Catalyst Feedback Thread

[Noodle Ant.1605]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

The best way to achieve what you're saying is the boon support traits (Spectacular Sphere or Sphere Specialist) make quickness a near 100% uptime jade sphere boon probably. Power catalyst reportedly does less damage than condi catalyst due to the hammer 3 circling orb applying burn/bleed meaning any diviner catalyst would be even worse (last I saw it was just over 26K on large hitbox or something). As it is now, it's worse than arcane once quickness is out of the picture. The rest of the boons aren't noteworthy,  as in why would you run catalyst with the high variance over tempest : it would need to have role compression of heal + 5 man quickness in order to even compete with tempest (which heals 10) let alone other specs.

From what I've seen air+water is the way to go for power , air + arcane may also work if boon support is the aim.

Since quickness is applied on air attunement and the air attunement part of hammer is ranged , quickness catalyst really isn't a great idea in its current iterations.

The way I see it is weaver is the attunement swapping spec, tempest is the spec you linger for overload, so catalyst shouldn't be another constant attunement swapping spec.

I don't feel having catalyst putting out more DPS than weaver is healthy for the game. Instead weaver should do more damage since catalyst is designed to remain in the fight so sustained damage and higher cleave is the aim. The defensive side from the orb could be amped up and lengthened instead of doing upwards of 11K+ DPS depending on hammer 3 hitting.
 

thats not really what i was trying to get at, i dont really care about a unique support role or benchmarks or quickness atm

something that has always seemed to bother ele is the innate issue of attunement lockout - the key to defeating ele would always be something like "pressure them into water, then burst the moment they leave". similarly, ele dmg always plummets as soon it tries to swap attunements defensively. what catalyst attempts to achieve is to combine all attunements in such a way (through constant, possibly mindless swapping) such that it covers these gaps better, hence why i was trying to get at the idea of lingering elements and "fire outside fire", etc.

when i talk about spheres staying in their deployed element, im looking at combos more than the boons it provides. being able to heal in any of fire, air or earth by water blast/leap finishers ("water outside of water"), or cc randomly outside of air (although i dont think ele/cata has enough leaps to facilitate this) covers these gaps in attunement rotation. the current iteration, however, doesnt really add anything that being in the attunement doesnt already do, and cant be used at all by attunements that lack finishers

pve-wise, its important to note that hammers damage comes maintaining hammer 3, requiring the player to swap across all attunements vs just fire/air or fire/earth. this supposedly allows ele to press all 20 of its weapon skills (rather than ~10 because commonly 2 attunements "dont exist" when dpsing), which would be incredibly powerful if the each skill had proper individual impact (i know they dont, and it is another issue)

[Jski.6180]

I love to see other ppl get added effects for combing in the catalyst F5 field maybe not base off of your atument but base off of there combo type. I am not sure if that something anet could program in.

[Infusion.7149]

2 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

thats not really what i was trying to get at, i dont really care about a unique support role or benchmarks or quickness atm

something that has always seemed to bother ele is the innate issue of attunement lockout - the key to defeating ele would always be something like "pressure them into water, then burst the moment they leave". similarly, ele dmg always plummets as soon it tries to swap attunements defensively. what catalyst attempts to achieve is to combine all attunements in such a way (through constant, possibly mindless swapping) such that it covers these gaps better, hence why i was trying to get at the idea of lingering elements and "fire outside fire", etc.

when i talk about spheres staying in their deployed element, im looking at combos more than the boons it provides. being able to heal in any of fire, air or earth by water blast/leap finishers ("water outside of water"), or cc randomly outside of air (although i dont think ele/cata has enough leaps to facilitate this) covers these gaps in attunement rotation. the current iteration, however, doesnt really add anything that being in the attunement doesnt already do, and cant be used at all by attunements that lack finishers

pve-wise, its important to note that hammers damage comes maintaining hammer 3, requiring the player to swap across all attunements vs just fire/air or fire/earth. this supposedly allows ele to press all 20 of its weapon skills (rather than ~10 because commonly 2 attunements "dont exist" when dpsing), which would be incredibly powerful if the each skill had proper individual impact (i know they dont, and it is another issue)

