Sugestions to make catalyst feel a bit better to play

[Nozdu.5971]

Hello everyone, here are a few ideia I came up with to make catalyst more enjoyable.

 

Jade spheres: instead of F5 these skills would replace the number 3 slot of hammer skill on their respective attunements. 

 

The orbs: this should be the main spec mechanic. Every time the player uses a weapon skill it spawns an elemental orb up to a maximum of 3 orbs, changing attunements resets the orb count. There would need to be something in the UI to show players how many orbs they have up. 

 

Grand final: this skill now would make use of the attunement buttons (like tempest overloads):

- Grand finale fire: shoot active orbs at your target dealing  damage per orb, burning the enemy and granting might to allies near you.

-Grand finale air: shoot active orbs at your target dealing damage per orb and inflicting vulnerability. Allies around you also get fury.

- Grand finale water: blow up your active orbs to heal allies around you, cure 1 condiditon per orb and grant Regen.

Grand finale earth: blow up your active orbs dealing damage and inflicting bleed on enemies around you. Grant stability to allies near you.

 

I also thought about two grand master traits for the grand finale mechanic:

- Empowered orbs: fire and air grand finale also deal AoE damage around the target in addition in fire deal more damage per orb and in air grant quickness to allies.

 

Orbs of salvation: water grand finale now heals more and grants resistance buff to allies. Earth grand finale now also inflicts cripple on enemies around the blast and grants barrier to the players(or even allies?).

 

I know it's a bit much and not really fleshed out but imagining this made come back to the game and play my elementalist again and not a piano.

 

Let me know what you guys think and what you would change.

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Nozdu.5971

[Serephen.3420]

But my hanmer animations 🥺

[Eva.3629]

Maybe it is just me but the weapon it simply does not fit with the class, it looks bulky, sidewalking, animations are kind of bad. I personally would have been more happy with an axe or a pistol, but yea A net decided to give us hammer :). (keeps reminding me of miley cyrus wreking ball song lol)

But hey we can always prey to get a ranged weapon :))

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Tbh i kinda like the way Cata is now. Sure there are some balance issues/QoL changes but overall i like the feeling of cata. The main problems with cata is simply that it doesn't provide enough dps output (especially in case of qdps) and the lack of synergy with other weapons. 

 

Some changes i'd propose for hammer:

Skills

Remove cd on orbs, Grand finale cd is fine.

Make all utility augments instant cast

Reduce cd on molten end, shock blast and ground pound to 20 sec to promote combo blast/aura/EE synergy

Remove self knockback on wind storm

Make invigorating air party wide

Remove cd on energy gain after deploying a sphere

 

Traits

Empowered empowerment: Always double the elemental empowerment regardless of stacks

Staunch aura's: now party wide stability

Spectacular sphere: remove -10% dmge output

[Dadnir.5038]

The devs would have to rethink way to many things for this rework suggestion. By swaping Ham#3 and F5 they would have to modify the way augments work and make changes to the traits that focus on the current F5 (because it wouldn't make sense to keep them focused on the hammers aoe since the hammer is optional).

Keep in mind that the devs would still keep all the aura crap while you'd lose most of the ham#3 bonus. Which mean that you'd do less damage, have less defense and would still need to play the piano in order to get the auras.

From how I see it, this is definitely not the way to go to make catalyst feel a bit better to play.

[Vinny.7260]

I blame the core specialization for why Catalyst feels awful to people. 😉

[pallas.8150]

Delete the Profession. Seriously, this expansion should have had Ele Longbow. Its bizarre that Ele has some of the least access to ranged weaponry in the game.

 

Aside from that, they need to stop making piano rotations that the Ele needs to be even MORE COMPLEX. Its weird how they dumb down some designs, yet always find a way to make Eles work even harder.

Edited September 1, 2022 by pallas.8150

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

How I see catalyst's traits and hammer : "increase a bit of everything and don't change anything in your rotation, your gameplay (except the benchmark)"

They should specialise more the jade sphere into a role in grandmaster traits :
One trait for DPS or control : inflict immob/chill, burning, 200% damage...
One trait for personnal sustain/play : personnal quickness/alacrity on activation, no longer need the right field for augments, double effect of combos, EE +50% duration ...
One trait for group support : the boons + boon duration + range...

