Catalyst Feedback Thread

[Axl.8924]

NUmber 2 hurricane pain hurt s quite a lot its a good aoe type move to kill enemies in 1 area.

[Naneel.2348]

59 minutes ago, gandlethorpe.2641 said:

After a several hours wrapping my head around it, hammer is starting to grow on me.

 

Soloing champion mushroom king

Respect on that fight, looks really good and probably how this Spec should be played 😊

[MeyMey.1970]

After reading a lot of the comments to this thread, I find I agree on a lot of them. Such as:

1. increasing the range of the hammer
2. useless healing and utility skills
3. no point using f5 since you can rely on other professions for combo, hard to gain energy, etc. [really, i think this makes the class really useless, and scrap-worthy]

my additional take would be:

Immutable Stone: What's the point of gaining an aura depending on the attunement when clearly its only accessible by earth skills? So naturally isn't it always going to be auras from earth? unless you can weave other elements at the same time--but no.

Augments: no traits available. it takes too much time to get energy for f5 and the payoff to be able to cast the right skill with the right attunement is too hard. id rather just slot in a better utility than use this one

 

Overall Hammer: it felt like no one really thought about how to use this new spec and weapon. I feel like there was a deadline at the office to submit a new spec, and one of the people who are responsible, just glossed over previous guild wars builds and decided to go with a hammer and a flying ball that doesn't move, because they couldn't be bothered in thinking more from the hangover from last night's party. So they just submitted whatever, without so much as a research or internet browsing involved. Is the office politics really that bad? 

 

Highly subjective below:

 

For the Canthan feel, which i thought was based out of Asian inspirations from gw1, this was sorely lacking. There are jangshis, mikos, guqin, Hindu gods, folklore that they could have sourced for a new spec for ele, and none of this hammer-weilding-stuff ever came close to that. What a simple find, closely related to this was Uchide no kozuchi, which has a hammer in it. But that's it. No other similarities or inspirations can be drawn. Whoever thought of this at a concept level, needs more coffee. Since it was doomed at the start and just rolled over to a hot mess when i played it in beta. 

[Stallic.2397]

The time limits of this build are all wrong. It complicates the class even more so than weaver did. You constantly have to worry about Elemental Empowerment stacks, Hardened Aura stacks, when is your F5 full, when is the F5 off cooldown, is hammer 3 already over before I could apply another stack? Plus, you gotta make combos every few seconds to survive melee encounters and keep the train going. 

 

Ele players aren't computers, we still like to enjoy the piano play, rather than speeding through it.

 

Please increase all the durations of these traits-

    Hammer 3 lasts for 12 seconds- This way you can comfortably switch elements and keep the buff going

    Hammer 3 should also pulse damage in a 200 radius rather than only hit at 200 range. Change it to how primoridal stance works. 

    Hardened Auras- Each stack lasts for 10 seconds

    Empowering Auras- Each stack lasts for 10 seconds

    Jade Sphere- Remove the CD. The only thing that should worry the player is building up enough energy to start another F5. Also, think about making it move with the player because at the moment, it's still pretty sad of a mechanic, given it's immobility. If stationary, why only one well?? This is an elite spec. It's all about energy management anyway, so let the player create multiple wells! 

    Jade Sphere (Multiple Wells)- Each well costs 30 energy. They last for 20 seconds. Now you can cast at least 2 wells and it's up to the player to attack fast and keep the wells up. 

    Jade Sphere- The boon duration this mechanic pumps out is incredibly weak. Might gets 8 seconds but Resolution, Quickness and Prot only gets 1 second?? Makes no sense. A minimum of those boons should be 2.5 seconds. Core Ele was all about boons, much like Herald and Engi are. Buff the durations!

     Grand Finale- CD reduced to 8 sec. For some reason the flip over skill has a 20sec CD. But hammer 3 has an 18 second CD. There's honestly moments where you get all 4 elements going, but loose out on the Grant Finale cause it's not off CD. Lol 

 

All of the traits I just mentioned should have automatic renewal of stack duration when applying a new stack. Honestly, Catalyst has potential, but every buff is so limited by time limits that they don't add up to anything good. Even Dagger/Dagger, a very fast paced kit, can't keep up with the time limits. And Hammer is an even slower weapon. But it was supposed to be the main weapon that works best. It doesn't keep up.  

Edited September 23, 2021 by Stallic.2397
added more suggestions

[Zunki.3916]

38 minutes ago, Naneel.2348 said:

Respect on that fight, looks really good and probably how this Spec should be played 😊

I agree it looks hard to execute and very flashy and it's probably hard to see anything behind that visual noise it  creates. But then this here is core ele just using basically autoattack the most of the time doing it faster

Mushroom Challenge (streamable.com)

which might show the problem: hard to execute, still not really a lot of dmg.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Zunki.3916

[Naneel.2348]

4 minutes ago, Zunki.3916 said:

I agree it looks hard to execute and very flashy and it's probably hard to see anything behind that visual noise it  creates. But then this here is core ele just using basically autoattack the most of the time doing it faster

Mushroom Challenge (streamable.com)

which might show the problem: hard to execute, still not really a lot of dmg.

Wow that looks really boring, but I agree complex play should be rewarding.

[Zunki.3916]

Just now, Naneel.2348 said:

Wow that looks really boring, but I agree complex play should be rewarding.

Hahaha I don't actually play this spec. I just saw ppl posting Hydra and Mushroom challenges and was like "do ppl think that's actually a way of showing that something is viable?" But I guess they more wanted to show how cool it looks (which I agree, it does!).

To be honest Cata is the definition of complex is rewarding, at least in raids. The skill floor of that specc for dmg is probably a new level. I just dont think that ele desperately needed higher skill floor for dmg. I dont mind a high skill ceiling, but upping the floor feels wrong. But that's just me.

[gandlethorpe.2641]

Not every mob has a bug to abuse where it doesn't fight back

[Xaylin.1860]

The Catalyst overall

The Catalyst is... for a lack of a better word... weird. It's totally not what I was hoping for but I don't hate it. I do like the concept of the Sphere and unlike many others I actually had quite some fun playing with Hammer.

