Overall I wanted to make a post about Season of Mastery and use it as a chance to deep dive into Season of Mastery. What went wrong? What was right? and what could be better next time? Overall, this is my personal opinion on Season of Mastery, and I am interested in other opinions as well. I want to keep this discussion open so people can share their thoughts.
Season 1 - WHAT WENT WRONG?
So Season of Mastery Season 1 was broadly considered a failure, but why? I think there are a number of things that contribute to that from the timing of its release to the content of the season.
The timing was all wrong. The entire community had just come off Vanilla classic. Most people were excited for TBC as many considered it the best expansion (many others consider Wrath the best expansion). So realistically, SoM Season 1 didn’t perform well because the only people in a position to really play it were people who are vanilla purists. While it is fine to target vanilla purists with specific content, it’s not a very large portion of the community. The rest of us were busy doing TBC content because we had already just done vanilla and wanted something new.
This brings me to the second issue with Season of Master Season 1: the content. The big changes were the rushed content (having less time to “progress”) and additional boss mechanics. While these weren’t bad changes, they still left a lot to be desired. I want to be very clear and say Season of Mastery (The Idea) is not a failed idea, but it was poorly implemented. It was kind of a minimalist job really. With something like Season of Mastery there is a lot of potential to play with things in Classic that just wasn’t touched. WoW as a whole is not just boss mechanics, it’s the gameplay, the reward system. The Boss mechanics are only a part of what drives people to play this game. Adding boss mechanics is a nice touch, but a very minor one in the grand feeling of the game. Regardless of mechanics, dpsing as a mage still feels like spamming Frostbolt. Healing as a Druid still feels like HoT spamming. These are separate and extremely important factors of the game. The same can be said for rewards. SoM gave us the opportunity to come into a classic that we don’t have figured out yet, but then it gave us a classic that was still mostly the same, and thus still mostly figured out. The best builds, the BiS lists, some of even the strategies on bosses were largely unchanged. You just have to look out for this extra mechanic now.
Season 1 - WHAT WENT RIGHT?
Now it wasn’t all bad. Season of Mastery had some nice parts as well. Things like everything being sped up was, in my opinion, a great change. Faster leveling, more pressure to clear content before it became irrelevant, these are not bad things. The improvements to professions were also very nice. That, though, is about all I can point out as being the highlights of Season of Mastery Season 1. I would honestly say, if we were to get a Season 2, I would hope things like the profession changes would remain. I think the leveling experience was well balanced, not too fast, not too slow for what we were given as well.
Season of Mastery - FUTURE POTENTIAL
So I go over all this to say, Season of Mastery (the idea) had a lot of potential, but it was never realized. We could have had something unique and exciting. Revisiting a time when we didn’t know everything and had to just wing it. We could have massive changes that deviate from not only Classic, but from TBC and Wrath as well. Changes that so drastically change classic for 1 season as to make it feel new and fresh. I feel like there may be a bit of fear on not changing the classic formula too much, but that’s exactly what SoM needs.
In Vanilla Classic (and SoM Season 1 by relation) mage dps for the entire first half is just spamming Frostbolt, with a couple of cooldowns: 1 for making 1 Frostbolt instant cast, and 1 for making Frostbolt deal more damage. Imagine, if you will, a very small change to Arcane Missiles that increases its damage by, say, 300% but also increases its mana cost by, say 300%. Now mind you, this is just an arbitrary amount that I am throwing out for the sake of argument. Just this small balance change would make arcane missiles do massive burst at the cost of making you go oom, but there is a Clearcasting talent as well that makes your next spell cost nothing. So this 1 small change to mage could change the rotation from just Frostbolt to a style more akin to using Frostbolt to fish for Clearcasting states, then using arcane missiles for massive burst. Then change arcane missiles to potentially proc the Clearcasting state on each missile, rather than a single time on cast to add an additional probability that you could go from Arcane Missiles into Arcane Missiles again for more damage.
Along the same line as the above, imagine reworking Ret Paladin. I absolutely love the way Ret paladin plays at the lower levels of Vanilla, but that gets lost at higher levels. Ret Paladins have synergy between 2 of their seals that could have been capitalized on. Granted this is a bit more than just a small change, but it is very in line with what was already in Classic. Seal of the Crusader, when released by judgement, added a debuff to the target increasing the holy damage they took. This synergizes with Seal of the Rightousness which deals holy damage on attack and when released on the target through Judgement. So imagine if there was another seal added, or an existing seal changed, that adds a debuff on release that returns holy damage done to the target back as mana, or gives a portion of mana to the paladin on Judgement. Then we could also add a talent, for fun, that increases holy damage done to stunned or dazed targets. Now we are synergizing 4 different seals: You would open a fight with the new seal so you can get mana back as you fight (this could work on top of, or be a change to, or a talented addition to Seal of Wisdom) then you would go into Seal of the Crusader to increase holy damage done to the target, then if the target is stunnable you would go into Seal of Justice to stun and then into Seal of Rightousness. Otherwise, you would just go into Seal of Rightousness. Because the idea of adding additional mana back on holy damage or Judgement, you would want to optimally use your Judgement to release Seal of Rightousness more often.
These are just a couple of ideas on tweaks that can be made to classes that would make them feel a bit different and a bit more interesting. Though classes aren’t the only things that can be tweaked to change up how gameplay works. We could also tweak gear. We could add more gear options or change up existing gear. Maybe change up tier set bonuses, or add tier set bonuses for different specs like existed in later expansions. Changing up tier set bonuses, or just set bonuses as a whole would require a minor recalculation on what the best gear is for each phase. To go further, we could introduce new gear that could be specifically targeted (in terms of stats) towards different and/or unique builds. Give people options that make them have to really think about what they want and not just go into it with a pre-defined list of what’s best.
Season of Mastery - CONCLUSION AND TAKE AWAYS
These are entirely my own opinion, but it makes me sad thinking about Season of Mastery: what it was and what it could have been. I would urge Blizzard not to give up on the idea of Season of Mastery but to double down on it. Do MORE with it. I find myself more and more missing vanilla again while I’m playing in Wrath. Don’t get me wrong, Wrath is good, but there’s just something about Vanilla, and I say now would be a good time for it to come back. These are just some thoughts on how it could come back and not flop when it does.
As stated at the top, I want this to be an open discussion on these areas of Season of Mastery. This isn’t a list of “What I would like in Season 2”, it is an analysis and discussion of Season of Mastery and what we, as the community, expected from it, what we got from it, and what we wanted from it. If you read this far, thank you. It took me quite a while to write this and I’m sure it could have been written better, but thank you.