Catalyst Feedback Thread

[BigEvs.6971]

7 minutes ago, Vinteros Asteano.1209 said:

If you think about it, Tempest isn't particularly innovative either. Overloads are a visually appealing mechanic, but mostly mimic glyph of storms with some addons. Tempest's shouts are very similar to Reaper's shouts in terms of mechanics, they just generate different effects. This doesn't stop us from enjoying this spec.  

 

Thank you, I don't feel this is stated enough because Tempest shouts disappointed me so much when they were revealed. I know ranger shouts are now commands but just thinking about how creative those were vs "Aura share but without the trait, and makes the trait slightly redundant" always saddened me.

 

Weaver stances never impressed me either. I think I'd agree augments are nearly better stance concepts.

[Josspai.4356]

A lot has being said and a lot of feedback has been given, so I'll just focus on the 'lack of identity/personality' aspect of the catalyst. Because on paper, summoning four celestial beasts sounds super cool (and visually, they are stunning), but the fact that all four of them pretty much do the same (combo field, little damage, pulse a boon) makes them kinda boring.

I mean, look at tempest overloads: they have very different effects and represent their attunements roles. Look at weaver dual attacks: their effects really embody the dual nature of the two combined elements.

But these holographic monsters we summon with our jade sphere have nearly identical effects, so eventually you only want to combo them and that's pretty much all of it (which is why you pretty much only use the air one because it pulses quickness, the most useful boon of the pack).

So maybe you could consider giving them some differences? Like, make the water one pulse some small heals instead of damage (water is the healing attunement after all), or the earth one pulse a small amount of barrier instead of damage (earth is supposed to be the defensive attunement), etc...

And/or make them pulse a condition too, so that enemies are punished for being inside them. They don't even need to be damaging conditions if you don't want the sphere as a big source of damage: earth could pulse cripple or weakness, air could be weakness, vulnerability or blindness, and water could be vulnerability or chill (or even regen instead, since it represents the healing attunement, making it more of a supportive field). The only one that would pulse some damaging condition (burning) would then be the fire phoenix one, but that's okay because fire IS the heavy damage attunement.

Basically, give each of these summoned creatures an identity, not just some field that pulses boons and happens to be aesthetically cool.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Josspai.4356

[bluberblasen.9684]

Played about 10 hours wvw.

Catalyst is worse than core elem in wvw.

 

It's great against non moving targets but it's more than bad against thinking enemies.

 

After 10 hours I switched back to core elem....

 

* let us create fire field with the fire attunement button ( air with air button ect.) and remove this stupid cool down after switching attunement.

* let the field follow you

* add some heal / conditions cleans in the trait lines

* give the trait line some defense abilities.. (heal/barrier/block/aegis) or

* when using catalyst your vitality is increased or your armor... Just give it 15k base life (catalyst is very bad in survival)

 

 

[BlackSheep.2195]

Even after the balance changes, it is weak yet.

Jade Spheres:
The new mechanic is better than the old, but it also could cause AoE damage and boons based on the activated attunement.

Hammer:
It needs more condition removal, more healing and regen on water attunement,  mobility (Wind Storm is terrible for me, this skills could be a leap with 600 of range with an AoE Knockdown on the final destination, similar to warrior Stomp skill ). The auras are very important since we have one trait line focused on them, and finally, Rain of Blows needs some damage buff.

Healing skill: Great

Utility skills:
 It looks too weak compared to all the other utilities. Maybe shorter cooldowns , ammunition or rework make it more attractive.

Elite skill: Ok

Traits: Ok

[Cegolex.8702]

Yesterday i made a Post about my feedback on Catalyst while mostly playing PVE and being very happy how it plays there.

 

Today i tried WVW.

 

And oh boy what a lackluster experience that was^^'. I havent tried it in pvp only wvw with some roaming and zerging.

Staff:

It feels like i was a bit too enthusiastic about quickness double meteor shower. While it is possible to pull of its more of a gimmic than really good. In my opinion FGS is still equal if not a bit better than a second meteor shower. I think for the catalyst elite to realy outperform FGS in any gamemode it would also need to reset utility skills not only weapon ones.

