Hefty nerf on Catalyst again

[soulknight.9620]

4 minutes ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

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)?

Sword condi weaver with weave self is more complicated and rly ping dependant. 

As for catalyst rotation, u basically just go through the attunements and using all of the availible skills (except air 4). Energy sustain is easily fixed by adjusting ur rotation a bit. Current rotations works on a 2+2 jade sphere drops, which is not that hard to master. 

 

9 minutes ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

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. 

All of the mentioned defences are availible in pure dps spec. So dont see any problems here. The problem here is not efficiency, but a matter of need. If you need to survive a hit, use block in earth 4, if you need to resustain - use heals in water or blast fields or heal skill, etc. Dead dps does no damage. Although if you are doing mechanics of the encounter correctly and you have a semi-decent support you wont have to worry about it at all. Catalyst has tools to deal with "oh sh.." situations untill a support can do his job. 

12 minutes ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

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.

Like i said, all of the abovemntioned defences and sustain mechanics do not require any changes to a build or rotation order. Its there for you to use when needed. If you want more sustain then sure you need to invest in it just like every other class has to. Not a single dps class can selfsustain himself indefinetly with no invest into sustain while keeping its dps that high (even virtuoso). 

 

21 minutes ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

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)?

The way i see it its like this:

Benchmarks measure the maximum potential of a spec/build.

Average person does 80-90% of benchmark of a said spec if he practices a bit. 

So lets take a few examples. 

1) Catalyst that has 46k dps bench

2) Sword weaver that has 40k dps bench

Average cata player would dish out somewhat 36,8k dps (thats 80% of the bench).

Average weaver player would dish out somewhat 32k dps (thats 80% of the bench). 

The difference is there. But thats not all. Various encounters bring additional conditions which are needed to be met. Like AH where downtime of dps is huge for all of the group. So weaver and cata still do the same amount of dps that they could potentialy do with the same proportions as i mentioned above. Lets say cata did 17k, that means weaver will do 14.7k. Thats the difference between 46k dps and 40k dps benches. Sure there are a lot more when it comes to encounters like "can you get close to dps" or "ranged is prefered" or condi vs power (like mathias/KC) etc. But the proportion stands as it is. Thats why benchmarks not being 100% accurate still serve as a valid tool to compare classes and specs. 

Theres also a matter of player skill involved. If a cata player is bad and does 60-70% of the bench, and a weaver player is good and does 90-95% of bench, then weaver would be ahead of cata in terms of dps. Another thing to consider is that in actuall encounters various things could happen to both weaver and cata: chills, cc, dmg spike with a need of resustaining, etc. All of this contribute to discrepancies of the dps on that specific run and thats why we cant take a single run as an example for class/spec viability. This is a game and much can happen. 

 

30 minutes ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

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?

And im against nerfing mech. The problem with mech is not that its dps is high or anything its the fact that even average player can utilise 95-100% dps of benchmarks due to simple rotation. So if we compare it to the abovementioned cata/weaver numbers. Mech would bench around 34k dps and average player would be able to pull of 32-34k dps which puts him on the level of weaver while being lower on the bench. Thats why we still see loads of them. They are reliable, they bring utility and are easy to use. 

 

The second part i do agree. I do think that they should have nerfed traits and leave hammer 3 untouched since it is simpler to use by low skill players and average players. But my guess would be this: they knew exactly how much dps loss hammer 3 nerf would do (3-4k dps) and they wouldnt have to put a lot of resources on making this change, since this wasnt a balance patch or anything, but rather a hotfix. Maybe they would make additional changes to it in the future balance patches like reverting the hammer 3 skills and nerfing more complex trait synergy to compensate. 

[zeyeti.8347]

4 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Average cata player would dish out somewhat 36,8k dps (thats 80% of the bench).

Don't know where you take that , but i am average and i am mostly blocked at 28-30k , while doing the same on mech pew pew scratching my a** , this spec has to keep too many tracks of everything , and for the boonuptime , who care about a random aegis , who care about 5-6 stacks of might , that every spec can give more frequently now , same for the other boons , its' already covered , too many things too kepp tarck on , the stealth energy mechanic , who don't charge up for like 4 secondes after launching a sphere , making you AA like an idiot to upkeep the next 3 attunements with a sphere , the EE stacks , powerfull indeed , but so hard to upkeep (not talking about a moving boss...) , and i forgot maybe half off the other things to keep track on , but for all that difficulty it deserve to be a little bit checked by a big QOL team (making EE efficiency +100% regardless how many stacks , more way to have aura finishe, giev ele an actual good ult , tired to use fiery GS just to spam 5 and 4 then drop... ) 

[Nezekan.2671]

Honestly, Catalyst capping around 40k-42k should keep things calm. If speedrunners can pull 46k, people will keep nagging about it. It's a very good dps, and quickness dps should be able to keep up or be higher than other quickness providers.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Nezekan.2671

[the krytan assassin.9235]

5 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

The way i see it its like this:

Benchmarks measure the maximum potential of a spec/build.

Average person does 80-90% of benchmark of a said spec if he practices a bit. 

So lets take a few examples. 

1) Catalyst that has 46k dps bench

2) Sword weaver that has 40k dps bench

Average cata player would dish out somewhat 36,8k dps (thats 80% of the bench).

Average weaver player would dish out somewhat 32k dps (thats 80% of the bench). 

