Seems like guides for each spec suggest mastery as bis stat…
Is it really?
How much do you lose out from not taking the other raw dps stats?
Ex. as Preservation, mastery good for throughput but not for DPS?
As dev, is it better to have other dps stats instead?
For Devastation it is significantly better than the other stats for DPS, yes. Can’t speak to the others in PvE contexts.
For Aug, all secondary stats are bad, but mastery is the least bad by a fair margin.
For dev, it’s best to a point (need to sim yourself) and then it quickly loses value. Can’t stress enough, you should sim yourself.
Can’t speak to pres.
I think a lot of Aug guides underestimate crit. I’ve been experimenting with crit a bit, and the extra .5 seconds on EM from crits has made it a lot easier to keep EM up. So many guides talk up mastery, but idk. Also, mastery is harder to stack. When I was pushing full mastery I only got it up to about 20% mastery, and my other secondaries were around 10%. Now I have around 30% crit, 20% haste, and my mastery is at 13%. I feel that trade was worth it.
I mean those guides are based off sims/math and mastery is unequivocally better than everything else. Mastery affects all of our buffs (as well as shifting sands power/duration)-- crit only improves EM uptime and our personal dps (lol).
Granted, the lions share of our damage comes from EM, but if the spec is played somewhat optimally, mastery is significantly ahead of crit.
These percentages are unrelated and are just representations of the numerical value of the stat you have–it’s not harder to stack mastery. If you switched to devastation, that same 20% mastery would likely convert into the low 70th percentile. You need to look at the actual stat value that you have.
For instance, the 26% crit you have right now is the result of 3,794 combined crit on all of your gear. You only have 13% mastery, but you’re actually at 4,291 combined mastery from your gear, so you still have more mastery than you do crit. It’s not “harder” to stack, you just need to know that the percentages aren’t apples to apples and you have to go by how much of the stat you actually have.
All of that said, if you’re having decent results for the content you do and you’re enjoying the spec more stacking crit, just do it and live your best life, but people coming here trying to figure out which stats are best should not come away thinking anything other than mastery is the answer.
Yea that’s why I came to ask about this because my sus alarm is going off
I am having a hard time justifying how dedicating the entirety of your secondary stats to be able to have just 10% or so more vers for a small window after empowered spells is worthwhile
From some napkin math it seems that having DPS stats makes a larger swing in your personal dps (which although lower is still a decent amount considering EM to the party). Even in a best case scenario where that 10% mastery directly contributes to 10% dps buff on party member, it’s still less than the dps you would gain by having dps stats by a lot so…
There’s plenty of information available between the evoker guides and discords that explain why mastery is better, there’s no need to do your own feelycraft.
Additionally, if you think that more vers is all that mastery does for Aug, it explains how your “napkin math” is so far off base.
This is factually and wildly incorrect. Even if mastery was only about the vers buff like you seem to think it is, you’re giving it to 4 people during time shift windows/lust. How can you possibly think that damage buff on 4 people is going to be less valuable than having some extra crit on one aug doing sub-tank dps?
It also increases the duration of all your auras, which is where most of your value comes from.