Smoke, not fire

[jaif.3518]

I think a big issue with the jade sphere is that it gives redundant combo fields.  Yay, I have yet another fire field in my kit, whooptie-do.

 

But a smoke field?  I could blast for stealth.

Poison for earth - great, something I didn't have before.

How about ice for water, and light for air, just to keep things thematic.  

[SeTect.5918]

30 minutes ago, jaif.3518 said:

I think a big issue with the jade sphere is that it gives redundant combo fields.  Yay, I have yet another fire field in my kit, whooptie-do.

 

But a smoke field?  I could blast for stealth.

Poison for earth - great, something I didn't have before.

How about ice for water, and light for air, just to keep things thematic.  

The fire field on Jade sphere is good. It should stay like that. To be honest, there are even too low fire fields on catalyst atm.
Power Catalyst needs fire fields to get stacks of Persisting_Flames. The max stacks are 10 stacks and as Catalyst with hammer you can only get 5 stacks because hammer has no Fire fields. A fire field is something thats always needed on a power dps build for Elementalist because of this trait. So in fact, Catalyst needs even more Fire fields.

For the smoke field, they were thinking about this for Earth Sphere but they didnt want to do it.
(Source for this is: https://youtu.be/fSOtfivjD98?t=3554 , at 59:16)

Poison is "okay", Smoke field would be nice, sure, but they stated that this was off the table very fast so I dont think it will happen. Tho I wouldnt exchange Fire field with Smoke field, I would rather exchange poison field with smoke field.

Ice fields could be nice, tho the heal from Water field is also nice to have tbh.

Why light for air? Lightning field is really nice since is gives cc on jump combo and vuln on whirl and projectile finishers.
I dont know why light field would fit better thematically than lightning field. Its Air attunment, not sun attunement, all Air attunement skills are about wind or electricity, so lightning field fits just fine.

Edited March 26, 2022 by SeTect.5918

[Stallic.2397]

I would have to agree with previous comment

 

Fire field also creates fire combos. Especially with projectiles you get burning which is arguably the best condi. 

 

Ice would be nice for water attunement but with water field you get healing combos. And catalyst has terrible sustain at the moment. So I wouldn't change that

 

Air would be the only one I would change cause comboing and getting aoe swiftness is lackluster. The cc on leap is nice but that's only usable on hammer or Dagger. Hammer is a pve weapon currently, so why do you really need a cc like that when there's literally so many better cc's at your disposal. And as mentioned before, catalyst sustain is low so using Dagger just to get a leap cc is not really optimal

 

Poison field is prefect. Either poison projectiles or aoe weakness. I wouldn't change it. 

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, jaif.3518 said:

But a smoke field?  I could blast for stealth.

Arenanet explicitly told us they don't want Elementalists have access to Stealth.

That's the very reason they mentioned why Earth got a poison field instead of a smoke field.

[jaif.3518]

Thanks, I did not know the devs commented on smoke fields already.

I think many of you are arguing from a strike/raid perspective?  I'm not very familiar there, but it would be rare in wvw for a fight to last long enough to benefit from so many fire fields, at least in my experience.

So if what we're saying is that catalyst is a pve-oriented spec, I guess I understand.

 

 

[Jski.6180]

19 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Arenanet explicitly told us they don't want Elementalists have access to Stealth.

That's the very reason they mentioned why Earth got a poison field instead of a smoke field.

I would love to see an earth field or even an Ethereal field.

[fuzzyp.6295]

I was hoping we'd get stealth considering Hammer is lacking in mobility. If we don't have the tools to successfully disengage in a battle, having stealth to help put some distance would be incredibly useful. Catalyst is pretty tanky as it is, but stealth would be a good way to add a much needed escape option to the Hammer weapon. Maybe they could add some stealth to Invigorating Air as its Augment ability when used near the Jade Sphere. As it stands, having a conditional effect on a stun break of all things is ... really, really stupid.  Although thematically air would probably be the least 'stealthy' of all the elements lol.

