Why Catalyst needs energy removed.

[Kuma.1503]

This post will  focus on PvE, where Catalyst is struggling.

It's been said numerous times that the energy system poorly implemented on Catalyst, but I'd really like to hammer home just how detremintal it really is. My goal is to demonstrate why this mechanic is ruining catalyst. 

• Energy limits build diversity

Every weapon needs 2 things to be viable on catalyst: Quick multi hit attacks in at least 2 attuments, and auto attacks that don't suck. 

This is because multi-hit attacks is how we build energy efficiently. Additionally, we cannot build energy while a sphere is active. This forces us to briefly camp every 2nd attunement until the duration of both spheres runs out. During that time, we will have to auto attack a lot. Hammer excels at both, and that is why it is catalyst's preferred weapon. 

If a weapon has both poor autos and poor energy builders (Spear, Staff, Dagger) those weapons become unusable on Catalyst. Want to play a staff QHeal catalyst? Too bad. Want to play the shiny new spear on your catalyst? Too bad. 

• Energy ruins boon uptime in actual fights

Catalyst runs into what I like to call the Chronomancer problem. It's a power build with great upfront burst and cleave damage. Therefore, it should excel in dungeons/fractals, where these two things are rewarded. Right? Wrong. 

Energy throws a wrench into everything. Catalyst needs tanky enemies that stay alive. Without targets to hit, catalyst cannot build energy. Without energy, catalyst cannot maintain its boons. If you drop your spheres, burst down a pack of mobs, and those mobs die. Now you have nothing to hit, you cannot build energy back up for your next rotation of spells. 

When the next pack of mobs arrive, you have to sit there and slooooowly build energy back up again before you can provide boons to your group. To make this problem even worse, Catalyst has to run almost full zerker just to have damage comparable to other boon DPS. With this setup, Catalyst can only barely upkeep 100% boon uptime under ideal circumstances. It's abundantly clear that no dev has ever tried to play a catalyst in fractals otherwise, this mechanic would not exist. 

And all of this... is assuming the player is playing perfectly and not making mistakes. All of this is outside the player's control. If you get stunned, if you get dazed, if you have to dodge, if you have to leave melee range for whatever reason, if the boss phases or goes invuln during a bad time in your rotation, you are not only are you losing DPS, you're dropping boon uptime because you cannot build energy. 

And the icing on the cake... If you get downed... Your energy resets to 0. 

• Catalyst's DPS benchmark is fake. And energy is (mostly) to blame

Even after the nerfs, spheres are a lot of your damage. They deal good damage on their own, and they provide you with the combo fields you need to build your Elemental Empowerment stacks. And you guessed it, energy ruins all of that. 

As stated previously, catalyst needs targets to hit or cannot drop its spheres. Without spheres, your damage plummets. Without spheres, your elemental empowerment stacks fall to 0, and your damage plummets. Thanks to all the problems laid out before, energy causes Catalyst's dps to drop significantly in actual fights vs what you see on a golem. 

 

Okay, that all sounds pretty bad. How do we fix it? 

Delete the energy mechanic. 

 

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 11 by Kuma.1503

[Incurve Giidis.7829]

its unplayable in fractals because you dont have energy for prestacking.

when you full gg, you spawn at 100% energy but the button is greyed out until you get into combat lol

 

imo they should double down on hammer and make the spec not worth playing on any other weapon, dps and qdps and nothing else bc the rotation and setup was fun

Edited August 11 by Incurve Giidis.7829

[adalonz.4579]

I don't disagree with the op generally speaking, but I do have one question..i thought sword/warhorn was the meta build for catalyst ever since SoTo came out, not hammer.

 

[Kuma.1503]

28 minutes ago, adalonz.4579 said:

I don't disagree with the op generally speaking, but I do have one question..i thought sword/warhorn was the meta build for catalyst ever since SoTo came out, not hammer.

 

Admittedly I do not have SoTo, so I've yet to experience how Sword/Warhorn impacts the spec. 

I can imagine better access to fields/finishers and sand squall would help alleviate some of these issues. But the fundamental flaws with energy still remain. 

