With the probable end of elite specs, is anyone else even more upset that Catalyst exists?

[Jski.6180]

14 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

My one sentence referencing WvW acknowledged that you probably didn't want to melee there, but that this is a common issue among several professions.

Your post that claimed that ele ALWAYS went ranged didn't specify WvW, though. Meleementalist either is or has been quite viable in the other modes. Therefore, they don't ALWAYS go ranged.

This isn't a justification for going 3 for 3 on melee-oriented elite specialisations, though.

Yeah, I don't think anyone's advocating for catalyst to be just deleted with nothing to replace it. Just that if we're only going to have three elite specialisations, the third should have been something more distinct from the other two.

O sry i though you knew something i did not is all.

If catalyst is going to be the last elite spec for ele it should at least be 900 range on hammer skills. I think that would go a long way to filling in the missing ranged elite spec of the ele class.

[draxynnic.3719]

6 hours ago, Jski.6180 said:

O sry i though you knew something i did not is all.

If catalyst is going to be the last elite spec for ele it should at least be 900 range on hammer skills. I think that would go a long way to filling in the missing ranged elite spec of the ele class.

Yeah, I've been saying that hammer air and fire should have more range since the beta. They probably need a bit more projectile speed too - if you're chasing something they're basically melee because they're so slow.

It'd still be a mostly melee spec, though, since you'd still want to be in melee so the orbs can build energy for you, and in PvE you want both your friends and your enemies inside the sphere.

[Jski.6180]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Yeah, I've been saying that hammer air and fire should have more range since the beta. They probably need a bit more projectile speed too - if you're chasing something they're basically melee because they're so slow.

It'd still be a mostly melee spec, though, since you'd still want to be in melee so the orbs can build energy for you, and in PvE you want both your friends and your enemies inside the sphere.

The "missing" range elite spec weapon seems like hammer is about as close as we can get. WH is kind of range ish but in no way is sword range. 600 feels too short and it seems as other hammer skills are 800? for its orb firing off. It just dose not fit.

I am more updating the F skills of the elite spec to better reflect how you want to play that class mind you catalyst F5 skill fits the ranged class already (oddly i want it to have an melee mood for its F5 as i see hammer an far more important part to catalyst then its F5.) but tempest dose not and i am not sure if there an real way to make weaver have an range vs melee split. My way of fixing "being upset that catalyst exists as its seems to be the end of elite spec."

[Serephen.3420]

12 hours ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

if you think in solo gameplay yes, but in raids/fracs/rstrikes you sit inside boss hitbox fully proffiting from it

I think you completely missed the point I was trying to make...I hardly do any solo play anyways, most of my game time is in raids, strikes and fractals. I am saying as a skill, their design is disappointing and don't feel or behave like real weapon skills at all.

You only do real damage with the 3 skills in pvp and wvw. In pve the base damage is 1. 

They also changed it to pulse damage once per second so hitbox no longer matters anymore with that.

[draxynnic.3719]

12 hours ago, Jski.6180 said:

The "missing" range elite spec weapon seems like hammer is about as close as we can get. WH is kind of range ish but in no way is sword range. 600 feels too short and it seems as other hammer skills are 800? for its orb firing off. It just dose not fit.

I am more updating the F skills of the elite spec to better reflect how you want to play that class mind you catalyst F5 skill fits the ranged class already (oddly i want it to have an melee mood for its F5 as i see hammer an far more important part to catalyst then its F5.) but tempest dose not and i am not sure if there an real way to make weaver have an range vs melee split. My way of fixing "being upset that catalyst exists as its seems to be the end of elite spec."

Yeah, WH is suitable for a ranged build, but most overloads require you to be in dagger range of your enemies, ideally in the middle of them if you can, to get the most benefit. Catalyst can be ranged in competitive with sceptre or staff since you can just drop the sphere on yourself or your allies as the damage is trivial, but in PvE, the spheres are a big enough part of your DPS that you really want to be able to get yourself and your enemies in one sphere. Weaver is the one that can build pure ranged as long as you're willing to ditch sword and the melee-focused utilities, but anyone who isn't making excuses can see that weaver was designed to be a meleementalist.

Weapon-wise, I like the idea of elementalist having a weapon that's melee in some attunements and ranged on others. But 600 isn't enough. 600 range with slow projectiles basically makes it a dagger substitute that trades mobility for more reliable energy generation and combo finishers.

