Hefty nerf on Catalyst again

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Ele community: we've been asking for 9 months to lower the skill ceiling of the catalyst and let it deal appropriate dps for its difficulty level

Devs: we heard you! Lets increase the dps and the skill ceiling!

Ele community: uhm we didn't ask for that, but i guess we'll somehow make it work

Devs: we've noticed that Catalyst is able to bench the highest dps ingame in an unrealistic boss encounter. Also the catalyst playrate has gone up to 2%, this is meta defining!

Devs: lets nerf cata back to its original state for the next 10 months so we can feed off the salty elementalist community.

 

All the fcking changes to the elementalist have been so random by the dev team... They consistently ignore the ele community and have no clue how the skills work, let alone how to balance it (f.e. the original 0.25 coefficient would've resulted in a 10k dps increase). 

 

The dps/Qdps are still in a better spot then pre patch (unfortunately cant say the same about HAT though), but this is just so infuriating. 

Atleast CmC can have his fun playing around with his scepter in pvp though so i guess in the end its all fine. Its all fine, its all fine *starts Smashing the keyboard* hksksnsjsnsorbneiei

[thetwothousand.5049]

2 minutes ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

1) "funny number" is not the be all and end all of class viability. This fixation with arbitrary fairy-tale numbers and their supposed correlation to a class being "good" or "bad" is unhealthy

 

I will push back against this thought everytime it comes up, because it is just flat out wrong. People want to play effective builds, period. Benchmarks measure how effective a build is, period. If it does 5k DPS no one is playing it full stop. If a build does 50K DPS, but everything else is doing 30K, people will flock to that build in droves. We've literately seen both examples of this in just the last 6 months with Weaver and Power Mech respectively. But we've also in the last few weeks seen how VERY impactful these numbers are when everything is in the same ~8K DPS variance. When people know that their preferred option will still perform in the same range as the best they are more willing to play it. This leads to better over all performance as their on what they are most comfortable playing and the meta sees significantly more options in play as a result. This is very healthy for the games community, and having these numbers is key part of it.

 

12 minutes ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

2) there is already too much damage in pve. 30k is A LOT... Content shouldn't be trivialized so easily

I don't disagree with you here in theory, but its trickier to handle than just saying it in a vacuum. For better or worse Anet is balancing specs and new content around specs benching in the 36K to 44K range. I would rather see them do a sweep on old content and buff the encounters up to their new power levels rather than nerf every class back down to HoT levels and adjust new content to match. Leads to the same end result, but its psychologically more satisfying, and it might lead to more older content being engaged with more as we might see an adjustment to out date rewards at the same time

 

18 minutes ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

4) looking at firebrand changes, it is apparent, that tuning and tinkering are part of anets balancing process. This workflow is much preferable to how it was before and is a good approach

.At the end of the day, this is exactly what they are doing, but there are limits to what they can do with each patch. There are 27 elite specs in the game, and right now at least of 20 them are in a good spot, in strong part due to the July, August, and Nov patches. Catalyst is obviously not one of those specs yet, but I suspect its going to be the next to get the Firebrand treatment.

[Serephen.3420]

2 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Same as with every other class. There is a minority of good players with 0 ping that get 95-100% of the bench on a constant basis. Average player is doing around 80-90% of the bench and that is acceptible. 80% of the bench is somewhat 36,8k dps which was doable by almost anyone on cata. After the last patch (the one with buffs) i picked up my power cata and went blind on the rotation on the golem. Did 39.7k dps. Again, no rotation, no practice, first try. Thats somewhat 85-88% of bench. After a bit of practice i was doing around 40-41k dps. And yes im no pro player by any standarts. Last time ive had such a result (i mean first try 90% of the bench) it was power engie with rifle after the rifle rework.

Its not just golem. Ive seen the same picture while doing hard content. While doing raids, fractal CMs and strikes for weeks i only saw someone perform on par with my catalyst twice and guess what, they were catalysts. Even in actual fights cata outperformed other dps by 10-15% constantly. 

No dps should do more than 40-41k dps. 