The difference is there. But thats not all. Various encounters bring additional conditions which are needed to be met. Like AH where downtime of dps is huge for all of the group. So weaver and cata still do the same amount of dps that they could potentialy do with the same proportions as i mentioned above. Lets say cata did 17k, that means weaver will do 14.7k. Thats the difference between 46k dps and 40k dps benches. Sure there are a lot more when it comes to encounters like "can you get close to dps" or "ranged is prefered" or condi vs power (like mathias/KC) etc. But the proportion stands as it is. Thats why benchmarks not being 100% accurate still serve as a valid tool to compare classes and specs. 

Id say your calculations are way off. Its quite ridiculous to say that the average player is able to get ~80% Golem efficiency regardless of the difficulty of the build. Just take a look at the Pmech and Cuntamed as example. Ontop of that the dps in actual encounters also depend on alot more factors then you suggest. (Phasing, hitbox size, movement, forced dodges, CC, melee/ranged, optimizing your traits etc). For most encounters the catalyst has a major dps loss in suboptimal scenarios/human error. 

 

Id say a more realistic benchmark goal for the average player would be 80% dps on dps Weaver and 70% on dps cata. For actual encounters the dps drop off on cata is like ~10-15% more then Weaver (the exact nr ofc depends on the specific encounter). 

 

So with those calculations pre patch cata 46k dps results in an avg of a 33k bench and pweaver has a 31k bench. So in actual encounters i'd say the average pug is outdpssing cata by a lillbit. 

 

Ofc these arent stale numbers, they vary per skill level and boss encounter, but in general id say the cata is only a better dps option if you're in the top 1% playerbase (and we haven't even talked about its lack of CC and extra apm flexibility it requires).

Edited December 15, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Guys, why the Elite Skill "Elemental Celerity" is still 90sec cd in pve ? Why can't we have nice usable elite skill for elem ?

[Ace.1784]

13 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Don't know where you take that , but i am average and i am mostly blocked at 28-30k , while doing the same on mech pew pew scratching my a** , this spec has to keep too many tracks of everything , and for the boonuptime , who care about a random aegis , who care about 5-6 stacks of might , that every spec can give more frequently now , same for the other boons , its' already covered , too many things too kepp tarck on , the stealth energy mechanic , who don't charge up for like 4 secondes after launching a sphere , making you AA like an idiot to upkeep the next 3 attunements with a sphere , the EE stacks , powerfull indeed , but so hard to upkeep (not talking about a moving boss...) , and i forgot maybe half off the other things to keep track on , but for all that difficulty it deserve to be a little bit checked by a big QOL team (making EE efficiency +100% regardless how many stacks , more way to have aura finishe, giev ele an actual good ult , tired to use fiery GS just to spam 5 and 4 then drop... ) 

You need to simultaneously cast abilities more, that's probably your first blocker.

The second is animation cancelling.

Overall I agree Catalyst's rotation is easier than Sword Condi Weaver because it's less to memorize. Sword Power Weaver is much easier than both though.

[soulknight.9620]

15 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Don't know where you take that , but i am average and i am mostly blocked at 28-30k

Then you need more practice as i said "Average person does 80-90% of benchmark of a said spec if he practices a bit." Or work on ur mistakes. Get some help, there are a lot of people that can look at ur log and tell u ur mistakes. It is a l2p issue.

The main problem people have with cata is keeping an eye on the things they shouldnt bother with like EE stacks. Dont cancel attacks of air 2, water 2, earth 2, and use ur jade spheres on a 2/2 basis (after the initial 3 jade sphere burst) with energy regen in between (its all shown in sc rotations). If you use finishers in every attunement you wont have to worry about EE stacks at all. 

If you have the tools up, record a video of ur rotation, then look at it and spot ur mistakes, that will help you learn too. 

14 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Id say your calculations are way off. Its quite ridiculous to say that the average player is able to get ~80% Golem efficiency regardless of the difficulty of the build. Just take a look at the Pmech and Cuntamed as example. Ontop of that the dps in actual encounters also depend on alot more factors then you suggest. (Phasing, hitbox size, movement, forced dodges, CC, melee/ranged, optimizing your traits etc). For most encounters the catalyst has a major dps loss in suboptimal scenarios/human error. 

Ive pointed this out. There are builds/classes that have easier rotations like pMech where average player can get 90-95% of bench with ease. 80-90% is more like a general rule with some exceptions. We need to agree on one more term then: "Average player" is a player that understands the mechanics of a build/class and has practice of playing this class/build. If a guy picks up ele for the first time or hasnt been playing ele aside from OW builds and has no clue on how it funtions in group content, doesnt know the rotations, doesnt understands the mechanics, he is not an average player (for the particular class/build). He need practice and some "study" on the subject. In other words - a player thats puts effort into getting the result. 

Ive also pointed out that "Sure there are a lot more when it comes to encounters like "can you get close to dps" or "ranged is prefered" or condi vs power (like mathias/KC) etc." I just find it a bit annoying to list all of the factors since the list would be rly big. But the point here is that there is a basic potential dps of different classes/builds which is affected by these factors and results in different dps in real fights. The proportions in general (with some exceptions) are still there. 

 

15 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Id say a more realistic benchmark goal for the average player would be 80% dps on dps Weaver and 70% on dps cata. For actual encounters the dps drop off on cata is like ~10-15% more then Weaver (the exact nr ofc depends on the specific encounter). 

Cant agree with this. Ive seen catalysts outperform people even after nerfs. And they manage to keep up with my power weaver IF the fight hasnt got a lot of dps downtime like fraenir for example. Thats due to weaver having an edge by providing better burst damage in tight dps windows. The thing that makes this discussion a bit of pointless is that player skill difference makes it impossible to measure accurately. I may have been lucky to get groups with decent catalysts for example and others have not. We would have different experience and observations there. 