Edited September 2, 2022 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[zeyeti.8347]

I personnaly like the cata the way it is now , but it needs Qol and some buffs , we know some players are able to reach high numbers with it but they are very very few .

For some ideas :

-Spectacular sphere : remove the -10% damage dealt , thats one abberation of a trait , who isnt pissed off taking a trait that deminish your damage ? And make boons from it pulse , kinda bothereing having your quickness tied to a one shot 15 secs cooldown...

-Elemental epitome : Thats one hell of a weird trait to use , combo there and there and only one time each per attunement with an aura , blablablabla ... a new player reading this trait :"ok i am gonna play something less complicated". Just add whenever you combo you gain an aura based on your actual attunement , and even an aura for 1secs , we dont care we only need Elemental empowerement to work.

-Enpowerend empowerent : just give +100 % EE efficiency at 6 or 7 stacks , we are a lot to complain to not stay at 10 stacks and its really difficult to maintain , add also a +2 secs to EE stacks when you take this trait.

-Sphere Specialist : Maybe reduce the boon duration from 100% to 80% , but make all sphere last 1 secs more.

It's my personal opinion , but anet is really looking into forums for some ideas , so keep going guys !

[luigrein.8514]

5 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

...And make boons from it pulse , kinda bothereing having your quickness tied to a one shot 15 secs cooldown...

For this specifically I believe the current method was chosen so you don't lock the party in to a small area to keep their quickness.

[LuNiki.4208]

future balance decissions regarding elementalist
 

yw

 

[zeyeti.8347]

15 hours ago, luigrein.8514 said:

For this specifically I believe the current method was chosen so you don't lock the party in to a small area to keep their quickness.

True , but if for some reason or mechanic occuring , a member isnt in your air sphere the moment you launch it , he's good to go without quickness for 15-12 secondes , thats the problem you have firebrand who has 3 different source of quickness : 

-tied to heal every 7secs 

-mantra every 9-7 secs 

-elite shout on a 30 sec cd 

With that even if someone is away , you know your firebrand can upkeep the quickness when you come back (same goes for scrapper) , Ele is trough his whole rotation once air sphere is launched ... they should make all sphere provide quickness on use , but ofc with a shorter duration , this will allow more fluid quickness providing. Like 2 secs of quickness with some boon duration and the 2x duration on gm traits .

Edited September 3, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[Junkpile.7439]

It's like core, but you need to push that F5 button sometimes. It feels bad like most of ele specs because you just mash buttons whole time inside combo fields. Scepter/dagger core ele doesn't feel bad to play because idea is to do burst combo and that is fun play style. Problem just is that damage is low and you can't stay alive more than couple sec.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Junkpile.7439

[Scolix.4879]

I wish elementalist would had been given a rifle or a pistol mostly because of this trailer.

I mean Harbinger is cool but i want to be Gandalf with a shotgun.

[scerevisiae.1972]

> Sugestions to make catalyst feel a bit better to play

fix hammer so it feels impactful in other areas of the game besides PVE golems and PVP capture points?

 

get rid of energy as a mechanic and replace with regular cooldowns so you don't have to farm energy on ambient mobs before starting your real fight?

 

add something else to the core spec so dagger/sceptre/staff don't feel exactly like core ele?

 

i still think i would struggle to come up with a less desirable elite spec tha hammer catalyst but at least ^those changes would give me the option to play it without hating it.

(apologies for font size, forums are just like hammer catalyst, half-baked & poorly thought-through)

Edited September 18, 2022 by scerevisiae.1972

[brandies.8673]

On 9/18/2022 at 8:30 PM, scerevisiae.1972 said:

hammer catalyst, half-baked & poorly thought-through)

I'd just like a better balance of ranged and melee skills so it feels different to sword and dagger.

[Zunki.3916]

I still think 3 main things are almost mandatory and then add further changes down the line:

• Remove Energy and make it the cooldown only
• Bake the F5 into the F1-F4 like Tempest does
• Remove the 10 stack condition on the gm trait

Then what I would further like:

• Increase the empowered elements duration by 33% with the gm trait
• rework some core weapons that dont have good access to finishers to have them
• Remove the 10% dmg reduction from Quickness. You already lose 10% stats AND 10% dmg by not taking the dps traits. Further shafting is not needed.

This would not actually increase top end DPS but would open up the class to a greater audience by removing the pain to play it without dumbing the meta rotation all too much.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Zunki.3916