Agrios.9071

This would very much improve the gameplay experience in wvw. It feels like weaver is the biggest victim in the current china-chrono-supscourge meta. DPS tempest performs currently better... while having easier access to group support utility.

I know it isnt real feedback but i just want to say this. I expected nothing from pistols for elementalist, because pistols on other classes arent exactly the most interesting weapon gameplay wise. Somehow the laziness of the design still manages to disappoint. Many people said this for the catalyst hammer aswell and nothing was changed, but i will say it again here. Just start over and design a useful weapon for elementalist. (My PoV is mostly from wvw zerging where pistols in its current itteration will never see play.)

Staff weaver isnt meta in organised groups, there are a few individums who can make it work, but if you have 2 weavers in a 50 man squad you cant really call it a meta spec. It fills a small niche but is hardly changing the interactions between 2 squads. And 90 to 99% of the people who try to play weaver are performing so bad that literally any other (meta) spec is more useful to the squad. Staff Catalyst is a clear downgrade because you trade damage, mobility and flexibility for nothing. Double meteor is a gimmick that might work against really bad players. Against good opponents you already have to invest atleast one of your mobility skills to even cast one meteor. Standing still for long periods of time is just not realistic in high end gameplay. It seperates you from the rest of your group and makes you an easy target for enemy focus, be it dh pulls or single target focus from any dps class. Since catalyst has no new mobility skill in its utility seperating yourself from your group in the first place is more risky than on weaver.

It is so bad that i didnt even buy the expac, because this spec doesnt give me (as wvw staff weaver) anything interesting or new. Its is just a downgrade in every aspect compared to weaver. I saw people on catalyst consistently doing not even half the damage i can do on weaver. At the same time you are even more squishy than a weaver because you loose twist-of-fate. Double Meteor is more than worthless. Even thinking about catalyst is depressing...

Tested it in bvb yesterday and it felt much worse than weaver. You are squishier because you dont have twist of fate. All your damage is either meteor or fgs, it feels like you have alot more downtime where u cant do anything compared to as weaver. It is nice to selfbuff with might/quickness but it always felt like i was forced to make the decision if i want to buff only myself or if i try to buff my team. Obviously i played staff but i have to say both earth and water feel so useless that they are not really worth to use.

Its very good in pve i guess, but terrible and borderline unplayable in pvp and wvw (using the hammer)... Overall bad.

It is impossible to realistically land the double meteor against not sleeping enemies btw. If you actually fight in a more competeptive bvb setting both groups move so much that you can only cast 1 meteor and you already have to invest burning retreat or your teleport to get this one skill casted safely. Now try to use 2 meteor while standing still, even with quickness you take too long. Remember that alot of specs can either interrupt you or just kill you off (scourge with focus, herald with sword or hammer) while you try to meteor 2 times. FGS is by far superior compared to the catalyst elite because the 3 skill actually gives you sustain while you can do good damage. Arguably FGS (or conjureds in general) is broken because it got forgotten during the big power dmg nerf but because of this it actually has a really high power level compared to most other things in the game currently. Against enemies that dont fight back you will obviously be able to double meteor them but then again those players behave more like pve mobs and while seeing high damage numbers is nice, it is not a representation of skill or good design if the enemies are on the level of random open world mobs...

Well nearly every other spec has those effects in some way on their weapons, maybe not the stability but i only thought of either stab or evade.

I think catalyst hammer has a big discrepancy in its performance for pve and for wvw/pvp. In pve it appears extremely fluid and looks very promising (this was already the case in beta 1). Now in beta 2 it seems to overperform quite a bit in pve. However in wvw and spvp it has many issues and the fluidity fails because it means you have to lock yourself out of skills you might need seconds later. The 3 skills are not real skills in a competetive environment because they are difficult to set up, very telegraphed and you only have a small window for the grand finale. If they only touch projectile hate they are gone completely. In 1v1s it might work somewhat (depending on the match up) but in larger fights there is simply too much projectile hate to make this combination of skills work at all. And a large part of the damage catalyst can do comes from the jade sphere (17 %) and the orbs (31 %). The % numbers are based on the log of Roul's video on small hitbox. Now take away the dmg from the jade sphere and negate the orbs with projectile hate (or dont stand afk next to the catalyst) and suddenly catalys doesnt do damage anymore.

It should work similar to the skill 5 of the tornado elite "Dust Charge", you basically rush towards a direction and knock down targets (5?) in your path. This would mean we have another mobility skill that can also be used to engage. I think 600 range may be not enough... For reference Dust Charge has 900 range. Another thing to consider is giving catalyst some stability on such a charge skill maybe 2 stacks for 2-3 seconds. Alternatively there could be evade frames tied to such a skill to help overall survivability.