I know that this argument sounds a bit weird, but ill say this. Im not a pro ele in any form or shape, but i tend to get 85-90% of benches on weavers and on cata in first 1-2 tries on the golem. And i do have a bit of a ping problem and dont have any stat infusions. But this argument is subjective i guess. 

[Celano.8492]

I mean my mouth is just foaming at this point..... Anet looks like a company with a huge experience and this game is 12 years old at this point or something? The point is that I am running catalyst on pure enthusiasm as does probably the bulk of people playing ele spec in general due to the fact that it is complete garbage in comparison with other specs that do way better owing to the fact that they require way less skill and knowledge to pull it off, while Elementalist requires full knowledge of rotation, Catalyst in particular depends immensely on not being interrupted cause that way the damage drops immensely. If you missed any of your damaging skills you lose damage, while other specs simply PRESS 1 BUTTON AND IT IS STILL DOING WELL, DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SAY HERE? Yes, some tryhard on youtube pulled off 46k on golem or something, I went to that same golem with same build, same everything and only managed 30-32k tops if i remember correctly and I play CATALYST basically since it came out and before that mainly played Ele spec in general and that's been for about 2 years at this point probably. There is no joy in playing a spec (CATALYST) 3rd skill of which does literally NOTHING, I am running open world right now and it just does 0 damage, or 1. And that's it, I spin that hammer like crazy and I see ZERO'S POPPING ON MY SCREEN! Are you trying to drive people nuts or something? Just delete the SPEC from the game then, and that'd be the end of this everlasting story. Furthermore, you must be some kind of masochist to run full DPS build in open world with CATALYST having only 13k hp, what a joke! Here is the crazy idea, why not buff base health of elementalist if you are so afraid of Huge damage that can be pulled by only 5-10 players in the entire game so Catalyst could run full power build without dying of sudden wind blow in open world?? Meanwhile my reaper is full power and I can drink coffee while slashing hoards of enemies left and right without giving a kitten about losing my hp or damage. WHERE IS THE LOGIC???? Hard to play = crappy unrewarding frustrating experience, Easy to play = you are going to have a blast. Do you, Anet guys, REALLY believe that your game MUST have specs that MUST be played on pure enthusiasm alone? If that's your main BELIEF then you will never be able to balance your game and all what you said in you post about "Balance philosophy" is nothing but placebo. Which, I am pretty sure you are aware of, will eventually lead to loss of players cause i am certain that if I am thinking of quitting this game because of this sort of "BALANCING", there are people out there that just did so or going to do so shortly or at least thinking about it just like I do. 

Edited December 16, 2022 by Celano.8492

[Skyroar.2974]

This balance change was misguided. I'm fine with nerfing numbers, but there's a large difference between nerfing a little bit of each skill in the kit, and completely removing a specific skill's ability to deal damage.

Rotating orbs that dealt damage was fun and casual-friendly. Anet could have nerfed numbers elsewhere, but, as usual, they decide to destroy casual playstyles and punish the casual playerbase instead of making a more sensible, thoughtful change.

But that's the history of GW2's Elementalist class, isn't it? Arbitrarly designed and balanced to be anti-casual, even though its the closest thing this game has to the very casual-friendly wizard/scholar archetype.

[zeyeti.8347]

A rework of hammer 3rd skills is needed those skills are the only one that do not one shot neutral beasts like rabbit or flys in open world , having a huge number appearing , saying you have crit. , and see the number is 6.... "i critically strike neutral rabbit in queensdale for 6 damage , hello i am a glass canon , but if forgot my canon at home ..." thats laughable.

As a rework idea the passiv should be added on the sphere with same attunement as well as a pulsing 1 energy sec till passiv is activ , and make all 3rd skills combo field , blast , leap whatsoever (just giving ideas...) , and rework the kitten pun skill n*4 in air , pressing that skill is like trying to leap above an electrified fence hoping it is not electrified

[noneHotBuildTest.7251]

Don't get why engi are perma op while elementalists were gutted for years.
CMC is openly biased and now they will just gut everything besides their favorite classes
A class needs skill to play like elementalist gets wack all the time, a high risk, low reward class in raid, it must be crazy.

[WolfinTD.3904]

On 12/15/2022 at 9:58 PM, zeyeti.8347 said:

Don't know where you take that , but i am average and i am mostly blocked at 28-30k , while doing the same on mech pew pew scratching my a** , this spec has to keep too many tracks of everything , and for the boonuptime , who care about a random aegis , who care about 5-6 stacks of might , that every spec can give more frequently now , same for the other boons , its' already covered , too many things too kepp tarck on , the stealth energy mechanic , who don't charge up for like 4 secondes after launching a sphere , making you AA like an idiot to upkeep the next 3 attunements with a sphere , the EE stacks , powerfull indeed , but so hard to upkeep (not talking about a moving boss...) , and i forgot maybe half off the other things to keep track on , but for all that difficulty it deserve to be a little bit checked by a big QOL team (making EE efficiency +100% regardless how many stacks , more way to have aura finishe, giev ele an actual good ult , tired to use fiery GS just to spam 5 and 4 then drop... ) 