However, despite the fun I had, the ingame implementation of the Catalyst concept is all over the place for me. It does feel like the lost sibling of the Tempest. Maybe that's not a bad thing but from e-spec mechanic to traits I personally dislike the huge overlap. It is also a step down from Weaver and I am not talking numbers here, but sophistication in sideline progression/speccing. In the end, just like Tempest, it's yet another Elementalist+ with a visually appealing but rather unimpressive gimmick. It will most likely be playable. But it probably won't play much different. Where is the trade-off? Give core Elementalist some love already... Even if it's just something like "Transmute Arcane" F5 which universally transmutes Auras or whatever.

 

Jade Sphere

The Jade Sphere feels like a ranged energy-powered alteration of Overloads. I do like the Energy idea a lot and always wished that Tempest worked more like Warrior (but with elemental energy instead of Adrenaline). Jade Sphere kind of falls in line with this type of playstyle. The F5-well might not be great for roaming or WvW but I can see it's use at least for PvE and PvP. I also like the idea to use the F5 for Quickness even though this approach falls short to me due to the issues I see with F5.

Generally, the F5-skill and Energy system don't really seem to matter. I can put it into a rotation but unless I want Quickness I don't even notice. I don't have to worry about Energy as long as I'm not fighting a single target. It usually fills up fast enough anyway. So what's the point? Either make it relevant or ditch it. Additionally, there is one single trait for Energy. Why don't I gain Energy for combos? Or gaining Auras? And why is the Energy bar so unreasonably small?

To some extent, as others, I sadly find Hammer #3 more interesting and versatile than the current Jade Sphere field. Which is a pitty considering the wells themselves are nicely animated.

 

 

Hammer

I didn't do any number crunching so I won't comment on that. I really enjoy the switch in direction for Water and Earth. Fire is less exciting and Air neglectable aside from the Tornado which is quite fun. But that's about it.

However, I'm not sure what to use Hammer for aside from maybe trying to make a nichy Water/Ice damagy-build work. Hammer also feels unnecessarily handicapped when it comes combos and Auras which is very irritating when looking at the traits. Elemental Epitome looks like a band-aid for that. But... why? It just seems backwards to me.

Personally, I'm not looking for more range on Hammer. I'd rather see improvements for Staff and Scepter for that. For Hammer, I'd like ANet to lean more into the reversed roles of Attunements, like Water being more melee and damage etc.

 

 

Utilities

I've noticed that many people don't like them but personally, I don't think that all of them are that bad. None of them feel like they have the potential to be meta, but at least they somewhat fill some existing gaps. At this point in time, this is fine imho. However, I wonder why neither of them are combo finishers or fields. Yeah... we've got the sphere. But still.

 

 

Traits

I won't go through all of them individually since they are pretty straight-forward. Overall, most of the traits are just a stat bloat which is not very inspiring. They don't really effect your playstyle too much which at least should be the case for the GMs. It's still better than on Virtuoso or Adepts on Willbender but still not great. It's also a bit sad that you in most cases are probably inclined to go only top, only middle, only bottom to focus on one single feature instead picking traits based on a role or playstyle.

Let's start with Elemental Epitome: This is probably the most interesting trait on Catalyst mechanically. It opens up alternative options for Elemantalists to generate Auras. However, the gain Aura part feels like a band-aid for Hammer and imho is way too close to what Tempest does. Why make Auras such an important part of the spec? I don't get it.

 

Aura traits

The Aura traits are mainly non-boon copies of existing Aura traits. I don't really like it. Staunch Auras is kind of interesting but might as well just be in Earth or even in Tempest. I'd rather see all of them be removed from Catalyst for someting block or CC-centric to gain those effects.

 

Empowering traits

Oh baby... just as Empowered Empowerment repeats itself: nice things are nice. And stats are almost always nice. But are they fun? Not really. If Catalyst is about comboing, why don't I gain Empowerments (or Energy) when comboing? Why do I gain Empowerment by evading but not by blocking?

 

Sphere traits

The Sphere traits are fine but not very interesting. Mostly because F5 doesn't seem to matter too much. Energy feels irrelevant. And in case I want to provide Quickness, I'll probably just pick the Boon duration and don't care about anything else. Why aren't there more options for Energy generation? Why does no trait effect the "Recall Jade Sphere" skill? For example, refund some Energy... and if Auras are here to stay grant a corresponding Aura?

 

 

Personally, I feel that Catalyst would benefit from a trait layout comparable to Bladesworn where you'll have to decide on how to use your mechanic based on the Grandmaster trait. There still could be Auras. There still could be unique effects even though I don't think we need three stacking effects.

[ClickToKill.8473]

49 minutes ago, MeyMey.1970 said:

Immutable Stone: What's the point of gaining an aura depending on the attunement when clearly its only accessible by earth skills? So naturally isn't it always going to be auras from earth? unless you can weave other elements at the same time--but no.

 

 

Just chiming in on this.  The way that skill works is it takes time for the finisher to execute, so if you are in F5, you can switch attunement before it expires and gain that aura. 

[Zunki.3916]

21 minutes ago, gandlethorpe.2641 said:

Not every mob has a bug to abuse where it doesn't fight back

Really? This is your argument? Here we go again...

Insane Mushrooming (streamable.com)

I used utilities this time (only instantcast ones to keep the skillfloor REALLY low), still only one weaponskill and still faster even with some major hickups.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Zunki.3916

[gandlethorpe.2641]

15 minutes ago, Zunki.3916 said:

Really? This is your argument? Here we go again...

Insane Mushrooming (streamable.com)

I used utilities this time (only instantcast ones to keep the skillfloor REALLY low), still only one weaponskill and still faster even with some major hickups.

 

Sounds like you didn't read this part then

 

2 hours ago, gandlethorpe.2641 said:

And I know some other professions can pew pew this thing down easily with a few buttons, that's not the point. This is the damage it can do without even considering the strong AoE boon support.

