Proposed Catalyst fix

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

I think everyone who has played Catalyst currently in end game content knows it doesn't really work anymore, it barely worked initially, but has gotten worse.

I have a proposed fix, but am definitely willing to hear suggestions, with the hope that devs and balance get some ideas.

1. Get rid of the energy mechanic for sphere - pretty straight forward, the energy system doesn't work. Have the sphere work on a cooldown only and have it only be accessible after a few seconds after attunement (to stop people just cycling attunements to cast all spheres). 

2. Change quickness duration - adjust the quickness duration provided by spheres so that if you want to camp a single element (e.g. water for healing) you should be able to just barely be able to provide quickness with 100% boon duration, attunement recharge reduction from Arcane trait line, alacrity and sphere boon duration from Cata trait line. This would stop forced attunement changes and would still allow a quick dps variant to exist that cycles through all elements to get 100% quickness (or less elements if they have enough boon duration)

3. Provide a trait for the augment skills - unsure of the exact balance and wording of the trait, but something like the Soulbeast stance sharing trait. So if the augment is cast within a jade sphere, a smaller/reduced version of it is cast onto 4 allies around you. Would most likely need to be balanced for each of the augments but could allow utility. If not sharing the trait, then something very simple like boons around caster when cast within a jade sphere.

There are a few base elementalist changes I would make too, but I dunno how to balance those through all 3 elite specs so won't get into here.

Let me know what you think and what improvements/changes you would make to Catalyst to help it out.

Cheers

[crosknight.3041]

agree with energy sucking the way it is, it is one one of the biggest issues currently on catalyst. the energy mechanic works like a cheap knock off version of warriors adrenaline, but atleast warrior has many ways of generating it (through utility skills and more than one trait). my method of fixing would to be boosting energy generation, increasing the energy gained from hitting enemies, energy gained from the attunement swap trait, and making healing also give energy (heal cata needs love) as well as making some of the catalyst lesser used augments grant energy. ALTERNATIVELY can get rid of energy and make the orb an ammo skill, 3 ammo with the attunement swapping skill recharging its cooldown 25-30%.

quickness being on every sphere is good, though agree duration needs looking at. though my bias in wanting catalyst to lean more heavily into combos makes me want to see bonus quickness given to allies when you combo. so the base quickness (2s base quickness with 1s per combo in the active sphere)

augements are pretty boring imo, would like to see them be more active instead of being stanceV2. hate the bonus effect for using them in the specific sphere. do like the augment share idea.

other fix that wasnt mentioned, Staunch aura trait (aura give stability) does not apply to allies you give auras to. WHY JUST WHY, let me have a support cata that just farts out stability on par with rev/guard. also elemental empowerment traits are boring would like the traits to do more than a lazy statboost. like make my spheres EXPLODE at the end of their duration dealing damage or healing (based on attunement) or something.


off topic but hammer 3... should have been part of the catalysts main mechanics too!

[oCynder.5136]

There were suggestions to remove the energy mechanics since like... forever. They won't budge. But it's nice that this is being brought up again and again. Probably it gets looked into.

I would prefer if they remove the energy mechanic and just let the jades be a skill cast. This could be the first steps to see how the spec plays after before they do other big changes. This way, you can play with other weapons rather having to rely on a high energy generation weapons.

Augments are actually boring. I would prefer more active play rather just... yay some uncool thing. You could say the same goes for signets if you are just holding the signet for passives only.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

On a instances PvE perspective:

I think the main reason people stopped playing cata lately is due to the lack of dps output. Buffing hammer dps by ~3k ish would probably be the easiest way to fix it. 

Apart from that the following trait//utility/UI changes should imo be implemented.

Energized elements should be increased to 4 energy/attunement swap in pve to facilitate more builds that struggle abit with energy regen. 

Staunch auras should be party wide for pve (or at least when used with powerful aura trait). 

Empowered empowerment should probably flat out double the EE effectiveness instead of adding the 10 stacks trashold for the extra 50% effectiveness.

Remove aegis from spectacular sphere and bring back the resistance. Although i believe it was originally intended to be a buff, id much rather provide good uptime on resistance then some not on demand aegis. 

Invigorating air should definitely be party wide

Elemental celerity cd should probably be reduced to ~40 seconds 

Add skill/trait descriptions that mention the downtime on energy regen while a sphere is up. 

 The energy bar should be bigger and have clear indicators of 10&20 energy. Downtime on energy regen should be visible here aswell. 