The dmg output is roughly the same as weaver while i believe weaver is still better with the dmg and utility skill wise. Twist of faith is way better than fortified earth.

 

The quickness you can get from the jades spehere only really matters with casting meteor shower.

You cannot give any boons for your team because they last to short and the jade sphere is static while in WVW you are constanly moving standing still is more or less rip.

 

And the rest feels like core ele all over again.

 

Hammer:

Well not too much to say here besides i was reluctant to even try because i knew what was going to happen. And after testing hammer in wvw im suprised to say

its even worse than imagined.

 

Other weapons:

Havent tried them yet maybe some fres air build with scepter?

I dont know what else but staff could be realistic and not be way worse than weaver while even staff feels worse than weaver.

 

 

 

In the end it looks like it will be mostly a PVE spec while weaver and tempest perform way better in competitive game modes.

Hope they at least allow catalyst to be meta in pve because otherwise it would feel a bit disappointing.

[Widmo.3186]

My second feedback, I spent almost 2 hours contemplating and deciding what to write, so carefully and slowly read what Im gonna say:










it sucks.

Thank you, have a nice day.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Widmo.3186

[SkyCake.4216]

This is all from a casual PvE perspective. I did not feel interested in doing anything else with Catalyst. 

- The Jade Sphere doesn't need a cooldown, energy, and shared attunement cooldown all at once. It makes situations such as swapping to water, laying down a water field, and then Hammer 4 inside it for the heal and aura unnecessarily complicated and long. Especially if you get CC'd out of the combo during those 5 seconds, wasting the energy cost. 

- From that point, this elite spec is crammed with 5 second (or less) durations. Auras, the F5, augments, and Hammer 3. It creates a very frantic gameplay akin to Weaver. Except, unlike Weaver, Catalyst doesn't really have the tools to deal with this. Weaver's dual attunements, lack of an F5, ammo skills, dual attacks giving barrier, and not having something like Hammer 3 to manage makes it feel much better even if you are quickly swapping between attunements. I don't mind swapping attunements. I just wish it wasn't part of the many little pieces of Catalyst while trying to manage Hammer 3, the separate auras, and dealing with the restrictions on the Jade Sphere. 

- The Augments are better. Maybe moving Hammer 3's mechanic to them would have made them more interesting. Gaining an orb of each type used with the Elite giving all four orbs or any missing orbs. It could have even flipped to Grand Finale. Just quick brainstormed idea. I don't find the Elite Augment Elemental Celerity is that interesting because some of the higher cooldown weaponskills aren't that exciting to cast twice in a row. Especially on Catalyst when you're probably juggling several other things. Double Molten End or Meteor Shower is kind of cool. Maybe this has more interesting applications that I missed and makes it worth the 90 second CD. I'm not a fan of the duration of the Augments, though some of them have useful effects. 

- The survivability of the elite spec is not a "frontline" spec like mentioned in the video. Scrapper is a frontline spec. Hammer 3 and 4 on a Scrapper will let it outlast many situations. Then it has useful toolbelt skills as well as gyros in Bulwark and Purge gyro.  Fortified Earth, Hammer 4 in Earth and Water just aren't nearly as strong. I found a lot of Catalyst's survivability came from core Ele. Stone Resonance (Weaver), Armor of Earth, Conjure Earth Shield, Mist Form. These are all better than Fortified Earth even considering the cooldowns. I do not think Hardened Auras or Staunch Auras provides this gameplay. The tools I used to stick in a fight were not Catalyst tools. 

- Auras are important to the elite spec, but I don't think Auras are that interesting in the first place. They're, once again, another low duration with low effect theme on the Catalyst. I personally don't like Hammer 3 since it adds to that theme and would have liked to instead seen Hammer 3 changed to transmutes that differ slightly from what core Elementalist has. I think that could have made Auras more interesting to play around with on Catalyst and help give it a strong identity. I also think Auras themselves could use changes in either their durations or their effects. 

