Was survival mastery ninja buffed?

[Deleted]

Regarding my comment about devaluing mastery, it's kind-of complicated to explain & this is based off napkin maths so bear with me here & I'll try to explain.

Imagine for a moment that MB had no cooldown and was infinitely spammable. There are still only a finite number of MBs you can get into the 14s window. This is essentially what Mastery is giving you at a high enough %age. Even with Mastery as low as it is on my gear I'm occasionally seeing this happen during AotE usage, this will be the case more often as haste increases pet attack speed and thus MB proc chances. Thus more Haste = less need for Mastery.

If MB was our only ability then increasing the frequency of what I'd call MB saturation as described above would be the gearing goal but we have other abilities, mostly DoTs, that are a net increase to our overall DPS. To maximise our DPS, we need to be doing something other than endlessly spamming MB*. These abilities take GCDs to cast so again, less need for our mastery to be providing enough MBs to fill every GCD.

*This is where the napkin maths come into play. I'm not 100% certain of this statement, it may not be true for pure ST dps.

Hope that made some sense!

[Sixel]

Because in no world will our mastery in it's current form ever be worth it. So any buff like this is just a nice bonus.

Just look at the mongoose fury window, it's basically meant to be a boost to our dps, yet it takes a long time to ramp up and even at 6 stacks it doesn't hit that hard. 6 global cooldowns to just do meh dmg. Why would you stack mastery to do meh damage?

Don't stack mastery. But this change gives us more burst windows. Yes it doesn't do a lot of damage, but the frequency in which we have these burst windows goes up which (I assume) would increase our overall damage since we aren't stuck outside mongoose bite windows as long.

- - - Updated - - -

Regarding my comment about devaluing mastery, it's kind-of complicated to explain & this is based off napkin maths so bear with me here & I'll try to explain.

Imagine for a moment that MB had no cooldown and was infinitely spammable. There are still only a finite number of MBs you can get into the 14s window. This is essentially what Mastery is giving you at a high enough %age. Even with Mastery as low as it is on my gear I'm occasionally seeing this happen during AotE usage, this will be the case more often as haste increases pet attack speed and thus MB proc chances. Thus more Haste = less need for Mastery.

If MB was our only ability then increasing the frequency of what I'd call MB saturation as described above would be the gearing goal but we have other abilities, mostly DoTs, that are a net increase to our overall DPS. To maximise our DPS, we need to be doing something other than endlessly spamming MB*. These abilities take GCDs to cast so again, less need for our mastery to be providing enough MBs to fill every GCD.

*This is where the napkin maths come into play. I'm not 100% certain of this statement, it may not be true for pure ST dps.

Hope that made some sense!

Okay I think I understand and it makes sense. So basically haste and mastery function as the same thing in a sense. And stacking both would result in a lot of lost MB procs since we will be filling GCD's with dots and such?

[Deleted]

Yep, I think you pretty-much got the essence of it, like I said, I've no maths to back this up & it's just a hunch at the moment.

Edit: I'm pretty sure what I said holds true for AoE in any case.

[Deleted]

No where did I say to stack mastery, but to assume that this somehow doesn't increase the weight of mastery is plan wrong. The amount of times you realistically are able to get to 6 mongoose fury, or even cast extra mongoose bites during a 6 mongoose fury is soo slim without Snake Hunter in a fight. With this buff this period drastically increases.

With the buff, Aspect of the Eagle now gives insane amount of procs with the 25% increase now working with auto attacks. It wouldn't surprise me that at a decent percent of mastery, you drop Snake Hunter and grab A Murder of Crows.

Doesn't help that a large majority of survival hunters followed the cookie cutter artifact tree, which is shows to grab the mongoose bite 3%(9% total) damage increase near last. I think you will be hard pressed to find a survival hunter with 3/3 in Sharpened Fang, with 3 relics for Sharpened Fang. Since I believe no one has taken the spec serious enough to warrant min maxing it.

I went that way at first, because I didn't like the cookie cutter spec. You know what happened? I wasted my AP, because ultimately it wasn't worth it. Did a respec and went the cookie cutter route and it boosted my dps massively. You always have to remember that while you imagine some things would be better this way or that way, the people have actually tested it and did the math. There's a reason the cookie cutter path exists, it gives you the most potential out of the spec.

Of course I also want the mongoose bite dmg increase though, these artifact talents are complete clusterfuck...

Also in order to get enough mastery so that you don't need Snake Hunter, you'd have to sacrifice crit/vers which will decrease your overall dps massively, while all you would gain is one not very good dps cooldown.

[supersnap]

I went that way at first, because I didn't like the cookie cutter spec. You know what happened? I wasted my AP, because ultimately it wasn't worth it. Did a respec and went the cookie cutter route and it boosted my dps massively. You always have to remember that while you imagine some things would be better this way or that way, the people have actually tested it and did the math. There's a reason the cookie cutter path exists, it gives you the most potential out of the spec.

Of course I also want the mongoose bite dmg increase though, these artifact talents are complete clusterfuck...

