Mar 10
14
On the topic of masteries
Blizzard recently released a bit of information on the Mastery stat, a stat that I have been slightly confused about. The information clears up a bit of the confusion though, and while they only released examples, it does seem like an interesting concept.
Keep in mind that the information we have on masteries is very limited. We will have to make some educated guesses and then simply wait and see who is right, before we can actually start theorycrafting much. But lets take a look at what we do know.
The deal is this: The more points you spend in a talent tree, the bigger Mastery you get. Mastery is a talent tree specific bonus which will increase the core purpose of the tree. This, for example, was that holy priests will get general +healing and mana regen, and a sort of “fun” benefit as well. This new effect would cause their direct heals to add a HOT to the target as well, probably scaling with how big the heal was, and how much mastery the priest has.
A frost death knight would gain damage, haste and their funzies would be to gain runic power faster. If an unholy death knight were to spend some of his points in frost, he would still gain the mastery, but not as much as one who had filled in 50-some points into it.
The Frost DK comment made a lot of heat. People were pointing out that Frost DK’s had no need for more runic power, that the bonus seemed unnessecary, and would be far better in another tree. What me must remember, is that we cannot apply future bonuses to how the talent trees are now. We can expect a massive overhaul, and it would make no sense that Blizzard gave Frost DK’s a bonus to runic power, unless they made them more dependant on it.
And we must also keep this in mind for balance druids. We don’t know yet what it will be, and even if we do hear about the bonus ahead of time, we musn’t make the mistake of crying out against it if it doesn’t suit our current talent tree. When we get the mastery stat, we will also get different talents, so it will probably work out just great.
So what can we expect for moonkins? I surely have no idea, but I’d like to venture a guess. We will most likely see a flat damage and haste increase, that much is a given. But what could our funzies be?
- A languish type effect on our starfire and wrath?
This might be an idea, but it would probably be a bit weird for those of us using tier 10 as we level up. Two languish effects is rather odd to have up. It could probably work in level 85, as we swap our gear and lose the bonus, but it doesn’t seem feasable to have it when 4.0 comes out.
- Initial damage on our dots?
Probably a great idea, and a way to make sure we keep using our dots. “Upon casting moonfire or insect swarm, the spell will do x% of its total damage, in addition to its damage over time component.”. That could work quite well, and it would scale with the other masteries (damage %). Dots are currently a bit of a grey area – we can barely justify putting them up, and only because they can buff starfire and moonfire. But they should definately be a central part of our rotation.
- Increases the benefit from eclipse by x%?
I know, we rely a lot on eclipse at the moment, and Blizzard wants to change that. That being said, it will probably still be a vital part of our spec, and the buff is unique enough to make me cling to it like a baby clinging to his mothers teat. Increasing the benefit of eclipse (much like tier 8 did), could be an interesting buff, especially if they fix eclipse so that we don’t suffer as much when moving or when we otherwise can’t benefit from the proc.
- “But Qieth, we are already soft capped on lunar eclipse!”.
Sure, but things will probably change. Who knows if we will be having so much crit in level 85 with tier 14? Just like I don’t worry too much about getting +haste from our mastery stat, because we may just see a change to Nature’s Grace, or the gear we have. You must also remember, that we can use reforging to reduce one stat and increase another. It could very well be that if we reach a soft cap on any stat, just like I pointed out with spirit/hit, we can simply reduce it – if it works on combat stats – and increase something that is not capped.
Whatever it will be, I am sure looking forward to the mastery stats. It seems like an interesting option to have to choose between clear combat stats (crit, haste, spell power), or increase our mastery stat for the mystery buffs we will get. But for now, we can do nothing more but wait and see what Blizzard has in store for us!
) be anything that is not usefull in PvP. For example, straight buff to Eclipse wouldnt mean much for us, where as languish and dot critting would. As every one of our trees “must” be viable in pvp, so has to be every one of our “fun” masteries.
