Catalyst Feedback Thread

[kara.2893]

Profession-specific UI and shortcut

[F5] shortcut makes me seriously nostalgic of the tempest's overload-style ones.

Also gauge is too small and needs a clear minimum marker.

Trait lines

Elemental Epitome isn't worthwhile with the current blasts per minute.

Maybe making attunement swap, jade sphere and/or augments blast would make a good saddle for the mechanic?

Jade Sphere

Base boon durations too small.

 

[ScottBroChill.3254]

I was suggested to post my response from another thread here so here we go: 

Like others have said, the orb totally ruins the gameplay feel of the weapon. You have this slow, deliberate weapon that strikes hard so the skills themeselves already take longer to fire off and should be more impactful. And you're also trying to set up combos and build a bunch of auras. The orbs on the other hand have so much dps worked into them that it's basically like nah, cycle through your orbs and maybe get off one other skill in each attunement before you swap out again. Like it's hard to even use the hammer as the weapon it's supposed to be because it has a utility/mechanic baked into it that forces you to use it instad of the rest of the skills. People say the orbs are a weaver thing and thats true, it fits the fast playstyle of sword and fast attunement cd's more and generally you'd be able to use a lot more sword skills with the orb than you would hammer.

Idk, i think it totally butchers the weapon if I'm being honest and overshadows every other skill on the weapon. The overall changes to the class will make catalyst more viable for sure, but the orb is like the worst thing you can possible put on a weapon. It's basically a class mechanic or an ammo based utility as opposed to a weapon skill, and it's strength makes it necessary to focus on. I mean it gives me mad conjured weapon vibes. Totally clunky useless things, but because two of them have like 2 strong skills you are forced to awkwardly fit it into your skill rotation to the point where it feels more like a gimmick than an actual useful feature. 

[Caid.4932]

I feel ultra reliant on cantrips using hammer. I absolutely 100% need lightning flash and stability for playing it to be at all tolerable, i feel i need another stun break on top of that as any downtime feels awful. The arcane skills and the combo finishers they give feel great to use but i just cant fit them in. Same with augments really - i need other stuff more. I had elite augment on bar but never used it, just doesn't fit the rest of the class, i need to get into the next attunement now, always.

Playing in a group with enough combo fields around to stack elemental empowerment and using the trait to give a 20% stat buff from it was spectacularly powerful, its one more thing i cant maintain on my own or with any real consistency though and it was wildly inconsistent in value. Almost certainly outrageously op in the hands of the right player or set up, pretty weak for any mediocre player like me.

Jade Sphere feels quite short lived. Long enough for the buffs, more on the combo field side of things. Energy feels overly restrictive.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Caid.4932

[Kyniel.4706]

FWIW, here's what I would do to make catalyst more fun.

Treat the jade sphere exactly like tempest overloads. The delay after switching attunement prevents spamming, thus removing the need for the energy mechanic and freeing up F5.

Move the Hammer 3 to a profession mechanic - whenever you switch attunements, you gain an orbiting thingy, F5 fires them.

Make your 3 trait lines:

1/ CC: synergise with disables (and thus hammer)

2/ Bruiser: buff the orbiting orbs (increase duration, improve buffs while orbiting, improve F5)

3/ Boon support: buff the jade sphere

You'd need a replacement for the Hammer 3 skills, but I doubt that would be a big problem. The removal of aura synergies gives tempest back it's unique aspect.

 

Edited December 1, 2021 by Kyniel.4706

[The Great Al.2546]

10 hours ago, emablackread.7246 said:

I think there's a clear consensus that the Cata is the worst idea and implementation of all the new Especs.
Honestly the best thing would be to just delete Catalyst and go back to the drawing board from scratch.
I'd rather buy an Ele DLC 2 months after the expac releases (which would give you 5 months to work on it) than see this go live.

1) The Sphere
So... you made a melee Hammer spec with combo fields and a holoprojector gadget. That's a Scrapper, thanks, so you already ruined the Ele identity with a confused spec mechanic to start with. But guess what, you made the Catalyst worse, because it relies on combos, and yet the only combo field you get on your new kit doesn't move. It has a cooldown, an energy cost, and it isn't even mobile. Whyyy??? And seriously of all the cool interactions you could have done with the 'Jade Sphere', it may as well not exist. F5 is just an immobile elemental AoE with boons, and the literal Mage class doesn't need some nonsensical high-tech holoprojector to deploy one, meanwhile the lore tries to justify the spec with 'ancient Canthan arts'. The whole spec and its weapon and its mechanics are a complete confusion.

- give the Sphere the Scrapper treatment. Make it deploy around you and move with you.
- give the Sphere the Scourge treatment. Have one field around you and a deployable one just like shades.
- delete the Sphere. It's not interesting, it's way too punishing to use compared to other classes, come up with a new mechanic.

2) Hammer
Pretending that the Hammer is mixed range is pointless when half of your skills force you into melee, and the spec simply doesn't work if you aren't in melee (Water and Earth are useless and the Hammer Orbs are melee only). Ele really didn't need another melee weapon when every single Espec is melee-mid-range and its only long-range weapon is slow as hell and was nerfed to oblivion. Catalyst Hammer exemplifies the  reason why players hate Hammers on all classes in general: it's clunky, doesn't have enough payoff, and is only useful in niche scenarios at best, so it's really not exciting. The Hammer 3 skill is just Weave Self on steroids. Except way worse because you need to micro-manage it, and it forces you into a punishing rotation, as well as melee range. 

