Catalyst - S/F Condi Cata

This is a test build. You may comment and rate it.

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:
TBD


Overview

A condition Catalyst build making use of the new Scepter buffs.


Skill Bar

Scepter/Focus
Utility


Skill Variants

Utility

  • Shattering Ice - excellent Chill uptime.
  • Lightning Flash - better mobility.
  • Conjure Earth Shield - amazing boost to your sustain.
  • Glyph of Lesser Elementals - adds a minion with decent damage to the build.


Elite

  • Glyph of Elementals - the Fire elemental can do significant damage while Water's good for extra healing.


Template Code

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Copy Template Code


Specializations

Variants

  • Renewing Stamina offers more sustain.


Equipment

Scepter
Focus
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet


Sigils

  • Sigil of Cleansing - if you're struggling against conditions.
  • Sigil of Doom - better condition variety and some healing reduction.


Usage

Elite specialization basics

  • Catalysts gain access to Deploy Jade Sphere which drops an AoE combo field with pulsing boons depending on the attunement they were used in.
  • The Jade Sphere costs energy to deploy, you build energy by hitting enemies or swapping attunements thanks to Energized Elements.
  • Jade Spheres are instant and can be used while casting skills or sitting in a CC.


General

  • Because of Signet of Restoration you should almost always be casting something for the passive healing, even if it's just an autoattack that's not even hitting anything. An exception to this would be having high enough Confusion Confusion stacks in which case you'd take more damage then the signet could heal.
  • Elemental Celerity (the elite) is usually used in Earth Attunement to reset the CDs of Magnetic Wave and Template:Skil under heavy pressure.


Auras

  • You gain Stability Stability and cleanse 1 condition whenever you gain an aura thanks to Staunch Auras and Smothering Auras.
  • Elemental Epitome grants an aura based on your current element when you execute a combo.
  • Combo finishers in the build:
    • Dragon's Tooth and Phoenix on Fire.
    • Comet on Water.
    • Hurl (chain skill of Rock Barrier, Magnetic Wave and the first dode you perform after swapping to this element thanks to Evasive Arcana. There's also the autoattack Stone Shards but that's a bit random.
  • As you can see Air has no combo finishers, but that doesn't mean the build has no access to Shocking Aura. All you have to do is make one of your finishers land while you're attuned to Air, for example a Phoenix which has a travel time.
  • Aura combos like this from Elemental Epitome can only happen once every 10 seconds per attunement, so while it's possible to swap attunements for a different aura keep the CD in mind!
  • There are also some less complicated ways of obtaining auras. Fire #5 directlies a Fire Aura (and flips over into a chain skill which lets you transmute it for extra effects or more cleansing via Smothering Auras). Another easy one is to simply swap to Fire Attunement for a Sunspot proc. These are both instant and can even be done while casting skills or sitting in a CC, preventing enemies from piling more CCs onto you.
  • As the Jade Sphere is instant you could even drop a combo field in the middle of your dodge in Earth to obtain an aura.


Damage

  • Fire is your strongest element.
  • Flamestrike is an autoattack which is more dangerous than it looks, capable of rapidly stacking burning on enemies if you're allowed to freecast for a few seconds. Quickness Quickness from the Air Jade Sphere can help a lot with that along with Glyph of Elemental Power when used in Fire, so dropping the sphere on Air before switching to Fire is always a good idea.
  • Dragon's Tooth and Phoenix both do good damage and are Blast finishers. Other than stacking auras they have inherent value as combo tools, for example if used inside the Fire Jade Sphere these two are going to stack Might Might which increases your damage.
    • Both of these skills work on targets behind your character, allowing you to effortlessly pressure enemies even while kiting them.
  • Flamewall can sometimes be hard to get value from, but it's good against CC'd or downed enemies.
  • Air skills don't do a whole lot of damage compared to Fire but Lightning Strike and Blinding Flash offer good cover conditions to make your Burning stacks harder to cleanse.
  • While Rock Barrier offers a passive stat increase, most of the time people tend to go immediately for its chain skill Hurl to deal damage. Hurl launched 5 projectiles which apply Bleeding Bleeding that are guaranteed projectile finishers, these are best used inside the Earth Sphere to combo Poison Poison or a Fire Field for Burning Burning.
  • Dust Devil adds more condition variety to your bursts on top of being a great defensive skill.
  • Stone Shards isn't quite as good of an auto as Flamestrike but it's an okay filler skill when you've got nothing better to do.


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Ratings

This build has a rating of 5 stars based on 2 votes.
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5 stars
Guirssane gave this build 5 stars • January 2023
Great dps build, but sustain could be better. Your defenses rely a lot on blind, projectile reflect and sphere. Overall a super strong dps build. I like the wizard amulet variant as well.
5 stars
Guardianismyfavourite gave this build 5 stars • December 2022
This build is broken, try it before it gets nerfed. Literally melts everything just with glyph and autoattack, personally I use wizard amulet because of the fire crit trait but carrion is good too

Comments

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