[SeTect.5918]

53 minutes ago, jaif.3518 said:

Thanks, I did not know the devs commented on smoke fields already.

I think many of you are arguing from a strike/raid perspective?  I'm not very familiar there, but it would be rare in wvw for a fight to last long enough to benefit from so many fire fields, at least in my experience.

So if what we're saying is that catalyst is a pve-oriented spec, I guess I understand.

 

 

I was arguing from a general PvE perspective.

I agree that fields are not that good in wvw/pvp. Tho Catalyst has really low amount of fire fields atm, tbh just 1 field which is the fire sphere.

The point is that if we remove this fire field, Catalyst has none if you are using hammer. This makes the whole trait with the strike damage bonus useless on Catalyst and imo it shouldnt be like this.

Yes i think that, at the moment, Catalyst is PvE-oriented. Tho this is just because its very bad in WvW.
I think the 29th march update will also hold pvp/wvw updates which will apply to catalyst.

I think there shouldnt be stuff like PvE-oriented e specs, I think every e spec should work in every game mode.

However I just wanna say that Fire fields are important on Catalyst to make use out of Persisting_Flames. I just dont want that this trait becomes totally useless on Catalyst because you want to remove the only Fire Field that Catalyst has, which makes it impossible to use this trait.

[Bleikopf.2491]

I've been waiting for more smoke fields on ele for some expansions now. I can see that Cata doesn't get smoke fields, it doesn't fit with the theme that well. That ANet doesn't want smoke fields on ele is sad, and doesn't make much sense either. Ele already has a smoke field. 

Ice field doesn't make sense. Not only is it taking sustain away, Hammer has only two finisher types: Leap and Blast (E: it has also Whirl and Projectile, I forgot about them). Therefore you'll always get a frost aura when combed with ice field. When you combo in water attunement, you'll get a frost aura as well due to grandmaster minor trait. That's a waste. 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Bleikopf.2491
Forgot two finisher types

[Bast.7253]

I don't understand why they didn't push auras a bit further for catalyst given that it's pretty much the core of the spec. 

I'm interested in seeing what this would play like if auras stacked. For that matter they could have created some new kind of aura system that grants quickness when you have all 4 attunements or something. 

I feel like in general there's a lot more interesting things they could have done with this spec and it's sad. I'm not saying my ideas are the way to go but in comparison to some of the other profession mechanic reworks we got this expansion alone, Catalyst feels like scraping the bottom of the barrel. 

[fuzzyp.6295]

16 minutes ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

Ice field doesn't make sense. Not only is it taking sustain away, Hammer has only two finisher types: Leap and Blast. Therefore you'll always get a frost aura when combed with ice field. When you combo in water attunement, you'll get a frost aura as well due to grandmaster minor trait. That's a waste. 

Not disagreeing with Ice being less useful to have than Water, but Hammer has four finisher types: Blast (Fire 5, Air 5, Earth 5), Leap (Water 4), Whirl (Water 5) and Projectile (Hammer 3 x 4).  Still hoping one of these days they will make Air 2 and Earth 2 Whirl Finishers too. Would probably prefer that than the Hammer 3 as projectile finishers.

Edited March 26, 2022 by fuzzyp.6295

[jaif.3518]

Like I said, I understand where many of you are coming from  I would like to point out that "catalyst" and "hammer" are not synonymous.  I was honestly thinking about things from a dagger/dagger and a staff perspective.  A dagger/dagger ele with access to chill and stealth would be nice.

 

Also, many of the comments sound like you're not swapping.  Even before catalyst, people regularly cast a field, then swapped to a different element to blast (or vice versa, e.g. dragon's tooth).

[gooddrakkarboi.4870]

Smoke field on Elementalist already exists: Underwater earth 5... 

So they where just afraid you could abuse it... just like Ranger and Guardian and Mesmer and Thief and Scrapper can already abuse it in competitive game modes... What a bunch of cowards...