Edited May 24, 2023 by draxynnic.3719

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

all three elites are bad in their own way.

Tempest was made to go with sword. They screwed up, could not make sword in time, so we got warhorn. Which does nothing that focus doesnt do already. Also melee class.

Weaver is clunky af. We got the sword we should have gotten with tempest. We got a stupid mechanic oh and sword has the shortest range of all weapons - which makes zero sense. So another half baked melee elite

Catalyst is dumb in its own ways and worse than the other two in every regard. Fields? Tempest does it better. Atunement swapping? Core and weaver do it better. Class mechanic? Tempest and weaver do it better. Weapons? Hammer has dumb range, clunky and slow. Another melee spec noone asked for. Besides the name is just idiotic. Catalyst does not catalyse anything.

What would have been great? An ele elite with long bow. Shooting elemental bolts at the enemy. Raining fire wrath from heavens. Maybe even with either stealth or stealth removal, so there is at least a way to deal with hit-and-run thiefs and/or break the firebrand-scrapper-anynecrospec-rev meta in wvw.

But no. Once again, other got the cool, thought out classes. Eles got the third half baked, clunky melee spec noone wanted. 

How to fix catalyst? To be honest? Pull it. Redo it completely. Throw the whole thing away and make it new. With some GOOD ranged choice. Longbow. Greatsword. Stuff like that. Or make hammer ranged, like on rev. Give us FINALLY the ability to stop hit&run thieves. THAN it might be a decent spec. But at the moment it is nothing but garbage. Yes, numbers are nice. But it is garbage to play. It had no theme going on (unlike tempest and weaver), it is an incoherent stupid mess.

ANET should be ashamed of it and apologise. 

[draxynnic.3719]

I really doubt that they decided to make an offhand with 8 skills because that was somehow easier than getting a mainhand with 12 skills to work. I know it was leaked/datamined that they were working on sword pre-HoT, but there are plenty of explanations for that, including that they'd started thinking about Weaver early on. They may have been originally thinking of Weaver for HoT but baulked on making so many dual skills in the time available.

Now Catalyst is out, it's not going to get deleted and replaced. That just isn't practical. There are, however, still a lot of ways it can be improved.

[Batalix.2873]

In thinking about it more, Catalyst should have had a mace, not a hammer.

[TheDetective.8172]

On 5/24/2023 at 8:42 PM, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

Weaver is clunky af. We got the sword we should have gotten with tempest. We got a stupid mechanic oh and sword has the shortest range of all weapons - which makes zero sense. So another half baked melee elite

Ummm... Weaver is the opposite of clunky. It flows perfectly. I play power Weaver with Sword Dagger and can honestly say that it's an amazing elite spec. I don't really understand where you're coming from regarding this point?

[Sporks.4395]

Catalyst sucks because of the hammer. Hammer gives damage mods in the weapon skills. This means you have to make the elite spec damage mods harder to obtain. The way the damage modifiers are maintained makes it impossible to every even see use out of the grandmaster trait that buffs users stats in any form of PVP. Going back to the hammer, it is close range. So, on a catalyst, because of the damage modifiers and defensive abilities baked into the weapon, all other weapons are subpar in PvP for damage. This means that Cata has only one playstyle. Bunker boon build. That's it. It's boring, it's one dimensional, it offers very low support other than boons. It's like core ele but useful. Very boring. If they would fix the damage traits, fix hammer, and fix the energy system, this class would shine. It is so close, but yet so far...

[Curunen.8729]

I'm not an ele main but felt it worth posting here as every time I want to play ele it's sad there's no rifle/bow options since they neutered Frost Bow a long time ago...

Hammer is a cool weapon (I've also been wanting a hammer mesmer spec for some fun), but does seem a bit redundant and an odd choice given the other specs.

Nothing quite scratching the itch aside from playing a different game which has elemental ammo, or having to make an aurene and by extension jormag/primordus etc legendary rifle for engi or similar and pretending it's an elemental gun wielder, which isn't quite the same. 😕

It's a perfect template for elemental arrows or bullets - freeze enemies, burn them, shoot round corners with magnetic rounds, etc. I mean sure I could just go and mess about in warframe/destiny/borderlands/mass effect and so on, but it could be really awesome in gw2.

By extension it would be nice to see more rifles and bows across light armour classes for the variety, as virtuoso does nothing for me either.

