/cheer Mastery Change

[Exclusive]

I think it will be like Blood Boil.
BB does x damage, extra damage vs targets with BP or FF
I think they'll do the same, like...

Increases your damage done to diseased targets by xxx%, each point of mastery increases the bonus damage by xxx%

[Jeleh]

Does it not bother anyone that it took 3 weeks of live before they finally did something about this? mastery was usless for uh long long before in the beta feedback was given on how pointless it was. Now they are gonna make it useful, boost our damage and we are gonna be doing even higher dps just through passive mastery meaning chances are we will need a nerf soon after.

Really bothers me how bliz just simply ignore some clear feedback thinking "nah live will fix it"

[Exclusive]

By the way, I see you all say "they're going to boost our damage with the new mastery"
But where did they say that? They litteraly only said:

Unholy DKs are another spec for whom mastery just isn’t working out.

It's not working out is something completely different than "because it's not doing enough damage" or "because the stat is very unwanted at the moment"

Don't forget, they actually did say we're high on single target, indicating they -might- actually nerf us, so don't be so sure the change will be an increase.

I kinda think it's the same thing as with the druid feral buff, the dots are getting too high, resulting in uncontrolable damage. In PVP for example, put up diseases on a non-healing class, run around for ages and just slow him, and he's dead. Kinda like old affliction warlocks, dot'n'run.
Another thing could be that they have to increase the numbers too much to make it wanted on low mastery levels, but at the same time it will increase too much at high mastery levels.

Not saying all of this is the case, just pointing out that you're all expecting a change which will increase our damage, while I really think it won't be.

[Deleted]

They prolly had more serious matters to fix before looking into balance , and we we're performing well even with our mastery being completely useless so whats the problem.

[Daljo]

Increases the damage of your spells and abilities that interact with or apply diseases by X%.

I think that would be the best course of action.

[Barael]

I think many people are missing the bigger picture here, thinking that they're getting a better/more powerful mastery without giving anything up in return. Unholy is already not only stronger than Frost but one of the strongest dps specs across the board; you are simply not going to get to eat your cake and keep it too. One obvious nerf target is Sudden Doom, which should be PPM-based like Killing Machine instead of flat percentage proc.

[im a deathnight :O]

no matter what... i reckon if this change makes it live... it will outweigh crit easily... and will probably be a bit higher to haste at a certain point... ie reaching 15% haste= mastery better... if ya get what i mean

[Deathquoi]

You're not understanding mate, they are making it to where the diseases you put on your enemy will activate your mastery, increasing your damage by say 5% for each of your diseases you have on your primary target and persist as long as your diseases are up on your target(s), stacking by 5% increased damage for every disease you currently have on your target and increase by say 0.5-1% extra damage as you gain points in mastery.

I UNDERSTAND THIS. I was correcting other people that were misunderstanding it. Jesus Christ.

---------- Post added 2010-12-31 at 08:56 AM ----------

By the way, I see you all say "they're going to boost our damage with the new mastery"
But where did they say that? They litteraly only said:

It's not working out is something completely different than "because it's not doing enough damage" or "because the stat is very unwanted at the moment"

Don't forget, they actually did say we're high on single target, indicating they -might- actually nerf us, so don't be so sure the change will be an increase.

I kinda think it's the same thing as with the druid feral buff, the dots are getting too high, resulting in uncontrolable damage. In PVP for example, put up diseases on a non-healing class, run around for ages and just slow him, and he's dead. Kinda like old affliction warlocks, dot'n'run.
Another thing could be that they have to increase the numbers too much to make it wanted on low mastery levels, but at the same time it will increase too much at high mastery levels.

Not saying all of this is the case, just pointing out that you're all expecting a change which will increase our damage, while I really think it won't be.

"Our current intent is to redesign their mastery so that their attacks cause more damage to diseased targets (in a similar manner to the Restoration druid mastery)."

Literally the very next sentence from what you quoted.

[Mothhive]

I think many people are missing the bigger picture here, thinking that they're getting a better/more powerful mastery without giving anything up in return. Unholy is already not only stronger than Frost but one of the strongest dps specs across the board; you are simply not going to get to eat your cake and keep it too. One obvious nerf target is Sudden Doom, which should be PPM-based like Killing Machine instead of flat percentage proc.

Yeah, it seems people are focusing on our Mastery being made useful and forgetting that we are considered to be doing too much damage already.

Removing our current Mastery will drop our disease damage, sure, but if like most people you've avoided or reforged Mastery wherever possible, our diseases don't make up an awful lot of our damage (about 12% for me with 10 Mastery last time I checked), so losing the approximately 50% extra disease damage would result in a tiny reduction in our DPS (only about 4% in my case). That means that they can't just give us a new Mastery and be done with it, as we'll still be doing too much damage, they'll need to retune (trying to avoid the N word here! :P ) our damage elsewhere.

So yeah, ner... I mean, retuning is definately on the cards, we just have to wait and see how they go about it.