Removing some of the restrictions on Jade Sphere would be a huge change in my opinion. I'm disappointed that larger changes weren't made for the Catalyst during this beta for testing purposes. But, it is certainly playable now and useful. Maybe even strong in the right situations. I don't enjoy the "slightly different Weaver" flavor of it and would have rather it would leaned more into a bruiser-style gameplay more similar to Scrapper since it would have at least been different for Elementalist. 

[manddras.1794]

1 hour ago, Josspai.4356 said:

A lot has being said and a lot of feedback has been given, so I'll just focus on the 'lack of identity/personality' aspect of the catalyst. Because on paper, summoning four celestial beasts sounds super cool (and visually, they are stunning), but the fact that all four of them pretty much do the same (combo field, little damage, pulse a boon) makes them kinda boring.

I mean, look at tempest overloads: they have very different effects and represent their attunements roles. Look at weaver dual attacks: their effects really embody the dual nature of the two combined elements.

But these holographic monsters we summon with our jade sphere have nearly identical effects, so eventually you only want to combo them and that's pretty much all of it (which is why you pretty much only use the air one because it pulses quickness, the most useful boon of the pack).

So maybe you could consider giving them some differences? Like, make the water one pulse some small heals instead of damage (water is the healing attunement after all), or the earth one pulse a small amount of barrier instead of damage (earth is supposed to be the defensive attunement), etc...

And/or make them pulse a condition too, so that enemies are punished for being inside them. They don't even need to be damaging conditions if you don't want the sphere as a big source of damage: earth could pulse cripple or weakness, air could be weakness, vulnerability or blindness, and water could be vulnerability or chill (or even regen instead, since it represents the healing attunement, making it more of a supportive field). The only one that would pulse some damaging condition (burning) would then be the fire phoenix one, but that's okay because fire IS the heavy damage attunement.

Basically, give each of these summoned creatures an identity, not just some field that pulses boons and happens to be aesthetically cool.

There is an animal ? Sorry, i've never seen it. Too busy surviving, looking at my hammer 3 uptime and mashing 36 buttons at the same time.

[Morderger.6298]

Lets just do a quick easy rework. (I wrote this while just pvp in mind.)

 

Hammer - Copy Rev hammer 1200 range, then copy ele staff animations and paste on top of rev hammer.  Like hammer 1 in fire is a fireball, in water its a ball of water, etc.  You get it it. Hammer 5 make big meteor that knocks down.  In water Hammer 5 aoe blast heal. Earth Hammer 5 aoe knock up???? Hammer 5 air mega super damage lightning shot stun aoe 600 raidus.  I'm sure the art team has some reusable stuff.  Keep damage from rev hammer.  Make blast and projectile finishers.

 

Elite - I dunno, Jade sphere circle increase 200% radius ,  more damage based on past pulse damage . Maybe explode for % damage pulsed to  enemy team. I'm sure theres better ideas in this thread. 

 

Jade Sphere -  Moves to target, keeps moving field on them for duration of energy.  Make earth a poison field, lightning aoe stun pulse. This will require target to move from team or team from them.  

 

Traits and Utilities based on  above changes. 

 

Where the hell is our ranged dps.  There is no reason to paly Catalyst if it is not range.

[Inigo Montoya.1605]

Never played an elemental before. Great mechanics. I especially like that skill treads can be changed during battle, there's always a skill ready to use. Great game play.

[apharma.3741]

I mostly tested in WvW so this is a WvW perspective.

 

Class mechanic

I find I almost forget about it most of the time, but the few times I did use it was either to get prot because prot is great or a water field for additional healing. What I found really annoying is the cool down on deploying a sphere when switching attunements, I was playing D/D which is a bit faster paced so putting it down on swap, blasting and getting that aura is something I might need to do quickly. All in all though I would honestly rather get rid of the jade sphere design, I have plenty of buttons to press with attunements, weapon skills and utility skills that another isn't really needed. I found the sphere to be next to useless in a mobile fight too, it just doesn't really work.

What could you do instead? I don't know, I'm not really a creative type sadly, we had tempest that is geared to support, weaver is supposed to be more damage focused and possible duellist. Seems this is supposed to be a team fight spec but I think it would be interesting to give ele weapon swap in combat but each set is locked to 2 elements, up to you if you allow these to be customised.