if you have that many issues with it, maybe you're not average 😄 i actually do consider myself average (mainly because i've seen some catalysts do miles better DPS than me in raids). i have a few months of playtime on cata. my highest bench before the big buff was 34k. my biggest bench before the most recent nerf was 40.7k. my current best bench is 37.4k. compared to the current best benches people are pulling off, those are pretty run-of-the-mill numbers. so yeah, average. the thing about ele's state is, you have to just get used to it not being able to provide as much as some other classes can. there's no point complaining about it when people have been doing the same thing basically since launch.
the way i see it, the things you actually have to keep track of are - sphere position if it's a mobile fight, EE stacks (which isn't even a problem in actual bosses since everyone spits out combo fields even if your own spheres aren't places well or you don't have energy for them), the fact that you can't gain energy while a sphere is out which is for 5 seconds, and maybe counting earth autos if you wanna tryhard that much. so in terms of things that actually matter if you actually learn the class at encounters that aren't the training golem, there's just sphere placement. sure, doing Hurricane of Pain or Lightning Storm and then the boss moves away sucks, but it's your fault for placing them when you should be ready to adapt to a moving or active bossfight.
if you actually learn the rotation, you will always have a finisher for every single attunement. following the rotation, you'll always have access to fire 5, air 5, water 4 or 5 and earth 5. finishers are literally the easiest part of playing catalyst, not sure why you consider it something to track.
EE stacks exist to motivate you to actually interact with the main mechanic of the class, using fields and finishers to make combos, so if they make EE give that much stats baseline then there's no point doing any combos more often than 15 seconds.
the ultimate thing, i can agree with. fire greatsword is a bland skill that you just place and use 5 on, then weaponswap out. only ele elite skills i think are interesting in gameplay are Weave Self and Rebound for obvious reasons.
pretty much, if you want to do more than the damage you're doing right now, you're gonna have to practice more and more. if you consider your efforts worthless because mech does the same as you, then you're always free to just play mech 😄i've seen countless times that since i've put in work to do better DPS than i ever did on any class before catalyst, i can actually outDPS people 99% of the time.
i really do hope that you can get better at the class if you really are interested in it, it's the class that made me fall in love with elementalist in the first place. i wholeheartedly believe it made me a better player for any class I play, and i hope it can have the same effect for you 🙂 

[zeyeti.8347]

15 hours ago, WolfinTD.3904 said:

if you have that many issues with it, maybe you're not average 😄 i actually do consider myself average (mainly because i've seen some catalysts do miles better DPS than me in raids). i have a few months of playtime on cata. my highest bench before the big buff was 34k. my biggest bench before the most recent nerf was 40.7k. my current best bench is 37.4k. compared to the current best benches people are pulling off, those are pretty run-of-the-mill numbers. so yeah, average. the thing about ele's state is, you have to just get used to it not being able to provide as much as some other classes can. there's no point complaining about it when people have been doing the same thing basically since launch.
the way i see it, the things you actually have to keep track of are - sphere position if it's a mobile fight, EE stacks (which isn't even a problem in actual bosses since everyone spits out combo fields even if your own spheres aren't places well or you don't have energy for them), the fact that you can't gain energy while a sphere is out which is for 5 seconds, and maybe counting earth autos if you wanna tryhard that much. so in terms of things that actually matter if you actually learn the class at encounters that aren't the training golem, there's just sphere placement. sure, doing Hurricane of Pain or Lightning Storm and then the boss moves away sucks, but it's your fault for placing them when you should be ready to adapt to a moving or active bossfight.
if you actually learn the rotation, you will always have a finisher for every single attunement. following the rotation, you'll always have access to fire 5, air 5, water 4 or 5 and earth 5. finishers are literally the easiest part of playing catalyst, not sure why you consider it something to track.
EE stacks exist to motivate you to actually interact with the main mechanic of the class, using fields and finishers to make combos, so if they make EE give that much stats baseline then there's no point doing any combos more often than 15 seconds.
the ultimate thing, i can agree with. fire greatsword is a bland skill that you just place and use 5 on, then weaponswap out. only ele elite skills i think are interesting in gameplay are Weave Self and Rebound for obvious reasons.
pretty much, if you want to do more than the damage you're doing right now, you're gonna have to practice more and more. if you consider your efforts worthless because mech does the same as you, then you're always free to just play mech 😄i've seen countless times that since i've put in work to do better DPS than i ever did on any class before catalyst, i can actually outDPS people 99% of the time.
i really do hope that you can get better at the class if you really are interested in it, it's the class that made me fall in love with elementalist in the first place. i wholeheartedly believe it made me a better player for any class I play, and i hope it can have the same effect for you 🙂 

First , thank you , you made solid points , i think the class isnt just suited to me , i do way better dps with any other dps class , the thing is i find it completely absurb some classes are able to perform near this one with so much less effort (deadeye DD doing 40k pressing 3 buttons ...)

What pisses me off is that this class has been the most reworked class of the game in such a short period of time , countless nerf then unnerf , then buffed , then nerfed ... that means that anet is unable to patch the ele correctly and also it's the only spec (with untamed) that has such a large gap in dps between average and hardcore player (player doing 25k on golem .. like me .. and player doing 42k on golem , still small percentage) thats why i agree now it doesnt need some dps increase but some Qol , not being as stupid to play as mech pew pew , but giving better access to EE empowerment , have also something to tell you you can't charge up energy for x secondes ( i find that really annoying waiting for a strong multy strike skill being wasted while you couldnt build up energy )

for now , personnaly i see no reason to play ele , risk vs reward isnt worth it , the whole class has too many weakness , has no selling point except for people mastering it , can it be tempest (heal or dps) , weaver or catalyst.

i have tryed every class in the game (except untamed , dont want to wreck my keyboard and mouse) and i am able to perform very well with all of them in any specific roles , only with ele i struggle , as healer as support and as dps and that really upsets me.

