Catalyst - Fresh Air Cata Roamer

• Catalyst - Fresh Air Cata - sPvP version of the build.

A Catalyst take on S/F Fresh Air builds for WvW Roaming. This iteration of the 清新气流 archetype offers high damage/mobility and lots of boon variety along with plenty of aura synergy while bringing the usual burst damage to the table.

Skill Variants

Utility

• 空气纹章 over 大地护甲 - 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 stunbreak. The Signet's 目盲 could also be used proactively to avoid incoming attacks.

• 秘法波动 over 电光火石 - as a mobility/defensive CD 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

• 再生纹章 - could be better if you can afford to give up some cleansing.

• 幻光恢复 - removes more conditions than your current healing skill, but it gets interrupted much more easily due to the long cast time (in which case it goes on full CD).

Weapons

• Off-hand Dagger over Focus is also a viable option. This variant has more damage and better mobility but overall worse survivability due to the loss of skills like 黑曜石肤.

Second set: you may have noticed a Focus on the second set, this one's for the tryhards. While Elementalists can't swap weapons in combat, they can still stack Bloodlust on random PvE mobs before fights using the second set then switch back to the first set once they're ready to PvP. The Bloodlust stacks will remain active without the need to sacrifice a sigil slot on the PvP set. It's enough to put 1 weapon into the second set as they'll inherit the missing one from the main set. If you have no intention to stack Bloodlust before fights then you don't need the 2nd set! It's not mandatory.

Equipment Changes

Runes

• 超级破法者符文 - bit cheaper option with better survivability.

• 超级兽群符文 - lower burst damage but higher consistency and better uptime on important boons. Add a Diviner backpiece and you can hit 25%+ boon duration.

Sigils

• 超级空气法印 with 超级鲜血法印 could boost your damage, but it's very greedy. The build already has no shortage of damage but the sustain is quite low, sacrificing even more sustain for extra pressure is generally not needed and not recommended.

Relics

• 萨奇洛斯古物 - converts some of your outgoing damage into healing, offering better passive survivability.

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 强能元素.

• 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 空气协调 every few seconds, made possible by 清新气流 which recharges Air whenever you land a critical strike.

• Swapping to Air triggers 电力激发 which you should immediately follow up with a 闪电打击 for instant burst damage. Entering this attunement also grants you Ferocity from 清新气流 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 弧光闪电 just before leaving 空气协调. Swapping attunements doesn't break the channeling and Arc Lightning is almost guaranteed to critically hit at least once.

  • 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.

• This build can self-stack 威能 by blasting the fire field created by the Fire Jade Sphere and 烈焰之墙. Do not prioritize Might stacking, but do take advantage of the incidental opportunities which arise. Your blast finishers are:

• 巨龙之牙
• 浴火凤凰
• 寒冰彗星
• 磁力脉动

• 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.

• 's main purpose is to reduce/reset the CDs on and for extra sustain, but if you want to get greedy it could also reset burst and CC cooldowns of other attunement skills.

• Gaining an aura grants you 1 stack of . The first combo you perform in a given attunement always grants you an aura via .

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:

1. Drop your Fire Jade Sphere to passively begin stacking .
3. ⇒ for Might and AoE damage in melee. Both Transmute Fire and Dragon's Tooth have a delay, your goal is to swap to Air by the time these skills go off.
4. - optional: right at your target before you finish casting Phoenix to make it near instant.
5. - swap to this just before Phoenix is about to hit the target.
7. to avoid/mitigate incoming damage, but it's not required

From Earth:

3. Optional: if you're in melee range of an enemy you may throw in a which can proc if it hits something.
4. + 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:

2. - the trident does more damage to Chilled enemies which is important. Shatterstone should secure that but can do the trick too.
3. 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

• makes it easy to kite most specs. Avoid melee range whenever you can!

• is a source of spammable which you can even place behind your back when running away. Chill is great at building distance.

• Needless to say other CCs can also be used for shaking off pursuers.

• 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.

• The build doesn't havy many condi cleansing options, but all of them are quite powerful:

  • is instant and can be used while stunned. You can even reset its CD with the elite if you need to cleanse twice.
  • is just as good as Magnetic Wave (and trigger on attunement swapping), but with 4 attunements this is a bit random. You have very little control over this one, although it doesn't hurt to try and swap attunements if you're pressured just to see if it procs.
  • is slower than your other condi removals, but cleanses more conditions overall. Using it inside the Water Sphere reduces its CD, which is a nice bonus but not something you can always afford when in trouble.

• offers protection against all kinds of pressure.

• is great at avoiding crucial skills by blinding enemies, and it also shuts down Power-based specs in general with the Weakness.

• The first hit of blinds enemies.

Food

There are plenty of viable choices:

• 黑胡椒粉真空烹调肉排 - passive damage mitigation and great stats.

• 碗装甜辣冬南瓜汤 - highest damage non-ascended option.

• 巨龙甜甜圈片 or 怪异莓幽灵 - armor ignoring damage/healing procs plus extra Precision which is one of the most important stats to have.

• 碗装欧尔松露鲜肉煲 - defensive option with more evasion.

Utility

• 强效超级磨刀石 or 罐装水果蛋糕, whichever is cheaper (note that the sharpening stone lasts twice as long).