[Deleted]

I get a feeling that they might only let the new Mastery effect Strikes (I.E Your Strike Abilities do X% more damage to diseased targets. Each point of Mastery increases the bonus damage by Y%). This coupled with a small nerf across the board to our damage would effectively kill DW Unholy, as the new Mastery wouldn't effect Auto Attacks, Death Coil or DnD, Dual Wield's most powerful attacks (DnD to a lesser extent.)

[Shelly]

Does it not bother anyone that it took 3 weeks of live before they finally did something about this? mastery was usless for uh long long before in the beta feedback was given on how pointless it was. Now they are gonna make it useful, boost our damage and we are gonna be doing even higher dps just through passive mastery meaning chances are we will need a nerf soon after.

Really bothers me how bliz just simply ignore some clear feedback thinking "nah live will fix it"

Not at all, truth is their beta testing in relation to game population is extremely limited and it's only once they have the bulk of their player base at the maximum level and doing stuff that they can really say where everyone is in relation to each other and more importantly in relation to where Blizz wants them to be.

Really just another day in a development cycle.

@Deathqui, see, this is why I always quote the person I'm responding to. Sure I still look like an idiot more often than I'm comfortable with, but it cuts down on being misconstrued.

[Exclusive]

"Our current intent is to redesign their mastery so that their attacks cause more damage to diseased targets (in a similar manner to the Restoration druid mastery)."

Literally the very next sentence from what you quoted.

Yes but it still doesn't say "we're going to change the mastery so Unholy DK's can do more damage"
They're saying what they're going to change, how they intend to fix our mastery, not that it's going to increase our dps.

[Nyanmaru]

I see all this talk about Blizzard talking about "we feel that" and "we think that" and "we may change" but nothing that's even remotely concrete. They just may nerf unholy by 10% and not change the mastery with the next patch. It's what their devs are talking about what may be changed rsp. what would be a good idea to change.

There hasn't even been an announcement what changes actually will be made just some random bread crumbs for the hungry masses. I'd be honestly surprised if we see any major changes in the next 8 weeks. Just don't be disappointed if what you imagined now because of those highly speculative words doesn't even remotely go live.

Don't cross your bridges before you come to them.

[Deleted]

Usually what they Blue Post about like that tends to be solid concrete changes they've decided to do, assuming further Internal/PTR Testing proves that X Y Z is bad and A B C is better.

Far as I can remember all the recent Blue Posts on Class Changes have happened, even if they took time. Or at the very least, they tried it with Internal Testing.

Even the Rune Strike change, took a while, we started questioning what happened to it but it did show up... 2-3 weeks later.

At the very least we know they're taking a look at Unholy's Mastery and they're doing Internal Testing on how to change it. Now one of three things can happen:
- They change it, it becomes decent.
- They change it, it remains fail because Blizztards fail. Again.
- They don't change it, it remains the same, because Blizztards fail. Again.

[Axethor]

I get a feeling that they might only let the new Mastery effect Strikes (I.E Your Strike Abilities do X% more damage to diseased targets. Each point of Mastery increases the bonus damage by Y%). This coupled with a small nerf across the board to our damage would effectively kill DW Unholy, as the new Mastery wouldn't effect Auto Attacks, Death Coil or DnD, Dual Wield's most powerful attacks (DnD to a lesser extent.)

This is a good prediction. Kills DW unholy, and it (hopefully) fixes mastery. Couple it with the slight nerfs to our damage to balance the buffs, and all will be good for unholy DKs, for now.

[BoomChickn]

I believe the mastery would rather be 8% base and 1% per point, as diseases would always be on your target and I believe one 1 mastery point should be about equal to 1% damage increase, like most ratings are before class bias.

[TeeZed]

I believe the mastery would rather be 8% base and 1% per point, as diseases would always be on your target and I believe one 1 mastery point should be about equal to 1% damage increase, like most ratings are before class bias.

This is what i'm thinking as well. They'll just balance out our damage with the other abilities considering we're already doing too much damage on bosses (Going off the front page)

It's already mentioned but what i think it'll do is balance our damage out by nerfing deathcoil but buffing other attacks therefore killing DW.

But this is Blizzard. They'll probly move NoCS down the tree and keep everything the same.

[Deleted]

Moving NoCS down wouldn't kill it entirely I believe.

[Emothianes]

Im still looking forward to see what kind of dps increase this will give us. They said that they feel unholy is a bit to high, i think that is because of DW unholy. So this may end up being a dps increase.

I would argue Unholy's real OPness comes from how well the ghoul scales, for a pet their dps is just incredible with dark transformation up

[Deathquoi]

Yes but it still doesn't say "we're going to change the mastery so Unholy DK's can do more damage"
They're saying what they're going to change, how they intend to fix our mastery, not that it's going to increase our dps.

Well, part of the dominance of unholy is probably due to DW being too good right now. I agree with you to an extent, I don't know why players are hellbent on mastery being a good stat, it really makes no difference aside from the amount we're forced to take due to suboptimal itemization.