Do you like "mastery" as a stat?

[Selah]

I want to like it. I really do. It has huge potential to be an awesome stat, problem is that for a lot of specs it isn't good enough to warrant reforging or gemming into. Everyone jams all they can into their primary stat (e.g. agi, str, int) and then their hit, then expertise, then their highest priority secondary stat. Hit, expertise, dodge, and parry needs to be removed. Every expansion, near the final patch, I end up with way too much hit and expertise and can't reforge down close to the cap. Right now for example my main is a WW Monk, I'm sitting at 8.7 hit. The cap is 7.5, but I can't go any lower than that, so I'm wasting 1.2 worth of stats on hit unwillingly, stats that could be used in crit. Same problem with my tanks, or I end up with to much dodge and not enough parry.

[Deleted]

Some masteries are good, others are boring. I like ones like elemental shamans' mastery, but flat % increase ones like the guardian armour increase mastery are very dull.

Everyone jams all they can into their primary stat (e.g. agi, str, int) and then their hit, then expertise, then their highest priority secondary stat.

This hasn't been true since Cata. Most of the specs I play gem for secondary stats rather than primary stats.

[Asphyxiate9]

I wouldn't mind if the dropped hit and expertise for two more interesting stats similar to mastery.

[Kelimbror]

I think mastery is pretty subpar design wise. The intentions were good, but in reality it feels no different than any other stat. I think it would be much more compelling as a stat that could only be enchanted or reforged, but didn't drop on gear. I know that sounds crazy, but then they could make it the best stat for every class, which is more in line with how it sounds it should be.

Why go through all the trouble of designing different mastery effects if some classes can effectively ignore it? It seems to be completely opposite to the intentions of its design. Additionally, it would be nice to add some cosmetic flair to mastery in this scenario. When you use an ability affected by mastery, just give it a little visual pep based on how much mastery you have.

The better your gear, the higher your mastery could be. For example, a Frost DK could have standard looking spells at 1000 mastery, maybe get some snow flurries added at 2000 mastery, maybe start to become coated in ice himself at 3000 mastery, ultimately giving the highest visual coolness at the end tier levels of mastery.

If they wanted to make it even crazier, they could add mastery rating as rewards from personal accomplishments like Brawler's Guild or Proving grounds, to add an additional mode of progression to the game. This way maybe you don't raid, but you can still improve your mastery (read: don't have to get new gear) in order to improve your character.

I mean, they should call it mastery for a reason. Let it be a show of you mastering your class, not just anotehr secondary stat to add to a pool.

[Sajek]

Mastery is another stat to play with and it's different not only for every class, but every spec as well. Crit/haste is a lot more straightforward and pretty boring. Gives more options and you can toy with a crit build or mastery build or whatever. And with reforging, you're not entirely pigeon-holed into any 1 thing depending on what gear drops. To some extent of course.

[endersblade]

As a stat I like it, but I don't think they've done it any real justice. Just passive damage/block boosts is lame. They should do things like what relics used to do, different unique abilities or procs or something like that.

[Deleted]

Yes it is one of the better improvements this game has received and definitely a step in the right direction but it's not enough, customization options are still lacking.

[Deleted]

Never liked it. It diminished the importance and fun of haste and crit for no apparent reason. It just bloated the game in yet another pointless way. I also think resilience, pvp power and battle fatigue are stupid.

Let me guess, you're a holy paladin?

[Rivin]

If you are going to make me dig through old blue posts, I will if forced. But hopefully other posters here will back me up that the original stated intent for mastery was (to paraphrase blizzard):
To use as a dial to tweak class output.

It hasn't worked out that way. Hence my conclusion that it failed its goal.

It was going to be that dial to mess with back when it was a flat increase for everyone, tied directly to spending points in talent trees. Mastery was completely changed when the Cataclysm talent trees were announced, and at some point during beta Blizzard realized that using the spec passives for tuning was a much better idea.

[Ossandran]

I don't have any particular love for it, I think it over complicated things really, but then again I don't like reforging either, I always liked that you had to get your BiS piece sorry haha

[Redpanda]

Never liked it. It diminished the importance and fun of haste and crit for no apparent reason. It just bloated the game in yet another pointless way. I also think resilience, pvp power and battle fatigue are stupid.

bloated the game? you remember they removed mp5 and armor pen among a few other stats in favor of a simple system your main stat, haste crit mastery and call it a day

[Deleted]

I like the idea, but it is overshadowed by the lack of the "kontrol knob in pvp" they mentioned. Now I am fine with it.

[Vladimeir]

On the sake of complexity vs complicated, mastery is too simple and it feels fairly binary. You either want it or you don't depending on your spec. Occasionally after certain gear points, it changes status however, more often than not, if mastery changes to something you want its because of a buff or a nerf.

It just leads to boring gear choices. Epics have Armor, 2 core stats, 2 secondary stats. Core stats are obvious. Secondary is a choice between 2 of 3 (hit and expertise are bland as well because for every class, capping hit is priority in regards to secondary stats.)

As mentioned prior, mastery failed at its goal and its boring.

My solution would be to add more random procs to gear (Have them equal the average dps value of the scondary stats it replaces) and bring back things like elemental spell power that "forces" changes to specs and playstyles like the tier sets do.

Also, mastery would probably be a lot more worthwhile with an item squish where numbers are a lot closer together and a few points here and there of a stat are actually meaningful.

[XyroN]

Yes, I like mastery as a stat. The game wouldnt be as good without it.

[DrMcNinja]

Let's all forget the abomination called Armor Penetration and how Warriors cried out loud when it was removed whilst Ret paladins and enh shamans cheered.

[Abstieg]

Let's all forget the abomination called Armor Penetration and how Warriors cried out loud when it was removed whilst Ret paladins and enh shamans cheered.

MP5 wasn't a fun stat, either, and never felt quite right.

[cmennare]

On my Destro lock I love mastery, it completely removes the RNG that crit provides. More mastery and all of my spells are going to do more damage, that is huge. I wish I could increase the amount of hit that I can re-forge off of gear to mastery, even if the gear already has mastery on it. So much of my lock gear has hit on it that I cannot get below 18%. Being able to completely remove hit would be a big help.

Now my Prot warrior is a different story, I like the old defense system better, once you reached the "cap" you could continue to put more defense into gear and truly increased overall damage avoidance. I believe the combat table went defense rating, dodge, parry, then block and armor, this meant that with a really high defense the chance that the boss just plain missed you was greatly increased, my healers loved that shit. Too bad it only worked on melee damage.

[Andyo]

No, it's boring. I'm a Holy Paladin.

[fangless]

You could remove all of your mastery and put it into crit, and likely never notice a gameplay difference.

Largely, all the stats are like this, short of Haste. Haste is the one stat that you'll always notice if you go from 0 to 100% reforge/gem.

[cmennare]

I have never gotten into the whole pvp thing so resilience and pvp power have had no meaning or benefit. Though I do like that I can blacksmith some pvp gear that is decent enough that people actually buy it on the AH. Gold is always good. Especially for repairs on my tank after raid night.