Catalyst - Fresh Air Cata
The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great
Focused on: Direct damage and Mobility
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Difficulty:
Normal
This build was last updated on July 03, 2024 and is up to date for the August 20, 2024 patch.
Overview
A Catalyts take on the Scepter Superspeed and CC spam while keeping them pressured with ranged attacks.
Skill Bar
Scepter/Focus
Utility
Skill Variants
Utility
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 for you, a stronger defensive or more frequent access to a stun break. The Signet's
- over - as a mobility/defensive tool Arcane Wave is worse than Lightning Flash, but it's better at everything else. Has multiple charges, good AoE damage, dazes enemies and even acts as a Blast finisher which is a highly valuable thing on Catalyst builds.
Heal
- - worth considering when you're facing a condition-heavy comp, as condi cleansing is one of the weaker aspects of the build.
Weapons
- Off-hand Dagger over Focus is a somewhat viable albeit more greedy option. Dagger offers better damage and mobility, but worse survivability.
Template Code
[&DQYpKiUeQx90AHUA7xpPAZAAkAAcAesA9xoAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]
Specializations
Variants
Vigor uptime for more healing.
trades
Equipment
Scepter
Focus
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic
Equipment Variants
Runes
- - higher HP, slightly lower stats overall.
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
- The build's all about swapping in and out of every few seconds, made possible by which recharges Air whenever you land a critical strike.
- Swapping to Air triggers which you should immediately follow up with a for instant burst damage. Entering this attunement also grants you Ferocity from for a few seconds, which is why most of your heavy hitting skills should land in this small time frame. More on that later.
- Recharging Air: to recharge Air you need to score a critical hit. The fastest way to do it on attunements with slower skills is to start channeling the air autoattack
- Jade Spheres are great for this too. While their damage is insignificant, they are instant cast ranged AoEs that strike multiple times and can crit.
just before leaving . Swapping attunements doesn't break the channeling and Arc Lightning is almost guaranteed to critically hit at least once.
- This build can self-stack
Might by blasting the fire field created by the Fire Jade Sphere and . Do not prioritize Might stacking, but do take advantage of the incidental opportunities which arise. Your blast finishers are:
- The first dodge you perform after swapping to Earth attunement
- is an excellent skill for setting up burst, use it right before swapping out of Air into another attunement.
- With Off-hand Dagger you should use the elite in Air for mobility/evasion, Water for cleansing/healing or Fire for burst damage.
's main purpose is to reset/reduce the CDs on and for extra sustain, but if you want to get greedy it could also reset burst and CC cooldowns in other attunements.
- Gaining an aura grants you 1 stack of
Stability. The first combo you perform in a given attunement always grants you an aura via .
- A common tactic is to cast and burst enemies before it falls on them. This presents a no-win situation for many builds: they can either facetank your burst but dodge the tooth, or dodge your burst and facetank the tooth.
- Try to aim
- Because of the slow travel time it's also best used in melee.
slightly behind your target whenever you can. This skill passes through targets while doing damage, explodes on the ground, then returns to you once again damaging targets it passes through. The goal here is to hit the target with all 3 parts of the skill, not just the explosion damage.
Notable burst combos
These are some potential combos you can use based on the techniques outlined above. The quicker you pull these chains off, the better.
From Fire:
- Drop your Fire Jade Sphere to passively begin stacking
Might.
- ⇒ for more Might (it also does good damage in melee). Both the transmute and Dragon's Tooth have a delay, your goal is to get into Air by the time these go off
- - optional: right at your target before you finish casting Phoenix to make it near instant. You don't have to do that if you were already in melee.
- - swap to this while casting Phoenix
- to avoid taking damage in melee, but it's not required
From Earth:
- Optional: if you're in melee range of an enemy you may throw in a which can proc if it hits something.
- + then swap to during the channeling to make the projectiles land in the right attunement. Hurl is a guaranteed projectile finisher which has synergy with your Spheres, consider dropping one before doing this combo. Any Sphere except Water will result in a damage boost.
From Water:
- - the trident does more damage to Chilled enemies which is important. Shatterstone should secure that but can do the trick too.