I am not sure how you are supposed to kill anything as a catalyst (with hammer) in wvw. Everything seems to have teleports and more leaps than you. You also have no real lockdown, the only skill that could help is Wind Storm but that either moves you further away from the enemy or you are still atleast in 600 range and cant catch up cause you lack mobility. The skills itself are also mostly underwhealming. Animations way too long for what they do so countering this spec will be fairly simple. Overall this elite spec still seems to lack a real direction it goes to.

When people were speculating about the weapon for the elementalist elite spec i was very much against longbow. A weapon like greatsword or even hammer seemed more interesting. Now after seeing hammer on catalyst i think the best approach would be to start with a new concept. I mostly play wvw and the hammer is absolutely unusable in RvR. The elite spec doesnt give any sustain or reasonable support that is usable in a pvp gamemode. Utility skills seem very much useless and i use only skills from the core ele kit. The f5 beeing a class mechanic seems incredibly boring. A pulsing field with a tooltip of 8 dmg on full zerk is a class mechanic? It has nothing unique about it, it doesnt suit any role i can think of in its current state and it doesnt promote interesting gameplay. I hope Anet reads some of the posts here and comes up with a big rework to this (and other) specs...

If you play herald or weaver in wvw and fight against organised groups you do see most of your projectiles hitting nothing, this applies for pretty much all ranged auto attacks. So yes all the ranged auto attacks are quite terrible and only used as fillers. Lastly we just had a patch that tried to normalise things in wvw by nerfing the overtuned stuff. Since CoR is bugged we cant really say how it all turned out so i dont think asking for buffs right away is the correct thing to do. If something now overperforms in comparism it might need further tweaking.

Herald still reaches 25 might in wvw, where hammer is primarily used, once CoR is fixxed it will see more use again. I never claimed it beeing great at anything else however it is very good in zerg fighting. I was only comparing the auto attacks because it was mentioned how bad hammerbolt was supposed to be. I cant really see how Gunflame as a projectile based meme build really compares to herald as a whole. Revenants Hammer is clearly designed for fights against groups of enemys (wvw) and performs outside of the bugged CoR very well at this. It also gives required boon support to the team and has strong utility in form of AoE superspeed. Asking to make such a weapon viable for dueling or spvp seems a bit weird since you do have other weapon options. If those are underperforming in pvp then that is another discussion.

They are very much comparebly, Fireball is the ONLY auto attack on elementalists staff that does anything meaningful.Necro Staff auto attack is also slower than hammer bolt just btw (1.32/attack). Looking into this subject it appears thatthe auto attack from revenant is the fastest of all the zerg classes (not counting ranger's longbow, only looking at 1200range attacks).Additional hammerbolt can hit 5 targets and ist rather fast while other classes auto attacks easily get sidestepped and only hit3 targets (fireball, chain lightning), 1 target (stoning) and 5 targets (necrotic grasp).Hammerbolt also has the benefit of beeing a physical projectile finisher (100%). The usefulness of most elementalist skills is also rather questionable, as most are terribly outdated.And if there is 1 thing to compare revenants auto attack it would be Elementalists Staff or Necros Staff as those skills have similar usagein wvw while rifle (warrior) and longbow (ranger) dont really have the same use in wvw. Another Point is that Heralds dmg was actually nerfed AND buffed at the same time in this patch, you are now more useful in melee rangewhich makes this weapon more reliable and better and not worse as argued here.

Fireball has 1.4 sec/attack and worse tracking then hammer bolt.

Well some might argue that it already didnt have a spot in the wvw meta. It isnt bad but when did you ever hear a com say"we really need some more weavers"?

You are technically not wrong but currently for staff over 95% of the dmg is done by fire skills. All other attunements do not offer anything meaningfulto use and would need a complete rework. Most of the Dual Skills are projectile based and all Staff auto attacks are also projectiles and apart of thestaff fire auto attack they are all complete garbage.

(Talking about WvW only here)A well played Herald is rather close to a well played Weaver unless the enemys are standing in your meteor for its full duration.However Herald offers alot more to the team then Weaver. You also can not stack Weaver as easily in a team composition asyou can stack Herald.Weaver gets significantly worse the less people are present in the fight, for guild fights it is not good sinceMeteor can be avoided easily. Many Commanders already dont want Weavers in their squad and only take the ones that get Top DPS consistently.

Elementalist gets yet again a massive nerf despite not beeing meta anywhere but in pve. For WvW this class already was very much subobtimal. Staff-Weaver only brings damage while Herald and Scourge alreadydid nearly as much damage while offering alot of support and other utility.