Arcanist got the blues because it is the worst mastery.
2 Likes
I voted Arcanist, because I mostly play gunslingers, and Arcanist is objectively the least useful for gunslingers.
Every class except Arcanist and Occultist has either a main skill or wps support for guns. Occultist does better with applying massive flat damage, which is great for gunslingers.
That said, it’s not a bad class, just not as good as the others.
2 Likes
any class that doesnt have a pet of course.
It’s between Demolitionist an Occultist for me.
I hate using CoF on elemental or acid build, and thermite on ranged build. What’s more is Fire Fire Strike where if you try to reach 22/12 on most of its node, statwise it’s feel very lacking due to many of Fire Strike item lack OA/DA, CC resist, or synergy with other WPS skill. But I like Darkblaze Pyromancer.
Haven’t voted because I can’t say I’ve tried all the masteries enough to say which are good or bad. But I haven’t really played much with Nightblade or Arcanist; for some reason they just don’t appeal to me that much. 
That said, it’s made me think I need to try them all as solos to see what they’re really like. Yet MOAR characters to play! 
2 Likes
For me, the weakest one is Demolitionist. It has the weakest defences among all classes (Blast Shield gets wasted all the time due to too high HP threshold, and Ulzuin’s Wrath doesnt work on close targets hit by Vindictive Flame). His RR reduction skill is still pretty awkward even after improvements (as it covers too small area and is stationary). Most of his skills dont have any ADCtH, and dont have means to get it or make it work properly. Maybe, with an exception of Canister Bomb and Fire Strike. And Fire Strike has too low WD compared to Savagery and RF, not to mention no WPS skills to support it.
And the final proof - among top-20 sofcore builds there are 0 Demolitionists (and even among “honorary mentioned” ones there is only one). Every other class is present. And even though Inquisitor is present only once in top-20, a build with it takes a 5-th place, so it isnt weak by any means.
And of course, a weak single mastery makes a weak build overall.
It stays strong because of Phantasmal Blades and other stuff, not because of DW 
.
2 Likes
Demo does have brimstone which is wicked aoe especially combined with WPS such as Storm Spread or stronghold WPS or Jaxxon. However single target is usually sorely lacking, (because of high nem resistance in general imo), highest single target damage FS build I played was Darkblaze and I constantly tuned that thing for about 2 years with max rolled gear. And it’s still glassy af. But darkblaze is a special consideration because it’s chaos damage, not fire. Demo is primarily a fire mastery after all.
Edit: fullish conversion on brimstone can be hard to get esp without sacrificing other vital gear slots.
Storm Spread isnt even an AoE WPS, lol (unless you have pass through on it from items). It’s a close-range “shotgun” to deal massive single-target damage! True AoE WPS are the ones with pass through (like Chilling Rounds) or ones with AoE damage around target (like Bursting Round).
The problem of brimstone is that it doesnt scale with weapon damage and WPS. And yes, in endgame, strong single-target DPS is more important, and it isnt that hard to get some AoE, as most WPS (even ones provided with items) now have pass through or AoE radius.
As for conversion - well, there is Mythical Dreadscorcher, that is supposed to convert all Fire Strike’s damage into a single damage type, but we all know that it doesnt work for skill modifiers like Brimstone (i wonder which genius made chaos->aether conversion local on it?).
it’s not local, better check it out again 
Arcanist. I like Arcanist as a support class. But i just don’t like the offensive skills. TSS is inconsistent with its projectiles (sometimes all land together, other times they spread out and miss the target), OFF doesn’t work against enemies immune to freezing and i only hear people talk bad things about Callidor’s Tempest, but i need to test it myself to be sure. Devastation is okay if the enemy doesn’t move out of its AoE and AAR is really good but requires standing completely still which makes it dependent on leeching to survive. Also, the class lacks any sort of reliable RR. OFF is just not good for the job.
1 Like
All masteries are poop in this game.
Still waiting for the Zantai mastery, only one skill and it’s the nerf touch.