Be honest, was it really a good idea to add another attunement-juggling melee weapon Elite spec with stance utility skills? Cause that's Weaver and Catalyst has no justification for existing as a concept. Was it really a good idea to add another boon-sharing spec with auras as one of its core traits and immobile aoe fields as its main mechanic? Cause that's Tempest and Catalyst has no justification for existing as a concept. An Elite Spec shouldn't be TempestPlus, or WeaverPlus, or CoreDaggerxDaggerPlus or whatever justification the spec has for existing - because it's nothing new and it's just a thematic mess of previous Ele specs and Scrapper except way more worse to use. And even if you made it better to use, like got rid of the Sphere energy cost, made it move with you, etc, it still wouldn't be new and exciting that's the point.

Catalyst has nonsensical lore, conflicting themes, boring traits, a clunky and unnecessary weapon, and mechanics stolen from other places except executed far more worse.

agree with every single point you made, you said it better than I could. Devs needs to see this post. 

[Swiftwynd.1685]

From a pure PVE raid benchmark perspective, and to potentially balance it in other modes, I think Hammer 3 skills should have a limit of hitting each foe ONCE per rotation.

It looks like from preliminary testing from Roul that standing inside of a hitbox causes significantly more impacts per second from the orb rotations.

If this was changed to once-per-revolution-per-foe then it would likely standardize the DPS for all hitboxes I'd think, and would let you not have to be literally up the foe's butt for it to function well lol.

[Hemdale.1520]

 I’m afraid catalyst is just bad by design… despite the improvements, (which have helped) it still feels like the spec is piecing tools together without knowing what exactly it is creating.

The hammer is a great testimony to just how contradicted the design is. It’s as if the idea is that since catalyst has the jade sphere to create combo fields that it means that the hammer doesn’t need any at all, leaving it feeling like half a weapon despite the fact that you can just swap to any other weapon and actually have a weapon that stands on its own. Catalyst is obviously very dependent on auras, the more you can get them the better, but with hammer providing no combo fields it is left helpless without the jade sphere to provide them. This leaves a very odd intro into any fight due to energy, especially considering the spec has no real initializing abilities to begin with, anything/anyone can see you coming from a mile away and you have no real way of countering that disadvantage.

The other issue that is similar to this contradiction is this hybrid range concept. It appears that since two attunements have 600 range that there’s no need to create any gap closers or utility to help lock anything down. When in practice a 600 range isn’t going to keep you safe from anything, not to mention that to reach the specs full potential you are going to be using more than two attunments, otherwise you’ll just be auto attacking and waiting on cds just for the sake of this ill conceived luxury of 600 range.

This is just the gist of what is happening throughout the spec, wether it’s the augments, the #3’s, or the traits, it all seems to be compensating in this partial way that leaves everything without the full picture.

On the bright side I appreciate weaver a lot more now.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Hem.7514
Ughh

[Adah.8371]

Except for the Jade Sphere system, I really love the spec!

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

Here's an idea, drop the spec and go back to drawing board.

[Swiftwynd.1685]

Catalyst certainly feels like it has good potential, but it is still not quite there. I suggest a reasonable overhaul that requires *minimal* changes to UI and no changes to visuals of current abilities, to realistically fit within the very tight 2 months deadline.

Consensus of most of the feedback on this thread seems to be:

1. F5 "orb summoning" should be moved to the Attunement buttons ala Overloads on Tempest, and that it should only have a SUPER brief delay after attunement, not the lengthy 1.5 seconds. Perhaps .5 seconds to prevent an accidental double click
2. This would Free Up F5 to have a new mechanic. Most people seem to agree that the Orbs from Hammer 3 are super cool and iconic, BUT that they feel very weird to linked directly to the Hammer itself and that they feel much more like an Elite Specialization mechanic.
3. The current theme does ***not*** match the very unqiue Canthan tradition of venerating celestial beings / starts / constellations. With minimal naming convention changes and focusing on the Orbs, you could make this elite specialzation exceptionally more "Canthan" in origin, more Closer to the Stars!
4. Aura traits feel EXTREMELY out of place and cause visual clutter, and remove some of the unique aspects of playing Tempest.

As such, I think a VERY cool feature to change the UI and mechanics with the least amount of effort for maximum playability and thematic improvement could be as follows:

Celestial Spheres

New Minor Adept Trait: Celestial Mastery
"While Attuned you may Coalesce the elements into persistent Celestial Arrays to create fields that damage foes, enhance allies, and generate Celestial Energy. Expiring Arrays become Celestial Spheres that orbit you while consuming Celestial Energy. You may activate Convergence to hurl them at foes.

Gain access to Augments." 

Full breakdown:

You now now have a single, larger energy bar (similar to Adrenaline) above your attunements called Celestial Energy, and immediately below this new bar you have four circles similar to the Mesmer's Clones positioned above each Attunement. While attuned, you active Attunement is replaced with "Coalesce Fire/Air/Water/Earth" to summon the Celestial Array field at the ground target location, just as we currently can by using F5. The Coalesce abilities share a 5 second cooldown, with a 5 second field duration. These otherwise remain completely unchanged (besides no longer having an energy cost).

The Celestial Energy bar energy bar fills as the Celestial Array deals damage to foes and applies boons to allies.

