Create your own Masteries – show your creativity

[Maria Murtor.7253]

From the three expansions End of Dragons has the weakest Masteries so far in my opinion. Especially Skiff, Fishing and Arborstone Masteries felt for me more like Living Story Masteries, which have little purpose for making in inpact in our way to actually play the game (the exploration aspect). Masteries were introduced to skip a max level increase and still give our characters a way to getting stronger and explore new places. This is what this topic is about: Think about a new expansion/campaign and create Masteries which would fit into your imaginative game. What other Masteries could be implemented into the game to make our characters stronger and explore new places? Here are my takes:

 

Secondary Profession

"Learn how to combine skills and traits from two professions. Elite Specializations are bound to your first profession."

• Step 1: Weapon Insight: "Understand how to wield and use weapons from another profession. Choose outside of combat which weapon set you like to use."
• Step 2: Utility Insight: "Learn how to use healing and utiliy skills from another profession."
• Step 3: Trait Insight: "Dive deeper in the way of another profession by using its Traits."
• Step 4: Attribute Insight: "Learn how to benefit from using weapon skills from another profession by temporary increased stats after a weapon swap depending on the profession."
• Step 5: Elite Insight: "Get access to powerful Elite skills of any secondary profession.

Comment: The purpose of this Mastery is to let us feel more powerful in combat. It's a flashback to the Guild Wars 1 way to play the game. A secondary profession system made Guild Wars 1 incredible complex and fun to play. Literally thousand of different ways to play your character. Choosing a secondary profession never hurts. On the contrary: You can only benefit from it. And if you don't want to use it: That is fine too. Using a secondary profession gave your character a wide variety of new skills. However, the skills of your main profession still were a little bit stronger due to the fact of not being able to increase attributes beyond 12 (by distribute attibute points) and by not being able to use the secondary professions main attribute. With that in mind I decided to not include Elite Specialisztions into my imaginative secondary profession system. You can still use all the "normal" weapon skills and utility skills from a secondary profession. But you aren't able to use its Elite Specialization, only the Elite Specialization from your main profession. There are some unsolved questions at this point like F1-F4 skills or pet. But I leave this to imagination.

 

Mist Walker

"The unstable mists have made its ways into Tyria. Learn how to survive the toxic touch of the mists in your fragile material form."

Step 1: Mist Resistance: "Understand how to temporary shield your body from the deadly touch of Mist Fields, which where spotted in Tyria. Using a Mist Shadow grants you Invisibility."

Step 2: Mist Fighter: "Get access to your combat skills while walking in Mist Fields and increase your resistance from the deadly touch of the Mists whenever you kill an enemy." 

Step 3: Mist Rebell: "Learn the new utility skill Flesh Zone, which grants you protection from the area effect of the mists, Regeneration, Resistance, while weaking Mist enemies.

Step 4: Mist Diver: "Learn how to enter the distorted reflection of Tyria in the Mists and loot its treasures. Increase your resistance from the toxic Mist touch whenever you loot an item and gain a temporary speed buff."

Step 5: Mist Champion: "Teach your body how to survive the deadly grasp of the Mists for unlimited time."

Comment: This imaginative Mastery is a way how traveling can be changed by adding something like the toxic fields in HoT (Itzel Poison lore) while also adding something new. The idea is to get more access to toxic areas little by little. Mist areas are supposed to be scary at the start. You can enter such areas. But you are very weak early on, trying to avoid combat by sneaking and make your way through these fields as fast as possible. While doing this mastery, you gain more and more access to these areas and learn to benefit from its secrets. Also, in my concept are distorted reflections of Tyria, which serve more as some sort of tressure vault and puzzle areas for extra loot. The Mastery also comes with a new utility skill, which is a flashback to the new healing skill we had access to during the Living Story in Kessex Hills. It has more purpose during the campaign, but looses a bit of its value outside the expansion. 

 

Culture of the Feather

"Become more than a stranger to the Tengu by learning their ways of life."

Step 1: Ally of the Tengu: "Make friends with the different Tengu tribes and unlock unique merchants, new conversations and friends."

