Demented Yak.6105

I'd rather pay for a proper balance patch than an expansion at this point. What a disappointment.

If you struggle with this kind of thing just be honest and you might be surprised to find that 1: there might be a few others like you in your group and 2: that some good players are willing to carry to an extent. Personally I don't mind when one or two players insta die in the first/second phase as long as they at least tried. I've run this strike quite a lot now with plenty of first/second timers each time and haven't seen any toxicity yet. As for mechanics, there are only really two or three things you need to learn. If you play a build with even a little bit of vitality/toughness then the rest is practically irrelevant. As long as you give your healer an easy time you can practically facetank the minibosses in dps gear (except for the mech laser). Good luck.

I tried catalyst, untamed and willbender and I will not be trying them again so I voted for none.

Untamed has "Rending Vines" that removes boons and this can be traited to corrupt boons instead with "Corrupting Vines".

Comboing with all fields seems way over the top. I can't imagine the ridiculous amount of burning people would get from projectiles on 100 fire fields. Comboing with up to 3 fields or all fields from your party sounds good though. Aura suggestion is great.

I didn't test the stability trait with powerful auras during the first beta but I'm not sure the stability is applied to other allies. I could be wrong but, it says: "Gain stability when YOU gain an aura" whereas elemental shielding says: "Auras you grant to allies also grant protection". Still probably the most powerful trait on catalyst but not as good as you're making out. Can you clarify if powerful auras definitely works with staunch auras? Whether or not the team resistance is reliable depends on the new cooldowns and energy mechanics which we don't know too much about yet. Before the last beta most people loved catalyst. Then after a few hours all those people agreed it was trash. Which sigils are you talking about, specifically? I can't think of any in particular that synergise that well with catalyst. We'll all probably end up using the same stuff as we do for weaver. And which traits are you talking about? There were virtually no changes made since last time and we know how that worked out. What defensive tuning is there? Literally the only change to defence for catalyst as a whole was a slightly easier time upkeeping hardened auras. As for the changes to hammer, the defensive utility on focus still obliterates it. The utilities are slightly better, I'll give you that, but they're nothing we haven't seen before on weaver (which has more barrier, vitality, evasion etc.). Any other defensive qualities catalyst has were there before and we already know they were pretty bad in actual combat. Constant attunement swap is a problem with hammer (not so bad with dagger/sceptre). On weaver we have much lower attunement cooldowns. On tempest, we have to stay in an attunement for at least 5 seconds to gain overload and then use the overload itself which takes a good 8-10 seconds. Catalyst hammer on the other hand forces you to switch every 5 seconds (4 in practice) if you want to upkeep the projectiles. And this is further incentivised by the new jade sphere 5 second duration. I usually play weaver so I'm no stranger to the piano but I'm not fancying blowing all my 10 second attunement cooldowns in quick succession to maintain the very necessary hammer3 skill. I'm not really concerned about the melee range on hammer. I just can't see why we have 600 range skill right next to 130 range skills even on the same attunement. Is there any situation now where we'll really have the option to be at hammers max range? Ultimately I don't mind if it's melee or range. What I want is some sort of design cohesion.

There are a few nuggets of gold in these changes but overall, catalyst is still going to be disappointing. f5: The f5 changes are welcome, but now I'm worried that I'll just be spending half my time in combat trying to pump out combo finishers in a tiny 5 second window. Since each sphere has its own cooldown and it only lasts for 5 seconds, I'm wondering what the point of the energy mechanic is? If the sphere still drains energy after the initial cost it will remain unusable. If it doesn't then it's essentially just an extra, separate, pointless cooldown. Hammer: Circle skills seem to still only last 5 seconds and force fast attunement switches. 99% of the testers complained about this but I suppose instant cast is a small step in the right direction. The other weapon changes are pretty good. I'm very happy with the new combo finishers. It still looks like dagger/dagger/focus will be the best option for both offence and defence. Utility: Utility skill changes are a lot more attractive. Other than soothing water and fortified earth, I still probably won't use any of them. Elemental Celerity remaining on a 90 second cooldown still makes it seem weak for an 'Elite' skill. Traits: The traits are a massive let down. None of the traits looked amazing in the first place except for the stability trait and the minor traits. Now it seems every other profession got more attention in this area. Even with the greater duration on the aura traits, keeping up 5 stacks when not playing against a golem is still going to be pretty tight considering we still won't have great aura access. With the energy changes, Energized Elements seems like it'll be pretty weak. I was hoping for one or two traits that actually give the catalyst an identity beyond core ele but never mind.

