I thought Eles were asking for a higher base hp and more sustain based spec?

[Logos.3042]

It seems like Anet literally did NOT give the forums of almost all professions what they were looking for.  Why did they make Catalyst?  It is so non-unique and offers no corrections to all of the major problems all eles have at the moment... 

I'm so frustrated with all of the Elite specs they have revealed so far... such a massive let down for the expansion... maybe fishing will be good...

[primatos.5413]

Anet did Not now about this 😞

[Fueki.4753]

Elementalist is Arenanet's second least favourite profession. Did you expect them to actually give it something its mains want?

Catalyst really feels like Arenanet just wants Elementalist mains to move off it and main other professions.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Jski.6180]

I for one want a few things for hp / def balancing in this game. I like to see it stadizes as down state is base off of the classes hp so by having higher classes hp you simply live longer in down state. It also lets other classes build more aggressive with out giving up the ability to stay alive.

I would also take higher power / cirts rate for being a class much like there is a different between classes hp /armor. There is an argument about skills do this by there mods but often ele is locked to a wepon set that has very set in stone mods to balance the class where other classes can chose weapons whom have better mods over all even though they are simply more tankly as well. I love to see a Fire ball hit for 6k much like an axe throw from a all in war but even all in eles cant do that the different being that ele has 11k hp and the war has 16k hp during these effects. So its kind of a self told lye by anet and the player base that the hp / def system is balanced in any way for the ele class with out there being a power / cirts rate different.

This is all due to skills being more up to date to fill there roll and hp / def being so old and out dated that they simply are more of an lack of though effects. Like the description of classes being out dated because they where not updated.

[fuzzyp.6295]

Catalyst has the potential to reach pretty high stat caps with their Elemental Empowerment and Auras enhancing abilities, this includes base HP and defense. I saw some pretty crazy looking stats during the beta. I think the bigger challenge is keeping the Catalyst at those high ends of their potential, something it is struggling with because of the lackluster Jade Sphere and lack of combo field on hammer. Hopefully ANet will make some tweaks to allow longer uptime for the Catalyst's maximum potential.

Edited October 20, 2021 by fuzzyp.6295

[Obtena.7952]

17 hours ago, Logos.3042 said:

It seems like Anet literally did NOT give the forums of almost all professions what they were looking for.  Why did they make Catalyst?  It is so non-unique and offers no corrections to all of the major problems all eles have at the moment... 

I'm so frustrated with all of the Elite specs they have revealed so far... such a massive let down for the expansion... maybe fishing will be good...

What gave you the impression ... based on forum replies ... that Anet EVER gave players what they were looking for in professions? I also don't get where this idea comes from that especs 'fix' professions. That's not their point. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The forums are not so unified in demanding higher base HP with more sustain.  First of all, that's weaver.  Second of all, the catalyst is closer to something that I wanted, except Anet got it a bit backwards.  I had been saying that Ele needed better group utility and better aura support for awhile now.  The Catalyst is an attempt to fix this by giving eles a buffing well, except instead of giving better auras the Catalyst is requiring auras to be better.  

[Gorani.7205]

If I took one stable trend among Ele players for a new specialization, then it was the hope for another (more) ranged option beyond the staff. What we got with Catalyst so far is hammer with a ranged option at 600, which is a very odd, clunky middle ground between true melee and usable range (e.g. to attack a target on a wall in WvW).

Weaver kind of is the "higher health" thing, because of Barriers (although I think those are not the best ones, compared to other professions).

My gut feeling is that Catalyst (including Utilities, Traits and F5 + #3 hammers skills) is threatened by foes at every range and non-threatening to foes at every range. (just look at Ruby on the streams struggling to stay alive and killing something when not in Dev/god mode)

[Fueki.4753]

57 minutes ago, Gorani.7205 said:

If I took one stable trend among Ele players for a new specialization, then it was the hope for another (more) ranged option beyond the staff. What we got with Catalyst so far is hammer with a ranged option at 600, which is a very odd, clunky middle ground between true melee and usable range (e.g. to attack a target on a wall in WvW).