[Axelteas.7192]

All revolves around the clunkiness of hammer. This could be solved easily reworking it like the revenant hammer.

[draxynnic.3719]

11 hours ago, Axelteas.7192 said:

All revolves around the clunkiness of hammer. This could be solved easily reworking it like the revenant hammer.

Revenant hammer is nothing to aspire to.

[Serephen.3420]

12 hours ago, Axelteas.7192 said:

All revolves around the clunkiness of hammer. This could be solved easily reworking it like the revenant hammer.

Literally the only nice thing about it is having range. Otherwise it's a far more clunky feeling weapon than cata hammer aside from that cursed air 4 skill.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

On 5/30/2023 at 11:00 PM, TheDetective.8172 said:

Ummm... Weaver is the opposite of clunky. It flows perfectly. I play power Weaver with Sword Dagger and can honestly say that it's an amazing elite spec. I don't really understand where you're coming from regarding this point?

Weaver is not clunky?

You are in fire/fire or whatever and need to access Water 4 NOW.

On core, tempest, even dreadful catalyst that is one atunement swap. On weaver it is two. Unless you slotted unravel, wasting a precious utility slot.

Weaver does not 'flow'. It hobbles along. You can make it work. Or you can equip one of ANETs pet classes and have all the fun, all the flow, all the damage , 0 risk and massive rewards.

 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

5 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

Weaver is not clunky?

You are in fire/fire or whatever and need to access Water 4 NOW.

On core, tempest, even dreadful catalyst that is one atunement swap. On weaver it is two. Unless you slotted unravel, wasting a precious utility slot.

Weaver does not 'flow'. It hobbles along. You can make it work. Or you can equip one of ANETs pet classes and have all the fun, all the flow, all the damage , 0 risk and massive rewards.

 

Need Frost Aura that urgently?  Just run fresh air.  Specific skills aside, there's something to note about weaver, and that is that the weapon skills for sword are designed differently from the other weapons.  The other weapon sets have their utilities located on the later half of their skills, usually 3 or 4.  For sword, it is 2.  Fire and Air 2 are mobility skills with Air being a CC, while Earth and Water are both evades.  Whether you need to move, dodge, or CC, you're never more than one attunement swap away.  

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Yes the Weaver spec asks you at start some anticipation and to develop some rotations for differents aspects : burst, heal, cleanse... rather than press the right "on demand" skills.

But even there you should already realize the 4sec CD on attunements is insane coupled with all traits "on attunement swap" (sunspot, healing ripple etc, arcane traitlane etc); then you should also look at Unravel, Weaveself, fresh air that speed up significantly your rotation and "on demand" solutions.

It's a demanding spec; but to me far from clunky, particularly when compared with catalyst and tempst stuck with long cast-time/CD, weird #2 on hammer,  jailed with hammer #3 rotation ...
Edit *; that's stoopid but i've changed keyboard and press F5 on catalyst became a new challenge to me now 😀 I don't know how to bind it better. A new to point to make me hate this spec.

 

At least it was until the HUGE NERF "QoL" on dagger leaps and overall the abandonment of sword in regard to range, cleave, mobility...

Edited June 3, 2023 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[Ace.1784]

Honestly, I think Catalyst is the best and most interesting elite spec we have. I do play it primarily with hammer in PvE and staff in WvW, but it's pretty strong and has always been strong since its release.

With no more elite specs, I'm pretty content with the options we have, even though I rarely play Weaver nowadays and Tempest only when I need to alac.

[Helgaley.3619]

I'm curious what the June balance patch will bring for ele. It's almost been a year since those Discord chats leaked where a dev said he made balance decisions based on his own preferences and what he thought was fun to play, and he even admitted to influencing the design of at least one EoD elite spec. The fact he was comfortable saying that in a Discord channel with high end players that don't even work for Anet makes me think it's a culture problem with Anet and he said the quiet part out loud, and if you look at profession representation in fractals etc, not much has changed since then. 

Just think how much money the players spent on gems etc with the expectation Anet would make the game fun while the guy in charge of balancing professions was getting paid to make his favorite classes more fun and competitive than the others. They probably should have reversed every balance decision made while that guy was in charge, but whatever 🤷

Depending on what's in the June 28 balance patch, ele mains just might be out of luck until a dev decides else is their favorite class. 

