Catalyst Feedback Thread

[Noobing.3085]

Long-winded breakdown of my opinion ahead. TL;DR: idea good, execution bad.

Hammer 3:

I love the concept and the design. It's got so much potential. First off, some numbers: One cast will hit up to 10 times over 5s (0.5s internal cooldown between hits) and makes 3 rotations (~1.66s per rotation).

Some feedback:

1. Grand Finale does as much damage as 2 hits, so casting it with more than 1 second on the buff is a DPS loss and casting it when it's possible to extend the buff is always a DPS loss (and that's ignoring the loss of the buffs too)
   1. Honestly, I'd be very happy to see Grand Finale removed entirely and instead allow re-casting the abilities to extend the loop indefinitely
2. The rest of the hammer kit feels slow and clunky, so maximising the uptime on the buffs is extremely cumbersome
   1. A band-aid fix for this would be to remove the cast time on hammer 3 skills
3. Having to react to mechanics can easily ruin the entire loop. Admittedly, this is a "get good"-issue. Losing the air and fire loop after 10 seconds means you're just not playing the class correctly, but such a hard rotation is currently just a high risk for no reward.
   1. One option would be to extend the duration of running loops by 5s (up to a capped duration) instead of resetting them to 5s, and play with the duration cap to adjust rotation difficulty.
4. Targets in melee range don't get hit by the loop at all, which is obviously problematic
5. Realistic targets will only get hit by the loop once per rotation, so it'll hit once every 1.66s instead of every 0.5s. Goodbye DPS.
   1. Triple the ICD between hits from the same orb and triple the damage. Welcome back DPS.
6. As much as I like my Juggernaut effects, it's making it so that you have to look at your buffs to know which are active because they all look the same
   1. Not sure if this is possible, but maybe only replace the projectile's tail by the quicksilver trail?

Jade sphere

This just feels bad to use. Simple as that. Sphere is supposed to be the main class mechanic and what sets it apart, but in it's current state it's just a fire-and-forget button with extra sadness if your target decides to move.

Some feedback:

1. The elephant in the room is that the area is small and there's no way to move it, which just makes using it feel bad
   1. Either energy cost should not be a thing, or the sphere should have no cooldown. Having both makes no sense. Rune of the Chronomancer with a 0 cd well is a fair concern, but there's better ways to address that.
2. Ely has no kits that provide enough finishers to make an on-demand combo field relevant. I believe fire scepter 2 is the lowest cooldown finisher available, and realistically you won't be getting significant value out of that
   1. Adding a projectile finisher to hammer 3 is probably overkill, but to make something like this work, Catalyst needs more access to finishers and/or finishers need to be more rewarding.
3. With quickness as a premium boon, there is a huge incentive to camp air attunement. This is very much in contrast with ely's fundamental design of constantly swapping between attunements as the situation requires.
   1. It could be an option to have the sphere grant a few pulses' worth of boons when swapping attunement and change the pulsing effect to only pulse damage and/or conditions. Would need a per-attunement ICD to keep Fresh Air from becoming problematic.
4. Limited interaction with traits feels like a missed opportunity (after all, this is the new class mechanic). There's a lot more potential in the sphere if traits change the way you interact with it. Some examples: larger radius, no more boons but more damage, lower energy cost/cd, move the sphere with you, bonus for using finishers in sphere field, ...

Elemental Empowerment

It's very hard to get good value out of it, and consistently getting value out of the grandmaster trait is (almost) impossible. In fact: DPS rotations use air hammer 5 as a DPS increase instead of saving it for cc phases purely it's a blast finisher. Seems questionable at best.

Some feedback:

1. I don't believe there is any build that can consistently get to 10 stacks without help from another class.
   1. In my opinion, there are 2 options:
      1. Make Elemental Empowerment more accessible (e.g. by refreshing the duration when a new stack is applied, or by adding it to more skills/traits (1 EE stack on attunement change, anyone?))
      2. Make Elemental Empowerment a very limited access buff, but more impactful (e.g. non-stacking 10% buff, only granted by augments)

Augments

I can be very brief on these: they feel incredibly disappointing. The fire augment is solid, but it's just a boring damage increase. The earth augment probably has its place in some scenarios if you really insist on playing Catalyst over Weaver/Tempest. The other augments are straight up bad: by taking them over a conjured weapon or even signet of fire (a literal passive), you are just nerfing yourself. Maybe give them a unique circling projectile like the ones from hammer 3? Either way, they need something.

[Widmo.3186]

6 hours ago, gandlethorpe.2641 said:

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

 

Soloing champion mushroom king

Didnt know nowadays shrooms are some kind of...determinant lol.
But let me show something, my meme 2012 spec - d/d core ele, celestial stats, water traitline, defensive runes and sigils. Basically bunker.

And its still faster while not even trying to make it a pve-oriented dps build in any kind of matter. Not using FGS because im too lazy.
2012 core ele >>> catalyst

[Bambu.4270]

I'll focus my feedback on user story because there are plenty of comments and suggestions on hammer, traits, utilities and F5.

