Useful Masteries (Possible suggestion?)

[Stu Grockalot.2937]

I was thinking about MO's speech way back before the HoT release. In which he said that the Mastery system would give you meaningful sideways character progression post level 80.

So far I think the mastery system has been hit or miss, with some of them encompassing MO's vision, and some of them sadly, missing the mark.

 

I was reminiscing of the old GW1 days, and the Deldrimor , and Vanguard ranks. Whereby you learned skills in each of these title tracks that got more powerful as you increased in rank. Furthermore, you did more damage, or received less damage, from specific monsters, again commensurate with increase in rank.

 

I was thinking, what if in the future, this system was implemented through the mastery system?

 

Imagine, (for example), a new type of branded monster, let's call them corrupted sparkbrands for the sake of argument.

They do an insane amount of damage to start with , and going up against anything more than a 1v1 would be suicide.

You can purchase specific skills from the heart missions, (this encourages repeat play of heart missions, and is also a currency sink which I know arenanet enjoy).

Obviously, the better the skill, the more expensive it is. These skills become more effective with increased sparkbrand mastery rank.

 

Finally, you do and receive, an extra (or less) 10% damage per mastery rank, so at level 5 mastery you do an extra 50% damage, and receive 50% less damage, from all corrupted sparkbrands.

 

What do you guys think?

[killermanjaro.5670]

I'm not really in favour of anything that would send me back to do heart missions, because most (especially some in PoF) are tedious and boring as fuck imo.

 

As for masteries doing combat things like take/receive x % extra damage against enemies/certain types of enemies I'm not to sure it's a good idea, especially if it means, enemies are almost unkillable without them. That doesn't seem to fit sideways progression, if it's directly combat related like that then it feels more like an almost mandatory power progression, it wouldn't be a massive amount of difference to having an increased level cap.

 

On a note of useful masteries though, I would quite like one to reduce the endurance usage on mounts (or increase the recharge rate).

[Frostfang.5109]

Nope. Masteries like this Will Only cause powercreep.

[Stu Grockalot.2937]

> @Frostfang.5109 said:

> Nope. Masteries like this Will Only cause powercreep.

 

How? If the specific monsters are in a specific area, then it has little effect on the rest of the game. What you are doing is gating some areas , so that they can't pe progressed unless certain criteria are met, this has been done within GW before and IMO works quite well.

 

[jwaz.1908]

I don't like tying skills to vendors (bloodstone fen for example), but I do like your idea for mastery progression. I'm honestly disappointed in how the mastery system was implemented; the majority of masteries are just various modes of tranportation which don't feel like meaningful progression whatsoever. I would love more skill-based or maybe even crafting masteries.

[Carighan.6758]

I think in general skills which make you deal more damage or take less are... boring?

 

They're no different than just giving us more levels and hence more baseline power, so might as well do that because it is both more intuitive and more transparent.

 

What is interesting is **movement upgrades**. Lots of skills in HoT did this, and the mounts do so, too. MetroidVania in my MMORPG, backtracking to find new areas I can now access. With that being said, there is obviously an upper limit to it. Quite literally in this case since we got a flying mount now. And what to do after that I really don't know. Much like with character levels, there will always be a limit to how far these progression systems can realistically go, unless we lose them (and delevel) on death, EQ1 style.

[InsaneQR.7412]

Good masteries were: Gliding, shrooms, nuhoch wallows, thermal tubes, oakheart essence. These gave access to new areas or helped with mobility ir gameplay in general.

 

Mediocre but useful masteries: Poison knowledge, nuhoch alchemy, half of the exalted masteries.

 

Bad masteries: Every merchant and champion mastery.

They are blant and dont give a lot if interaction.

 

They could make them better if the merchants are unlocked when finishing a meta event on the specific map and the champions could be unlocked after reaching a certain amount of mastery points.

 

[Cristalyan.5728]

I don't understand why you are so focused on the masteries giving X% in a fight with the Y monster? Instead, please look around and you will find a **real** useful and fully anchored into the game reality: a gathering mastery :#

Soon, new legendary weapons will be added (soon ... that means in less than 2 years from here we can hope to have all the HoT legendary). A very useful mastery can be a gathering mastery. Five lines (or tiers)

- tier one - Acknowledged gatherer - all the NPC having gathering tools for sale will salute politely you with something like: "You again! Orr is like a barren desert because of the locusts like you!" Or: "The world is large, why don't you go in a holiday?"

- tier 2 - Trained dormouse - all resource nodes you pass by without gathering will have a weak sound, making you aware of its existence.