You're right that hammer doesn't have much defense but you have to keep in mind that water has the highest melee damage of all attunements if you're camping hammer on any given attunement. Earth doesn't have bleed on auto , fire has a slow attack rate and for some reason the tooltip has foes plural but it has no cleave / pierce / multi-target auto. Air basically has hurricane of pain and the damage split hurts that skill heavily in competitive modes even if it is ranged. That's actually something I mentioned I'd like catalyst to have before it was tested: a water attunement damage option. In that sense you wouldn't rotate into water just for sustain and cleanses.

Really it should be that the earth attunement has bleed output on auto so that less emphasis is placed on the orb for damage, as once Grand Finale is used you are not going to apply much condi at all while camping earth in any fashion . Camping earth under pressure is a favorable decision if you're not going for DPS due to earth traitline's damage mitigation (more commonly used on a condi build). If spheres stacked instead of being replaced by the element you swapped to then maybe you can achieve that goal you have of healing in fire attunement or CC outside air for example.

Power weaver only uses fire + air so using two attunements is possible in the PVE sense when support is already provided ; condi tempest uses every attunement but water; power tempest uses 4 attunements but generally uses air ; condi weaver uses 4 attunements. I have a suspicion that Earth attunement won't be used often on power builds for catalyst using hammer beyond the rocky loop (hammer 3).

[Noodle Ant.1605]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

You're right that hammer doesn't have much defense but you have to keep in mind that water has the highest melee damage of all attunements if you're camping hammer on any given attunement. Earth doesn't have bleed on auto , fire has a slow attack rate and for some reason the tooltip has foes plural but it has no cleave / pierce / multi-target auto. Air basically has hurricane of pain and the damage split hurts that skill heavily in competitive modes even if it is ranged. That's actually something I mentioned I'd like catalyst to have before it was tested: a water attunement damage option. In that sense you wouldn't rotate into water just for sustain and cleanses.

Really it should be that the earth attunement has bleed output on auto so that less emphasis is placed on the orb for damage, as once Grand Finale is used you are not going to apply much condi at all while camping earth in any fashion . Camping earth under pressure is a favorable decision if you're not going for DPS due to earth traitline's damage mitigation (more commonly used on a condi build).

catalyst isnt an espec that attempts to redefine the attunements. like core/temp/weaver, if cata wants more raw damage then it still needs to swap to fire, not water

as catalyst is obviously designed around combos and combo fields, i just thought it would it would have better value if it simply had more control over the fields it combos in, using the hammer 3 mechanic as a guiding point. the result just happens to work out fairly well imo, or at least better than comboing for effects that the current attunement already brings

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

If spheres stacked instead of being replaced by the element you swapped to then maybe you can achieve that goal you have of healing in fire attunement or CC outside air for example.

i think thematically, cata only carries around one sphere (it is an ele and not an engi after all). additionally, the energy mechanic also fairly limiting in this factor

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Power weaver only uses fire + air so using two attunements is possible in the PVE sense when support is already provided ; condi tempest uses every attunement but water; power tempest uses 4 attunements but generally uses air ; condi weaver uses 4 attunements. I have a suspicion that Earth attunement won't be used often on power builds for catalyst using hammer beyond the rocky loop (hammer 3).

its not whether or not the build switches into the attunement at all, but more about how frequently and actively the build can and wants to switch into the other attunements. theres a significant difference between condi weaver only switching to water once to complete weave self (every 70-90s), and cata switching into water 4-5 times as much because it constantly needs to rebuild hammer 3 orbs

[Artyport.2084]

I really think hammer spheres need to be the mechanic 

 

imagine a staff ele with those elemental balls rotating around it. Would be epic.