In any case, it sounds like you've got the perfect build that does it all, so what do you need catalyst for?

Edited September 23, 2021 by gandlethorpe.2641

[Poseidon.1839]

2 hours ago, Naneel.2348 said:

Respect on that fight, looks really good and probably how this Spec should be played 😊

Great job but still honestly you could do the same job if not way better as a tempest or a weaver..

[fixit.7189]

some of my humble suggestions:

- swap f5 and skill 3

- increase well energy gain

- increase well duration

- make wells follow the ele

- increase well size

- shorten earth 2s channel

- shorten air 2s channel

- put bleed damage on earth 1

- increase bleed damage on earth 2

- increase bleed damage on earth 5

- increase duration of the spinning orbs or make them last until grand finale is used

- make water 5 a whirl finisher

- make hardened auras/empowered aura traits easier to proc/maintain

- make empowerment traits easier to proc/maintain

- increase burning damage on 4 or make it a field(?)

edit1. obviously, power damage has to be tuned down a bit to compensate for increases in condi effectiveness: i'd like to see a balance where power and condi builds can both be viable options. right now, only power is far as i can tell. also, all these suggestions might make catalyst super OP so take them with a grain of salt: i am no numbers guy. lol!

edit2. in it's current state, i would only unlock catalyst for the achievement and then go back to tempest/weaver. i really dislike super complex piano rotations: catalyst makes condi weaver look easy which is insane to me. also keep in mind that those 44k+ bench marks floating around are on a stationary target so the chance you can replicate this amount of damage in a moving fight is going to be very hard to do.

Edited September 23, 2021 by fixit.7189
speeling/grammar/additions

[Gomes.5643]

After the bladesworn and the Vindicator I also took a Catalyst to the drizzlewood coast (that eventchains there are actually quite fun, should go more often there) and I must say that I dont get the spec. I certainly had the least fun with it.

 

Part of the problem is that I in general have not a good flow with the elementalist as all that skill variation leads me to press buttons as quickly as possible to get as many skills out as possible with results in more stress than fun .....

 

While the other two specs were in a decent spot but with a few mechanical points that hopefully will change to make the flow better in the case of the catalyst I unfortunately dont even know where to start. Some points which killed the fun for me but i honestly have no clue how to adress them:

 

- I like to play ranged (as in melee I tend to die quite a lot) which means that I have to decide if i put the orb to the enemy or on top of me. In both cases i sacrifice something (dmg or boons) and because of all that movement in a normal fight that AoE feels pretty useless regardless what i do.

- Hammer 3 is a cool idea but disappears to quickly - which results in pressing buttons as fast as .... no know the drill

- the "adrenalin" -mech feels kinda tacked on with no real impact - outside that i need to wait before placing the orb

- traits do not really have an overarching theme but feel like 3 mechanics glued together (but all specs until now have that problem)

[Seresibyl.2874]

The only thing I don't get is why I would want to play Catalyst over the others.

 

I mean, if I want to play support - Tempest is pretty supporty. It's also fluid and elegant.  

If I want to play complex damage - Weaver can fill that role pretty well.

 

What do I pick Catalyst for? And yeah, I am sure you can name off a billion things I'd pick them for... but really, is it something that somebody WOULD pick them for? 

[crosknight.3041]

23 hours ago, crosknight.3041 said:

it's already taken me to long to type up these ideas so going to skip traits for now, def would like to replace the aura traits with more combo finisher traits though and enhance the jade sphere effecting traits,
 

im back and now im going to talk about my criticisms of the traits (you can find the rest of my criticisms and potential fixes on page 12)

now for the traits. IMO the minors and the middle line "Vicious Empowerment" "Evasive Empowerment" and "Empowered Empowerments" are fine enough the way they are. another fine trait would be "Energizing Elements" and would be great with my proposed jade sphere fixes in my previous post (again page 12).

now for the traits that imo need fixing and my proposed fixes.
first off, i still feel catalyst should go full force into combo-ing, so i think the top trait lines should tie into the combo focus instead of auras. replace the "when you gain an aura" effects to "when you combo". continuing along the top line, the grand master is quite boring. i would add onto it to improve combo effects, for example blasting a water field heals for double the normal amount.
secondly i agree with the bottom traits being focused on improving the jade sphere. i'd change the effects of  "Spectacular sphere" to trigger on attunment swap. again with the grandmaster it's boring. a 50% increase to boons is kinda dull. i'd add in that augments you use while jade sphere is active have their effects granted to allies within your jade sphere area.

[ledernierrempart.6871]

20 hours ago, Josspai.4356 said:

At this point I'm seriously thinking that our three new skill types (jade spheres, hammer orbs and augments) are actually good ideas but in the wrong places...

 

- Orbs should be the F5 mechanic instead of a random weapon skill, so every class gets access to them, extend their duration, it encourages constant attunement swap.

- Jade Spheres could become utilities and be considered as well skills, so we can get access to those beautiful combo fields on every weapon (and since they're utilities, we can choose to deploy the fire phoenix while in water attunement and even deploy more than one at a time). Think Scrapper gyros.

- Augments can now become the Hammer 3 skills, just make them work on any appropiate combo field (so relentless fire makes your attacks unblockable when used on ANY fire field, not just jade sphere ones).

this is actually a very good idea.
i'll add some range change on a few hammer skills like air 5 and 2 which needs to have a bigger range, some damage/condi increase and a few blast/leap/whirlwind finisher. (whirlwind on air 2 and earth 2, blast on fire 5, leap on water 4) with some additional animation speed. (earth being too slow to use)

[TheDarkness.6947]

I’ve only messed around with Catalyst a little bit.  I’m not interested in it at all.

 

Why, Anet, why, would you take a profession that people obviously choose because they want to play an elemental caster and give it yet another melee weapon with poor damage output,  a spec that has no synergy, and also make sure there are no good sustain options on the already squishiest class? There are plenty of professions that players would logically choose if they wanted to play melee and its not ele.  Why go down this road, again?