Edited August 12 by Kuma.1503

[luigrein.8514]

Hammer remains the best at energy generation in my experience (admittedly not high end focused) but scepter or sword paired with warhorn gives you enough energy to do your thing, just with a bit less breathing room. With a good amount of boon duration you can probably upkeep quickness with any weapon but you would be unlikely to keep up with other boondps on damage at that point. (staff would be incredibly reliant on lava font for energy so staff qheal cata is still in not a great place, which is a shame because I could see it being a good off stack capable healer with energy requirements removed)

[zeyeti.8347]

sword and warhorn also have way more combo available , don't know them all , but turned up on a static target i had infinite stacks of Elemental enpowerement , also one launch of  lightning orb pretty much fill the whole bar if energy generation is allowed.

But have the same feeling as you , that energy need to go away , a cd of 15 sec on each sphere and an added 3 secs cd after a sphere launch on any sphere who was below 3 secs from recharge should make it less a pain in the a** to play , cause now it's just an overcomplicated quickness herald with no advantage paying off out of this complexity.

most annoying and worst designed spec to play with in my opinion.

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

I would not say "remove" because the idea in itself is not bad.

We have various different types of some more or less similar mechanics in other professions too.

But those are a lot more complex; Necromancer for example has the shroud mechanics which work differently depending on the elite spec you use. Warriors have also different abilities depending on their Adrenaline Level as well as elite spec. And also, there is the question of how energy, adrenaline or so is being generated.

However, with Catalyst, there is zero interaction with the rest of the profession and that is the bigger issue here. There is no other way except for speccing on Catalyst spec or hitting enemies to gain more energy. And the only bonus that energy provides is that you can place Jade Sphere fields. 

 

So instead of only removing energy we should rather change interaction to the rest of the profession. For example, why not giving bonuses for high energy such as more healing, more damage or so? Why not changing energy generation for being granted for using skills rather than only foes being hit? This would still force rotations while also benefitting more defensive playstyles. Why not scaling damage and/or size and effects of the spheres with energy being in storage which would be far more true to the word "Catalyst" rather than the current, boring mechanics? 

[crosknight.3041]

Best way to fix catalyst energy is adressing the multi-hit meta of catalyst, so is either

-make energy gain easier to get, for example healing contributes to the energy and/or move energized elements to minor trait so it's always active. also yes to the weird "no energy while sphere is active" getting scrapped
-make sphere an ammo skill and dump energy entirely.
- and most radical of all, REWORK THE ENTIRE SPEC FROM SCRATCH

6 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

most annoying and worst designed spec to play with in my opinion.

i've been saying this since EoD, it really feels like a project turned in last moment with it's quite frankly lazy design. Aura focused kinda steps on what made heal tempest stand out (before they got the alacrity on overload trait) and augments are just stances2.0. Plus hammer takes half the spec to itself with the orbs, and i will die on a hill saying those orbs should have been a major part of the spec instead of elemental empowerment.
sphere were a good idea on paper but they bungled that up hence this thread (and many others like it), could have made it work like scrapper gyros (maybe if entire spec was reworked, they make the hammer orbs the primary spec mechanic while the spheres get moved into the utility skills).
 

Edited August 12 by crosknight.3041

[Juniper.8197]

This TED talk has been given by many other presenters already (you don't need to scroll past the 1st page of this forum to find more). Catalyst changes are just not prioritized by this dev team right now (look at the past few balancing updates). They won't even make time for low effort/high value UI changes like making the energy meter more user friendly.

I would adjust your expectations and try to make catalyst work as they are in their current state.

[voltaicbore.8012]

Yeah in PvE I just gave up and made my catalysts open world cosplay characters. They all run celestial (+divinity runes lol) so they're almost unkillable, but only do about 10K dps when working alone. Pressing the exact same buttons jumps to 20K dps if other ppl show up and put out all the other boons, but all the energy issues made me give up on making catalyst competitive in instanced content.

[zeyeti.8347]

indeed other specs have also a "mana bar" but all those are way more reliable than the damned energy of catalyst , mostly cause there is 0 downtime of energy and the Ui is way better on any other spec , warrior ahs a huge adrenaline bar , bladesworn has literally a counter of ammo , rev has a big glowy bar with a % and nécro has a number and the bar is way bigger too , druid is the same and is not hard : you can switch to CA whenever you hit 100% ... Also any of them are way easier to manage , necro has a whole traitline dedicated to shroud generation (soul reaping is literally a must have for any playstile), wariorr etc ,blablabla you see the point.