 

spheres: mechanic

Elementals summons: spirit utilities 

augments: put on hammer

 

perfect 

[Avatara.1042]

Hammer will still feel horrible due to Hammer 3 attunement dancing and the class between melee and range.

The traits are all lacking any fun.

The elite is boring and the cooldown is far too long.

[hasagi.4380]

..

Edited June 8, 2022 by hasagi.4380

[Py Romantic.9134]

Give us weapon swap already. It would give us the opportunity to go out of mele and then back in. Youve put a glass cannon in mele range and expect us to survive. It would help a ton to be able to get out of mele briefly, and go back in. I think it would solve a lot of complaints. 

[Vilin.8056]

 

[Arheundel.6451]

On 11/20/2021 at 10:51 AM, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

catalyst isnt an espec that attempts to redefine the attunements. like core/temp/weaver, if cata wants more raw damage then it still needs to swap to fire, not water

as catalyst is obviously designed around combos and combo fields, i just thought it would it would have better value if it simply had more control over the fields it combos in, using the hammer 3 mechanic as a guiding point. the result just happens to work out fairly well imo, or at least better than comboing for effects that the current attunement already brings

i think thematically, cata only carries around one sphere (it is an ele and not an engi after all). additionally, the energy mechanic also fairly limiting in this factor

its not whether or not the build switches into the attunement at all, but more about how frequently and actively the build can and wants to switch into the other attunements. theres a significant difference between condi weaver only switching to water once to complete weave self (every 70-90s), and cata switching into water 4-5 times as much because it constantly needs to rebuild hammer 3 orbs

It's still the same BS crap they have been shoving down our throat for years now! Go full melee and grind your way through dozen of AoE just to go and tickle the enemy after some elaborate combo/set up only for the enemy to "opsy daisy" and sprint miles away instantly, healing himself and laughing at you.

 

Basically full melee gameplay it's like ...2012 and now it's 2021, everybody and his mom got access to powerful/decent ranged/mobility and every fight outside the "sacred PvE" becomes an exercise in frustration as you must dodge that attack and that attack again, heal there and there, Lightning flash there and there for mins...hoping the enemy is bad/stupid enough to stay in your melee aoe range for long enough.

 

The most absurd thing is people are so disilluniosed and distraught ..they convinced themselves that Catalyst will be the bomb. it's still the same melee BS you all have been playing for the last 9 years and now you will play more for another 4-5 years

[Lynx.9058]

PLEASE increase the duration on hammer 3.  5 seconds is not enough, and forces you to rush through each atunement.  A single knockback/down or stun, or any kind of movement requirement during a particular fight, will ruin your hammer 3 setups.  I'd like to be able to use more than one ability per atunement before having to switch to the next one to keep that hammer 3 circle going.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

11 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

It's still the same BS crap they have been shoving down our throat for years now! Go full melee and grind your way through dozen of AoE just to go and tickle the enemy after some elaborate combo/set up only for the enemy to "opsy daisy" and sprint miles away instantly, healing himself and laughing at you.

 

Basically full melee gameplay it's like ...2012 and now it's 2021, everybody and his mom got access to powerful/decent ranged/mobility and every fight outside the "sacred PvE" becomes an exercise in frustration as you must dodge that attack and that attack again, heal there and there, Lightning flash there and there for mins...hoping the enemy is bad/stupid enough to stay in your melee aoe range for long enough.

 

The most absurd thing is people are so disilluniosed and distraught ..they convinced themselves that Catalyst will be the bomb. it's still the same melee BS you all have been playing for the last 9 years and now you will play more for another 4-5 years

why the quote? this doesnt really relate to what i am trying to address

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

Change Hammer range to 1200 and stop pushing this melee nonsense on a class with low health, low armor that can't weapon swap in combat to deal with a changing combat environment, vs classes who can remove themselves from melee combat range with relative ease while they laugh at you for being dumb enough to go melee in a range fight.