 

I used to think people were being cynical when they said that Anet hates ele.  It didn’t really make any logical sense that a company would hate one of its own designs.  But I’m really starting to think there’s some truth to it.

 

Please listen to the many pages of feedback above.  Delete this and start over.

[Bleikopf.2491]

3 hours ago, Zunki.3916 said:

which might show the problem: hard to execute, still not really a lot of dmg.

Good to see they're sticking to the basics of Ele lol.

[Erebus Ashsworn.9476]

The cooldown and energy charge up required to use the jade sphere implies it's a very powerful ability. It really didn't feel worth the payoff, and the cast is easily interrupted by other skills or character actions unintentionally. In practice it the Jade Sphere in its current state feels almost inconsequential. The uptime is really short and hammer doesn't offer many ways to interact with the fields it creates, which makes the apparent focus on fields feel a little baffling. I have great trouble understanding why the Jade Sphere requires both energy charge AND a 15s CD.

 

I didn't get a sense of what the intended gameplay was meant to be for the Catalyst. There are some ideas, but at the moment they don't seem to fit together very well. I expected way more lean-in on field-based gameplay given the profession mechanic, but it doesn't seem to be there. Augments are also fairly weak utilities slightly boosted by a synchronised Sphere, but with the Sphere's short uptime the opportunity cost and small payoff of taking Augments is too great compared to much stronger baseline utilities.

 

Hammer skills feel undertuned and could use more weight. I'm okay with hammer skills being slower if they have impact (and I feel like hammer skills, if anything, should have IMPACT). I mean, in Destiny 2 you can be a maul-wielding warrior who creates flaming tornados by slamming your hammer into the ground. The only current skills I really felt had that sense of impact at the moment is Air 5 with that sense of lobbing a slow but powerful projectile.

 

Strangely, no traits seem to affect the Jade Sphere at all. Whereas Bladesworn's GM traits offer you different flavours of Dragon Trigger use, the Catalyst traits in this beta felt as if they were for a completely different spec altogether.

 

Catalyst needs work to figure out how to make all the pieces fit together and synergise. Ele is a complex class and carries extra design challenges because of the base mechanics, and it shows a lot in the current state. I don't envy the designers on this one.

[azarhal.3086]

I finally looked at the utilities more in-depths and they really are worst version of things core Elementalist already has access to. I'm starting to think that the F5 fields should be moved to the utility slots and be - elemental- Summons (see Renegade's Summons) that still do pretty much what they are doing now but boosted because Summons can be killed/CCed...

Then fix Hammer 3 before you redo the Scourge PoF release fiasco: nerf everything to the ground instead of fixing the actual problem. Read the 1st issue highlighted in this Reddit post to know why and what you have to fix: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/ptcm9q/pve_only_the_currently_2_biggest_problems_with/

I personally would suggest to just remove the orbs. F5 should be a skill(s) that exploit the Catalyst main features (based on the trait line): Auras.  We call those augments. Keep the energy/jade Sphere, but make it work more like Warrior's burst skills: more Energy = bigger payoff from using the F5 skill.

And put some fields/mobility/defensive on the Hammer 3 slots freed. It needs it. Just like it needs finishers not on ~30 seconds cooldowns.

Then we will have a proper elemental spirit Shaman identity for Catalyst.

Edited September 23, 2021 by azarhal.3086

[Kain Francois.4328]

5 hours ago, Rising Blade.9206 said:

hammer feels like just a bastardized version of D/D while D/D feels like it fits the spec a lot more than the weapon it's introduced with,

This has been my impression. Daggers are faster, and have WAY more access to both auras AND combo finishers.

What can hammer do? Well... it does damage, and can melee in water... That's pretty much it.

The really weird thing is that hammer has a bunch of skills that seem like they'd make leaps or whirl finishers, but they aren't.

 

Philosophical question: Is it necessary for Hammer to be deigned around quickly swapping around elements, rather than the element you need for a particular situation? In D/D, you swap like crazy to get access to auras and blast finishers. However it might be awkward if Hammer occupies the same niche.

 

Hypothesis: It is okay if something other than the elite spec weapon synergizes better with its mechanics. Dragonhunters use Greatsword instead of Longbow in PvE, yet it's one of the highest praised elite spec designs. Hammer should NOT replace the niche of other weapons!

 

Proposal: Design Hammer around camping a specific element, rather than swapping. Since the autoattacks all have different ranges, we should swap to the one we need, otherwise the rotation simply places us in melee. This should harmonize with our Orb Mechanic. For example, since Air Orb is designed around maintaining Quickness,  and Static Fields, the kit should have Leap Finishers in order to CC, a projectile finisher on auto to proc Vulnerability, and possibly even Heals to support your team. Whereas since Water and Earth Elements are front-line melee, it should compliment the "bruiser" promise and provide a lot of passive defenses and sustain. Conjure Thunder Hammer has Blast Finisher on the third auto. Perhaps this could be a fun synergy with 3rd Water Hammer auto and our Water Field Orb Mechanic in order to sustain?  Obviously not all of my ideas may be good here. But the point is I want to see a unique niche.

 

Hammer 3 Rework: Reworking Hammer 3 is a popular idea in this thread. However, it's kinda bad if you don't continuously swap elements each second, with a very little payoff. Perhaps it should be considered that camping an element increases the effects, rather than dissipating?

 

Personal Request: I really want a spec designed around embracing Earth Attunement.  Let me be a bulky juggernaut, like the earth elemental creatures we fight.

[RasSativa.5109]

First of all, i like the hammer skills, some feel clunky but i dont mind it. I play a lot of specs with hammer and ele’s hammer isnt the worst of them.

 

For the jade sphere: it misses something that makes me wanne utilize the skill, either it could follow you or you can overlap elemental fields and make 4 fields of elemental boons. 
 

the utility skills feel of and dont see a real good reason to use them.

 

this specs feels like a good boon support/bruiser type. But it misses it mark. I see some high dmg being dealt but thats not with catalyst skills.