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

19 hours ago, Helgaley.3619 said:

I'm curious what the June balance patch will bring for ele. It's almost been a year since those Discord chats leaked where a dev said he made balance decisions based on his own preferences and what he thought was fun to play, and he even admitted to influencing the design of at least one EoD elite spec. The fact he was comfortable saying that in a Discord channel with high end players that don't even work for Anet makes me think it's a culture problem with Anet and he said the quiet part out loud, and if you look at profession representation in fractals etc, not much has changed since then. 

Just think how much money the players spent on gems etc with the expectation Anet would make the game fun while the guy in charge of balancing professions was getting paid to make his favorite classes more fun and competitive than the others. They probably should have reversed every balance decision made while that guy was in charge, but whatever 🤷

Depending on what's in the June 28 balance patch, ele mains just might be out of luck until a dev decides else is their favorite class. 

We heard your complaints about mobility, support role, cast-time and preponderance of some skills and element swap in rotation on contrary to our will to offer "on demand" solutions.

We changed #2 skills on sword with more range. We also add alacrity to glyph trait. Hammer #3 no longer grant buffs at cast, but pulse boons. Quickness only when traited and you'll need 100% BD for 50% uptime (the remaining 50% with jade sphere, we decreased duration to compensate).

We also increased all CDs by 50~100% to compensate and reduce base damage and healing numbers.

 

See you in 2 month for drastic nerfs, and february 2024 for balance.

Edited June 5, 2023 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[Helgaley.3619]

On 6/5/2023 at 5:18 AM, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

We heard your complaints about mobility, support role, cast-time and preponderance of some skills and element swap in rotation on contrary to our will to offer "on demand" solutions.

We changed #2 skills on sword with more range. We also add alacrity to glyph trait. Hammer #3 no longer grant buffs at cast, but pulse boons. Quickness only when traited and you'll need 100% BD for 50% uptime (the remaining 50% with jade sphere, we decreased duration to compensate).

We also increased all CDs by 50~100% to compensate and reduce base damage and healing numbers.

 

See you in 2 month for drastic nerfs, and february 2024 for balance.

Stop it before you give them ideas 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

On 6/4/2023 at 7:44 PM, Helgaley.3619 said:

I'm curious what the June balance patch will bring for ele. It's almost been a year since those Discord chats leaked where a dev said he made balance decisions based on his own preferences and what he thought was fun to play, and he even admitted to influencing the design of at least one EoD elite spec. The fact he was comfortable saying that in a Discord channel with high end players that don't even work for Anet makes me think it's a culture problem with Anet and he said the quiet part out loud, and if you look at profession representation in fractals etc, not much has changed since then. 

Just think how much money the players spent on gems etc with the expectation Anet would make the game fun while the guy in charge of balancing professions was getting paid to make his favorite classes more fun and competitive than the others. They probably should have reversed every balance decision made while that guy was in charge, but whatever 🤷

Depending on what's in the June 28 balance patch, ele mains just might be out of luck until a dev decides else is their favorite class. 

Meh imo ele is in a decent spot right now. Meta in pvp & WvW as support and decent for dps. Weaver is probably the easiest build to get high numbers in instanced PvE. Tempest has its issues but is getting quite some attention next balance patch according to the previous balance patch notes. 

Catalyst has a steep learning curve but very powerful in the right hands. It has its problems, but overall energy management is fine except for solo target PvE for staff and dagger. The orbs can be abit of a struggle, but Arent inherently flawed after the icd on flipover skill. Only change cata really needs is for empowered empowerment to double the EE effect without requiring 10 stacks of EE. Sure there can be some minor improvements (like staunch aura providing group stability for PvE only) but overall it is in a decent state. 

With CmC as lead balance dev the elementalist has become very versatile & powerfull profession accross the board. 

[draxynnic.3719]

8 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Meh imo ele is in a decent spot right now. Meta in pvp & WvW as support and decent for dps. Weaver is probably the easiest build to get high numbers in instanced PvE. Tempest has its issues but is getting quite some attention next balance patch according to the previous balance patch notes. 

Catalyst has a steep learning curve but very powerful in the right hands. It has its problems, but overall energy management is fine except for solo target PvE for staff and dagger. The orbs can be abit of a struggle, but Arent inherently flawed after the icd on flipover skill. Only change cata really needs is for empowered empowerment to double the EE effect without requiring 10 stacks of EE. Sure there can be some minor improvements (like staunch aura providing group stability for PvE only) but overall it is in a decent state. 

