I’ve been thinking of this thought experiment in terms of LE and its various defense systems and how each one could pair with the current masteries thematically. I found it relatively fun and thought it would be interesting to see how the community would pair the masteries with the current defensive systems!
The primary idea of this is the following: Not too heavily taking into account the current pairings of masteries and defensive systems. How would you pair each mastery with the currently existing defensive systems within their passive trees?
I’m going to group similar defensive systems below into more general categories, if you feel like there should be different pairings or if I’m missing anything, just let me know and I’ll add them! There are some systems intentionally left out, the reasoning for that is further down.
The current masteries are the following (grouped by class):
Acolyte - Lich, Necromancer
Mage - Sorcerer, Spellblade
Primalist - Beastmaster, Druid, Shaman
Rogue - Bladedancer, Marksman
Sentinel - Forge Guard, Paladin, Void Knight
Now, here are some general structure/ground rules to this thought experiment.
You can only choose a max of two pairings per mastery.
You cannot have all masteries choose the same pairings (i.e. Everybody gets Vitality & Ward), try and get creative!
Remember that class masteries are shared to an extent, so synergy/common pairings could translate to stronger defenses (i.e. if a class’s two masteries have the Vitality pairing, that could mean a build with a stronger than usual Vitality defense)
Have fun with it!
I have intentionally left out some systems, such as leech. If I add leech, I might also add it with the concept that the Ward defensive system could also leech (which currently doesn’t exist as far as I know). This is also to keep the discussion largely high-level in concept without too much focus on the details or what’s currently implemented gear/affix wise.
Feel free to just post your pairings, or include some reasoning with your decision, I look forward to seeing what people come up with!
Easier access to resistances and critical strikes avoidance from mastery passives is also important as you can invest more in other defensive layers on your gear. SO I would give Shaman and Druiid access to crit avoidiance and some resistances (more generous than other masteries except for Palading) but no GB for him. It is out of his theme.
Those have also been left out intentionally for several reasons
Primarily, with resistances and CSA I consider both of those primary defenses that are the outer most layer and fundamental to any character/build in the game. You can argue HP falls under that category as well, but it is the dichotomy of Ward and also (currently) some classes have much more access to health increase passives than others. So I included it to help round things out
