He isnt you do. I dont get this idea why everything somehow has to have this impact on way how classes play. There is absolutly nothing wrong about having flat % dmg increaeses. Its RPG game. This kind of thinking is exactly what give us current boring items. Instead of having variety of stats to play with we have 2 primary + 2 seconday with primary stats being all set anyway and thats it. And we have it becouse people like you cried how stats do nothing but increase dmg and doesnt really have impact on how classes are played.
WoW at this point have one of the most boring gear stats of all games i have ever played including mobas. League of Legends items have way more interesting stats on items than freaking mmorpg.
Why have hit Blizz its just something we get to not miss. Why have spell penetration blizz? Why have resistance blizz its just boring def stat what doesnt alter my rotation.
i think you need to know what mastery came from
if you ever played classic wow, or any version of the game before wrath
talent trees were just a bunch of boring passives like +15 spell damage or gave absolutely necessary spells for your class to function
so, while moving away from that and changing the talent trees into what they are now, blizzard removed almost half of the talent in cataclysm, and only left the interesting ones so they would feel less boring
but then took all of these boring passives and made them masteries for these specs that you think their masteries and are just damage increases and made it a passive that scales with some pieces of gear
i do agree with you that you just end up forgetting about your mastery while playing your character, but keep in mind that even the boring ones don’t affect all of your spells, i play a warlock and demonology and affliction’s masteries only buff the pets and damage over time respectively, so it is something you actually think about while gearing your character for pvp for example
and i feel like if they change them then it’s going to offer little towards character freedom and just going to make rotations unnecessarily more complicated
I have to disagree with unnecessarily more complicated.
Enhancement mastery, elemental mastery, the proposed ret mastery that i did, do not make the rotation more complicated, they just make it more fluid and better from a gameplay standpoint.
About the point that immovabull made, i think artifacts could have been a great base to make a progression system. Power creep? Power creep is only a problem as long as it’s left unchecked, meaning that if you scale your enemies up to a level that is relevant to the power of players, power creep is not a problem, but you will get the benefits of a generally better gameplay loop that it brings.
So what would you rather have? A balanced game that is boring? Or a balanced game that is fun?
there’s no way this is ok. you’ll be progressing your character and everything scales up to you so it doesn’t do anything, it seems like staying the way you are with extra steps,
okay let me explain myself here, yes i do think elemental and enhancement masteries are cool but if you think about it , they are just passives that are allowed to scale with gear, so technically you can make any passive in the game a mastery and have it scale with gear, because you can have the passives if your spec needs them , but i don’t think it becomes cooler if it scales with gear, it’s the same thing, which probably still scales with gear indirectly in many cases.
That is completely fine, i never argued that masteries should dramatically change your rotation.
Not even once.
What i said is that stats in general, could and should be more interesting.
Progression is extremely important, it is not pointless, yea your relative power should stay similar, but the way you are playing, how it feels to play, changes dramatically.
For example, count the odds could become the outlaw mastery, or they could take inspiration from it. Etc…
If you don’t know what count the odds does it basically gives you a roll that you do not already have, if you proc it, for 5 seconds. It’s actually one of the better soulbind in my opinion, as it has an actual beneficial effect on the rotation, and feels really nice when you get that extra roll.
Mastery savant is decent i guess, as it does increase your rate of mana regeneration, which has a beneficial effect on the rotation other than just doing more damage, but it’s far from good.
Main Gauche isn’t the worst offender in my opinion, because even if it is nothing changing with the rotation, the fact remains an extra strike is more interesting than the “versa, but not” masteries.
Like affliction, like holy pally, like shadow priest, like destro lock…their mastery is simply “increase damage” albeit in many cases not for every spell because it scales slightly better than mastery - it’s boring.
Healer Masteries tend to be alright in general, priest ones are a bit meh (largely just “increase your healing”)
Shaman makes sniping low health more viable
Dudu mastery is essentially a playstyle
Holy pally chances how you play if you stack it v high
Monk, a bit generic however you can “play with” the mastery due to stuff like EF causing double procs which a mastery heavy monk will get lots more benefit from than one without, so it’s not quite as bad as the “versa by another name” ones.
