Underwhelming Essence system

[LucianDK.8615]

With how much it was hyped, it have turned into a completely irrelevant dud. Every champion where it might have mattered gets zerged down so fast that the system might as well not exist. Save opening colored chests, and giving a buff on the sanctum boss, Ive not seen -any- use for it at all. The two raven abilities is much better intergrated in the zone. One useful in the meta, and the other to remove forcefields.

 

Feels like it was something that only looked good on a designer paper, whereas the practical use ingame is showing how little it actually matters.

[Ayrilana.1396]

I found getting the 30 stacks to be more of a hassle than it’s worth and the buffs to be meh. I was originally under the impression that the buff you get from using the special skills would the passives but apparently that isn’t the case.

 

Edit: The blog post may be wrong, or at the very least, misleading.

[LucianDK.8615]

I initially thought that you needed to have a stacked up buff of the respective type to unlock the matching colored chests. I was rather suprised when you just needed tier1 of the mastery to open the small chests. Tier2 for the bigger ones.

[Ayrilana.1396]

That's what I thought too.

 

Going back to their blog post:

 

> Unlocking the Essence Manipulation Mastery allows you to pick up essence orbs that drop from corresponding enemies. Picking up an orb immediately grants a **temporary enhancement stack with benefits** that improve with the Mastery’s second tier:

 

> Vigilance

 

> * Gain 5 seconds of fury, 15% endurance regeneration, and 4 seconds of swiftness.

 

> Resilience

 

> * Gain 10 seconds of might, 400 health, and 4 seconds of swiftness.

 

> Valor

 

> * Gain 3 seconds of quickness and 4 seconds of swiftness.

 

> **Obtaining 30 stacks will activate the Mastery’s passive benefits for fifteen minutes**, making it easier to fight creatures weak against that essence. While active, you’ll also gain access to powerful offensive abilities through a special action skill. These abilities will be available for use in specific situations, like at certain enemy health thresholds or when defiance bars are exposed.

 

The above makes it feel like we'd get those buffs as passives which is how it comes off as written. Unfortunately, we don't get that. So either there was a last minute change, this is actually the third mastery, or the phrasing is confusing.

[LucianDK.8615]

If anet intends to use it for episode 2 as well when the map expands, they need to give it a serious do-over.

[aspirine.6852]

It is too long of a build up for what even. Also how many times I noticed that I could use my skill but because of mixed mobs it kept on failing saying this was not the right type. I just stopped trying to use it since it fails more than it works.

[Healix.5819]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> The above makes it feel like we'd get those buffs as passives which is how it comes off as written. Unfortunately, we don't get that. So either there was a last minute change, this is actually the third mastery, or some other reason that probably won't look good.

 

To simplify:

 

> Picking up an orb immediately grants a temporary enhancement stack with benefits:

>

> **Vigilance**

>

> * Gain 5 seconds of fury, 15% endurance regeneration, and 4 seconds of swiftness.

>

> Obtaining 30 stacks will activate the Mastery’s passive benefits for fifteen minutes, making it easier to fight creatures weak against that essence and gaining access to powerful offensive abilities through a special action skill:

>

> **Vigilance**

>

> * Gain a 33% chance to steal life on critical hits to Fallen enemies. Gain the ability to use the Shattered Psyche special action skill. Gain a 1.5-second cooldown reduction when picking up an essence.

> * Shattered Psyche: This powerful blast deals immense damage and causes lesser creatures to float in the air. (Applies 15 seconds of fury at tier 2.)

[Chichimec.9364]

Finished the story, completed the map, got a few mastery points. Since then I've been wondering if wandering around the map racking up exp just to get the essence masteries was worth the bother. I certainly didn't need them in any of the fights I was involved in. Other than opening up some chests here and there as well as getting those irritating pop up notices to stop, is there any point to the essence masteries? From the discussion here so far there doesn't seem to be.

[Perihen the Thawk.9527]

I haven't explored the map very much yet and haven't gotten the mastery, but so far I haven't had any trouble at all with the glowing mobs and I'm a very casual player. I was sort of expecting the mobs would be at least HoT level challenging without the mastery to take them on, but I'm not really feeling the need for a buff yet.

[Gop.8713]

I didn't realize we'd be able to have all three essences at the same time. I expected some sort of trade-off, forcing you to think about which you wanted to stack up. As it is you just get all of them and forget you have them, play on as normal . . .

[Infusion.7149]

On my mostly diviner chrono the quickness was of much more use.

 

Unless you have a firebrand there's basically no other class that pumps out quickness worth noting. On power DH it helped a bit and also on elementalist.

 

The article made it seem that you could only have one active at a time so that was disappointing. I thought each character would pick one at a given time and stick with it similar to the choice of Order/Vigil/Priory , but tied to mastery system so that you can swap it for karma/eternal ice shards or some other gating.

 

[Ubi.4136]

Personally, I'd like to see them patch it out altogether and put the bosses back the way the others are and just let us open chests normally. Replace the mastery with anything, or nothing. Half damage falling is too tough for us, but we have this, mostly useless kind of thing. /smh

[LucianDK.8615]

I think the greatest problem with these masteries is that theres little to no thought involved with it, and its a lot to spend time on building up. But really, why? It doesnt matter for almost all the content with so many people in the zone. Call out something and people come running if you tag up, things dies maybe a little slower, but thats it then.