Not to mention that cata is not a pure dps spec, it is an offensive support by design, so its dps should be lower than lets say weaver which is a full glass cannon spec with no group support and limited selfsustain potential. Alongside the dps catalyst provides boon coverage, easy access to self healing skills on low cd, nice self condi cleanse, blocks, projectile denial and yes its bulky due to stat buffs from EE and hammer 3 sphere buffs. 

So the answer is simple - it needed a tone down. Now its on par with power weaver and condi weaver where it should have been from the start. All of them bench around 40k dps more or less. 

Does cata still has problems? Sure, fixes to stack uptime, hammer air 4 should be done asap. 

 

 

Except at least for me weaver has always been easier than cata. Especially if you don't have that fortune ping. It's physically impossible to reach those benches. Me doing the rotation for dps cata on a golem and having played cata since EOD, I got around 32 to 33k. 

It would have been better to nerf the aura buff than hammer 3s because quick cata takes a hit as well. Or at least not completely undo the buff to 3s. 

Edited December 13, 2022 by Serephen.3420

[the krytan assassin.9235]

45 minutes ago, thetwothousand.5049 said:

P.S. I would strongly argue thief is fine as is. Daggers are pure single target, truly brings zero utility to the party to hit that number, and it is very difficult to maintain the conditions needed to hit that number, even if the rotation is very simple

I agree the thief is fine as is, aslong as a class struggles with playrate i'd definitely encourage buffs to it. I just thought it was kinda weird that they only targeted the cata, saying its dps was a big problem, but simultaneously completely ignoring the other top dps. 

[Falson.5284]

43 minutes ago, Serephen.3420 said:

Except at least for me weaver has always been easier than cata. Especially if you don't have that fortune ping. It's physically impossible to reach those benches. Me doing the rotation for dps cata on a golem and having played cata since EOD, I got around 32 to 33k. 

It would have been better to nerf the aura buff than hammer 3s because quick cata takes a hit as well. Or at least not completely undo the buff to 3s. 

Also nobody is mentioning the fact that the original 0.001 nerf was back when those orbs could hit multiple times at least. Putting them back to 0.001 and retaining the 1 second interval puts the orbs in an even worse position than they were originally

[Nephalem.8921]

5 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Cmon that was expected by 95% of ele players. Catalyst was overperforming by a lot. This change will net a 3-4k dps loss which would still put dps cata at 40-42k dps which is the same as every other dps spec out there (including power/condi weaver). 

Yes and that is the problem. Cata is still great on bosses with very long phases where you can upkeep your ee and aura stacks. It drops extremely hard if you cant.

The dps difference between 9 and 10 ee stacks is massive. The value gets doubled at 10stacks and its very easy to drop them when you cant constantly do your rotation.

That leaves cata with being good on MO, Cairn normal, sabetha, HT cm, xera and maybe even olc. Kinda bad or mediocre on most other bosses. Instead of nerfing dps all the time they could also just address the fundamental flaws this spec has so its playable by more than 0.1% of the community and does not drop that crazy hard when not at 10ee stacks.

If you check wingman for example weaver despite having a vastly lower bench had comparable numbers to cata in fractals because cata has just no burst.

The thing is dps cata will still be fine and its still very good on long phase bosses. Qcata on the other hand... There is no point to play qcata at all anymore. They destroyed qcata again while trying to nerf dps cata.

Meanwhile they omega buffed qfb. Well at least qfb does not have free utility anymore.

Edited December 13, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Falson.5284 said:

Also nobody is mentioning the fact that the original 0.001 nerf was back when those orbs could hit multiple times at least. Putting them back to 0.001 and retaining the 1 second interval puts the orbs in an even worse position than they were originally

It's pretty negligible regardless when you consider that at 0.1 coefficient it was ~4K DPS with all 4 attunements' orbs because the likelihood of dropping orbs is higher the worse you are at playing catalyst. At 0.001 coefficient it means less than 0.1K DPS. The 10% damage boost on fiery loop and the 10% crit chance on crescent wind is more impactful.

