Hi folks, I think Outlaw’s mastery is uniquely bad and it’s handicapping the spec, combined with other factors. Here are some reasons why I think this is so:
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Doesn’t feel good: Now before you dunk on me for feelcrafting, hear me out. Most masteries can be boiled down to “Your spells do more damage”. This is usually boring, but at least you can see your numbers getting bigger as you get more and more mastery. All the bars in your Details breakdown go up (not even talking about cooler masteries like Ele/Enh Shaman, all mage specs). Meanwhile scaling mastery on Outlaw literally just interacts with one bar in your Details. It just doesn’t feel good.
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Poor scaling/No synergy: Now this could be considered a tuning issue, after all if Main Gauche damage was doubled today the stat prio would be much more different. However the scaling with the mastery stat is poor, and scaling mastery doesn’t give you other tangible benefits. Fatal Flourish extra energy is fixed and doesn’t scale with rating.
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Doesn’t interact with gameplay: The only meaningful interaction of MG is with Ambidexterity and that determines on how many targets it’s worth it to press Blade Flurry. In comparation for example, Monk mastery places strict limitations on your rotation; and some other masteries like Enhancement gives you tangible & easily noticeable benefits.
Due to poor scaling with mastery and haste, crit and versatility are our best stats, which is really boring as far as character building imo. Here are some obvious alternatives that I think are better than the current one without being overly complicated:
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Mastery: Main Gauche Now mastery rating scales proc chance instead of proc damage. Fatal Flourish possibly gets built into the mastery.
What this accomplishes: Mastery now scales energy regeneration. Still a bit boring imo.
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Mastery: Opportunity Opportunity gets moved to Mastery and the chance scales with mastery rating.
What this accomplishes: Mastery is now both “% more damage” and increased CP generation and interacts with your other stuff. Opens up the design space in the talent tree. Downside: would require a lot of work.
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Mastery: Heavy Hitter Mastery increases the damage of builders
What this accomplishes: Fleshes out the brawler/sustained damage archetype, lets you see big numbers and feel good, is more in line with other masteries in interacting with your kit.
You could engineer really complicated and intricate mastery passives that interact with restless blades or RTB but I think the spirit of mastery is to be a stat that’s straightforward yet interesting enough to allow scaling of a spec in a unique manner. What do you think about Main Gauche? What do you think about these suggestions? Let me know!
FAQ
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XYZ spec’s mastery is more boring than outlaw!/You’re cherrypicking interesting masteries! I think every spec should have something interesting, but we’re talking about Outlaw today. Sub mastery is relatively simple but at least it feels good to build where later in the expansion you’re getting these fat multipliers.
11 Likes
I would like to see the proc rate increase instead of the damage increase.
More procs is more damage and more energy which is more damage. It would synergize exceptionally well with Haste Mastery builds too, to see extremely fast energy gains.
An example function would be regressive to 65% but every point of difference between an exponential decay function and a linear percentage function could be added to base damage.
(I finished the function for the latter, where chance is exponential decay function against the “non-chance” and the difference increases potency. When I did finish, I realized this is a better overall model for crit chance itself because it naturally increases critical strike damage in accordance with linear growth.)
3 Likes
outlaws mastery used to be like that before BFA, mastery increased chance for main gauche proc and it was still not a good stat compared to vers and crit.
4 Likes
I thought all stats were pretty close to even in the current design?
I also think I was trying to suggest a treatment for that as well, where diminished proc chances results in increased proc damage. That has never been the case–it was all one way or the other.
If haste is devalued, another potential add could be to increase energy cost of generators for higher damage, with better scaling than vers.
If haste and mastery are undervalued, it means to me energy gain and use aren’t in a good marriage.
(I started to write a function but had to take care of some deliveries this morning. I plan to revisit as soon as I can.)
mastery got alot better this expansion but its still not something we want over crit and vers. In fact I think haste lost alot of value compared to SL
2 Likes
Mastery should be a bleed for extra damage or they can add the azrite trait keep ur wits attached to mastery. Much rather witz be added to talents but i think it would fit rather well in mastery .
2 Likes
I think the cap can also be handled using DRs in a built in way.
1 Like
Any geometric series is an example.
The problem with frequency improvement and diminishing returns is that it sets a theoretical maximum on what you can get out of the stat, where other specs continue to scale indefinitely. Any frequency gain should have a fork for potency too so hard caps don’t impede growth.
2 Likes
I thought some more about it this morning too.
Another fun way to do frequency is to allow multiple procs.
This can be similarly bound to a linear growth function so the stepwise “bonus roll” maps uniformly at key breakpoints.
This is often modeled with modulo and integer functions.
E.g., 15% base rate. Every time you reach 30%, you get +1 chance to proc and the total chance is reduced by 15%/number of attacks before the extra. Frequency growth continues at a slower rate (divided by number of bonus attacks).
1 Attack: 0% - 15% extra chance, 15-30% “true” chance
2 Attacks: 15% - 45% extra chance, 15-30% “true” chance each
3 Attacks: 45% - 67.5% extra, 22.5-30% “true” chance each
4 Attacks: 67.5% - 87.5% extra, 25-30% “true” chance each
Not sure how that maps linearly, but damage on the bonus attack could be diminished with each successful roll in the same event (but keep the energy gains, which would still be a big net positive).
1 Like
I don’t think you need to convolute it that much, if you go above %100 the extra percentage goes towards a chance for a double proc. i.e. if you have %120 mastery you proc it with every hit with %20 chance to proc it twice, this is how most games do it (Warframe off the top of my head). But I think there shouldn’t be a scenario where %100 proc chance is obtainable? idk.
1 Like
Getting to 100% is an issue. With the above, getting to 3 attacks within 50% is achievable.
The true reason it won’t ever materialize?
Blizzard hates passive damage.
1 Like
100% needs to be improved
1 Like
Outlaw mastery should increase the odds of good rolls, like increasing the likelihood of double buffs, possibly bring back triples.
Its beyond weird to me that an “outlaw” has been fairly gambling for years at this point. Rogues steal and cheat, I think blizz would do themselves a favor by having gameplay reflect that!
6 Likes
You know, that’s not a bad idea.
Change the name of Mastery to “Loaded Dice” or something.
It would fit the theme of the spec and it would help with the RNG factor in rolls.
Nice. 
2 Likes
It just needs to be a flat damage %
2 Likes
No.
That’d be more interesting, definitely, than the current effect, and would better allow players to emphasize or deemphasize that theme (whereas the current Mastery’s effect is basically redundant with Haste… just worse).
…Yeah, I… really like this Mastery: Loaded Dice idea. Sold.
Yup. Precisely. There’s no need to soft-cap proc rates.
And heck, that all can be used to bring back “triple rolls” in the above context (Mastery: Loaded Dice) if we so desire.
2 Likes
I don’t understand how people struggle with rolls. Stop dumbing down Outlaw. It’s rotationally perfect. It just needs damage.
3 Likes
Honestly if they just buffed killing spree to where it did secret tech damage outlaw would be in a good place. Leave it at a 2 min cooldown, it just needs to do damage.
1 Like
i somewhat agree with the rolls, if you spec to it its supper common having all the buffs a fairly part of the time. But the mastery really is boring i am stacking mastery and it does like 13k of damage per proc. i would rather see the mastery be bandits guile i really love that gimick something like the % of mastery is the increase in damage the proc gives like a 5% 10% 15% + the % of mastery to help make some nice builds with BTE crits and ghostly strike but thats more like a dream of mine
2 Likes
100%
Not a fan of the new grand meele change thou.
2 Likes