Rate catalyst Round 2 (beta 4)

[Vissarion.6509]

Round 2 of voting Catalyst elite Spec. GO

Edited December 2, 2021 by Vissarion.6509

[Flori.2194]

Well, after the first survey where a majority rated it bad or terrible and less than 20% rated it mediocre, good or better and a big amount of participants said they should redo the whole thing or at least fix a lot I think anet doesn't care at all. This survey is nice and I feel confirmed with my concerns and complaints about this crappy e-spec, but overall it's pointless because there are too many white knights and I don't think they listen to anything else but the feedback in the feedback thread, even if 100% said they should redo it, they won't because it's another pointless thread where ele mains cry. And we have a lot of them and it seems like anet doesn't care. 🤷‍♂️

[BigEvs.6971]

From a PvP/WvW standpoint:

Voted "Bad" for now. Changes recently pushed the spec in the direction of viability, but the overall concept still feels like an afterthought. This spec isn't the catalyst of anything. Make Jade Sphere a field that sticks to your target if it's gonna be this finicky to use. At least then the spec can be the "Catalyst" of an engagement by visually signalling to allies what enemy is being focused. 

 

Cata is probably a 4-5/10 rn for me. Gains some points for working well with old weapons, but traits are kinda boring and hammer is miserable without an organic field or more auras. Also some of the augments are almost better than cantrips, especially untraited cantrips. The heal could function more like Vindicator heal IMO.

 

For my personal reference:

Tempest was a 5-6/10, for pigeonholing ele into a healbot for as long as it did. Also because warhorn. 

 

Weaver was maybe 7-8/10 for strong viability but flowing poorly outside of like 2 weaponsets. Why does everything need some huge windup? 

[Dadnir.5038]

There wasn't the option for "playable". It is now playable. However, my main "hate" point which are on the overall design didn't change one bit between Beta 2 and Beta 4.

Design is lazy, traits are awful (all of them), focus on auras is uninspired, augments are stance 2.0 and hammer is somewhat playable despite it's own lack of field.

You could put augments skills or Hammer#3 in the F5 slot and that would be enough to make the spec look like something else than tempest 2.0.

You could replace Augments by Traps that basically do what F5 currently do and that would feel more original than the current thing.

Auras are already over-exploited on the various traitlines, they are bad in themself adding more and more to create an illusion that they are somewhat desirable is just beating a dead horse. It's painful to see that most of the time you to get auras not for their effects but for the things that tag along. Catalyst add new mechanisms and barely exploit them just to put it's focus on auras... Ah! This is making me crazy.

Fun fact (or not fun at all): Earth got a poison field which mean that if you leap into it you're not going to get a god awful aura nor will you get the boons and buffs that come along which mean that "earth sphere" will end up into being a "forbidden skill". Same goes for Water sphere, the reason why it's not an Ice field elude me. The thing even does damage instead of healing, why is it a water field?

 

Rant mode: off.

 

Edit: I'm not fondamentally against the concept of Aura but I'm sick of them being the focus on elementalist. Other professions should have some focus on them (it would be appropriate for necromancer to have a focus on dark aura, guardian a focus on light aura and mesmer a focus on chaos aura. Elementalist had it's share of focus on aura with Tempest, another e-spec with focus on aura wasn't needed.)

Edited December 2, 2021 by Dadnir.5038

[Infusion.7149]

The patch made it better (as far as the jade sphere it's a huge improvement) but it still isn't attractive outside PVE because now the hammer orbs are melee ranged. Mobility and sustain still remain lackluster : obviously minor mobility issues could be left as is if the sustain were improved: a one hit block on earth , projectile block on whirling stones, or a heal on water with a long cooldown (nearly twice that of dagger mainhand) isn't enough to make up for that.

In particular because of the "no damage on CC" policy in competitive modes the entire air attunement skillbar on hammer is more or less hurricane of pain and that's it. The autoattack has no piercing or cleave and low damage. Wind Storm (the naming is unfitting) could have been a leap finisher but besides that it makes you travel away from your target , which generally isn't what you want if you are primarily melee damage. If instead it acted as a launch (as Wind Blast on Lightning Hammer) it could have had some utility in knocking people off capture points for example or even in PVE for pushing things.