Example you have staff and dagger/focus. You set staff to fire and water attunements (single F1 to swap between them 5s GCD) dagger/focus is air and earth, of course this wouldn't work with Fresh air.. Then give them physical skills or corruptions...oh that would be nice a boon corrupting or stealing ele.

 

Hammer

Personally I'd have preferred greatsword but I doubt anything can be done about that. I found hammer was slow and clunky, some of the cast times make necro look like it's full of instant casts. The 3 skills is a gimmick, please get rid of it as you essentially lose 4 skills for minor bonuses that make little difference, the circling damage is negligable and easily avoided. The only good thing to be said is at least it's a combo finisher in each element. The range could do with increasing on many skills like how you did with scrapper, most of the non autos are over 130 range. All in all I just hate this weapon as it is and it feels bad to play, I'm sorry to whoever put the time into it but I can't help but say this.

Also please make autos either ranged or melee but don't have ranged autos with melee range skills.

Fire skills, 2, 4 and 5 are all VERY slow, the 4 and 5 do OK damage (if they crit and hit) but hitting any of them is going to be more luck than skill.

Water skills, I like the heal and cleanse on the 4, and 5, the 2 skill is a bit weird being on water, not a fan.

Air skills, 2 does good damage but 3s cast (what are you smoking?) and small AoE it's a PvE skill mostly, 4 and 5 have no damage which makes air just...bad. Also not a fan of the cast time on 4 and for it to send you flying, it says 1/2s but it feels like more possibly due to animation.

Earth skills 4 is pretty good, 5 is a significantly worse churning earth, you can move and it's a long immobilise but for melee range it's vulnerable, more damage would be nice, 2 is hit and miss, blocking missiles is good but another long cast for a melee spec is not good.

Augments

They're not bad but I can't say they're good either, fortified earth is pretty useful and invigorating earth might be but I don't like the bonus for activating in the attunement sphere, most of the time I'm not in air and have my sphere out AND stood in the blooming thing when I need to stunbreak. Change this to activated in range of your jade sphere and it'll be better. Heal feels...OK, elite continues the trend of being generally kinda rubbish, you'll use Fiery Zimmer Frame or CCgeddon tornado as usual. Other augments seem to be PvE only, that's OK, 2 for PvP game modes is OK.

 

Traits

Actually pretty decent, uninspired, not perma alacrity or other grossly over tuned stuff on other specs but works well with the idea of spamming auras and pissing everyone off till it gets nerfed into the floor and the devs need to actually redesign the entire spec. Empowered Empowerment changing Elemental Empowerment to last 20s would be nice, 20% higher stats is hard to choose against stability on auras and keeping the 5%-10% higher stats you get from baseline or 50% boon duration from the jade sphere.

General

It feels bad, the mechanic feels tacked on, the hammer feels bad to use and like you lose skills with the 3 mechanic. It doesn't feel like an elite spec that changes how I play the class, it feels like I'm playing elementalist but with a different colour skin. The augments are decent and the traits with a bit of tweaking is OK but it's also VERY passive which isn't a good thing, we all remember D/D ele. I'd say please redesign the elite spec but you simply don't have time.

 

Also I think most people would have preferred greatsword.

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Catalyst feedback, round 2...

 

Giving hammer more finishers was a good change. 
It surely needed it.

 

Hammer still has an identity crisis concerning if it wants to be melee or somewhat ranged.
It is very confusing to have one half of my kit at 600 range, and then when I switch to another element finding myself to having to move into melee range. Is this supposed to be a melee or a midrange spec?

 

Floating orbs from the 3^rd hammer skill need a longer duration to not make us feel so pressured. 
If you want any shot at decent DPS you need to keep those hammer 3 orbs up. Which only last a few seconds, meaning you only have time for 1 other attack before you need to swap attunements and hit the next orb so they don't go to waste. The timer on these could really use a lot more leniency imo.