If Arenanet wanted to make Catalyst more playable for the general public then the EE (Elemental Empowerment) stacks shouldn't be all or nothing on DPS catalyst, water attunement auto should be reverted from the June nerf (it has zero usage in the benchmark by the way), and autos should cleave on air /fire which are traditionally DPS attunements. Benchmark has on average 9.44 stacks or something, most players won't attain that without significant investment into rotation.

Stream strike and water rush are so bad right now they have a higher coefficient in PVP/WVW.

I can understand nerfing hammer orbs to increase the parity between the weapons but I don't understand why no other changes were put in place.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Infusion.7149
spelling

[Librist.4175]

Its sad for me that ANet changing and nerfed again elementalist just because SC get 46k on golem with piano playing and a lot of luck. Its one of the hardest rotation in the game with a lot of mistake-punishing, and in reallity you cannot get this numbers on bosses with mechanics. Its time to give up with trying to play ele, its not worth it and its really stressful keeping in mind that ANet can nerf that in any sec without significant reason. 

[Mauti.3520]

It's not a big deal. Infusion.7149 summed it up quite nicely.

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

9 hours ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

1) "funny number" is not the be all and end all of class viability. This fixation with arbitrary fairy-tale numbers and their supposed correlation to a class being "good" or "bad" is unhealthy

 

That's an interesting point and I'd say even, it is at least in parts true, however, you miss the biggest points here:

The class design is already overcomplicated, the (right) rotation is being the most complex of all classes, the Elementalist is basically having the lowest armor and health by nature, so it would only be right to have a higher reward. Instead, the reward is mediocre at best, but after the last patch, it was at least in parts okay. 

 

9 hours ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

2) there is already too much damage in pve. 30k is A LOT... Content shouldn't be trivialized so easily

 

Try 30k at 100 cm.

You will never reach it. Same can be said about many other encounters too.

Guess why 90% of all rotation/benchmark-vids are about Golems or Golem-Like-Bosses? 

 

 

9 hours ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

3) ONLY Hammer was nerfed, and that's okey. The rest of catalyst remains buffed

 

I hate to say it, but the Hammer is - except for some very much niche-builds - the only viable weapon to be used as a Catalyst, because class mechanics got intertwined with weapon mechanics, a weakness I pointed out a while ago already, see skill 3. So nerfing the hammer is like nerfing the whole spec.

 

9 hours ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

4) looking at firebrand changes, it is apparent, that tuning and tinkering are part of anets balancing process. This workflow is much preferable to how it was before and is a good approach

 

It would be good, if they listened at least to some feedbacks.

And they did when buffing the 3 skill. It was simply underwhelming. Now it is back at 0.001 again for a ridiculous reason. Meaning they buffed some traits which are actually used by some builds, and said: Oh, that's enough. Great. So for me not using those traits out of some reasons (I play more a supportive dps without lightning traits and spectacular sphere) , it is a huge nerf instead. 

 

Not to mention the hidden nerf of letting the orbs hit each second, which is also a nerf to energy regeneration and overall dps output as well.

 

9 hours ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

5) "but class X does more with less Y" is not an argument. What you want to say is: "according to your balance manifesto, this change makes sense/doesn't make sense"

 

No, this is exactly the point.

And if you look at other classes, that is plain and simply true. Some like Mech got even nerfed because gameplay was far too easy.

Edited December 14, 2022 by DaKillaOfHell.5907

[soulknight.9620]

10 hours ago, thetwothousand.5049 said:

I will push back against this thought everytime it comes up, because it is just flat out wrong. People want to play effective builds, period. Benchmarks measure how effective a build is, period. If it does 5k DPS no one is playing it full stop. If a build does 50K DPS, but everything else is doing 30K, people will flock to that build in droves. We've literately seen both examples of this in just the last 6 months with Weaver and Power Mech respectively. But we've also in the last few weeks seen how VERY impactful these numbers are when everything is in the same ~8K DPS variance. When people know that their preferred option will still perform in the same range as the best they are more willing to play it. This leads to better over all performance as their on what they are most comfortable playing and the meta sees significantly more options in play as a result. This is very healthy for the games community, and having these numbers is key part of it.