The aura traits are also mediocre, since if you combo you need to have a finisher ready at least every 10 seconds (which is more or less using every combo finisher on hammer in its current state) just to have more than 2% Damage reduction from Hardened Auras. Since only auras are off combo finishers on hammer (you wouldn't use immutable stone on random attacks and it drops your damage) it is far weaker in that respect. The ways you'd get auras otherwise on hammer are leap through fire field , leap/blast ice field (which you don't have on hammer) , and immutable stone which is on 20 cooldown itself.  With the aura traits in mind I don't know why whirling stones and hurricane of pain aren't whirl finishers : having low cooldown whirl finishers that aren't part of skills you would use defensively (Cleansing typhoon) would set it apart from other elementalist weapons which are mostly blast/leaps and would allow additional use of fire and poison fields.

I would rather the hammer orbs have damage removed from earth's rocky loop completely and be given soft CC in the form of cripple so that sticking to a target is easier. The bleeding should absolutely be on the earth auto attack so that if your hammer orbs drop or you use Grand Finale that earth attunement still has consistent condition output. In fact if all power damage is removed completely from the hammer orbs I would not be surprised if the catalyst still did 35K-36K DPS in PVE.

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Agrios.9071]

Its very good in pve i guess, but terrible and borderline unplayable in pvp and wvw (using the hammer)...

Overall bad.

[Dadnir.5038]

25 minutes ago, Agrios.9071 said:

Its very good in pve i guess, but terrible and borderline unplayable in pvp and wvw (using the hammer)...

Overall bad.

It's not "very good in PvE, it's very good against stationary foes. The difference is subtle but of importance. Take the spec and go hit the golem in the PvP lobby and you'll get similarly good result, which could lead you to say something like "it's very good in sPvP". It's true that there are stationary foes in PvE just like it's true that there are players that afk on point in sPvP (and yes, the spec is good against afk players).

[Avatara.1042]

Horrendous in WvW, bad in PvP, and can output high damage with kitten orbs in PvE if the target stays still and you are high on speed.

Of course Anet will only look at the DPS benchmark, nerf the damage of something stupid, then call it a day.

[scerevisiae.1972]

heh funny i was going to repost my original survey again today but i see someone has already done it 🙂

 

I think the 2 big issues are:

1. energy is a pointless/clunky/annoying mechanic, it's super dumb to have to farm energy before any encounter
2. hammer is REALLY FREAKIN bad vs anything not stationary cause of bad range, bad mobility, small AOE radii, pointless hammer #3 skills

 

I zerged with marauder hammer for 4hrs the other day and I knew it wouldn't be great but I was shocked at just how bad it is. 

 

Would be good to have a survey that broke hammer down into finer detail so anet get the right picture.

 

Overall IMO it's still _bad_ and feels way too much like core Ele. Hammer is garbage in its current 70/30 melee/600-range split.

Edited December 3, 2021 by scerevisiae.1972

[Stallic.2397]

I put meh-average. Cause D/D Catalyst is very fun in Pvp. It's core Elem with so much more stab, fury, auras and Stat boost. 

 

But an elite spec with a bad weapon is ultimately a bad spec. They should work well together and it seems like this build is only playable in pve. 

 

The orbs are hard to maintain, forces you into melee and it's really confusing if I should stack all four orbs then grand finale. Or only two, before shooting them out. 

 

No evades on the weapon. Barely any good defenses. Range is not far enough or effective enough to use. Just a bad weapon. 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Stallic.2397

[Stand The Wall.6987]

catalyst has no sustain, no condi cleanse outside of heal (that you have to be in range of water f5), all of the utilities are bad, damage is ok but nowhere near what it should be for a glass melee ele spec. its doa if they don't make changes.

[Agrios.9071]

Tested it in bvb yesterday and it felt much worse than weaver. You are squishier because you dont have twist of fate. All your damage is either meteor or fgs, it feels like you have alot more downtime where u cant do anything compared to as weaver.

It is nice to selfbuff with might/quickness but it always felt like i was forced to make the decision if i want to buff only myself or if i try to buff my team.

Obviously i played staff but i have to say both earth and water feel so useless that they are not really worth to use.

[Flori.2194]

2 minutes ago, Agrios.9071 said:

Tested it in bvb yesterday and it felt much worse than weaver. You are squishier because you dont have twist of fate. All your damage is either meteor or fgs, it feels like you have alot more downtime where u cant do anything compared to as weaver.

