Ok, this may be a bit of a rant thread, but I’d also like to argument on how underpowered Catas currently are.
First of all, Steed Charge is a plain horrible skill. I have no idea who thought 395% skill factor on a lv 15 skill would be good enough. Doesn’t matter it has 8s cooldown or if it’s getting an area buff in the future, it’s still weaker than auto attacks in most situations (considering you have sacra + blessing). The AoE atk ratio of this skill is also a joke (+1 only).
Impaler is a pvp only skill. It has nearly zero utility in pvm (aside from grabbing your party members in a duel and taxi them across the map).
Now onwards to the “important” skills:
Earth Wave has a good AoE area, but being a fake multi-hit skill with only 625% skill factor at lvl 15 makes it very lackluster. The skill factor needs to be twice as high or the skill receive one or two overheats. Look at Rodelero’s Targe Smash, for example: it has 608% factor but three overheats and also gets 150% damage improvement from Murmillo’s Cassis Crista attribute (skill factor per cast becomes 1520%!!)… Earth wave isn’t getting any boost from higher rank classes and it’s still much weaker than Targe Smash even without Cassis’ attribute.
Doom Spike needs some sort of debuff, like +20%~50% more pierce damage similarly to Spear Lunge to compensate for the lackluster skill factor at higher ranks. I saw it’s cast time is getting removed but that’s still not good enough. Spear Lunge itself hits much harder because of the two overheats and the fact the second cast is applied with the +pierce damage debuff. Spear Lunge is also a rank 4 skill, while Doom Spike is rank 5 (and still much weaker!!).
Rush deals a decent damage, but the sp cost is waaaaay too high. It’ll literally drain 40~60% my whole mana if I cast it for the whole duration.
Trot is okay as it is, convenient, but not essential.
Catas just have too little interaction with other class ranks. Another possibility for Doom Spike is to give it bleeding so that it combos with Skyliner. Earth Wave could gain damage from other debuffs (i.e. +100~150% damage while enemy is under Crush debuff or Dethrone debuff).
Right now, with my Highlander 2 Cata 3 Dragoon 2, I’d rather play unmounted so I can use Cross Cut + Skyliner and Cartar Stroke + Knockdown combos than play mounted and have marginal skill damage with Cata skills.