How would you rate Catalyst?

[brandies.8673]

I haven't bought the expansion but I like Ele the most. Curious to know what the community thinks of it.

[Flori.2194]

If you really love ele you will probably be disappointed. If you breathe every aspect of the class, enjoy your WvW or PvP support Tempest, solo PoF bounties with your Weaver and love the concept of those e-specs you will find nothing new in Catalyst. It's a mix of leftover ideas for Tempest (aura traits) and Weaver (augments are like stances, the celestial trait line), the hammer is weird and unfitting and yet again melee, so what's left is a combo field... like yeah, core ele with an extta field. Catalyst lacks identity, a true concept and especially it lacks something new for the class.

[ScottBroChill.3254]

I have complained about catalyst before and how I would have liked for them to have taken the spec in another direction, mostly in the gun or bow direction where we could get some more ranged options, but I am act ually having a lot of fun with catalyst. I'm a big fan of piano playing once i figure the skills out a little bit and I can work on a rythm/rotation and now it's flowing more smoothly but I am still staring at my skill bar and miss-clicking my f5 a lot, it's getting better. Might generation has been insane on catalyst from all the blasts and on-demand fire field. Quickness is great fun. The passive bonuses from traits are easy to stack, I literally don't have to think about it because I'm already trying to constantly rotate my fields and get the auras. But that in turn makes the traits feel lame and boring. It's just mostly stat boosters, but I guess it's nice for once to finally have stats on my ele lol For me, hammer is basically like a close range staff this is just more useful and fun. Augments are a dumpster fire though. Not that they're useless, but they are just boring stances. The air one just feels like the tempest shout but worse. Just boring and don't add anything. Actually all of our elite spec utilities feel this way so I think it just hurts a little more that we just can't get some interesting utilities, but I guess that's because we get 4 times as many weapon skills as the other classes... i guess. But the spec is a lot more fun and effective than the forums are implying. 

[Jongi.7612]

Ive been trying to get into Ele for a while... Reve and Ele. Catalyst to someone not entirely into the profession, seems not out of place but not finished? Hammer 3 duration increased would cut down on the feeling that you need to cycle so much.

 

It doesnt feel like it has any real payoff. Maybe its just too much going on for me, but I dont see any reason why I would go Catalyst over Weaver. Maybe something just isnt clicking with me.

 

 

[scerevisiae.1972]

I get the distinct impression that people voting "good" are pure PVE players, and people with significant playtime/interest in WVW/PVP are the ones voting "terrible".

[Cygneis.1730]

In every MMO, when new stuff is released you get this period where nobody have a any idea of what they're doing. With EOD we are still in this period. So when it come to catalyst, it's hard to give a definitive answer on what it's really capable of.

I've been playing it since launch and i'm honestly not sure of what to make of it. Without the hammer it's basically just a core ele+. So if you like core ele you might enjoy a dagger/dagger or even a staff catalyst.

When it comes to the hammer, it's a... weird weapon. It could definitely use some tuning but as it is currently the weapon has access to some pretty good damage (air 2 is pretty scary, especially in pvp if you manage to land your air 4 first) and it has some really good sustain. I've been running around in open world with celestial gear and runes of the pack without any major issue.

The real problem is that the hammer is a pretty slow weapon. Meaning that there is a latency between when you commit to an ability and when the ability lands. This leave you extremely vulnerable to knockbacks and your target dodging your ability by simply moving a few centimeters away. The issue being that the spec is extremely reliant on you comboing your abilities together. So a single knockback can really mess with your rotation.

Honestly, give it a try. It's not nearly as bad as some people on the forum make it to be.

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, Jongi.7612 said:

Ive been trying to get into Ele for a while... Reve and Ele. Catalyst to someone not entirely into the profession, seems not out of place but not finished? Hammer 3 duration increased would cut down on the feeling that you need to cycle so much.