It is nice to selfbuff with might/quickness but it always felt like i was forced to make the decision if i want to buff only myself or if i try to buff my team.

Obviously i played staff but i have to say both earth and water feel so useless that they are not really worth to use.

That's exactly my experience. If I really need a lot of might I can go firework or pack rune or sigil of battle with my weaver. And most FB and some scrapper already kitten out a lot of quickness, so in the end you are like a core ele or a tempest without overloads... And those two are already way worse than weaver damage-wise. The double meteor shower with the new elite is a nice little gimmick, but losing FGS is too much of a DPS loss to justify to meteor showers every 90 seconds that you have to nail perfectly.

[Lynx.9058]

Slight improvement from the first iteration, but hammer 3 and Jade sphere still need longer durations

[Vissarion.6509]

17 hours ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

heh funny i was going to repost my original survey again today but i see someone has already done it 🙂

https://i.imgflip.com/4/2zo1ki.jpg

[Downstate.4697]

Hammer needs more defence for pvp/wvw. The 3 is bad because it doesnt use an energy system like rev. Should be removed honestly.

The traits are boring and dont contribute to the concept of catalyst. They need to narrow what they want the catalyst to be. Aura spammer is not one of them. They should focus on how you interact with the sphere. The bottom traits are the closest. The middle is stupid and unrelated to the mechanic and i wouldnt be mad if they got rid of all of it. The top line should be interactions with the fields from finishers.

 

[giblets.6401]

Bad, because the design of hammer is bad, and the traits are boring.

Hammer too similar to sword and dagger, traits too similar to tempest.

 

[Winchester Smythe Anus III.2153]

Hammer is garbage. Noone wanted another melee weapon for Ele.

 

Why are fire/air ranged but Earth/Water pure melee? It's stupid, and plays like crap.

 

[crosknight.3041]

beta 1 catalyst for me was an F tier spec.

the fixes for this beta puts catalyst at C- for me. pretty big jump up in how much i enjoy it.

issues i have currently are the traits, hammer, and some minor nitpicks

starting with traits, most of them feel boring as well as the aura based traits definitely still feel like they are stepping on tempests toes. the jade orb traits are mostly fine but imo the master tier trait does need some tuning.

Hammer time, hammer 3 is still my biggest peeve with the weapon mostly because it feels out of place (feels like a weaver thing) in a close second is the range inconsistency. just feels bad having trouble moving around in more chaotic fights, especially since the hammer has only 1 movement skill on air. with the lack of movement and inconsistency in range i can see this weapon not doing well especially in pvp/wvw.

lastly, the nitpicks. the energy on the jade orb, it feels pointless now. UI for orb is lackluster.

[Dadnir.5038]

23 hours ago, giblets.6401 said:

Bad, because the design of hammer is bad, and the traits are boring.

Hammer too similar to sword and dagger, traits too similar to tempest.

I'll add to that: Utility are too similar to stances and stances have already be given to weaver in the last X-PAC.

[Mithos.9023]

Tested it again, while better after 5 Minutes my thoughts were again: I am so what of not using this spec ever.

Especially, the Hammer is extremely clunky and unfun to use. Nothing flows well together. Worst are the #3 skills, they give you this feeling of having to rotate as fast as possible through the hammer just to get the buffs of the skills up. This kills the fun and the flow of the hammer. Especially as often you simply lose them. As others said, the switch over skill on #3 needs a little delay.

I think if this spec must have energy as mechanic, let us use it for the #3 skill. Make them an upkeep like the revenant whirling hammers. Once activated it drains energy and every time you attune to a new element, a new orb is added. That would help to take out the pressure from these skills to switch so fast and ruining any form flow. Or at least increase the time from the orbs a lot to 10-15s. 5s is just outright terrible.

[brandies.8673]

Voted "Bad".

Profession mechanic is kinda boring - it's just a field, so what, rest is core Ele.

Hammer is not bad, it is terrible. Too much like dagger and sword and too much emphasis on melee.

Maybe 600 range could work but needs more 600 ranged skills and more mobility to match cause 600 is a very awkward range to play around.

Someone suggested 600 range cone AOEs like warrior hammer 3, that would have been a great match for Ele hammer.

I hope they seriously rework hammer or at least add more ranged elements.

Edited December 7, 2021 by brandies.8673