After your Celestial Array field expires, you automatically draw a Celestial Sphere of the corresponding Element into your orbit, exactly like Hammer 3 currently on live, but it consumes Celestial Energy over time to maintain (replacing the current "duration" of the Hammer 3 style orbs.)

This is displayed in the UI as filling the clone-like circle above each Attunement. If your Celestial Energy becomes depleted, you lose your orbiting Celestial Spheres. By default, you can only have one Celestial Sphere of each attunement active at a time, so no multiple Fire Celestial Spheres for example.

Mechanically, each Celestial Sphere will only impact each foe once per revolution (really only matters for larger targets such as raids) to make hit-box variation not impact damage performance.

F5 now becomes Convergence, launching all Celestial Orbs at your foe (unchanged from Live's Hammer 3 Finale). You gain a bonus effect for launching four unique elements.

Augments:

Instead of gaining bonuses while inside your Celestial Arrays like live, these provide their bonus effects while you have a Celestial Sphere of the corresponding element in your orbit. This significantly improves their capabilities in mobile situations, and requires advanced planning / player skill in the dynamic of determining to "wait" for the Celestial Sphere or to use it without it for an emergency.

Hammer:

This frees up Hammer 3 to fill in any "gaps" the weapon is missing, particularly for PVP/WvW where the lack of engage/disengage/sustain mechanics harm the weapon's viability. Sadly, this would require new abilities and art / reused animations to be designed and implemented, but at least it is only four skills.


Trait Revamp:

The new theme and mechanics open up a wealth of cool trait space, as another criticism players have noted is a lack of interesting Traits that change the playstyle and are just "numbers."

Minor Traits
 

Celestial Mastery - (new) Minor Adept - See above. Basic core of the Elite Spec.

Closer To The Stars - (new) Minor Master - While a Celestial Sphere is in orbit, it provides passive benefits.

Fire - +5% improved Strike and Condition Damage, gain 10% Power and Condition Damage.
Air - +7% Critical Chance, 10% Precision and Ferocity, gain 10% Precision and Ferocity.
Water -5% Incoming Condition Damage, gain 10% Healing Power and Concentration,
Earth - 5% Incoming Strike Damage, gain 10% Expertise and Vitality

Catalyze Elements (new) - Minor Grandmaster - Executing a combo finisher in your Celestial Array, generates 10 energy. Limit of once per Array.

Major Traits

Major Adepts - These augment the basic playstyle of your Celestial Arrays and how they generate Celestial Energy.

Domain of Destruction (new) - Your Celestial Arrays have an increased radius when harming foes and can target additional foes (10) but no longer generate Celestial Energy from applying boons and have a 33% increase cooldown.

Domain of Enervation (new) - Your Celestial Arrays have reduced cooldown (33%) and generate additional Celestial Energy when simultaneously harming foes and providing boons to allies (+33%).

Domain of Compassion (new) - Your Celestial Arrays have an increased radius when applying Boons to allies and can target additional allies (10) but no longer generate Celestial Energy from harming foes and have a 33% increase cooldown.

Major Master - These augment the basic playstyle of your Celestial Spheres. Provides options for raw damage builds, ranged builds, and condition/boon enhancing builds (which work even as a primary dps who just wants to help aid their raid at a small damage loss!)

Wheel of Ages - Gain 2.5% additional strike and condition damage for 10 seconds each time you generate a Celestial Sphere, refreshing this duration and stacking up to 4 times. Gain double this effect for 5 seconds after using Convergence with four spheres.

Apex Apogee  (new) - Celestial Spheres now project outward 900 units in an elliptical orbit the direction you are facing and rapidly return as part of their revolution. Damage, conditions, and boons are extended by 33% on foes hit beyond 600 units on the apogee of the orbit. Convergence deals 50% increased strike damage and condition duration on targets beyond 600 units and becomes Unblockable and 1200 unit range.

Universal Catalyst  (new) - Celestial Spheres now extend boons and conditions on all targets once per revolution by 1/4 second per sphere on up to 10 allied and 10 enemy targets.


Major Grandmaster - These capstone traits provide extremely unique changes, promoting certain build options that can work with any of the other traits. This enables a playstyle option of "playing all attunements"  vs "playing one attunement" vs "support of boons."

Singularity (new) - Celestial Spheres may now stack from a single element and reduce the cooldown of the Attunement Weapon Skills by 10% per matching Celestial Sphere. Closer To The Stars has 50% reduced effect but can now stack. Augment skills gain 100% increased duration from their additional duration effects if used with four matching spheres.
(E.G. 4 Fire Celestial Spheres = +6s bonus to Relentless Fire instead of +3s)

Ancestral Syzygy (new) - Celestial Spheres consume less Celestial Energy while four unique Spheres are in orbit and the effects from Closer To The Stars are doubled. Convergence becomes "Alignment" which consumes all active Spheres to enhance your attributes by 30% for 3 seconds per unique Sphere consumed.
(Syzygy is a REAL word for planetary alignment and one of my favorite words in existence!)

Sphere Empowering Specialist - Remains the same, but additionally applies to all boons from Celestial Spheres and Celestial Arrays, and gains the additional boons effects previously noted on Spectacular Sphere.

[ClickToKill.8473]

I really like a lot of the changes they made to the spec. 