 

It doesnt feel like it has any real payoff. Maybe its just too much going on for me, but I dont see any reason why I would go Catalyst over Weaver. Maybe something just isnt clicking with me.

 

 

Weaver even with arcane doesn't generate high amounts of might at once or any quickness and doesn't have as good cleave. It is also highly alacrity reliant due to dual attunements and can't deal with phase shift if you use sword.

---

My rating for catalyst in PVE is probably good but with the caveats that anything that favors condi or long ranged is going to suffer. The skill level required to play catalyst is lower than weaver and about on par with tempest: just upkeeping hammer orbs on 3 and hitting 2 and 5 does a large amount of the damage. Since it provides quickness without trait or utility  investment (unlike harbinger/StM chrono /quick scrapper/FB) it means if you already have quickness provided you being in a party helps cover any gaps as well. Unlike tempest it doesn't have hitbox reliant in the extreme, small and large hitbox has 1K DPS difference. Hammer orbs give it innate melee cleave to eliminate any packed trash mobs.
--- Improvements to be had: if Wind Storm launched and knocked down at the same time for more CC bar damage it would be helpful. Also hammer orbs could probably be 8s duration rather than 5s to make it more forgiving. In last beta I mentioned that earth could probably have bleeding on auto such that if you drop hammer orbs for whatever reason that you still have bleeding ; instead of bleeding I'd rather see cripple since water hammer orbs apply vulnerability.

My rating for catalyst in WVW is probably bad since it has no 900+ range option on hammer and the ranged autos can't hit more than 3 people nor are they high damage. If you just wanted to hit 5 people in melee you're better off spamming arc divider on berserker which also has 1200 range Scorched Earth. The competitive splits hurt catalyst hammer immensely as well as jade sphere being 15 cooldown with zero actual damage; in WVW stability is best provided by firebrand and revenant. Catalyst would have to replace hammer herald which provides stability, might, swiftness, and fury or power DH/scourge/berserker/scrapper. The only way it remotely do that is if hammer has 900 range+ and it brings more than quickness/might/resolution.
--- Minor improvements to be had: hammer 3 orbs closely approximate vengeful hammers on revenants and may even compete with DH traps now, so ultimately the largest deficiency is ranged ability. An increase in hammer to 900 range on fire/air as well as piercing on fire and air autos would do a lot. Rain of blows should be unsplit since the auto chain does similar damage right now. Bleeding is worthless in WVW so I'd rather have the earth hammer orbs apply cripple.
--- Note that if you run staff for example the only advantage is double meteor in any squad that runs heal scrapper which provides quickness.
--- Virtuoso and harbinger suffer immensely from projectile reliance so this actually has more potential that either of those EOD epecs.

My rating for PVP is tentatively meh since everyone doesn't even bother using hammer. Hammer doesn't have much sustain other than the projectile block on earth and the single hit block. Heal is mediocre on the water leap considering it is a gap closer. Gap closer could probably be an ammo skill. The spec itself does provide stat value , damage reduction, as well as stability but  jade sphere being 15 cooldown with zero actual damage doesn't make it as strong as in PVE.
--- Improvements to be had: if hammer is to be mainly a slow melee weapon then Ground Pound could probably be ranged, Immutable Stone could probably block 3 attacks given the cast time. Rain of blows should be unsplit since the auto chain does similar damage right now. Invigorating air could probably remove immob.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Lynx.9058]

Essentially a melee spec that has pretty much no movement/gap closers.
F5 is clunky to use still.

A lot of damage potential is tied up in Hammer 3 still, which is extremely frustrating to keep going.  Yay for another carpal tunnel atunement-spaz spec.
Has almost no survivability/sustain, which is 100% necessary for fighting at melee range with any spec.

 

Brings nothing new to the table that other elementalist specs don't already offer, and do better in most cases.