[zeyeti.8347]

On 7/23/2024 at 12:55 PM, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

1. Get rid of the energy mechanic for sphere - pretty straight forward, the energy system doesn't work. Have the sphere work on a cooldown only and have it only be accessible after a few seconds after attunement (to stop people just cycling attunements to cast all spheres). 

that has been asked ... i've lost the count , the energy mechanic would be fine if there wasn't this freaking 5 secs of "no energy allowed" after a sphere launch , but it would also be useless , so yeah get rid of that energy , but for the cooldown i would preffered a reverse idea of your own , put a cooldown of 3 secs on all other sphere while you launched one , so people would attune launch a sphere immediately and use it for combos in the resoective attunement , instead of attune , wait (kind of tempest feeling right there) and use the sphere then switch attunement. This would also prevent opening with 4 spheres  giving tremendous amount of boons in few secondes , would be op i guess.

And the elite elemental celerity should also recharge the sphere of your actual attunement , it's a catalyst elite skill but has nothing to do with spheres , a bit out of touch to me.

For the quickness version it would need to combine Spectacular Sphere and Sphere Specialist , cause no one wants to remove two offensiv traitline to be transformed from calssic deeps to support , it's a -10% dmg and -10% all attribute , too big of a loss.

Edited July 26 by zeyeti.8347

[draxynnic.3719]

On 7/23/2024 at 10:00 PM, crosknight.3041 said:

other fix that wasnt mentioned, Staunch aura trait (aura give stability) does not apply to allies you give auras to. WHY JUST WHY, let me have a support cata that just farts out stability on par with rev/guard. also elemental empowerment traits are boring would like the traits to do more than a lazy statboost. like make my spheres EXPLODE at the end of their duration dealing damage or healing (based on attunement) or something.

At least in PvE, now that they're willing to split mechanics between game modes. You'd be investing two grandmaster traits to do it, might as well let it happen. Could be fun in places like Dragonstorm.

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

On 7/23/2024 at 1:00 PM, crosknight.3041 said:

quickness being on every sphere is good, though agree duration needs looking at. though my bias in wanting catalyst to lean more heavily into combos makes me want to see bonus quickness given to allies when you combo. so the base quickness (2s base quickness with 1s per combo in the active sphere)

As long as it is any combo and not what poor scrapper got.

On 7/23/2024 at 1:00 PM, crosknight.3041 said:

augements are pretty boring imo, would like to see them be more active instead of being stanceV2. hate the bonus effect for using them in the specific sphere. do like the augment share idea.

13 hours ago, oCynder.5136 said:

Augments are actually boring. I would prefer more active play rather just... yay some uncool thing. You could say the same goes for signets if you are just holding the signet for passives only.

Augments just seem very poor designed and see a little like a last minute addition or something was changed.

10 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

I think the main reason people stopped playing cata lately is due to the lack of dps output. Buffing hammer dps by ~3k ish would probably be the easiest way to fix it. 

Remove aegis from spectacular sphere and bring back the resistance. Although i believe it was originally intended to be a buff, id much rather provide good uptime on resistance then some not on demand aegis. 

I don't wanna see a hammer buff that would just cause tempest and weaver to be better, base catalyst skills need buffing, potentially more damage on spheres or making the augments actually a better choice than base elementalist skills.

Resistance is nice, but I may have to disagree with getting rid of aegis, so many encounters rely on aegis and stability to "skip" mechanics that squads kinda expect them from a build, resistance is a very niche bonus.

1 hour ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

but for the cooldown i would preffered a reverse idea of your own , put a cooldown of 3 secs on all other sphere while you launched one , so people would attune launch a sphere immediately and use it for combos in the resoective attunement , instead of attune , wait (kind of tempest feeling right there) and use the sphere then switch attunement. This would also prevent opening with 4 spheres  giving tremendous amount of boons in few secondes , would be op i guess.

And the elite elemental celerity should also recharge teh pshere of your actual attunement , it's a catalyst elite skill but has nothing to do with speher , a bit out of touch to me.

For the quickness version it would need to combine Spectacular Sphere and Sphere Specialist , cause no one wants to remove two offensiv traitline to be transformed from calssic deeps to support , it's a -10% dmg and -10% all attribute , too big of a loss.

I like your idea better, as I didn't think of this, a global 3 sec cooldown for spheres which would allows a fire sphere + some skills, then swap to earth and immediately do the the same, but would stop you doing this 3 times in a row in quick succession.

Good shout for the elite skill too, could allows extra quickness uptime too to bridge a gap.