 

For me catalyst could be saved by tweaking hammer a bit, but not a lot.

make jade sphere a combo field of a duration where you can place more fields of another element. or make it follow you

 

fix the utlity skills to either enhance the combo fields and give them dmg, boons or more duration. Or completely rework the skills.

 

 

[Sorasnobody.9350]

Beginning notes ---------------------------------------------------------------

The class concept as a whole is really interesting and fun! It’s a nice take on Elementalist. Despite it being mostly melee, it still feels different to Weaver and I do love the class mechanics overall. Visually, stunning! The sphere mechanic feels really nice again as a CONCEPT. However, I feel a lot of Catalyst just needs some better execution or synergy as it feels a little all over the place at the moment. Please keep in mind that I will give my feedback from the perspective of open world PvE/Solo. Please also note I won’t be saying “I want this to be able to give every boon and murder everything in 30 seconds” as I aren’t requesting every spec to be powerhouses that can sustain themselves solo as well as doing high DPS. Before you read on as well, do know I am not expecting class overhauls with my feedback. Proposed changes that I will give I feel are plausible and can be met in the time frame before EoD.

 

Catalyst sphere + class mechanics ---------------------------------------------------------------

When I saw this ability and what it was to do in it’s concept video I screamed because it looked amazing! This sphere that channels ancient magic to explode an area of immense power that you’d attune with and bunker down in. It felt like the area you deploy your sphere was supposed to be very powerful. However, upon playing with Catalyst and using the sphere...I can safely say it feels very underwhelming. It does less damage than an auto attack on pulse, gives little boons, even if you trait Spectacular Sphere and Sphere Specialist. It stays up for 10 seconds or so, even when you’re full on bashing enemies with every skill you have. There is no chance of keeping it up for a really extended period. It is on a 15 second cooldown so if you accidentally place it in the wrong place then you’re kittened as withdrawing it consumes ALL remaining energy. It’s actual radius is really small too so sharing the boons becomes a lot more tighter as everyone needs to always be directly on you and you can’t for example, cancel the Sphere during a split mechanic then summon it again once the mechanic ends due to its extensive cooldown period. 

 

It has no UI visual identity; I can hardly see what energy I’m at and it doesn’t feel that special in the UI. When I’ve been playing with it in the open world I’ve sometimes forgotten about the sphere entirely as I haven’t felt like I’ve been missing it being up. With the sphere being the class mechanic and it feeling this...not useless but under-performing, it’s kinda sad. The energy system I do like a lot-generating it-not so much. I feel the energy the sphere needs to keep up is decent but then you can’t generate it too much to keep it up for a longer period especially when you’re solo/in the open world as you might be dodging attacks so you are losing time where you are attacking so your sphere disappears even faster. My initial thoughts using sphere summed up to it just being a glorified combo field on low duration and a really long cooldown that can throw a few boons out here and there. I feel I’m being very critical of the sphere but I so badly want it to feel impactful and right now it just feels like an extra effort to even make use of it.

 

Trait ---------------------------------------------------------------

I will say that I didn’t feel much pain coming from the traits. Of course I only really ran with Vicious Empowerment, Spectacular Sphere and Sphere Specialist to up my own boon income when solo. Elemental Empowerment is a really nice class trait. Bonus to all your traits while in combat just helps on all fronts and the traits that give you more stacks of this are nice to run as well. One thing I would say from overviewing traits is that this class does shine only really in group content for max potential. I know that is the case for all specs but most can handle themselves and do well when solo. I feel Catalyst’s damage from traits DEMANDS group content. Elemental Epitome is nice to generate auras and gain a stack of the buff. With it being 10 seconds per attunement allows for you to make good use of it. With Sphere not lasting long though, it does enforce this playstyle of manically pressing buttons to get combos finished in each attunement while the Sphere is active to get maximum use. The increased damage and damage reduction traits from gaining auras is actually really nice to go alongside the class considering they focus so much around combos but  again you run into the same issues with sphere not being able to last long enough and it taking too long to come back. A lot of these could just be solo situation issues so could be overlooked and I wouldn’t mind that for the most part. An issue with some traits is not them, but the fact sphere feels even more underwhelming without them. To make the sphere even feel useful, Spectacular Sphere and Sphere Specialist have to be taken otherwise popping Sphere just feels like a waste of time right now. Again, I feel a lot of my trait gripes are mainly focused around solo play. The traits in a raw format for the class in group situations serve a better purpose.

 

Utilities ---------------------------------------------------------------

I haven’t got a lot to say about these for the simple fact I haven’t used them, but that alone concerns me. None of the utilities to me feel useful. A lot of core elementalist utilities feel twice as useful, especially ones that allow for combo finishing to get more combos completed for Elemental Empowerment. I feel bad to use the utilities without having the sphere up and in the right attunement, which again poses a problem due to the limited sphere uptime and it’s lengthy cooldown. Along with that, they again have this following issue that the entire spec has where they feel underwhelming. Overall, I wanted the augmented versions of these spells again to feel very powerful as you have to make sure A) you are using them when your sphere is up and B) make sure you are in the right element to make full use of them and they are again something you can just ignore and run core ele utilities.

 

Soothing Waters > is just a pseudo Ether Renewal. It does similar healing on a longer cooldown. If traited Ether renewal can be an even lower cooldown. Soothing waters can only provide some of Ether renewal’s strength when you augment it in water which again has the issue of low sphere uptime and long cooldowns. (I’ll mention this as the occuring issue for the other utilities save repeating myself)

 

Fortified Earth > feels poor as the more defensive utility that all specs tend to have. It’s very niche in how it could provide utility and the barrier doesn’t really provide that much so it doesn’t feel rewarding to augment it, along with it facing the occurring issue.

 

Invigorating Air > is just like eh? This class doesn’t really have any mechanics that tie into dodging so more endurance feels a bit out of place. I guess Evasive Empowerment works with this but again that is very niche. I feel it would make more sense for this to give another secondary effect and move it’s break stun to Fortified Earth to make that a powerful break stun. Again, it faces the occurring issues and just to get a bit of superspeed. Sure, some situations this would feel good but very limited functionality.