I am struggling to see what Catalyst is trying to accomplish in its current state. For background, I used berserker gear with traits air/arcane/catalyst (dps with attunement swapping) & also air/water/catalyst (quick access to air but to stay longer in other attunements). I went with hammer to roam to kill random monsters in pof maps.

I encountered various mobs with the idea of stacking might on fire and then switching to air for stun and burst with F5. In a tough spot I would use earth (defense) and water (heal). What really happened was the following: I tried using some of the dps skills in some kind of rotation in mind (fire 5, 4, 2, 3, & air 3 2) but I always ended up in dodging stuff a lot and trying to toggle on earth's reflect aura and heal myself switching to water. So instead of using that precious time limited F5 field for killing mobs, I was wasting the F5 most of the time to keep myself alive in open-world content.

I also tried staying in one element after getting some buffs (might, fury and quickness). After using all other skills than auto-attack, the fights became slow and I felt the spec was useless while auto-attacking. It also didn't help when F5 field was up. There I was forced to stay inside the F5 field while the mobs were outside of it. Most of the skills also felt slow to activate, leaving me vulnerable for too long period of time.

Afterthoughts from posting this: I think what the spec really needs for hammer is more movement skills and a bit more of evading. Perhaps the underperforming utilities might help if they had evade and/or movement involved in them?

Edited September 23, 2021 by Bambu.4270
forum adding extra enters

[Alistair.9786]

Outside of raids this class is going to be painful. Inside of raids the lighting field providing quickness is cool and the boon trait for jade sphere means you can basically run a dps who provides quickness. I personally didn't play a ton of this just because I am farming for mats right now and wasn't that interested. Looking at it objectively there needs to be a significantly reduced auramancer vibe. That was tempest's thing and let it have that. All those traits that try to be auramancer can go into giving the jade sphere faster energy charge, making it mobile - actually the cool way to make it mobile would be to have it do something when you swap attunements and that thing pulls it to you (fun grandmaster idea), making it do new things and being an active part of your build rather than a meh tool.   

 Personally I found the 2 on hammer to be really fun but the 5 skills need alot of work. I would agree the autos feel a tad slow and with the fire and lighting ones being ranged there isn't much reason for it. The earth auto is cool but I think the spikes either need to hit harder or apply bleed. I would also love to see a flip over on the jade sphere to dump its remaining energy (after you add some traits to make building it back up easier) and do something cool and flashy. Thats about the only place I would want to see an aura on catalyst.

Water is just bad, with resolution only giving condi reduction the boon is meh and the skills just feel bad, the two is a rip from hundred blades but doesn't hit as hard and doesn't make sense (you can do that but you can't swing the hammer normally that fast really?). The four should be an aoe heal like most ele weapons have and the chill that is being applied everywhere is literally worthless anywhere other than pvp or niche moments that I can't think of off hand. 

The utility skills are just disappointing overall. I honestly can't even remember what they do and outside of the one that gives barrier which I need to switch to earth to get I don't think I used them for long. If you want an augment skill type I would go with utilities that amp up the jade sphere for a little while. Give it some life and flare for a little while with each of them.
- The water one could make the sphere clear condis and gain energy for each one removed.
- The fire one could do some damage or something
- The lightning could be a cc around the sphere that charges energy based on how many it hit. 
- The eath one would give barrier and charge the sphere based on how many it hit.
- The heal could be a pulsing heal around the sphere with a flip over to detonate the sphere for a burst heal
- The ult fully charges the sphere or gives a damage amp to nearby allies based on how charged the sphere is.  

For all the people who say it can't do open world content I would suggest taking a look at your gear, I was playing around in verdant brink with no problems outside of the jade sphere being immobile. 

[ScottBroChill.3254]

So played some pvp and tried a bunch of things out annnnnddd....  I melt every second. I've never had such trouble trying to make an espec survive in pvp and i'm just melting in seconds. Idk, it feels like there's a lack of tools for the kit. Having to build up energy for the sphere is just bad because the survivability of the catalyst is almost non existent. Remember weaver had to have a lot of evades, barrier, and an ammo based stunbreak in order to survive on the front lines like that and catalyst almost has no ability to survive without these things. Tempest also has a bunch of heals and survivability letting it survive easier in the frontline that cat also lacks. You almost are required to take water traits because of the lack of healing. I have no qualms with the concept of f5 and having a field on demand, but my problem with it is it's a lot of work just for a field and a boon that requires an energy buildup. Make it more effective. It's stationairy so it's not like people can't walk out of it anyway. And i also feel like the field/sphere needs to be available from the start of the fight. Utilizing the sphere is the only place catalyst gets most of its power from so having to wait 5+seconds to get it on an unsurvivable spec is like mission impossible.

 

I'm just struggling to figure out how to play it. I have zero defenses from being one-shot by a ranger using that rapid fire attack. I have to stack healing traits/skills but it still isn't enough to even make a bunker build. It doesn't really have the ability to stick to targets or stay in a fight. It tries to do too much which combo fields, sphere, and auras. 

