So to preface, I am relatively new to the ARPG genre, but I enjoy rpg games with character building. after finishing Last Epoch on my paladin I have been fooling around trying to make character builds when I came across a build for primalist that just made me feel bad.
I wanted to make a build using Upheavel, Fury Leap, Tornado, Warcry, Gathering Storm. (listed as I would place them on my ability bar.) and when I went to choose a mastery. I realized every mastery had large hiccup regarding their passives. Put simply, each mastery cares about having minions or transforming, and my build uses neither. To my knowledge, no other class suffers from this issue. each other class has a pretty generic option that allows them to use a significant portion if not the entirety of their mastery, no matter the build. or at the very least, the masteries have enough coverage between their three masteries such as the rogue.
This might just misplaced expectations. but my suggestion would be to allow one of the masteries to be more generic. As an example, shaman says “you are the storm.” So instead of having totem focused passives, give them more area focused passives to cover the battlefield with said storm. this would allow the passive to both cover new ground compared to the other two while remaining generic enough to use a significantly large portion of Primalist’s abilities. and of course, in this example, it isn’t like totem stuff needs to disappear. It would simply be moved to the shaman grid.
I feel similarly about the beastmaster tree being lackluster in that one of its perks is 1 extra companion, but if you run solo companion, which I do, you get NOTHING from this at all. And if you try to use ranged or spell minions or abilities(thorn bear) you get nothing from the +melee damage to minions bonus either.
Actually, if you’re talking about the mastery bonus, they kinda do.
Bladedancer’s mastery bonus is all about melee (+1 max shadows, that you get mostly from melee skills + Smoke Bomb, +15 melee damage & +15% more dodge, handy for a melee character), Marksman is all about bow skills & Falconer is 50% pet-based (+dex & +Falcon damage per level).
Void Knight mastery bonus is 50/50 melee focussed, Paladin gets a heal & damage buff (very generic) & Forge Guard gets more tank (woo. hoo.).
Sorcerer mastery bonus is all about spells, Runemaster is all about elemental (what about void!!) & Spellblade is all about melee (what about spells!).
Necro mastery bonus is all about minions (what about player-damage!), Warlock is all about curses (& a generic resist buff, but what about non-curse damage!!) & Lich is leech/player damage (what about mah minion Lich??).
As you can see, most of the other masteries have mastery bonuses that are focussed around a particular area, it’s not just Primalist. You can make a build that draws outside of those particular lines if you wish, but they’re there for a reason, to encourage certain build architypes that are favoured by the mastery bonuses. If the mastery bonsues were all generic, things would be boring AF (just remember PoE when everyone started in the middle!).
So while I get where you’re coming from, it’s not just Primalist & I disagree.
My idea wasn’t that the masteries shouldn’t focus around an area, but that the class as a whole, should have mastery bonuses that support most combinations of skills at their disposal. it is the only bonus that is locked in for the character. you can choose any 5 skills to specialize in, and put passive points into any passive grid. Obviously some skills and parts of passive grids are available only to certain masteries but that is more of a cool choice rather than a “feel bad” moment.
And that is the core of my feedback. I want my choice of mastery to feel good, not feel bad, as subjective as that is.
The primalist masteries still give you benefit if you dont use the minions. Beastmasters gain melee damage regardless, their companions just happen to get it too.
Shamans get attunement, a attribute they can use(Similar to falconer who gets a pet bonus, and a boost to an attribute)
Druid gets %health and mana regardless if they transform.
Like llama showed, lots of masteries dont get to access their full passive. Void knights only get melee void damage, spell void knights only get 50% of their passive.
50% elemental resistance is more than any piece of gear, I don’t know how much overall damage “50% melee damage” gives me and 70% DR, even for 2 seconds, would practically stop you from dying from practically any attack. It would be great if these things were entirely baked into the class, but they aren’t. they are a choice you make, and when you want to play a certain way, but are then forced to choose something you will never use -that would otherwise be build defining- it feels bad. even the skill you unlock from the masteries don’t feel bad because you already choose between your base class skills for what you want to use.
Edit: as for the void knight angle, the choice of void knight gives you access to half of the void spells to begin with, as well as echoing for said spells.