Step 2: Swiftness of the Tengu: "When enabled: Learn how to slightly increase the height of your jumps and decreases falling damage by a little. At the highest point of a jump: Gain access to the Swoop skill, which does damage after impact and inflicts Defiance Break."

Step 3: Finesse of the Tengu: "Understand the unique unarmed fighting style of the Tengu by getting access to the Glove weapon, which comes with a set of 5 new skills for each profession."

Step 4:  Fabrication of the Tengu: "Learn new recipes from Tengu merchants. Thanks to this knowledge: Fighting other Tengu (PvE only) grants you slightly increased Power, Condition Damage and Toughness."

"Step 5: One with the Tengu: "Gain access to the Tengu race in your character creation menu."

Comment: This Mastery is basically your story barrier, which we already know from other expansions. You need to unlock at least Step 1 to progress through the story, which is strongly related to the Tengu. But I always wanted more out of Masteries like this. Adrenal Mushrooms or Nuhoch Alchemie are fine while doing expansion related stuff for example. But they have little value outside the new content. That's why I added a little stats boost, which could come in handy in EoD for example. The slightly increased jumping height should be something you can anable and disable whenever you want. This way you don't get punished if you do not enjoy this. And about Step 5 … Yeah, that's high on my wishlist. So I added it.

 

Value Efficiency

"Spending time on the road increases your sense of making a profit out of your journey."

Step 1: Trading Efficiency: "Learn how to bargain and lower the fees of the trading post by 10 percent. Increases Magic Find by 20 points."

Step 2: Harvest Efficiency: "Learn how to make the best out of mining notes. Get one more material from each node. Increases Magic Find by 20 points."

Step 3: Traveling Efficiency: "Learn to manipulate Waypoints which lowers traveling costs by 25 percent. Increases Magic Find by 20 points."

Step 4:  Loot Efficiency: "Learn where high tier enemies hide their secret treasures. Veterans, Elite, Champions and Legendaries drop more loot. Increases Magic Find by 20 points."

"Step 5: Challenge Efficiency: "Learn to make the best out of the most dangerous challenges in the world. The money reward from strikes and raids is increased by 50 percent. Increases Magic Find by 20 points."

Comment: This Mastery a way to tackle the issues with lacking rewards by giving players more and better ways to earn money and materials. Especially the more challenging content in the game suffers from the lack of good rewards. This should encourage players to do more stuff to get better rewards. Better rewards from salvaging could be also added. I don't think other things like Karma should be changed.

 

Maybe I gonna add more ideas later. But now it's your turn. Show your creativity and create your own Masteries. For the uncreative, crackbrained people: Please respond with a confused emote.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Maria Murtor.7253

[Antycypator.9874]

Jade Scout.

 

Step 1: Deploy Jade Bot — Take remote control on your Jade Bot and manually scout the area (range: 5000).

Step 2: Increase range of your Jade Bot by 2500 units.

Step 3: Defense Protocol — Stun a foe for 3 seconds (cost: 1 charge). Doesn't work against breakbars.

Step 4: Stealth — Unlock a stealth skill for you Jade Bot (stealth duration: 5s).

Step 5: Increase range of your Jade Bot by another 2500 units.

Step 6: Looting — Open any chest with your Jade Bot (cost: 1 charge).

Jade Bot will draw agro from nearby foes; destroyed Bot can be repaired only by using Jade Bot Workbench.

 

Surviving.

Step 1: Food and Utility effects have increased duration by 50%.

Step 2: Know your enemy — store knowledge about enemies you've encountered (example: after being hit with Backbreaker by Big Nose Ted, you can now see this skill and check what is does in an "Inspect" window).

Step 3: First Aid — Remove 2 conditions from yourself when exiting a combat (triggers only if you would exit a combat mode after defeating all enemies).

Step 4: Play Dead (requires "Play Dead" emote) — play dead and lose agro when you're downed (doesn't work in fractals, raids, strike missions, PvP, WvW and against champion and legendary foes in Open World). You're still vulnerable to all attacks.

Step 5: Hot Stuff — Hatched Chillis are now consumable [inflict burning for 1 second upon critically hitting a foe (Cooldown: 4s)].