Hammer: Hammer is far, far slower than it looked in the preview. The cast times and slow animations (especially earth2) make it an incredibly dull weapon. I tried to enjoy the earth2 skill but it's just comically bad. Fire and air auto-attacks are single target. This might be justifiable if they had other perks like greater range or if the other skills had great cleave. As it is, it's not very usable in open world or WvW. Either the timer on the circular projectiles needs to be increased or the payoff has to increase. It's absolutely not worth frantically switching elements, thereby wasting my attunement cooldowns, for essentially nothing. Instant casting and 10s timers might make it worthwhile to build them up. I'm not sure the range differences between air/fire and water/earth have been well thought out. I can't see any benefit to staying at 600 range when the circling projectiles and fire5 are all close range. So my question is: What???!!?!?! I wouldn't mind that there are no combo fields on the hammer if there were more combo finishers to compensate. Long cooldowns on the finishers as well as delayed effects are killing me. Whirl finishers on air2 and earth2 as well as a projectile finisher on grand finale or fire2 would completely solve this issue. Damage-wise, I'm not really sure. It's certainly nothing special but maybe that's how it should be. f5: In WvW everything moves far too quickly to take any advantage from this whatsoever. Even in PvE the cooldown, the cast time, the energy and the lack of mobility make this the perfect storm of uselessness. I can't see that the energy mechanic has any value at all. The energised elements trait barely helps. Given that hammer has no fields of its own, it's not overpowered for an elite spec where the sole mechanic is a field to at least have that field at all times. We can only have so many combo finishers anyway and any relevant traits have their own cooldowns. There a few things that could be done to make this usable and nothing less will do. Make the field constant along with one the following: Give it a ammo mechanic like scourge shades / Make the field move with you / Make it moveable like a ventari tablet. And please make it usable outside of combat. With constant uptime and more combo finishers this could be a much more fun and useful mechanic. Traits: Most of the traits, in a vacuum, are alright. Unfortunately how they interact with the hammer and jade spheres makes some of them very weak. The aura traits would be perfectly fine if the jade spheres could be relied on. As it stands, to take full advantage of these traits you'll have to sit on your field and rush through your attunements, wasting extremely valuable skills and attunement cooldowns just to sit at max stacks until your jade sphere disappears a few seconds later. The elemental empowerment traits are ok. The one problem is that for an elite spec with so little active defence, it doesn't make sense for evasive empowerment to activate on a dodge. It's just not worth it. The jade sphere traitline (bottom) is truly underwhelming. 2 energy that hardly makes a difference as far as I can see. A few boons on the second trait that activate once every million years. And lastly, while extra quickness uptime from the last trait is actually great with fresh air, this trait has extremely limited value for condition builds and suffers from the jade spheres being immobile and inaccessible half the time. Utilities: Quite forgettable. Not amazing. Not awful. Given how unreliable the jade spheres are, getting the secondary effects is way too situational. Other than giving these a complete rework I'm not sure what to suggest. Defence: In practice, this spec has even less defence than weaver. Staunch auras, hammer-air-4 and water-4 are very good. The rest is incredibly unreliable or non-existent. If you build very tanky you could rely on elemental empowerment but that's it. Overall this spec is essentially the same as core ele. The jade spheres are incredibly impractical. Hammer is too slow and weak. The bottom traitline is weak. So what does catalyst really provide?

I'm very glad you wrote this. You wrapped up 90% of my problems. I've been misunderstanding the trait or not reading it properly. I missed the "Once PER ATTUNEMENT per interval". I kept assuming you could only proc the trait every 10 seconds across all attunements. But now I have a new question. Let's say you do use burning speed on dagger into your fire field and proc the trait at the same time. You get two fire auras? One is wasted? What happens? So it seems I spent a good half hour today writing kitten. I will leave my post unedited as a testament to my stupidity. Thanks.