 

Sphere changes are not good enough and the field needs to last longer and do something unique like a ranger spirit would. 
Perhaps some people will disagree with me here, but this still doesnt feel unique. It just feels like a toothless tempest overload on a shorter recharge and duration. Press 5 for combofield. okay. Yes, the entire thing is playable with the current changes. But playable does not equal fun, at least not automatically. Oh and perhaps it is not a bad idea to just get rid of the energy mechanic at this point. It's not really doing anything and feels tacked on for the sake of it.

 

Utility skills are still boring and need something unique, a ‘wow factor’.
These are just as boring as before.

 

Duration changes to the aura and defense buff is good. 
They needed the duration changes, I think this was a good change.

 

Other traits still boring.

The traits still feel like it does not really bring many new things or at times feel like they are leftover traits from Tempest or core ele.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Wielder Of Magic.3950

[Avatara.1042]

3 hours ago, BigEvs.6971 said:

Thank you, I don't feel this is stated enough because Tempest shouts disappointed me so much when they were revealed. I know ranger shouts are now commands but just thinking about how creative those were vs "Aura share but without the trait, and makes the trait slightly redundant" always saddened me.

 

Weaver stances never impressed me either. I think I'd agree augments are nearly better stance concepts.

Primordial Stance is amazing, in every way (the rest suck, though), and tempest has 4 good shouts which feel nice.

Augments feel like rubbish and are mostly dps buttons, like the horrible traits.

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

I'm imagining designing ele and then subsequent ele specs and I can't help but feel it's a little like gw1. With so many skills and things that it can do and can do since launch it must be tricky to imagine new ways of making ele play and having all the elements interact and skills and what have you while also remaining balanced. I'm not sure hammer fills any relevant niche but you've done the melee, the ranged, the mid range, so now we've got a weapon with all of the above somewhere. Hammer doesn't seem to have any particular niche. Still though it's not my weapon of choice on any class so it would have to be spectacularly effective in some area for me to use it.

The main thing I wanted to see improved was the jade sphere. It is most definitely improved but I'm not sure it's improved in the best way possible.

Feelings on jade sphere:

1) At this point I'm wondering what is the purpose of the energy on it. Because it only seems slightly hindering and I'm not really sure what the purpose of hindering the current jade sphere is. Cooldowns are fine for that goal here. Energy was totally fine for the previous iteration, the problem was that the aoe couldn't be logically refreshed or moved. This redesign seems like more work than was needed.

2) I don't understand the purpose of global cooldown on jade sphere on attunement swap. It feels unnecessary. Fair enough for it having its own non-global cooldown for the current iteration. I would say the attunement cooldown wouldn't be so unusual on the first iteration even though it still seems to be arbitrary.

3) Being able to refresh jade sphere much more often is definitely a step in a better direction than previously. However now it feels like it needs refreshing far too often.

4) I liked that jade sphere was persistent and changed attunement when the player changed attunement. Having the aoe be movable like ventari tablet feels like it could be a much better deal than constant refreshing. Since that functionality exists in game I'm surprised it wasn't added instead of it being rewired to what it does now.

There have been some improvements here and some not-so improvements. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to help you build these specs.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Nayaru.4716

[BigEvs.6971]

7 minutes ago, Avatara.1042 said:

Primordial Stance is amazing, in every way (the rest suck, though), and tempest has 4 good shouts which feel nice.

Augments feel like rubbish and are mostly dps buttons, like the horrible traits.

Primordial stance is strong, but pretty boring. You just sweat condis.

 

The  tempest shouts are very very uninspired for the most part. The stunbreak is interesting and the elite sorta I guess. They'd be more impressive if, again, we didn't already have aurashare in core. Compare them to "Guard!" on ranger, where your pet takes damage that normally goes to allies and grants the ranger might. Maybe not super viable now, but it had its moments and it's way more interesting than Tempest shouts. 

 

I think the stunbreak augment is alright, as is the block. The elite and heal are meh. The fire/water augments are just dps buttons for sure though.

 

That all said, Jade Sphere is a greater offender than augments in making Catalyst feel lame. I still think it should be a field that is casted on a targeted enemy. 

