How would you rate Catalyst, post june patch ?

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I have tried Catalyst on the first beta week plus some hours in OW with my friend's account; then Finally i've bought the xpack ... but honestly, after 15~20 hours in OW and wvw, catalyst is worst than in my memories.

 

Hammer and jade sphere feel like  a dumb and ordinary version of weaver to me : You weave between all elements one by one to maintain the projectiles; you spam jade sphere randomly for dps and EE, and you try to fill the gapes with Hurricane and other skills without any real regard of effect, combos.

But if you want to focus on one or two main elements (something you can do with weaver, tempest Idk for example a water/air power build) hammer simply doesn't work at all, EE doesn't stack, jade sphere is now stuck with a 15sec CD,  elemental celerity is on a 90sec CD with kitten boon for second effect. It seems with hammer I have to do the same rotation no matter my build, my gear.

Edit* I honestly think the hammer would be a lot healthier without all this circular projectils mechanic (and some tweaks to numbers, base and coef). May be too "basic" for some, but healthier.

 

And I feel the same thing for the traits : no matter if I chose EE, or the auras traits, jade spheres traits, the "mandatory" gameplay feels exactly the same. Hmm yeah you'll give quickness, you'll lose DPS, okai. However do you change your rotation ? Is there any hammer skill or augment to support allies, to "enhance" the boon sharing ... ?
Catalyst traits give no diversity, no purpose, to jade sphere, augments, hammer .... +2% damage per aura is a joke, the  "celestial" buff is lazy,  the EE grandmaster trait is a joke. Except one trait to share quickness. 

Yet there were easy options : Double the effect of combos, hammer water skills now heal allies, jade sphere transmutes auras in range, share EE to allies (with a limit threshold), augments give quickness, allies earn lesser augments in range of jade sphere ... and we can find a lot more, better than "+1% to all stat" "+2% damage".

 

And I'm not even mad, but it's just ... a boring and wasted spec to me.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[kara.4597]

I agree with you in all you said. For me the cata spec is a really nice design and i enjoy the rotation and feel of playing it but its also a very kitten spec at the same time. Cant use another weapon as its useless and most of weapons dont have finishers to apply EE its already a pain to keep 10 stacks of EE and the whole spec is around EE if you want to have ANY value. The whole spec need huge changes of how it functions and the fact they gave -10% dmg on a trait is beyond stupidity. Because a 0.01% of players that did speed run lets kitten the class for everyone else. and give more traits to be useless. You play like a piano and make barely same dmg as the super trio. Guardian/Necro/Engi 

 

What pisses me off is that ele is suppose to be high skill high reward. now its High skill high kitten.

 

Sorry for my language but i love the class and i can barely do ANY end game content (raids/strikes cm) coz who the kitten will take a class that if you mess a bit you do same dps as supports.

[scerevisiae.1972]

I still don't know what the hell they were thinking when they came up with hammer.

"Ok guys, we can easily see from the forums that Eles want a new ranged option, but kitten them, let's not give them that, let's give them another melee weapon, just like sword and dagger, but let's make its skills only useful vs mostly stationary PVE raid bosses, yeah!111"

"but boss, won't that suck?"

"nah, we'll give the spec quickness so PVE dweebs will be forced to play it, no matter how bad it is. OK what class are we going to do a half-assed elite spec for next? We need to get back to making gemstore skins" 

 

 

suffice to say i think catalyst is "meh" (lazy/unimaginative/recycled tempest mechanics) but hammer is TOTAL GARBAGE and I deeply wish for it to be seriously overhauled to be usable outside of PVE.

Edited July 8, 2022 by scerevisiae.1972

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

Only two things really bother me in catalyst at the moment: the 10% damage penality from spectacular sphere and how hammer outclasses every other weapon in PvE due to it's design, energy generation and damage output. 

But it's the Ele's Elite Spec that I enjoy playing the most, never really dig up Tempest and Weaver didn't fit my playstyle due to attunement lockout. Catalyst has this core ele feeling to it which I love. But I can understand the negative feedback towards it when we have things like Harbinger and Mechanist in this expansion.

