There are a couple good passives for pure DK tank. Past that I haven't seen anything noteworthy in the class masteries. Certainly nothing significant enough to out compete a subclassed build.

Complete waste of developer time versus just advancing the reworks. Kind of like how Vengeance was a complete waste of time.

Solved nothing, made less builds competitive, and subclassing is still better in every single way on templar and necro because the skill lines themselves suck and both classes don't have access to slottable major savagery and other buffs in singular skill slot (and no Innerlight / expert hunter does not give major savagery on both bars).

Then the masteries will somehow justify other nerfs, despite the fact that it's only a buff IF you choose that mastery. They are likely to adjust skills and passives that interact with the masteries. When that happens, it will mean that it's ultimately a nerf under the guise of a power increase.

Ultimately a dissapointing waste of time.

Overall I like the Class Masteries as it is most certainly a step into the right direction, however the implementation details are questionable. I'm unsure whether it is or is not supposed to..

• mitigate subclassing (as it did not, subclassing is only on par with WWs today)
• introduce balance between revamped and to-be-revamped classes (as it did not, DK is still superior)
• bring balance between classes (as it did not, the unlockable passives are ridiculously imbalanced)
• have a selection for all roles (as it did not, it only has selection for DDs)
• revive class identity (it kinda did, brought back some stuff disabled in the past its cool to see them again)
• add flavor and depth (it did, but I the palette is not covering all that those classes are meant to be capable of)

.. so I think it is a work in progress kind of thing. I don't know why it is a WIP as it was under testing on PTS for quite some time, and e.g. Arcanist is clearly underpowered (and at the time of writing even bugged) even in the Class Mastery passives. It made sense to bring some of the OP DK stuff into the Class Mastery system, as for Templar and Necro I think they are thematically cool, Warden and Nightblade I'm no that familiar with.

It's a decent idea as a temporary measure until reworks are done, but some have been made far too strong. We're in a Sorcerer meta and they haven't even been reworked yet. It is entirely because of class mastery passives.

The difference in design quality between masteries is crazy. Some are ultra-niche with barely any effective use cases, others are god-tier universalists. They are blatantly unfair. In my eyes this was the worst combat update since U35. If it hadn't been for the unadressed issues subclassing created and more players would evaluate U50 in isolation, it would probably be pretty clear how unbalanced this update was.

Templar could have been a lot better.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

subclassing is still better in every single way on templar and necro because the skill lines themselves suck

This is so wrong though lol.

Necro is better than it's been in years thanks to the class masteries. It actually has an identity in PvP now, and is very competitive in both PvE and PvP.

Yeah, I actually like playing necro again.

I do like the Warden and Arch mastery passives for healers in both PvP and PvE usage. Being able to proc Major Heroism/Major Force nearly 100% of the time is excellent. I’d like to see more, maybe having PvP specific passives to mitigate some of the issues that are glaring for healing support would be greatly welcome. Or use scribing more to help us help our groups.

A note to PvP DPS/Crowns: those passives only help in group so… group up with your master class healers for massive buffs and upgrade in heals and recoveries.

That being said, however, I like where it’s headed (for PvE), but as a mainly support person the small steps forward (at least in the PvP sector) have had huge steps back in the form of WWs. I don’t know how they’re going to fix that imbalance (the cc coupled with the use of sets to boost what is already massive stand alone benefits like sustain, hemorrhage and bleed), but it makes being a healer in PvP a living nightmare. Also… battle spirit in PvP that has negative debuffs that I was told are way worse than they were just a few months ago… talk about hamstringing my ability to be affective. Couple that with a seemingly slower cast time (one second when it used to be instant) which is wreaking havoc on a healer’s ability to help save their team through a pull + colossus combo (Let us not even mention controller exploits that go largely ignored when reported — you know who you are, cut it out).

Overall, PvE, the new masteries are a good step forward. I know Cro and Sorc have gotten some much needed love and comebacks for DPS and some support roles and the Arc and Warden have stepped to the front of the class for healers, freeing DPS to have more selfish sets.

until all classes are reworked too and we see some proper end results

I’m happy in regard to what it did to the meta. Power creep is an issue, though.

It would be better if they added real game-changing passives to class masteries instead of just more flat numbers and % damage modifiers.

So far, I like only Necro Malevolent Promise (detonate a corpse twice). In the same way, they could made a passive for DK that adds 5 more stacks to Power Lash.

It's a step in the right direction. They certainly could have done worse.

It's just hard to feel good about at the moment with Werewolf and DK sitting a magnitude above everything else (in pvp).

aLi3nZ wrote: »

Arcanist, I’m staying as subclassed on that. I think the class masteries were not great.

not great, or in the case of Fate Realigned, not working.