 

It's fun fighting golems with catalyst and trying to perform combos and stuff but the second you have to try and fight a real opponent you realize how much it can't compete. Maybe it's not supposed to but it should atleast be able to kinda fight, at least team fight. But it just melts. Not enough survivability on hammer.

Edited September 23, 2021 by ScottBroChill.3254

[Juan.6124]

Not a fan of the design

* Air and earth 2 have such a long cast time that you are basicly defenseless for 3 seconds each. Earth 4 blocking one attack is just not enough.

* Hammer is the only weapon set without combo fields and aura transmute. Dagger dagger has both, plus more combo finishers which all lead to a better synergy with the sphere and catalyst traits.

* You spend a lot of time building up sphere energy to cast a long lasting aoe and then the enemy just takes a step to the side and it was all for nothing. 

* You lose all remaining energy when removing the sphere which should simply not happen. 

* In general the sphere mechanic is boring, it's just a combo field that pulses damage and one or two boons and you have to pray that your target stays in it because you can't perma cc it while doing damage. You remove all combo fields and their interactions from a weapon set and squeeze them all into one clunky ability.

* The sphere gets in your way when fighting something mobile or you need to be mobile

* Going from core ele to catalyst simply gives you one more button and that's it. It doesnt change the gameplay of the class in any way apart from pulsing quickness in air while the sphere is up.

* The heal skill is too similar to the already existing aether renewal 

* All utility skills are weak when not used in range of the sphere and in the correct element which as mentioned above is tedious to achieve. 

* No traits that enhance augmentations

* No interaction with energy other than "your sphere aoe remains longer"

Edited September 23, 2021 by DirtyDan.4759

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

This spec feels...bland.  I didn't feel like I had enough damage output to make it a worthy frontliner and this was after tweaking the build and armor a bit to try to get it there.  It felt slow and clunky and boring.  I'm trying to find a good time to also yeet myself across a map with that one skill and could not for the life of my find when the right time was other than I'm about to get hit really hard and want to not be in the way of the hit.  Accidentally hitting that skill meant taking time to re-engage, or worse, sending myself off a cliff by accident in the heat of combat.  Not sure I'd ever play this spec over the other two that ele already has.  There's just no payoff.  Not even sure what would make it better.  Maybe faster attack speed?  I dunno.

[Saetien.4763]

(May have been mentioned already) Invigorating Air (stun break) has a 1/2 second cast time - so used this today and casting my stun break was interrupted.
Not sure how many other stun break skills on other classes have a cast time, and if this is normal, but this feels wrong without instant cast like other ele stun breaks. 

p.s agree about all other comments of jade sphere energy mechanics feeling too slow etc

[Reddof.5026]

Let me start by saying that I am thoroughly excited about this elite specialization; I love the idea of it, and it's fun to play around with. It feels like it needs a little work here and there to tighten up its sense of cohesion, but I don't think much work needs to be done to do that tightening. That being said, I'm no mechanics guru; I'm sure some of these suggestions will require scrutiny and refinement if they're to be taken seriously. These are meant more to play to the feel of the specialization and give that feeling a purpose/feedback loop without drastically altering what already exists. These ideas were also based on limited exposure to the specialization, and not an extremely in-depth analysis.

 

SUGGESTIONS:

 

Hammer 3: Hammer 3 skills either need:

* an increased duration (maybe double the current?) to allow for other skills to be inserted into the pattern of building up for the grand finale,

* or the ability to generate or throw skill 3 element orbs during any existing animation (think like the instant-cast Arcane utilities skills, Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast).

 

Otherwise initiating the first hammer 3 skill leads the player into pushing through all elements in rapid order to fire them off, gating other skills behind cooldowns. In the current iteration, this feels a bit like throwing a stick into the spokes of a bike wheel; you can't use skills during, and are locked out of using skills afterward, until coming off of cooldowns. Which compounds with a similar issue involving the specialization's F5 mechanic.

 

Specialization Mechanic (F5): For the class F5 skill: cooldowns plus energy buildup leads to too much downtime; the class is built around this mechanic, and it is fairly difficult to integrate into play. There have been many suggestions provided by others to fix this, but it is the stand out "feels off" element of the specialization. Being able to resituate the Sphere, increase its duration, or modify its behavior in some way to make it feel more impactful/relevant to the specialization, will go a long way to addressing this issue.

 

Hammer Play General: The specialization is combo-centric; there are a few skills that induce spinning in their animations, and many other skills of this type elsewhere in the game induce whirl finishers when in effect; the hammer skills here (Hurricane of Pain, Air 2; Whirling Stones, Earth 2) do not. Additionally, the player's location should probably deal a minor amount of damage during the non-field spinning portion of Hurricane of Pain, as you know, they're spinning around like an idiot wielding a heavy, impactful object.