[Kuma.1503]

Pros

Very fun to play, engaging rotation, high skill ceiling, makes use of the GW2 combo system, flashy animations, 

 

Cons

High effort low reward, energy system is clunky, terribly designed traits (Evasive Empowerment, -10% damage on Spectacular sphere), Is yet another example of why Ele NEEDS 15k base HP. 

 

This spec is difficult to rate with an actual number. Fun is what matters most in a video game, and this spec has that in spades. It's very engaging, both the rotation and the use of the combo system are satisfying to execute. The visuals are spot on.

It's a combination of the balance, energy system, and bad trait design that hold it back. DPS should be higher, energy should be removed or reworked, Elemental Empowerment should refresh duration of all stacks when you gain a new stack, whirling stones isn't a whirl finisher???

For now, I'll give it a 6.5/10. It's fun, but the energy system and bad balance hold it back. 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[ArjukKagrim.6049]

The spec was good for "normal" gamers prepatch but broken for boon-stacking speedrunners. After the patch it can be played but is always inferior to other options and for min-maxed groups it's bad now. Therefore it will not see any play except from players wich enjoy the class and like to suffer. As dps I give it a 5/10.

However, quickness catalyst (not the stacking thingy) was just ok pre-patch and even then inferior to firebrand. Now it is straight up bad, has 33% less dps than qfb and not support/utility at all therefore everyone playing it is actively holding his/her team back... which is very very sad. As qdps it currently is imo 1/10.

The profession stats for fractals, raids, and strikes  from Wingman also show that cata is not played any more which is sad 😞

Edited July 7, 2022 by ArjukKagrim.6049

[Ashantara.8731]

The OP's question wasn't about Catalyst as an elite spec per se (Hammer and all), it was about the nerf the spec received with the last "balance" patch.

3 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

How would you rate Catalyst, post june patch ?

Can't say anything about it as I have not tried it post-patch.

I am too miffed over it receiving a nerf in PvE. WTH was that for?! 😡
 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

17 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

The OP's question wasn't about Catalyst as an elite spec per se (Hammer and all), it was about the nerf the spec received with the last "balance" patch.

Can't say anything about it as I have not tried it post-patch.

I am too miffed over it receiving a nerf in PvE. WTH was that for?! 😡
 

 

The state of catalyst... post patch, but not the state of the patch for catalyst.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

6 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Pros

Very fun to play, engaging rotation, high skill ceiling, makes use of the GW2 combo system, flashy animations, 

 

I find it very wasted.

In pvp it is okaish, still I won't ever play hammer.
But in PvE the purpose of the combos are not the effects themself, but the damage bonus you'll get from aura, no matter which one, and the EE. Where is the skill ceiling here ? Spamming skills on random field for the common buff ?
For example Powerful Synergy IMO was simpler, and better design.

 

Same with the rotation, I don't enjoy the (mandatory (damage buff, energy...)) circular projectil mechanic, nor the aura's buff (see above) but once you understand how the duration resets all you need to do is to start with fire projectil, smash F5 (it's easy, each element has its own CD), smash every skills because you need all elements and AA are kitten, then the same on CD.

Yes it's "harder" than most of other specs, because you're still ele with 12khp, you need to smash keys at 9.000 apmn and also because the average result is meh compared to those cheese specs, but I find Weaver simply with elemental polyphony, weaveself and elementals of rage, or combos with dagger/x,  a lot more demanding with more room for skill and improvement.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

26 minutes ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

For example Powerful Synergy IMO was simpler, and better design.

Indeed, it would also make other weapons such as Scepter see more play in catalyst. Imagine the burst of 10stacks of burn from comboing Hurl in a fire field lol But I guess it could easily become broken when talking Water Fields in pvp modes.

I agree EE mechanic could be deleted. It would be great if instead we had a trait line to improve the Jade Sphere offensive side, giving up the boons while increasing the Damage and making it pulse condis. Turning it into the counter part to Spectacular Sphere to better differenciate DpS Cata and Support Cata without the need to punish every single source of it's damage in order to bring quickness into play, while also making it less frenetic without all the EE stacking. Looking at Harbinger and Mechanist trait lines, which are so cohesive in the way they differentiate cDPS/pDPS/Support, makes me wonder why they didn't take the same approach with cata. 

