EoD Masteries - Should they be overhauled?

[CrashTestAuto.9108]

I don't want this to be a complaint/doom and gloom thread.  I actually really like EoD.  However, when I thought about it, I realised that basically all the masteries feel significantly undercooked to me, and they were a major selling point in the marketing for this expansion.  To go through them quickly:

 

Fishing: It isn't bad, but it also isn't exactly... good.  Even though I was enthused for it, it just isn't that fun.  I suggested in another thread removing the cap on fishing spots so people could just relax into it, but there have been lots of suggestions around this.

Skiff Piloting: I mean, there isn't even a hotkey.  I don't know if anyone uses these unless they have to for fishing, as mounts are hotkeyed and generally outperform them in every way.

Jade Bots:  I'm really curious what the community feeling on this is.  I personally haven't touched this beyond equipping them (often with irritation when I realise I basically need one in Dragon's End meta and there isn't a Trading Post on that map).  The fact it isn't account wide, or intuitive, makes this mostly uninteresting.

Arborstone Revitalisation:  I use the corner next to the mystic forge and that's it.  Eye of the North feels much nicer, more convenient, and more integrated to me.

Turtle Mount: I think I've used this exactly three times, and that was just to see myself on the mount and to test walking underwater.

 

I'm not sure if my experience is unusual, and obviously this is highly subjective, but yeah... basically none of the masteries hit the mark for me.  Which is a shame, because I don't think it would take much effort to improve at least the first three (and Arborstone and the Turtle could have been awesome). 

So, do people feel this is worth the time to fix, or should resource go elsewhere?

Edited September 5, 2022 by CrashTestAuto.9108

[Wolfshade.9251]

I like arborstone, turtle, skiff and jadebot are just.. there (nothing special, but not horrible design either except for those lvl 10 jade cores on every character). Fishing is ok, nice past-time though not exactly a game changer.

You can keybind a skiff to a hotkey, like a mount.

[CrashTestAuto.9108]

8 minutes ago, Wolfshade.9251 said:

You can keybind a skiff to a hotkey, like a mount.

Can you?  Previously you hotkeyed "mastery", which includes the fishing rod (making it fairly useless as if you're on a skiff you likely want to be able to use the fishing rod instead).

[Astralporing.1957]

This is lacking some options. Personally, for example, i think that EoD masteries are subpar and should be improved, but still i would never go as far as saying they should be the key thing to improve. Because, honestly, there's lot other things needing improving compared to which those masteries are peanuts.

[CrashTestAuto.9108]

7 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

This is lacking some options. Personally, for example, i think that EoD masteries are subpar and should be improved, but still i would never go as far as saying they should be the key thing to improve. Because, honestly, there's lot other things needing improving compared to which those masteries are peanuts.

Yeah, I thought about that, then leant binary.  Either ANet can spend resources on this, or they can't.  Obviously "A key thing" doesn't mean "The key thing", just that masteries should be in the bucket of things to prioritise.

[Fueki.4753]

While they are definitely on the weak side, I see no issues with them.

But then again, I'm not exactly a fan of fishing, boating, jade scrap or GW2's Arborstone.

They are definitely not worth spending more resources on them.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[vanfrano.1325]

Honestly, EoD as a whole should be overhauled but they will never do it so let's focus on what is coming up next, sadly.

[Wolfshade.9251]

2 hours ago, CrashTestAuto.9108 said:

Can you?  Previously you hotkeyed "mastery", which includes the fishing rod (making it fairly useless as if you're on a skiff you likely want to be able to use the fishing rod instead).

Yeah, you can hotkey each of the 3 EoD masteries separately now. I've got skiff on alt+C and fishing on alt+Z. Should be an option in game settings under hotkeys.

[Vavume.8065]

I feel all masteries should be added to, I have a lot of unused mastery points for every region, currently 455 is kind of easy for most vets to reach.

[Tinker.6924]

Look at the different mastery tracks 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery

There are are 5 groups and 25-30 tracks total. 4 out of 5 EoD mastery tracks are usable everywhere.  Compare that to IBS tracks were only 1 of 6 are useful outside of IBS content and HoT tracks where 2 of 6 are useful outside of HoT/LW3 content (one of those 2 "useful" tracks include bouncing mushrooms which are nearly irrelevant).  EoD masteries aren't the flashiest or most useful be they are way more useful than many others.

 

The mastery system clearly needs to walk a fine line of enrichment without game breaking power creep 

 

 

 

[Tinker.6924]

accidental double post, can't delete

Edited September 5, 2022 by EmmetOtter.8542

[Fueki.4753]

9 minutes ago, Vavume.8065 said:

I feel all masteries should be added to, I have a lot of unused mastery points for every region, currently 455 is kind of easy for most vets to reach.

