Power Catalyst

Power Damage Build

Tooltip Language

June 28, 2023
15.96 min to read

Overview

Up-to-date	we are working on it...
Template Code	`[&DQYfHSkbQyb+GgAAUAEAAPgaAAC+AQAAlwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]`
Boons	Might: 9 stacks - party
Conditions	Vulnerability: 10 stacks
Role	Power Damage

Synergy	average
DPS	high
Independence	average
Acquiring basics	difficult
Achieving mastery	challenging

The Power Catalyst is a strong DPS build for fractals. Power Catalyst provides conjures and Vulnerability, as well as some Might through Spheres and potentially blasting fire fields. It may also swap traits and gear to provide permanent Quickness and a decent amount of extra Might. It is also very useful for some T4 skips in fractals like Aetherblade, Cliffside, Thaumanova Reactor etc. thanks to high mobility and

This build has less burst than Power Weaver but offers extra utility through the boons of the Jade Spheres.

Unfortunately, the survivability of this build is on the lower end. While some defensive utilities are available in

and

, you will use them during your normal rotation and not always be in the correct attunement when you need the defense. Therefore, it is recommended to have a high awareness of the encounters and good class knowledge before picking up this build.

This build has one of the harder rotations in the game but is very enjoyable to play - if given some dedication. The build benefits heavily from slaying potions and sigils such as

and

Equipment

Stats are shown with

and 10 stacks of

Extra weapons that can be used are:

Hammers with
Hammers with
Hammers with slaying sigils (see Cheat Sheet)
A staff to precast
on some encounters
Weapons to precast Might

Show Infusions

Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker

Berserker

Any item with the same stats may be used!

Heal

Utilities

Elite

Berserker

Food

Utility

Build

Traits

Fire
Air
Catalyst

Situational Traits

	Useful for skipping with Superspeed, especially in combination with or .
	If your group has absolutely no Might from other sources, you can also run this to provide extra Might as well as Fury. However, this comes at a significant DPS loss of around 10%.

Defiance Bar Damage

Skill	Damage
	200 with Knockdown
	150 with Stun
	232 with Launch
	300 with Stun
	200 with Daze
	150 with Pull
	33 / s with Chilled
	20 / s with Weakness

Situational Skills

Offensive
	Good on encounter with longer phases like Ensolyss instead of .
Heal
	Additional Might by blasting fire fields.
	Strong heal over time and condi cleanse.
	Strong burst heal.
Conjures
	Good on larger hitboxes and fast phase times instead of . Precast that skill everywhere where it is possible for DPS increase.
	Precast it for Renegade for additional cc on encounters like Siax.
	Precasted for additional cc on encounters like Artsariiv.
Defensive
	Provides three blocks for things like the console in Aetherblade Fractal.
	Another defensive utility skill granting Protection and Stability.
	Strong defence against pulsing damage like the Heat Room in Thaumanova Reactor Fractal.
Utility
	A teleport with a range of 900 units. Very important skill for certain skips.
	Useful to generate Might with a fire field.
	Useful for skipping with Superspeed, especially in combination with or .

Skill Explanation

Jade Spheres

As a Catalyst, your unique class mechanic is the energy system and your Jade Sphere.

You build up energy by attacking your enemy up to a maximum of 30.
Your F5 skill will cost 10 energy and cast a Jade Sphere based on your current attunement, for example
.
Your Jade Spheres damage enemies and provide boons to allies while they are active. They also act as combo fields.
This means, that even on the full DPS build you will provide some boons to help out the group.

Certain traits interact with your sphere, namely:

makes your Sphere grant an extra boon based on the attunement. This allows you to provide Quickness in
for example.
doubles the duration of the boons applied, making it possible to provide higher boon uptime when traited with
.

Hammer Skills

The unique mechanic for the Hammer weapon set is the third skill. Mastering it is very important for the rotation.