There is a 15 secs cd on spheres ... there is no need of energy , it made sense when sphere where on a 5 secs cd , just imagine all your berserker skills are on a 15 sec cd ... make sense ? not at all , it's just to make the class feel like there was work being done on , but it is awfully designed as shown the playrate of catalyst who is abyssal , why play cata quick when you have a herald franckly ?

I'd rather see energy go away than anet trying to fix it (and with luck make it even worse , like buggy : energy is not loading up for 5 secs after you switch attunement ...), and trait reworked like "sphere are now launched on yourself and follow you for their duration as a mobile combo field", way simplier to remove it and rework the only trait who was "dedicated" to energy loading (who is also freaking bad : access to fury for yourself while you have fury trough air traitline and air sphere , talk about useless overload of a boon...)

 

[Aurawind.8429]

I 100% Agree.
Energy mechanic is awful and it's not practical for most fights.
Sword/Horn doesn't make THAT much of a difference compared to hammer in terms of energy management. 
The same underlying problem occurs when you boon up and things die quickly, you don't have any way of regaining that energy. So the next encounter is off to a slow start.
Weapons (LIKE SPEAR) that don't have many multi-hit abilities are doomed to ever try running boon Cata.
One day... I would love to play Quick Cata as a boon support, But I don't know if that would ever happen 😞

One suggestion if they keep Catalyst the way it is. Offer better energy management through Traits OR have an Energy Gain mechanic on the utility skills in some way.

Edited August 13 by Aurawind.8429

[zeyeti.8347]

16 hours ago, Aurawind.8429 said:

Weapons (LIKE SPEAR) that don't have many multi-hit abilities are doomed to ever try running boon Cata.

The spear will actually not fit with any spec.

Tempest overload time erase the ability five of spear , imagine overlaoding then  laoding the 5 ... , or launching skill 5 and try your luck with an overlaod timing...

Catalyst : now you have to keep your skills to load skill 5 , but need to keep the multi hit skill for energy (when energy is allowed to go up...), keep combos for EE uptime , yeah .. was not complicate denough , why not add an emote "dance" while doing the rota ... i am sure ppl will enjoy.

Weaver : i won't point out how lazy the 2x attunement skills are ... , next strike will be a crit... , you get aura of "whoever care" and an aura also "whoever care".

Nope can't see any playstile with the actual design of spear , but heh we got the HABOOB , my vocabulary level has reached lvl 69.

(that's my opinion , don't be offended or take huge emotional damage cause i share my way of thinking , it's okay to not agree... )

[Jski.6180]

Its F5 maybe should be something that is more impactful like tempest overload to where it eats the cd on the atument and dose an strong effect that stay on the ele. I am suggesting cut the energy cost but make the F5 put the ele atument on an 15-20 sec cd BUT have the field effect stay on the ele and give it much stronger dmg and boons. Make the F5 have say an 3-10 cd (make it so you can use an atument that is on cd already to keep the field going if that is what the cata wants to do.)

[draxynnic.3719]

On 8/13/2024 at 3:40 AM, Juniper.8197 said:

This TED talk has been given by many other presenters already (you don't need to scroll past the 1st page of this forum to find more). Catalyst changes are just not prioritized by this dev team right now (look at the past few balancing updates). They won't even make time for low effort/high value UI changes like making the energy meter more user friendly.

I would adjust your expectations and try to make catalyst work as they are in their current state.

How to make quickcata work in their current state:

Step 1: Log off your elementalist character

Step 2: Go to character select screen.

Step 3: Pick literally any other profession for a better quickness provider experience.

No, really, even warrior and thief have more functional quickness builds nowadays.

5 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

The spear will actually not fit with any spec.

Tempest overload time erase the ability five of spear , imagine overlaoding then  laoding the 5 ... , or launching skill 5 and try your luck with an overlaod timing...

Catalyst : now you have to keep your skills to load skill 5 , but need to keep the multi hit skill for energy (when energy is allowed to go up...), keep combos for EE uptime , yeah .. was not complicate denough , why not add an emote "dance" while doing the rota ... i am sure ppl will enjoy.