 

Visual Flavor Changes: Visually, I'd probably also update the specialization to show the Jade Sphere floating over one of the Elementalist's shoulders; out of combat, it returns to this position and in combat it moves to the locations where deployed. This will make the class more identifiable and add a touch of flavor, much like the Engineer's Scrapper gyros. This is visible in the art assets representing the class and wouldn't feel out of place.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Kuddlekins.6407
Terminology adjustments; refocusing/adjusting post.

[Jski.6180]

Bit more feedback.

The arguments need to work on all fields not just the f5 field and they should give there added effects to 3 to 5 targets of your team as well. This lets cata have its own combo effects with out adding in new combos and fields. Mind you the earth argument needs to work on poison field because that seems to be the earth field now.

[Seraphic Sonata.8426]

Hello! Let me start this off by saying thank you. Thank you for taking the time and energy to code all of this into the game. Thank you for brainstorming ideas. Thank you for this game. 

 

Catalyst has been a strange experience. So far I've only played it in WvW. I've had moments where i've felt really strong, and moments where I feel like the "classic" ele. I've primarily been experimenting with Celestial gear, and Minstrels. 

If you happen to have other ele's around you who happen to be running tempest, or water with the middle grandmaster trait, it feels incredible. 

I haven't been trying to go for super crazy dps numbers with it. I've been treating it like a new support spec.

The ice augment feels incredible with all of the aoe's on staff though, I'd imagine this spec is going to break the golem again lol. 

 

However I would now like to hop into my opinion of what Ele should be. I want a class in the game that is wholly dedicated to support. I want dps to be an afterthought. Can Weaver be the elite spec that breaks that for ele? And we can turn Core, Tempest, and Catalyst into pure support builds. Tempest is already fine, it has the highest raw healing of the support builds. And it doesn't step on other classes boons to do so. 

In the current iteration of both Harbinger and Catalyst, you have quickness. A stat that HB is expected to give to everyone. 

Where do Ele and Harbinger fit into comps, when people won't want to lose the easy Stability, Tomes, stun breaks, etcetcetc. 

What about giving Catalyst Longbow? It could be a Robin Hood esque spec.

They could have, traps, wells, or keep the augments but the actual profession skill would need reworked entirely. No energy, make it an ability.

They could place an egg that hatches and grows into the current elementals.

The theme of the spec would be boon steal, and condi cleanse. It wouldn't really be able to deal dps outside of that. If a skill deals cc, it doesn't deal damage. Would be full support based while providing a crucial role.

Imagine this, you use abilities that corrupt boons, and you spread those to allies. If you cleanse a condition from an ally, you spread that condition to enemies.

Lots of arrow animations.

Fire would be based on corrupting the boons, water on cleansing conditions, air would also be the "dps", and earth would cleanse as well.

Summoning the well/trap/egg in fire places a fire field that only corrupts boons, It doesn't deal damage. It could give alacrity. Might isn't really relevant anymore, covered entirely by previous classes + we might not get more expansions sooo.

Water would cleanse conditions, and pulse healing, NO DAMAGE.

Air could stun or daze on creation and keep the quickness pulse while also corrupting boons. (still no damage, make this the "dps" portion. I want to command the wind. I want CC. Air is the CC attunement. Could have less boon corrupt to compensate.

Earth would pulse Stability, or BOTH protection, and the condi version of protection, while cleansing as well. NO DAMAGE.

Don't give energy to a class like ele. Using the sphere, while not being able to keep it up in large fights felt bad.

Also I really feel like to compensate for being a FULL support spec, unlike tempest, attunements should have a very very very short cd. 2 seconds max.

Ele's want to be fully ranged. GIVE US WHAT WE WANT. GIVE US MORE SUPPORT VARIANCE. TAKE DOWN THE HEALBRAND. But make sure it's still playable.

[Elaron.8150]

Speaking from mechanics.

Is it support spec?it loses hard vs tempest.

Is it bruiser-tank build?it loses to weaver.

God forbid ele do dps.

So whats the design space for this again?

So far we got the worst scrapper.

I am thankfull from the bottom of my heart for free beta test.I will be skipping the next expansion now.

[Quadehar.4379]

15 minutes ago, Elaron.8150 said:

Speaking from mechanics.

Is it support spec?it loses hard vs tempest.

Is it bruiser-tank build?it loses to weaver.

God forbid ele do dps.

So whats the design space for this again?

So far we got the worst scrapper.

I am thankfull from the bottom of my heart for free beta test.I will be skipping the next expansion now.

 

I agree 100%.

 

If Catalyst's F5 would have been let's say Arcane attunement, it will fit more to the mantra of "breaking the rules" in this expansion. It will also be something unique to the Catalyst that would want people to play it. 

 

Look at Tempest with its Overload/Aura or Weaver's Dual Attack/Barrier, you'd want to play them because they have those unique mechanics. With Catalyst, you have what? Combo field? Aura? You can already reliably produce those using the other specs.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Quadehar.4379

[Ashamir.9574]

Ele main here.

 

The Catalyst feels... worse. A worse tempest. A worse revenant.