[Kidel.2057]

4 hours ago, Tungsten Monarch.6058 said:

Change Hammer range to 1200 and stop pushing this melee nonsense on a class with low health, low armor that can't weapon swap in combat to deal with a changing combat environment, vs classes who can remove themselves from melee combat range with relative ease while they laugh at you for being dumb enough to go melee in a range fight.

The weapon basically has 10 melee skills and 10 ranged skills (give or take). It basically trades weaponswap for attunement swap. It's still 2 times the skills of the other classes. 

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

3 hours ago, Kidel.2057 said:

The weapon basically has 10 melee skills and 10 ranged skills (give or take). It basically trades weaponswap for attunement swap. It's still 2 times the skills of the other classes. 

I don't care how many skills they have, if I'm ranged and they are not, I'll win. If I can engage and withdraw and they can not, I'll win. Heck this is not even a PvP or WvW argument. If I'm being hit for massive amounts of damage and have little armor and low health, without the ability to disengage like a thief, block or boon boost like a Guardian, then all of these skills are useless and pointless at Melee range. This is not a Weaver with Barrier, not a Weaver with Evade either. 

[Kidel.2057]

48 minutes ago, Tungsten Monarch.6058 said:

I don't care how many skills they have, if I'm ranged and they are not, I'll win. If I can engage and withdraw and they can not, I'll win. Heck this is not even a PvP or WvW argument. If I'm being hit for massive amounts of damage and have little armor and low health, without the ability to disengage like a thief, block or boon boost like a Guardian, then all of these skills are useless and pointless at Melee range. This is not a Weaver with Barrier, not a Weaver with Evade either. 

Can't you just swap to a ranged attunement? Hammer has 2. It's kind of the same of weaponswap. Or are you saying that Ele should ONLY have ranged weapons? Because that makes no sense. 

[Milosz.5938]

7 hours ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Can't you just swap to a ranged attunement? Hammer has 2. It's kind of the same of weaponswap. Or are you saying that Ele should ONLY have ranged weapons? Because that makes no sense. 

hahaha you make my day. You called 600 as range? Then how you would call 1200,  double-range? Fire + Air have to be standardized to 1200, otherwise Catalyst will die everytime he will face any other spec  in wvw. 

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

8 hours ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Can't you just swap to a ranged attunement? Hammer has 2. It's kind of the same of weaponswap. Or are you saying that Ele should ONLY have ranged weapons? Because that makes no sense. 

Hey, you switch to that "ranged attument" and you still have to run to your target for atleast 600 units (900 if it's against ranger lmao). You could that great GAP closers, but hey you'll get bonked back since they don't have any evades on it and they're max 600 units range. Then you use your super hitting skills, but wait! ENEMY JUST WALKED OUT OF THEM!
Now imagine trying to fight a kitten Teef with stealth and teleports that just jumps around you.

[Kidel.2057]

1 hour ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Hey, you switch to that "ranged attument" and you still have to run to your target for atleast 600 units (900 if it's against ranger lmao). You could that great GAP closers, but hey you'll get bonked back since they don't have any evades on it and they're max 600 units range. Then you use your super hitting skills, but wait! ENEMY JUST WALKED OUT OF THEM!
Now imagine trying to fight a kitten Teef with stealth and teleports that just jumps around you.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm NOT saying Hammer is good or that Hammer doesn't need change. I was explicitly replying to Tungsten Monarch's claim that hammer needs to be fully ranged and not hybrid. 

Having 2 attunements at 900 range and 2 melee ones is completely fine in my opinion, and allows Elementalist to have both range types on 1 weapon (justifying the lack of weaponswap). 

I'm not expert enough on Cata to judge if the current state of Hammer  is good or bad, I'm simply talking about general design concepts. 

Plus if you want to go fully melee or fully ranged you already have weapon options for that. Being mixed in range would make Hammer unique. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by Kidel.2057

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

36 minutes ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Don't misunderstand me: I'm NOT saying Hammer is good or that Hammer doesn't need change. I was explicitly replying to Tungsten Monarch's claim that hammer needs to be fully ranged and not hybrid. 

