very simple, use hammer skills, use grenade skills, use gyros off cooldown. you cant easily be tripped up by a miss input, and if you need to walk from one place to another you have range so you can at least keep some output while on the go. if we are really super worried about having fury uptime on the build, which isnt something that comes up too often considering how many classes get fury, catalyst also has to give up 10% extra damage for it. not to mention that scrapper brings superspeed, which is a godsend in certain encounters that very few other classes can say they can do. like maybe some funky mesmer stuff, and i guess tempest has one shout? i mean i get it, having quickness on a profession mechanic is huge, no denying. but maybe it should be noted that alac renegade almost always need to bring RR unless you were bringing two of them. this means you weren't bringing lasting legacy which would be the preferred dps choice. also im not sure that matters much, like the problem is much less about where the damage ceiling is, and much more about where the average is. the issue is rotation fragility, not lacking dps. like if i had my way, i would probably get rid of the delay in energy generation, because it just pidgin holes you into using hammer in pve content because you need the orbs for energy generation. give the arcane line a little extra juice so that it feels good to use in place of either fire or air. in the beta streams there was note of a neat interaction with arcane power and id love to see it actually have a reason to exist. just change hammer 3, like it feels really neat to do it, but with the double tap issue and other problems with rotation fragility, it feels really bad to have to deal with any mechanic while your mid rotation. and lastly, fix the UI. i can never tell if i have 18 energy or 20, which when you cant generate energy for 5s makes it hard to tell if swapping attunements for an extra orb is worth it.

i think the weird thing is that two air spheres means your not maxing out persistent flames, so your not only trading 10% to all stats to get 12s of quick per air orb, but also 4-5% to damage flat. and lets say you stick in air attunement for 2 air orbs anyway so you have more time to actually generate energy because for every orb you give up 5s of energy generation which is what The Boz is actually talking about: not the cooldown. the tightness of the energy generation means you need lots of multi-hits going on all the time. 14s for 30 energy assuming you swap at exactly the right time isn't impossible and is definitely easier on hammer given the 3 skill, but that's coming at a dps loss from the video, which is generating 30 energy in 6s. for the record idk if any other weapon can manage that much multihit in that short a timeframe. like you need 3+ pulsing aoes(spinning orbs) going at the same time as using multihit moves on several attunements, which no other weapon has. It should also be noted that videos of benchmarks aren't impressive or demonstrative of a class' actual performance. I would never run the build in that video ever because everything is WAY too tight. the guy in the video literally presses air sphere at the exact moment he would loose quickness (of course he never does because he has perma boons on for demonstration purposes), meaning your not doing nearly that much damage in an actual fight. not to mention the level of staying in one place that has to happen. your probably only getting 3-4 ticks of the quickness on average depending on the boss' movements/mechanics. ele has always had this kind of rotation fragility problem. where at the golem with large hitbox ele is consistently the best, but in actual instanced pve end game it falls short because they lack the utility/consistency of other classes. quick scrapper isn't dependent on upkeeping a skill like hammer 3 to maintain resource generation, and firebrand comes prepackaged with stability, flex utility slots to bring massive CC, and aegis. quick catalyst is really cool and I like it, but I don't see how it could ever dethrone the kings in the state its in. i would just reduce the CD of sphere and let you generate energy while the sphere is down. then other weapons can get in on the fun, and its not nearly as tight.