Edited December 21, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[soulknight.9620]

1 hour ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

What pisses me off is that this class has been the most reworked class of the game in such a short period of time , countless nerf then unnerf , then buffed , then nerfed ... that means that anet is unable to patch the ele correctly and also it's the only spec (with untamed) that has such a large gap in dps between average and hardcore player (player doing 25k on golem .. like me .. and player doing 42k on golem , still small percentage) thats why i agree now it doesnt need some dps increase but some Qol , not being as stupid to play as mech pew pew , but giving better access to EE empowerment , have also something to tell you you can't charge up energy for x secondes ( i find that really annoying waiting for a strong multy strike skill being wasted while you couldnt build up energy )

for now , personnaly i see no reason to play ele , risk vs reward isnt worth it , the whole class has too many weakness , has no selling point except for people mastering it , can it be tempest (heal or dps) , weaver or catalyst.

i have tryed every class in the game (except untamed , dont want to wreck my keyboard and mouse) and i am able to perform very well with all of them in any specific roles , only with ele i struggle , as healer as support and as dps and that really upsets me.

Ele is really hard to balance like i said in countless other threads. A small change in numbers can inflate ele to the sky or nerf to the ground. We actually saw that many times like the latest weaver buff, condi weaver scepter buffs etc. Ele has a major advantage and a weakness at the same time - attunements. You have access to a lot of utility/cc/dps/evades etc, but all of them are locked behind attunement swaps and cds. If you lower the cd to a certain amount ele would become unkillable. I actually remember the good old times when sword water 2 healed 0-100% in a loop (with some blasting ofc) with 12 (? mb mistaken) sec cd without investing into healing power. It has been nerfed like 3-4 times now. 

If you compare an ele weapon kit to lets say any other class (except fb) you will notice that ele has a lot more utility built in his kit than 2 weapons of other classes (not talking about the quality of utility, but rather quantity). But they are locked behind different attunements. 

If you want to truly understand my point just throw a full cele build (doesnt actually matter which elite u take) and go destroy some open world Legendary monsters solo. Thats how broken the class is atm. One of THE most powerfull classes when it comes to soloing stuff (btw that works fine in Wvw too). But... theres always a but... When ele lacks the abovementioned cele stats, many skills especially healing and barrier skills feel underwhelming for the effort you need to put into using them (like double attuning, swapping to water, swaping utilities etc). Every action ele takes is a tradeoff by default. You want to do damage - no utility. You want to get a few evades/sustain skills out - loose dps. 

Fully agree that EE stacks and energy mechanics on cata need some QoL, but i believe that will come after they decide "what to do" with cata as its primary role and usage. Atm Cata lacks a role. It wasnt suppose do be a full glass cannon dps (we have weaver for this), it doent need to be a defensive support like tempest. I believe they were going to make it an offensive support spec, but they actually failed at it. It was suppose to have lower dps than a weaver, but more durability and more utility. And yet now its just another glass dps spec. Btw if you take a full cele gear to a cata it actually feels like a great offensive support (at least in OW that is). Since it can take a punch, dish a punch and provide variety of boons, conditions, heals to ur group. 

Now about that selling point. Ele has never been a class that people play to get results (usually it gets used by people when it overperforms, like prenerfed cata and then dropped off by the majority, when it performs the same as other specs). People tend to play ele because they either like the aestetics or how it plays. Thats it. You can definately achieve better results with other classes with less effort put in. 

People tend to have difficulties with different classes. Find a class u enjoy and master it. For example im an average/semi good ele player, but i totally cant get into something so broken (by the opinion of the majority) as quickFB (before the rework). Ive tried it countless times and still got bad results. Something just doesnt "click" inside me to understand how to play it to get the same average 80-90% dps. So i just dont bother with it. There are other quick classes/builds that i can use efficiently. 

 

 

[zeyeti.8347]

i know that , i've been playing celestial weaver in OW a lot , but now i don't go in OW often , 90% of the stuff there is boring and make me sleepy , i agree with your point: any player using celestial ele in OW would do great , in OW ... i mainly am focused on endgame harder content (fractales cm's , raid , strikes ) , and i play every class , i like being versatile (like a swiss knife) but there is 1 class i don't touch , it's the whole ele , i see no points playing it .

-Weaver ? there are more ranged , with more hp and more survivabilty , dpses that perform as well as this one.

-Tempest ? as healer , don't even want to talk about it (alacrity ...) and as dps it's a joke.

-Catalyst ? Way better dps to give quickness as scrappy , firebrand , herald , or harbringer , more fluid quickness , more sources of quickness and all off those have more cc accessibilty and not bend to use in the rotation to upkeep EE ...

i mean if you take teh whole ele class it's the least played in endgame , every other class has a least one e-spec represented in one of the endgame content (except maybe thief , and warrior is slowly coming back from his awfull banner rework...)

[soulknight.9620]

1 hour ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

i know that , i've been playing celestial weaver in OW a lot , but now i don't go in OW often , 90% of the stuff there is boring and make me sleepy , i agree with your point: any player using celestial ele in OW would do great , in OW ... i mainly am focused on endgame harder content (fractales cm's , raid , strikes ) , and i play every class , i like being versatile (like a swiss knife) but there is 1 class i don't touch , it's the whole ele , i see no points playing it .

-Weaver ? there are more ranged , with more hp and more survivabilty , dpses that perform as well as this one.

-Tempest ? as healer , don't even want to talk about it (alacrity ...) and as dps it's a joke.