Weaver : i won't point out how lazy the 2x attunement skills are ... , next strike will be a crit... , you get aura of "whoever care" and an aura also "whoever care".

Nope can't see any playstile with the actual design of spear , but heh we got the HABOOB , my vocabulary level has reached lvl 69.

(that's my opinion , don't be offended or take huge emotional damage cause i share my way of thinking , it's okay to not agree... )

No emotional damage because you're right. Spear just isn't designed to work well with any of the elite specialisations, however fancy the visuals might be.

[Jeyzer.1605]

8 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

The spear will actually not fit with any spec.

Tempest overload time erase the ability five of spear , imagine overlaoding then  laoding the 5 ... , or launching skill 5 and try your luck with an overlaod timing...

Catalyst : now you have to keep your skills to load skill 5 , but need to keep the multi hit skill for energy (when energy is allowed to go up...), keep combos for EE uptime , yeah .. was not complicate denough , why not add an emote "dance" while doing the rota ... i am sure ppl will enjoy.

Weaver : i won't point out how lazy the 2x attunement skills are ... , next strike will be a crit... , you get aura of "whoever care" and an aura also "whoever care".

On top of that, every Ele elite spec is designed to be played melee for some reason, so won't work well with a ranged Spear.

- Tempest: Overload are still melee only, and are 80% of the spec.

- Weaver: Just a terrible design overall, it's only really meant to work well in PvE with Sword MH to offset some of its innate limitations  (so a melee weapon). The spec might as well not exist for other weapons, since it clashes with skill #3 which is often important to quick access (dash + dodge on dagger, aura for stun, reflect, pushback etc). Spear's "solution" is recognizing that weaver is an utter failure of a spec and make the dual skill simply refresh the attunement.

- Catalyst: Another terrible design, meant to stay in range of your jade sphere to get the buffs, but you also want the jade sphere on top of the enemies in PvE because it actually deals good damage. 

[tykel.6073]

On 8/14/2024 at 5:08 PM, Jeyzer.1605 said:

On top of that, every Ele elite spec is designed to be played melee for some reason, so won't work well with a ranged Spear.

- Tempest: Overload are still melee only, and are 80% of the spec.

- Weaver: Just a terrible design overall, it's only really meant to work well in PvE with Sword MH to offset some of its innate limitations  (so a melee weapon). The spec might as well not exist for other weapons, since it clashes with skill #3 which is often important to quick access (dash + dodge on dagger, aura for stun, reflect, pushback etc). Spear's "solution" is recognizing that weaver is an utter failure of a spec and make the dual skill simply refresh the attunement.

- Catalyst: Another terrible design, meant to stay in range of your jade sphere to get the buffs, but you also want the jade sphere on top of the enemies in PvE because it actually deals good damage. 

I mean weaver has worked well enough with other weapon when they have real dual skills to make the attunement limitations worth it. Staff dual skills are actually pretty good and helped weaver be functional in zerg dps when meteor shower wasn't up in the past, scepter dual skills enabled certain pvp and wvw 1v1 builds, and the dagger skills didn't suck at least but it was a weapon that was very hamstringed over the years until getting some buffs in the past few years.

Main thing is the dual skills have to actually contribute something useful for a weapon to at least work in pve which the spear ones just don't. Spear weaver could function just fine at range if the dual skills were at least as good as some of the staff ones. Heck if the rest of staff didn't suck so much at doing damage, the dual skills for it almost make staff weaver playable in pve. 

I do get weaver isn't everyone's cup of tea and at this point it seems ANET hate making weapons around it but honestly if its that annoying they could have given an off hand weapon in SOTO instead of main hand pistol. Give warhorn some competition and such.

[Eventine.8024]

On 8/14/2024 at 2:43 PM, zeyeti.8347 said:

The spear will actually not fit with any spec.

That is why I'm playing core ele with spear. Nothing else make sense.

[Eventine.8024]

On 8/12/2024 at 4:12 PM, crosknight.3041 said:

Best way to fix catalyst energy is adressing the multi-hit meta of catalyst, so is either

-make energy gain easier to get, for example healing contributes to the energy and/or move energized elements to minor trait so it's always active. also yes to the weird "no energy while sphere is active" getting scrapped
-make sphere an ammo skill and dump energy entirely.
- and most radical of all, REWORK THE ENTIRE SPEC FROM SCRATCH

Rework could be cool to see, or terrifying (looking at the work they have done on spear).

