Enhancement Catalyst Salvage

Overview

Enhancement Catalysts are special salvage pieces that allow a player to increase the effectiveness of an enhancement. Catalysts are obtained from Super Packs, from the Reward Merit Vendor, and also as rare drops on a 20 hour cooldown for characters once they have reached level 50.

Currently, only Archetype Enhancements (ATE) and Winter Origin Enhancements (WOE) utilize this function:

• Attuned enhancements in these sets will become the "Superior" version with improved enhancement values and set bonus values.
• Catalyzing ATE/WOE enhancements for a character below 50 can be done, but the finished "Superior" enhancement cannot be slotted until you reach Level 50.

For any sets outside of these, the set bonuses and names do not change at all.

Note: Standard and Catalyzed Enhancements do not contribute to each other's Set Bonuses. Having two standards and one Superior of the same set will not count as a 3-slotted set, but rather a 2-slotted standard and 1-slotted Superior.

Sometimes, intentionally frankenslotting this way may be useful. For example, Corruptor Scourging Blast and Defender Vigilant Assault both offer a 6.25% global recharge bonus for slotting 3 of the set in one power and can be stacked with the 10% global recharge bonus from slotting 3 of Superior Scourging Blast or Superior Vigilant Assault (in the same power as each other, but not necessarily in the same power as the 3 non-Superior ATOs). As the set "proc" effectiveness is increased when catalyzed it would be advisable to include the "proc" IO in the 3 Superior IOs slotted.

Description

1: In the Manage Enhancements screen, click a power to reach the combination screen.
2: To catalyze a slotted enhancement, click the enhancement, then the catalyst to the left.

This salvage can be combined in the Enhancement management screen, with a suitable slotted Enhancement if the character is level 50. This will result in a superior version of that Enhancement that has significantly improved stats and set bonuses.

To use this salvage, enter your enhancement management screen. Click on the power that contains the slotted enhancement. Once in the combine screen, click on the enhancement you wish to upgrade. This will cause the enhancement to slide into the left combine slot and will cause the Enhancement Catalyst salvage to appear in this screen. Click the Enhancement Catalyst to cause it to slide into the right combine slot. Click Combine to complete.

Attunement

Editor's Note:

Using catalysts to attune enhancements is not recommended.

A Catalyst can also be used to make an IO Attuned. The process is the same as for catalyzing an Archetype Enhancement or Winter Origin Enhancements.

The reason a player might want do this is to bypass the -3 level Exemplar limit of Set Bonuses and Global Enhancements, as well as being able to slot an Attuned IO at a lower level and not have to reslot it with higher ones later until you reach Level 50. This has one obvious downside of sunk costs if doing it on more than a handful of IOs (as opposed to slotting origin enhancements and using Upgrade). In addition catalyzing enhancements is almost always more expensive than unslotting the one you have got, selling it, and buying an attuned IO from the Auction House.

This is actively harmful on PvP IO Sets and, at Level 50, Very Rare IO Sets which get no benefit from attunement. In addition procs in IO Sets ignore set bonus Exemplar rules without attunement. This makes catalyzing a proc unnecessary to retain the proc chance when teaming well below the Enhancement level.

On Boosting

Attuned Enhancements cannot be boosted and vice versa. ATEs and WOEs can only be boosted without catalysts; the Superior versions of those sets will never take Enhancement Boosters. Once an enhancement is catalyzed, to replace with a boosted enhancement of the same type and kind, the catalyzed enhancement must be unslotted (or replaced at a loss) with a fresh one to boost instead.