If they add more Masteries, they also need to add more Mastery Points.

There is supposed to be a surplus of them to give players a choice of which ones to pursue.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Ashantara.8731]

It is what it is. I don't think that resources need to be wasted on this. I'd rather see them do something cool with upcoming Masteries or the next Mastery levels that might come with LWS6.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

The masteries in EoD are reflective of the expansion in general. Poorly designed, poorly implemented, adds very little in general to the game. 

[Dark Red Killian.3946]

To be honest, EoD masteries may not seem like much, but to be fair what did people expect? Hearts of thorns brought good masteries like gliding and bouncing shrooms, but once you got all the required ones, you’re left with a bunch of masteries that don’t do much or anything outside of HoT maps. LWS3 brought some good masteries like the spectral attack when downed, the lava shooters are cool but map limited, and I still don’t get the point of the siren’s mastery, which doesn’t even need to be learned. PoF had just mounts for masterys, and LWS4 had extra mounts plus mount abilities. Icebrood saga brought the waystation and mount cloaking, but the rest were specific to icebrood saga only. Then you get EoD. The only masteries I had to have on my alt account as I’m leveling his masteries was arborstone and Jade bots. The turtle and skiff masteries are all for fluff and not really required. Fishing masteries are a must if you like the fishing concept and want to do all the fishing content for achievements and that cod title. I would say while underwelming to a lot of people, EoD fills a gap with its Jade bit and fishing masteries, while other masteries are similar to those hot and ibs masteries that people don’t have to have but help you in certain places only. Each expac I fear will have stuff like this. Some masteries that you get to boost yourself in all maps of GW2, and some masteries are just going to be expac specific. It is that way of course for your progression within the expac. I do look forward to hopefully more unique and hopefully permanent masteries with new EoD content we may see within the next year, as well as into the next expac. There is so much more they can do. I’d rather they take their time to knock it out of the park with big mastery features rather than release all big mastery features within one expac.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Dark Red Killian.3946

[Astralporing.1957]

15 hours ago, EmmetOtter.8542 said:

Look at the different mastery tracks 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery

There are are 5 groups and 25-30 tracks total. 4 out of 5 EoD mastery tracks are usable everywhere.  Compare that to IBS tracks were only 1 of 6 are useful outside of IBS content and HoT tracks where 2 of 6 are useful outside of HoT/LW3 content (one of those 2 "useful" tracks include bouncing mushrooms which are nearly irrelevant).  EoD masteries aren't the flashiest or most useful be they are way more useful than many others.

You're comparing quantity to quality. While in general you have a point - most masteries everywhere are not worth much - we should also think about how useful the few remaining ones are. And it so happens that HoT's gliding alone is way more useful than all EoD masteries taken together.

Fishing is useful everywhere, but it's use is niche. Skiffs general usage is primarily aestethics - beyond that they are nothing more than a supplementary mastery to fishing. Arbborstone is EoD-specific and is actually a downgrade (its functions should have been placed in Eye of the North instead). Turtles are a general use mastery, but of all the mounts are probably the most meh. Jade bots is the most useful of EoD masteries, but it's also designed to be very annoying to use and could have been done far better. In reality it is more a gear grind than a mastery, and the workbench requirement seems to exist only to annoy players, with no upside to it at all.

[CrashTestAuto.9108]

6 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Arbborstone is EoD-specific and is actually a downgrade (its functions should have been placed in Eye of the North instead). 

Oh man.  I'd never thought of having the Arborstone mastery track upgrade EoTN.

That would have been awesome 😞

[Zzik.5873]

I like the jade bot only for the personnal "updraft". Its like a bunny jump but that can be use in combat! I love it! All in all, I find EoD mastery to be fine, I just want them to expend them in the new living world season, like more jade bot tool, more turtle skill/level, etc.

[Ashen.2907]

I don't use any of the EoD masteries and dont see why I should.  I don't think that, "whatever, I dont care," should be the reaction an expansion should go for.

[casualkenny.9817]

To add some customer feedback (2 customers only) my buddy and I were keeping our eyes peeled while they were unveiling the expansion details. We decided not to buy. We were looking for that this-is-fun-and-unique-ireallyenjoyit element that we had in HoT gliding (and metas and maps) and PoF mounts. The 2 expansions were worth every penny (and much more, because players spend in the gem shop only while the game is enjoyable) for those elements .

