That’s basically just inverting the present situation, though, making Mastery competitive with Crit for AoE but terrible for ST.
At present SV Mastery feeds into all but mass-AoE, since it affects…
Raptor/Mongoose
Carve/Butchery
Serpent Sting (including those left by Volatile Bomb)
Explosive Shot
Kill Shot
Arcane Shot (including Quickshot procs)
Pet special attacks (as affected by Flanking Strike via the Focus gain’s double-damage hit)
…but, if it were just tuned decently, it’d have the advantage of amping damage where it’s already highest. Whereas Crit and Vers are spread everywhere, the benefits of Mastery are disproportionately bundled up into the likes of your Mongoose Bite spam, where that added damage is all the more threatening.
Its design is honestly great for PvP, and offers a lot more control than most damage-type-based Masteries do today (see Ret turning all their physicals into Holy so Mastery no longer improves their burst/spenders more than their fillers, Frost DK turning even Obliterate into Frost damage, etc.). Its problem is, first and foremost, just that it’s undertuned and that Butchery and especially Carve are too weak.
Arguably FotE should be affected, but that’s also just because a 4-second non-spender means you’re decently constrained in when you can use it (especially while Terms of Engagement is rolling) as not to overcap Focus. Adding a small %damage bump to its first target hit and making it (when accounting for natural regen) Focus-neutral instead of Focus-positive would help it regardless, but that shrinking the AoE | ST performance gap of Mastery would be an added bonus.
Oh, and of course it ought to affect the things triggered by Focus-spenders, such as Shrapnel Bomb’s Bleed and the damage of the Volatile Bomb explosions, too. That just seems an oversight that it doesn’t, though. (Or at least I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. Will have to test.)
Random/Aside:
There’s been so much talk of Clusters, but what of, say, quadratic damage from Volatile Bomb (each SrSed enemy explodes onto all others, rewarding multi-DoTing and vastly improving the maximum value of Bombardier in mass-AoE)? What of bringing that back?
I would, too, even as much as I’m… not a fan of exactly how MB works at present (I’d prefer, say, 4 stacks and 12 max).
Of course, ideally, I’d rather have MB return to the Legion 3-charge and Focus-free format, at which point MB could just come up later without feeling so spammy.
Granted, I’d also want Serpent Sting to be moved to Row 1 of the class tree, on a choice node opposite a passive RNG-based means of applying a brief (say, 8-second) poison, Intense Focus to be removed (as we’ll be getting out free MBs anyways), Harpoon to reset on kill baseline while Terms is removed, for Viper’s Venom to be reworked, and to give SV a version of Deadeye (chance to refresh Kill Shot and make it usable on any enemy regardless of %health) based on Focus actively regenerated (Flanking Shot would pretty high chance, then), etc. So, pipedreams.
I have to disagree, so long as one has key rotational events or CD resources through which to spread DoTs more effectively. Multi-DoTing, when well supported and interestingly rewarded (see Volatile Bomb before Dragonflight nerfs, for instance), can be quite fun.
Note: We can be pretty sure we lost the ability to get off 81 Volatile Bomb explosion hits off just 9 mobs precisely because we can now so much more quickly/cheaply sting them all (in 3 GCDs, via Hydra’s, instead of 9 GCDs), but still… there should be something available to us there as a mass AoE option, in as fun a way as possible (I don’t consider Clusters interesting, no).
I’d love to see a further WFI-augmenting talent or two… or even something that, say, makes us deal increased flat %AP damage per bleed active on the enemy (significant only in AoE… or under Shrapnel Bomb 3-stacks bleed + Kill Command bleed + Kill Shot / Spearhead MB bleed, etc.)
There is a long list of reasons why people hate you, telling the truth means you have to actually do that to receive said hate. They mainly hate you because your pathetic and act like a child whining thinking anything you say is worth taking into consideration. You are the laughing stock of the hunter forums, hunter discord, and community. You cant even stick to Wrath Classic that has your diet coke Marksmen spec you praise so much and came back to retail to play actual marksmen. If thats not an L idk what is.
The new tier set bonuses for SV feel odd, at least at first glance. Maybe im being anxious and testing will show it to be good but given that SV is the least played dps spec in the game for a reason, im not gonna hold my breath.
