Class Mastery Feedback – Healers & Tanks

1. Did Class Mastery help in providing a meaningful boost to power for playing as a solo class?

For support roles (healers and tanks), the system does not currently provide a meaningful increase in power.

Support effectiveness is measured through group impact, not personal output. Most Class Mastery passives are too passive, conditional, or low-impact to significantly affect real gameplay, and therefore do not feel like a meaningful power increase when playing without subclassing.

2. Do you feel this system helps in allowing for more player agency in a post subclassing play environment?

Not for support roles. Subclassing currently provides:

Reliable group buffs
Resource sustain
Strong, identity-defining utility

Class Mastery does not offer an equivalent level of impact, which results in a lack of real choice. Healers and tanks are effectively forced into subclassing because the opportunity cost of losing that group utility is too high.

3. What are the things you like about Class Mastery?

It brings a strong concept with potential for build diversity, an opportunity to reinforce class identity, and opens space for alternative playstyles.

4. What places do you think could use improvement with Class Mastery?

1. Utility is too weak compared to subclassing

Effects do not meaningfully impact group performance
Not strong enough to justify replacing subclass utility

2. Effects are too conditional or inconsistent

Health thresholds and niche triggers reduce reliability
Support roles need consistent uptime, not situational value

3. Lack of group-oriented design

Many passives feel like they were designed for DPS (self-focused bonuses)
Healers and tanks need group-wide impact, not personal gain

4. Passives are not role-defining and can be taken by DPS

Some utility passives are generic enough that DPS can take them with little tradeoff. Because of this, they are tuned conservatively, which further weakens their value for supports. This results in passives that are not strong for supports, but still accessible to DPS, creating poor role identity

5. Opportunity cost is too high

Losing subclassing means losing proven, high-impact utility. Class Mastery does not currently compensate for that loss

5. Any other general thoughts around Class Mastery?

For support roles, Class Mastery needs to meet a higher standard:

It should provide group utility powerful enough that a healer or tank could reasonably choose it over subclassing.

This can be achieved by:

Increasing group-wide utility, not just personal stats
Ensuring high uptime and reliability
Designing effects that are role-defining, not generic

Additionally, if certain passives are intended to serve support roles, they should be designed in a way that:

Either scales with healing/tanking behavior, or
Provides value that DPS cannot easily utilize

At its current state, the system feels overly cautious and sits in a middle ground where:

It is not strong enough for supports
But not specialized enough to justify being weak

As a result, Class Mastery does not currently function as a true alternative to subclassing for healers and tanks, and player choice in these roles remains limited.

Speaking from a PvE DD perspective, for the most part, the class masteries are really good and do a lot to fill the gap between pure class and subclassed setups.

Then you have Necromancer, with the options for DD being Nothing Wasted and Cycle Unending. Nothing Wasted feels decent, hard to judge. But Cycle Unending is quite lacking, a max damage bonus of 25% which will only be at max for 75% of the fight, which averages the damage bonus out to about 20%. Whereas you have Arcanist with Unbound Potential, which is a 30% damage done bonus all the time.

Taking the current top Necromancer parses, which are at just about 157k to 159k without the Pummeling Goliath ultimate which is very impractical to use, if Cycle Unending had a max of 50% Necromancer would still be a bit short of the current Dragonknight top parses which are at around 176k and 180k. Considering both these classes have a similar function in the DD role, slow ramp up, lots of cleave, Necromancer ought to be a lot closer to Dragonknight.

Another look at the Cycle Unending passive would be great as it is very lacking at the moment.

Parses referenced:

Ataskir wrote: »

Perhaps try not to get close to the raging werewolf?

This is what I was worried about. People want to 1 v 1 a werewolf during his rage ultimate in melee range and throw a fit when they lose. Instead of... you know, stunning the crap out of him because he still has no defense against that, using range, draining ultimate, and just disengaging for a bit until his ult is over (not the werewolf form but the ultimate in werewolf form).

You can also 100% dodge the channeled claw attack with just as much ease as you can beam, if not moreso because beam has range and claws do not.

Werewolves aren't wolves, they are half human, I feel like I'm going crazy haha.