Difference between revisions of "Catalyst - Power Catalyst"

Revision as of 14:53, 31 May 2022

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage

Designed for: Open World and Open World General

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on May 31, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

Power Catalyst is a mid-ranged Elementalist build that focuses on high burst damage and extremely high damage to bosses. It brings permanent Quickness and a good amount of Might to the table, as well as large amounts of Protection or Resolution on demand when using Water Attunement or Earth Attunement, respectively. It also shares its gear with group PvE builds for Catalyst (uses the same gear as quickness support and mostly the same as power DPS), making it a convenient option to choose for general PvE gameplay.

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Skill Bar

Hammer

Utility

Skill Variants

Signet of Restoration - passive healing
Arcane Shield - for a block and stunbreak on demand at the cost of damage.
Lightning Flash - mobility

Specializations

Trait Options

Blinding Ashes for passive CC at the cost of some damage
Empowered Empowerment for higher overall stats

Arcane

Arcane can offer more boon duration and burst damage when you are supplied with many boons thanks to Bountiful Power, which means higher DPS in some situations.

Equipment

Ascended gear is not required.

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Diviner

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Diviner

Ring
Berserker

Hammer
Diviner

Sigil

Rune
x6

Variant Equipment

Gear

Full Berserker is used for the Power DPS variant. Just replace the few Diviner pieces with berserker.
Knight - defensive trinkets
Marauder - defensive prefix
Assassin - used to fine-tune crit chance, good for using certain raid builds in open world
Elementalist is a low-health class, so having a jade bot core helps with survivability a lot; the higher the tier, the better!

Runes

Rune of Superior Rune of the Eagle, Rune of Superior Rune of Infiltration - budget runes, use Sigil of Superior Sigil of Impact when using Rune of Superior Rune of the Eagle to not overcap on critical chance.

Consumables

Food

Any ascended food is superior to any other food you could use. Steak for power, flatbread for conditions. Budget versions of these foods exist and are acceptable.
- farming
- DPS
- defense

Utility

(and variants) - farming
- dps

Usage

Damage/CC

In open world,you can play at 600 range when alternating between Fire Attunement + Air Attunement.
Make sure to use Glyph of Elementals in Earth Attunement to gain two additional stacks of Elemental Empowerment upon casting its active skill Stomp.
The rotation for group content is a simplified variant (only using Air Attunement, Fire Attunement & Earth Attunement) that will get you within 10% of the current benchmark and loops nicely.
Start in Fire Attunement, then swap to Air Attunement and then to Earth Attunement, and repeat.
The pattern in the respective element is always similar: always use Hammer 2, then Hammer 3 while 2 is casting and then use the Sphere and finish with hammer 5 to make use of the combo field. Avoid using Wind Storm + Immutable Stone for damage purposes.
Stay in Fire Attunement until Surging Flames is available a second time. Use Grand Finale in Fire Attunement and reactivate Flame Wheel as soon as possible to maintain the 10% damage buff.
Your main sources of CC are Shock Blast and Ground Pound as well as soft CC through Weakness, Cripple and Blinded

Survivability

With all the glyphs, you can prestack lots of Protection when using them in Earth Attunement.
Wind Storm is a large self-knockback that can put you out of danger; it can, however, also put you into it when used at the wrong time.
Immutable Stone is a block on demand in Earth Attunement.
Glyph of Elemental Harmony has a short cooldown and provides a very strong heal and boons, so make use of it.

Detailed explanations on the general usage and the rotation are given down below.

Guide Video (as of May 2022)