Anet really screwed up with this one.  Catalyst should've been a ranged spec.  It should have been a simpler spec that didn't force atunement swapping constantly, we already had enough of that with both tempest and weaver.  IMO, it should've focused on chemicals/potions/elixirs to better fit the name "catalyst", too; would've gone great with an elemental rifle and magic bullets as a theme.

[scarlettmoonbabe.6932]

I was most hype for this out of anything in the expansion, though very iffy on hammer. Thought i'd give it the benefit of the doubt. I hate everything about it after trying it, and have gone back to tempest even with the nerfs. Catalyst has potential forsure. But it's not for me.

EDIT: I do like the aesthetic. Mechanically, I'm not a fan. I haven't given up on it yet, but I feel like I'm bashing my head against a wall trying to do the story or open world content. 

Edited March 6, 2022 by scarlettmoonbabe.6932

[Serephen.3420]

47 minutes ago, Cygneis.1730 said:

In every MMO, when new stuff is released you get this period where nobody have a any idea of what they're doing. With EOD we are still in this period. So when it come to catalyst, it's hard to give a definitive answer on what it's really capable of.

I've been playing it since launch and i'm honestly not sure of what to make of it. Without the hammer it's basically just a core ele+. So if you like core ele you might enjoy a dagger/dagger or even a staff catalyst.

When it comes to the hammer, it's a... weird weapon. It could definitely use some tuning but as it is currently the weapon has access to some pretty good damage (air 2 is pretty scary, especially in pvp if you manage to land your air 4 first) and it has some really good sustain. I've been running around in open world with celestial gear and runes of the pack without any major issue.

The real problem is that the hammer is a pretty slow weapon. Meaning that there is a latency between when you commit to an ability and when the ability lands. This leave you extremely vulnerable to knockbacks and your target dodging your ability by simply moving a few centimeters away. The issue being that the spec is extremely reliant on you comboing your abilities together. So a single knockback can really mess with your rotation.

Honestly, give it a try. It's not nearly as bad as some people on the forum make it to be.

I'm with you on this, spending all my time since eod launch on cata in pve and wvw to see how far I can push it and what can/won't work. I was way more critical early on until I realised I felt the same way woth weaver at the start, I simply didn't like it, but now it's become my favourite class/ele spec in the game. So I'm not gonna shoot down cata just yet.

[brandies.8673]

5 hours ago, Cygneis.1730 said:

Honestly, give it a try. It's not nearly as bad as some people on the forum make it to be.

I tried it in beta and to be honest I thought it was pretty bad. Felt like a slightly different version of sword TBH.

I don't understand why they gave Ele another melee weapon when the last 2 elite specs had melee weapons. I know warhorn isn't exactly pure melee, but it's pretty close to it.

 

Edited March 4, 2022 by brandies.8673

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The hammer has the worst design feature that any build can have, and that is an artificial time crunch.  This is the reason why I hated the old Invocation condi Renegade and also why I don't like hybrid weaver:  There's skills that force exact rotations with split-second timing, and if anything should go slightly wrong the DPS plummets.  Griever Weaver had that with Weave Self, which required a 26-part combo under perfect quickness and alacrity in order to pull off.  If there was any mistake, even ones that I cannot control, then I lose the 20% condition damage bonus and I'm worse off than just running marauder gear.  Invocation renegade also had that, with some rotations plummeting down to 8 or 9 energy before the weapon swap, giving me 1/5th and 2/5ths of a second of error, quite literally.

With hammer it is the orbs.  The animations on all of the hammer skills are very long, with some standouts like Air 2 taking longer than the orbs stay up to cast.  How much can be done and how fast it has to be done is highly variable depending on quickness, which means I will miss the timing regularly and all practice that I do in the overworld amounts to nothing.  There's no room for error and there's no flexibility in the rotations.  If anything goes slightly different, DPS drops off a cliff and everyone gets mad at me for being a failure.  5 seconds of orb time simply isn't enough.