[Bast.7253]

I mean they already had a similar system they could have reused that might have even been more interesting. The Siren's Landing was pretty much useless but even it felt a little more useful than this mastery. And if you replace each siren song with a spirit you could grant buffs that way.

 

Or maybe instead of some dismal beam every 2 minutes you could have some chance on attack with the 30+ stack buff to gain some insane power boost like quickness and +200% damage or something. I mean obviously not that much, but then they could make the mobs significantly more difficult and give the mastery a little more purpose. Because right now the mastery doesn't do anything noticeable in combat and the mobs you generally don't need them for anyway. They're just a season-wide key system for chests instead of using silverwaste shovels or auric keys or chak acid. It's just the same thing but with a blog post that tried to make it sound better than I knew it would be.

 

I'm not surprised, and I'm probably even more disappointed in them than I thought I would be. I haven't played that much the past month though. I just hopped on for a few hours to complete the story and check the map out. Certainly won't be grinding out the masteries or anything. Maybe when they expand the map or after a few more story releases when I can play through something that doesn't feel like I just ate one M&M out of a package and know that's all I'll get for the week. lol

 

[Sarrs.4831]

Picking up the Aberrant essences when you don't have any Quickness feels pretty neato.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Masteries should be reserved for gameplay that impacts how the game is played. The damage abilities makes sense, but the Mastery locked chests seems to be the strangest choice so far.

[Palador.2170]

I have some mastery points to start doing this, but... why bother? As I've said elsewhere, I don't see the point in working to get these masteries when I can just go to ANY OTHER MAP and get full rewards without them. This isn't fun, it's a roadblock to make you spend time preparing to have fun. And I have better things to do with my time.

 

Will they be needed in the future? Oh, I'm sure they will be. Content locked behind them, or something that requires you to get them all to level 3 to progress the story in the next chapter. What does that mean for me? Well, it means I'm going to hit one hell of a roadblock, and then have to decide if the story is worth dealing with this BS system. My impression right now is "No, it is not."

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Well, it's not like you have to 'work' to get them, if you already have the Mastery Points. Just playing the game awards XP, and you don't even have to play in that map.

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Its just another map gimmick. I'm glad its not worth any time investments to battle the bad guys.

 

Anet feels its necessary to gimmick up every new map. I don't know why. On this map you have some color crud to follow, that map you have some buff or another, some other map has a musical note to bounce around on, next map has some combination of stupidity. Gimmick overload.

[kratan.4619]

> @"Blockhead Magee.3092" said:

> Its just another map gimmick. I'm glad its not worth any time investments to battle the bad guys.

>

> Anet feels its necessary to gimmick up every new map. I don't know why. On this map you have some color crud to follow, that map you have some buff or another, some other map has a musical note to bounce around on, next map has some combination of stupidity. Gimmick overload.

 

Because people want gimmicks, just look at dungeons, fractals, and raids. Just switch the word gimmick for "mechanic", they are the same thing only gimmick seems to be used derogatively while mechanic means something cool you need to figure out.

[MokahTGS.7850]

The mastery system is basically a dud as a whole. There are some ideas that work, but a lot of the new ideas are just not worth putting the time in. These masteries will fall prey to the season 2 mastery system problems that is a one time shot and when the player base moves on, you'll have wasted those points. Anyone using that singing mastery? Vine swinging? Yeah...didn't think so...

 

At this point I'll wait to see how this shakes out before playing any of it...I have no desire to grind for a mastery I'll never use. I don't want a gimmick...I want a good story and interesting map to explore.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"kratan.4619" said:

> > @"Blockhead Magee.3092" said:

> > Its just another map gimmick. I'm glad its not worth any time investments to battle the bad guys.

> >

> > Anet feels its necessary to gimmick up every new map. I don't know why. On this map you have some color crud to follow, that map you have some buff or another, some other map has a musical note to bounce around on, next map has some combination of stupidity. Gimmick overload.

>

> Because people want gimmicks, just look at dungeons, fractals, and raids. Just switch the word gimmick for "mechanic", they are the same thing only gimmick seems to be used derogatively while mechanic means something cool you need to figure out.

And that's why TA Aetherpath was more popular than TA up, and Dhuum more popular than Cairn.

...oh wait.

 

 

[Donari.5237]

I have yet to get to 30 stacks of any of them. By some of the comments I don't need 30 stacks to open a chest? I've just flat out been ignoring the chests due to thinking I had to get the stacks first.

 

Also, there are comments that you can build multiple stacks at once. If you get to 30 in more than one, does it auto-select the right one to use when you special action laser at a foe?

[Snowmane.5826]

> @"Donari.5237" said:

> I have yet to get to 30 stacks of any of them. By some of the comments I don't need 30 stacks to open a chest? I've just flat out been ignoring the chests due to thinking I had to get the stacks first.

>

> Also, there are comments that you can build multiple stacks at once. If you get to 30 in more than one, does it auto-select the right one to use when you special action laser at a foe?

 

You can open chest without stacks

 

You can build all 3 at once (I did it in the meta, failed attempts at other times to get more than 2 buffs simultaneously)

 

Yes it auto selects the correct beam to fire - though it doesn't seem... reliable selecting any beam to fire; regardless of whether you've got 1, 2 or 3 buffs.

[ugrakarma.9416]

looking at Sirens Landing that had map passives buffs too, its seems passive system dont catch up much the playerbase. ppl seems like more a active extra skill or navigation stuff like the vulcano thing(i forget the name) or the oakhearts essence.