Sporks.4395

I'm shocked at how many people think that core warrior is better than core ele. Core warrior's weapon mastery did not make NEARLY as many gains as core ele did. Hammer, sword, and warhorn are insane for core ele. Warrior got what... daggers? Not a bad weapon to get, but nothing compared to what core ele got.

If you don't kill a catalyst in the first 15 seconds you are dead. We put out wat to much damage on cele. If you double dodge our fire burst, we just reset all the cooldowns and do it again. We have the most cleanses in the game for a solo build. We also have magnetic aura up 25% of the time with a ridiculous amount of blocks, invuln, barrier, and we have a crazy amount of protection application, frost aura damage reduction, on aura damage reduction, resolution, resistance, stability, and good enough mobility to keep up with a harb if they try and run. The signet build is way to strong with the catalyst trait line. Way to strong. It's even worse with sword because of all the additional combo's we have access to. Not only do we proc an aura every ten seconds with the trait, we also proc them because of all the leaps that sword has. So now you can chain even more aura's together. Catalyst needs a rework for competitive game modes and the sake of the rest of the elementalist specs. They keep nerfing weapons because of cata. Weaver, tempest, and core suffer because of it. PvP has been dominated by catalyst. WvW has a bit more stupid builds Than PvP, but Catalyst is one of the strongest of the stupid builds right now. Full disclaimer, I get that it has a higher skill ceiling than a spam all your buttons and then press 1 for a while harb. I get that, but if you master the catalyst... It is really really hard to lose right now in roaming environments.

Just something I have been messing with The damage multiplier buff for overlaods and utilizing signets to spam aura's to keep up the other damage buff is pretty nutty with the hammers damage buffs. Very very strong high damage open world build. I'm going to play around with it more when arc gets fixed and see what it would look like on a full vipers set on a golem.

As an unkillable catalyst player... no way.. lol. I eat harbs for lunch. magnetic aura, imob, ded harb.

I'm just sayin... but hammer damage tempest... mmmmmhmmmmm very good build.

*crickets* Someone has to know the answer to this.

It's going to be quick. lol. I'm surprised we have not heard anything about it already.

One of the biggest problem with catalyst is the hammer. You get damage, crit chance, damage reduction, and condition duration reduction on a weapon. You could see how busted this was in the beta with the power builds of core ele and weaver.. That much stats for free is way to much. Makes the hammer seem really good, but the other weapons are severely lackluster. Hammer needs a total rework. The orbs are trash. Impossible to balance in regards to the rest of the elite spec. As long as hammer orbs exist, all other weapons in PvE, and most weapons in PvP will be subpar. It's like having 4 additional traits you can take for nothing. There is no other weapon in the game that gives you those bonuses. This is one of the biggest reasons why Catalyst is impossible to balance in regards to the rest of the ele specs. You will see damage nerfs to all the rest of the specs unless Anet deals with hammer. The way the class interacts with aura's is also a huge issue. Any combo giving an aura is nuts. Especially when you have no ICD on traits that gives you damage reduction, damage increase, and stability. Even with the signet and scepter nerfs, the build is still good in pvp and completely busted in wvw. So, weapons are going to keep getting nerfed to maintain the poor elite spec design. This makes fresh air scepter weaver hit like a noddle now. It makes condi scepter incredibly weak in PvP modes. Sword is the next thing to get nerfed into the ground because of catalyst design issues. To many leaps to combo with the sphere's. By the time they are done nerfing weapons and other traits because of catalyst, no ele spec will be playable unless it's support. Elemental empowerment is garbage to balance as well. Because of how difficult it is to maintain the stacks, the entirety of the traits are worthless in PvP/WvW settings where reactionary play is always taken over rotation based play. You will never get enough stacks to make it worth even considering the 3rd trait. The first two are so lackluster compared to the alternative traits you will never see them get used. Also, gaining the toughness makes it really hard to utilize in PvE unless someone adjusts there gear to ensure they stay the tank. It's a cool idea, but it's really impractical in every game mode. The utility skills are also really rough to use. Ele has a severe problem with supportive utility skills. Tempest has them. That is it. This pigeon holes Cata into very selfish play. That is why it will never compare to a quickbrand, a chrono, a scrapper, or Herald (good god is Herald good right now). Cata utility skills are bland. Core skills at best in a sense of creativity. The only one that has potential in pvp settings is relentless fire for the unblockable effect. The heal is ok, but when you have a water field, why would you not be taking arcane brilliance with the buff it just got? You can cleanse like an idiot because of the aura's and fire traits as it is. The utility skills are designed to be selfish, but they are not good enough to warrant taking over core utility skills 90% of the time unless you are in a PvE rotation. They need to be better. The energy mechanic is the only thing that has potential with a tweak and not a total rework. All you have to do is remove the ridiculous concept of not gaining energy in a sphere in pvp/wvw settings especially. You are not hitting something a million times a minute in pvp settings. These spheres need to be up on demand in order to be effective. Let them be that way. Also, make it like a rev so that you start at 50% without having to hit a bunch of random stuff in combat to get the energy up before you can use it. The way they are now makes them feel like a really bad version of necro shroud.

Catalyst is a problem. The signets and scepter pre nerf was only an issue on Catalyst. Every other spec it was just ok. The issue with catalyst is the way aura's interact with the traits. The more aura's you get, the better you class is. So, we nerfed the kitten out of the weapon and the signets (in PvP) for every spec, while catalyst is still able to run around and abuse getting aura's in all sorts of ways.

Game was 100% not playable last night on FA. Trying to cast a meteor shower and just being stuck in the animation for 20 seconds is abysmal. Every one was getting the lag. Even auto attacks lagged.

have to inject some adrenalin into the hamsters again?

This seems really bad. Ele scepter is one of the best 900 ranger weapons in the game. Why are you going to give us something to compete with it? Ele lacks 1200 range options. It is where we lack the most. Pistol is like Anet telling us that our class will always be handicapped compared to others.

Seems like it does absolutely no damage. Even the tool tips seem really really low. 95 initial damage on skill 2 and 3? That is marauders/zerk with scholar runes. hitting for a whopping 2k IF you land everything. It's really really bad. It's almost acting like there are no multipliers applied to the skills or something. Even the auto attack crits for around 700.

Yea, it's a hard nerf in WvW. Thanks Anet. making a subpar class worthless.

Catalyst sucks because of the hammer. Hammer gives damage mods in the weapon skills. This means you have to make the elite spec damage mods harder to obtain. The way the damage modifiers are maintained makes it impossible to every even see use out of the grandmaster trait that buffs users stats in any form of PVP. Going back to the hammer, it is close range. So, on a catalyst, because of the damage modifiers and defensive abilities baked into the weapon, all other weapons are subpar in PvP for damage. This means that Cata has only one playstyle. Bunker boon build. That's it. It's boring, it's one dimensional, it offers very low support other than boons. It's like core ele but useful. Very boring. If they would fix the damage traits, fix hammer, and fix the energy system, this class would shine. It is so close, but yet so far...