I think an easy fix is you get energy every time you use a skill (much as the healing signet), and if it needs some tuning, you can scale it with the cd of the spell. It's not a very cool design, but it is an easy fix. And also you can get it off combat

Regarding the "no energy while sphere is active" I think it adds a layer of complexity to the class (we are already playing ele, let's go full pain) and so it should not be scratched. To fix the boon uptime you can simply increase it way more, at least looking at other classes which they get quick uptime way easier.

[Uete.3805]

Definetly something needs to be done with Cata energy. I'm guessing removing it comepletely would fix and simplify it's playstyle, but maybe it screws up balance in competitive (though I haven't played Cata there, so I could be wrong). If that's the fear, then maybe it'd work better in PvE if any hits generate energy no matter how many Spheres you got up.

In any case, if energy is a keeper I just wished the UI for energy was better implemented. My top hope is for the UI to change to something similar to the Druid's Astral Force bar: Big and  clearly showing the amount of energy for a Sphere you've generated so far. A simpler option would be to change the F5 button, showing 3 bars like the one we have, each filling up with 10 energy.

Whether the Devs remove or rework the Catalyst energy system, its UI needs to change as well.

[recipesw.7453]

Well, I think being super overpowered in WvW and PvP is enough. You don't need to rule every game mode.

[Bleikopf.2491]

On 8/12/2024 at 1:12 PM, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

So instead of only removing energy we should rather change interaction to the rest of the profession. For example, why not giving bonuses for high energy such as more healing, more damage or so? Why not changing energy generation for being granted for using skills rather than only foes being hit? This would still force rotations while also benefitting more defensive playstyles. Why not scaling damage and/or size and effects of the spheres with energy being in storage which would be far more true to the word "Catalyst" rather than the current, boring mechanics? 

This just sounds like Elemental Empowerment. Bonuses for high Elemental Empowerment does include more healing, more damage or so.
Elemental Empowerment and Energy both fulfill the fantasy of "building momentum", but only one dominates the trait lines and while Elemental Empowerment is seen as a buff, Energy feels like a hindrance.

On 8/28/2024 at 10:53 AM, Eventine.8024 said:

Regarding the "no energy while sphere is active" I think it adds a layer of complexity to the class (we are already playing ele, let's go full pain) and so it should not be scratched.

Currently you just drop two spheres at once, so the "no energy while sphere is active" overlaps. IMO, complexity should come from choice, and such restrictions like not being able to build energy more often just restricts the choices you can make. If you don't overlap the spheres, you have less energy, and eventually no more spheres to place.

On 8/28/2024 at 2:22 PM, Uete.3805 said:

Definetly something needs to be done with Cata energy. I'm guessing removing it comepletely would fix and simplify it's playstyle, but maybe it screws up balance in competitive (though I haven't played Cata there, so I could be wrong). If that's the fear, then maybe it'd work better in PvE if any hits generate energy no matter how many Spheres you got up.

I'm still of the mind that a simple ammunition system would work just fine. Since the spheres have a cooldown now anyways.
As for competitive balance I'd wager a guess that increasing the CD for the ammunitions would be working well enough.

4 hours ago, recipesw.7453 said:

Well, I think being super overpowered in WvW and PvP is enough. You don't need to rule every game mode.

What a tacit admission that energy is only there to hold the spec back. Nothing a simple CD couldn't do.

[Panda.1967]

Catalyst should, in my opinion, just use an automatic cycle of building up energy and burning it for orbs throughout combat… upon entering combat you start generating energy with every action, once you hit 100% energy your orb activates with your next skill using that skills target to determine its placement. Energy is burned while the orb is out, once your energy hits zero the orb deactivates and returns to your side. This would remove the jankiness from Catalyst and give it a smooth predictable cycle that is easy to work with while simultaneously removing the reliance on multihit attacks to fuel the orb.

[Panda.1967]

On 8/14/2024 at 7:43 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

The spear will actually not fit with any spec.