I have always disliked that you need to equip 2 traits just to make quickness viable on Catalyst. I'd say just double the boon duration on cata spheres normally and then put an augment skill booster trait on the grandmaster line.

[mirage.8046]

On 7/23/2024 at 5:00 AM, crosknight.3041 said:

augements are pretty boring imo, would like to see them be more active instead of being stanceV2. hate the bonus effect for using them in the specific sphere. do like the augment share idea.

other fix that wasnt mentioned, Staunch aura trait (aura give stability) does not apply to allies you give auras to. WHY JUST WHY, let me have a support cata that just farts out stability on par with rev/guard. also elemental empowerment traits are boring would like the traits to do more than a lazy statboost. like make my spheres EXPLODE at the end of their duration dealing damage or healing (based on attunement) or something.


off topic but hammer 3... should have been part of the catalysts main mechanics too!

Augments are like stances but 10x more boring than stances; at least the air augment is useful because it offers 100% endurance regen *and* a stunbreak, a very strong form of vigor. 

All the top traits in Catalyst affect the player, but nothing stops them from leaping or blasting in others' combo fields to trigger those traits. I'd like catalyst to have more ways to grant stability, but with how readily accessible combo fields are, you could constantly blast or leap into fields to share stability. Because staunch aura has no cooldown, the stability stacking would soar with powerful aura; leaping into fire, dark, light, ethereal, or ice fields would mean very high stability stacks and uptime. The synergy would also help daggers, focus, warhorn, and staff share aoe stab with their aura skills. 

Requiring powerful aura and staunch auras would be good to integrate into both DPS and support builds but not giving out high stability uptime without having both traits. (I fear to see that much stability application on Catalyst in PvP and WvW unless staunch aura gets an ICD.)

Edited July 24 by mirage.8046

[draxynnic.3719]

17 hours ago, mirage.8046 said:

Augments are like stances but 10x more boring than stances; at least the air augment is useful because it offers 100% endurance regen *and* a stunbreak, a very strong form of vigor. 

All the top traits in Catalyst affect the player, but nothing stops them from leaping or blasting in others' combo fields to trigger those traits. I'd like catalyst to have more ways to grant stability, but with how readily accessible combo fields are, you could constantly blast or leap into fields to share stability. Because staunch aura has no cooldown, the stability stacking would soar with powerful aura; leaping into fire, dark, light, ethereal, or ice fields would mean very high stability stacks and uptime. The synergy would also help daggers, focus, warhorn, and staff share aoe stab with their aura skills. 

Requiring powerful aura and staunch auras would be good to integrate into both DPS and support builds but not giving out high stability uptime without having both traits. (I fear to see that much stability application on Catalyst in PvP and WvW unless staunch aura gets an ICD.)

Staunch Auras has no cooldown by Elemental Epitome has a ten-second ICD per attunement, so there is a limit to how often it can trigger (broadly speaking, once per attunement swap unless you're staying in one attunement for an extended period). You'd be able to get additional triggers from weapon skills and (if you invest traits accordingly) signets or swapping into fire for Sunspot (can't have both triggering if you also want to share it with Powerful Auras).

[Juniper.8197]

Catalyst was largely ignored in the last balance update, so this class is not in their top priority right now.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

23 hours ago, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

I don't wanna see a hammer buff that would just cause tempest and weaver to be better, base catalyst skills need buffing, potentially more damage on spheres or making the augments actually a better choice than base elementalist skills.

The design for Pdps hammer naturally fits catalyst way better then Tempest/weaver and therefore also does considerable more dps output on cata. Compared to Sw/wh cata the hammer  is slightly underperforming. Hammer dps can therefore be buffed without any problem. 

Base dps catalyst already gives quite alot of extra dps bonus (currently 10% dps output+20% stats from traits) and is outperforming weaver in terms of pdps output. Buffing catalyst will only make weaver further irrellevant. If anything Tempest should get a slight nerf on transcendent tempest to bring it more in line with weaver+cata. 

23 hours ago, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

Resistance is nice, but I may have to disagree with getting rid of aegis, so many encounters rely on aegis and stability to "skip" mechanics that squads kinda expect them from a build, resistance is a very niche bonus.

Resistance is actually quite powerfull for fractal cm's, IBS strikes and a couple raids. Ontop of that the boon is relatively rare, so adding it back to cata would atleast give it some small unique benefit compared to for example herald. The current implementation of the jade sphere with aegis is simply to unreliable to block important mechanics. You don't want to rely on a catalyst sphere on Deimos/Q1/fractal cm's etc. You either have no other aegis provider and are gonna struggle with your aegis consistency or you bring another aegis provider which makes the catalyst aegis kinda irrelevant. 