And I also agree Weaver is harder to learn and perform well than Catalyst.

[Tycura.1982]

About three fiddy

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

It's definitely worse than weaver now.  I've been playing mostly overworld now that I have full legendary trinkets and legendary armor.  The biggest advantage that Catalyst had over Weaver was the self-quickness.  The ramp up was slow to get the energy, but once the energy was there the Cata would rip the crap out of any nearby enemies  The constant shocking and magnetic auras provided good defense, water attunement heals significantly without losing damage, it's skills all hit in an AoE, and anybody standing nearby got buffed to the nines.  Then came the patch:

• Auto attack damage was nerfed significantly.  I don't know why, considering that I have extensive proof that the auto damage wasn't overpowered in any way, but here we are.  The ramp up time is now worse in damage overall, but slightly faster if you camp fire to get energy.  Which.. I don't, because against small enemies I use earth to disable them and against big enemies I use lightning storm in air to ramp up energy really quickly.
• Damage was nerfed across the board for the spheres.  Understandable, I guess, if they wanted to reduce overall performance.  But then...
• Quickness was moved onto a trait that has a mandatory self damage reduction.  This is compounded on top of losing Empowering Auras, meaning that any form of self quickness comes with an automatic 20% reduction in damage.  Considering that Quickness overall is just a 30% damage buff, it means that running self-quickness less preferable to just going with Empowered Auras and Empowered Empowerment.  
• The air sphere now gives fury, a boon that every profession is doling out in droves for free, including the air line for the elementalist

The old X/Arcane/Catalyst buff builds now do significantly less damage and feel much worse to play, no matter which line I choose for "X."  The DPS build is also significantly worse, since without quickness it is much harder to maintain 10 stacks of Empowerment.  I don't know how Anet crunched the numbers on these, but Cata is now just firebrand with twice the effort and half the payoff.  I know Anet wanted to nerf DPS catalyst to stop speed-clearing guilds from stacking 3 of them, but they went too far with it.  

[Arolandis.8360]

18 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

I have tried Catalyst on the first beta week plus some hours in OW with my friend's account; then Finally i've bought the xpack ... but honestly, after 15~20 hours in OW and wvw, catalyst is worst than in my memories.

 

Hammer and jade sphere feel like  a dumb and ordinary version of weaver to me : You weave between all elements one by one to maintain the projectiles; you spam jade sphere randomly for dps and EE, and you try to fill the gapes with Hurricane and other skills without any real regard of effect, combos.

But if you want to focus on one or two main elements (something you can do with weaver, tempest Idk for example a water/air power build) hammer simply doesn't work at all, EE doesn't stack, jade sphere is now stuck with a 15sec CD,  elemental celerity is on a 90sec CD with kitten boon for second effect. It seems with hammer I have to do the same rotation no matter my build, my gear.

Edit* I honestly think the hammer would be a lot healthier without all this circular projectils mechanic (and some tweaks to numbers, base and coef). May be too "basic" for some, but healthier.

 

And I feel the same thing for the traits : no matter if I chose EE, or the auras traits, jade spheres traits, the "mandatory" gameplay feels exactly the same. Hmm yeah you'll give quickness, you'll lose DPS, okai. However do you change your rotation ? Is there any hammer skill or augment to support allies, to "enhance" the boon sharing ... ?
Catalyst traits give no diversity, no purpose, to jade sphere, augments, hammer .... +2% damage per aura is a joke, the  "celestial" buff is lazy,  the EE grandmaster trait is a joke. Except one trait to share quickness. 

Yet there were easy options : Double the effect of combos, hammer water skills now heal allies, jade sphere transmutes auras in range, share EE to allies (with a limit threshold), augments give quickness, allies earn lesser augments in range of jade sphere ... and we can find a lot more, better than "+1% to all stat" "+2% damage".

