Why Catalyst needs energy removed.

[crosknight.3041]

another energy change that needs to happen.

-ele currently loses ALL ENERGY when they go down or defeated, this needs to end. this is extremely punishing for a catalyst.
-some energy needs to be gained while out of combat, this allows catalyst to be able to start a fight with atleast 1 sphere

[draxynnic.3719]

12 hours ago, Shaman.2034 said:

Just look at the number of people asking for Tempest to be able to throw its Overloads at range, willingly asking to sacrifice the self-boon generation. This is good for the game. Choosing between self-buffing and ranged damage gives the game meaningful skillful choices. Catalyst is currently doing very well at that, and it needs to be preserved above all else.

I think there is a distinction in that most overloads are viewed as a damage (or healing) tool with some boons, while spheres are generally viewed as boon sources that happen to do some damage. In the case of supporting for group events that distinction might be insignificant, but in terms of trying to make a ranged build that works when playing solo, it's quite significant.

14 hours ago, Khaldris.9026 said:

Catalyst needs a full redesign. Band-aid fixes like this are just going to spotlight how wonky the whole thing is.

I don't disagree, but I think there's also a degree to which the kind of rework it would really need would be so intensive that I'm not holding my breath. The spheres are... okay, but I think most of the traits and utilities really need to go back to the drawing board. Quickcata being functional is better than the alternative, though.

[Bleikopf.2491]

14 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The spheres are... okay, but I think most of the traits and utilities really need to go back to the drawing board.

That's an issue with not a few Elementalist traits. 

I still hold the opinion that Elementalist needs a trait redesign as a whole. Catalyst is most egregious. 

If Catalyst is to keep the energy mechanic and have it work similar to Adrenaline, it would profit most from more trait support. We have one trait that adds energy on attunement swap. We have three traits that add Elemental Empowerment on controllable circumstances (dodge, disable, combo/aura).

Having more traits to allow for energy generation that don't involve hitting things often would help when you don't have stuff to hit with because they die too fast, boss is phasing out or if you're simply out of combat. Or you just don't have a weapon that hits as often as hammer does. 

[Jmvars.4501]

On 8/12/2024 at 1:47 AM, 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.

 

Well, if we go full meta slave, currently the quickness Catalyst build on Snowcrows uses hammer and it apparently deals a tiny bit more damage on small hitbox enemies according to a bencher. Sw/Wh is 100% viable and deals basically the same damage, more on large hitboxes. Air Sword 3 and Warhorn 5 build energy like crazy, and so does Earth Sword 3, plus Fire and Earth Warhorn 5 also build decent energy.

[Jmvars.4501]

I'm going to spew out random thoughts:

I agree, energy is holding Catalyst back, especially quickness Catalyst. Luckily they are changing the Sphere Specialist trait to not only give longer duration boons, but make it so you can build energy even if a jade sphere is active. This probably does not help DPS catalyst, though.

Currently the only viable quickness Catalyst weapons are sword/warhorn and hammer because energy generation is tied to number of hits rather than damage dealt, and these sets both have ways to do a large number of hits quickly. Want to play quickness Catalyst with spear? lol no

I don't get why the jade spheres have a cooldown and require energy to cast. Surely it should be one or the other.

Frankly I think they should combine Spectacular Sphere and Sphere Specialist into one, having to take two traits to give your boon effectively does not feel good. Especially considering most specs can get away with changing only one trait.

[zeyeti.8347]

Well , i never thought i was eager to try catalyst again , but the soon rework seems promising enough , i just wish that the energy allowed to fill while a sphere is active was a base trait , just gonna see if it is viable with staff for energy loading , no multihit but 0 gap with energy allowed to rise ... don't know , testing must be done.

But if it works we are gonna have a Herald 2.0 , seems anet tend to give support dps more and more boons to be on pair with herald. Good to see , really.

Now we need that juicy 600 range aoe too plz  😊

[Xaylin.1860]

On 9/15/2024 at 3:26 PM, Khaldris.9026 said:

These are pretty cool ideas, but... that basically makes energy the core mechanic of Catalyst, not the jade sphere.

Energy already is the mechanic. As others pointed out, it is supposed to mirrors Warrior Adrenaline. The Jade Sphere is basically the Burst skill. If you only had the Jade Sphere, you wouldn't have a mechanic at all. Like Scrapper with Function Gyro.

On 9/15/2024 at 11:06 PM, Panda.1967 said:

A dedicated trait tier isn’t necessary… it’s more the fact that they underutilized the energy mechanic [... made it into a hindrance rather than an interesting mechanic… they could have made it work similarly to Revenant’s energy [...]

Yes, it is necessary if you want to enable different playstyles and not shoehorn the spec into one single best in slot weapon choice and utility skills. It is exactly why Energy feels irrelevant or bothersome at best. Of course, a system like for Revenant could have worked. But to me, just passively regenerating Energy doesn't promise intriguing gameplay.

On 9/16/2024 at 9:50 AM, Bleikopf.2491 said:

I still hold the opinion that Elementalist needs a trait redesign as a whole. Catalyst is most egregious. 

If Catalyst is to keep the energy mechanic and have it work similar to Adrenaline, it would profit most from more trait support. We have one trait that adds energy on attunement swap. We have three traits that add Elemental Empowerment on controllable circumstances (dodge, disable, combo/aura).

Completely agree. Energy on Attunement Switch vs. Evade/Block vs. Disable could be the Adept Majors, with on Aura or Combo being the Master Minor. This way different builds and weapons could be balanced separately.

On 9/16/2024 at 4:45 AM, crosknight.3041 said:

ele currently loses ALL ENERGY when they go down or defeated, this needs to end. this is extremely punishing for a catalyst.

This also applies to most other class with a comparable resource system. I'd argue it being a design choice, not an issue.

On 9/16/2024 at 11:44 AM, Jmvars.4501 said:

I don't get why the jade spheres have a cooldown and require energy to cast. Surely it should be one or the other.

Same comment as above. This might be unique for Elementalist but is actually quite common in GW2.

[The Ghost.3087]

On 9/15/2024 at 11:38 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

The class was already doing perfectly fine without these changes to BD and energy (Although some better energy regen downtime tracking and more visible indicator would have been helpful). It shouldve been quite easily fixed by buffing some hammer weapon skills & nerfing Herald (since Herald is basically gatekeeping all qdps from being viable). 

With energy basically removed for qcata it once again means that highest dps weapon=best qdps weapon with spear now being even more powerful due to enabling a consistent 4 sphere cycle rotation on qdps only. Lastly the qdps will probably become the "easier go to" build for every player that wants to try out cata. Im 99% sure however that all new players that try out the new qcata (and not learn energy management) will absolutely hate it when they try out normal dps cata. 

This game is becoming more and more brain dead by the day and even though the dev team is pretty clueless about their game, the community itself is also definitely to blame. The amount of times i've seen people complaining about the most basic class mechanics like having energy, cd's on full attuning on Weaver, overloads forcing you out of your favorite attunement for way to long. Literally this community wants every single thing handed on a silver platter. People constantly make excuses for their own garbage gameplay by blaming it on their class's identity.

Ele's bad rep simply comes from all the players being kitten in the game, constantly being in downstate, have low dps and complain how their class is bad, is way to difficult to play and argue the class should deal 10k more dps then the rest. 

Ahwell gz to y'all i guess, now you can finally enjoy your core elementalist elite spec. 

I see yet another player who has zero idea how badly the system works. There are a lot of us that claim the opposite of what you say and you suddenly come out of nowhere and proclaim that all of us is wrong because we want everything to be served on a "silver platter" while what we are trying to accomplish here is bring the Ele class to the same level as some other favourite classes like Mesmer. 
 

If you cannot comprehend how low or badly designed the Ele is, we cannot really help you. It takes years upon years of playing this class to understand how underhanded really is and all that badmouth regarding the Ele on higher difficulty content like CMs. Obviously, the entire class Ele is poorly designed or not really devs favourite if they allow so much hatred go towards it simply because they keep it out of the competitive classes. 

It has been how much now? A decade I believe since Ele was underwhelmed and made joke out of everyone. Especially the devs favorite classes from where the most hatred came. And while that hatred is down quite a bit these days since the Fresh Air buff and the Spear, we still lack the competitive level to play on the same field as other classes. This, by itself, speaks how badly the Ele is. The energy change is obviously good, the 150% BD boost is obviously good. But a e-spec like the Catalyst, and the Weaver both need total redesign, remake to properly match other e-specs like Chronomancer, Herald, and so on. 

Please consider your words better next time before coming here and offending tons of players with your disrespect towards us as players and the Ele class. 

[Khaldris.9026]

On 9/15/2024 at 8:18 PM, Shaman.2034 said:

As I said, it's just a nice bonus that splashing boons on people gives you gold event participation. It's not the main reason why I think Catalyst Sphere needs to stay ranged - that would be the fact that you can do damage with it at range, and sometimes you also want to apply boons elsewhere too, for the benefit of those players at that location.

At the same time, it's also very much worth noting that getting gold event participation in open world is THE main content thread in GW2. It is the content they develop the most, far above all other kinds of content, so a build that does well in this context does well for the vast majority of the game's content. It's not to be written off as a triviality!

But it's often difficult to secure gold participation if all you bring is damage. Enemies can die too quickly. The specific event might have a bad threshold for gold credit. Other players try to snipe the event. And it goes the other way, too: if you bring too much damage, you're the one killing enemies too quickly. You're the player sniping the event. A gentle but still significant amount of AoE damage coupled with boon sharing is exactly what you need in many cases. Catalyst Spheres are basically perfect for that, especially when traited to be 360 radius.

If you are actively participating in an event, and not getting gold: that's a problem with the participation system, not with the design of any given profession. I'm still of the opinion that "it helps me get gold participation" isn't a valid metric when designing and balancing professions.

On 9/15/2024 at 8:18 PM, Shaman.2034 said:

Anyway, my point is that any kind of rework - involving the removal of energy or not - should preserve the ability to throw the Spheres at range, the way it is now. I agree that the best solution is to just delete Energy entirely and leave everything else untouched, except for the one trait that gives Energy when you switch attunements. Now that quickness Catalyst will be able to build Energy while Spheres are out, Energy won't serve any function at all, except to prevent you from pre-stacking boons out of combat in some cases. But Tempest can pre-stack boons, and several other professions besides. ArenaNet should work to minimize the amount of dependence on "currently fighting a valid target" that boon builds have.

If you do so desire damage and boons at range: Elementalist has access to the staff. Scepter, pistol, and spear are all more damage-focused ranged weapons. Weighing down jade spheres specifically with "this must be ranged" is an unnecessary thing to do. Please don't take this as me saying the shouldn't be ranged at all, though. I just think Catalyst is just that lacking in identity that adding arbitrary gameplay restrictions would help in any future development.

On 9/16/2024 at 3:28 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

I don't disagree, but I think there's also a degree to which the kind of rework it would really need would be so intensive that I'm not holding my breath. The spheres are... okay, but I think most of the traits and utilities really need to go back to the drawing board. Quickcata being functional is better than the alternative, though.

I'm certainly happy the trait is getting changed to make the spec more playable, I'm not out here trying to make perfect the enemy of good. I just want to be consistently vocal about it because a full rework needs to happen (like with a lot of Elementalist trait lines, really).

6 hours ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

Energy already is the mechanic. As others pointed out, it is supposed to mirrors Warrior Adrenaline. The Jade Sphere is basically the Burst skill. If you only had the Jade Sphere, you wouldn't have a mechanic at all. Like Scrapper with Function Gyro.

As pointed out in the Adrenaline comparison: it's not a good comparison at all. Warriors can still regenerate adrenaline while their bursts are on cooldown.

As to your second point... what? The Jade Sphere is a "mechanic" because it's a completely new button that interacts with the traits of the spec. The entire conceit of providing boons with the spheres is to maintain as high a sphere uptime as possible. A thing you cannot do because of the energy lockout while the sphere is deployed. Yes, this trait change alleviates that problem, but it also is a tacit admission that energy is a burden on the ability.

As it stands, it's still a problem for non-boon Catalyst: a spec based on procs generated by combo finishers (primarily provided by the hammer) having access to its primary field by both a 15 second cooldown per element and a shared energy pool that can't be regenerated while using the thing you're supposed to be standing in (remember Augments?), all on a profession that has been generally designed as "rotate through your elements with as little downtime as possible".

Making sure you maintain your buffs, your energy bar, your rotation, all while dodging mechanics. It's an absurd amount of Things To Do. All while other professions get to do the same things with a quarter of the buttons.

[The Ghost.3087]

On 9/16/2024 at 10:50 AM, Bleikopf.2491 said:

That's an issue with not a few Elementalist traits. 

I still hold the opinion that Elementalist needs a trait redesign as a whole. Catalyst is most egregious. 

If Catalyst is to keep the energy mechanic and have it work similar to Adrenaline, it would profit most from more trait support. We have one trait that adds energy on attunement swap. We have three traits that add Elemental Empowerment on controllable circumstances (dodge, disable, combo/aura).

Having more traits to allow for energy generation that don't involve hitting things often would help when you don't have stuff to hit with because they die too fast, boss is phasing out or if you're simply out of combat. Or you just don't have a weapon that hits as often as hammer does. 

I personally think that the energy regeneration should be timed based, for example it takes up to 5-7 seconds to fully refill energy, that would make like 1-2 energy point per second.  This will save us from having to hit anything and still being able to provide quickness as fast as we return to the boss fight after we avoid a mechanic, like the fear eye from the Silent Surfer Fractal (CM or NM). That is the place were I feel the energy lacks the most. 

As well and other fractals where we have only one to two bosses and they have invulnerable time. 

Edited Tuesday at 09:16 PM by The Ghost.3087

[Bleikopf.2491]

1 minute ago, The Ghost.3087 said:

I personally think that the energy regeneration should be timed based, for example it takes up to 5-7 seconds to fully refill energy, that would make like 1-2 energy point per second.  This will save us from having to hit anything and still being able to provide quickness as fast as we return to the boss fight after we avoid a mechanic, like the fear eye from the Silent Surfer Fractal (CM or NM). That is the place were I feel the energy lacks the most. 

The reason this approach works with Revenant and Thief is, that they have multiple skills to use their energy on. Catalyst only has a sphere. In effect this would just be an ammunition skill then with a fancy cooldown timer.

For this approach to work, Catalyst needs more things to spend energy on. Augments would be my first choice.

[The Ghost.3087]

6 minutes ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

The reason this approach works with Revenant and Thief is, that they have multiple skills to use their energy on. Catalyst only has a sphere. In effect this would just be an ammunition skill then with a fancy cooldown timer.

For this approach to work, Catalyst needs more things to spend energy on. Augments would be my first choice.

Well, you do have four spheres to handle, so I don't really see much of a difference between those. Plus, they can always add some back-end internal timer which allows certain skills to consume an energy or 2 to make skills 50 or 100% stronger. It would improve damage over all for Catalyst and it will add fun mechanic for management, of course, the skills would be just 2 or 3 per element, and of course they shouldn't have more than like 3 seconds CD on the buff. Even though I think the best would be like 1.5 sec. Considering that it would be global back-end CD for all skills that are buffed for the Catalyst. 

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

The thing is Jade-Sphere is primary a conduit for Combo/EE and augments, not stricto sensu a burst skill.
All the issues on generation ( /gg, Mistlock Singularity etc) UI or boon duration, impact severely all aspects of the e-spec. Arguably they could individually be explained or excused but the whole thing is just messy. That's also why hammer isn't even optimal since weapon mastery; you better want other sources of combo-fields and multi-hit skills on brief time, than no field + orbs.

But don't worry I don't find Energy/Jade sphere the  only worrying problem about Catalyst.
The EE thing is the lazyest buff ever and serve no purpose, no vision but to jail once more elemenalist into hybrid/celestial ; it could be fun on an augment/elite-skill, not like a full traitlane dedicated.
Augments are just bad stances ; the jade-sphere attunement-related restriction is everything but appealing,  and ... why they can't affect allies ? At least it should be the reward for casting them into Jade-sphere, or a trait.
The stab spam while weaver got nerfed because of that ... I'm jealous.

And the future changes "+150% duration" on Sphere Specialist, trait that has almost no use without Spectacular sphere, rather than to actually buff Spectacular Sphere ... Sigh..
Catalyst can't be the result of thorough work. Some e-specs (Daredevil for example) are just outdated, but Catalyst is a mess since the beginning with no actual design; and all we got are bandages, just  enough for the players to get tired and return to anything else.
"Wow, EE is more easy to maintain wow" "Yeah,+150 Boon duration, quickcata is back baby" and 2 weeks after, oddly most of "elementalists" will disappear.

[Suyheuti.1732]

On 8/12/2024 at 2:47 AM, 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.

 

Sword/WH is meta, hammer is meta too. Sw/Wh has better burst, in longer fights (more than 10 secs) hammer has better DPS atm. Snowcrows admins dont put every viable spec on site. Detailed infos are being shared on dc channel. 

[Juniper.8197]

On 9/15/2024 at 1:38 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

The class was already doing perfectly fine without these changes to BD and energy (Although some better energy regen downtime tracking and more visible indicator would have been helpful). It shouldve been quite easily fixed by buffing some hammer weapon skills & nerfing Herald (since Herald is basically gatekeeping all qdps from being viable). 

With energy basically removed for qcata it once again means that highest dps weapon=best qdps weapon with spear now being even more powerful due to enabling a consistent 4 sphere cycle rotation on qdps only. Lastly the qdps will probably become the "easier go to" build for every player that wants to try out cata. Im 99% sure however that all new players that try out the new qcata (and not learn energy management) will absolutely hate it when they try out normal dps cata. 
 

Please enlighten us and and provide some proof of you maintaining acceptable quickness uptime in an actual encounter, as QCatalyst current exists today.

[Juniper.8197]

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Edited Wednesday at 08:26 PM by Juniper.8197
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