And then we see loads of people playing "this months top class" just to "look good" on the group and substantially underperforming because they main different class and have 0 ideas how to play this one. There is an opposite side of the coin to what you describe.

Benchmarks do not measure effectiveness of builds - they measure dps output potential. You can take a rifle engie and get 34k dps benchmark and take a 40k dps weaver benchmark. The potential is higher on weaver, but the practical application is far easier and better on mech. A low skill player would still do 33-34k dps on engie quite easily, but he will not be able to achieve 40k with weaver. The best he can hope to get is 28-30k. Thats why even after the nerfs we still see mech players doing decent dps in majority of fights. Judging by your logic people should stop playing power mechs, but they arent. There is still a lot of them in all kind of top content (raids, strikes, t4 fracs and CMs). 

And its not all about dps you know. There is a thing called built in utility. Thats why scourges despite their low benchmark dps still are one of the most desirable classes out there. Same goes for FB and a few others classes. 

 

And no it is not healthy for the games community. This puts unneeded pressure to players that like a certain class/build and just wants to play that class (or a few classes). But since there is a new "flavour of the month" they are being forced to change classes and play what they dislike which leads to bad performance and lack of fun. Praising the numbers is what is killing this game atm. People are getting tilted by "oh you are a dps and cant do x amount on y boss? you are bad!". Its been proven a long time ago that almost any content can be cleared with 20k dps group (yes-yes even raids).

 

10 hours ago, thetwothousand.5049 said:

For better or worse Anet is balancing specs and new content around specs benching in the 36K to 44K range.

I would say they aim at 38-40k. Since they buff classes that are sub 38, and nerf classes that are way above 40k. Im pretty sure thief will get its nerf in the next major update. 

1 hour ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

The class design is already overcomplicated, the (right) rotation is being the most complex of all classes, the Elementalist is basically having the lowest armor and health by nature, so it would only be right to have a higher reward. Instead, the reward is mediocre at best, but after the last patch, it was at least in parts okay. 

Catalyst rotation is by far not the most complex at all. 

And yes elementalist already has its benefits for being the "lowest armor and healt" class. Each elite spec brings tools that boost your active or passive defences. Tempest has more powerfull protection, loads of boon uptime and loads of healing potential. Weaver has a trait that basically gives you free vitality, another one does a perma weakness on a target (thats a nice survivability boost), and a few traits/skills that give you access to barriers and a few evades. Catalyst has loads of condi cleanse built in, dmg mitigation via buffs from hammer 3 spheres (and a perma weakness too), bonus stats from EE, easy access to heal skills (which are in your dps rotation by the way), easy access to boons (protection included) and easy access to blasting fields for bonus heals. 

Ele survivability works differently than lets say guardian or necro. You dont want to facetank hits while standing still with no boons and not using any skills, you sustain yourself with combination of the abovementioned passive defences with active ones (blocks, heals, invulns etc). 

 

1 hour ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Try 30k at 100 cm.

You will never reach it. Same can be said about many other encounters too.

Guess why 90% of all rotation/benchmark-vids are about Golems or Golem-Like-Bosses? 

Each encounter has its own "benchmark" because there are often a lot of dps downtime during phasing, but it doesnt mean that you cant do an equivalent of the 30k golem benchmark on a 100CM boss. Like ive said a bit earlier - golem benchmarks measure potential dps, not its actual application. There are too many factors to take into account when applying the dps in real fights, like the dps window of a boss, phasing of bosses, possitioning etc. Many people cant handle the information that is provided to them by arcdps and they come to conclusion that 15k dps on AH is the same as 15k dps on a golem. Which is wrong. 

 

1 hour ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

And if you look at other classes, that is plain and simply true. Some like Mech got even nerfed because gameplay was far too easy.