For the specialization as a whole the traits do nothing.  All of the aura traits and elemental empowerment is just an extremely convoluted way of giving minor bonuses that other specializations gain for free.  Instead of just having a 10% damage bonus or a 10% damage reduction, Catalyst has to blow through every weapon skill they have then wait awhile for the internal cooldowns to go away, and then they have to do it again.  Because, funny thing: the catalyst can't mechanically get full aura traits and elemental empowerment on it's first run through it's rotation.  The ICD on Elemental Epitome prevents doing so.  That covers most of the traits.  Staunch Auras is nearly useless, because Stability needs to be tactically applied to be of any value, not randomly throughout the damage rotation.  If I want stability, I can't wait to build up energy, drop down a field then use the slow hammer-5 animation to finish a combo..  The only ones left that actually do anything are the bottom 3, which amount to "get energy, give boons, slightly longer boons."  These traits are only really useful for the buff build, because the durations on all of these are so short that a DPS build can't make use of them.  Catalyst traits are so bad that, if I were to happen to forget to pick any of them while changing my build, it would take hours of game time to even notice a difference.

The Augments are terrible.  They amount to the same basic utility set that every profession gets, ever.  "Do damage, do extra hits, stun break, defensive ability, mostly generic heal, etc."  The only one that's unique is the elite skill... which conflicts with the orbs on hammer 3.  

All in all, the only thing catalyst has going for it are high numbers against immobile bosses.  

[ZoXLike.9073]

Im Ele player all the way but this breaks a lot of fun.
I would love to have a specc where i can just play and dont have the constant problem with low health pool or low dps cause i dont press all my buttons or both.

If u play ele ur kittened in must raids cause they dont give a kitten about ur low hp pool. Even if u can deal a lot of dmg (hybrit waver <3) 

Anet just dont know what to do with this class cause if u make it 'eZ' to do dmg, some pros will abuse it and deal like 50k+ with no problems. 

But if Anet would listen (like Final Fantasy does) maybe we would have a better weapon.... 
At least if they dont gonna find a way to balance ele in Raid / PvP / WvW / PvE content, im very disapointet and maybe leave the game. I allready have 5k hours and more of the half is my Ele. Pls dont kitten it up so hard Anet.

[SkyCake.4216]

Thematically and mechanically, I find it the most disappointing elite spec out of all of the EoD specs. Even as someone that likes the idea of a "hammer mage".

[Ragnarox.9601]

I do more dmg as a weaver in cele gear than catalyst in cele gear. I think theres is something wrong in wvw, I think its like 50% nerfed or something. 

[Junkpile.7439]

I don't like to spam finishers inside fields. Dagger and sword specs already do this. Didn't really find any other use for these fields. No idea why there isn't traits that would change these fields something else.

[Jongi.7612]

Once I went to weaver it was instantly more damage. Again it could just be im not used to the hammer as a weapon, but the might stacks had very little impact not to mention in group play might and other buffs can be handled by other professions.

 

I just dont see its place really.

 

[giblets.6401]

Hammer shouldn't have been melee. Noone wanted a Sword v2.0 but that's what they made. Stupid. 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

16 minutes ago, giblets.6401 said:

Hammer shouldn't have been melee. Noone wanted a Sword v2.0 but that's what they made. Stupid. 

It feels more like melee staff to me.

[crosknight.3041]

been playing it through the story as D/D catalyst.
it's alright though i still feel that the traits should be focused on COMBO FINISHERS over aura. boon duration feels like it got stomped from last beta so i feel like quickness catalyst is gonna be outdone by already established quickness giving specs. Energy mechanic on orb is EXTREMELY BAD. if you go down (being made of squish this will happen if a boss sneezes at you) you lose ALL ENERGY, feels excessively punishing. if you wanted us to have a limiter on the number of orbs we can have out, make orb an ammo skill on a 15s recharge. orb duration i feel should also be effected by the "sphere specialist" grandmaster, 5s feels way to short.

havent tried hammer yet since release however i can see that they still have the 3 skill that is imo out of place on the hammer and the varied ranges. the hammer range should be 600 and those orbs should get yeeted and given to weaver.