Don't forget that less than half of hammer is mid range though. Only Fire and Air 12,4,5 are ranged, while Fire and 3 effectively are melee and all of water and Earth are melee as well.

I wish Arenanet had done something simple and stupid instead of this micromanagement mess. They could have given Elementalist a ranged weapon, allow for weapon swap in combat and lock attunement swapping in combat instead. That would have been a truly new experience that diverts from the piano with no payout, but apparently Elementalist is not allowed to have that.

[Logos.3042]

8 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

The forums are not so unified in demanding higher base HP with more sustain.  First of all, that's weaver.  Second of all, the catalyst is closer to something that I wanted, except Anet got it a bit backwards.  I had been saying that Ele needed better group utility and better aura support for awhile now.  The Catalyst is an attempt to fix this by giving eles a buffing well, except instead of giving better auras the Catalyst is requiring auras to be better.  

Dont you think Tempest is group support/utility?

[Bleikopf.2491]

9 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

The forums are not so unified in demanding higher base HP with more sustain.  First of all, that's weaver.  Second of all, the catalyst is closer to something that I wanted, except Anet got it a bit backwards.  I had been saying that Ele needed better group utility and better aura support for awhile now.  The Catalyst is an attempt to fix this by giving eles a buffing well, except instead of giving better auras the Catalyst is requiring auras to be better.  

I'm not sure I understand you either. 

Do you want a support build using Auras or support for the Aura mechanic? 

Tempest has some support through Auras, so that's a thing. It could be improved, but it's there. 

Catalyst has some support for the Aura mechanic, but it's a bit lackluster as well. The direction it's taking doesn't feel very defined, as is with the whole Cata spec.

Also, every Elementalist has the option to share Auras through Auramancer trait in Water. I'm not sure on the interaction with Catalyst combing for Auras, though. That's something the design has to keep in mind because every Aura build is a potential support through Auras. 

[Infusion.7149]

You wouldn't need "higher base HP" if you did 39-40K DPS on power weaver in full glass as it did prior to the change to EoR. It means you can give up 10-15% of your damage and not be terrible on marauder. Already people in fractals are able to run master's fortitude to make up the health gap (see https://discretize.eu/builds/elementalist/power-weaver/) , although it's now condi meta. Right now if you run marauder even for half your gear it will be close to alac ren DPS (~30K) before exposed and mist potions.

As a stopgap you can run condi weaver (~39K) with a scepter to be "ranged" if that is the complaint. Condi weavers have innate 10% damage incoming reduction in 360 radius while running earth traitline with an added 7% reduction in earth attunement.

Catalyst will have more passive sustain in PVE that's for certain (as opposed to weaver evades and barriers on dual attacks ; high protection uptime on tempest when you overload). It is able to camp water attunement for longer (due to water attunement not being a garbage auto attack on hammer) which means you will always be able to have soothing mist up on the power variant. For now however, the damage is far too hitbox reliant just as tempest is. If it's able to do 33K+ on small hitboxes while being roughly as tanky as DPS scrapper (with no quickness) it would be a decent spec for DPS. The caveat here is the "all stat increase" of elemental empowerment can be potentially disastrous in raids where toughness tanking is present while running Empowered Empowerment (+20% toughness puts you at 1200 toughness , more than soulbeast).

Current power benchmarks have 40% of the damage coming from the hammer 3 orbs, meaning that is not attainable in reality with a perfect rotation with orbs always up and hitting (because it hits at exactly 200 range if you are melee on water or earth it means you won't hit with orbs). The condition benchmarks are similarly skewed due to burning and bleeding output from the orbs. Fennec (of qT fame) posted that a 44K DPS condition catalyst is only able to do ~32K on small hitboxes.

