Which mastery pair, to you, seems to have the least synergy?
From my experience of playing a bunch of the combinations through act 1, and looking over their future, Witchblade (Soldier/Occultist) seems to have the least synergy between the two. There’s some bleed, and a few other things… but they don’t seem to couple as smoothly as a lot of the others.
Elementalist (Demolitionist/Shaman) also doesn’t seem to complement each other too much. Sure, you can focus heavily on lightning damage but overall they don’t seem to jive very well either.
Synergy doesn’t necessarily has to mean damage. Survivability, etc also matter. And just from that one aspect shaman can easily supplement anything. Just like occultist can he LPNs oldie r with cof/blood of dreeg
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying these combinations are weaker or unplayable. I’m just saying they are… less tight; there are fewer “options” to make them work together.
Actually has one of the highest synergies, oddly enough. There are like 4-5 radically different builds that you can build on a Spellbreaker, that all work very well.
Phantasmal Blades with Frenetic Throw and Devastation, using the Clarivoyant set to convert P-blades chaos into Aether damage.
Max CDR Spellbreaker, designed around spamming an 85% CDR Shadow Strike.
A standard WPS Nightblade, using Shard of Benorath as basic weapon attack, with arcanist providing a bit of supplementary stats.
Skycaller build, using the Trozan’s Set + and using Trozan’s Sky Shard, using NB to supplement the mostly Arcanist build with things like NB’s Night’s Chill.
You could probably squeeze one or two more out of there as well, but those are some of the builds I know off of the top of my head. The two support eachother really well though, mostly because Arcanist brings tons of cold damage, and NB brings -cold resistance.
Before i played my Battlemage in Ultimate i would have said arcanist and soldier, cause they dont have damage synergies and soldier requires a shield for a lot of his skills and and a caster with shield looks awkward… :rolleyes: but the few skills you can use without a shield or a 2H are pretty amazing, probably the only reason i survived Ultimate
Occultist is probably the best second mastery for any kind of physical-based Soldier build. Massive physical and bleeding resistance, massive flat OA bonus, and attack speed bonus. these are exactly the things you need from a support class for either the Blade arc two-hander build or a block/retaliation tank. The physical resistance bonus and the fact that a lot of items are give bonuses to important skills in both classes (Black matriarch ring for example) are just extra.
Elementalist is amazing because of how well he uses the Stormheart swords. The advantage of Shaman over Nightblade is that you can get enough survivability and regeneration trough Wendigo totem, Shaman mastery’s massive health bonus and Heart of the wild that you don’t need Tree of life and can chose fully offensive constellations (Spear and Dying god).
The worst class is probably Warlock. Chaos and aether compete for item bonuses, Reckless power and Possession compete for the exclusive skill spot, Vulnerability doesn’t affect aether and chaos, Occultist passive give attack speed and flat damage, while Arcanist passives mostly give cast speed and spell damage with almost no % weapon damage. Maiven’s sphere and Possession don’t stack properly and both benefit from % health and armor bonuses neither class gives. DEE Warlock is somewhat doable, benefitting from some Arcanist passives (Inner focus, Elemental balance and Mental alacrity). Which hunter is a much better option for DEE. Yea, stay away from Warlock. Or better yet, prove me wrong, I haven’t seen a Warlock build that works since B30 or something.
Don’t forget Crown of the winter king and Temporal archblade with 100% conversion combo.
Saboteur - Technically the name should be changed to Elementalist because if you pick a saboteur your best option is to stack elemental damage and it’s nearly impossible to make a saboteur and not attack with a combination of cold/fire/lightning.
In terms of what they actually synergise with. Piercing damage and not by high degrees. Easily the least synergy imo.
It sure seems as though Warlock is at the very bottom of the synergies list right now… I’ve never rolled one and failed to properly theorycraft it out with the exception of focusing on Arcanist passives.