3 Likes
Nightblade hands down for me. I’m a team player and that mastery is much too selfish for me to enjoy.
That is NOT to say that I do not theory craft, make and use builds that utilize the mastery that are fun.
1 Like
idk Necro is actually really strong especially early game in Solo. I went Necro Arcanist and its awesome. My Endgame is pretty insane with the lifesteal and 140k+ DPS without using anything near endgame gears (like 75 gun and 82 sword).
To me its Shaman.
I hate its debuffs, hate spamming a stupid insect swarm, hate recasting those super low whirlwinds.
I play a very fun Archon - acid grasping vines, just to avoid them stupid debuffs.
Playing elemental, bleeding or vitality Shaman is the worst.
Swarm is not that bad, but Wind Devils are horrible indeed (outside of Cyclone set).
Perhaps I’m the only one who doesn’t hate Wind Devil. Maybe it’s just that thematically Shaman is one of my favourite classes, but practically I have no problem casting them. It could also be due to the fact that I avoid playing anything more than 5 buttons to press on keyboard. I could see where piano builds hate using wind devils though.
1 Like
Arcanist for me.
While I’m well aware that the supportive side on it is strong (see: maiven, star pact, fabric, mirror, null) the offensive side is very lacking aside from tss & aar.
CT is very weak even with great investment barely going over 100k sheet dmg on crazy paper thin spirit-dump’d toon and to make matters worse it’s AoE isnt all that great either & the transmutor skill a joke! The cooldown is waaaaaaaaaaaay too long to justify ever using it, the AoE laughable & the dmg. doesnt exist. If Agrivix ever exploded enemies to ashes with it as the skill info states it must have been a bunch of mosquitos… 
PRMs clear is ok but man is the single target bad… 
Rly needs more power.
OFF… ohhhhhh OFF why is ur usefulness gated behind endgame items… 
A real shame imo. I would truly like to use it more but being pigeon-holed into mageslayer or conduit isn’t it and hurts build variety imo.
This boi needs -freeze duration on it so that it at least works for a short duration on bosses.
I’m not asking for perma freezes here (obv.) but please… make it work!!!
Devastation… the “ultimate force of destruction” which sadly doesnt hit hard at all and requires huge investment into flat reduced cdr to feel ok or very specific sets/items like diviner / anna helm + -cdr stacking gear to do actual dmg. / feel good.
I would love for it to be better outside of these… a man can dream. 
4 Likes
That’s true, Arcanist has the most amount of attack skills. Only 2 of them are decent - the same amount all the other masteries possess, averagely.
Voting for this without context is like voting for the worst attribute or gear slot.
If you consider the power of active skills as the highest contributor to mastery’s “worth” then Occultist is a pretty easy pick. Two of the worst damaging skills in the game for dmg (DEE and Sigils) and two of the worst skills for sustain (also DEE and Doom Bolt).
Every other mastery is advanced enough to carry a good amount of builds without ridiculous mods. Occultist active skills feel like they are forever stuck in pre-FG era.
Yeah I’m currently playing a PRM Mage Hunter and I’m starting to somewhat reconsider my choice of Inquisitor as the worst mastery. Inquisitor at least signals its shortcomings right off the bat, namely the lack of spammables (Box doesn’t count cause spamming it doesn’t work right) or the difficulty of building around some of its skills (Runes because of lack of leech or WD). But Arcanist seems chock full of very usable stuff with PRM as the flagship main skill and at least from what it looks like on the Aether front…good god. Fully juiced, barely outputs 90k sheet DPS. There’s a good bunch of crit dmg on the build but a comparable skill like DEE, with passthrough from set, has even more crit dmg and outputs 50 % more DPS with essentially no item skill modifiers.
And OFF, along with Blade Trap, might just be the most useless skill in the game. Even the conduits don’t actually fix them (3 % effective duration is a yoke).
So what you’re left with is CT and AAR as main skills. So just AAR cause CT requires, at the very least, that you use something else for single target.