The best course of action Arenanet can take is relocating some more of the damage of hammer onto the skills themselves rather than the passive hammer 3 orbs (flame wheel, rocky loop, icy coil, crescent wind). In particular the bleeding on the earth hammer 3 could easily be relocated to the autoattack and other skills since the 0.75 activation on stonestrike is quite hefty compared to every other attunement *. The defensive value at least in PVE could also be amplified, 5% incoming damage reduction is quite low but I guess that's why the Hardened Auras trait exists (despite aura generation being extremely gated if you run hammer). I don't think all of the jade sphere, orb, and aura micromanagement remotely compares to tempest having 40% strike damage reduction after overloads (via protection).

* Even if you run a full cele + divinity rune meme like given in the beta with the normal earth+fire traitlines that people use on condi tempest/weaver you end up with Stonestrike having 847 damage tooltip per gw2skills (at 10 stacks of elemental empowerment and 5 stacks of empowering auras) and fire attunement with 0.5 activation and range does 662 +1932 burning. Readjusting to viper + elementalist rune with no sigils (but 100 expertise +70 condi food and toxic focusing crystals) you get 1128 Stonestrike, 865+2841 burning on Singeing strike so if there's only one target such that hitting 5 with earth attunement isn't possible then it's strictly worse.


The jade sphere needs to apply boons in longer duration (as well as not require the energy rampup) because nobody is going to camp air for quickness with a hammer. Another way to go about it is to have the catalyst utilities lock that attunement on the sphere (i.e. Invigorating Air always forces quickness , it isn't that great a utility anyway). The other boons are inconsequential: if you wanted them you could run tempest aurashare and be more effective overall (protection uptime is quite high on tempest which means that catalyst isn't even more robust without camping water).

As an example of what I mean by the jade orb effects:
 

Spoiler

Invigorating Air is currently : " Gain increased endurance regeneration. If this is cast within range of your Air Sphere, also gain superspeed. "
It could be something similar to " Gain increased endurance regeneration and your jade sphere locks its attunement to air sphere for 5s". --- this applies quickness but does not trigger Spectacular sphere's fury

Shattering Ice is currently: "Your successful attacks will trigger an additional strike on nearby enemies. If this is cast within range of your Water Sphere, additional strikes also apply chilled."
This essentially has no added value on hammer since you have chilled already from auto and Rain of Blows. It could be changed to "Your successful attacks will trigger an additional strike on nearby enemies. Your jade sphere locks its attunement to water for 5s." --- this applies resolution but does not trigger Spectacular sphere's vigor

Fortified Earth is currently "Block attacks. If this is cast within range of your Earth Sphere, gain barrier if the channel completes successfully."
The block duration is 3s so if you had the protection from jade sphere it would be nice. Something akin to "Block attacks. Your jade sphere locks its attunement to earth for 3s and you gain a barrier if the channel completes successfully."

Relentless Fire is currently "Your attacks and conditions deal increased damage. If this is cast within range of your Fire Sphere, your attacks are also unblockable. "
That is rather uninteresting but at least usable if fire was strong on hammer. However you wouldn't spend that much time in fire attunement on hammer, maybe on dagger or scepter.

If I wanted might why would I run jade sphere in its current iteration? Deploy jade orb in fire attunement is traited 5 stacks. I can't see any reason to run it over Empowering Auras which increases damage by 2% per aura up to 5 stacks. If you ran air traitline with Zephyr's Boon then allies get fury on every aura for the same duration rather than being gated by the jade sphere as well. Couple this with elementalist power builds usually running Power Overwhelming which requires 10 stacks of might and it isn't looking good for the boon aspect.

The highest benchmark I've seen thus far is <27K for quickness catalyst (on a large hitbox) and that doesn't even account for movement. 32% of the damage is coming from hammer 3 orbs circling so expect abysmal results as far as boon uptime and small hitboxes. Even on Boneskinner which is mostly stationary the quickness uptime was ~75% .

Without accounting for quickness you put out more boons running a weaver with arcane (due to elemental attunement) instead of catalyst.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Shiyo.3578]

On 10/20/2021 at 1:22 AM, Logos.3042 said:

It seems like Anet literally did NOT give the forums of almost all professions what they were looking for.  Why did they make Catalyst?  It is so non-unique and offers no corrections to all of the major problems all eles have at the moment... 