Spear actually does work great with Weaver. Air/Fire attunement is really good. The dual skills actually aren’t half bad… sure it would be a huge improvement if they added damage to all of them… The attunement cooldown reset gimmick on the dual skills is kinda useless… though truth be told Spear on Weaver actually works best if you DON’T full attune.

Edited September 6 by Panda.1967

[zeyeti.8347]

22 hours ago, Panda.1967 said:

Spear actually does work great with Weaver. Air/Fire attunement is really good. The dual skills actually aren’t half bad… sure it would be a huge improvement if they added damage to all of them… The attunement cooldown reset gimmick on the dual skills is kinda useless… though truth be told Spear on Weaver actually works best if you DON’T full attune.

It maybe shine in open world solo , but there is 0 damage added to it , "heal yourself" , "you win aura x and aura y" , "remove a condi" , "win stab" , no damage whatsoever , weaver has no access to neither alacrity nor quickness , i personnaly only play quickness provider in pve sole , all characters feels sluggish. 

The weaver dual skill from spear are actually a lazy design , i would be ok with a spear throw chilling and burning your target , a multi hit healing yourself in air water , a spear coming from the ground projecting your target aside or in the air , but those skills are 100% defensive stances, and the bonus from primary attunement recharge endorse more button mashing ... as weaver who is already a keyboard/mouse nuker... 

And 0.0000 damage added in skills as weaver with a spear... good for you if you like it , but i ll stick to my herald condi trailbrazer/viper with overgodlike damage condition (which is normally getting a nerf ,   seing the bench...)

it works yes , poorly , but it works.

Fact it works best without full attune also completely render useless Elements of Rage and the two other grand major traits are really designed for pvp too , i don't need extra survival traits if playing weaver celestial...

22 hours ago, Panda.1967 said:

Catalyst should, in my opinion, just use an automatic cycle of building up energy and burning it for orbs throughout combat… upon entering combat you start generating energy with every action, once you hit 100% energy your orb activates with your next skill using that skills target to determine its placement. Energy is burned while the orb is out, once your energy hits zero the orb deactivates and returns to your side. This would remove the jankiness from Catalyst and give it a smooth predictable cycle that is easy to work with while simultaneously removing the reliance on multihit attacks to fuel the orb.

And how would generate quickness if you let one sphere unload all of your energy , energy is a useless added mechanic to an e-spec already overloaded with mechanics , orbs from hammer , EE stacks , managing the 5 sec non energy load , manage multi hit skills to generate as much energy as we could when the 5 sec are done. And the idea of auto placing a sphere when energy is enough ... yuk , no control whatsoever over that placement , again as a quickness provider you clearly will mess up some shots , and end up screwing your whole group with a low quickness uptime.  I see what you want with your idea,  it's basically less button to press , which is nice and welcome as catalyst , but your ideas will make it loose total control over his core mechanic placement

Just tell me what use has energy now ? if you do a good rotation with a 100% uptime target available you will cast your sphere anyway , if you are in fight with target phasing/invulnerability/going away ... (Vale guardian , Matthias , Sabetha , Qadim 1 and 2 , ankkha , Mai trin , and the list goes on) you will loose sphere uptime , no energy and having sphere with only cooldowns , will allow prebuffing/buffing allies and yourself out of combat or whenever combat pauses occures , make a class who is complicated for no reason less complicated , increase slightly the damage , with spheres damages , more access to combo fields for EE stacks and way less concentration and focus from the player needed (especially from that 5 sec no energy allowed...) and as balance for not having people overload the field with 4 spheres in a row , just put a 3 sec cd whenever you use a sphere on all other attunements spheres and keep the 15 sec cd for each one separetly. Make a new traitwho increase the duration of sphere by 1 sec or give it the opportunity to AA spehre on yourself and following you. Make the ultimate reload the sphere of your actual attunement (cause it's a very weak and niche elite...)

Too much for an e-spec who is underperforming in the actual meta , so no point in playing it , you want damage ? more reliable classes do it. You want quickness ? way more reliable class provides it. You want tankiness ? There is far enough classes who can be tanky without playing full celestial dumpster stats , also you are not a 11500 hp class starter ...

As for pvp , wvw , if it is overperforming i guess a simple cooldowns increase should do the trick.

Edited September 7 by zeyeti.8347