Stop 6: Take a break — using /sit or /sleep emote for at least 30 seconds will grant you a small buff for 5 minutes.

[TagIsBad.1350]

Combat Training (PvE only Mastery)

 

Step 1: Swift Engagement - Gain 5s of Swiftness whenever you enter combat (2 min cooldown).

 

Step 2: Vengeful Spirit - Your attacking downed skills cast and recharge 20% faster and deal 10% more damage.

 

Step 3: Master-at-arms - Gain Fury and Protection for 5s when entering combat with a two-handed weapon, and Might and Quickness  for 5s when entering combat dual-wielding one-handed weapons (2 min cooldown).

 

Step 4: Cling to Life - When you would be downed for the first time, instead heal yourself to 25% of your maximum health. Your Bandage downed skill grants doubled healing while you are in combat.

 

Step 5: Frontline Cavalier - You may summon mounts in combat to auto-cast their Engage skills (2 min cooldown).

[Infinity.2876]

Cultural expert

All steps: increase gold, karma, and xp gain from hearts.

Step 1: respected - Navan will not get mad at you if you get rid of your boat (during escort in EOD story), you can talk to non-merchant npcs that you were not able to before, and gain increased gold and xp from escort events

 

Step 2:  battle leader- when in downed state(not defeated) nearby npcs will rez you if able and you get a reduced version of guardians': strength in numbers

 

Step 3: one of the brethren - you can buy and ware other races cultural clothing and buy other orders' outfits. escort events you participate in have faster move speed while not in combat in non-core-zones.

 

Mount master

All steps: increase mount endurance regen

Step 1: explorer - increase the amount of xp you get when you discover an new place or claim a poi

 

Step 2: pet savvy - mount specially skills gain reduced cool down (bond of vigor, leap of faith mount stealth etc.) 

 

Step 3: zoology expert - dismount attacks are a 2 ammo skill using the second round dismount you normally yellow passive mobs are in affected by the attacks

 

Step 4: shared will(can only get xp for it on a soulbeast): increase all of the other masteries, gain all.offensive boons upon dismount, and gain increased health on mounts

Edit: added yellow passive mobs protection and more benefits to cultural.expert

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Infinity.2876

[Cuks.8241]

Master Commander mastery line. Open world only. Only works when you are commanding a non raid squad.

Tier 1: Supply line. Summon a merchant and bank access for your squad members. 1 h CD.

Tier 2: Train driver. Increase running speed of every squad member within 1200 range around you to your equipped mount speed.

Tier 3: I am better than you. Increase character size by 50 % and additional 1 % for every member of your squad. Emit a blinding aura around you in the colour of your tag. Each option can be toggled on or off.

Tier 4: You're making us look bad. Can turn off infusions' effects of your squad members.

Tier 5:  Master commander ban hammer. Can kick one player from your map instance. 5 min CD.

[Zaraki.5784]

We have skimmer, turtle and skiff for water.  

We have glider, griffon and skyscale for air.   

We have rest for land.  

Next step is a mount/device for digging and moving underground! Not like Sonic Tunneling Tool which is a scam.  

 

Edited May 9, 2022 by Zaraki.5784

[Cuks.8241]

Hero of the ages mastery line. Mastery xp gained through pvp activities. Need to perform heroic pvp feats to unlock. 

Tier 1 Legend. NPCs will trigger special dialogues when youre near talking about your deeds. 

Tier 2 Hero of the ages. Leaders around the world comissioned statues of you. You get your statue in home instances and guilds can craft your statues as decorations. 

Tier 3 Bask in my presence. You get a special striking pose. Players can charge quartz on you while youre striking your magnificent pose. 

Tier 4 I live to tell the tale. Players get a hero point when the kill you in spvp (max 1 per character). 

Tier 5 Godlike. You can walk on water. 