You have alleviated some of my fears but I've still got some problems. Auras: 3 of those 4 finishers on hammer are blast finishers. Unless we also have ethereal or ice fields to use them with, we're not getting any auras this way. The air and earth blast finishers being on a delay makes no difference to this. They won't provide any auras no matter which of our jade spheres we use them on. Arcane blast is a projectile that can't provide any auras. Arcane wave can only apply auras with ethereal or ice fields which aren't all that common. Even ele only has 1 ice field and that's on staff. Evasive arcana is just another blast finisher. As far as I know, there are 4 traits that give you access to extra auras. Sunspot and elemental epitome are perfectly good and reliable. Soothing ice and arcane resurrection are absolutely not reliable however. You can't control if you're critically hit or have an ally to resurrect in the few seconds you need them. The only other auras I can think of come from runes which are either unreliable or have ridiculous cooldowns. Realistically, you can't expect to play perfectly and apply an aura exactly 5.9 seconds after the first to maximise uptime. Even if you manage to perfectly set up an aura every 5 seconds, it takes 25 seconds to build up to 5 stacks and still, your cooldowns will take their toll. Elemental epitome has an easy to work with cooldown but sunspot only procs going in to fire which means every second you spend in fire (I imagine most people will spend a lot of time in fire) will delay that proc for 10s + however much time you spend in fire. Water and arcane traits you can't control. If you water leap in to your fire field you must be proccing sunspot at the same time so the 6 second refresh is irrelevant. That's not even mentioning that there are too many other things to consider in places like PvP and WvW. Is it worth wasting your block just to upkeep your aura trait? Is it worth switching to fire if you need to stay on your earth attunement? As I see it, I don't expect the vast, vast majority of people to be able to hold more than 4% consistently. And if you're good enough to manage everything tick perfect, is it worth building your playstyle around it? Defence: Thanks. You've made some very good points here about empowerment that I didn't consider. Still, I don't like the fact that to get this tankiness I'll probably be forced in to celestial gear. I guess this'll require testing before I'm convinced. Traits: Personally, if I want fury I'll be relying on zephyr's boon, raging storm and my allies. It's a fairly common boon. But I do see where you're coming from. Thanks. I'm not sure how you're seeing a good uptime on shocking aura. Without dagger, your maximum uptime is 30% and that's if you use your air and earth finishers perfectly in addition to arcane wave and arcane blast. That seems like a hell of a lot of work but I recognise it could be fairly powerful. I'm not 100% sure I'd want to do all that and have to use my ccs for empowerment but I do feel a bit better about it. Thanks.

