Catalyst - D/D Duelist
The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great
Focused on: Strike damage, Sustain and Mobility
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Difficulty:
Normal
This build was last updated on July 05, 2024 and is up to date for the August 20, 2024 patch.
Overview
D/D Elementalist makes a return with a bunch of shiny new tools. A fast-paced, highly versatile duelist build with great sustain and damage.
Skill Bar
Dagger/Dagger
Utility
Skill Variants
Utility
- over - sacrifices mobility to make the build more tanky. The conjure can help you out in any situation as it has aura synergy, CC, invulnerability, block, even damage. Take on Fire.
- Blind could also be used proactively to avoid incoming attacks. over - Armor is a better defensive skill in general but it's on a longer CD. It's up to you to decide what's more important to you, a stronger defensive or more frequent access to a stun break. The Signet's
Template Code
[&DQYfKyUeQx90AHUAHAFPAZAAkADvGusA9xqWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABLwAA]
Specializations
Equipment
Dagger
Dagger
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic
Equipment Changes
Relics
- - adds a lot of extra healing to the build in case you're looking to improve survivability.
- - similar to Nayos in terms of purpose, but Zakiros provides a more consistent type of healing throughout a fight while Nayos is better at burst healing when you really need it.
Runes
- - more tanky option.
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 .
- Jade Spheres are instant and can be used while casting skills or sitting in a CC.
General
- Because of Confusion stacks in which case you'd take more damage then the signet could heal. 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
- Water for cleansing and healing.
- Air for CC and an excellent mobility tool.
- Earth for CC and combo finishers.
- Fire for raw damage, combo fields and an evade frame with some mobility.
(the elite) is used mainly to reset the CD of skills 3-5 of a given attunement:
- Jade Spheres do insignificant damage, but that can still be useful because these are instant skills. Dropping a new sphere to remove Aegis from an enemy or consume Blind on yourself right as you're about to land an important attack can make all the difference.
Auras
- You gain Stability and cleanse 1 condition whenever you gain an aura thanks to and .
- grants an aura based on your current element when you execute a combo.
- The spread of combo finishers on D/D isn't optimal for aura stacking with Elemental Epitome - it ranges from 0 on Fire to 4 on Earth (skills 3-5 + the dodge from ). This however can be remedied with good timing and a little bit of creativity by switching attunements at the right moment, causing some finishers to land in a different attunement.
- Some examples for spreading out your finishers inside the Jade Sphere:
- Cast then quickly swap to Air to end up with a .
- Dodge on Earth inside a Jade Sphere for , use but swap to Water before the animation ends for a . Cast but immediately swap to Air for a Shocking Aura.
- Frost Aura from the combo itself and a Shocking Aura from Elemental Epitome synergy. is the best combo tool in the build - it's both a field and a finisher, so you're always going to get an aura when using this skills. In fact you can get 2 auras by swapping attunements while casting Frozen Burst, for example swapping to Air will give you a
- Aura combos like this from 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's no point in carrying a finisher from earth to combo on water if you were going to use on water anyway.
- There are also some less complicated ways of obtaining auras. Water #4 and Air #3 are skills that directly apply auras (and flip over into a chain skill which lets you transmute them for extra effects or more cleansing via ). Another easy one is to simply swap to for a proc. These are all instant and can even be done while casting skills or sitting in a CC, preventing enemies from piling more CCs onto you.
- Combo finishers in the build:
- Air's .
- Water's .
- Earth's skills 3-5 and the first dodge you perform after swapping to this element.
- 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 where most of the damage comes from, followed by Air, Earth, and finally Water.
- and can both do good damage without any real setup.
- is a quick attack that drops a combo field and could quickly get some Burning on enemies to set up Fire Grab.
- should only be used on burning foes as it does significantly more damage that way.
- , and are more on the filler side of things in terms of pure damage but they are quite useful in their own right and much more versatile than most Fire skills.
- Air's Jade Sphere grants Quickness which increases your DPS in general. This combined with spam can dish out some decent damage especially against downed and CC'd enemies.
- , and are all great CC tools for setting up burst.
Combo Examples
Low Risk Burst Rotation
- Optional - if you're not in melee range or if you need to get rid of Blind/Aegis quickly before the next step.
- for CC while evading attacks.
- for Quickness.
- and swap to Fire Attunement while casting it.
- for damage and to get back into melee range after having used Updraft. At this point Convergence (which has a delay) should also hit.
- . Now, if you have the energy for it then drop the Jade Sphere (F5) on Fire. If not, do it after swapping to Earth.
- Swap to Earth Attunement while still casting Drake's Breath.
- Stability and Immobilize the target. These should make it easier to land the next CC. for evasion and an aura combo, which should give you
- for CC.
- for damage. You could consider swapping to Water while casting CE for another aura combo, or stay in Earth for a bit more damage via the next step. If you stay in Earth you won't be able to carry a combo finisher over to another attunement though.