Having 2 attunements at 900 range and 2 melee ones is completely fine in my opinion, and allows Elementalist to have both range types on 1 weapon (justifying the lack of weaponswap). 

I'm not expert enough on Cata to judge if the current state of Hammer  is good or bad, I'm simply talking about general design concepts. 

Plus if you want to go fully melee or fully ranged you already have weapon options for that. Being mixed in range would make Hammer unique. 

I disagree, we already have hybrid-range weapon, it's called dagger and we have it since 2012, there's no point in having another one, that is even inferior to it. The only difference between these two is that dagger is centered around caster and hammer can put few field within 600 range, but that's about it.

[Kidel.2057]

2 minutes ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

I disagree, we already have hybrid-range weapon, it's called dagger and we have it since 2012, there's no point in having another one, that is even inferior to it. The only difference between these two is that dagger is centered around caster and hammer can put few field within 600 range, but that's about it.

Dagger is 600-400 range, right? That's not hybrid, but just mid-range. 
An hybrid would be a weapon where 2 attunements are 900 range and 2 are melee (so 300 or lower). Plus dagger has almost zero cleave compared to Hammer, so that would make another difference. 

Agreed that cata hammer atm is 600 range too, but a good suggestion would be to increase the range from 600 to 900 instead of asking for a fully ranged weapon (that would also require much more effort and give less gameplay options). 

By design (os in general) having hammer as an hybrid ranged-melee would be perfectly fine (so melee+900 range at least). 

[bluberblasen.9684]

31 minutes ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Dagger is 600-400 range, right? That's not hybrid, but just mid-range. 

dagger WAS 360 range ( air 1 ) ( maybe it was bugged but it was great how it used to be )

since the nerf 360 -> 300 dagger is more a jump in and jump out weapon (class).  (belief me i still play core elem with dual daggers)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

23 minutes ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Dagger is 600-400 range, right? That's not hybrid, but just mid-range. 
An hybrid would be a weapon where 2 attunements are 900 range and 2 are melee (so 300 or lower). Plus dagger has almost zero cleave compared to Hammer, so that would make another difference. 

Agreed that cata hammer atm is 600 range too, but a good suggestion would be to increase the range from 600 to 900 instead of asking for a fully ranged weapon (that would also require much more effort and give less gameplay options). 

By design (os in general) having hammer as an hybrid ranged-melee would be perfectly fine (so melee+900 range at least). 

Dagger is 240~600 range, so that's melee+ to midrange. It does even decent gap closers compared to hammer so it's already better in that regard. What's the point of having cleave if you'll barely survive encounters though?
Actually it's not great design, because you're just sitting duck in 2 attuments to range pressure and half sitting duck in 2 other attuments, the tools are very bad on that weapon and you have dead skill on all 4 attuments.
There's really no reason for it to be split in the slightest. While running D/D you're still able to do some pressure on enemy, be it from gap closers or even skills, since they do have some variety in range, but hammer is no-no, once you get in wrong attument in wrong time you're just gonna die.

[Kidel.2057]

if there is redundancy with dagger (except the cleave) that's one more reason to make Hammer 50% fully ranged to at least 900 range. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by Kidel.2057

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

13 hours ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Can't you just swap to a ranged attunement? Hammer has 2. It's kind of the same of weaponswap. Or are you saying that Ele should ONLY have ranged weapons? Because that makes no sense. 

1) my heal engage such as Water Staff 1, or Weaver Sword Seiche+Clapotis+Breaking Wave then Riptide heal does not exist. That means attack withdraw is not advisable. There is no ability to safely withdraw. 2) if I wanted to go melee range I would not play a Catalyst to begin with, as there is no viable protections such as Weaver Barrier when using Sword or Dagger. 3) There is no quick use Water Overload to bring myself back up to full health when using dagger in Tempest. 4) outside of Water Hammer 4 Crashing Font and the sub par heal Soothing Water, I have little to allow me to disengage. This is absurd to push onto an Ele within Melee Range.