I'm so frustrated with all of the Elite specs they have revealed so far... such a massive let down for the expansion... maybe fishing will be good...

Devs don't care what ele's want. They have some vision for the class(that makes no sense) and will keep forcing it onto us until the entire class is extinct. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Wow I surprised these didn't show up in my mentions.

13 hours ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

I'm not sure I understand you either. 

Do you want a support build using Auras or support for the Aura mechanic? 

Tempest has some support through Auras, so that's a thing. It could be improved, but it's there. 

Catalyst has some support for the Aura mechanic, but it's a bit lackluster as well. The direction it's taking doesn't feel very defined, as is with the whole Cata spec.

Also, every Elementalist has the option to share Auras through Auramancer trait in Water. I'm not sure on the interaction with Catalyst combing for Auras, though. That's something the design has to keep in mind because every Aura build is a potential support through Auras. 

 

There's two things I wanted with Auras.  First is for them to be better.  Second is for ele's to be better at giving auras.  As far as it goes for being a support mechanic, Auras are pretty terrible.  They're nearly useless in PVE, and in PVP/WvW the only good ones are shocking and magnetic.  Support tempest uses auras largely because they're being forced to.  Aura traits are where most of their group buffs are, and these traits are so spread out that any support tempest has to sacrifice something pretty big when making their builds.  My initial suggestion was to make aura share an innate feature of the elementalist, freeing up a GM spot in water while also making aura support traits more versatile in other trait lines.  Alongside of that, auras could be improved by giving them stat bonuses, making them give boons innately, give unique buffs, making them all explode when they finish, etc and so on.

The Catalyst ended up with Hardened Auras, Empowering Auras, and Staunch Auras, which did what I and many others were suggesting.  However, it did it in the wrong way.  If 10% damage bonus and/or 10% damage reduction were innate to auras, then the Ele would have a unique support spot due to their excellent aura generating capabilities.  Instead, the Catalyst gets 2% every aura, stacking up to 10%, but only if they receive an aura every 6 seconds.  So, instead of making auras good and making the ele better at aura spam, they made the Catalyst require aura spam in order for auras to be good for the Catalyst alone.  The second irony to this is that the Catalyst is the worst ele spec to make auras with, because it has the fewest finishers and weapon skills in which to make them.

The other support feature that was added was quickness, which is a boon that ele players have been wanting for a long time.  At least, somewhere other than Lightning Hammer.  As it is now, support tempest has 3 things going for it: auras, Vigor, and Rebound.  Vigor is good in small scale WvW/PVP, and Rebound has some PVE utility to it.  But, when it comes to most of PVE and in large scale WvW, it is necessary to have quickness and alacrity, since those are the two biggest modifiers.  So much so that there's only one optimal support profession that doesn't do this, and that is because Druid has immense mechanical utility + 10-man might.  This support, unfortunately, was balanced around sitting in air perpetually, gutting any potential DPS or extra support skills the Catalyst might give.

 

[Arheundel.6451]

Simply speaking, Anet uses a different approach when dealing with elementalist  , where with other profession Anet is all about :"what can we give to make it powerful?", with elementalist the opposite always happens for some particular reason, like deep hatred or something, when it comes with eles, the approach is like :"let's try this ...but let's add this to make sure it's not too good"

Anet specifically doesn't want ele to excel at anything , they have this idea of ele being "jack of all trades and master of none", so they balance the class accordingly...the problem is that they ended up buffing/changing other professions to a point where they are "jack of all trades and master of everything"...like : scrapper, holosmith, firebrand, scourge etc etc etc

There is a cautious approach on everything about ele, where the idea of making it fun to play rarely reaches the discussion phase...with ele is everything about this so called "balance", for everything given to ele....2-3 must be taken away and this doesn't happen with other professions

With professions like necromancer, Anet moves things around with a truck...when it comes to ele, they use a tea spoon: with necromancer you can get skills/traits like 10s instant effect on a 25-30s CD while on ele will be 5s every 40s+ under specific conditions, like blasting a field or something and with min a 1/2s cast time.

