Best Catalyst Open World Build

[kanorsanity.9752]

Hi all

 

As title whats the current best open world pve catalyst build or if not catalyst any ele spec?

[HowlKamui.5120]

If you wanna use Hammer, a marauder set-up with arcane/air works. Get the arcane grandmaster trait that reduced arcane utility skill cds and use arcane blast/arcane wave to proc combos for the auras.

Aside from the arcan gm trait, Arcane restoration (health gain on attunement swap) and zephyr's boon (fury and swiftness on gaining auras)  and empowering auras are great to have. 

It's a pretty active rotation with a bit of a learning curve but it's fun and can solo bosses.

If you want an easy open world build, go with Fresh air tempest and spam air overload. Also uses Marauder setup. Pair it with water traitline for the heals, but up to you.

Edited April 6, 2022 by HowlKamui.5120

[SeTect.5918]

1 hour ago, kanorsanity.9752 said:

Hi all

 

As title whats the current best open world pve catalyst build or if not catalyst any ele spec?

However title doesnt really fit because imo Weaver does better, but yea thats most likely the best open world Catalyst build.

Carried by the elite skill.
If your Elemental dies, dont expect to survive.
Elemental is very bad against aoe, as all pets/minions.
So dont start mushroom queen heropoint because of big aoe damage where your Elemental will die in seconds.

Wish the Elite Augment wouldnt be such a joke...

[Nezekan.2671]

It's expensive, but Celestial is amazing for Catalyst. You have permanent might, fury and quickness uptime, so what this does is you get almost the same damage as marauder, but you bring a lot of utility for yourself. Sustain, boons, condis etc. But Celestial gear can be expensive, so look it up. If not, Marauder is the cheaper alternative.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Nezekan.2671

[grx.8714]

Celestial is the go to for the majority of specs and especially for elementalist is a god mode.

 

Probably use Lord Hizen build.

 

Go check his youtube channel he has pve solo builds for every profession, good for really hard content, but also for everything else concerning open world.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Fire/arcane/whatever full celestial +  runes of pack or runes of elementalist/balthazar.
Is there really any other option for solo gameplay with Elementalist ? I don't think so.

[AliamRationem.5172]

25 minutes ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Fire/arcane/whatever full celestial +  runes of pack or runes of elementalist/balthazar.
Is there really any other option for solo gameplay with Elementalist ? I don't think so.

Sure.  Fire/earth trailblazer with undead rune works great for higher damage and passive sustain on weaver.  But I love fire/arcane celestial, too.

[Nephalem.8921]

19 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

However title doesnt really fit because imo Weaver does better, but yea thats most likely the best open world Catalyst build.

Carried by the elite skill.
If your Elemental dies, dont expect to survive.
Elemental is very bad against aoe, as all pets/minions.
So dont start mushroom queen heropoint because of big aoe damage where your Elemental will die in seconds.

Wish the Elite Augment wouldnt be such a joke...

Can you please stop spreading hizens trash builds?

Thats probably the worst open world cata build. Its like all hizen builds sacrificing all dmg and even takes useless runes.

Just go with dragon stats on some pieces arcane, air and cata 213. strength + force sigil. No need to go full bunker like hizen unless you want to solo legy bounties.

[AliamRationem.5172]

9 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Can you please stop spreading hizens trash builds?

Thats probably the worst open world cata build. Its like all hizen builds sacrificing all dmg and even takes useless runes.

Just go with dragon stats on some pieces arcane, air and cata 213. strength + force sigil. No need to go full bunker like hizen unless you want to solo legy bounties.

That escalated quickly...

Can you perhaps share some video of such a build in action or give us an idea of what sort of DPS and sustain you might expect from your experience doing boss solos?  I don't know catalyst very well yet, but I know on weaver I can solo champs in glass gear just fine but it doesn't improve my damage in most cases because I have to play defense more than I do on a trailblazer/celestial build.  It just adds more risk/difficulty with not much (if any) benefit.  What are your thoughts?

Edited April 7, 2022 by AliamRationem.5172

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

No but, he builds for really niche gameplay; do legendary bounties or meta alone. Plus gear full celestial  and concentration/healing runes in all his videos, we begin to see the routine.
Don't get me wrong, yes he's good, yes it's not easy to solo some boss blablabla; but I wouldn't recommand any of those builds to people with few ascended pieces options or willing to do variety of contents in a MM O. That's always the issue with players asking or arguing for the best build / best gear, it doesn't exist.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[draxynnic.3719]

35 minutes ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

No but, he builds for really niche gameplay; do legendary bounties or meta alone. Plus gear full celestial  and concentration/healing runes in all his videos, we begin to see the routine.
Don't get me wrong, yes he's good, yes it's not easy to solo some boss blablabla; but I wouldn't recommand any of those builds to people with few ascended pieces options or willing to do variety of contents in a MM O. That's always the issue with players asking or arguing for the best build / best gear, it doesn't exist.

I think there is still opportunity to learn from it, though. For instance, you could have the gear you use for group content (which is probably going to be fairly glassy), and still make use of defensive traits and utilities. Or a player that isn't looking to push the build into the highest levels might get exotic gear of the relevant stats and still get most of the benefit from the build, and still have their glassy gearset (which can be where the ascended is) with which they can move towards ascended with.