 

Aura's are tempest's things. Why do we need another aura based ele? Why do we need another melee-based Ele? We have 1 long-range weapon an it's slow as kitten. When I heard that we'll get a hammer, I expected a Rev-like playstyle. 1200 range, some slow, hard-hitting attacks but also some good pace, variable utilities. The augments feel negligible. The investment and the gain doesn't match. It's slow and boring and gives you even more chances to use mistform...

 

The only place I see this class being useful is in raids, which is single-digit percentage of the playerbase.

 

Positive: the icons look polished, both the skills and the trait line. It looks almost a lot more finished than the Rev and the Warrior going by appearance alone. The animations are fine, too. Flashy, even though I don't feel the skills. Best thing I can say about this class, sadly.

 

This is a missed opportunity to give us more variety at playstyle. Instead it's same old again :(

[HeliosAlpha.3198]

Just another Catalyst suggestions post. I won't be saying much that other people haven't said already. 
Overall, Catalyst seems interested in doing so many things at once that it becomes hard to focus. You're doing all these things like gaining auras and unique boons, but the moment you stop doing those things to actually get in some DPS, then you lose all those boons. It makes that effort feel pretty pointless. I do think some numbers can be shifted around to give the player more leeway for a smoother experience, but that type of balancing always comes with time anyway. 
Energy
* People have complained about energy draining out of combat and the long cooldown of the sphere. I'd probably be fine with both of these if I could gain energy while the sphere is active. If I can keep the sphere going perpetually by hitting stuff, then it's more my fault if it goes on a long cooldown. 

Sphere and Utilities
* I think the sphere should stay the same element as when you placed it down. That way you can do the thing most people want to do: give Quickness. 
* I imagine it'd feel smoother if the sphere changed elements when you use an Augment skill instead. The regular ones change the sphere to their element while the elite changes it to whatever your current attunement is. 
*  The sphere should move to you when you switch attunements, maybe at an energy cost.
* As for the Augment bonus effects, they can be based on the Elementalist's current attunement instead of the sphere. 

Traits
* The middle major, Evasive Empowerment, should be evade *or block* since Catalyst comes with a number of blocks. 
* Elemental Empowerment and the two unique aura buffs feel pretty similar in use and how they're gained, so maybe it's better to remove one and focus on the other. This frees up some trait slots.
* Possible new traits: Vitality for wielding hammer (200-300), Your sphere changes elements to match your attunement (So the functionality isn't lost), An Augment trait similar to what Tempest and Weaver had

Hammer
Don't have much on hammer really. I think the duration on the orbs should be about 7 seconds instead of 5. The Air 2 is also a little awkward when it doesn't deal damage around your character. Even if it was a fraction of the damage and didn't stack with the tornado, it could do something. 

[Josspai.4356]

As a small note, maybe the small Jade Sphere floating thing should always be deployed and follow you around in an 'inactive state', and then shine in a red/blue/purple/brown light when the combo field with the creature is summoned? It's a bit weird to have the sphere (a physical object) just 'pop' out of nowhere. If that's our spec mechanic, it should always be around gathering energy during combat.

[Zeivu.3615]

Same issues with base Ele apply here. Low defense, low HP and low damage output. It needs a boost to at least one of the three to make it worth using. The augments seem kinda meh. There is no reason to have all of them on your skillbar and I found it more useful to add other base skills over them. With Catalyst, you pretty much are limited to One or two major elements so element swapping loses value. The catalyst tree skills rely too much on auras and doesn't really add many aura opportunities, at least when using Fire hammer.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Zeivu.3615

[NecrollShadow.3401]

So heres some wild ideas oh how to add some interesting things to catalyst (or atleast I hope, the community will decide anyways haha):
Having two or more auras at the same time should do something interesting , im thinking they do special effects depending on aura pairings (Ie frost-fire could do mass healing mist and a damage nova, shock-magnetic pulls people and stunbreaks allies, etc) along with that maybe add some energy in there so we can hold the field a lil longer since it feels wayy to inconsistent on its current cd , or if you dont want to have it add energy maybe make it reduce the cooldown on the sphere cast ! 

The utility feel kind of foreign next to the ususal elite specs , so why not make them one of the existing categories ? I like the idea of them being traps that do blast finishers when activated , if they blast their corresponding-element field that´s when you get the conditional benefits , while the normal effects could mostly happen on trap activation and give i to all allies within an area (probably very small for allies and global for ele ?), would also allow some trap runes to work with it !

If that was too outlandish maybe just let them create oportunities for auras or regen energy/reduce sphere cooldowns...

Hammer as a weapon also feels strange and for some reason it doesnt have ANY fields, granted having big fields would defeat the purpose of the F5 , so why not add some trails(like burning speed) to the hammer 3 skills when fired ?  and while we re on the topic of those orbs, why is firing ANY of them on a global CD ? If i start a fire orb and then fire it, i cant fire any of the others until the global CD is over , is this intended ? 

Regardless, i think we could have the orbs fire in a slower sequence after activating the skill, yes the first one activated should go almost instantly, but why not let us keep the others a bit longer each creating a field trail we could use for combos as they shoot ?  That also can give a bit of a buffer to add one last orb that we might not have cast yet and keep the cd as a global one .