You will never have anything fun to play with that kinda of approach, once again I suggest people who log in to simply have fun, to go and change their main....I still play ele from time to time, when I feel pissing people off with using a tanky condi healer in wvw equipped with stone heart.....but when I want to have actual fun..I jump on ranger/warrior and enjoy that little time I have during the weekend.

Just think about it....you putting actual effort to accomplish even simple tasks in a videogame, not worth it man...I'd rather now play another class...press 1-2 buttons and having a laugh, nobody pays me to play, I am done sitting here pressing 20+ buttons just to deal as much dmg as the next guy who press a single button from distance without even looking at the screen.

I stopped having fun with this class around 7 years ago, started to play other professions from that moment- best decision ever made (especially after the only dev who ever gave a crap about this class left for Amazon..I miss you Jon Peters). and don't regret it

Edited October 22, 2021 by Arheundel.6451

[Arheundel.6451]

For new players and old ones who may not know....Jon Peter  is the guy who.....

1)Made d/d playable when it appeared right away, elementalist would suck in GW2, he buffed d/d around 2012 Oct/Nov

2)Added Stone Heart/ Pre-nerf Diamond skin to help eles against the abuse of thieves and necromancer dhuumnabs

Basically if you had fun with your ele till the release of HoT ...you have this guy to thank, bless him

He was along with Jonathan Sharp the only dev with an actual interest in balanced gameplay, the only reason you have stuff like scourge, scrapper, firebrand, renegade...it's because these 2 devs left and nobody ever replaced them

Edited October 22, 2021 by Arheundel.6451

[Bleikopf.2491]

2 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Simply speaking, Anet uses a different approach when dealing with elementalist  , where with other profession Anet is all about :"what can we give to make it powerful?", with elementalist the opposite always happens for some particular reason, like deep hatred or something, when it comes with eles, the approach is like :"let's try this ...but let's add this to make sure it's not too good"

Anet specifically doesn't want ele to excel at anything , they have this idea of ele being "jack of all trades and master of none", so they balance the class accordingly...the problem is that they ended up buffing/changing other professions to a point where they are "jack of all trades and master of everything"...like : scrapper, holosmith, firebrand, scourge etc etc etc

There is a cautious approach on everything about ele, where the idea of making it fun to play rarely reaches the discussion phase...with ele is everything about this so called "balance", for everything given to ele....2-3 must be taken away and this doesn't happen with other professions

With professions like necromancer, Anet moves things around with a truck...when it comes to ele, they use a tea spoon: with necromancer you can get skills/traits like 10s instant effect on a 25-30s CD while on ele will be 5s every 40s+ under specific conditions, like blasting a field or something and with min a 1/2s cast time.

You will never have anything fun to play with that kinda of approach, once again I suggest people who log in to simply have fun, to go and change their main....I still play ele from time to time, when I feel pissing people off with using a tanky condi healer in wvw equipped with stone heart.....but when I want to have actual fun..I jump on ranger/warrior and enjoy that little time I have during the weekend.

Just think about it....you putting actual effort to accomplish even simple tasks in a videogame, not worth it man...I'd rather now play another class...press 1-2 buttons and having a laugh, nobody pays me to play, I am done sitting here pressing 20+ buttons just to deal as much dmg as the next guy who press a single button from distance without even looking at the screen.

I stopped having fun with this class around 7 years ago, started to play other professions from that moment- best decision ever made (especially after the only dev who ever gave a crap about this class left for Amazon..I miss you Jon Peters). and don't regret it

Partly agree. The devs seem challenged when designing the Elementalist. Which is understandable, as Ele has quite some potential. The problem comes (partly) from balancing around the potential which can be very hard to realistically achieve on the Ele.

Catalyst is the epitome of "Let's try not to make it too good" with all the gating that's happening. I hope they change that.
I do not think, however, that ANet 'hates' the Elementalist. I think they're just incompetent.

The 'Jack of all Trades' problem is real, however, especially with the way GW2 is designed around every class being able to opt into any role, and some specs being overpowered. I would not advise balancing around Firebrand or Scourge, though and would rather see them getting nerfed.