 

I will agree the Jade Sphere is hard to manipulate, but I changed it to a key on my mouse and it became much easier to use.  Its still much better than its previous alteration, you don't need too much planning on where you will drop the field. (where as previously, you had to make your placement count or you wasted it)

 

My only problem with hammer was how bad the Weapon skill 3 chain felt because of how precise it was to pull off, but that was one of the main points fixed in this update, its fine. 

 

Augments are much better.  While they still compete with other ele utilities, but I can see myself slotting a few of these skills in.  I need to practice chaining it with the fields, but I don't feel punished if I don't like in the last iteration. 

 

The Elite skill does feel elite now.  It doesn't seem like much, but being able to double dip some of the weapon 4-5 skills is great especially since that is where a lot of Ele's CC options lie.  You can Gale twice in a row.  Updraft.  For survival, Obsidian Flesh.  I like this skill alot. 

 

I'm still working on traits, but the Aura line seems fine, though maybe the Grandmaster version could be a little stronger.  I don't have the strongest opinion on these yet; I need to play more. 

 

This spec could still use more improvement, but I am more excited for it now then when it was first beta'd. 

[Caid.4932]

I think they should peel away some of the conditional stat buffs and bake it into the spec. The difference between this class at the start of the fight and when you have 4 orbs spinning, a full stack of elemental empowerment, a pile of boons and an aura up is just way, way too wide.

First place i'd start would be the hammer orbs, its too significant a part of specs power. It'd be less punishing to drop an orb if I was just losing the orbs damage than losing 5% strike and condition damage and so on on top of it. Elemental Empowerment giving up to 20% bonus to every stat is frankly silly, making it annoying and difficult to acquire and maintain doesn't make it balanced, just annoying. Drop it to 5% - 10% and make it stack naturally as part of the rotation.

Take all the vitality, toughness, condition and strike damage reductions you've removed and throw them into the base elite, it really needs that stuff and it needs it as soon as the fight starts. Spread the damage across other hammer skills where it make sense (it doesn't need 55k dps)

[Cegolex.8702]

Mostly PVE feedback: (some WVW)(and mostly Power)

 

Overall i am having a blast with catalyst :D, allowing for fun times in WVW with staff and PVE in generall. I realy love that they finally made a spec where i go into every attunement and use almost every weapon skill and not just 2 or 3. (I know for the cweaver i also go into every attunement but going into water once for the extended elite does not count for me). It's finally a spec where i dont get punished for going into water for some heals since its basically part of the dmg rotation. Tankyness increased slightly while survivability is way higher than with pweaver since i can access my heals + if i need i can pop down the sphere in earth for protection if i need to.

 

I like the new sphere mechanic so i finally can provide some boons to me and my team and i am not only either a selfish dps or healer and can actually provide some dps and boons like other classes as well.

 

Weapon skills:

There are two weapon skill i dont know what to make of tho since i kind of like them but also not:

 

Wind Storm (air hammer 4): It is good cc and i can use it as some movement ability (when used with the turnaround key) but it kind of feels a bit clunky since when i want to do cc bar dmg i dont want to be out of sudden 600 away when a big part of my dmg comes from being close range with my orbs on the other hand using it as a movement ability is also only mediocore (at least make me evade so i dont die from using it through aoes (if its not already didnt test actively)).

 

Hammer 3: I dont know what to say cause on one hand i kind of like the orb idea + the bonuses they provide but on the other hand they are inconsistent when it comes to actuall dps output (talking about around 7k dps difference (on power) compared to when you stay in the hitbox vs outside of it). I dont know maybe making it a ring around you that pulsates helps? Another thing is please add a 0.5 sec delay from activation of orb to using Grand Finale.

And some more clear indicator when my orbs run out would also be super nice since it makes it unnecessary hard to keep track of how long they will still last by guessing with the blinking icon in my status bar

 

Slot skills:

 

Heal Skill: I like it keep it :D

 

Utility Skills: I like Relentless Fire (the unblockable quickness meteorshower in wvw is nice :D) and Shattering Ice is a nice alternative to conjured weapons (even though i like my conjures)

I dont know too much what to do with the other two they might have some use in PVP but i kind of doubt that, so they kind of seem a bit useless to me in their current state(maybe make the superspeed aoe for the team?). Fortified Earth seems like a worse arcane shield to me but maybe im wrong i dont have pvp nor roaming experience with catalyst yet.

 

And as far as i know for condi catalyst they are all bad.

 

Elite Skill: I think when it comes to the dps golem rotation its not used. But i can see some nice usecases when you sacrifice a bit of dps to be able to use it as some ability to allow more cc from air 5 or maybe (i havent tested yet) as some sort of tool to adapt your rotation when you want to swap your rotation attunement(basically hammer 3) because you need some immobilize early or heals. (ALSO DOUBLE METEOR SHOWER HORAAAAY).

Also it somehow doesnt reset Grand Finale no matter what i do. Same with the orb activation. The cd for the orbs starts ticking even when the orb is in upkeep but if i cast my Elite while i have the orb in upkeep it doesn't reset the cd.

 

Traits:

I like that i can either go full dmg or get some utility in form of boons out if them.

There are some issues dont get me wrong but in generall it can be fixed with some tweaks here and there.

For example i kind of have to take Vicios Empowerment when i want to take Empowered Empowerment and Persisting Flames now triggers with the fire Jade sphere but does not increase the duration.

But so far i like the traits since in WVW having Staunch Auras realy helps if you dont have a guard in your group, Empowered Empowerment is good stats increase, and Sphere Specialist probably allowes for a good quickness and might support.