With CmC as lead balance dev the elementalist has become very versatile & powerfull profession accross the board. 

It's not just about the power level, though. It's the playstyle. People were hoping for a new way to play elementalist, and while Catalyst does have some of its own style, it's still mostly rehashing beats we've had for years. Rapid attunement swapping for stacking buffs? Weaver did that. Utility skills? Basically weaver stances again, apart from the elite. Aura-based playstyle? Tempest. Field-based playstyle? Tempest again. Skill combo based playstyle? Elementalist staple for a long time, and the way it works for catalyst is mostly just pushing you into using hammer for more finisher access and doesn't really enhance your ability to support allies with combos, just stacking buffs on yourself. You could possibly use it to create an aurashare build but Tempest does it better. Playstyle-wise, it's basically a few new rotations and that's just about it. An elite spec that was more distinct from tempest and weaver could still have delivered new rotations, while doing so much more to offer new playstyles in other ways. 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

It's not just about the power level, though. It's the playstyle. People were hoping for a new way to play elementalist, and while Catalyst does have some of its own style, it's still mostly rehashing beats we've had for years. Rapid attunement swapping for stacking buffs? Weaver did that. Utility skills? Basically weaver stances again, apart from the elite. Aura-based playstyle? Tempest. Field-based playstyle? Tempest again. Skill combo based playstyle? Elementalist staple for a long time, and the way it works for catalyst is mostly just pushing you into using hammer for more finisher access and doesn't really enhance your ability to support allies with combos, just stacking buffs on yourself. You could possibly use it to create an aurashare build but Tempest does it better. Playstyle-wise, it's basically a few new rotations and that's just about it. An elite spec that was more distinct from tempest and weaver could still have delivered new rotations, while doing so much more to offer new playstyles in other ways. 

Sure everyone hopes on a completely different playstyle & want one that is viable aswell. Cata's playstyle isn't completely different, but definitely atleast a viable playstyle (across all gamemodes!). 

Im not sure why people refer to fast cycling through the elements as a flaw of the Espec. You play a class with 20 weapon skills & 3 weapon swaps. Ofcourse you're going to frequently swap to other attunements. Also the class definitely has unique elements. Its the first viable boon dps, first time you got actual surviveability in your traits, access to quickness & stability, an interely new strong 2h weapon, new class mechanics to manage (ee stacks, orbs, spheres & augments). 

Sure in an ideal world every Espec would offer a vastly different playstyle that is also viable in every single gamemode and which is accessible for all skill levels. In actual reality this isn't normally the case. Just look at the EoD specs as example. Harbi is just a selfish condi necro, without any interesting utility skills, untamed apart from fervent force( which isn't really viable anymore) plays almost exactly the same as the other especs (theyre even to lazy to update non hammer skills to have a flipover effect in beastmode.  Mechanist plays just like a normal engineer, only difference is a self operatingmech running around you all the time. Willbender plays almost exactly the same as DH, only difference is some extra mobility. Vindi healing just is miserable in most gamemodes, still uses the same weaponsets in all content. Only real new thing is a new Espec weapon. 

Virtuoso, specter and bladesworn are probably the best especs out there for EoD. Of all remaining 6 especs i'd consider catalyst definitely one of the better viable/ designed especs making it overall mid tier. 

 

 

[draxynnic.3719]

21 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Sure everyone hopes on a completely different playstyle & want one that is viable aswell. Cata's playstyle isn't completely different, but definitely atleast a viable playstyle (across all gamemodes!). 

Im not sure why people refer to fast cycling through the elements as a flaw of the Espec. You play a class with 20 weapon skills & 3 weapon swaps. Ofcourse you're going to frequently swap to other attunements. Also the class definitely has unique elements. Its the first viable boon dps, first time you got actual surviveability in your traits, access to quickness & stability, an interely new strong 2h weapon, new class mechanics to manage (ee stacks, orbs, spheres & augments). 