 

And I'm not even mad, but it's just ... a boring and wasted spec to me.

They really should have made it into a 1200 range elemental baseball batter spec. Would've been fun to watch, knocking elemental balls back and forth at enemies.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

29 minutes ago, Arolandis.8360 said:

They really should have made it into a 1200 range elemental baseball batter spec. Would've been fun to watch, knocking elemental balls back and forth at enemies.

 

Yeah I forgot to speak about the "mid range" gameplay where 3/5 of the skills are melee, the energy/projectiles force you to stay melee and AA on fire and air are trash level. Plus some issue like air #4 with animation that stop in middle, or air #4+#5...
Clearly scepter is more fluid, even dagger/x has better tools to kite and glose gaps.

[Gustaff.6581]

I like it.

At first not much, but feeling hammer in action i have a blast. Good damage, using all the attunements, the best parts are the combos, really like using combos in this game.

I made a list of what can be improved, but only in quality of life changes:

• Augments: remove the dependency to stay in certain attunement to get their extra effect, just get the extra effect when inside the jade sphere field, regardless of attunement.
• Empowered empowerment: I find very hard to get 10 stacks in open world situations, making this trait be wasted a lot.
• Sphere specialist: Its only useful if used along with spectacular sphere, because provides very little boons by itself.
• And last, making jade sphere be a moving field around you can be a good idea, so you always combo.

[Bast.7253]

Complete garbage in every game mode. 

Rating? 3/10. And that's solely because it gives access to stability and the flow of hammer. Honestly, I can't even include stability because you have to trait for it and even then you have to get over the energy mechanic for your 1 combo field if you're running hammer to get any advantage out of it.  

You can put in 10x the amount of effort and get something mediocre or you can play mechanist and press 2 buttons. 

But they obviously have no intention of touching it outside number tweaks or aimlessly shifting boons around. It had no identity, still has no identity, and only serves as a checkbox met on elite specs this expansion. 

All of these HUGE balance patches and we still have countless core skills, elite spec skills, and traits that could use reworking but it doesn't matter because they'll just adjust numbers on a few random skills and MAYBE change a trait or two once a year if it's something they play. 

It's really fun playing pvp, not having any energy ever for half the fight, and not being able to land any abilities because you have no immob. Not landing abilties = no energy = no "jade sphere" = no stability . 

They MIGHT nerf the other classes that are easier to play and more rewarding but I doubt they'll do anything to touch this. I don't think they have the first clue how. I thought maybe they had some e-sports level dev working on balance and the reason they've done very little to touch this spec from the beginning is because it's just so good if played correctly or with a certain build - but ultimately it seems they just don't play it and don't care. 

Why we need attunement swapping to access certain things for damage/cc/sustain AND an energy mechanic AND have to trait for quickness and stability access when harbingers get our previous spec's elite gravity well skill baseline as a shroud skill ... I'm assuming they just really don't want people to play elementalist. 

What they have done this expansion with this spec is disgraceful, point blank. 

Maybe in a few years when they feel like addressing some of this we'll be up to the level of scrapper with traits that are more than just courtesy boons for the sake of meeting a quota.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Bast.7253

[the krytan assassin.9235]

I still kinda like hammer Cata for open world. It probably the first spec that naturally provides some tankyness to the class. Rocky loop and Icy coil providing -15% condi and dmge, crashing font is basically another healing skill slot and you get good uptime on resolution, resistance and protection all while still able to spec full dmge.

 

Hammer cata pvp & wvw roaming is in a pretty good spot atm. Decent dmge output while having lots of condi cleanse&heals. It kinda misses some mobility for wvw roaming however. 

 

Wvw zerging is pretty much garbo atm. Staff got nerfed like 2 months ago (less dmge on lava font and MS) and elemental celerity double MS still doesn't work (the -10% dmge carries over to the next MS). Full cele hammer zergbrawler offers a very entertaining playstyle with high surviveability, but doesn't really provide any team support/boonstrip/cc or whatsoever so definitely not an optimal pick. 