Edited December 2, 2021 by BigEvs.6971
Spelling

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

2 minutes ago, BigEvs.6971 said:

I still think it should be a field that is casted on a targeted enemy. 

Hiya! There is a setting that auto snaps aoe's to enemy target already.

[BigEvs.6971]

Just now, Nayaru.4716 said:

Hiya! There is a setting that auto snaps aoe's to enemy target already.

Pardon me I should've been clearer. It should stick to an enemy the way scrapper fields stick to the scrapper. 

[Avatara.1042]

Elementalist utility has always been worse than other professions'.  No idea why.  Maybe anet do it to punish eles for having 20 skills.

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

1 minute ago, BigEvs.6971 said:

Pardon me I should've been clearer. It should stick to an enemy the way scrapper fields stick to the scrapper. 

Eh now that's inspired! Nice! =D

[BigEvs.6971]

Just now, Nayaru.4716 said:

Eh now that's inspired! Nice! =D

Thank you. I just think that since Anet is kinda branching away from old design philosophies like targeted healing with thief, Catalyst could get a unique identity this way.

 

Like imagine in wvw/PvP and a catalyst field spawns under you during a big fight, and you just KNOW the enemy plans on rushing you. That has to be kinda interesting. Everyone could leap in on the water field to sustain themselves while attacking the enemy, or the air field to daze the target and gain quickness.

 

It also lets Jade Sphere remain useful for melee and ranged styles. 

 

Obviously it's potentially problematic, because no mechanic exists to strip the field from yourself once it's cast on you. But the Jade Sphere isn't immediately impactful, and it's not terribly easy to maintain, so that could mitigate imbalance. 

[Avatara.1042]

I wish they had given the Catalyst some of the new, more fun stuff:

- Boonstripping

- New conditions like slow and torment, or even poison

- Knockdowns to actually make the Hammer feel like a Hammer and give ele some break-bar abilities (why does the ele always get shafted when it comes to breakbars?)

- A fun LOW COOLDOWN Elite utility

- Traits which are not just boring excel modifiers

Edited December 2, 2021 by Avatara.1042

[Kain Francois.4328]

3 hours ago, BlackSheep.2195 said:

Even after the balance changes, it is weak yet.

 

 

Not weak.

Frankly, Catalyst is overpowered, and needs some nerfs on damage output.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

it feels fun to use but it has no sustain or ways to defend itself. all of the utilities are bad.

[Flori.2194]

33 minutes ago, Kain Francois.4328 said:

 

Not weak.

Frankly, Catalyst is overpowered, and needs some nerfs on damage output.

The big problem catalyst has is that it's seemingly broken in predictable PvE scenarios and unplayable in anything unpredictable (aka pvp, wvw) where it is either competing for a damage role with weaver as a glorified core ele or with tempest as some kind of aura support... It has no identity, no niche to fit into, no role to play in any competitive game mode... oh and it lacks sustain to be even borderline useful in pvp as a sidenoder/duelist or wvw as a roamer, so here it loses against weaver...

[giblets.6401]

Hammer still sucks.

I hate the mix of mostly melee skills (14/20) with just a few ranged. We already have sword/dagger and frankly they are way better.

No evades and crappy mobility mean melee range is death.

Which makes the hammer 3 skills feel useless because I can't hang in melee range. 

I hate not having ranged attacks in water or earth. Feels really bad to be at 600 range and then swap into water/earth and not be able to do anything.

I hate having the only gap closer in the kit in water attunement.

I hate not being able to drop a field when I want because of having to build up energy, feels clunky AF.

Even the 600 range skills feel weak considering how close range you have to be to use them and how small their AOEs are. On my rev I can hammer 3 from 1200 range 240 radius for instant 10K+ per target while I evade all damage. On Catalyst hammer I can air 2 for 6-7K from 600 range but it takes several seconds of channelling and I am completely vulnerable.

I hate that outside of hammer, Catalyst feels and plays exactly like core Ele, which has been around for what, 9 years?

 

Idk the entire weapon just feels and plays like garbage because the whole weapon design is wrong. Needs consistent 600 ranged attacks in all 4 elements, and more mobility to get into and out of 600 range.

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by giblets.6401