[Xerxez.7361]

Tyrian Explorer

 

Tier 1: Gatherer. Gain Quickness for 5 seconds while Gathering (15 Second Cooldown)

Tier 2: Woodcutter. Gain Quickness for 5 seconds while Chopping Wood (15 Second Cooldown)

Tier 3: Miner. Gain Quickness for 5 seconds while Mining (15 Second Cooldown)

Tier 4: Traveler. Gain increased experience for Discovery (+50%)

Tier 5: Well Versed. Revive at the nearest Waypoint when killed at no cost (Options -> Toggle Auto Revive On/Off)

Edited May 9, 2022 by Xerxez.7361

[DaFishBob.6518]

3 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Hero of the ages mastery line. Mastery xp gained through pvp activities. Need to perform heroic pvp feats to unlock. 

Tier 1 Legend. NPCs will trigger special dialogues when youre near talking about your deeds. 

Tier 2 Hero of the ages. Leaders around the world comissioned statues of you. You get your statue in home instances and guilds can craft your statues as decorations. 

Tier 3 Bask in my presence. You get a special striking pose. Players can charge quartz on you while youre striking your magnificent pose. 

Tier 4 I live to tell the tale. Players get a hero point when the kill you in spvp (max 1 per character). 

Tier 5 Godlike. You can walk on water. 

Kind of hilarious how not a single one of these is useful for the mode it's earned in. Is there even water that you can swim in on any pvp maps?

 

Greatest Of Adventuring Tyrians

 

Tranquil Sight: Allows you to disable visuals and interact-able objects dropped by other players.

Absorbing Essence: Auto collect dropped essence orbs for their related mastery.

Pacify Threats: Immediately exit combat and make yourself invulnerable while channeling this mastery skill

Unstoppable Ley-Lines: Allows use of contested waypoints, even in combat.

Inspiring Commander: Command and coordinate certain NPCs present at world boss and meta events, providing useful skills and abilities to compensate if there is currently a lack of participants. NPCs are limited in number per event to prevent a zerg of NPC groups from forming.

[Maria Murtor.7253]

11 hours ago, Infinity.2876 said:

Mount master

All steps: increase mount endurance regen

Step 1: explorer - increase the amount of xp you get when you discover an new place or claim a poi

 

Step 2: pet savvy - mount specially skills gain reduced cool down (bond of vigor, leap of faith mount stealth etc.)

 

Step 3: zoology expert - dismount attacks are a 2 ammo skill using the second round dismount you normally

 

Step 4: shared will(can only get xp for it on a soulbeast): increase all of the other masteries, gain all.offensive bond upon dismount, and gain increased health on mounts

 

 

 

I love the Mount Master. Should come with another mount though. And that's my biggest problem: I have no idea what new mount we could benefit from. Only thing that comes to my mind is a new combat mount. Turtle feels too disappointed for me with this whole "you need two players to make to most out of it" idea. Turtle still performs underwhealming for the most part and has little use.

[Diovid.9506]

So many of the suggestions above are either quality of live changes that should be implemented for all players wirhout being tied to masteries or they are power creep that make pve even easier / even more convenient (which it really doesn't need). 

 

What I want is transformative masteries. Like gliding and mounts and to some extent Skiffs and Fishing. I have zero interest in masteries that are like the core Tyria masteries. I know that it's hard to keep coming up with new interesting masteries (as evidenced by the Siege Turtle, though the combat mount thing and being a two-seater is at least somewhat novel). 

 

Give us an air balloon or a wall climbing gecko mount or a tunneling mount. Or do things like the Jade Bot free cam (but in more places than is currently possible). 

[SinisterSlay.6973]

I can't think of a whole line. But I think one or maybe 4 that reduce agro range.

Maybe call it feared commander or something. When turned on (because it needs a toggle) it reduces agro range.

In core it basically removes all of it.

In HoT and PoF and EoD it makes it like core. Stuff is only a little scared of you.

At the highest level, you get an intimidation skill that scares away low level enemies if they approach you. Ending their agro. Bit like the grumpy crabs do when you threaten them.

I feel like masteries like this one improve the exploration again. After you've killed everything, it just leaves you alone to do your other achievements and stuff.