Finally, theres the Ult skill, its just an 8 second reduce on only-weapon cooldowns, and you have to keep hitting each second or miss one, so potentially less if  you miss get out of range or get disabled during it, it doesnt apply to conjure weapons ethier, wich already are a great combo generators and could benefit a lot from the ulti just reducing their cds !

Now since the ulti would also be a trap skill, why not have it pulse blast finishers or even whirl ? Each pulse can do the cooldown refresh on hit and still generate the boons , but now it also sinnegises with the auramancer part of the spec.

The trait lines could stay the same if the flavor is added to the skills, or maybe transfer some of the rudimentary bonuses to some fo the stuff i mentioned above and find ways to spice up the interactions, trait wise, ele could use ethier more ways to evade hits (group cc, blocks, blinds , kiting/movement) OR ways to take hits (spike damage mitigation for a few seconds, better healing if you do something right, maybe reflect some damage ? )  
 
With all this included we would now be very incentivised to plan our attunement order in advance and really look ahead , not being reactionary like sometimes ele feels, with traps being there it would allow easier ways to kite and move around the two ranges hammer has, the traits could also give incentives to this, if your plan goes accordingly , maybe you get some extra things to help you stay alive, we are the poster-people for downstate meta after all.
 

[Afterland.2951]

Ok, i'll try to simplify cause everybody basicly said what i came here to say.
►Jade Sphere:  If the ideas Jade tech to be imbued into something, make it worth it. All this technology studies and tests to have a orb that summons a holo dragon for 1 Might/sec? All this Tech for "Oh, permaquickness", yeah, but stuck on air and in a 240 radius. Tbf theres no reason to use Jade Sphere even if the radius was 1.200, beeing stuck on attunament and imobiles the problem in this case. I'll not talk about energy/damage/stacks and numbers in general cause this is easily changeable. Again, make Jade Tech WORTH beeing related to the new spec. 
►Auguments: No reason to use them at all besides fire. Air gives endurance wichs useless (I believe the idea was maybe to use with Evasive Empowerment trait thats as useless as well since the only way to use vigor + endurance regen is to dodge since theres no dodge skill on the kit) (i'll talk about this later).
►Traitlines: HERE lies my problem and i believe ellies problem. Tempest was based on aura share, aura spamming and all. Weaver is based on dodging and combo fields, Catalyst is everything. Evasive Empowerment to dodge more (might as well be a Weaver trait), Elemental Epitome, Empowering Auras, Hardened Auras, Staunch Auras, all should be great for Temepst cause i believe Auras suposed to be a Tempest thing (a lil bit here and there on the others, but 4 traits related to Auras is too much. Temepst has 3 Aura related traits and it works super fine. If the idea is to have Elemetal Empowerment as a unique boon, remove aura traits and Jade Sphere energy. If the idea is to make Jade Sphere useful, remove aura traits and Empowerments. If the idea is to make auras useful AGAIN, make it worth more than its worth on Tempest ( wich will be a lack of creative desing). Vindicators base is that he has Support and Dps together as it swaps, Bladesworns base is that he uses a lot of ammo and big dps, Harbringers idea is to make Blight usefull, Virtuosos base is dagger instead of clones. WHY does Catalyst has Jade Sphere+Energy+Auras+Empowerments+Hammer 3? It makes no sense, its all over the place. 
► Catalyst: The name doesnt match the class. It would be expected to do something like Bladesworn does, a big slow dps or big slow cc, its a CATALYST, but the impact you have on game is like watching a League of Legends cinematic and then checking how it is ingame: no impact at all. 
► Animations: Animations are great. You guys didnt save time to do them and they look awesome (something that was really poorly done on Willbender if i may say), they translate well what it suposed to be.

In resume: All over the place. If its going to be a DPS PVE spec, make Augments usable, remove them and make them change Jade Spheres place, share Empowerments, share Auras, idk (ONLY ONE, NOT ALL THE OPTIONS AT THE SAME TIME) cause til now it will be the same thing as other Ellies PvE DPS: No augments used (besides fire) Fiery Great Sword, Lighting Hammer, Glyph of Storms. If it was suposed to be a PVP Dps, make it regen more energy, remove the cooldown, remove Hammer 3 and make it possible to summon all 4 Jade Spheres, make it follow you around (might as well remove Auguments and give her Jade Gyros); 
I feel really disapointed with the execution, even tho the base idea is good. Not as disapointed as i was with beta 1 lack of creativity/animations/particles (except Virtuoso), but disapointed nontheless. 
Right now the only thing i can do is PRAY A LOT for Ranger and Thief.

[BlueTheRaptor.4576]

Been doing some thinking lately, after taking Catalyst out for a few more spins... And I've thought on how to make Catalyst less painful to play, without requiring too drastic a rework. My thoughts have been added on by reading through this feedback thread as well.

Three words: elementalist become Scrapper (with a few differences).