 

 

 

There are still way more things that should be adressed but i need way more testing for them.

 

 

 

And if quickness double meteor shower in wvw is too strong please nerf the elite and not meteor shower since other ele specs want to play staff too. (DON'T RUIN STAFF IN THE LAST GAME MODE WHERE I CAN STILL PLAY STAFF AS A DPS).

[Ace.1784]

6 minutes ago, Caid.4932 said:

I think they should peel away some of the conditional stat buffs and bake it into the spec. The difference between this class at the start of the fight and when you have 4 orbs spinning, a full stack of elemental empowerment, a pile of boons and an aura up is just way, way too wide.

catalyst: noun

• a substance that causes a chemical reaction to happen more quickly
• a person or event that quickly causes change or action

 

I think you're hitting the point of the spec.

[Alradab.5491]

as an ele main I am super satisfied with the changes to the catalyst and love the way it feels. I think I only have a few gripes with it at the moment. 

 

Readability in the UI is a little lack luster. when the energy for the jade orb was consumed all at once, and you could roughly judge the remaining duration by the small bar above the F5 skill icon. However, now that energy essentially stores three "charges" to place an orb, it is kinda tricky to see how many orbs you can place or how close you are to your next orb, especially on that very small bar. maybe the UI could be updated to look somewhat like adrenaline; a large bar that is easy to see, partitioned in segments of 10. this way it is very clear when you have a change of jade sphere and how many charges you have ready at any given moment. this bar could be placed just above the attunement icons, or just below similar to how the Holosmith UI is arranged.

 

this is similar to readability but i think its slightly more specific than that. the skills have very little animation feedback to show when youve gotten the full benifit of the augment skills, like you could probably just notice that the skills were lasting longer or came back faster, but a slight animation flourish that shows that you matched the orb correctly would go a long way to both communicating to people who dont read the skills that it worked and also make it more clear if you succeeded or not without looking away from the action to take count of the duration of the skill.

 

Im sure this is mostly just a visual bug but probably one of my favorite parts of the orb graphically is the... holographic? creatures in the center and ive noticed that the dragon from the air orb seems to disappear really quickly, well before the duration is out, and both the turtle and dragon are super transparent and much harder to see than the kirin or the phoenix

 

Im sorry this is all graphics and not mechanics but honestly the only gripe i have with the mechanics is that some of the combo finishers take too long to go off in a spec that already has to juggle a TON of unique buffs.  i hope this helps!

[manddras.1794]

Catalyst is buffed, but it's so badly designed it's like multiplying zero by whatever in hope that will change something.
 

Top and Middle traits line are good with combinaison that are not 2 handed. Especially D/D because it has access to all aura easily and is really mobile. But do not expect to benefit from your jade sphere, because it's stationnary, small, will not generate enough energy and be busy enough to never activate them even once. You'll probably do a better job with tempest or weaver at close range with far less hassle.
 

Or you can take your favorite staff, get the bottom trait line and be an AoE backline support turret. Just take arcane and water, spam your attunement, water to heal, occasionally go into fire to make some damage (eventually take the spec elite so you can make 2 meteor shower back to back every 90 seconds lol) It's too bad staff is trash now and that others spec can support and do actual damage better than you.
 

Or you can take your favorite hammer, get all the drawbacks of other weapon (i.e not being able to benefit from its jade sphere, having to spam attunement to be somewhat useful) with even more drawbacks.You will have to always move because you are litterally paper, outside your jade sphere most of the time, because you have basically no mobility otherwise.You'll have to make sure your sphere (of hammer 3) is always up when you attack AND be in the right range AND switch as soon as you must even if you didn't burn all your weapon skills or you'll miss dps (because obviously, there are extreme range difference on this weapons) It's already 3 extra things to monitor just for ONE skill.
 

You can't use top traits well because there are no obvious way to gain aura (earth 4 doesn't count 'cause you lose dps) Or maybe you know your combo really well.
 

You can support your mate at the front line with the bottom trait line but now they all have the same problem as you since your jade sphere is so small, at least they can survive better.Lastly, you can use your middle traits, but now you just have to wait to escape an attack or use air 5 and earth 5 since you can't use air 4 (you'll lose dps).
 

With hammer, you'll probably do a better job with another spec or weapon combo and your support is laughable next to other spec. On the plus side, if you take the spec elite, you can spam Air 2 back to back if your target is stationnary lol.
 

Your hammer 3 should be a class thing, not a weapon skill, and should damage your ennemy whatever your range, the jade sphere should follow you everywhere and have no energy or no cooldown. Then throw your hammer away and forget it.

[Wulfhearth.7962]

I like the overall Concept of the catalyst as a spec oriented around managing buffs on themselves and others while playing into combo fields/it's sphere mechanic and synergizing with the arcane specialisation and skills. (And the fact that the Catalyst buffs quickness is pretty cool.) 

In practice, the buff managing feels quite weird, overwhelming and spread thin as there is just too much going on in the spec. Boons, hammer 3, elemental empowerment, stacking buffs from auras...

More focus on a select few mechanics with more choice, diversity and depth regarding traits would probably make the spec feel better and more cohesive.

 

The Jade Sphere really benefited from the changes that gave it a fixed duration and energy cost and was quite fun to play with. The instant activation offers great quality of life and using the sphere in water and arcane blasting it for a heal while CC'd just feels so good. 

