Just curious, why is mastery talked about as if it’s only good for Mythic+ and not for Raiding?
I decided to go all-in with Mastery, because it seems to jive the best with my play style. It’s the same reason why chose the talents that I did, because despite being totally different than just about every guide suggests, they seem to work well with my play style.
Example:
warcraftlogs .com/reports/F8dHk1mfDtvZAKN4/#fight=2&type=healing
Resto Druid mastery only works when you cast multiple HoTs on a person. In M+ where there’s only 5 people, it’s very easy to go with a talent build that allows you to maintain multiple HoTs on a group of that size, and therefore get a lot of benefit out of mastery. (Cultivation, Spring Blossom, Rejuv, Regrowth, Wild Growth HoTs are all very easy to stack up on a small group)
In raids, you have at least twice as many people and will have a much harder time stacking HoTs on only a few people when you will usually instead be focused on healing the raid as a whole. You’ll typically only have around 3 HoTs on one person at max. It’s more efficient to instead stack haste and Crit which is a benefit all the time rather than mastery which only takes effect under a specific circumstance (stacking multiple HoTs on one target).
Yeah, I get how it works in theory, but in practice, I don’t seem to have any real issue keeping enough hots on the people who need it to make mastery worth while. Especially with SOTF which means I am already casting Wild Growth very often, germination which means I can cast rejuv on the same person twice, prosperity which gives swiftmend two charges, combined with grove tending which gives swiftmend it’s own HoT, etc. Add in a bunch of haste, so that I can cast a lot of HoTs, and dual mana-regen trinkets so I can go balls-out without worry, and it seems to work well.
if you just put all your hots on the person before using swiftmend, you get the full benefit from mastery. It doesnt really take long to do that either.
Moslty because crit is better than mastery for raiding as you can the bigger heals on the target without setup or wasting mana on pre hots to do so
It gives the illusion of two charges.
Don’t ever use prosperity.
There are weakauras / addons you can get that show your current stat effectiveness while healing. It shows all stats and essentialy gives you a weight you can apply towards judging how good gear is for the content you are doing. The stats obviously will vary by fight, like if you can all stack up, or if the entire raid is taking consistent damage ticks.
Objectively, mastery is almost always the lowest value stat in raid, and almost always the highest stat in m+.
Edit: ‘Healer Stat Weights’ is a good addon that does it
Mastery isn’t a bad stat for raiding. It’s just easier to maximize its benefit in a smaller group.
That said, I’m not sure I’d say Mastery is the best stat for M+. It may be best in terms of raw healing, but in the range of keys I run (10-18), I find that shorting Mastery in favor of something that helps me contribute DPS is usually a better option.
What size are your raid groups? Keep in mind mythic raids are locked at 20, so it becomes pretty difficult to count on targets having multiple HOTs on them.
As others have said mastery isn’t bad, it’s just that haste and crit are going to benefit every single heal you cast equally whereas mastery requires caveats.
If you’re enjoying it and you’re healing fine, by all means stick with it.