Hammer Catalyst

August 2023

Hammer Catalyst is a high damage duelist; its DPS on top of boon support from Depth of Elements allows it to be great even in larger fights where Elementalist typically suffers.

Build Fundamentals

Unlike typical Elementalist builds, hammer has a high focus on mitigating incoming damage rather than resustaining through it. Your best defensive skills are Fortified Earth, Conjure Earth Shield, and Immutable Stone. Upkeeping auras specifically Shocking Aura and Magnetic Aura significantly boost your sustain in most matchups, and frequently comboing into them can even win certain duels by themselves.

Catalyst also has a stricter attunement rotation than typical Elementalist builds, the majority of the time you will follow the pattern: Earth Attunement, into Air Attunement, into Fire Attunement, into Water Attunement, into Earth Attunement and looping from there. This is because it will generate you the most Shocking Aura and Magnetic Aura while also providing you the best setup for your damage in Fire Attunement, while at the same time providing you with the best ways to blast and combo your Deploy Jade Sphere for resustain.

Deploy Jade Sphere makes catalyst tick, your success will vary widely based upon how much energy you have and are generating. You won’t be getting auras, Stability, or condition removal without comboing through your jade spheres. Engaging with Conjure Earth Shield is a great way to build up energy when you don’t have any while keeping yourself safe. When you’re at your most vulnerable without energy, try to swap through your attunements while you’re holding your Conjure Earth Shield for additional energy.

Damage

The more damage you mitigate and the less you have to focus expending energy you worked so hard to generate on defensive jade spheres (Deploy Jade Sphere or Deploy Jade Sphere), the more you can spend that energy on offensive jade spheres (Deploy Jade Sphere or Deploy Jade Sphere), which will greatly boost you and your team’s damage output.

Most of hammer’s damage output will come from the Fire Attunement skills, however hammer can do noticeable damage outside of Fire Attunement too with skills like Hurricane of Pain and Cleansing Typhoon, and Conjure Earth Shield auto attacks. Standing close to enemies with your Hammer 3 orbs up also does sizable damage and generates a significant amount of energy, but is inconsistent due to the projectiles getting blocked or destroyed.

Resetting your Fire Attunement cooldowns with Elemental Celerity to unleash another set of Surging Flames, Triple Sear, and Molten End right after using them is one of the best things you can do to finish off a pressured or downstate target.

Sustain

Like normal elementalist builds, water fields and your Evasive Arcana’s Cleansing Wave are an important part of your sustain, and you can make great use of your Deploy Jade Sphere water field with all of hammer’s blast finishers. You can blast or leap through the field 3+ times consistently utilizing Crashing Font, Evasive Arcana’s Shock Wave, Ground Pound, Shock Blast, and/or Molten End.

As mentioned earlier, hammer catalyst focuses on mitigating incoming damage rather than just resustaining through it with water combos and the more you do it will boost your offensive capabilities.

Fortified Earth is a 3 second block that also will give you 3000 barrier to deal with whatever is thrown your way after the block expires. You can lower the recharge on Fortified Earth to a very low 16 second cooldown by casting Deploy Jade Sphere before or during Fortified Earth’s channel.

Deploy Jade Sphere is the most important jade sphere by far for your sustain and in general. It provides Resistance from Spectacular Sphere, Protection and can easily combo with your Evasive Arcana’s Shock Wave to give you:

• Magnetic Aura from Elemental Epitome which in turn will apply Stability from Staunch Auras and additionally removes a condition because of Smothering Auras.
• Area Weakness on enemies around you from blast finishing the poison field.

This is your easiest and best way of generating Magnetic Aura, and allows you to use other finishers in other attunements to get other auras, since you can’t with Evasive Arcana’s Shock Wave.

The 3 main ways you generate Shocking Aura will be casting Ground Pound from Earth Attunement as you go into the Air Attunement, casting Shock Blast in Air Attunement, and quickly swapping to Air Attunement before your Immutable Stone block is hit.

Anytime you get an aura you’ll cleanse a condition thanks to Smothering Auras. This is the way you keep conditions off of you when they’re applied slowly to you over time. The best way of dealing with a condi bomb is either Cleansing Typhoon which can cleanse anywhere from 2 to 6 conditions although usually 3-4, and Conjure Earth Shield’s #5 skill Fortify as most conditions will fall off during the 3 second invulnerability.

Other Tips and Tricks

Comboing in Air Attunement to get Shocking Aura and then pressuring with Fire Attunement skills is one of the best ways you can land damage.

Deploy Jade Sphere is instant cast, this means you can use it while doing anything else and even when stunnned!

You can swap attunements mid cast of your skills, and it is integral to getting proper value from some of your skills.

Elemental Celerity can be used in any attunement in the right situation:

• As mentioned earlier, resetting your Fire Attunement skills is great at helping you get a kill, but when chasing down enemies with your teammates, it can often be better to set them up for success by resetting Air Attunement skills to chain crowd control with Wind Storm and Shock Blast.
• Resetting your Water Attunement skills with Elemental Celerity can be a great source of healing and burst cleanse.
• Resetting your Earth Attunement skills is a great way of sustaining and is often better to do so proactively to mitigate damage in Earth Attunement than reactively resustain in Water Attunement. It will also help you maintain Shocking Aura and Magnetic Aura uptime.

You don’t get nearly as countered by Chilled, Weakness or Immobilize as other elementalist builds thanks to Spectacular Sphere causing Deploy Jade Sphere to apply Resistance. By the time the Resistance runs out the conditions will probably have run out or been cleansed.

Crashing Font will only heal you a lot if you hit a target with it; to avoid this being nullified by Blinded or Aegis you can use a jade sphere during or before the cast of it to remove those two effects. You can also use Signet of Air to blind enemies during the cast to keep yourself from being interrupted.

Swapping your Rune of Divinity to Rune of Speed can help you chase down kills if you find yourself sidenoding less or if you expect to sidenode less.