Edited May 10, 2022 by SinisterSlay.6973

[Infinity.2876]

Dredge Mole mount idea

 

Dismount: swipe the air in front of you bleeding foes and giving fear to them allies in the areas' next few attacks after dismount inflict bleed

 

Mount ability 1(jump): dash forward. This blasts through certain walls

 

 

Mount ability 2: launch yourself straight up in the air and lock on to a nearby wall of able

While on a wall: jumping disabled move speed decreased and you can only climb up semi-flat walls(no over hangs)

(yes there must be a jumping puzzle)

Dredge mole mastery track

 

Step 1: burrow- mount ability 2 is an evades attacks and dazed foes

 

Step 2: powerful presence - mount ability 1 knocks down foes ,

 

Step 3: using the dismount immediately gathers all pre nodes in the area

 

Step 4: potent pressure - all mounts gain the effect of powerful presence

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Infinity.2876

[SoulGuardian.6203]

Only one idea.

 

Mercenaries.

 

1. (Unlock Mercenaries Mastery)

Begin your journey to master your commander skills.

 

2. Train with a pre defined choice of  merc in Personal Instances, dungeons, raids, and strike missions.

 

3. Select one of your characters to be used as a merc to accompany you. Unlock first merc slot.

 

4. Unlock 2 other merc slots.

 

5. Unlock full editing for your mercs.

Note that changes to mercs will affect your characters. Including build, mounts, or any other changes.

 

FIN

[Fuchslein.8639]

Kitty's and Foxes

1. All animals tranform into kitten and foxex. Including cuter models for actually kitten and foxes.

2. All npc tranform into kitten and foxes

3. All players tranform into kitten and foxes

4. All enemys transform into toys

5. A world full of kitten and foxes, what do you want more?

[Xelqypla.6817]

Dance Mastery:

1-4, able to use a different dance.

5. Able to shift to different styles while dancing.

 

Music Mastery:

1- however many. Automatically play songs from the Guild Wars soundtrack.

 

Nothing too involved and hopefully not step on the Novelties.

[Rauderi.8706]

Mercenary Mastery

Not going to lay out specific lines bc idc but tldr: 

Hire (with actual gold/consumable) your mercenaries in any instanced content that you're in alone. Extra levels let you hire a 10 man band, adjust their builds to meet various needs, and an additional interface for on-demand tactics. 

[Demon Pie.2634]

Beast Tamer: Your mount engage skill no longer dismounts and has a 30 second cooldown.

 

High Horse: When you talk to NPCs or open chests you no longer dismount.

[dace.8019]

Airship

 

A home away from aerodrome.

 

Description: A player house which is an airship. It can be "docked" in any map, in the sky, because that's where the air critical to the airship lives. The commander is often cast into far-off, unfamiliar places and this provides suitable fluff for the concept to exist and be sensible. In the way that Arborstone provides a multitude of conveniences and a resting buff, the airship could expand on these core concepts as a mobile forward staging area for the god-conquering, elder dragon-taming, seat-compatible Commander but also allow for customization. Have a keybind so that you get a WP confirmation prompt to immediately go to the airship so that it feels convenient, and the same key will return you to the spot you used it from.

 

Local Hero: Generate map-specific resources and currencies on a rolling basis when docked in a map - probably ticking in on an hourly basis during active play and the Commander is present in the map.

 

Field Training: Some sort of mechanics buff. Only in open world and again only when airship is present in map with Commander. Slot in a core profession Major Trait from a line that you don't have equipped? 

 

Fly Fishing: Where you are flying and fishing. Or catching flying fish. Or... just birds? Stray players gliding happily through the air? I admit that I haven't thought this one out. Fly Fishing! 

 

Air Support: Parachute in an NPC vendor that you have unlocked on the airship eg. a bank or tp agent, maybe crafting (plus bench) that sort of thing.

 

R & R: Spending time on the airship (whether logged in or out) accrues a resting buff; allow it to be more customizable than the Arborstone one (allow for magic find, karma boost, the usual suspects).

 

Honestly there's so much you could do with this. I thought about it for just a few minutes but I reckon this solves the housing request and gives us agency over a home/resting system that is always relevant.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

On 5/8/2022 at 6:06 AM, Antycypator.9874 said:

Surviving.

 

Step 3: First Aid — Remove 2 conditions from yourself when exiting a combat (triggers only if you would exit a combat mode after defeating all enemies).