 

Sure there were useless filler masteries, that anet kindly kept at the final 12mp tier so we could ignore them completely, but the impt ones were all good. Wallows, the webslinging one and the human cannonball were also useful(wallows) or fun(2nd, 3rd) even though they were very map specific.

 

It's ok for a mastery to be map specific provided the map is fun to play in / explore.

 

I'm still waiting for upcoming lw6 news to see if they bring back that magic of ingenuity, to see if I will try EoD. (Like the crazy asura who designed tangled depths)

[Labjax.2465]

I said they should be improved, but idk how much it matters. Masteries in general have been pretty lackluster with few exceptions, in my view, but then I guess I tend to see it as how useful it is in the game overall, rather than being extremely niche. Like gliding was an incredibly useful one, as was mounts. And then the waystation masteries synergize well too. But many of the HoT ones were just "this helps you with some mean mechanic in HoT." Many of the IBS ones are "this helps you navigate like one IBS map and open chests in it."

Core tyria has a series of them that's literally just unlocking accessing to a vendor. But then it also has the invaluable auto loot and mentor tag.

When I look at EoD in that way, jade bot I think is the closest thing to having something that goes beyond niche, but the jade wp and gliding boost is all I can think of and IIRC, you need a core on each character for it to even work....

The skiff and fishing are kind of like the same mastery, but split into two, since the skiff isn't very useful outside of fishing when compared to skimmer (I guess if you want a group water mount, but that's it). And then the aborstone thing is just to make it a hub basically. And the turtle is useful for like a couple of metas (drizzlewood and rata lane cannisters in TD are all I think of) and is otherwise a niche toy to play with.

So from my point of view, the main problem with them is there's nothing very stand out that is useful outside of niche context. I kinda feel like jade bot had potential to be if it hadn't been a character progression system, but it is what it is.

[CrashTestAuto.9108]

4 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

When I look at EoD in that way, jade bot I think is the closest thing to having something that goes beyond niche, but the jade wp and gliding boost is all I can think of and IIRC, you need a core on each character for it to even work....

Yeah, the cores and upgrades being character bound change change the jade bot from brilliant to forgotten about for me.  I really hope they change this or add legendary cores/chips.

[BnooMaGoo.5690]

I would suggest the next expansion stay away from how jadebots work & treat them more like mounts. Not need cores etc etc for each player, they just become annoying having to swap back and forth. Make a Mastery like them account wide not character based

Just my 3 cents
ps should have read previous comment
:{>

Edited November 23, 2022 by BnooMaGoo.5690

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

On 9/5/2022 at 7:23 AM, CrashTestAuto.9108 said:

I don't want this to be a complaint/doom and gloom thread.  I actually really like EoD.  However, when I thought about it, I realised that basically all the masteries feel significantly undercooked to me, and they were a major selling point in the marketing for this expansion.  To go through them quickly:

 

Fishing: It isn't bad, but it also isn't exactly... good.  Even though I was enthused for it, it just isn't that fun.  I suggested in another thread removing the cap on fishing spots so people could just relax into it, but there have been lots of suggestions around this.

Skiff Piloting: I mean, there isn't even a hotkey.  I don't know if anyone uses these unless they have to for fishing, as mounts are hotkeyed and generally outperform them in every way.

Jade Bots:  I'm really curious what the community feeling on this is.  I personally haven't touched this beyond equipping them (often with irritation when I realise I basically need one in Dragon's End meta and there isn't a Trading Post on that map).  The fact it isn't account wide, or intuitive, makes this mostly uninteresting.

Arborstone Revitalisation:  I use the corner next to the mystic forge and that's it.  Eye of the North feels much nicer, more convenient, and more integrated to me.

Turtle Mount: I think I've used this exactly three times, and that was just to see myself on the mount and to test walking underwater.

 

I'm not sure if my experience is unusual, and obviously this is highly subjective, but yeah... basically none of the masteries hit the mark for me.  Which is a shame, because I don't think it would take much effort to improve at least the first three (and Arborstone and the Turtle could have been awesome). 

So, do people feel this is worth the time to fix, or should resource go elsewhere?

1. Fishing is used for relaxing, especially with friends.

2. Skiff does have a hotkey, and it used for transporting players who don't have a Skimmer. Skiff and Turtle as taxis have gone a long way to improving the quality of life for lower-level or F2P players.

3. Jade bots need the most work out of all masteries, as they need to be account-wide.

4 Arborstone is used b players who don't have the other expansions. Eye of the North is expensive to upgrade for newer players, while Arborstone is free (experience vs. gold).

Edited November 23, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[SinisterSlay.6973]

It's been a long time now and I am trying to recall.  But I don't remember any puzzle or anything gated behind a mastery this time around?  At least as far as story goes?