People criticise the orbs for incentivising fast swapping because Weaver already did that with Weave Self (and, to a lesser extent, interactions with core traits). People criticise it as a boon DPS because in practice it's probably the hardest and least reliable quickness spec since maintaining quickness requires making sure you always switch to air at the right time, and with sufficient energy, without the benefit of being able to see the air sphere's cooldown. It's also hard to be reactive with other boons because they require being in (or able to switch to) the right attunement at the right time with a build that pushes rapid swapping. People criticise the hammer because it's another melee weapon - the 'favours ranged' profession is 3/3 for melee specs and now has more melee than ranged weapons (it could have been a good melee/ranged hybrid, but they dropped the ball by giving it 600 range and slow projectile speeds). I'll admit it has an interesting rotation, but a ranged weapon or a genuine hybrid weapon could have had that too. People criticise augments because, with the exception of earth augment and the elite, they're basically Stances 2.0, except with more conditions about when you can use them if you want full effect from them. People criticise the "new class mechanics to manage" because a lot of people don't actually enjoy having a build that's based around managing four different kinds of self-buff (oh, and weaver did the 'get self-buffs from traits as you go through your rotation' thing too, it just didn't take it to the extreme Catalyst did and waste dedicate more than half of the trait set to them)

21 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Sure in an ideal world every Espec would offer a vastly different playstyle that is also viable in every single gamemode and which is accessible for all skill levels. In actual reality this isn't normally the case. Just look at the EoD specs as example. Harbi is just a selfish condi necro, without any interesting utility skills, untamed apart from fervent force( which isn't really viable anymore) plays almost exactly the same as the other especs (theyre even to lazy to update non hammer skills to have a flipover effect in beastmode.  Mechanist plays just like a normal engineer, only difference is a self operatingmech running around you all the time. Willbender plays almost exactly the same as DH, only difference is some extra mobility. Vindi healing just is miserable in most gamemodes, still uses the same weaponsets in all content. Only real new thing is a new Espec weapon. 

Virtuoso, specter and bladesworn are probably the best especs out there for EoD. Of all remaining 6 especs i'd consider catalyst definitely one of the better viable/ designed especs making it overall mid tier. 

Cannot disagree more. All of those at least made an effort to have a different playstyle. Harbinger is pushing to trade the durability normally associated with necromancer for a mobile glass cannon approach (necromancer traditionally lacks a lot of mobility) and if you're going to defend catalyst for being a good boondps, well, harbinger probably does it better if anything, albeit not at the level of the big boys like herald, firebrand, and to a lesser extent scrapper, and while I'm not fond of elixirs myself I don't really see them as being any less interesting as utility skills than Catalyst's "press for more damage, but make sure you're standing in the right sphere when you do so!" augments. Untamed, for all its current flaws, is the first ranger elite specialisation that actually encourages you to work with your pet, as opposed to druid basically ignoring it and soulbeast being designed around being able to get rid of it. Mechanist has the pet as a solid distinguishing feature. Willbender mobility on the previously relatively low-mobility guardian is not to be sneezed at, or the switch in playstyle to using the virtues actively without reservation because they have low cooldowns and you need to activate them to get what was previously a passive effect. Vindicator healing kinda failed mostly because it doesn't provide a key boon in PvE (but I see it in the build list for WvW...), but they at least tried to do something new with the double legend, and the dragoon jump is a distinct playstyle difference even if you're otherwise using core legends and weapons.

But the key and most fundamental difference between all of these and Catalyst?

Any similarities they have in playstyle with other elite specs on the same profession are because they're based on the core profession. The elite specialisations are all going in different directions, but because they're all starting from the same foundation, it takes something pretty extreme to completely change their playstyle. Catalyst, however, feels like it's not just building from the same foundation, it's reusing features that were already in Weaver and Tempest, when people wanted something that actually went in a different direction.

Don't get me wrong: Catalyst is reasonably functional for what it does (although I do wonder if what it really does is serve as a gateway to Weaver). If ArenaNet was to come out with a statement that they'd had a couple of ideas in mind but went with Catalyst because they figured it fit Cantha better*, but that we shouldn't worry because they have something else in the works which will be more in line with what people were asking for, then we wouldn't have this thread. But they've done the opposite. While I think people are grossly overstating the 'no more elite specialisations' case, ArenaNet's statements have at least cast reasonable doubt on the idea that there will be more coming that can fill the gaps that remain. Catalyst would be fine in isolation. What makes people angry is that if there are only going to be three elite specialisations, the third should not have been something that feels like it was cobbled together from ideas that had already been used with the first two.

*But this still leaves open the question of why Catalyst has no NPC representation apart from the obligatory lore NPC, while willbender, bladesworn, mechanist, harbinger, and virtuoso all have prominent roles in at least one point in the story, and spectre bosses are a little less prominent but still at least exist. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by draxynnic.3719