How to make catalyst viable in pvp

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Make the earth jade sphere combo field a smoke field. Then ele might finally have enough power creep to crawl into the meta.

[lLobo.7960]

Why not make it a new field type: Dust field.

When you blast it provides AoE barrier.
When you leap it provides barrier to you.
Projectiles and whirls cause cripple.

[gooddrakkarboi.4870]

8 hours ago, lLobo.7960 said:

Why not make it a new field type: Dust field.

When you blast it provides AoE barrier.
When you leap it provides barrier to you.
Projectiles and whirls cause cripple.

No need to reinvent the wheel, earth and smoke field is totally on flavour for ele, underwater 5 in earth is already a smoke field... They are just cowards and probably too lazy to balance another class with access to (a really minimal amount of) stealth... They can't even balance trapper rune and give it an icd xd

Edited March 30, 2022 by gooddrakkarboi.4870

[Winchester Smythe Anus III.2153]

Just give it some ranged skills. Sword is just better than hammer at everything hammer wants to do cause the weapon design is so limited and melee-focused.

Just a stupidly-designed weapon TBH.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Winchester Smythe Anus III.2153

[Puck.3697]

Tbh since buffa D/D fire cata is working real well people think it will be a meta build... 

Hammer is no where near sadly though. That would take some work to reach 😂 

[Poelala.2830]

On 4/3/2022 at 7:48 AM, Daddy.8125 said:

Tbh since buffa D/D fire cata is working real well people think it will be a meta build... 

Hammer is no where near sadly though. That would take some work to reach 😂 

Cata isn’t working well and will not be meta any time soon

[Puck.3697]

3 hours ago, Poelala.2830 said:

Cata isn’t working well and will not be meta any time soon

Dunno, blam says otherwise tbh. 

Blam and one of his friends are achieving 700k dmg 300k plus healing with no deaths flexing as both a teamfighter and a duellist. 

They are saying it needs nerfing. So I don't know. Maybe watch him on twitch. I use his build to major success also 

[Poelala.2830]

18 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Dunno, blam says otherwise tbh. 

Blam and one of his friends are achieving 700k dmg 300k plus healing with no deaths flexing as both a teamfighter and a duellist. 

They are saying it needs nerfing. So I don't know. Maybe watch him on twitch. I use his build to major success also 

I do similar numbers and have similar success but a minority of players don’t make something true. How it performs for an aggregate does.

[Downstate.4697]

I cant bring myself to play catalyst in pvp. Something about it just feels annoying.

[Mik.3401]

18 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

I cant bring myself to play catalyst in pvp. Something about it just feels annoying.

That’s true unfortunately it feels a bit too static and vulnerable to avoid spam attacks from meta classes. The most success I had on it was with cheese condi signets variant which is pretty spammy and boring at the end.

[Puck.3697]

8 hours ago, Poelala.2830 said:

I do similar numbers and have similar success but a minority of players don’t make something true. How it performs for an aggregate does.

You can't make a proffession overpowered in the hands of the minority to get it successful in the masses. 

High difficulty specs will always be unsuccessful in the majorities hands, not to mention when you include how many run homebrew builds etc etc which don't work properly in low rating. 

If the discussion is to make the specc easier to play however, that's a different story and could be a possible fix. 

However meta is the the most effective tactic, not the easiest, most popular or what will work in a PuG / random team. 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Poelala.2830]

9 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

You can't make a proffession overpowered in the hands of the minority to get it successful in the masses. 

High difficulty specs will always be unsuccessful in the majorities hands, not to mention when you include how many run homebrew builds etc etc which don't work properly in low rating. 

If the discussion is to make the specc easier to play however, that's a different story and could be a possible fix. 

However meta is the the most effective tactic, not the easiest, most popular or what will work in a PuG / random team. 

No ele isn’t played because 90% of the skills are totally worthless. That’s why it is bad.

[Puck.3697]

4 hours ago, Poelala.2830 said:

No ele isn’t played because 90% of the skills are totally worthless. That’s why it is bad.