Many people here have already mentioned that they expected the Augments and the Jade Sphere wells to be swapped- Augments being special triggers while the elemental fields would be dropped with utility skills. That's exactly what ANet could do, I feel, to drastically improve the Catalyst's viability. Let the Jade Sphere be a permanent intangible gyro-adjacent entity that emerges whenever Catalyst goes in combat. It would do no attacks, no idle behavior except maybe zooming around the player's head when we're standing still (like how it currently zooms around when F5 is activated). On triggering a utility skill at a chosen location it would drop a well that would act as a combo field, pulsate a damaging effect and/or condition on enemies inside it, and, of course, all wells would have a wider radius. Visually the wells would practically not need to change at all, they could still have the elemental beast projection hanging around in there- like how the Kalla Scorchrazor legend's effect fields have specific charr specters present, on Renegade utilities. The elite skill could be the widest well of them all, maybe similar in radius to Meteor Shower, and could have all four elemental creatures' projections active at the same time.

The Augments could be triggered like the Overload skills were on Tempest- by hitting the elemental attunement key for an element you're already attuned to. What element's Augment you'd trigger would be amplified if you were standing in a utility skill's well of the matching element at the time, and apply a select boon (depending on the element) and an aura on yourself and 5 or 10 allies in the wells with you. As for what effect the Augments could have in the elite utility skill: the current Catalyst elite utility causes every strike dealt against an enemy to shorten skill recharge times. Keeping that effect could facilitate the ability of potentially engaging all four elemental Augments at once, for a payoff worthy of the name "elite utility".

What could happen with the Jade Sphere's energy charge, and the F5? Leave it there, I say, but repurpose it's effect. For one, get rid of the skill cooldown timer. For another, let it accumulate energy in combat (and, if not keep all of it's charge outside of combat, then at least not fall below 50%, or a combination of both: do not lose any charge outside of combat only when at 50% or under). When F5 is triggered, it could... become a miniature elemental supernova, for a lack of better phrasing. Explosively expel accumulated energy in a limited radius, dealing specific amounts of damage on nearby enemies depending on your stats and how much energy has been collected by the Sphere. Every time F5 would be triggered it would use up all of it's energy, regardless of how much it had collected beforehand, but the greatest damage payoff would be to let the sphere gain full charge before F5 would be hit. As a caveat to this alteration of the skill, in the case it could be considered broken: double the capacity of the energy gauge. Therefore it would require you to remain in combat for a bit longer to truly maximize it's potential, and yet not render it useless overall.

Ah, and this new F5 effect's origin point would be the player, because the Jade Sphere would constantly remain by the player's side during combat.

Anyhow, those would be my thoughts on potential alterations to the Catalyst. I hope they're alright! Or at least acceptable.

[reagents.2064]

The topic has already been beaten like a dead horse, but yeah, the Catalyst is way undertuned as-is. I do think the concept has potential, but the devs need to loosen up and allow the class some more access to powerful abilities and weapon skills that complement its core idea.

It seems like the Devs consistently approach designing the Elementalist with a high degree of restraint. It's like there are so many inherent handicaps built into the design so as to prevent them from being too powerful that the end result is just not fun and needlessly complex with underwhelming results. Why master the optimal rotation on Catalyst for mediocre DPS when you can just auto attack on Revenant or face roll and win on Scourge?

Elementalist has always been a "thinking person's" class, and that's evident in the mastery required for Weaver and even some Tempest specs, but there needs to be a payoff for achieving expertise over the mechanic, and I don't see that yet for Catalyst with the way it looks right now. This fact is compounded with the totally uninspired trait line and utility skills. Where the other trait lines have loads of flexible synergies with each other, the Catalyst traits are blunt, linear, and offer minute variations on one particular playstyle. 

The jade spheres are underwhelming on all fronts. Again, the devs seem to have overestimated this mechanic and loaded the mechanic up with handicaps. Not only do the F5 skills have a rather long cooldown, it's shared across elements, it costs its own unique energy, has a cast time, and the fields aren't particularly big or long-duration. There is little in the way of meaningful support here; for all this build-up, you're getting a water field with 1 second of Resolution. 

I would like to see the Devs loosen up a bit on the Elementalist and give the Catalyst some more power. There is a place for a class that can drop big, powerful combo fields on allies that are fortified with blast finishers and attunement-aligning, but if that's the concept, let it be that. 

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by reagents.2064

[Soulus.4308]

Personally, I found that the Hammer 3 skill is what I'm supposed to be aiming for but with how it currently feels, it's like I either want to ignore the Grand Finale aspect or rush through all the elements solely for it.

 

So I'm wondering, why not replace the Hammer 3 skill with the current F5 so it has better access to generating combos and have the orbs when you attune to an element. Or, to give the Jade Sphere more of an impact, each element you cycle into, it charges the Jade Sphere and acts as the Hammer 3 skill until you use those charges with F5, possibly giving it a different effect depending on the number of charges stored.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Soulus.4308

[Avalon.4809]

After doing legendary bounties and some Silverwastes last 2 nights, I found that catalyst hammer doesn't give much new to the elementalist. Ele is still squishy trying hard to survive in events. Since catalyst lacks healing and evasion, it's really hard to survive with hammer if I am alone. I need people around me to take the agro away when my health drops.

