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Power Catalyst

Power Damage Build
  • February 26, 2023
  • 16.16 min to read
Overview
Up-to-date

updated for the 11/29/2022 patch

Template Code
[&DQYfHSkbQyb+GgAAUAEAAPgaAAC+AQAAlwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]
Boons
Conditions
Role
  • Power Damage
Synergy average
DPS high
Independence average
Acquiring basicsdifficult
Achieving masterychallenging
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
.
  • Berserker
  • Berserker
  • Berserker
  • Berserker
  • Berserker
  • Berserker
  • Berserker

Any item with the same stats may be used!

Catalyst
Heal
Utilities
Elite
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
 Food
Utility
Build
Swap Weapons
  • Hammers with
  • Hammers with
  • Hammers with slaying sigils (see Cheat Sheet)
  • A staff to precast
    on some encounters
  • Weapons to precast Might
  • 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
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 3
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:
  1.
  5. Repeat
You will cast
in
after the first loop and try to minimize downtime before getting back your offensive buffs from
and
.
Empowering Auras
 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.
Hammer Skills
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
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.
Elemental Empowerment
 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
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.
  1. Start in
    and cast
    .
  2. Swap to
    and cast
    .
  3. Swap to
    and cast
    .
  4. Swap to
    and cast
    .
  5. Swap back to
    and cast
    .
  6. 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.
  1. Start in
    and cast
    and
    .
  2. Swap to
    and cast
    and
    , followed by
    .
  3. Swap to
    and cast
    and
    , followed by
    .
  4. Swap to
    and cast
    . Use
    until
    has around 7-9 seconds cooldown left.
  5. Swap back to
    and cast
    .
  6. 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:
  1. Start in
    and cast
    and
    .
  2. Use
     and
    during the cast, swap to
    and cast
    and
  3. Once
    finishes its channel, use
    ,
    ,
    and
    .
  4. Swap to
    and cast
    and
    , followed by
    .
  5. Use
    ,
    and
    .
  6. Swap to
    and cast
    , followed by
    and
    .
  7. Use
    until
    has around 7-9 seconds cooldown left.
  8. Swap back to
    and cast
    , followed by
    . Cast
    once you have enough energy. Use
    when it is back.
  9. 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
.
Information
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.
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
.
  1. Start on
    and cast
    to provide a fire field. Alternatively, use an off-hand Dagger to provide a fire field with
    .
  2. Blast it using
    .
  3. If you started with full energy, you can swap to
    and use
    to prolong the duration of
    .
  4. Attune to
    and cast
    .
  5. Attune to
    and cast
    . If you
  6. Precast
    and
    . You can also precast
    and then swap back to your regular utility skills.
  7. Cast
    .
  8. 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
    .
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