Draft 2 is out! Thanks for your input everyone! The discussion here was poured over with a finetooth comb, I assure you. The ultimate goal is for this to be as much of a community project as possible, with myself having the hubris to feel like I can pretty accurately gauge the good points from the bad ones. I update the post based on the discussions in this thread, so feel free to keep it going!
Changelist --->
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Updated scoring key to be clearer, particularly for 3/5 score.
- Added back in class specialization icons... kind of weird that they turned into invalid PNG's so quickly.
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Frost DK is now a 4/5 (from 5/5). I feel that while it is probably the best secondary stat, it doesn't deserve the sort of weight given to 5/5s. Reaching a good Haste threshold is critically important for DKs and sort of caps the value of any other secondary for them.
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Assassination is now a 1/5 (from 4/5) Completely missed that Assassination's mastery doesn't work on Bleeds at level 20. This plummets it from a 4/5 to a 1/5. It is strictly worse than other secondary stats available to them.
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Beast Mastery is now 3/5 (from 4/5). The discussion convinced me that going all in on a mastery that doesn't directly buff the Hunter itself shouldn't be in a 4/5 tier. Especially with BM hunters relying on a burst window that can be perfectly complemented with an Elekk Tusk trinket.
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Destruction is now a 5/5 (from 4/5).
@Hashbrowns weighting of it as better than Intellect in his testing swayed me, especially since it also brings a defensive option. Per the updated 5/5 description, this doesn't have to mean that full savant is the best possible build, which I doubt that Destro Mastery would continue to be after you started dropping Haste.
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Arms is now a 3/5 (from 4/5). Both
@Chops and
@mirrorbender both made good arguments that the very slight dps advantage combined with the awkwardness of starting out burst on a target both prevent this from being in the 4/5 "get a lot of this" category. For the small DPS difference between Mastery and Crit, you give up the raw impact of landing a Sudden Death execute critical strike. Their discussion is enough of a reason for me to see lowering Arms' score.
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Mistweaver is now a 5/5 (from 4/5). This one is mainly from my own confusion over how MW's mastery works. But
@mirrorbender 's explanation makes sense from what I've seen in game before, and the flat healing output is unparalleled for MW
Did Not Update --->
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Fury. Keeping it at 2/5. Mastery seems too situational to place it higher. Even for something like an Elekk Tusk build, you can't consistently proc the Enrage condition at level 20 enough to make it worth it.
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Arcane. Keeping it at 5/5. I was very torn between leaving it at 5/5 or moving it to 4/5. I need to see more data supporting it being less effective than any other secondary, as
@Ivo states. As it stands purely on the numbers, stacking Arcane Charges would lead to a 3%/1.5% increase per mastery point in Arcane Blast / Barrage damage, which is far and away better than the numbers from any other secondary. Even those aside, spamming Arcane Missiles leads to a 1% damage increase per mastery point and an increase to sustained DPS from mana / mana regen. I would love to see more testing and discussion here.
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Discipline. Keeping it at 3/5. It is a pretty sizeable increase to healing and fairly easy to keep up on multiple allies. I don't think Elekk Tusk is worth it, but I think that's also sort of a thing with healers in general rather than a knock on mastery. Increases to mastery during a window are more valuable for DPS trying to get kills than for Healers, who generally are gated by CC or reaction time rather than HPS. But as it stands, Mastery is the highest HPS stat after you've gotten Haste to 20% in pvp or so. Realistically speaking, you will want Vers on a priest every day of the week. But there is a specific niche (squishy HPS) that Mastery fills. Haste 100 > Vers = Mastery as a build niche would equate to a 3/5 in my eyes.
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Shadow. Keeping it at 3/5. As Ivo pointed out, Spriest Mastery is designed around keeping up 3 dots, which is impossible for extended periods of time at level 20. That being said, mastery does amp up your Psyfiend burst window when combined with Mind Blast + Unfurling Darkness + Shadow Word: Death. It also *very slightly* eaks out a damage increase at 2 dots over Versatility. To me, this is the bottom end of a 3/5 spec, but it still has a specific niche where Mastery does better than other stats.
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Protection Warrior. Keeping it at 1/5. While I don't dispute that Prot gains quite a bit from Mastery stacking in PvE, I just don't see how this would ever be less than a terrible stat to have on your gear in pvp. Versatility and either Haste or Critical Strike seem like they would flat outperform in what I presume to be the main ways you would play ProtW in pvp -> Being a tanky CC bot with one of your many CC oriented pvp talent options, putting Bodyguard on your team's Hunter for massive damage reduction, or being an annoying dps / nerf bot for caster dps with Shield Bash.
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Elemental. Keeping it at a 5/5. I think the discussion centered about Elemental had more to do with the "5/5" score being unclear, implying that it means savant stacking is the class's best choice. But no class that I am aware of values mastery to the exclusivity of all other secondary stats, so I updated the 5/5 score key to reflect a better interpretation of what it means. The consensus seems to be that you want enough Mastery on Ele to be at roughly 50% chance to proc the 2nd cast in a pvp instance, which would be enough in my view to justify a 5/5 score.
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Enhancement. Keeping at a 3/5. The discussion around Enhance has pretty much defined it by what a 3/5 score should be - it allows an interesting / unique way of playing the class without being a core way of building the spec.
Mastery: Elemental Overload