And then you go into any pug strike/raid/fractal group and see a "nerfed" mech still outdpsing people. Im not saying mech is op or anything, but it is still a "go to" class when you just want to "do ur job" and get the content done. So maybe, just maybe anet had the right call for nerfing mech? And tbh it wasnt about numbers at all since mech wasnt doing a lot of dps (it benched 35-36k before the last nerf), but according to anets philisophy it was considered of bringing too much utility for the dps it provided. 

[Dadnir.5038]

11 hours ago, Nup.4591 said:

ALSO, hammer 3 critting for 6 is just plain awkward

Well, keep in mind that at least it carry on both "on hit" and "on crit" effects.

[Dadnir.5038]

11 hours ago, Nup.4591 said:

ALSO, hammer 3 critting for 6 is just plain awkward

Well, keep in mind that at least it carry on both "on hit" and "on crit" effects.

[Dadnir.5038]

Bug double post

Edited December 14, 2022 by Dadnir.5038

[Markus.6415]

And here i thought nerfing a skill to deal crit damages of  "4" was just an emergency balance decision. A thing that felt utterly laughable and finally got reverted to how it was at the EoD release...

Again loosing it's impactful feeling and getting back to a gimmicky, unnessecarily unfun and boring weapon mechanic. Just because Anet was lacking any imagination developing elemental hammer attacks and wanted to only design 17 skills instead of 20.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Markus.6415

[zeyeti.8347]

17 hours ago, Hedonismbot.3697 said:

I think this post, and with it some of y'all, are overreacting. it's just a number adjustment.

1) "funny number" is not the be all and end all of class viability. This fixation with arbitrary fairy-tale numbers and their supposed correlation to a class being "good" or "bad" is unhealthy

2) there is already too much damage in pve. 30k is A LOT... Content shouldn't be trivialized so easily

3) ONLY Hammer was nerfed, and that's okey. The rest of catalyst remains buffed

4) looking at firebrand changes, it is apparent, that tuning and tinkering are part of anets balancing process. This workflow is much preferable to how it was before and is a good approach

5) "but class X does more with less Y" is not an argument. What you want to say is: "according to your balance manifesto, this change makes sense/doesn't make sense"

6) catalyst should be played because its fun. not because it's "best in slot" according to some website

Elementalist players like to be atop , because they know there class is very difficult to play , have 0 room for mistakes (catalyst dps going to 46k when mastered and 30k when not mastered , huge gap between hardcore players and more casual and even +- hardcore)and have the less hp and armor of the game , it should be the glass canon off the game for everyone to play , how does it come i do a rotation without really bothering special mechanics just going from an attunement to another attunement just spamming skills off cooldown and doing 22k , and when i play engi pew pew i do 30 k with 90% less effort ?

Whats the point in endgame playing a hard class , when you see easier classes are performing better than you , if i play ele i want to be atop , like the most difficult other e-specs shoudl do , for some reason having a thief benching 42k on the golem by pressing 3 buttons in a 4 secondes period in always the same order is ok ? but a spec where you have to keep track of your energy , of hidden cooldowns , use skill X in skill Y to gain a buff that increase your dps a lot benching over the top is not ok ? 

Elementalist is a joke to anet , next rework they should add a skill that instantly downs you , at least you could be used for a druid avatar refill...

Edited December 14, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

18 hours ago, Nup.4591 said:

hammer 3 has been awfully designed from the very beginning. but at the same time the weapon completely relies on it's mechanic. It's weird because if you remove skill 3, the hammer is very fun and intuitive to use. Magic hammer go bonk! 
so the question is, how do we fix this?
it's not easy, because this stupid skill has 3 incredibly important mechanics build in
- energy generation (messing up the orbs makes you lose a lot of energy and thus damage and boon uptime)
- burst damage ( the grand finale is a really big part of your damage and messing up the orbs makes it so you can't use it in your burst window, or you miss out on the burst altogether)
- buffs ( if you mess up an orb, you won't have a buff up during your rotation for a while, especially with how strong the air and fire orbs are, you are losing a lot of your damage)

this makes the weapon extremely punishing if you make a mistake. so we should split these mechanics and place them on other things on the weapon. make it so that skill 3 doesn't do all these things at once. place burst more on to the hard hitting skills of the weapon, like the nr 2 skills or the big nr 5 skills.
energy is an entire story altogether because other weapons also struggle with this (because they don't have hammer 3)
so they will have to rework the energy mechanic completely (being able to gain energy while a sphere is deployed already would help a ton)
If they do this, the orbs can then simply serve as a personal buff you can keep up to yourself. 