Catalyst i was really really hyped for, but now that i have plenty of time to just sit down and play with it i'm slightly concerned. i was really excited for my favorite class to get access to one of the big two offensive buffs, but from the betas its capacity to do that with the ease other classes can provide was slashed. the base quickness was brought down to 1s and sphere specialist brings much less duration, so you would need to bring more concentration, and still provide less quickness than before. this restriction makes you significantly more boon dependent as either your rotation becomes very tight with energy management, especially compared to other quickness classes, or you have alacrity/fresh air. another big problem is readability. the system for sphere energy is very similar to core warrior adrenaline, but unlike warrior adrenaline, at any given moment of combat it is very hard to see how many milestones i crossed at a glance. imagine if you had to guess if you had enough adrenaline for a 10adrenaline burst or a 20 adrenaline burst. that would be unacceptable from a gameplay perspective, and yet for catalyst the easiest way to tell if you've got 20 energy stored up to dump for quickness is to either get very used to reading every pixel of your hud or to hover over the sliver of a bar over the deploy jade sphere. now normally this wouldn't be that big a deal because if your at say 19 energy, you spend 10 to deploy a sphere, then just hit the enemy to get the last one you need. however that effort is frustrated by the fact that deploying a sphere prevents you from gaining energy for 5 seconds, so you cant drop fire, then swap and drop in air unless you've passed the milestone you cant even see. now i get that the breaks in energy gain are probably some form of balance, because if you could generate energy while a sphere was out you would have too much energy and would have no need for any, but this sort of thing isn't really the case for most energy systems in the game. scourge life force can be gained while pulsing damage out of shades with Desert Shroud, revenant energy isn't halted when you have an upkeep going, mesmers can keep making clones even if they still have clones running up to shatter. i think the comparison being made to justify this aspect of energy generation is warrior adrenaline. burst skills don't grant adrenaline when used. at first glance this makes sense because what is a sphere but a tweaked burst skill, its even got the same energy thresholds as burst skills, but burst skills are usually instantaneous effects or require you to channel the skill like with the sword burst, so you can get right back to building adrenaline instantly. imagine if warrior was locked out of their burst skills for 5s after using them, like no adrenaline or anything. this also causes a weird incongruity with what could be very synergistic skill usage. air sphere into hurricane of pain works and feels so good in open world that there's no way it was an accident, but as energy is generated per hit of an attack, and hurricane of pain is your longest multi-hit, you almost feel punished for using right after getting quickness because you don't generate any energy. you could say this is just a difficult choice you need to make, either more damage or energy generation, but to my knowledge no other class is actively punished for using its core mechanic at the wrong time outside of just whiffing and putting it on cooldown. like the older change to Mesmer phantasms to make them turn into clones once their attack was done was to address a similar problem, where not using your shatters was optimal because you would loose your phantasms. i think my only other gripes with the class is the missed opportunity that comes with how the class handles auras. its clear that auras are supposed to be a big part of the catalyst considering all the minor traits synergize with auras, but for a boon focused dps class, synergies with existing aura traits are very lacking. all the catalyst aura traits explicitly state its only for auras applied to you personally, which for the stacking damage and mitigation makes sense, but just imagine the interesting synergies with powerful auras. keeping auras on a subgroup consistently and gaining a pay off on that would be amazing. tempest already had something like this with a grandmaster that healed on aura application, though powerful auras played a supporting role because the shouts already applied aoe auras. I'm no balance expert but imagine if the stability was on aura application as opposed to gaining an aura. you could provide an alternative to firebrand for stability generation, and considering that the aoe stab on swap to earth trait isn't op, I don't see it getting too out of hand. or heck if that's not your style you could put the quickness on aura application. make it like alacbender. take a special trait to make your special boons aoe. idk it just feels silly to have a elite spec have so much access to auras but no incentive to take the aura synergy traits except maybe smothering auras. the prot and fury that could be given on aura application are covered by the sphere if you really wanted them so 😕 I'm trying to reserve judgement on hammer till i get more experience on it, but early thoughts: hammer 3, as cool as it is, is too much when the class already needs to hold up persistent flames, two aura stacking buffs, and elemental empowerment. which is a shame considering how much damage and energy generation comes out of the extra hits from the orbs

as an ele main I am super satisfied with the changes to the catalyst and love the way it feels. I think I only have a few gripes with it at the moment. Readability in the UI is a little lack luster. when the energy for the jade orb was consumed all at once, and you could roughly judge the remaining duration by the small bar above the F5 skill icon. However, now that energy essentially stores three "charges" to place an orb, it is kinda tricky to see how many orbs you can place or how close you are to your next orb, especially on that very small bar. maybe the UI could be updated to look somewhat like adrenaline; a large bar that is easy to see, partitioned in segments of 10. this way it is very clear when you have a change of jade sphere and how many charges you have ready at any given moment. this bar could be placed just above the attunement icons, or just below similar to how the Holosmith UI is arranged. this is similar to readability but i think its slightly more specific than that. the skills have very little animation feedback to show when youve gotten the full benifit of the augment skills, like you could probably just notice that the skills were lasting longer or came back faster, but a slight animation flourish that shows that you matched the orb correctly would go a long way to both communicating to people who dont read the skills that it worked and also make it more clear if you succeeded or not without looking away from the action to take count of the duration of the skill. Im sure this is mostly just a visual bug but probably one of my favorite parts of the orb graphically is the... holographic? creatures in the center and ive noticed that the dragon from the air orb seems to disappear really quickly, well before the duration is out, and both the turtle and dragon are super transparent and much harder to see than the kirin or the phoenix Im sorry this is all graphics and not mechanics but honestly the only gripe i have with the mechanics is that some of the combo finishers take too long to go off in a spec that already has to juggle a TON of unique buffs. i hope this helps!