Catalyst - Power Hammer Cata

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Direct damage and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on August 15, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A high damage PvP Hammer Catalyst build with good sustain, primarily made for taking 1v1s and other smaller skirmishes.

Skill Bar

Hammer

Utility

Skill Variants

Heal

• Soothing Water - better condition cleansing.

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Burning Fire offers better defense against conditions.

Equipment

Hammer

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Equipment Changes

Amulet

• - if you're feeling really confident in your abilities while piloting the build, this makes it harder to play the build for a bit better payoff.

Rune

• Rune of Speed - better chase and disengage potential on a build that doesn't have a lot of mobility tools.

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.

General

• Your role is primarily to be a sidenoder, holding the point and winning smaller skirmishes.

• Skill #3 on each attunement is an orb skill, consider this your secondary profession mechanic. Air and Fire grant offensive bonuses while Water and Earth supply you with defensive ones. All 4 orbs also pulse damage and apply conditions around you while active:
  • Flame Wheel on Fire increases your damage
  • Icy Coil on Water grants condition damage reduction.
  • Crescent Wind on Air increases crit chance.
  • Rocky Loop on Earth reduces direct damage.

• Each orb has a duration of 8 seconds, but whenever you add a new orb to the mix the duration of all previous orbs is refreshed. Once you've rotated through all 4 attunements the orbs will inevitably fall off - this is when you should use the chain skill Grand Finale which shoots them at your target for damage.

• Arcane Resurrection passively helps with reviving allies.

• 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 stacks in which case you'd take more damage then the signet could heal.

• You gain Stability whenever you gain an aura thanks to Staunch Auras. The easiest way to get an aura is to swap to Fire Attunement for a Sunspot proc. This is instant and can even be done while casting skill or sitting in a CC, preventing enemies from piling more CCs onto you.

• Other sources of auras include performing any combo in your Jade Sphere via Elemental Epitome or using Immutable Stone.
  • Immutable Stone is a channeled block - the aura is applied after you block something. This gives you a little bit of time to swap attunements before that happens and get an aura of your choice as the aura is granted based on your current attunement.

Damage

• Try to have Flame Wheel and Crescent Wind active when unloading your ahrder hitting skills.

• Energized Elements grants a short duration of Fury whenever you swap attunements. It's not much, but just enough to cover your next 1-2 skills so consider using some harder hitting skill right after swapping.
  • As swapping elements doesn't interrupt your casts, you could even boost your crit chance through this while casting a skill. All you need to do is swap attunement before the skill lands.

• Most of the burst comes from Fire Attunement, every skill here hits hard.

• Surging Flames is a cone attack best used in melee range to make sure all 3 projectiles hit the target.

• Triple Sear creates 3 AoEs on the ground - try to position this in a way that your opponent is in the center of this skill so they get hit by all 3.

• Molten End is rather straightforward, just a big smash you should aim to land when the target has Burning. All the other Fire skills apply Burning so that shouldn't be hard.

• Air is mostly about CC, but skill #2 Hurricane of Pain hits rather hard. Only downside is, this is has a rather long cast time and you'll have a hard time landing it without proper setup. Try to CC targets beforehand and make sure to have Quickness from your Air Jade Sphere.

• Whirling Stones and Ground Pound are also worth a mention on Earth. The latter could even set up other burst skill with the Immobilize.

Top Streamers

• Twitch: Mijo

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