Catalyst has so many problems just from the traits alone... elemental empowerment stacks, energy, quickness, aura comboing... this class is weird. but it has some potential. 
it's just time to stop trying to tweak numbers and rework this thing. 

Move wells from F5 and put them into utility skills and merge them with Augment skills. (Make a traits that would alter it's function, like "When you cast Augment skill deploy Jade Sphere and create a field that will affect allies": Relentless Fire would deploy Fire Jade Sphere that would provide +15% dmg, ublockable and might to you and allies as long as you're within it's range.)
Move orbs from hammer "3" and make it a "passive" elite specialization mechanic(no, it won't be constantly damaging, just passive effects).
Create new F5 that will interact with orbs. Quick tap = fire 1 orb into target and do something depending on which attument you fired it from. Hold for 1s = fire all(4) orbs and apply all effects from all attuments. Make it have like EITHER energy based OR cooldown.
Give Hammer some real skills with fields and remove bs like Wind Storm.
Give real traits that actually are useful for the spec.

[Nup.4591]

8 minutes ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Move wells from F5 and put them into utility skills and merge them with Augment skills. (Make a traits that would alter it's function, like "When you cast Augment skill deploy Jade Sphere and create a field that will affect allies": Relentless Fire would deploy Fire Jade Sphere that would provide +15% dmg, ublockable and might to you and allies as long as you're within it's range.)
Move orbs from hammer "3" and make it a "passive" elite specialization mechanic(no, it won't be constantly damaging, just passive effects).
Create new F5 that will interact with orbs. Quick tap = fire 1 orb into target and do something depending on which attument you fired it from. Hold for 1s = fire all(4) orbs and apply all effects from all attuments. Make it have like EITHER energy based OR cooldown.
Give Hammer some real skills with fields and remove bs like Wind Storm.
Give real traits that actually are useful for the spec.

I actually really like the f5 skills. they are quick and interactive and you can use them even with different weapons to quickly create combos or get the boons you want. I wouldn't want to see these changed. the problem is the energy regeneration. there's two things in this:

-it favors fast multihit attacks
-you can't get energy while a sphere is deployed.

hammer has the stupid orbs on skill 3 that constantly "hit" which gives you a constant stream of energy
other weapons don't have these and thus struggle with getting energy up. the few multihitting skills they have (like meteor storm for example) are often used in a burst window where your spheres are deployed, so you can't use these to get energy.) this is why it's so reliant on hammer. 

I agree on the augments being incredibly boring as they are now, and I hate using them. but I wouldn't want to sacrifice the F5 for it.
 

(also a sidenote that if augments were shareable they would become completely overpowered.)

the idea with the orbs you have sounds interesting, but I think I'd like to keep those tied to the hammer weapon itself.

 

[Thron Stal.9367]

23 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

I just want to remind:
 

• Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind, Rocky Loop: These skills now strike enemies once per second instead of using a projectile. Increased power coefficient from 0.001 to 0.25 in PvE only.

 

This was the first idea, then, they changed it to:

 

Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind, Rocky Loop: These skills now strike enemies once per second instead of using a projectile. Increased power coefficient from 0.001 to 0.1 in PvE only.

 

Which is still a 100 times as before, okay.

Catalyst desperately needed a buff, because gameplay was underwhelming and the nerfs basically made catalyst the most useless spec in overall PvE.

And all of that only, because someone deemed it "meta-defining", to kill a Golem-like-boss faster than any other combination.

How great, that we have such a long history of golem-like-bosses as well as raids in gw2...

 

And now:

 

Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind, and Rocky Loop: Reduced power coefficient from 0.1 to 0.001 in PvE only.