- Swap to while casting Water Trident, preferably even before the 2nd strike of Shatterstone goes off so that it may benefit from Air's damage modifiers.
Survival
- Swapping to Air is just as important for defense as it is for offense. Even when you're running away you should try to get some Fresh Air procs just so you can abuse blinds and superspeed.
Superspeed. Avoid melee range whenever possible! Don't stay in melee unless the target is blinded, CC'd or you're about to burst them.
makes it easy to kite most specs via
- is great at avoiding crucial skills by blinding enemies, and it also shuts down Power-based specs in general with the Weakness. Being an instant cast skill this can also be used while CC'd. fills a similar purpose, so does although that one has a cast time.
Chill which you can even place behind your back while running away. Chill is great at building distance and the damage could recharge Air, and swapping to Air gives you
Superspeed which makes it even easier to run away.
- Swapping to Water, dodging for healing/cleansing then dropping Shatterstone on top of your target and using its damage to go back to Air is a common defensive rotation.
is a source of spammable
- Needless to say other CCs can also be used for shaking off pursuers.
- is one of your most powerful reactive skills for defense. It's a low CD block that can be used in any attunement, don't hesitate to use it the moment you're getting focused by an enemy, especially if your current attunement isn't defensive enough. It's great for stalling a bit and giving you some time to figure out your next move.
- and provide excellent protection against enemies who use projectiles. These however do not work against unblockable projectiles, and some ranged builds - such as this one - are mostly unaffected by projectile reflects and blocks.
- is the build's best condition cleanse which can also be used while stunned.
- offers protection against all kinds of pressure.
- The first strike of Blinds enemies while the snare is useful for keeping distance.
Top Streamers
- Twitch: Zeolith
- Twitch: Grimjack
- Twitch: Zeus
- Twitch: Justanotherelemain
Related Builds
- Catalyst - Fresh Air Roamer - WvW version of the build.
Ratings
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
I play GW2 on and off and it's been my go to build since EoD. It's fun, effective, has depth but isn't overwhelming to play. I'm just glad Anet hasn't gutted it yet, to my surprise they even buffed it in the last patch. In previous metas I would've recommended the Cata heal over the signet but right now it's not needed. Dagger offhand is even more fun because of the extra nuke and mobility but in this burst meta Focus might be non negotiable.
![4 stars](/wiki/images/b/b1/4-star.png)
Still the go-to ele build for roaming/dueling. Good burst, good defences, ok mobility. It can deal with most classes and builds pretty well, though it struggles a bit vs heavy condi pressure. Decent in teamfights as it brings ranged burst and some nice group boons and combo fields.
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
Still one of the better builds to play in ranked and one of the strongest options for Ele in PvP. Great burst damage with very little downtime, several strong sustain options with moderate group utility. Conditions can be problematic sometimes, but it's possible to pack more cleansing into the build mostly by swapping out the healing skill.
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
Old King still shines in the new trend. Good to see this build needs more teamwork to maximize the value. The damage is in the right position right now. The only issue is that Fortified Earth is too perfect for ele. 3s Block in utility and 30s(or even 20s) CD.
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
Even repeated nerfs couldn't kill it.. unfortunately. Still feels unkillable on a bunch of classes and the damage is still crazy. Nerfing the elite was a step in the right direction but it's not enough, the build is cracked. Fresh air never should've become a competitive build.
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
The French Worms won the EU MAT with five of these today. The NA winner had two. Take that as you will. (Nerf it for the love of God).
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
Extremely overpowered build. The only thing it requires is that you can press buttons fast to swap between attunements. You basically just spam 2 of each element with air in between and do RIDICULOUS damage.
Earth 2 3
Air 2 3
Fire 2 3
Air 2 3
Water 2 3
Air 2 3
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
even a pvp noob can ez play to p2 meta build but big nerf soon . cuz Very Low Investment but Super High Return .
![5 stars](/wiki/images/d/dd/5-star.png)
This build has a strong mix of sustain, damage and mobility if dagger off-hand is taken. Definitely can provide prescence in ranked as a roamer/duelist hybrid.
Comments
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