It's still a bit awkward to use. Not having it available at the start of combat feels quite punishing as the hammer not having any combo fields makes you very dependant on it. The energy seems more like an annoyance rather than offering any engaging gameplay compared to a charge system. (Especially as there is only a single trait around energy management.)

 

The Hammer feels really, really weird...

It doesn't have much CC or any of the meaty, bombastic animations one might have hoped for/expected on Ele Hammer and while i get that it lacks combo fields to play into the Jade sphere, that just feels bad when you can use other weapons that have both fields and finishers. 

I haven't played much with the buffs of the 3 skills as quickly going trough attunements without using many other skills isn't very engaging and there are enough other reasons for me to want to go into other elements. Going trough your elements fast and only pausing briefly for a boon tick might have had a place when the sphere still changed attunement with you but in the current version of the spec it feels out of place. 

If switching elements and comboing between them is the goal of these skills, i think skills, like "Teinai's..." from the original guild wars, that cause bonus effects if the ennemy is afflicted by a status/condition associated with a different element would be a more fun, interactive and complex way to do it.  

 I do quite enjoy that a lot of power/damage is in the water attunement (especially the AA) and that it isn't relegated to an emergency or utility role only anymore. 

The Earth attunement on hammer seems a bit lackluster, having a whirl finisher on its 2 would makes sense thematically and allow it to combo with its poison field for more condition pressure. 

 

The Augments benefitted from the buffs and some of them are really useful. The air one feels a bit lackluster and like it's just tacked on to fufill a quota. Ele already has a variety of strong and usable stunbreaks and i don't think the spec profits from it as much as it would from a stun or daze utility skill for example. 

The idea is fun but the cooldown might be a bit shorter for what it does. It is also weird that as an augment, it doesn't interact with the sphere in any way. If it reset both the cooldown of the attunement and the weapon skills corresponding to the active sphere, it might offer unique possibilities to the spec and give some of that "Fresh Air" luxury to the other elements. 

 

The Traits, as already mentioned, suffer from trying to do too many different things while not fully supporting any of them. 

I like the idea of "Elemental Epitome" and Elemental Empowerment but the fact that it does it trough Auras, as well as the whole top trait line, feels a bit roundabout and awkward. More traits tying directly into combo finishers would be more unique compared to other ele specialisations.  "Staunch Auras" seems more like a major rather than a grandmaster trait in terms of how strong and build defining it is.

Having more options for gaining elemental empowerment in the major traits other than vicious- and evasive empowerment would be welcome. Especially as the hammer somewhat lacks CC and immobilze skills and the trait is yet another element that makes you want to use another weapon.

The catalyst does have a lot of chill access but no trait(s) tying into that. A trait that makes you do increased damage for each of the following conditions chill, blindness, weakness and immobilize/burning would let you live that hammer fantasy of disabling ennemies while avoiding too much hard CC, tying into existing aspects of elementalist and offering an unique playstyle. 

"Energized Elements" offers very little energy and a boon already quite abundant on ele while encouraging rapid attunement swapping.

"Sphere Specialist" is somewhat uninspiring and feels more like a tax/opportunity cost for going into a boonsupport playstyle (something that, in my opinion, gear should do and not a grandmaster trait). 

Increasing the duration of the sphere itself rather than just its boons would perform a similar function while offering more opportunities and lenience for comboing the fields as well. 

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

2 hours ago, Cegolex.8702 said:

Utility Skills: I like

I dont know too much what to do with the other two they might have some use in PVP but i kind of doubt that, so they kind of seem a bit useless to me in their current state(maybe make the superspeed aoe for the team?). Fortified Earth seems like a worse arcane shield to me but maybe im wrong i dont have pvp nor roaming experience with catalyst yet._________________

And if quickness double meteor shower in wvw is too strong please nerf the elite and not meteor shower since other ele specs want to play staff too. (DON'T RUIN STAFF IN THE LAST GAME MODE WHERE I CAN STILL PLAY STAFF AS A DPS).

Actually, the Air and Earth augments are really strong in PvP. 5sec superspeed + 100% endurance regeneration are HUGE, and 3sec block + 3k barrier is a LOT better than arcane shield's 3 blocks

You should try play staff Catalyst in PvP! I've had great results with it,  running Berserker's Amulet + Divinity's rune, Fire/Air/Catalyst (just like WvW, but with Aura Cleansing traits), with all augments (except fire) as utilities. It felt viable and I provided a lot of value to teamfights. I've played around 10 matches last night with it, and there was not a single time I wasn't either top damage or top kills (mostly both). It felt very different from Staff Core/Tempest/Weaver in PvP, which are extremely hard to pull out. Elemental celerity's double meteor shower felt incredible strong and the Water Augment's chill paired with Lava Font is amazing to fight at points. Air and Earth augments helped a lot with survivability and mobility. Overall i'm very excited with catalyst in PvP, it's not a better duelist than weaver, but it's sure better at teamfights.

The Elite skill is AMAZING in competitive modes. It's fine in PvE though, so if there's a nerf comming, I'm hoping it's in PvP/WvW only, but I don't know how they plan to balance it, but just like you, I hope they look at the elite and not at meteor shower lol

_____

I'll comeback to write a complete review after playing some more, there's some tuning left to do (mostly on hammer) but I do think a lot of the criticism and feedbacks feels biased and do not correspond with the reality. Catalyst is strong and in a much better state than the first beta.