Step 4: Play Dead (requires "Play Dead" emote) — play dead and lose agro when you're downed (doesn't work in fractals, raids, strike missions, PvP, WvW and against champion and legendary foes in Open World). You're still vulnerable to all attacks.

Step 5: Hot Stuff — Hatched Chillis are now consumable [inflict burning for 1 second upon critically hitting a foe (Cooldown: 4s)].

Stop 6: Take a break — using /sit or /sleep emote for at least 30 seconds will grant you a small buff for 5 minutes.

 

On 5/9/2022 at 2:06 PM, Cuks.8241 said:

Master Commander mastery line. Open world only. Only works when you are commanding a non raid squad.

Tier 2: Train driver. Increase running speed of every squad member within 1200 range around you to your equipped mount speed.

Tier 3: I am better than you. Increase character size by 50 % and additional 1 % for every member of your squad. Emit a blinding aura around you in the colour of your tag. Each option can be toggled on or off.

 

These are all genuinely great ideas.

 

Play Dead and the commander being bigger is pretty funny and interesting. Very useful too. Wish you weren't prevented from mounting with Embiggening and Shrinking tonics.

 

Using emotes to give you a boon is something every MMO needs.

[Valfar.3761]

Perhaps a mastery that can alter terrain or weather. Ie, lowering or raising the water/lava level to create more or less dry land to fight on.

[Maria Murtor.7253]

I would love to have something that makes you less appealing to enemies. I am just wandering through the many maps with a new character, and like everything comes after you. Every piece of trash. That would be something that fits good into a Mastery, like someone already proposed. Something like free use of Jade Bot shouldn't be linked to a Mastery imo. The only reason I would love something like that is for making better screenshots – and a photo mode should be in the game in the first place.

 

[Dark Red Killian.3946]

Underwater Combat Mastery

Miracle Shoes

 “Your jade bot creates jade stepping stones under your feet, allowing you to run on water and do combat using your land weapons and skills.”

Weighted Shoes

”Your jade bot encases your feet with heavy jade shoes, allowing you to sink to the floor of a body of water. Your land weapons and skills are available while in this state.”

Aquatic Weapon Mastery

”Learn to use your aquatic weapons on land, giving access to all new skills. Skills gain effectiveness based on current elite specialization.”

Legendary Aquatic Crafter

”Learn secrets of Maguuma, Crystal Desert, and Cantha’s bodies of water to craft powerful underwater legendary weapons and gear.”

Edited May 13, 2022 by Dark Red Killian.3946

[Wolfshade.9251]

Cartography mastery

1. Unlock the ability to place multiple personal markers on your map.

2. Enable multiple layers of personal markers on the minimap (like a filter to show only favourite farming spots or boss spawn points)

3. More varieties of marker icons to chose from with possible annotations when hovering over them.

4. Ability to generate a link to your map layer markers to share it with others.

5. Frequently used waypoints get a discount (limit to 3 favourite waypoints or so).

[Reborn.1738]

Seaglider mastery

Deploy a hand operated Seaglider that allows the user various utilities while exploring under the waves.

It probably would overlap with the Skimmer a bit, or make it slightly redundant, so it wouldn't be quite as fast. Or maybe the Skimmer gets an underwater speed burst.

I was thinking it would act more like a glider in the sense that you could use it to interact with underwater currents, act as a quick getaway like how you can glide to escape combat.

Potentially the mastery line could be just further enhancements to the Skimmer. But this would mean you wouldn't have to grind out the underwater skimmer master and have an alternative. Also, it'd be cool.

 

Tier 1 - Seaglider

You can now use your seaglider when under the waves. You can use an ability to give your seaglider a short forward boost. The seaglider has a built in lamp that will illuminate darker underwater caves.

 

Tier 2 - Sonar

Unlock the seaglider's sonar ability. Use this to detect underwater caches of treasure. Sonar ping will point in the direction of the loot (like treasure maps in PoF)

 

Tier 3 - Torpedos

Unlock the seaglider's torpedo ability. Use this to crack open underwater boulders and fissures to find secret treasure and caves.

 

Tier 4 - Current Drifter

Unlock the seaglider's ability to drift along underwater current streams. Gives the player a large speed boost while travelling along these currents, but only in the direction it flows.