 

And the reason why: "The damage increase on the hammer's third-slot skills ended up being unnecessary alongside the improvements to both Empowering Auras and Stormsoul, so we're reducing the damage to where it was previously."

 

Could anybody please explain them that they totally misunderstood class mechanics?

 

They nerf everybody until no one has a good time.  IMHO

[thetwothousand.5049]

7 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

And then we see loads of people playing "this months top class" just to "look good" on the group and substantially underperforming because they main different class and have 0 ideas how to play this one. There is an opposite side of the coin to what you describe.

Benchmarks do not measure effectiveness of builds - they measure dps output potential. You can take a rifle engie and get 34k dps benchmark and take a 40k dps weaver benchmark. The potential is higher on weaver, but the practical application is far easier and better on mech. A low skill player would still do 33-34k dps on engie quite easily, but he will not be able to achieve 40k with weaver. The best he can hope to get is 28-30k. Thats why even after the nerfs we still see mech players doing decent dps in majority of fights. Judging by your logic people should stop playing power mechs, but they arent. There is still a lot of them in all kind of top content (raids, strikes, t4 fracs and CMs). 

And its not all about dps you know. There is a thing called built in utility. Thats why scourges despite their low benchmark dps still are one of the most desirable classes out there. Same goes for FB and a few others classes.

I'm honestly not sure why you're trying to argue here, other than the community having information on a builds potential is not good, which is the hottest of hot takes. We are in agreement that benchmarks are a builds top potential, and we are in agreement that builds play different and some are easier to reach their maximum potential on than others. We are also in agreement that when one class or build has significantly better potential than others people will flock to it rather than play the class they are most comfortable with, and get worse results for their trouble. Benchmarks are just a tool to show how close classes are to one another and if they need a nerf or a buff to be in line with the other options in the game.

 

Trying to say that utility will offset out of line benchmarks is fraudulent as well frankly, and its clearly already being taken into account by Anet when they are balancing. Scourge may have a lower benchmark but at 35K its still well in line with DPS expectations for the game. You nerf scourges benchmark to say 20K and leave its utility as is, and that spec is flat out dead. No one will play it as DPS period because you can bring the same utility with a different class that does potentially double the damage. That is why benchmarks matter, and its why a healthy meta has every class in a comparable range. Every class can bring some kind of utility to a team, but if its not bringing enough DPS as well its will not be played period.

[patton the great.7126]

Guys I'm sorry it's my fault. As an avid power mirage player who is forever in search of a new class I made the mistake of falling in love with hammer catalyst and even making the jormag hammer because I found a new favorite power prof.

 

I'm sorry I brought the nerf hammer with me, they follow me everywhere. 1st it was og warrior. Then it was og power zerker, then it was power mirage and now....finally power catalyst. 

 

I give up. May as well play the golden child guardian, the single most boring class in the entire higgby game!

 

To be clear I did play it before the "buffs"

 

I will admit I don't notice a huge difference post nerf. Then again I'm perfectly min maxed for a WvW build I came up with. I doubt I'm running the same as pve raiders.

Edited December 14, 2022 by patton the great.7126

[Yer.8096]

On 12/13/2022 at 2:49 PM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

You sort-of answered your own question.  Anet wasn't happy with DPS Cata benching 46k on the less-mobile bosses.  

 

Don't worry, chrono quick still same damage. ANet really want who plays elementalist stop playing... All I see is ANet team regretting every meeting they had created elementalist in guild wars 2.

[Nymeria.1653]

2 hours ago, patton the great.7126 said:

Guys I'm sorry it's my fault. As an avid power mirage player who is forever in search of a new class I made the mistake of falling in love with hammer catalyst and even making the jormag hammer because I found a new favorite power prof.

 

I'm sorry I brought the nerf hammer with me, they follow me everywhere. 1st it was og warrior. Then it was og power zerker, then it was power mirage and now....finally power catalyst. 

 

I give up. May as well play the golden child guardian, the single most boring class in the entire higgby game!