Also in order to get enough mastery so that you don't need Snake Hunter, you'd have to sacrifice crit/vers which will decrease your overall dps massively, while all you would gain is one not very good dps cooldown.

So the problem is you are basing your information on the little amount of traits you had when ever you did your respec (pre 7.1). If you had the same amount of traits, you would be missing out on raptor strike, and carve traits (post 7.1). Also the buff to mastery pretty much buffs the mongoose bite trait, for how much more you are casting the spell.

[Critocalypse]

It had to be buffed. Something is definitely better. When I get into my rotation and pop aspect, mongoose stacks are raining in like candy.

Here is from Wed night mythic nythendra where I hit 699k DPS burst damage off the start. *hint* im at the top of the meter in bottom right of screen haha

youtu.be/MBtWi9MHbq8?t=766

It wont let me post links since I just signed up (wtf policy). Anyways, just add the https in front of the url.

[Sixel]

It had to be buffed. Something is definitely better. When I get into my rotation and pop aspect, mongoose stacks are raining in like candy.

Here is from Wed night mythic nythendra where I hit 699k DPS burst damage off the start. *hint* im at the top of the meter in bottom right of screen haha

youtu.be/MBtWi9MHbq8?t=766

It wont let me post links since I just signed up (wtf policy). Anyways, just add the https in front of the url.

Yeah pet autos are affected by mastery now. I believe this makes haste our best stat (until roughly 20%) then crit. Someone did some napkin math about haste vs crit vs vers and it seemed to check out as I noticed a decent increase in my damage when I switched from crit/vers to a more focused haste/crit. Also I'm running animal instincts now as you can pump out a lot more flanking strikes which in turn gives us more mongoose fury windows

[Critocalypse]

I dont know about simulationcraft but I did verify with askmrrobot and they replied back and told me they did include the stealth buff for sv mastery in the last build.

[Sixel]

I wonder how much better mastery is now, we must summon @Azortharion

I don't think mastery is much better than what it is currently. However, I believe this makes haste very valuable to us. If you think about it, haste and mastery basically perform the same thing now as haste increase pet AS granting more procs. Haste decreases the CD on mongoose bite, flanking strike, and shortens the gcd while still generating mongoose bite charges. So overall haste is just a better mastery I would think.

[melzas]

I also noticed that fury of the eagle now adds few seconds to your mongoose buff, though I'm not sure if it was like that before 7.1 and I just never noticed (I find it hard to believe but it's possible). Anyone can confirm?

[Hiricine]

I also noticed that fury of the eagle now adds few seconds to your mongoose buff, though I'm not sure if it was like that before 7.1 and I just never noticed (I find it hard to believe but it's possible). Anyone can confirm?

Thats always been the case, the idea is to allow you to use it without "wasting" buff time, but its certainly useful to buy time for stacks to refresh while its channeling. Nothing better than chaining 6 MBs in a row, using flurry, then having 3 more charges ready at 6 stacks.

Of course, now that you can play the spec and basically be swimming in procs (especially if you're mastery stacked), the 6 stack mongoose bites seem a little underwhelming. Each one at 6 stacks (and Fury of the Eagle) should make you feel like you're the hottest dps in the entire game but it only amounts to like 80-90% of what the top specs are doing anyways.

[Ometius]

I also noticed that fury of the eagle now adds few seconds to your mongoose buff, though I'm not sure if it was like that before 7.1 and I just never noticed (I find it hard to believe but it's possible). Anyone can confirm?

It always added 4 seconds to mongoose fury.

edit: i lost

[GT4]

Did a quick test and growl/bloody screech still triggers the mastery so I'd expect it's all abilities + auto attacks now. Spiked Collar will now probably outweigh thunder stomp but you'll still want to go for a pet with mortal strike for the extra procs.

[awbaker]

Has simcraft been updated to reflect these changes?

edit: just saw azor's new pawn string updates for survival. ICYMI http://pastebin.com/EpdZ5Y3D

[Ometius]

I don't think mastery is much better than what it is currently. However, I believe this makes haste very valuable to us. If you think about it, haste and mastery basically perform the same thing now as haste increase pet AS granting more procs. Haste decreases the CD on mongoose bite, flanking strike, and shortens the gcd while still generating mongoose bite charges. So overall haste is just a better mastery I would think.

Well, it seems it is much better than it was before, seeing that haste, crit and versa are all sitting around 6.6 and mastery sitting at 5.25, with agi at 9.55. Makes MM/BM gear pretty good for Surv and makes scaling better.

[Typhod]

Well, it seems it is much better than it was before, seeing that haste, crit and versa are all sitting around 6.6 and mastery sitting at 5.25, with agi at 9.55. Makes MM/BM gear pretty good for Surv and makes scaling better.

This makes me happy. Aswell as Azor are now promoting WotMN as the best level 15 talent which completely reworks our rotation. Not that I didn't like our first one, but with higher haste levels and WotMN the spec feels to much more fluid now and even more engaging.