[Caid.4932]

Can you please change hammer air 4 to a leap forward? The weapon would really benefit from it and im quite tired of throwing myself off cliffs. I just dont need access to the skill as is.

[GoQ.1048]

nothing changed..

 

still 🤡

Edited December 1, 2021 by shinta.8906

[Cegolex.8702]

2 hours ago, talesbfftt.4596 said:

Actually, the Air and Earth augments are really strong in PvP. 5sec superspeed + 100% endurance regeneration are HUGE, and 3sec block + 3k barrier is a LOT better than arcane shield's 3 blocks

Thank you for telling me, for some reason before i thought Earth augment i thought it only blocks the next incoming attack and like earth hammer 5 and only if you dont get hit you get some barrier xD. Makes it also quite good in WVW zerg fights then^^.

 

2 hours ago, talesbfftt.4596 said:

You should try play staff Catalyst in PvP! I've had great results with it,  running Berserker's Amulet + Divinity's rune, Fire/Air/Catalyst (just like WvW, but with Aura Cleansing traits), with all augments (except fire) as utilities. It felt viable and I provided a lot of value to teamfights. I've played around 10 matches last night with it, and there was not a single time I wasn't either top damage or top kills (mostly both). It felt very different from Staff Core/Tempest/Weaver in PvP, which are extremely hard to pull out. Elemental celerity's double meteor shower felt incredible strong and the Water Augment's chill paired with Lava Font is amazing to fight at points. Air and Earth augments helped a lot with survivability and mobility. Overall i'm very excited with catalyst in PvP, it's not a better duelist than weaver, but it's sure better at teamfights.

I am looking forward for trying this one next. 😄

Edited December 1, 2021 by Cegolex.8702

[Sevei.3012]

I do think the catalyst is in a better spot than the previous beta. there are issues still to be addressed, along with some obnoxious bugs

Jade Orbs
As static fields they are much better in terms of output and control, the changing field is extremely interesting and hope it can come back for other skills that aren't about boon application. maybe for weaver dual skills like lahar?

1.    This has been brought up multiple times at this point. the 2second cd on attunement swap with this iteration completely destroys the flows and makes combos feel clunky on various weapons : Staff Earth 2 into attunement swap orb doesn't work etc. this needs to be addressed

Other not really an issue or needs to be implemented:

1. we don't have the option to access to a Frost Jade Orb for frost aura and chill combos. either as a trait customization or actively switching the existing water field with some type of trigger to "freeze" it/or unfreeze it
2. The poison field is nice for weakness, which is something the hammer doesn't directly have, and has value in pvp and wvw. but would be nice to see an earth field be consider given it is an elite spec. since we can't have a smoke field outside of trident (good luck blasting that in underwater fractal)

Energy UI : I don't expect this beta was prioritized for UI work, so hoping if energy stays it moved as a bar under attunements like weaver / or an energy bar setup like revenant. 

Energy Management: this part of catalyst doesn't feel great.

1. Not regenerating energy during the orbs leads to spacing orbs out to be inefficient, this hurts builds targeting specific boon duration
2. Generating on strikes led to scenarios where I would either be overflowing with energy or famished 80% of the time. steady regeneration was rare. If catalyst is about revitalizing old techniques might as well make it old energy.
   1. Many times I would have preferred if it just had static pip regeneration like revenant .
   2. orbs could have overcast for using multiple at a time. and have traits based off overcast
3. Fight engagement was painful if I was empty on energy to start out with. this seems harmful to team groups if your expecting your catalyst to drop a quickness field to help with spike damage in pvp/wvw

 

Augments: Much better than last time. but with the above bullet 1 under jade orbs the bonus feels really had to use. and i would just ignore outside of pve unleash fire in multiple cases rather that try to determine if I should swap to use the sphere

1.  Celerity felt great in wvw to reset aoes on staff. the boons in sphere feels extremely pointless. 
   1. Could it just extend the duration of all jade spheres as the bonus? or spawn a field of some type
2. many of these feel like they could incorporate combo finishes. Invigorating air could be a leap. shattering ice a whirl. earth a blast. this would help get away from them just being stances redux 
3. non of these interact with energy outside of shattering ice extremely high strike output

Hammer:

hammer really differs extremely in performance  in perfectly executing and when i screwed up attunement timings so now i'm doing less damage than condi staff ele

1. the orbs being instant cast really helps with the flow. but  the orbs feel overly punishing on hammer, the different between a consistent rotation and drifts in the rotation doesn't feel good. often loosing grand finale or 3 orbs because the 4th attunement isn't ready (on top of the current bug with it going on CD randomly)
   1. Weave Self is easier at an average level than these orbs
   2. this also dramatically impacts energy generation outside of air 2
2. Sustain, a lot of power is put into water 4 and earth 4 whose base values are some of the highest we've had on weapons before scaling. but both can whiff and have no value if you use them without the conditions triggered. there is no other barrier or healing present on the rest of the hammer that can be used without a target
   1. Dagger and Sword both have options to heal/barrier yourself if the target is kiting you
   2. Condi cleanse on water 5 without a target is nice. 
   3. It has no group healing on skills, or group barrier.all other ele weapons and specialization weapons have group healing. you can fill your frontline with a heal tempest or a selfish catalyst. people will choose tempest
3. the 600 range is just really awkward compared the rest of the 240/900/1200/15000 range skills standards in the game. the orb place range is 900 as works for staff/scepter setups for pvp/wvw groups.
4. No combos on 1 or 2 skills makes the aura combo rotation really off sometimes
5. slightly related to the orb above. the might generation on catalyst is nice but the group might isn't really high asfire 5 is self only. and the orb is only doing one stack per pulse, with 5 pulse total. combine with fire grandmaster pyromancer puissance the group might option is likely fine with spectacular sphere, but would be nice for added might sources for the group
6. Persisting Flames doesn't do anything for hammer. the damage buff is still gotten from sphere at least. but this has been an omni weapon talent for eles