[zeyeti.8347]

On 7/24/2024 at 7:53 PM, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

As long as it is any combo and not what poor scrapper got.

Augments just seem very poor designed and see a little like a last minute addition or something was changed.

I don't wanna see a hammer buff that would just cause tempest and weaver to be better, base catalyst skills need buffing, potentially more damage on spheres or making the augments actually a better choice than base elementalist skills.

Resistance is nice, but I may have to disagree with getting rid of aegis, so many encounters rely on aegis and stability to "skip" mechanics that squads kinda expect them from a build, resistance is a very niche bonus.

I like your idea better, as I didn't think of this, a global 3 sec cooldown for spheres which would allows a fire sphere + some skills, then swap to earth and immediately do the the same, but would stop you doing this 3 times in a row in quick succession.

Good shout for the elite skill too, could allows extra quickness uptime too to bridge a gap.

I have always disliked that you need to equip 2 traits just to make quickness viable on Catalyst. I'd say just double the boon duration on cata spheres normally and then put an augment skill booster trait on the grandmaster line.

Yep , but i think my idea to mix the trait who gives ++ bd on sphere and the quickness provider is gonna make one trait so bloated it could end up being op , your idea to just improve quickness duration make more sense , after all giving quickness is your main task as quickdps , and you still got lots of boon to help your support with boon uptime , good might generation , fury , prot., etc.

saw someone also speaking off changing some underdog traits like :

-Energized Elements : as there is no more energy this trait would be useless , change it to your sphere are now launched on yourself and follow you for the duration as moving combo fields. (like berserker torch 5)

- Evasive Empowerment : underwhelming trait ... the idea was to make a catalyst healer option with an effect on each sphere launch to allys inside it (even before the 1st pulse)(and maybe add another weaker effect on each pulse) : condi cleanse for fire , healing for water , superspeed for air and barrier for earth . Not a bad idea since without energy the idea of a catalyst heal would make more sense.

Didn't remind the name of the guy who had those ideas , but they are definitly good ones.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/23/2024 at 6:55 AM, Yogurt Goblin.5934 said:

1. Get rid of the energy mechanic for sphere - pretty straight forward, the energy system doesn't work. Have the sphere work on a cooldown only and have it only be accessible after a few seconds after attunement (to stop people just cycling attunements to cast all spheres). 

This needed to be done 1 month after EoD's release.

I don't understand why it exists, besides a big "no fun allowed" sign destroying the entire class outside of raid bosses/strikes.

[crosknight.3041]

On 7/25/2024 at 12:29 PM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

The design for Pdps hammer naturally fits catalyst way better then Tempest/weaver and therefore also does considerable more dps output on cata

yeah, because hammer 3 orbs are pretty much designed to generate energy quickly on catalyst since having them orbit around you does a lot of hits. which is part of the reason i will die on the hill that those orbs should have been part of the catalysts mechanics instead of on hammer.

 

10 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

-Energized Elements : as there is no more energy this trait would be useless , change it to your sphere are now launched on yourself and follow you for the duration as moving combo fields. (like berserker torch 5)

- Evasive Empowerment : underwhelming trait ... the idea was to make a catalyst healer option with an effect on each sphere launch to allys inside it (even before the 1st pulse)(and maybe add another weaker effect on each pulse) : condi cleanse for fire , healing for water , superspeed for air and barrier for earth . Not a bad idea since without energy the idea of a catalyst heal would make more sense.

 

i like these, and quite frankly spheres shoulda worked like berserker 5 or modern gyros in the first place

[zeyeti.8347]

On 7/27/2024 at 12:21 AM, crosknight.3041 said:

yeah, because hammer 3 orbs are pretty much designed to generate energy quickly on catalyst since having them orbit around you does a lot of hits. which is part of the reason i will die on the hill that those orbs should have been part of the catalysts mechanics instead of on hammer.

 

i like these, and quite frankly spheres shoulda worked like berserker 5 or modern gyros in the first place

Well sphere being ranged at the first place allow for some ranged play (even if we all largely prefer being inside a sphere), giving the two option as tier 1 traitline is very underwhelming , tweeking some EE specialized traits to be more effective , that should do the trick and give cata nice Qol for melee stacked fights or to be a long range booner option.