[ArjukKagrim.6049]

I really like the hammer mechanic with the connecting theme. But in real fight it is not usable du to the "you must stand inside the hitbox" mechanic that lead to high golem benchmarks. My guess is Devs see the high number, think the spec is good and will nerf it, although in actual encounter (with the exception of "golem-bosses") it's terrible 😞

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

They need to remove Aura stuff from Catalyst (that's Tempest's domain, and to some extent, Core), and focus purely on combo fields giving the class a specific feel like Tempest and Weaver both have.

 

Hammer needs multitarget on the autoattack for Fire and more combo options. Its the only weapon in the Ele's entire kit that can't hit more than one target with the Fire autoattack, which makes it feel like a net DPS loss in some situations even compared to the venerable Staff.

 

The retreat skill of Air (#4) needs to be a flip-over skill, so flying off into the sunset is optional. Right now its not useful in any encounter restricted to a small area (most end-game PvE).

 

The orbs (all #3 skills) should be permanently activated (only on/off) and change depending on attunement. Maybe even remove this from Hammer and make it autocast by attuning.

 

The rest all seems quite good, and I'm enjoying it.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Hemdale.1520]

Despite being disappointed with another melee weapon there were certain aspects to catalyst that was enjoyable, such as the constant fields and having - water - earth - be more frequent. And there was this sense of a somewhat bruiser ele carrying a hammer smashing things when you got things rolling, not to mention quickness was something ele has never had before.

But upon being able to thoroughly play it more and especially taking it into a competitive environment such as spvp you realize that all the fun effects felt initially don’t mean much if there is no way to get them functioning in a practical way, it feels like a constant battle of trying to just have access to be able to play how the profession is supposed to be played. The orbs just feel like another attunement button that you have to press, energy is restricting all the specs and players potential, hammer is just a weak delayed weapon with no gap closers, mobility or cc, and you could combine all the augments into one button and it would still be terrible. So I thought well maybe it could just be some open world spec for fun, but even after switching to tempest/weaver it still felt like a night and day difference in every aspect.

The truth is catalyst is a two act novelty spec which is to find a stationary object and spam orbs then grant boons/quickness through sphere, doing anything else is just a slow clunky mess that could be done better with the other especs.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Hem.7514

[ArjukKagrim.6049]

"The orbs (all #3 skills) should be permanently activated (only on/off) and change depending on attunement. Maybe even remove this from Hammer and make it autocast by attuning."

 

No, please not. Hammer 3 as it currently is is one of the most fun mechanics any spec in gw2 had! Just the "stand-in-hitbox design should be adressed.

[epothos.4831]

It's depressingly bad and unexciting. Apparently the specc can pull off some insane DPS when you stand still on a golem, but that's all I can find going for it. I just finished the EoD storyling on my catalyst and my whole experience just makes me want to quit Elementalist as a whole. I've enjoyed Weaver and Tempest, but I just want something new and less complicated and actually rewarding. 

 

Catalyst is nothing new and certainly not rewarding to play. The traits leave a lot to be desired and don't offer a single interesting choice.  Just flat ability score improvements based on your role. Jade Spheres are just boring to use. No one wants to stand in a 180 radius for 1 boon for 5 seconds. And the specc wants to combo with fields, but the reward for all that combo-ing is just more auras?

 

Then there's Hammer. Looks awesome. The orbs are aesthetically pleasing. But it's frustratingly difficult to hit with most of the hammer skills. Abilities have long animations. It wasn't given a single combo field. And Hammer 3... God I hate Hammer 3, it is truly the final nail in the coffin for me. I'm tired of having to spazz out on my keyboard just to do mediocre damage and literally NOTHING ELSE. I'm ready to finally switch classes bc I want to actually experience the game's aesthetic and world and not be focused on my ability bar 75% of the time.