 

For PvE group content i personally really like the instant quickness buff & bigger radius. That being said the dmge loss for perma quickness is to high atm. I much prefer Weaver over cata for dps atm. Both specs offer very minimal group support, but Weaver outshines hammer cata in CC's and often dmge aswell. The dmge is sufficient enough for raids& strikes but there are way better options out there.

 

Also the dmge upkeep is simply way to hard atm. Elemental empowerment and flame wheel need to be kept up 100% of the time in order to dish out a decent amount of damage and the overall rotation is pretty difficult. 

The mechanics of catalyst (spheres & augments are Just really boring in general atm when playing a non hammer weapon. 

Last but not least the hammer is currently way overtuned compared to other weapons. It offers better damage and support simultaniously compared to the other weapons, making them practically useless. 

 

 

[crosknight.3041]

never was a fan of the catalyst in the first place so still bad just worse now. the design was bad in the first place now they nerf it to mediocrity

[zeyeti.8347]

Still fun to play , but thats it . As for efficiency , it has reached the bottom of a black hole . Beyond putrid . 🤢

 

[Rising Blade.9206]

still putrid, remained that way since its first beta. only place i roll cata is in WvW looking at crits with double meteor shower, everywhere else I'd just stay the hell away especially hammer. the concept had potential, execution is poor, far below even Anet's low standards

Edited July 9, 2022 by Rising Blade.9206

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

Let's see:
- Since beta up-to June patch > Garbage spec from bottoms to tops, 0/10.
- After June patch > Garbage spec from bottoms to tops, 0/10.
Nothing changed IMO, you can't really fix garbage design with % numbers here and there.

[Draconious.2751]

On 7/9/2022 at 3:32 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

The mechanics of catalyst (spheres & augments are Just really boring in general atm when playing a non hammer weapon. 

Last but not least the hammer is currently way overtuned compared to other weapons. It offers better damage and support simultaniously compared to the other weapons, making them practically useless. 

 

This sums of catalyst nicely. Its boring with anything none hammer. D/D plays nicely with it but I found the additional fields F5 provides redundant (water field is nice though due to no warhorn or staff). The augments are relatively tame and underwhelming for their dependancy on F5. Everything else about catalyst highlights how under tuned core ele weapons are. I dislike how clunky hammer is and want to go back to my weaver but the damage output and sustain are just so nice to have. I wished the other weapons could enjoy this.

[Ace.1784]

On 7/9/2022 at 3:32 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Wvw zerging is pretty much garbo atm. Staff got nerfed like 2 months ago (less dmge on lava font and MS) and elemental celerity double MS still doesn't work (the -10% dmge carries over to the next MS). Full cele hammer zergbrawler offers a very entertaining playstyle with high surviveability, but doesn't really provide any team support/boonstrip/cc or whatsoever so definitely not an optimal pick. 

Are you sure the damage reduction carries over? Because I've been getting some crazy spikes, even post MS nerf.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

19 hours ago, Vinteros Asteano.1209 said:

Are you sure the damage reduction carries over? Because I've been getting some crazy spikes, even post MS nerf.

Not 100% sure tbh. Just noticed a forum post a couple days earlier that mentioned it and was confirmed by a couple other forum posters. Also in my personal experience (although i barely have played any staff ele since the last ms&lava font wvw nerf) i always thought my MS dmge was pretty lackluster with 2x MS cata barely out dpssing weaver's single MS

[soulknight.9620]

19 hours ago, Vinteros Asteano.1209 said:

Are you sure the damage reduction carries over? Because I've been getting some crazy spikes, even post MS nerf.

 

24 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Not 100% sure tbh. Just noticed a forum post a couple days earlier that mentioned it and was confirmed by a couple other forum posters. Also in my personal experience (although i barely have played any staff ele since the last ms&lava font wvw nerf) i always thought my MS dmge was pretty lackluster with 2x MS cata barely out dpssing weaver's single MS

You missread. It is for pve only. In wvw it isnt affected by the -10% thing, since the -10% thing does not apply to playrers in pvp/wvw (although it does apply vs monsters and siege).