Pressing a third skill such as
will summon an orb circling you dealing damage to enemies in its way.
The orb will last for 15 seconds and grants access to
on this attunement while active
The orb will grant a passive bonus like crit-chance in the case of
while active.

Connecting multiple orbs:

If you swap to a different attunement and use the third skill there, it will cast the according to the orb and refresh the duration of any currently active orb.
will replace the third skill on any attunement that you have the active orb from already. It will send out all current orbs to your target to deal damage.
Your goal is to get all 4 orbs up at the same time, send them all at once with
, and repeat this loop during your entire rotation.
The hardest part will be the first loop as you can accidentally double press the third skill sending out the first projectiles as
is not yet on-cooldown for this loop.

Your attunement rotation will try to maximize uptime on the offensive buffs from

and

and will therefore be:

Repeat

You will cast

after the first loop and try to minimize downtime before getting back your offensive buffs from

and

All of your Hammer skills are useful in some situations and all except

(Air 4) and

(Earth 4) will be used for DPS.

If you need to auto-attack to bridge the gap between skills, you'd ideally want to only do so in

and partially

Some of them bring nice extra utility, like:

heals you for each enemy you hit with it.
cleanses conditions from you.
blocks projectiles.

This can sometimes be quite handy, however, all of these skills are used in the rotation so you will not want to delay them too long usually.

Utility Skills

As a Catalyst, you gain access to augments. You will be using two of them by default, namely

and

. Other augments listed in the situational skills section can also be useful.

Augments grant you a buff and gain a bonus effect when cast near their corresponding sphere. This is usually either a duration increase for the buff or a cooldown decrease for the skill.

For example,

will grant you a damage increase for 5 seconds. This is increased by 3 additional seconds when cast near a

. Therefore, you usually want to use them in the corresponding attunement.

Conjures are specific to the Elementalist class.

Casting a Conjure skill will give the weapon to you as a bundle replacing your weapon skills and leave one copy on the ground for yourself or an ally to pick up.
In fractals, you will mostly use these to precast additional damage at the start of the fight and between phases. Some Conjures will be used only for CC.

The most common Conjure you will always run is

(FGS).

is the most used skill on this weapon. It deals constant damage in the targeted area and can therefore be precasted before the fight or between phases for extra burst.
If you pick up the FGS in the middle of your rotation,
usually offers more damage than auto-attacking on your regular weapon set. It also rushes you to the enemy and is therefore great for mobility.
is also great for mobility. It also does a decent amount of damage when used with the Special Action Key to get multiple hits on Arkk.

Trait Interactions

is a buff unique to Catalyst. It grants a 3% outgoing damage buff capping at 5 stacks.

Traits that interact with Elemental Empowerment stacks are:

gives you a stack whenever you gain an aura.
provides you an aura every time you combo. Actively helping to blast Might at the Singularity is therefore even more beneficial, even if you just do it for your DPS.

is a buff unique to Catalyst. It grants a 1% bonus to all stats capping at 10 stacks.

Traits that interact with Elemental Empowerment stacks are:

gives 2 stacks whenever you disable a foe.
gives 3 stacks while in combat.
gives 1 stack every time you gain an aura and grants an aura when doing a combo.
doubles the effectiveness at 10 stacks (DPS build only).

Rotation / Skill usage

Golem rotations out of the raid builds are generally suboptimal in fractals due to Exposed and phases being much shorter compared to raids. The raid rotations are optimized for sustained DPS while in fractals a player needs the ability to adapt a rotation to the amount of time a group needs to finish a phase.

Step-by-Step Rotation

This is a step-by-step explanation of the Catalyst rotation. A mostly complete written rotation and some extra info can be found in step 3. The steps do not indicate what skills do the most damage, it merely demonstrates a possible way to learn the rotation.

Step 1: Attunement Rotation/Hammer 3

In the first step, we will take a look at the Hammer 3 skill. All of the orbs are instant-casts while

is not.