Tanks - a bit oooer.
Blood Shield is kinda just “death strike is better at mitigating physical”
Druid is boring as heck
Veng isn’t amazing either
Warrior makes shield block better largely but allows you to make pretty nice plays with SB when mastery is super high (essential physical damage immunity) which is different to the other tanks “ur AM is a bit better in a smallish way lol”.
Monk is entirely passive but you can play with it with high mastery due to BoK granting the stack, allowing you to target dodges. For example my mastery has my dodge as BrM at 35%, if I have one stack active and I BoK, with my dodge and base parry that’s a 86% chance for me to avoid whatever the next hit is, which allows to me almost control hits I dodge - which is cool. If i have 2 stacks, then yes I totally control whether i dodge the next hit or not.
Pally is rather generic because you’re always in consec anyway
Yea, main gauche now that i think about it does provide some extra energy generation through combat potency, so it’s not as bad as others, but the idea is still really boring.
So far id say elemental shaman mastery is the best, then we have enhancement shaman, then we have the tier like ww monk mastery or arcane mage, or fire mage etc, cool, but otherwise don’t really provide a lot, and then we have the trash tier masteries, like frost dk, or unholy dk, etc.
For me main gauche would be infnitely better is the mastery increased the proc chance rather than the damage.
The damage should be a baseline amount scaling with kit (like for example 100% of a sinister strike hit) and the mastery increases the frequency of it occuring.
It would have the same damage effects - but would make mastery a good stat for energy regeneration.
At current wierdly every stat bar mastery actually causes main gauche to deal more damage, haste especially because haste increases the chance of it proccing which means haste grants the CP benefits too.
I would honestly do this, make outlaw mastery do something with roll the bones, as i said before, either make count the odds the mastery, or you could make it simply a passive ability, because it’s actually really cool, and does not clutter the rotation, while still providing cool benefits that you can feel, or it increases the effectiveness of roll the bones and gives you a higher chance to proc more rolls.
But your suggestion is also nice as it provides more energy regen, this is how the mastery used to work in legion for outlaw, but the scaling was so bad, it was the worst stat by a landslide, so they do need to increase the damage of the proc along with it, you could get to 100% chance easily, but the damage per point it provided was just too bad.
The one problem with mastery as a healer is that it focuses entirely on healing, leaving it lacklustre outside of progress raiding or PvP (if the healing boost is broken enough to make it overtake haste or versa).
In most cases where you currently can aim for mastery as a healer then you tend to be better off with versa since that also nets some additional use when dealing damage.
They sort of fixed this for tanks by letting it boost a part of their damage alongside a specific defensive component (it’s a very valid option over versa for prot paladins for this reason). For healers this still isn’t the case though since it only offers raw healing of some sort and it’s why it rarely becomes the secondary stat of choice.
I think one of the issues with masteries is that they just can’t be visually seen because many are a flat increase/decrease in damage/healing in some way. Sure a visual mastery could still be whittled down to something similar but at least you can see it in action which feels much better imo. For example an Elemental Shaman’s mastery shows you the procced ability repeating itself at 85% damage while a Frost Mage has a visualisation for the Icicles and also shows the individual damage for them when they’re hurled at the target.
Mastery works well for Resto Shaman as deep healing is smart
I changed crit/haste gear to mastery/haste gear and get larger heals - I know IV and other sites recommend other stats but they are not as smart as they think they are.
Note that once you get Mastery over 50% for deep healing you get bigger non crit heals at low health level than crits
Also Mastery avoids overheals when topping up when the tank is on relatively high health and crit might overheal massively
So, resto shammy crit fans, I got ya beat hands down with Mastery - bigger heals when needed, less overheal - sweet
Echo of Light: Smite, Chastise and Holy Nova now apply a DoT effect that scales (lesser)
Grace: Increases the damage dealt by Penance, Smite, Holy Nova and SWP for every Atonement active.