-Catalyst ? Way better dps to give quickness as scrappy , firebrand , herald , or harbringer , more fluid quickness , more sources of quickness and all off those have more cc accessibilty and not bend to use in the rotation to upkeep EE ...

i mean if you take teh whole ele class it's the least played in endgame , every other class has a least one e-spec represented in one of the endgame content (except maybe thief , and warrior is slowly coming back from his awfull banner rework...)

Weaver got outclassed by virtuoso (having more utility/sustain), tempest by ham/hfb (more utility and easier to play), cata by herald (easier to play). Gw2 is an mmo, you will never get the ideal balance here, there will always be some classes/builds that are weaker/harder to play than others. 

There are classes that can get better results than ele (or at least easier to play), sure. No point in arguing about that. 

My point is that ele can be played and can perform on par with the requirements to clear any content. You gotta work for it, but its viable and you can get good results with it aswell (cata still does insane amount of dps atm if you play it right). And there are some LI builds out there (like condi scepter weaver) with decent dps that is not hard to play at all. 

If you play a lot of classes and you dont want to play ele specifically (for aestetic or gameplay reasons) there is no need to play it. When i want to slack in frac Cms or raids i usually dont go as ele, i pick something much more chill to play myself (like herald/rev/hfb/alacmirage etc).

Edited December 21, 2022 by soulknight.9620

[Passerbye.6291]

The problems I come across elementalist players being unhappy with balance changes usually come down to a few things.
1- Delusional players who think a difficult class deserves 47.6k dps. This I find to be the most important one because a lot of these people are deluded to the point of thinking elementalist is difficult to the point of being impossible to play and that only a few blessed people are capable of doing dps that is comparable to other classes. The fact is, prior to the most recent nerfs, me and my friends discussed this. My argument was that even a bad catalyst could bench as high as a lot of the popular builds' top benches. The goal was to reach 38k dps ( which is where a lot of the dps benches are, tho it seems to be shifting towards 40 lately) within 2 days of starting catalyst. The nerf hit before I could get started, so we moved the bench to 35, which I was able to hit in a few hours.
The reason I'm saying this is this, when a build benches something incredulously high like 47.6k, even an average player with no prior catalyst experience like me can outbench his main, which throws out the argument that elementalist makes you break your fingers to do damage.

2- Glass cannon purists. The problem, imo, with most ele builds is the lack of instant access to certain utilities, the most glaring one being CC, what they have available is usually multiple seconds away from access at any given time, whereas with other classes, there are quite a lot of builds with high amounts of CC readily available to them, usually coming with a minimal loss in damage. But the problem is, whenever I see someone suggest making eles more versatile, I see these glass cannon purists flood the thread, saying that ele is the hardest class with no utility, it should remain that way and therefore should do more damage than everyone, which is fair tbh, but at the same time, that more damage will or rather should never be allowed to be 20-30% more than the 2nd best dps.

3- People who cannot grasp their own skill level. This is a bit mean to say, but I feel like it needs repeating. I see a lot of elementalist players benching something along the lines of 25k, which is alright, doing that kind of damage, especially if you know how to adjust midcombat is good enough for pretty much anything. But please do keep in mind that when you bench 25k with a class that sees 42k post nerf, placing it among the highest performing classes in terms of dps, you don't get to argue that mechanist or any other class that is by default easy to play perform better than you. If what bothers you is how you perform, you have a few options, simply put; get good or play another class that is suitable for your skill level. Before someone says but I like ele, I prefer to play ele but want to have a super easy build, please look around, there are multiple fairly easy to play ele builds benching 35k+ atm.

TLDR: I fail to see how elementalist is bad with multiple builds benching over 40k, the topic of this thread, catalyst, benching over 42k with easy enough a rotation that I, someone with 0 prior catalyst gameplay, could reach 35k in a few hours with minimal understanding of the class. 

Edited December 21, 2022 by Passerbye.6291

[soulknight.9620]

3 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

1- Delusional players who think a difficult class deserves 47.6k dps.

Couldnt agree more. And as an ele main i think cata needs more adjustments. Anet needs to tone down dps of cata to smtn like 36-38k, ease up the rotations, give cata some QoL and a bit of more durability so that cata can actually be that offensive bulky supporty dps. Sword Weaver deserves a bit of a buff for being the glassiest of ele builds though. Not much, 1-2k would be fine to put it in line with where cata is atm (42k). 

Basing my opinion on their released design phylosophy which states that the more options/utility you have, the less dps you should have and wise versa. 

Imo not a single class should do more than 40-42k dps with any difficulty of rotation. 

4 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

2- Glass cannon purists.

This one is tricky. Since the only pure glass cannon spec of ele is weaver it should be doing the highest amount of dps compared to other ele specs. The problem is not the lack of instant access to utility (cc is not he main offender here), but rather that it adds a layer of complexity to end game encounter where you have to know the fight so much better than others that you need to know what the boss will do in a couple of seconds and plan ur attunement swapping ahead. It can be easily done by a competent ele (even an average one like myself) even for cc heavy encounters like samarog. And if you master it, you can outperform other classes when it comes to cc breakbar damage. An easy example is scepter condi weaver which can do a simple rotation with air/earth 3, water/air 5, fire/water 5,4,3 to do some nice cc breakbar in couple of secs. All of this can and should be chained. And you are not actually loosing a lot of dps since you can cast some skills like signet of fire while swapping and since the moment you get fire as ur active attunement its full dps mode again. Same for sword/dagger power weaver, which has a lot of access to cc (air 2, air 5, earth 4, air/earth 3, some soft cc on double skills). 