 

Shattering Ice > feels like a very weak impossible odds with the augment skill make the hits do chill instead? Feels underwhelming again as I don’t think many people scream with joy at the fact they can inflict chill with a few extra hits.

 

Relentless fire > is a nice damage booster for sure and I like that it doesn’t just add extra strike/condition damage, it is a straight up damage increase so nice for hybrid builds. However, it being on a 5 second duration again makes it really niche to use. You really have to consider when you want to use it to make the most out of it and with some hammer skills taking a while to cast and it’s general clunkiness these 5 seconds feel a little wasted no matter the situation. If you compare Soul barbs or Inspiring virtues to this, they just give you almost the same amount of damage increase as this does and they are just there passively.

 

Hammer ---------------------------------------------------------------

I love this weapon A LOT! It feels really fun. The visuals again are amazing on it and I feel every attunement has an array of skills that match their element. My issue with the hammer is it feels a little slow and clunky. It doesn’t have too many combo finishers that are easily accessible and some that it does have other more important functions when solo.They are either 25/30 second cooldowns and one of them is one of the two CC skills you have on hammer and one is your strongest solo heal aside from your utility so you don’t want to be using them aggressively at full health just to complete combo finishers. A smaller note too, the hammer doesn’t have much CC. I kind of expected it to have quite a lot of CC considering the type of weapon it is, maybe on really long cooldowns but still, I thought it would have more. Even Ground Pound being a knockdown would have fit quite well as all your CC is ALSO locked to just air with one of them being the giga yeet skill that I feel is gonna murder a lot of Catalysts in certain raid mechanics. It also shoves you really far away and you don’t have a great way of getting back into the fight which just feels counter-intuitive. 

 

Earth > I get earth attunement is meant to feel very slow as it’s this immovable mountain of a playstyle with hammer but whirling stones (2) feels SO LONG to a point where I never bother to use it. The auto attack also feels a little lacklustre. I never really had time to use Immutable Stone as I was panicking about keeping up orbs (more on that later).

Water > Cleansing Typhoon feels dull; very little damage for the trade off of cleansing a couple conditions on a 25 second cooldown, I can just run cleansing sigil and clear way more than this skill ever will. Crashing Font is nice healing, but I dislike the fact it’s tied to more targets to get maximum effectiveness.

Fire/Air > I actually love all the skills from these attunements. They feel powerful and serve a purpose. Hurricane of pain is such a nice flavour skill. It’s also nice you can cast it while moving. (This goes for whirling stones too, the movement is really good!). The only skill that kinda makes me grumble a bit is Molten End for the same reasoning as Crashing Font.

 

Now the biggest irk I have with hammer is the third skill. It is such a fun skill, but I get anxious even using it because if I press one wrong button (whirling stone for example) after using skill 3 I will just lose the orb before I can swap attunement. I know to a degree that the issue is my own as I aren’t using my skills in a proper priority but the time that the orb stays up feels really low. Especially in the open world where I might get CC chained or get the slow condition so I can’t activate the next orb in time. Shooting all four orbs into a target feels great but getting to that point is tricky in most cases outside of instanced PvE content (fractals/raids).

 

Issues with clashing class mechanics ---------------------------------------------------------------

I’ve kind of been wanting to throw elements of this section into the others but I decided to group it together to better explain it as a whole. So if we consider the sphere, you gain different boons for swapping between all four mechanics, now you might want to just focus on one boon. In this example, we will go with quickness as we all love it so we will be camping in air sphere. Sure, you can do that, nothing wrong with it right? Wrong. If you are using the CLASS WEAPON you must swap between all elements to make full use of it to start up all the orbs then swap back to air to launch them but you are missing quickness during the time when swapping to fire/earth/water so that need to camp one attunement actually hinders you, as the class weapon is saying “yeah go between all four to get Grand Finale ready”. One part is pulling you one way, and the other is pulling you another way. Also if you are camping air on hammer for example, you have one combo finisher despite this class wanting to combo finish a ton. 

 

The Jade Sphere drains energy a bit like Warrior’s adrenaline but even when you are doing a full rotation under the effect of quickness you can’t keep up energy to match the depletion rate so you’ll never be able to keep up the sphere 100% of the time and I feel that’s how the sphere was intended to work so you can keep dominance/control of the space you drop it down at as the sphere is meant to be the big powerful class mechanic. As I’ve mentioned multiple times, the class revolves around spamming auras/combo finishing to gain stacks of Elemental Empowerment as well as extra damage and damage reduction from aura stacking through traits but the class’ utilities do nothing like that and the augment effects that we currently get for getting correct combos just feel useless and pointless at supporting the core class mechanic of combo finishing. 

 

Open world/solo play ---------------------------------------------------------------

You can skip this section if you want as it’s more focused on my findings while trying this out solo against tough hero points. For context, on full celestial loadouts I’ve had 1 minute 5,10 and 20 kills on the champion vinetooth at Eastwatch in Auric Basin on Mirage, Renegade, Firebrand and recently Tempest. The main one to consider here is Tempest. I revisited Catalyst with some slight trait swaps and the overall experience felt bearable, not good or great, but bearable. If I had a sigil of strength I would have kept 25 might which is good. Fury, protection, regen I had good uptime of as well. I ran earth/arcane so I could facilitate using sigils offensively and having lower attunement cooldowns to compensate for the Sphere not lasting long enough (in the sense of needing to swap to multiple attunements to combo finish for Elemental Epitome) so I lost out on fire for damage. Making use of Elemental Empowerment/Epitome made the experience feel a lot better but still not up to scratch with other specs. There are certain things you need to go with currently to make the Sphere feel/act good which hinders your damage overall. I had initially felt Catalyst couldn’t solo at all on it’s own but with some changes it can solo, but it isn’t strong like its counterpart specs in my opinion. Tempest still feels stronger to me. 