Traits

the Aura Traits have a lot of value, but they interact weirdly in that they don't trigger the same way as all aura traits that the effect triggers for the auras you apply. aura share tempest will easy keep up these benefits for you, this feel counter to a spec with built in group support that you get more value from others to maintain it personal buffs. there is no benefit to running these traits with powerful aura,  the basis for most of ele boon support

1. the DR and damage up buffs makes sense with the current  functionality. and giving a 10% damage buff in pve would be a nightmare, again. 
   1. these 2 traits also have no impact on how you actually play either as fire trait line alone with random combos will keep both at full value all the time
2. The stability grandmaster is the catalyst main source of stable stability and is overall a great trait, but we don't have the option to share it like other boon aura traits. and we are incentivize to run as ele "pairs" to maximize it (or just let a guardian cover our stability as always).
   1. trigger from finishing combos we are often covering out next move instead of the engaging move that is likely hitting the cc field.
   2. arcane skills felt a way to get around this in wvw to have move stable access to stab. but other utility options don't cover this
   3. Aura skills on other weapons were great with this trait. but hammer doesn't have an aura skill that isn't conditional. and feels like a weakness of hammer again

Elemental empowerment 

Overall I do question why empowerment needs 3 traits for this minor. and feel like we are taking space that could be used for additional orb customization or combo bonuses. 

1. Viscous Empowerment works well. and has nice synergy with earth arcane skills + arcane traits for wvw. and was the only trait I didn't really have any issue with in this line of traits. 
2. Evasive Empowerment : hammer doesn't have extra evades. daggers and staff get more value out of this trait than the spec weapon. at last if it trigger on blocks similar to Flow Like water. this would also let it synergize with Fortified Earth
3. Empowered Empowerment: is nearly useless without one of the other empowerment traits as it too hard to maintain without a tempest pair. weapon wise it also has inconsistent value as they will stabilize at different stack levels

Sphere traits

changes to sphere rose the power of these traits dramatically in different modes. it hard to say what really could be changed till issue with orbs are fully cleared up. We only have one Energy Trait but the overall opinion of people using catalyst is energy needs a major redesign anyways. or to be replaced with ammo.

Other notes: I had a lot of fun with staff catalyst in wvw. didn't need water or earth traits. and felt I had the just about right balance of group support + damage. and unlockable double meteor storms is beautiful. the 900 range on the sphere placement really helps with this.  

 

 

Edited December 1, 2021 by Sevei.3012

[Mattmatt.4962]

^

 

Most negative feedbacks are about hammer beeing garbage. And thats pretty obvious ngl. Its kit is lackluster (no mobility, no tankiness, low cc, etc.)

 

I was saying before that beta phase that catalyst is strong (obviously not with hammer), and now that its live, it could be if they fix slight things on f5 

- remove the 1,5sec cd on attunment swap

- allow to gain energy anytime (aka when an orb is active

Do that and catalyst will be strong (again, not with hammer)

 

So saying that most feedback are unfair trashtamlking is wrong. Most are constructive tbh

[Joswi.2635]

The sphere changes help a lot but I still question the point of having an energy system for it. It has a 5 sec recharge and duration, just leave it at that and take out the energy cost. I mean you can basically keep it up when you are in combat and hitting things but if you use it towards the end of a fight it makes it more annoying for the next fight because you have to build it back up. Just makes sense to get rid of the energy on it. The other thing about the sphere is it being part of the global cooldown with attunements is very annoying, because it's your only field and your augments use it you want to fire it out as soon as you get into a new attunement not wait 2 seconds. 

 

Hammer still feels very odd with the different ranges, if you are fighting a stationary target that you can be next to it's fine but for most everything else it just feels off especially since the range stuff is only 600. Should really focus on one or the other, range or melee, preferably range and if you go with range it should be further than 600. If you stick with the combo of ranges I think water and air should be switched, making water range and air having more movement abilities. Having the your only engage be on water and it's your main heal on there too. Don't want your heal and engage on the same move, doesn't make sense. Then the orbs on 3 just feel so meh and I'm not sure what to do about those but something needs to change with those.

[Milosz.5938]

So I decided to try again. Oh my Lord, if that's what the "refreshed" version is going to look like, it's probably better to actually remove the elementalist from the game, completely.

Catalyst is still a parody in: mobility, survival, healing, range of attacks, no idea for builds at all, traits.

Has anyone from Anet ever tested this "great mocking version of elemntalist".

Unfortunately, I cannot fully express here what I feel when I try a new profession as a longtime elemntalist - because my comment would be removed. It is still cookie baked only in 10% and at the same time 90% raw and causing stomach problems.

Apart from the static training golem, Catalyst has no place to exist.

Once more you are showing that elemntalists are jokes for you. Thanks for your "respect".

Edited December 1, 2021 by Milosz.5938