How do we feel about Catalyst?

[apharma.3741]

Catalyst I said maybe the GM trait should determine the aura given by elemental epitome, giving fire, light or dark, maybe that's the fix but it'd make it dead for transmuting unless something was also done about transmutes.

Stoneheart is more of a "problem" because PvP amulets have been hyper homogenised. Out of 16 amulets only 3 do not have any precision at all and only 2 of the 13 left have only 500 precision. That means the percentage of no to low precision amulets is 5/16 or 31.25%, compared to 2015 when 52.94% of amulets had no to low crit.
However even a 500 precision amulet will still get nearly 49% crit chance with fury, so really the amount of low crit builds is 18.75% by stats alone (47.06% in 2015) not accounting for +crit chance builds that use low to no crit already. The reality is that nearly every build in PvP uses crit, not because they want to but because they have no other choice. Take a look at older states of amulets, the emphasis was more on power (especially in traits) over crits and generally stats played a bigger role especially in survivability and damge.
All this means that as changes have been handled by a skills team that had almost no regard to PvP letting mechanics get bloated we saw a homoginisation of amulets and a pushing of damage to be more crit reliant than based on straight damage mods and power. This means no matter your build, you are almost certainly going to have crits so stone heart feels worse to fight. Doesn't help this skills team threw in 2 damage reduction traits on top of enhanced protection for tempest meaning they take 50% less damage in earth even without stone heart.
I still stand by stone heart not being a problem as the elementalist isn't doing a lot if they're sitting in earth.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Build
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=PvP_Build&oldid=1040433
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stone_Flesh

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Geomancer's_Training
 

[Downstate.4697]

15 minutes ago, apharma.3741 said:

Catalyst I said maybe the GM trait should determine the aura given by elemental epitome, giving fire, light or dark, maybe that's the fix but it'd make it dead for transmuting unless something was also done about transmutes.

Stoneheart is more of a "problem" because PvP amulets have been hyper homogenised. Out of 16 amulets only 3 do not have any precision at all and only 2 of the 13 left have only 500 precision. That means the percentage of no to low precision amulets is 5/16 or 31.25%, compared to 2015 when 52.94% of amulets had no to low crit.
However even a 500 precision amulet will still get nearly 49% crit chance with fury, so really the amount of low crit builds is 18.75% by stats alone (47.06% in 2015) not accounting for +crit chance builds that use low to no crit already. The reality is that nearly every build in PvP uses crit, not because they want to but because they have no other choice. Take a look at older states of amulets, the emphasis was more on power (especially in traits) over crits and generally stats played a bigger role especially in survivability and damge.
All this means that as changes have been handled by a skills team that had almost no regard to PvP letting mechanics get bloated we saw a homoginisation of amulets and a pushing of damage to be more crit reliant than based on straight damage mods and power. This means no matter your build, you are almost certainly going to have crits so stone heart feels worse to fight. Doesn't help this skills team threw in 2 damage reduction traits on top of enhanced protection for tempest meaning they take 50% less damage in earth even without stone heart.
I still stand by stone heart not being a problem as the elementalist isn't doing a lot if they're sitting in earth.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Build
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=PvP_Build&oldid=1040433
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stone_Flesh

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Geomancer's_Training
 

PvP has always gravitated towards power because of downstate damage. Berserker amulet became the most popular option after EOD because of mobility added to other professions. Stone heart is a bit of an issue in ranked since a solo player can’t reliably kill a tempest on their own, but it’s necessary to keep tempest relevant in competitive imo. If anything they should reduce magnetic aura by 1s  baseline and maybe also reduce swirling winds uptime to 5s.

[apharma.3741]

2 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

PvP has always gravitated towards power because of downstate damage. Berserker amulet became the most popular option after EOD because of mobility added to other professions. Stone heart is a bit of an issue in ranked since a solo player can’t reliably kill a tempest on their own, but it’s necessary to keep tempest relevant in competitive imo. If anything they should reduce magnetic aura by 1s  baseline and maybe also reduce swirling winds uptime to 5s.

That is one way of doing it but like I said in another thread, guardian and tempest (at least in EU) were quite competitive for the support role, removing earth shield would remove 1 invuln, blocks, CC and extra magnetic aura from tempest. This might be enough to make guardian more favourable if they have to take 75s CD mistform. At that point tempest isn't unplayable, it's a solid alternative to guardian and it loses magnetic aura uptime (especially outside of earth) so to me it's a great way to target a long standing problem without making all other ele builds suffer too much.

[Downstate.4697]

2 minutes ago, apharma.3741 said:

That is one way of doing it but like I said in another thread, guardian and tempest (at least in EU) were quite competitive for the support role, removing earth shield would remove 1 invuln, blocks, CC and extra magnetic aura from tempest. This might be enough to make guardian more favourable if they have to take 75s CD mistform. At that point tempest isn't unplayable, it's a solid alternative to guardian and it loses magnetic aura uptime (especially outside of earth) so to me it's a great way to target a long standing problem without making all other ele builds suffer too much.

I’m not a fan of nerfing something to be unplayable. Earth shield is in a fine state at the moment. Maybe they should remove the aura entirely from it and have it give barrier or something 

[apharma.3741]

2 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

I’m not a fan of nerfing something to be unplayable. Earth shield is in a fine state at the moment. Maybe they should remove the aura entirely from it and have it give barrier or something 

Me neither but all conjures are kinda bad in one or multiple ways and earth shield has historically been abused multiple times as it's stacked with defence. Imo Sboon it and then put some developer time to revamping conjures entirely so each feels like a weapon swap and has useful defensive and offensive abilities on each conjure not the mess we have now. Ele getting a quasi weapon swap allowing it good ranged and melee options so it's not stuck as ranged or melee so completely by it's weapon choice.

[Leonidrex.5649]

11 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

Something that can give a lot of damage but can't really take a lot of damage. Scrapper and zerk wb can be considered a glass bruiser while spellbreaker/hammer cata are bruisers....

This is just 1 out of 300 random terms i made up in my head. Hey you asked.

I mean, the term bruiser means to be TOUGH and AGGRESIVE.
so glass and bruiser is mutually exclusive xd

[Saiyan.1704]

11 hours ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

I mean, the term bruiser means to be TOUGH and AGGRESIVE.
so glass and bruiser is mutually exclusive xd

I appreciate the agreement ^.^

[noneHotBuildTest.7251]

Catalyst have been overnerf