 

Another sad reality is I had the best experience when I WASN’T using the hammer. Dagger/focus is my best suggestion for solo. Scepter felt nice but earth dagger skills felt more useful to me and dagger main hand provides more CC to break bars with ease. I did try out the hammer more once I felt I had a better understanding of the class as well as proccing Elemental Empowerment but I just got downed in seconds. I even made sure to time skills to let me keep up orbs but then once I got into Jade Sphere, as I’d used the ONLY combo finishers in fire and earth that the hammer has to just dps with, I had nothing to combo finish so I wasn’t making great use of Elemental Epitome. Hammer overall needs some love because I want it to be strong and useful with it being the spec’s weapon but it doesn’t bring much. It’s healing is also negatable. Dagger/focus can use Cone of Cold and also blast finish with Frozen Burst for extra healing and dagger/dagger has way more sustain in water and you don’t have to use any of it offensively unlike the hammer.

I know right now Catalyst is not in a great state so I am still keeping my opinions split. With a few changes/buffs to Sphere I feel Catalyst would be as strong as Tempest, if not better in situations. 

 

Aside from soloing tough content, Catalyst feels weak at the moment in general combat. Veterans take me like 20 seconds plus on some occasions and that just feels really embarrassing. Regular mobs I have to throw about 5 to 6 skills at to kill which doesn’t sound like much but I can use 1 or 2 skills on other specs and just melt regular mobs so it feels really deflating when I can’t even nuke regular mobs that well. 

 

Proposed changes ---------------------------------------------------------------

Hammer

Speed up whirling stone. It doesn’t need to be much but it needs to be faster otherwise it will remain clunky and feel like a “oh kitten I’ve pressed this skill now, kitten” skill. Give Stonestrike a little bit of bleeding to give it a bit of extra spice. Singeing strike has burning on it and that is an auto attack too, it would make sense and also it stays quite true to the conditions that earth inflicts. Give Cleansing Typhoon some second effect; maybe it could give regeneration when it hits targets or even gives healing to allies in an area so hammer can give some outgoing healing as Crashing Font in self-healing. Let Triple Sear be a fire field for more combo finishing as this class in its current state does make good use of combos. With the Grand Finale counterparts (each attunements skill 3) I feel they need an uptime increase to 7.5 seconds or just a flat double in their duration so it allows for more fluidity in the rotation. I know orbs are easier cast with quickness and you can give self quickness through your air sphere but that can be a bit janky in the open world. The rotation from what I’ve seen on benchmarks is already like smashing a piano so making orbs easier to manage wouldn’t over inflate the damage this spec can do overall. 

 

More combo finishing potential; right now you have Molten End (25s), Crashing Font (20s and is also the only healing you have on hammer so using it offensively hurts), Shock Blast (25s and is also one of the two CCs you have access to on the hammer, not great to waste it) and Ground Pound (30s). All the current ones are either way too long of a cooldown or they have some secondary purpose that makes them too good to just waste on combo finishing. Singeing Strike and Wind Slam could both be projectile finishers, Whirling Stone could be a whirl finisher as could Cleansing Typhoon. The hammer seems to have the same amount of combo finishers as most other weapons and considering this class relies heavily on combo finishing I think that should validate more potential to complete combos.

 

Shift away from multiple targets being the most rewarding. Specifically I am meaning Crashing Font and Molten End. If we consider it, when are we fighting 4 or 5 mobs for an extended period? Never. Raids have singular mobs, fractals have singular bosses and trash packs that die in seconds. Even when I was solo in the open world I was fighting 1v1 vs hard hero points. The only time I fight against multiple mobs is zerg farming and you won’t even run a hammer there anyway as it will be awful for tagging. Instead I propose that these two skills have a diminishing return. The first target hit gives a bigger reward and then extra targets you hit give less of a reward so even when you’re fighting 1v1 you will have better use with a hammer.

 

Utilities

They need more effects, something to make them feel useful to use over against other utilities. Extra damage, conditions and boons or they could even allow for more combo fields/finishers so there are more opportunities to combo overall. As mentioned before, move the break stun to Fortified Earth as Invigorating Air just feels like a pseudo “Eye of the storm!”. Soothing Waters needs to do more; lower base cooldown, more healing or make the augement effect do more to make it a worthwhile heal. Their augmented abilities could create blast finishers which in effect pairs them beautifully with the Jade Sphere as you will gain an augmented effect and also be rewarded with a combo finisher for more chances at proccing Elemental Epitome.

 

Traits

I would like a trait that gives augments an extra effect and/or lower cooldown so they feel more connected to the class as they just feel very isolated as skills right now despite them being implemented to combo with the class’ core mechanic. Sphere Specialist reducing the cooldown of the Jade Sphere would also be nice to really empower the sphere so you can be throwing it out quite regularly to make use of it. Or if not a flat % reduction, make it so when you cancel the sphere early you get refunded some of the cooldown so you can use your sphere more strategically.

 

Jade Sphere/energy

Jade Sphere needs a reduced cooldown. I don’t mind it’s limited uptime if that’s how they want it to be but 15 seconds is way too long. 10 seconds base would be good and then it could be traited to be even faster as sometimes I found myself just sitting at max energy with still a 9 second cooldown on my sphere which felt sad. Being able to move the sphere’s location would be really good too (although this specific suggestion might be leaning a bit too much towards overhauling instead of just tweaks). My second and final bigger suggestion that stretches into the realms of mini-overhaul is somehow making it so you could command which attunement you want your sphere in. At the end of the day, you are this all powerful Catalyst that imbues the sphere with magic. This way you could choose to keep your sphere in air attunement to get your quickness blasting whilst swapping attunements to build up your hammer’s Grand Finale, resulting in the hammer’s swapping mechanic and sphere’s camping mechanic both working together at the same time. Swap the pulsing trait to regeneration for water. Resolution seemed interesting at the time but I have next to no regen unless I start traiting into it through arcane whereas most Elementalist specs get regeneration for free. It’d also help the survivability of the spec in general.

 

Remove the little lockout on deploying the sphere when you swap attunement. I have gone to swap to fire quickly to deploy it in fire to get more might but that like almost 2 second lockout makes it feel even more clunky and I’m not sure what purpose this serves. I know it’s the attunement cooldown lockout but I would consider the sphere to be on a different wavelength to the attunements for a catalyst in importance. 