Not sure how difficult it is to get exotic celestial from pure PvE sources nowadays, since if I want to get exotic gear to cheaply put together a build before committing to ascended, I get it from competitive modes, but if you do play a bit of WvW and PvP, you can fairly quickly get to a point where you can put together basically any exotic armour you want in short order, especially if you stockpile the daily reward track potions.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

No but, he builds for really niche gameplay; do legendary bounties or meta alone. Plus gear full celestial  and concentration/healing runes in all his videos, we begin to see the routine.
Don't get me wrong, yes he's good, yes it's not easy to solo some boss blablabla; but I wouldn't recommand any of those builds to people with few ascended pieces options or willing to do variety of contents in a MM O. That's always the issue with players asking or arguing for the best build / best gear, it doesn't exist.

I think Hizen is pretty clear in the way he titled the video.  He doesn't say it's the best for everything.  He specifically states for "open world" and adds the disclaimer "all-rounder".  And for players who want a solid build with a mix of good damage and amazing sustain for doing basically anything you need to do in open world, I think it's not much of an exaggeration to place Hizen's builds (or variations of them) in the top tier, if such a thing can be said of solo play.

Can you get more damage out of a glass build?  Would there be a better build for something specific that doesn't require sustain like tagging in open world squads?  Sure.  But such a build would be strictly inferior as an "all-arounder".

[Nephalem.8921]

4 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I think Hizen is pretty clear in the way he titled the video.  He doesn't say it's the best for everything.  He specifically states for "open world" and adds the disclaimer "all-rounder".  And for players who want a solid build with a mix of good damage and amazing sustain for doing basically anything you need to do in open world, I think it's not much of an exaggeration to place Hizen's builds (or variations of them) in the top tier, if such a thing can be said of solo play.

Can you get more damage out of a glass build?  Would there be a better build for something specific that doesn't require sustain like tagging in open world squads?  Sure.  But such a build would be strictly inferior as an "all-arounder".

Hizen has less power dmg than this which is downscaled to level 55. Granted hizen does more condi dmg but this level of sustain is not worth it in 99% of the content. Doing legy bounties solo is not useful for farming purposes at all and not the regular gameplay loop of 99.999% of players.

As cata you can use dragon stats instead of marauder because marauder would overcap critchance. Not completely sure about the exact mix but for open world a dragon berserker or even dragon marauder mix would probably be best.

Going that route instead of full cele would make you A LOT more useful in open world metas, DE meta, fractals, and could be playable in beginner raids. If you play just open world metas and some bounty trains like most people do in open world you could get away with full berserker just fine if you dont mind being glassy.

https://imgur.com/EiT31Z4 an example build. I highly suggest using https://optimizer.discretize.eu/?m=fractals to optimize your build. I wanted 19k hp and the optimizer calculated me the highest dps option with the runes and sigils i included. Be careful to not include the mist omnipotion for open world or raids since it only works in fractals.

Sigil of Strength is extremely powerful in open world. Strength runes are good too but hard to calculate and sigil + normal cata might should already be able to cap might without them. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[AliamRationem.5172]

22 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Hizen has less power dmg than this which is downscaled to level 55. Granted hizen does more condi dmg but this level of sustain is not worth it in 99% of the content. Doing legy bounties solo is not useful for farming purposes at all and not the regular gameplay loop of 99.999% of players.

As cata you can use dragon stats instead of marauder because marauder would overcap critchance. Not completely sure about the exact mix but for open world a dragon berserker or even dragon marauder mix would probably be best.

Going that route instead of full cele would make you A LOT more useful in open world metas, DE meta, fractals, and could be playable in beginner raids. If you play just open world metas and some bounty trains like most people do in open world you could get away with full berserker just fine if you dont mind being glassy.

https://imgur.com/EiT31Z4 an example build. I highly suggest using https://optimizer.discretize.eu/?m=fractals to optimize your build. I wanted 19k hp and the optimizer calculated me the highest dps option with the runes and sigils i included.

Sigil of Strength is extremely powerful in open world. Strength runes are good too but hard to calculate and sigil + normal cata might should already be able to cap might without them. 

Thanks for the info.  I think which build is "best" depends on how you play.   As I pointed out earlier, you don't necessarily gain damage in solo play by choosing glass stats.  And the less skilled you are, the more true that is.  If you're an average player who wants to be able to solo Champs and play around in open world I think Hizen's builds are a great option.  Although if all you want is to run in squads and you can survive fine on most Champs in glass stats then why not go for more damage? 

[punahou.3986]

On 4/7/2022 at 5:29 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

Can you please stop spreading hizens trash builds?

Thats probably the worst open world cata build. Its like all hizen builds sacrificing all dmg and even takes useless runes.

Just go with dragon stats on some pieces arcane, air and cata 213. strength + force sigil. No need to go full bunker like hizen unless you want to solo legy bounties.

i jsut returned after a few years away-- you are mentioning dragn gear?/stats?   what are thoese?  thanks

[fuzzyp.6295]

3 minutes ago, punahou.3986 said:

i jsut returned after a few years away-- you are mentioning dragn gear?/stats?   what are thoese?  thanks

Dragon is a new stat selection introduced in End of Dragons. Its power and ferocity major, precision and vitality minor.

[punahou.3986]

ah-- thank you

 

is that crafted and bound only or can that be bought somewhere?

[fuzzyp.6295]

2 hours ago, punahou.3986 said:

ah-- thank you

 

is that crafted and bound only or can that be bought somewhere?

You can purchase gear on the TP with dragon's stat but they are fairly expensive at the moment (about 20 a piece). I believe its the Jade Tech armor that has Dragon's. You can also craft it.

EDIT: Weapons are also on the TP as well, Saltspray set i think has dragon's stats. They are  cheaper than the armor (few silver)

Edited April 18, 2022 by fuzzyp.6295

[punahou.3986]

TY