90% of the skills aren't worthless. 

Because elementalist has more abilities every ability had to do less to be balanced against a proffession with 10 abilities. 

However. Catalyst hammer rotation uses almost every ability. 

D/D cata in PvP uses almost every single button. 

Hybrid weaver uses almost every sword ability. 

Elementalists abilities are most defintly not worthless. If they were people would cry less about difficulty because you wouldn't have to use the vast majority of em. 

[bluberblasen.9684]

I prefer a smoke field too

Stealth would help elem to stay alive.

Or give elem finally the medium health pool ( or rebalance all life pools)...

I still want the sphere radius increased to 360 or 480 range.. And additional give the field some conditions on enemies like burning in fire, cripple and bleed in earth, vulnerability and chill in water, slow and weakness in air.

 

And my old topic give lightning whip it's old range (300) back.  ( the reason for this nerf was that that skills follow the 60 * x rule) but 300 was already a 60*x rule 😭😢

 

[The Boz.2038]

ANet outright said elem will never, ever, under any circumstances, get smoke field or stealth.

[Sunshine.5014]

4 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Because elementalist has more abilities every ability had to do less to be balanced against a proffession with 10 abilities. 

This wrong line of thought is why Ele was nerfed to oblivion.

Having 20 skills is a _liability_, not an asset. Having 20 skills mean 15 of your weapon skills are _locked_ away not readily available when you need them, instead of 5 skills locked away on other classes.

Engi doesn't have this problem because kit _has no cooldown_. Ele has Attunement cooldown, making having 15 _locked out_ skills way more of a liability. In fact, Ele skills should be balanced _stronger_ to compensate for when you need to go into Water/Earth and lose all damage, or when you go into Air for CC and locked out of Water healing.

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Sunshine.5014 said:

This wrong line of thought is why Ele was nerfed to oblivion.

Having 20 skills is a _liability_, not an asset. Having 20 skills mean 15 of your weapon skills are _locked_ away not readily available when you need them, instead of 5 skills locked away on other classes.

Engi doesn't have this problem because kit _has no cooldown_. Ele has Attunement cooldown, making having 15 _locked out_ skills way more of a liability. In fact, Ele skills should be balanced _stronger_ to compensate for when you need to go into Water/Earth and lose all damage, or when you go into Air for CC and locked out of Water healing.

Eeeh I disagree. 

Water and earth abilities are in Weavers and catalysts physical DPS rotations.... So not rly all that punishing. 

Doing this would make elementalists over perform... You can't just ramp up the DPS of elementalists for this as it will just mean it's overpowered in high experienced players hands. 

The large problem imho is the fact there's alot of utility areas with elementalist that hasn't gotten fixed. 

Nades are a kit they're susposed to be alike out conjures. These both were made to supplement the loss of weapon swap. The issue is engineers kits just do a better job.

Our conjures need to be as I said need major improving. They're susposed to facilitate the losses created by the lack of weapon swap. 

Weaver I'm guessing is now primarily Condi / hybrid option and catalyst fills the power role. That's fine but as said Condi weaver needs to go back uptoo 40k benchmark to match virtuoso. 

Catalyst I think is actually in a really good place.

Tempest needs something. It's the one of the 3 doing the worst realistically. 

If they get it right effectively. 

Weaver will be flat Condi  DPS. 

Catalyst offensive boons. 

Tempest defensive boons / support. 

Which will be a fine place for elementalist to effectively sit. 

Then for power fights catalyst will serve as a flat power DPS with its builds. 

In spvp we need a dire look into our power options Tho the fact every single meta we build some form of fire build is a big telling sign on that. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[ClickToKill.8473]

Right now in spvp Catalyst is the team fighter, Weaver the Duelist, and Tempest has been Support/+1. 

 

And fire is in most builds, because Smothering auras is really good. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by ClickToKill.8473

[Puck.3697]

7 hours ago, ClickToKill.8473 said:

Right now in spvp Catalyst is the team fighter, Weaver the Duelist, and Tempest has been Support/+1. 