Deep Healing: Your LIghtning Bolt, Lava Burst and chain Lightning deal more damage to lower health targets
Harmony: Your Wrath deals more damage per magical dot on the target, your Shred, Swipe and Ferocious Bite deal more damage per bleed on the target.
Paladin: Your Judgement, Holy Shock, Hammer of Wrath and Consecration deal more dmg the closer you are to the target
Monk (rework)
Spinning Crane Kick: Base damage reduced.
Additional tweak: Damage from Spinning Crane Kick has a 3% chance per target damaged to reset the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick, calculated from a maximum of 5 targets being damaged.
Teachings of the Monastery: Each stack increases the chance for Spinning Crane Kick damage to trigger the reset by 3% and increases the damage of Spinning Crane Kick by 100%.
Gust of Mists: Your Vivify, Enveloping Mists, Renewing Mists, Revival cause a gust of mists on the target. Rising Sun Kick causes a gust of mists to heal the lowest health ally within 40 yds.
Additionally increases the chance for your Blackout Kick to reset the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick by (10% of current mastery value) and for your Spinning Crane Kick damage to reset the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick by (2% of current Mastery Value)
For example, i like divine purpose, it’s rng, but makes the rotation less static, while not feeling like you have no control over your performance.
Fire mage is also essentially rng, frost mage has some aspects with procs, those are all nice.
The only time rng is not good at all is when it’s makes you feel like you lose regardless.
For example i did not like roll the bones, because some traits were better than others and you could get from 1 to 5 rolls, but you would mostly get one, i think the best way to fix roll the bones is to make count the odds a baseline ability, and maybe to guarantee 2 rolls base, there are no 3 or 5 rolls, but you have count the odds, and maybe loaded dice, and to rebalance, especially grand melee, which is absolutely terrible.
Then the problem will be no more.
No rng in specs makes it boring in my opinion, way too static, nothing to look forward to, i absolutely despise base ret with no divine purpose and empyrean power. But if there is rng, it needs to have some mitigating factors so it doesn’t feel like things are 100% out of your control
TBH they should just remove grand melee, it’s absolutely pointless and Buried Treasure can go as well.
There is literally no situation where you don’t wish to reoll them asap. Grand melee is actually slightly better than BT because it at least causes you to stop worrying about slice and dice for a bit, but tbh other rogue specs get that mechanic baseline and much more controlled, so Outlaw should get it too (for example using RtB will grant X secs of Slice and Dice)
Broadsides is boring but you feel it’s power so it’s great.
True Bearing is nice because it speeds up ability use, very noticable.
Ruthless Precision is again passive, but felt a lot.
Skull and Crossbones is kinda a combination of Broad and RP in that it’s a passive “dmg and CP” type feel. It doesn’t feel terrible at least.
If not removal, proposed reworks:
Grand Melee - Increase your leech by X, auto attack damage by Y and main gauche receives an increased proc chance. This would increase the viability of mastery builds given mastery increases the raw damage of the proc.
Buried Treasure - For every Combo Point you spend during this effect, increase your Energy Regeneration by 1.5% for the remainder of the effect, increases the maximum amount of combo points you can store by 2 whilst active.
I would also rework the Outlaw Loaded Dice talent completely: selecting this talent grants two new abilities:
First ability: Rig the Odds - Only usuable out of combat, select from a drop down menu any one of the Roll The Bones buffs, which causes the Loaded Dice ability to correspond to this choice.
Second: Loaded Dice
1.5 minute cooldown (reduced by RB)
Off the GCD
Loads your Dice for 10 seconds. Your next use of Roll The Bones is guaranteed to grant you the specific enhancement chosen by Rig The Odds and increases the duration of any buffs rolled by the loaded dice by 6 seconds.
I would not remove them, i would just use your idea, which is frankly great. It would also be really cool if you could use up to 8 combo points with deeper stratagem and buried treasure, but even if it doesn’t it’s still way better than now.