Start in
and cast
.
Swap to
and cast
.
Swap to
and cast
.
Swap to
and cast
.
Swap back to
and cast
.
Repeat from step 1 (the cooldowns will take a bit to recover as we are not using any other skills yet)

This will maximize the uptime of the 2 offensive buffs from Hammer 3 and make sure that you always use

with all 4 orbs up. Make sure to not double-tap the skill on the first loop or you will cast

early losing your buffs and extra damage from sending all 4 orbs. In later loops, the skill will be on-cooldown so this will not be an issue.

Step 2: Jade Sphere and Augments

Now it is time to take a look at the Jade Sphere and Augments, namely

and

. These become stronger when cast near the corresponding Sphere. We will have enough energy to cast our Jade Sphere in Air, Fire, and Water. Use the Augments right after casting the corresponding Sphere. We will also use

as a timer for counting auto-attacks in

as this is our strongest auto-attack.

Start in
and cast
and
.
Swap to
and cast
and
, followed by
.
Swap to
and cast
and
, followed by
.
Swap to
and cast
. Use
until
has around 7-9 seconds cooldown left.
Swap back to
and cast
.
Repeat step 1

Step 3: Hammer Skills

All of your Hammer skills except

(Air 4) and

(Earth 4) are worth using in your rotation. Once you swap to an attunement, cast all good weapon skills in that attunement. You can use longer channels such as

to use your Hammer 3 and Jade Spheres as well as attunement swap during their casts. The rotation will look like this:

Start in
and cast
and
.
Use
and
during the cast, swap to
and cast
and
Once
finishes its channel, use
,
,
and
.
Swap to
and cast
and
, followed by
.
Use
,
and
.
Swap to
and cast
, followed by
and
.
Use
until
has around 7-9 seconds cooldown left.
Swap back to
and cast
, followed by
. Cast
once you have enough energy. Use
when it is back.
Repeat from step 2 (skipping the
as you already cast it in step 8).

You can focus on only using Hammer 2 in each attunement first if you struggle to press everything at once.

Note: Not all skills will always be off-cooldown in this rotation. It is usually worth waiting for the following skills (as all their cooldowns should be the same as

meaning you will not delay your rotation):

Step 4: Glyph of Storms and Conjures

The last skills we need to incorporate are

and

(as well as other Conjures if we're running any).

Cast

at the start of the fight in

. You will be able to cast it approx. every 3 loops in

In fractals, you will mostly use Conjures to precast skills at the start of the fight or between phases. The most important skills are

from

as well as

from

In a golem situation (long single phase, no Exposed to take advantage of), the highest damage is using

skill 4 and 5 in

instead of some

Precasting

If a Mistlock Singularity is present, you should precast boons and particular effects for better group performance.

As an elementalist, you have easy access to fire fields and plenty of blasts providing Might as well as

stacks. The amount of

you can stack will depend on how fast the rest of your group finish their precasts. With a slightly slower precast, you can prestack up to 5 stacks of

. However, in most cases, it is better to be faster and just go with 3-4 stacks

Start on
and cast
to provide a fire field. Alternatively, use an off-hand Dagger to provide a fire field with
.
Blast it using
.
If you started with full energy, you can swap to
and use
to prolong the duration of
.
Attune to
and cast
.
Attune to
and cast
. If you
Precast
and
. You can also precast
and then swap back to your regular utility skills.
Cast
.
Take the Mistlock Singularity.

It is recommended to use separate precast templates to cast different utility and weapon skills. Just make sure that both templates use the same traits to not get the status to reset on swap.

Extra Info

One possible way of adapting your rotation to your phase timing is skipping auto-attacks in
to get to your big damaging skills in
like
faster if the phase is about to end.
Try to move away from your target early if you know it will go Invulnerability like MAMA. Hitting an Invulnerability target with your Hammer 3 orbs will make them disappear which can confuse your rotation as you will not be able to cast
unless the orb corresponding to the attunement you are in is active. You will also lose important damage buffs this way. You can reset your rotation from this happening by using
in
if you notice it early enough so you can start over by activating
in
.