 

And fire is in most builds, because Smothering auras is really good. 

True, but power options are non existent and likely a problem that should be fixed. 

Although I will stand by my statement the problems are down to the problems core ele has. And that runs in both PvE and PvP. 

The catalyst changes do give me hope that maybe we will get some more good changes to problems that has plagued the proffession for years however. 

[ClickToKill.8473]

I personally think that the reduced attunement recharge on Elemental Enchantment should be removed, but added as a buff to ele class, because that trait is seems too necessary, and it might open up more dual-elemental builds instead of the usual Arcane + 1 building. 

[Ragnarox.9601]

On 3/30/2022 at 4:58 AM, lLobo.7960 said:

Why not make it a new field type: Dust field.

When you blast it provides AoE barrier.
When you leap it provides barrier to you.
Projectiles and whirls cause cripple.

 

Actually not a bad idea but I would like a pulsing barrier field (dust field - unique field just for catalyst) and when you blast it you get reflect aura. Then it will be good in pvp and wvw.

[Bleikopf.2491]

On 4/7/2022 at 3:35 PM, The Boz.2038 said:

ANet outright said elem will never, ever, under any circumstances, get smoke field or stealth.

Which is ironic because Ele already has a smoke field.

[Bleikopf.2491]

On 4/7/2022 at 12:32 PM, Daddy.8125 said:

Because elementalist has more abilities every ability had to do less to be balanced against a proffession with 10 abilities. 

This might seem logical on the surface level but doesn't survive further investigation.

Assuming every Ele skill did 1/2 of a 'normal' skill - what's the point of having more skills? Isn't that supposed to be our class mechanic, having more skills; the feature we gave up so many stats (armor, health) up for? What's the point of reducing the skills effectiveness so our skills in total are worth the same as that on another classes, except we don't get any class mechanics like Steal, Virtues, Pets, Tool Belts, or a Shroud?
There might be an argument that our skills have exceptional, but niche, utility so that we have the 'silver bullets' for everything. Well, our utility sucks. We're quite good at combos, but combos also suck. We used to be good at bridging the gap our stats left with boon-spam, but everyone can do that now, and they're not bad at that either.

And that's only one problem of the idea. If every Ele skill was 1/2 as effective as a 'normal' skill, we'd end up with ~  1/2 the DPS (or whatever else you want to measure) - because we still have normal cast time. Having twice as many skills doesn't mean we get to use two at once. Our cast time functions mechanically the same as on every other class. 

[Puck.3697]

4 hours ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

This might seem logical on the surface level but doesn't survive further investigation.

Assuming every Ele skill did 1/2 of a 'normal' skill - what's the point of having more skills? Isn't that supposed to be our class mechanic, having more skills; the feature we gave up so many stats (armor, health) up for? What's the point of reducing the skills effectiveness so our skills in total are worth the same as that on another classes, except we don't get any class mechanics like Steal, Virtues, Pets, Tool Belts, or a Shroud?
There might be an argument that our skills have exceptional, but niche, utility so that we have the 'silver bullets' for everything. Well, our utility sucks. We're quite good at combos, but combos also suck. We used to be good at bridging the gap our stats left with boon-spam, but everyone can do that now, and they're not bad at that either.

And that's only one problem of the idea. If every Ele skill was 1/2 as effective as a 'normal' skill, we'd end up with ~  1/2 the DPS (or whatever else you want to measure) - because we still have normal cast time. Having twice as many skills doesn't mean we get to use two at once. Our cast time functions mechanically the same as on every other class. 

But it does remove the proffession from being sat on CDs at all, and generally has a higher APM anduses more abilities per minute then other proffessions. 

It still has to equate to the same DPS as other proffessions doing less damage. The damage different is not half however. That would be extremely extreme. 

Edited April 10, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Dr Meta.3158]

Catalyst is pretty good. Most players haven't figured out viable builds yet (or just waiting on someone else to give them one as most players like to do in all game modes). And still, many people don't have the aptitude to play elementalist in a general sense, competently.