- Optional - if you're still in Earth. We call this a low risk rotation because you're using CC, evasion, defensive boons and debilitating conditions to make it harder for enemies to touch you while putting a lot of pressure on them.
Disengaging Safely (make sure you don't have a target selected)
- for evasion and to place a combo field.
- Swap to Earth in the middle of Burning Speed.
- immediately after BS to capitalize on the combo field of step 1. This is another mobility skill with evasion and you should be able to combo Magnetic Aura.
- Swap to Air.
- Optional - If enemies are still on you, use for more evasion and to CC whoever managed to follow you. Updraft makes you roll backwards, which is not the direction we want to go, so turn around before you use it then turn back before proceeding to the next step.
- without a target to get away from the fight.
- Either heal up in Water or wait a bit for out of combat regen to kick in, assuming you weren't followed. Using the elite for a CD reset just so you may use skills 4-5 again instead of swapping to Water is also an option, taking you even farther. If you use the elite definitely press skill 3 before you do, it's a "free" instant aura source.
Mass Cleansing/Healing
- While standing inside a combo field, carry a finisher over to Water attunement (either Convergence on Air or any of Earth 3-5). This will give you Frost Aura.
- while the Stability still lasts.
- Dodge for healing and cleansing
- You should have removed at least 7 conditions by now (8 if you got a Cleansing sigil proc) and healed for a decent amount.
- There are many ways to proceed based on what your situation is. If you're free from conditions and have time to cast longer skills without getting bursted, do . If you're still heavily pressured by conditions, use skill 4 twice (once to apply an aura and once to transmute it). If you're still focused cast while swapping to Air in the middle of it, this will give you 2 Auras (and cleanse 2 conditions) - Frost Aura will reduce incoming damage taken while Shocking Aura can give you some breathing room.
Sustain
- Water and Earth are the most defensive elements here as usual, but Fire and Air have a couple of defensive CDs as well such as evade frames on and .
- Simply swapping to Earth can already help you out against direct damage as you'll gain Protection from . Earth Jade Sphere grants the same boon plus Resistance.
- Water is the best element if you want to cleanse or heal.
- Both of these are AoE skills so if you see an ally in need you can provide some support for your team.
is a simple but effective heal that also cleanses conditions. A lesser version of this skill procs on your first dodge after entering Water Attunement, healing for a similar amount but only cleansing 1 condition.
- 's passive mitigates direct damage while transmuting it (using the chain skill) cleanses 2 conditions.
- is still a good heal but slower than the other skills, making it worse in emergency situations.
- Water Attunement's Jade Sphere is, you guessed it, a Water field. It's best used shortly before switching to Earth where most of your combo finishers are. Unloading Earth 3-5 + the dodge is a great way of recovering a large chunk of health. The sphere itself pulses Resolution to help mitigate condition pressure.
- is the only stunbreak in the build so use it wisely, but all the Stability synergy with the auras should help you deal with CC.
- When damage starts to overwhelm you D/D offers quite a few escape tools. Most obvious one is , just make sure you don't have an enemy targeted. Chaining into would be a good idea too, these are 2 mobility skills with evade frames that also have combo synergy - Burning Speed leaves behind a fire field while Earthen Rush is a leap finisher. This results in both a Fire Aura and a Magnetic Aura!
- is a low CD anti-projectile skill.
- If taken is for buying time and surviving heavy pressure. With a block, a Magnetic Aura, a CC and an invulnerability frame this could bridge the gap in your defenses until your other CDs come back up or help arrives.
Top Streamers
- Twitch: Grimjack
- Twitch: Zeus
- Twitch: Blamthrax
Related Builds
- WvW version of the build with Celestial gear
Ratings
with the recent buffs to dagger and water, the build is better than ever. For a more duelist role, i'm taking water trait now. Some have been buffed and i'm playing 3-1-3 water instead of arcane. Insane healing and survivability with water and still good damage.
I don't think it's any worse than hammer for sidenodes. D/D just feels soo good to play, one of the best designed sets in the game. D/D ele personifies what this class was meant to be, a swiss army knife for any situation, highly adaptable. And it's still as sturdy as ever. While I play FA Cata more these days D/D will always have some good ol' nostalgia factor for me.
Decent duelist/roamer. Problems with the build are it has no range and you will struggle to do damage vs targets you cant lock down with cc. Also its pretty bad in teamfights.
High kill potential in a 1v1 fight. Solid duelist build, but it is not good at team fights. Try to 1v1 and take the number advantage. You have strong mobility to rotate.
This and the hammer version are two sides of the same coin, very similar builds with a similar power level. Excellent damage and sustain, decent mobility. Very solid in the current meta and fans of the old D/D cele ele will be enjoying this one a lot.
Comments
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