 

Sphere itself needs to be more impactful; even if they keep it at a similar cooldown/duration as it is right now, it needs to feel like it’s making a difference besides dropping a combo field. Up the strike damage it does in each pulse. I am running full celestials so I don’t have as much power as zerkers but its flat damage is at about 280 per pulse with 0 might which is less than an auto attack so right now it may as well not be there.

Fire - Add pulsing burning damage, quite plausible when you consider the thematic of fire attunement for Elementalist 

Water - Add pulsing conditions, one of the following: vulnerability, chill or slow. Or even make it pulse healing instead of conditions to fit with water’s supportive nature.

Air - Add pulsing conditions, one of the following: weakness or vulnerability (if water gave this, air wouldn’t)

Earth - Add pulsing conditions, one of the following: bleeding or poison (fits with the combo field it provides being a poison field).

 

Now onto energy, I think firstly, it needs more visualisation. It’s a tiny little bar over the F5 skill whereas Revenant/Druid/Warrior/Holosmith get proper visuals for their energy so they know it’s about to go down or they know when to use it. There have been multiple times where I’ve been desperately fighting to survive and do decent damage while solo and I haven’t even realised my sphere has gone as the energy indicator is too small and I am too focused on the mob and staying alive. Similarly, I’ve sometimes forgotten to even use the sphere with it feeling under-performing right now but also as I haven’t even noticed I’m at full energy and ready to deploy it. The small energy bar above it just feels sloppy and a bit of a last minute addition as if building energy wasn’t actually intended for the spec. Increase how much you get from strikes to help better build up the energy. They could even add it where condition ticks give 0.25 energy per tick. Condi Ele applies bleed and burning so that would be 0.5 per tick plus strikes to give more energy while fighting. With this in mind they could keep the sphere at 2 energy per second to upkeep, allowing for us to keep up longer on the field. In contrast, they could just lower the energy cost to upkeep the sphere allowing for just strikes to generate enough energy to keep the Sphere up for longer. Don’t punish Catalyst’s for withdrawing the sphere either. Eating all the energy when you withdraw it feels very painful in its current state. 

 

Overall right now with the Jade Sphere, I just feel it needs more. Not full on class rework level but something more because I’ll be honest when I’ve tried Catalyst I’ve felt like not even bothering to summon my sphere. It provides boons and combo fields, yes, but as it’s at the core of the spec I don’t think those two things alone give it enough reason to feel this bad.

 

External accounts --------------------------------------------------------------- 

Not to solidify what I’m saying is right, but I just thought it’d be worth sharing this here. I’ve obviously spoken to a lot of my guild mates about the issues with Catalyst too and they’ve agreed in most cases. I wanted to add some quotes of what they’ve said to me about it just for more perspectives on Catalyst too as I have seen that Catalyst is not in a very loved state at the moment amongst a lot of the community. I spoke with them and they said they’d just like to remain anonymous which is fair so I’ll just post them as guildie A,B, etc.

 

Guildie A)

Quote

 

“To me it feels like Catalyst was originally designed to be able to have 100% uptime on Jade Sphere as long as they stayed near it. That way it would make sense that, for example, there aren't any combo fields on the hammer. The sphere was supposed to provide that. But then during development someone thought that 100% uptime was OP and they added a tradeoff in the form of energy. But that makes no sense (to me at least) because the tradeoff was obviously supposed to be that the sphere is stationary, and if you want to move positions you have to deal with a long cooldown. When I was watching the demo, I imagined it as the kind of spec where you bunker down at a strategic spot and, after a bit of buildup, nuke everything that tries to approach you. Which would be extremely useful in certain situations, like protecting camps during VB night meta or things like that. But the way it is now, that doesn't work because your bunker evaporates after a couple of seconds and you don't really have a way to compensate. Resulting in a spec that doesn't really have a good purpose / niche anymore.” 

“Personally I'm just hoping that they remove the energy requirement from Jade Sphere asap, like during the current beta? Because I feel like that mechanic kittens up the rest of the class so badly I can't even test it properly atm.”

 

 

Guildie B)

Quote

“Profession mechanic really needs tweaking. It's close, but numbers don't match in a way that it would be fun to use. Making them last longer and getting them up faster will definitely be needed if anyone is really going to play it unless some exploit is found. Other than that it seems to bring fair amount of just raw damage, using it with fire gives you plenty of passive damage so that feels really nice. With cele scepter build i was able to hit over 10k burn ticks on champs. it felt good to play, but with fixed profession mechanic it will definitely be much better. Survivability is also a problem for me, but that might be just because I am bad with elementalist.”

 

Guildie C)

Quote

 

“they really gotta buff the sphere time or smth, it feels so useless most of the time

it's a main profession skill and yet they managed to make it feel almost like an afterthought or like you have to commit to 1 element or like no more than 2 if you want the full value from it depending on what you're trying to do with it”

“but I really like the design of it even more if they can just execute it properly”

“also feels extremely underpowered, literally went to a dps golem, put all boons on, and I was still hitting like a wet noodle”

“But at least for catalyst I hope they make condi more viable, cuz hammer even feels like it could be a decent condi weapon but it just seems like you're putting feathers on enemies to tickle them.”

 

 

Conclusion ---------------------------------------------------------------

To wrap up, please know that I ain’t bashing the class despite what you might think. I do really like Catalyst and I have enjoyed playing and testing it (and this is coming from a Revenant main of about 2 years and I have hardly touched Vindicator due to being enthralled with Catalyst). It does have a lot of potential too. In most cases it does require a good understanding of Elementalist and their weapon skills to combo finish a lot to build up Elemental Epitome to keep Elemental Empowerment up. It has the core foundations to really be an amazing class but it needs some work and adjustments. Despite how much I gave in my proposal for changes, a lot of them are quite small and I do 100% feel Catalyst doesn’t need much to be an amazing spec.