The trick here is that although u dont loose much of dps if you are doing the rotation correctly, but you still loose some. And the less experienced ele player is the more he will loose. Classes like rifle mech do not loose dps when they do cc with rifle 3/4. Its part of their rotation. And since you kinda need to sacrifice a bit of dps to get access to ur built in utility (including cc) the dps of ele must be higher than lets say mentioned rifle mech. 

Another thing to point out is that ele has access to a lot of cc with utility skills, but you have to tradeoff some of ur damaging skills for this (frostbow is one example, air/earth elemental instead of fire one is another one). Atm ele is rly dependant on damaging utilities for dps output. The way anet could handle it is to switch some of the power from utilities to weapon skills so that ele wouldnt loose a lot of dps for taking defensive utilities. 

4 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

3- People who cannot grasp their own skill level.

Agree. 

4 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

TLDR: I fail to see how elementalist is bad with multiple builds benching over 40k, the topic of this thread, catalyst, benching over 42k with easy enough a rotation that I, someone with 0 prior catalyst gameplay, could reach 35k in a few hours with minimal understanding of the class. 

Amen. 

[Batalix.2873]

Catalyst needs a stronger gimmick than "Crummy Weave Self".

 

I don't know why the shaman/geomancer spec that is all about "augmenting" elements requires us to spastically attunement swap like Weaver, instead of letting us pump up or double down on elements.

 

Catalyst should be able to summon orbs of the same element. Catalyst should be able to charge up energy with reattunements just as easily as attunements. Catalyst should be able to resummon or extend jade spheres of the same element they already have on the field.

 

I want the ability, on an aoe and combo class, to actually have selectivity over the condis and boons I apply instead of always spitting out a haphazard mixture of impotent 1/4-boons/condis. There's no specificity to the Catalyst support, it's just throwing literally everything at the wall and hoping it sticks.

 

It's bad class design, through and through. And a lot of this is because Ele itself is a mess, but Catalyst is just all the worst parts of Ele, and it didn't have to be.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Batalix.2873

[the krytan assassin.9235]

18 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

1- Delusional players who think a difficult class deserves 47.6k dps. This I find to be the most important one because a lot of these people are deluded to the point of thinking elementalist is difficult to the point of being impossible to play and that only a few blessed people are capable of doing dps that is comparable to other classes. The fact is, prior to the most recent nerfs, me and my friends discussed this. My argument was that even a bad catalyst could bench as high as a lot of the popular builds' top benches. The goal was to reach 38k dps ( which is where a lot of the dps benches are, tho it seems to be shifting towards 40 lately) within 2 days of starting catalyst. The nerf hit before I could get started, so we moved the bench to 35, which I was able to hit in a few hours.
The reason I'm saying this is this, when a build benches something incredulously high like 47.6k, even an average player with no prior catalyst experience like me can outbench his main, which throws out the argument that elementalist makes you break your fingers to do damage.

The big problem is that ele is simply a dmge only spec. It doesn't really offer any significant boon/utility/cc/cleanse/heal support. 

For example take a look at the balance of d/a hammer spellbreaker and sw/d BttH Weaver. They offer very similar dps and playstyle. Yet spellbreaker has far superior extra bonusses compared to Weaver.

Only group support a Weaver has is 500 barrier every 10 seconds. Spellbreaker has: double the amount of health, less reliance on stationary targets, 30% party quick uptime, lots of boonrip, easier access to cc and about 3* more defiance break, better heal/utility/elite skills. 

So what is the correct amount of dps Weaver should do? Clearly its performing worse in almost every single aspect when compared to spellbreaker. DE currently has the highest benchmark and a fairly doable rotation and yet no one is playing DE. 

 

Even though cata was benching 47.6k the overall playrate was still below most standard raid classes. There were also alot of players that still preferred the 39-40.5k Weaver dps over the 47.6 of cata, so cata still has some downsides that makes people underperform on the catalyst. 

Wether 47.6k bench on cata is balanced, i do not know. I guess it primarily depends on how a player perceives game balance and all its factors that come into play. Still the fact remains that most ele specs will never be competitive in the meta as long as they do not get any significant dmge buff to compensate for their lack of support/utility/cleanse/cc/surviveability/heals etc. 

[Passerbye.6291]

25 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Wether 47.6k bench on cata is balanced, i do not know. I guess it primarily depends on how a player perceives game balance and all its factors that come into play. Still the fact remains that most ele specs will never be competitive in the meta as long as they do not get any significant dmge buff to compensate for their lack of support/utility/cleanse/cc/surviveability/heals etc. 

Exactly my point, they can balance it by providing ele with utility, and then having its dps balanced around the intended target level the balance team has in mind. That being said, you yourself defaulted to what I said in my response "we have no utility so give us damage", deadeye is clearly a huge outlier in terms of damage.
Whenever I see an elementalist argue for more damage they always get a tiny substrata of information that supports their point of view. To give a similar example would be for me to say "Look, reaper does no damage, has no support, is all around worthless compared to every other spec, nerf everything!". The fact is, elementalist is performing better than it did in a long time. Is it perfect? no, the way tempest provides alacrity is terrible for instance, but that is an entirely different discussion.
The topic of discussion here being a "nerf" to catalyst, I simply want to point out that a majority of the playerbase maining anything other than elementalist would love to get "nerfed" to deal 42k damage. Simply put, you will never have a selfish dps spec do 30% more damage than the 2nd best dps, because usually, we just use 1 healer and 1 support dps to carry almost the entirety of the utility needs of a subgroup anyway. So given the option to choose between a class with 47.6k bench and a 38k one with utility, people will gravitate towards the 47.6k. Also, people keep saying no one played catalyst after 47.6k bench, but magically aerodome had a lot of catalyst around after the patch that buffed cata. Not that "but so few people play it" is a good argument for balance.