What I also noticed is that the skills sometimes aren't balanced the way other class skills are balanced. With double the weapon skills available, the logical step would be to make the cooldowns twice as long but the effect equally as strong, as we're still investing normal cast time (We cannot cast in multiple attunements at once, so cast time is very real for us. Cooldowns however we can 'circumvent' by using another Attunement in the meantime). That should be the baseline for balancing Ele skills.
Of course this will be not consistent with every skill (just imagine lava font with a higher cooldown), but some skills feel like they're getting the worse of both worlds - long CD and negligible effect.
Elementalists having to 'use multiple skills to equal one skill from another class' has no reasoning that can be found in the class mechanic - as I said, cast time works the same for us so our time investment is the same.

Another problem is probably combo fields. Ele is designed with a strong focus on comboing - even Catalyst has is designed around comboing despite having no combo fields outside of F5. Yet everything around combo fields has been power crept.

[Zenakou.7853]

On 10/20/2021 at 8:23 AM, Fueki.4753 said:

Elementalist is Arenanet's second least favourite profession. Did you expect them to actually give it something its mains want?

Catalyst really feels like Arenanet just wants Elementalist mains to move off it and main other professions.

After the showing today, I'm picking up my ranger more and definitely rolling an engie. I think once they tweak engie more and adjust the toolbelt or lack thereof coupled with the craziness of the golem it will be super fun. 

[Xanadrine.4352]

Im telling you after seeing the leather specs, everyone else is crying in their beer. They really shine, putting everything else to shame.

[Joswi.2635]

16 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

 

they have this idea of ele being "jack of all trades and master of none", so they balance the class accordingly...the problem is that they ended up buffing/changing other professions to a point where they are "jack of all trades and master of everything"

I really think this is it. Because ele has been able to do so much since basically the beginning they worry about making it too good because of how much it can do. Trouble is now there are other classes that can do just as much and are better at doing it all than ele.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

When it comes to balancing the ele, there's one thing the devs have been trying their best to avoid: bunker ele.  It was pre-HoT era, so some of you youngin's won't know about it, but for awhile Ele was one of the most terrifying enemies to fight in PVP.  It was nigh indestructible and did a lot of damage, all-the-while buffing itself to the 9s.  We called it Bunker Ele, but really it was boon ele.  After introducing boon hate (made sword thief meta for awhile) and several nerfs, the bunker ele was quashed and the devs have been scared to push it forward ever since.  The last time they pushed it forward was with weaver, which then resulted in many, many nerfs to try and reign it back in.

Combinations grow exponentially in potential as you increase in number.  The large number of skills that ele has available to it means that it only takes slight changes for things to spiral out of control.  

[Logos.3042]

14 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

When it comes to balancing the ele, there's one thing the devs have been trying their best to avoid: bunker ele.  It was pre-HoT era, so some of you youngin's won't know about it, but for awhile Ele was one of the most terrifying enemies to fight in PVP.  It was nigh indestructible and did a lot of damage, all-the-while buffing itself to the 9s.  We called it Bunker Ele, but really it was boon ele.  After introducing boon hate (made sword thief meta for awhile) and several nerfs, the bunker ele was quashed and the devs have been scared to push it forward ever since.  The last time they pushed it forward was with weaver, which then resulted in many, many nerfs to try and reign it back in.

Combinations grow exponentially in potential as you increase in number.  The large number of skills that ele has available to it means that it only takes slight changes for things to spiral out of control.  

This is why they should have made a spec that added vitality, added weapon swap, but made you remove an attunement or 2.  This could have actually worked to cap Ele's utility in a meaningful way.  

Edited October 23, 2021 by Logos.3042

[oscuro.9720]

On 10/20/2021 at 6:23 AM, Fueki.4753 said:

Elementalist is Arenanet's second least favourite profession. Did you expect them to actually give it something its mains want?

Catalyst really feels like Arenanet just wants Elementalist mains to move off it and main other professions.

What is their least?

[Fueki.4753]

6 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

What is their least?

It obviously is Warrior.