To start off, I love the concept of the catalyst. I can't wait to play it in the beta. However, I do have some concerns. Firstly, auras. A catalyst wielding a hammer does not provide itself with nearly enough auras to justify such low numbers on the hardened auras and empowering auras traits. 6 seconds is not nearly enough time on each of these traits to reach max stacks without outside help. Of course that may be what Anet intends but the number of tempests running around is not nearly enough to account for all the future catalysts. At best right now, I see maybe 2 or 3 tempests in a squad of 50 in WvW and practically none in non-open world PvE. Without a dedicated tempest to babysit you or someone blasting ice and ethereal fields left and right (unlikely), the best case scenario is you'll have a consistent 4% damage reduction/increase with this trait with maybe 6% every once in a while. If you build with the aura traits on fire/water/arcane, have runes that give you auras (very situationally) and go out of your way to use your single aura skill on hammer-earth-4, maybe you'll manage 8 or 10% for a few measly seconds at a time. It's even worse when you realise that deciding when to get this boost is not entirely up to you since you'll be mostly relying on passive procs. The only weapon where this might be acceptable is with dagger and focus which has leap finishers and extra fire/water auras. As it stands, when using a hammer or staff, I can't see hardened auras be anything other than a dead trait. Secondly, defence. It looks like hardened auras and arguably staunch auras are the only defensive traits. It's true that there is a nice heal on hammer-water-4 and some acceptable blocks in hammer-earth-4 and the earth utility. Unfortunately I don't think this is nearly enough to create the 'bruiser' people want catalyst to be. As far as I can see right now, even weaver has more defensive options: 5 traits with access to barrier and vitality, two utilities with barrier/evade frames that are arguably more powerful than the earth/air augment skills, two sword skills with evade frames and arguably more cc (though less immediately accessible). So is this just another glassy melee/mid-range spec? Weaver has more evades, more barrier, more flat vitality/toughness/healing power stat boosts and can even blast their own water fields for group healing - something hammer-catalyst will not be able to do. Thirdly, hammer combos. We have four very accessible fields but when wielding hammer we have very little to do with them. Not only that, but given that the jade spheres change based on your attunement, we can't even mix and match which finishers we use on which field. That leap finisher in water attunement? It MUST be used with our water field. The blast finishers in fire/air/earth? MUST be used with their own fields. I'm thinking especially about air. Hammer-air has one blast finisher and the only field it has access to is a lightning field and I'm not really very excited for 10s of swiftness every 25s. For weapons other than hammer which have the own fields, this might be alright but it seems like we'll really be relying on these jade spheres that so far, have very limited versatility. I don't think it would be too overpowered to add a few more finishers on the hammer skills. Air-2 for example screams whirl finisher and a 25% projectile finisher on grand finale would be very moderate while also rewarding good planning. Lastly, a few more traits. Disregarding the aura traits, a few others seem a bit weak. I don't think I'll really understand how valuable energy is until I play, but energised elements seems incredibly weak. Many ele builds, especially ones that focus on power, have great access to fury. That's not to mention that a ton of other professions pump out group fury every millisecond. I'm not sure why anyone would use this trait, ever. If this trait replaced fury with something like some selfish alacrity (something ele always desperately needs) or some group defensive boons I could see it becoming a very competitive trait. Spectacular sphere also seems a bit out of place. A bit more might, fury, vigor or resistance when you activate a sphere every 15 seconds. I'm not sure what incentive there is to use this over the other master traits when ele can already have fantastic access to these boons with the right builds. If a few extra effects were added or replaced the boons, I could see this competing with the other master traits. Maybe if the pulsing damage of the jade spheres was increased or if you gained some sort of damage reduction while inside the sphere radius or if the jade spheres started moving with you - something that makes focusing on the spheres worth your time in a more fast-paced environment like WvW. Empowered empowerment could be quite powerful. I'm just not sure it'll be worth taking if we can't maintain those 10 stacks. Even in a very controlled PvE environment it might be tricky. It seems like to get any use out of this trait at all then you absolutely MUST take both of the other empowerment traits (vicious/evasive empowerment). I don't think it'll create good build variety. Staunch auras could be alright. However, I think it conflicts with the other aura traits. The other aura traits incentivise trying to get as many auras as you can very quickly. But personally I'd rather spread out my stability and use it at sparse, intense moments. Even without those concerns, it seems a little simple for an elite spec grandmaster trait. I think giving this trait some extra defensive or support options would help immensely. Maybe group stability or a small effect on gaining stability. I hope I'm wrong about all this but even if I'm not, I'll probably use this spec a lot anyway.

I've never played any kind of necromancer in WvW or PvP so I'm answering purely from a PvE perspective. Equip a sceptre, torch and condi armour. Place your shade (f1) on your enemy then cast f5 and all your weapon skills and utilities (except signets) off cooldown. Over time you should learn naturally what to prioritise and how to recognise opportunities for specific attacks like epidemic. By "Curses", do you mean corruption utility skills? If so, there's really no need to worry. You have a condition cleanse on f2, a condition transfer on f5 and barrier on f3, f5, f1 (if you take desert empowerment trait) and your heal/utilities. If you're really concerned about your survivability then take parasitic contagion (grandmaster in the curses traitline) and runes of torment until you're more comfortable. You'll heal so much you'll be able to face tank an elder dragon so dealing with self-conditions will be trivial. You should be virtually immortal with the following build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSgAs+lNwAZhMNGJWMX5PTA-zRJYkRDfZkbC0RB49A-e Here is an overwhelmingly simple rotation to start you off: sand shade (f1) -> blood is power -> desert shroud (f5) -> weapon skills

Cone of Cold: Useless change. The healing from this has never been truly useful.Cleansing Wave: Not bad. Nothing special though.Evasive Arcana: Useless change. The healing from this has never been truly useful.Arcane Abatement: Cleansing Wave: Useless change. The healing from this has never been truly useful.Swirling Winds: Nerfed.Vapor Form: Just a fix.Dragon's Claw: Useless.Ring of Earth: Could be good.Magnetic Leap, Earthen Rush: Could be good.Lightning Whip: What the fuck? Nerfed. Range is very important to me.Lightning Touch, Convergence: I appreciate this. This is good.Invoke Lightning: Just a fix.Glyph of Storms (Air): Just a fix.Imbued Melodies: Nerfed. Overall, this seems more like a nerf. I could do without it.

I made a minstrel less than a month ago. I much prefer this one.