[Passerbye.6291]

15 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

This one is tricky. Since the only pure glass cannon spec of ele is weaver it should be doing the highest amount of dps compared to other ele specs.

I agree that a glass cannon spec requires high damage to be competitive, but the problem here is that the amount of damage it has is rarely good enough for people, especially considering multiple people in this thread are arguing that it was unfair to nerf catalyst to 42k, a number that is top-tier high AFTER nerfs.

All in all, I'd go around making CC and some other utilities more accessible to ele and balance its damage around their intended benchmark range, because as it stands, so few ele mains are willing to accept one of the best benches available as enough damage for lack of utility.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

2 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

That being said, you yourself defaulted to what I said in my response "we have no utility so give us damage"

Well yeah, ofcourse i'd defend a higher dps potential of catalyst aslong as they are not addressing the underlying issues of the class. People have been complaining about the state of catalyst since release. Its horrible EE system, orbs and combo finisher synergy that make hammer a mandatory pick, a very bad energy design, skills bugging all the time (orbs & air 4) 

 

All Anet did in the last patch was increasing the difficulty level of the catalyst (no more aurashare, increased dependancy on orbs, increased the importance of maintaining empowering auras, fluctuating dps output due to most of open world/form/Dungeons not triggering stormsoul. 

 

So yes, incase Anet decides to ignore the ele population and do exactly the things we didn't ask for (make the class harder and more fluctuating in its dps output) the ele playerbase will adapt to the situation. Due to the dps increase you can somewhat make it work, still it can be annoying to play, but atleast i can be a viable pick. So why am i suddenly a dps purist? All i do is to adjust my point of view to the continuous pile of kitten Anet forces on us. 

 

Honestly i haven't really found any of the glass Cannon purists you describe on the forum. Sure i've argumented against the use of marau/cele gear/defensive traits etc for regular builds, simply because it results it a big dps loss while still maintaining most of the other ele issues. Sure some people are uncertain about the impact of certain proposed changes, simply because some forum forumposts tend to propose a ridiculously OP change and they dont want to get smacked by Anet's nerf hammer again. But still im quite uncertain even a single person has stated that they want the current energy system to remain as is. 

 

[Passerbye.6291]

6 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Honestly i haven't really found any of the glass Cannon purists you describe on the forum.

There are quite a few but as you can imagine, I won't be going around collecting samples, still should be easy for you to find. 
You keep overplaying the complexity of catalyst, it has a fairly simple rotation logic behind it, once you get the hang of the instant cast spells and not interrupting weapon 2 on water-air-earth, the rotation is fairly simple, again proven by the fact that I was about to do 35k on it post nerf without any prior catalyst gameplay, not because 35k is impressive, but because it is higher than most people ever hit after playing a class for months. I'm sorry to say this but if catalyst feels impossible to play to you, you aren't doing it right, either your keybindings make simultaneous keystrokes difficult, or you lack the coordination or muscle memory to do so, or more realistically, you just aren't willing to admit that catalyst rotation isn't that difficult to do alright with.
Now, if we're arguing about doing high end damage being difficult, that is the case with most builds.

 

6 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Due to the dps increase you can somewhat make it work, still it can be annoying to play, but atleast i can be a viable pick.

Viable, it is literally one of the best benching builds out there mate. About it being bothersome to play, or energy being a problem, these are all quality of life changes you can request, if the class is balanced around one F4 every attunement without problem, removing energy altogether is a fair suggestion ofc. That being said, I don't see how they have anything to do with balance discussion. If being more gimmicky requires more damage, I expect to see 45k axe mirage with the usual confusion stacks, the class has had bugs plaguing it for years now (one got fixed with the recent patch, thank *insert preferred deity here*). Worse yet, revenant has had bugs since its conception, people still get their utilities reshuffled/lost randomly upon switching builds etc. The highest benching build for revenant uses the swap with at or less than 10 energy trait iirc, making it require much more energy management than catalyst, let's give it 48k dps.

All in all, catalyst isn't that hard, and currently does great damage, people are just having a difficult time reconciling that fact in their minds. If it helps you though, this isn't specific to ele players, in most class forums there is a thread crying how anet hates that specific class, and that specific class is unplayably bad.

[Infusion.7149]

Claiming ele players want 47K DPS is asinine. That is the definition of a strawman. Even the benchmark in a stationary spot doesn't maintain 10 stacks of EE. Plus there are ways to implement a higher baseline damage that don't involve things utilized heavily in the benchmark, such a more consistent damage on the auto in line with other professions or making EE scale per stack rather than being on/off.

People aren't overplaying the difficulty of catalyst because there is no such thing as a low intensity catalyst while there are for most power builds whether it is (kitless) holo, power scrapper, mechanist, virtuoso, vindicator (jalis/shiro), herald (glint+jalis or glint+shiro), reaper, DH, bladesworn (this is all positioning), power daredevil, berserker/spellbreaker all have a shorter compressed easier rotation if you choose to go that route. Even power untamed with its high APM only uses hammer meaning the only swapping is done on unleash states (which means low unshown cooldowns). By definition you aren't playing catalyst nearly to even half potential if you only use fire and air or water and earth as on current weaver builds (Fire+earth for scepter, fire+air for power sword).

It also happens to be described by benchmarkers as "a very high learning curve build and is a huge step up in difficulty compared to Power Weaver, and most other builds in the game, for that matter" and "due to the fast and error-prone rotation and the fact that Elementalists have low health and wear light armor, the Catalyst is not suitable for beginners."