- tier 3 - Masterful miner - The dredges you encounter, no matter if hostile or not will salute you first: "Hello, Comrade [player name]". If a metal node is close, the dredge will not attack you until you complete the gathering.

- tier 4 - Legendary Lumberjack - You will receive a badge of "Honorific member of the Malchor Leap Lumberjack Syndicate". (still thinking to an action like - opening a new instance of the map if you manage to chop all the tree nodes on the map in less than 30 min.? I hope this is not too OP)

- tier 5 - Absolute Void walking over Tyria - First, the title. Then - the skrits promotes you to the rank of God. They will ask you to teach the young skrits the art of foraging. The payment will be in resources - one random piece per day of any resource you can gather in the game.

[Erasculio.2914]

I don't really like the OP's idea. I didn't like the system we had in the original Guild Wars that used points to increase the power of a few skills, either. That's the opposite of what I would like to see in the Mastery system.

 

I like masteries that can be used everywhere. Gliding (the basic gliding, at least) and everything about the mounts fit perfectly into this. We can use those masteries in the areas built for them, but we also can go back and use them in the core game, opening new paths and allowing new kinds of gameplay.

 

Masteries that I consider to be poorly designed are those that create a problem just so we can use a mastery to overcome it, and masteries restricted to a few areas - for example, the Nuhoc Poison Training mastery. Poisoned areas were added to a few maps just to make this useful. It adds an annoyance to the game, and it's also extremely situational.

 

Having a mastery that is needed to fight a specific enemy in a specific area, not unlike one of the "Ancient Magics" tiers, is creating an inconvenient just so we can use a mastery to overcome it. It has zero value anywhere else in the world, and it's easily forgotten considering how useless it is almost everywhere. How many people here actually remember the "Counter Magic" mastery tier we used against the Mursaat?

[OriOri.8724]

I am still a fan of the crafting/gathering mastery line that has been proposed multiple times as a core tyria mastery. Its probably the one I want to see the most.

 

Other than that, I want gliding to be moved to an expansion independent mastery line, so that everyone with any expansion can master it, so that new expansions and maps can be designed with gliding in mind. Its so fucking amazing and its not being used because Anet doesn't want to force people to buy HoT and that;s incredibly sad

[Stu Grockalot.2937]

Several comments refer to movement masteries.

There is a finite way to move. Jump run, fly, or teleport. After that they are redoing stuff for the sake of it.

 

For example, leyline gliding can nearly always have been replaced with thermal tubes, and or Nuhoch Wallows.

The mounts are pretty much covered every type of movement.

 

I like the idea of tying masteries to crafting. I also like the idea of tying masteries to gathering.

 

To reiterate, the masteries suggesting x% damage against monsters are only for specific types of monsters, and those monsters would be newly introduced to the game, and would be pretty much end game/elite areas. This is to avoid power creep in the game, but to give an end-game target. With careful balancing of the numbers, it may be possible to set the damage so that it is possible to defeat these monsters without the mastery, or at least with the bare minimum in masteries, but requires abosulte perfect gameplay.

 

This would give an additional target to aim for, as well as bragging rights, which I know some players enjoy. Similar to soloing fractals/dungeons.

[OriOri.8724]

You can't enter thermal tubes of nuhoch wallows anywhere in the line, but you can do that with leyline gliding. They are similar, but not interchangeable.

[Edelweiss.4261]

> @Erasculio.2914 said:

> I like masteries that can be used everywhere. Gliding (the basic gliding, at least) and everything about the mounts fit perfectly into this. We can use those masteries in the areas built for them, but we also can go back and use them in the core game, opening new paths and allowing new kinds of gameplay.

>

> Masteries that I consider to be poorly designed are those that create a problem just so we can use a mastery to overcome it, and masteries restricted to a few areas - for example, the Nuhoc Poison Training mastery. Poisoned areas were added to a few maps just to make this useful. It adds an annoyance to the game, and it's also extremely situational.

>

> Having a mastery that is needed to fight a specific enemy in a specific area, not unlike one of the "Ancient Magics" tiers, is creating an inconvenient just so we can use a mastery to overcome it. It has zero value anywhere else in the world, and it's easily forgotten considering how useless it is almost everywhere. How many people here actually remember the "Counter Magic" mastery tier we used against the Mursaat?

 

I strongly agree with the quoted points. I felt like I was progressing meaningfully with most mount masteries. Masteries like Nuhoch Alchemy just feel like artificial/contrived progression.