Fighting Rubedon or Rampager was a pain with all those freezes due to lack of evasion ability. With harbinger or virtuoso it was much easier to fight them. In Silverwastes i tried to defend the forts alone against the hordes of mordrem, but everytime i fell down, because I can't evade and heal myself enough with hammer. Best option was taking them in groups 1 by 1, but that way fort master fell down and there wasn't enough time to res the fort master. If i had a reaper i could kill those mordrem all at once.

 

1- Water Attunement

Hammer water skills are meaningless. I want to attune to water when i need to get away and gain some healing to recover. I have no idea why water is melee. I don't want to go melee if my health is low. I need to get away and recover. If you still want to have 2 melee attunements and 2 range attunements, just make air attunement melee. Water needs to be range and skills needs to give heal and regeneration. It makes no sense to have water as melee and even without any heal. 

Only skill#4 is giving heal. In explanation it sounds nice, in practice it's useless. Let's say I have 40% health, my healing skill is on CD and i wanna heal with skill#4. I see boss has no agro on me, i see this as opportunity. I use skill#4 and jump on boss, boss drops AOE and my health becomes 10%. Let's say I have 60% health and I wanna heal. My healing skill is on CD and I wanna use skill#4 to heal. I use skill#4, jump on boss, boss stuns me, puts a punch in my face, I use stun breaker and dodge back and escape with 10% health. Logic?

I had a hard time at cleansing conditions too if I don't use "Cleansing Fire". Hammer skill#5 should cleanse conditions even if i don't hit any enemies, and cleanse more if i hit enemies.

 

2- F5 skill

a) UI of F5 energy bar is hard to follow. It was really shocking to see it the first time, because I couldn't believe its size. I hope it's "work in progress" and you will change it. Just look at necro, warrior or engineer and you will get the idea how an easy to follow energy bar should be. Not everybody has 21:9 ultra wide screen like I do. I wonder how people playing on laptops manage to see it.

b) Relatively slow to charge F5 and filling its energy. I need "Energized Elements" to charge it fast by swapping attunements. This hurts the meaning of F5 skill.

 

3- Survivability

As i mentioned above catalyst has limited healing with hammer water skills compared to other ele specs, but catalyst also lacks evasion. Even much complained staff has an evasion on fire skill#4 and staff is 1200 range weapon! We have air skill#4 on hammer which takes us away from enemy, but it still isn't evasion and enemies can still hit while doing it. I don't see a point to pick catalyst in hard events while i have weaver. The only utility skills i found useful are "Fortified Earth" and "Invigorating Air". However, "Invigorating Air" should be an ammo skill and give quickness instead of superspeed.

 

5- Healing and Elite skills

I don't get the point of "wait to heal" healing skills we got with new specs. It's as if you don't know your own game. Currently, it's like catalyst is designed to fight against stationary enemies. I can wait, but enemies don't. I don't think i will use any of those new "wait to heal" heal skills we got from any new spec.

I also found not much use for the elite skill. I rarely used it and didn't get much advantage from it. I need to be in the range of it to get the buffs, but since i don't have much evasion, i can't get in its range whenever i want. So i change elite to something else which i can use more.

 

I loved the hammer concept, such potential, loved all animations, but it isn't satisfying at its current state. No need to change range to 1200 or even 900. We already have weapons at those ranges (Though i think you should still make staff a faster weapon!). Keep it at 600, give decent healing, give more evasion abilities like other classes has, so i can survive like i did with harbinger. 

 

EDIT: 

Today i changed my trait build and tried water-arcane-catalyst traits. Water trait did a huge impact on survivability. Also i used "Glyph of Elementals" elite skill to spawn water ele. I was amazed by the healing i got. I could heal myself 100% without using healing skill, and cleanse conditions. Never fell down on legendary bounties, stayed up alone longer against hordes of mordrems. I had more fun, almost more fun than weaver. I finally felt like i'm a powerful mage. Though, i still think water attunement needs to be range, and some hammer skills needs to have evasion ability, since i lost that heal i gained during melee fight easily. Also, CC skills are less than weaver.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Avalon.4809

[Link.6157]

If this spec is supposed to be about combo's, there should be more finshers and you should be able to maintain the sphere if you keep doing combo's.

Suggestions:

-new utility skills are all combo finishers (if used on the same type sphere, get the extra's*)

-2nd minor trait: gain elemental empowerment and energy for each combo

* I also like the idea suggested above, that the sphere keeps it starting element, so you can still switch attunements and get the extra's from the utility you picked. Maybe even double attuning could be used to change the sphere type so you can still change if you want to. Because of how aura's work though, the traits concerning them should be changed to on combo.

The static sphere remains problematic though and i don't see a use for hammer atm.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Link.6157

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

Very good analysis of Catalyst and its shortcomings by the awesome KROOF: