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April 20, 2024 19.7 min to read xChris
Overview
| Up-to-date | updated for the 4/16/2024 patch |
|---|---|
| Template Code |
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| Boons |
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| Conditions |
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| Role |
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| Synergy | average |
|---|---|
| DPS | high |
| Independence | average |
| Acquiring basics | difficult |
| Achieving mastery | challenging |
The Power Catalyst is a strong DPS build for fractals. Power Catalyst provides conjures and Vulnerability, as well as some Might, Fury and Protection through Spheres. Additionally it can blast fire fields and potentially extend boons with . It may also swap traits and gear to provide permanent Quickness and a decent amount of extra Might. It is also very useful for some T4 skips in fractals like Aetherblade, Cliffside, Thaumanova Reactor etc. thanks to high mobility and .
This build has less burst than Power Weaver but offers extra utility through the boons of the Jade Spheres. Power Catalyst might not be a common pick for fractals but it's main advantage compared to other power classes commonly taken there, is a general elementalist benefit, the trait which heavily boosts your dps output in later phases during fights.
This build unlike Power Weaver has higher survivalbility due to 20% extra stats from . Some defensive utilities are available in but you will be using them during your normal rotation and not always be in that attunement when you need the defense, and in which you mostly don't use due to short phases and can be saved for when you need heal or cc.
This build has a relatively hard rotation considering the specifics of fractal CM bosses but is very enjoyable to play - if given some dedication. The build benefits heavily from slaying potions and sigils such as and .
Equipment
Stats are shown with 10 stacks of .
Extra weapons that can be used are:
Swords with slaying sigils (see
Cheat Sheet)
A staff to precast and
Scepter to precast Might and and
Hammer to replace Sword/Warhorn (more information on that below)
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Assassin
Berserker
Berserker
Any item with the same stats may be used!
![Power Catalyst - GW2 | Discretize [dT] (1)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw== "Power Catalyst - GW2 | Discretize [dT] (1)")
![Power Catalyst - GW2 | Discretize [dT] (2)](https://i0.wp.com/discretize.eu/static/841ba655b497d70336aae62cdcd99984/21bdf/catalyst.png "Power Catalyst - GW2 | Discretize [dT] (2)")
Heal
Utilities
Elite
Build
Traits
Fire
Air
Catalyst
Situational Traits
| Useful for skipping with Superspeed, especially in combination with or . | |
| If your group has absolutely no Might from other sources, you can also run this to provide extra Might as well as some Quickness and extra Fury. However, this comes at a significant DPS loss of around 10%. |
Defiance Bar Damage
| Skill | Damage |
|---|---|
| 200 with Daze | |
| 150 with Pull | |
| 150 with Knockback | |
| 15 / s with Crippled | |
| 20 / s with Blinded | |
| 232 with Launch | |
| 300 with Stun | |
| 200 with Daze | |
| 150 with Pull |
Situational Weapons
Hammer
Can be used as a perfectly viable replacement for sword/warhorn that can achieve equal results in most cases.
Hammer in CMs
Playing Hammer means that you can do either air opener or fire opener, this depends on whether you can fit 2 or 1 during the encounter (if you can fit only 1 it is beneficial to open in fire and precast ). The main disadvantage of hammer is being unable to maintain or rebuild stacks once there is any downtime without anything to hit (or any field below you) and thus missing on a major dps modifier.
Hammer in T4s
Hammer is the recommended option for normal tier 4 Fractals. It has the highest sustain due to , a free block with , condi cleanse with and a significant amount of healing with . If your group is struggling to stay alive either because you don't play with a healer or the instabilities are making it difficult you can consider replacing with . This provides a very strong burst heal and condi cleanse for you and your allies with . Additionally you can even consider replacing fire traitline with water traitline for a dps loss but another big boost in sustain for both you and your group through , and thus making Catalyst a great choice overall for this content.
Situational Skills
| Offensive | |
| Good on encounter with longer phases like Ensolyss instead of . | |
| Heal | |
| Additional Might by blasting fire fields and / stacks by blasting any field during downtime. | |
| Strong heal over time and condi cleanse. | |
| Strong burst heal. | |
| Conjures | |
| Good on larger hitboxes and fast phase times instead of or . Also good for extra cc (for example on Artsariiv). Precast that skill everywhere where it is possible for DPS increase. | |
| Precast it for Renegade for additional cc on encounters like Siax. | |
| Precasted for additional cc on encounters like Artsariiv. | |
| Defensive | |
| Provides three blocks for things like the console in Aetherblade Fractal. | |
| Another defensive utility skill granting Protection and Stability. | |
| Strong defence against pulsing damage like the Heat Room in Thaumanova Reactor Fractal. | |
| Utility | |
| A teleport with a range of 900 units. Very important skill for certain skips. | |
| Useful to generate Might with a fire field. | |
| Useful for skipping with Superspeed, especially in combination with or . |
Skill Explanation
Jade Spheres
As a Catalyst, your unique class mechanic is the energy system and your Jade Sphere.
You build up energy by attacking your enemy up to a maximum of 30.
Your F5 skill will cost 10 energy and cast a Jade Sphere based on your current attunement, for example .
Your Jade Spheres damage enemies and provide boons to allies while they are active. They also act as combo fields.
This means, that even on the full DPS build you will provide some boons to help out the group.
Certain traits interact with your sphere, namely:
makes your Spheres grant an extra boon based on the attunement. At the same time it allows you to provide Quickness with every sphere.
doubles the duration of the boons applied, making it possible to provide higher boon uptime when traited with .
Weapon Skills
Sword/Warhorn is a very straightforward set, you want to use every high damaging skill and fill with auto attacks in between.
Learning the icons of each attack in the auto attack chain can be helpful to make sure that you always complete it. In air and fire the final auto looks like an upwards facing sword
, , and proc the fireworks buff.
, and are combo finishers and the main contribution to and stacks.
Some of your weapon skills bring nice extra utility, like:
acts as a dodge.
heals and provides a water field.
heals and provides Regeneration.
extends boons, acts as a blast and grants .
These can sometimes be quite handy but earth attunement and it's skills are used in the rotation so they might not be up when you need them. Water attunement is rarely used (mostly on Ensolyss) so you can use it during downtime if neccessary. Attuning to water is beneficial for damage if you have enough energy for it's sphere and is off cd.
Utility Skills
As a Catalyst, you gain access to augments. You will be using two of them by default, namely and . Other augments listed in the situational skills section can also be useful.
Augments grant you a buff and gain a bonus effect when cast near their corresponding sphere. This is usually either a duration increase for the buff or a cooldown decrease for the skill.
For example, will grant you a damage increase for 5 seconds. This is increased by 3 additional seconds when cast near a . Therefore, you usually want to use them in the corresponding attunement.
Elite Skills
Conjures are specific to the Elementalist class.
Casting a Conjure skill will give the weapon to you as a bundle replacing your weapon skills and leave one copy on the ground for yourself or an ally to pick up.
In fractals, you will mostly use these to precast additional damage at the start of the fight and between phases. Some Conjures will be used only for CC.
The most common Conjure you will be runnning most of the time is (FGS).
is the most used skill on this weapon. It deals constant damage in the targeted area and can therefore be precasted before the fight or between phases for extra burst.
can be used to rush you to the enemy and is therefore great for mobility, for example moving to your assigned add during the 2nd Siax split phase.
is also great for mobility to get back from your split add during Siax.
can replace fgs on some bosses with equal or better results. More specifically:
If you can use it twice during the fight (but fgs only once) or if you can cast only once in total, then it is worth replacing (Skorvald, Arkk. Ensolyss).
In cases where you can get 2x but only 1 , is better (Artsariiv, MAMA, Siax).
Notes:
The above examples are taking into account a relatively fast group, the slower your group is the more adjustments you need to consider making.
If you play with then should always be precasted before you take the mistlock.
Trait Interactions
is a buff unique to Catalyst. It grants a 2% outgoing damage buff capping at 5 stacks.
Traits that interact with Elemental Empowerment stacks are:
gives you a stack whenever you gain an aura.
provides you an aura every time you combo. Actively helping to blast Might at the Singularity is therefore even more beneficial, even if you just do it for your DPS.
is a buff unique to Catalyst. It grants a 1% bonus to all stats capping at 10 stacks.
Traits that interact with Elemental Empowerment stacks are:
gives 2 stacks whenever you disable a foe. Your disables are and .
gives 3 stacks while in combat.
makes your combos give an aura and each aura give a stack. This interaction has a 10s internal cooldown for each attunement, so performing a combo in a specific attunement means that any other combo in said attunement won't be giving you any stacks until that time frame passes.
doubles the effectiveness at 10 stacks and grants 50% effectiveness at less than 10 stacks (DPS build only).
Rotation / Skill usage
Golem rotations out of the raid builds are generally suboptimal in fractals due to Exposed and phases being much shorter compared to raids. The raid rotations are optimized for sustained DPS while in fractals a player needs the ability to adapt a rotation to the amount of time a group needs to finish a phase.
Step-by-Step Rotation
This is a step-by-step explanation of the Catalyst rotation. A mostly complete written rotation and some extra info can be found in step 3. The steps do not indicate what skills do the most damage, it merely demonstrates a possible way to learn the rotation. Keep in mind that this rotation is performed on a standard average golem, on bosses with shorter phases and/or downtime in between although the general idea will be the same, there might be adjustments you need to make.
Step 1: Attunement Order, Auto Attack Chains and Damaging Skills
In the first step, we will take a look at weapon skills.
Start in and cast , , ,
Swap to and cast , ,
Perform 3x Auto Attack Chains until is ready again to be used
Cast and swap to and cast , ,
Swap back to and perform 3x Auto Attack Chains
Repeat from step 1
This will give you a basic idea of what skills are important, how their cooldowns line up and how the auto attack chain functions.
Step 2: Jade Sphere and Utilities
Now it is time to take a look at the Jade Sphere and Utilities, namely , and . Augments become stronger when cast near the corresponding Sphere. You will have enough energy to cast your Jade Spheres in Air, Fire, and Earth. Use the Augment right after casting the corresponding Sphere. Use Arcane Blast in Fire because that is where you have the highest damage modifiers on you. Keep in mind that spheres are instant cast actions so they can be used immediately when you swap attunements as long as you have the energy required.
Start in , precast , cast and cast , , ,
Swap to , cast , followed by and cast , , then Auto Attack x3 until is off cd
Cast and swap to , cast and cast , ,
Swap back to and Auto Attack x3
Repeat step 1 (without glyph of storms since it will be on cooldown)
Try to use spheres back to back when possible (for example from air to fire) because that way you minimize the 5 seconds internal cooldown that exists until you can start generating energy again.
Step 3: Elite Skill, Water Attunement, Firestorm and Wildfire
Glyph of storms gives you 4 different options depending on your attunement and the ones you want to be using are and . Lightning storm is the strongest option but with a high cooldown so if you know you won't be able to use lightning storm in every phase or again in the entire fight, you can fit a firestorm somewhere in between and end with a lightning storm. Keep in mind that you heavily benefit from being able to precast whenever you can. If you have slotted it can be used to either reset air skills or fire skills.The rotation will look like this:
Start in , precast , cast and cast , ,,
Swap to , , followed by and , , , , , , ,
Swap to and cast , , ,
Swap to , cast and
Swap back to and Auto Attack x3
Repeat step 1 (without glyph of storms and elemental celerity since they will be on cooldown)
Attuning to water is normally part of the rotation in the opener and after that when you have off cd and enough energy for both and . On most fractal bosses there won't be enough time to attune to water due to how short phases are (exception being Ensolyss). You can save that attunement for cc or emergnecy healing.
Step 4: Skill Queuing and Cancelling Aftercasts
After learning what skills to press and in what order the last thing is to learn how to queque them and how to cancel some aftercasts. Skill quequing means that you can always click the next skill you want to press as long it can't interrupt your previous one ( and can do that for example) so as the action happens immediately when the previous animation is done. You can also use a skill while you are switching attunements which is done with , , and .
Aftercasts are animations that keep happening even after all the damage a skill can do has been applied to the target. They can be avoided by interrupting them with another skill. For example has a long aftercast that can be interrupted with .
In fractals, you will mostly use Conjures to precast skills at the start of the fight or between phases. The most important skills are from as well as from .
Precasting
If a Mistlock Singularity is present, you should precast your personal buffs and/or boons to boost your performance. Not precasting in fractals is gonna severly hurt your damage since building up your specific buffs takes a while and bosses phase fast. More specifically it takes ~3 seconds to get to 10x and ~6 seconds to get to 5x if you don't precast anything.
To deal with that issue the easiest precast you can do before interacting with Mistlock Singularity is by having a staff in your other set. Start in , use and , swap to and use and . This grants you the maximum amount of stacks right away, which you should also refresh with and extent boons for you and your allies.
Note: is an ice field and it can interfere with the general group precast which relies on a fire field for might. If you want to do this kind of precast then simply place your field a bit outside of the group while still being in range to receive their boons. An ice field is neccessary because it is the only field which gives 2 auras once you blast it and thus 2 stacks.
But if you don't want to go that way, as an elementalist, you also have easy access to fire fields and blasts providing Might as well as and stacks. In that scenario you only need a Scepter in your other set, you can start in fire and perform the following sequence:
Start in and cast to provide a fire field.
Blast it using .
Use while switching to
Wait for the combo to finish in and swap to
Blast using
Attune to and blast with
Switch to back to Sword
Precast
Take the Mistlock Singularity.
This puts you at 5 stacks (4 from each combo in each attunement and 1 from the aura you gain when you use ). It might be a bit more complicated and time consuming but it blasts a fire field 4 times meaning 12 might. Keep in mind that stacks last for 10 seconds from the moment you last refreshed them meaning you want to start the fight before they expire so as you can instantly refresh them with .
Extra Info
It was made clear in previous sections how important are but other than precasting them, you also need to be able to maintain them in between phases or build them up if needed. There are 2 ways to do that: 1) you can combo in an attunement that you don't normally use, which is . You can provide a field for yourself with and blast it with , 2) you can refresh your stacks with at any given moment as long as you can attune to earth.
If the downtime is longer (for example skorvald islands or ensolyss capture phases), keep in mind that attuning to fire refreshes your stacks or gives you 1 if you have dropped them, because of and you can perform extra combos by providing a field with and blasting it with .
This is mostly relevant if you decide to play hammer but hammer orbs can't be precasted anymore because they dissapear on weapon swap. If you play hammer on certain bosses you can do an additional precast with either or after casting depending on your opener (make sure to not get in combat on the wrong weapon set).
![Power Catalyst - GW2 | Discretize [dT] (2024)](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8/h8AAvMB+NzmkbcAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)