 

To be clear I did play it before the "buffs"

 

I will admit I don't notice a huge difference post nerf. Then again I'm perfectly min maxed for a WvW build I came up with. I doubt I'm running the same as pve raiders.

Hehe hope this post is ironic XD because we play what we like to have fun (and btw so far I didn't notice a great difference too).

[Nekrooo.1869]

Quote

 

They changing cata back and forth without fixing the bug with grand finale...

Edited December 15, 2022 by Nekrooo.1869

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

On 12/14/2022 at 10:08 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

Catalyst rotation is by far not the most complex at all. 

 

Oh, and which one is?

Or I should ask: Which one is that unforgiving for mistakes, that much dependant on so many external factors, and needs that strict a rota (there is only one right way to do it)?

 

On 12/14/2022 at 10:08 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

And yes elementalist already has its benefits for being the "lowest armor and healt" class. Each elite spec brings tools that boost your active or passive defences. Tempest has more powerfull protection, loads of boon uptime and loads of healing potential. Weaver has a trait that basically gives you free vitality, another one does a perma weakness on a target (thats a nice survivability boost), and a few traits/skills that give you access to barriers and a few evades. Catalyst has loads of condi cleanse built in, dmg mitigation via buffs from hammer 3 spheres (and a perma weakness too), bonus stats from EE, easy access to heal skills (which are in your dps rotation by the way), easy access to boons (protection included) and easy access to blasting fields for bonus heals. 

 

First, I talk about dps. Not about heal, support, or anything else. This means: Vicious Empowerment, Empowering Auras, Empowered Empowerment. 

Of course, other traits are okay as well, but not in terms of efficiency.

No other profession has that much drastic tradeoffs as we do. Of course, you have some built-in mechanics, which you can't use that much again, because of - you name it - efficiency. 

 

On 12/14/2022 at 10:08 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

Ele survivability works differently than lets say guardian or necro. You dont want to facetank hits while standing still with no boons and not using any skills, you sustain yourself with combination of the abovementioned passive defences with active ones (blocks, heals, invulns etc). 

 

Well, Ele survivability barely works at all if you don't choose to invest instead. This means tradeoffs again.

And tradeoff means less damage. Which is exactly the point why I said our class design is broken compared to any other profession.

 

On 12/14/2022 at 10:08 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

Each encounter has its own "benchmark" because there are often a lot of dps downtime during phasing, but it doesnt mean that you cant do an equivalent of the 30k golem benchmark on a 100CM boss. Like ive said a bit earlier - golem benchmarks measure potential dps, not its actual application. There are too many factors to take into account when applying the dps in real fights, like the dps window of a boss, phasing of bosses, possitioning etc. Many people cant handle the information that is provided to them by arcdps and they come to conclusion that 15k dps on AH is the same as 15k dps on a golem. Which is wrong. 

 

That is right, and I never said so otherwise.

But the point is, that balance is based on theory-crafting instead of real application. 

You don't feel much of the 46k anywhere else than golem-like bosses. But the same Benchmark should be counted to nerf a spec completely instead? And for what reasons? Uh, we buffed other traits already, so should be fine (even though people might not use them)?

 

On 12/14/2022 at 10:08 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

And then you go into any pug strike/raid/fractal group and see a "nerfed" mech still outdpsing people. Im not saying mech is op or anything, but it is still a "go to" class when you just want to "do ur job" and get the content done. So maybe, just maybe anet had the right call for nerfing mech? And tbh it wasnt about numbers at all since mech wasnt doing a lot of dps (it benched 35-36k before the last nerf), but according to anets philisophy it was considered of bringing too much utility for the dps it provided. 

 

I am in favor of a mech nerf, even though Engineer is my secondly most played class other than elementalist.

However, the main problem of Mech was too-easy accessible high dps numbers, even though the benchmark was lower, with literally no exchange at all. Now this isn't a problem anymore, but it just tells that my point of view of balance is also shared by Anet.

What I don't get is: If they have a problem with dps spec for cata, why not nerfing dps-spec for cata traits, instead of nerfing the weapon, which also other specs do profit from, and nerfing them as well?