Catalyst exemplifies bloat and conflicted design philosophies

[Swagg.9236]

The Catalyst 3 skills and Jade Orb are utility skills (both could be glyphs); they are neat and interesting, but they are absolutely not worthy of being super-exclusive features which ought to define an entire, isolated sub-class.

The actual Catalyst utility skills are boring garbage on their own; could have all been combined into a low-cooldown elite skill (or another, single utility skill).

Hammer is an half-baked concept that features a few interesting abilities/interactions tied together with flashy attacks that don't really do much.

It's too easy to identify and combine the few good, synergetic elements across Elementalist hammer, sword, daggers, and scepter respectively into a single weapon set that's actually fun and impactful rather than just letting an absolute garbage pile of unused content to build up and rot in a corner (because dagger/focus and sword/focus is just too rewarding for the effort they demand).

Unfortunately, beyond just the weapon design issues, GW2 is generally already ruled by passive effects which override player expression and parasitically benefit only a stiflingly narrow scope of "playstyles"; this is another reason why we see so little practical weapon variety.

Edited September 26, 2021 by Swagg.9236

[Ausar.9542]

8 hours ago, Swagg.9236 said:

The Catalyst 3 skills and Jade Orb are utility skills (both could be glyphs); they are neat and interesting, but they are absolutely not worthy of being super-exclusive features which ought to define an entire, isolated sub-class.

The actual Catalyst utility skills are boring garbage on their own; could have all been combined into a low-cooldown elite skill (or another, single utility skill).

Hammer is an half-baked concept that features a few interesting abilities/interactions tied together with flashy attacks that don't really do much.

It's too easy to identify and combine the few good, synergetic elements across Elementalist hammer, sword, daggers, and scepter respectively into a single weapon set that's actually fun and impactful rather than just letting an absolute garbage pile of unused content to build up and rot in a corner (because dagger/focus and sword/focus is just too rewarding for the effort they demand).

Unfortunately, beyond just the weapon design issues, GW2 is generally already ruled by passive effects which override player expression and parasitically benefit only a stiflingly narrow scope of "playstyles"; this is another reason why we see so little practical weapon variety.

honestly I didnt understand how the Utility skills worked.

[Swagg.9236]

13 minutes ago, Ausar.9542 said:

honestly I didnt understand how the Utility skills worked.

They were just self-applied passives with fixed durations which could grant a conditional bonus if you activate them while inside of your F5 skill's active AoE.  The only remotely "decent" one was the fire-based utility because it just increased your outgoing damage (the other ones were entirely irrelevant because they either provided worthless effects or granted a bonus which could be achieved--or outperformed--by other skills which already exist).  The fundamental concept honestly wasn't completely awful (dedicate utility skills to give a bonus to specific elemental attunements), but the execution was horridly janky (elemental attunement cooldowns combined with the spammy, rotation-based nature of GW2's combat will almost always prevent on-demand access to the best bonuses) and ultimately doomed to failure because there are simply not that many "unique effects" that GW2 can have any player provide anymore (hence why all of the utility bonuses are either super generic or unimpressive).  The end result is five skills which feel more like a single GM trait rather than something worth occupying a skill slot.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Swagg.9236