The 3 Best/Worst Mastery Classes Currently 0.8d

Hey everyone!

Lets discuss which mastery classes have the best trees and which ones need work! Here’s my thoughts on the Best and worst 3.

What are your thoughts?

Video

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I’m surprised you didn’t go with Spellblade as one of the better ones.

Awesome video! Hope to see a lot more of this kind of content. This is stuff that encourages constructive feedback A LOT!

I’m absolutely ok with your choices, while I haven’t played a Beastmaster beyond lvl 35, yet. I can’t say why… So maybe instead of BM I would have chosen the Spellblade. Since the revamp the Spellblade is bleeding synergy. I like that added defensive stuff with ward as well as the new fire aura mechanic.

When I saw your worst tree, the FG, I was like “W000T???” l. But your explanation makes sense. It got a revamp recently along with the Spellblade (if I remember correctly). But the clear identity is missing. I wanted to make a build or redo my old FG. But I turned to more appealing build ideas on other classes and haven’t gotten back.

The old tree was old, but more straight in its identity. Now it’s all new but it doesn’t come together as it does with other trees.

Again, great vid and good points!

Some of the better trees are Lich and Marksman. Both with unique mechanics and lots of synergies with skills and absolutely fitting their themes.

On the boring side for me are Sorcerer and Paladin. Both viable and rock solid, but nothing fancy.

Cheers! :v:

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Spellblade does indeed have a nice synergetic tree. Beastmaster definitely starts to feel better after level 35, it really comes together level 60+ when you start to have all the aspects benefiting you and your companions.

Yeah its why it made it to the top, even more devastating is that its a newer tree so its got me worried.

I am glad to see necro tree made it in the worst list. It and the minion skill trees need big improvements. I hate how in comparison to BM and companions necro minions have little to no synergy outside of themselves. I hope to see improvements on Necro someday though.

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Forge Guard should be rebuilt/redesigned into a Thorns/Reflect Damage class with lots of Taunt abilities. Since Thorns/Reflect is jacked up in that it is post-mitigated damage reflected, maybe the Forge Guard could focus on Health and Health Regen and DoT mitigation as its defensive mechanisms. Taunt will be a useful ability in the multiplayer future hopefully as well.

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Except they don’t want a passive play style that a straight thorns/reflect would engender. So you’d have to make it a more active play style (like Blizz did with the Involker’s set). Add some nodes on the skills that give a buff to thorns/reflect damage for X seconds after using the skill, make thorns/reflect AoE with some other skills, etc.

IMO, the Pally is the health/regen mastery, Forge Guard would be more armour/minions (and dare I say it, throwing attacks).

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I might be a small fish in this pond, but to be honest I hate the Spellblade and Sorc trees. The reasons are (and remember, this is just my thoughts):

  1. There is 0 reason to mix trees. If I’m a sorc, all the SB stuff is melee, and no good. If I’m SB, all the stuff is casting, which is no good.

  2. However, there are skills I want on the other side. If I’m a Sorc, I’d LOVE to get that static skill. If I was a SB, I’d LOVE to get flame shield (I think it’s called, I forget) and play that. The problem for me is as BM1 mentions with the Druid and FG; there’s no synergy. The reason I don’t think they are bad classes though is that they are fun and interesting, but…

  3. …My last grip with Sorc/SB is the skills. Look at the ladders, how many builds are Flame Ward + Teleport + Focus + your two favourite attack powers? Maybe drop one of those for Enchant Weapon for the SB, that’s about it. It’s too predictable for me.

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I like what Grim Dawn did with having attacks that used your damage reflect. Maybe the Shield skills could have nodes that add your reflect damage to it. Typically, reflect doesn’t work on ranged attacks/ranged spells that hit you, so that is where the active playstyle comes in.

I don’t want it to be passive either, but there seems to be much more passive builds already in existence. Even more if you count the numlock trick.

If you really wanted to get into the name “Forge Guard”, it sounds to me like a class that would focus on animating weapons/armors and be a general minion class. “Paladin” would be more about “retribution/vengeance” with thorns/reflect.

On that note, I also feel like Druid should be able to build a thorns build (briars and such) and maybe like the Necromancer (bone armor kinda thing), or Lich (spell damage reflect maybe?). Thorns/reflect should be viable in different ways for multiple classes.

You are right with the mixing of trees. SB and Sorc don’t mix very well. Only synergy is when you go for a spelldamage SB that focuses on procs like from static, mana strike and fire aura.

But that isn’t that important for me personally. Rogue also has no great synergies between the Bladedancer and Marksman tree.

You’re absolutely right, would be cool to have synergies that encourage mixing. But that only would be the cherry in the cake. When I choose a mastery, I’m ok with being mainly connected to its specific tree.

There are and always will be dominating meta builds in ladders. If you only look at these builds to rebuild it and being most effective, your going to miss a lot of really cool builds. Many people tend to look at the ladder and think these are the only viable builds, when this are just the most effective to use in a competition. But from my experience there are many many other builds that can beat the content.

I get your point. Variety is absolutely desirable. But I doubt that in a game with this complexity its is not possible to balance classes or even different builds at that level that is needed to make them competitive. And don’t let the ladder snapshot influence you too much :grin:

Teleport/movement skills are fun to use in every character and will be in like 95% of peoples builds. I can’t see a mage without teleport, a rogue without shift or a Sentinel without lunge or shield rush, ever. And I can’t see any balancing measures that may make these skills obsolete.

Naa, You opinion is as important as everyone else’s. And don’t worry. If your opinion is wrong we’ll gladly jump in to correct your point of view and convince you to agree with us! So keep it coming :laughing:

:yum:

More talking = more diverse perspectives = better game!

I just want to add to this, that theres no synergies needed here because there is so much eye candy inside of each respective tree you dont want or need to waste points in the unmastered class.

Where as with Sorcerer there isnt as much eye candy so you find yourself then looking in the bottom half of spellblade and you see some fire aura candy.

IMO while some hybrid build will work building from more than 1 tree, i feel all mastery passive trees should be good enough and have enough eye candy you dont want to build hybrid unless its because your trying to do a build or hybrid build outside the Identity of that mastery.

For example what i mean if its confusing

Marksmans Does an excellent job of being all about the bow build synergy. Bows are definitely its mastery identity. However if you want to do bow and shadows ( Maybe shadow with shift and throw acid flask for poison bow chance?) you might go hybrid and take some shadow damage in the bottom half of bladedancer, but this isnt because Marksmans doesnt have a ton of eye candy its because you went off the reservoir on the identity of the mastery. I enjoy hybrid builds like this im not saying there bad at all. I think bladedancer/Marksmans are perfect and other classes should follow there style.

TLDR - SB and Sorc need to be more like BD and MM.

Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at (and thought about after I put in this post, and ty for clarifying).

Same BM synergies have made me put my necro on hold, necro just feels so ARPG 2000 and teenie now than 2020’s

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