or maybe Nightblade so stronk it would unravel the fabric of reality, aether, void and eldritch realm all, if it had gotten an exclusive 
3 Likes
Yeah cause nothing screams creativity like doing the same thing over and over. 
1 Like
So conduit’s getting another slot aside from being amulets is still a possibility by what ur saying!?
Seriously tho, would be great to actually have that cuz so many sets block the amulet slot 
1 Like
So let us take lazy solutions and simply do not implement dominant Exclusive mechanic (when you reach maximum accordance with patron deity/sources of power) for some classes just… because? And call it “creativity”?
I do not have years of experience in gaming industry, so what do I know, eh? Oh well, I do not call for masteries change since it is not going to happen. The game has its glaring flaws and unexplainable contradictions, mechanical and lore. But still great nonetheless.
About main topic. Criterias of “worst”, “weakest” etc. are too unclear and have many variations. So “None of these” option should definitely be included. Like, for example, worst main mastery for me is Arcanist (aside from AAR and Panetti, its active damaging skills are not even worth investing or simply do not work without gear) and worst secondary is Necromancer (pathetic OA, no CC, resistances and DA outside of exclusive Master of Death, which is taken mostly for some Pet builds, poor variety of supported damage types, only one universal skill - MoT).
Nightblade and Demolitionist don’t need any excluse skill. Plus, what patrons or deities can an assassin or demolition expert even workship? I believe none in Cairn are specialized in any of that.
I guess Demolitionist can workship Ulzuin, but it better not because he’s a bitch.
Why, Occultist have the best support for Retaliation build - Fevered Rage. And Possession is one of the best exclusive skills there, if not THE best one. Along with RR skill and buff skils (including one with physical resist), I think Occultist is fine as a support class. As a main one, though - yeah, it’s all about items, be it DEE, SoC or Doom Bolt build.
IMO, the main issue with Occultist is that it clearly supports Chaos damage a lot (far more more than inquisitor and demolisher), but it doesnt have any chaos RR. So any build with Chaos damage would still avoid Occultist unless there are items to make up for massive RR loss.
But it has a lot of buffs to increase base weapon damage and 2 WPS, suitable for DW. It’s actually the best support mastery for DW characters, that focus on vitality or aether damage. OA and DA arent everything ,you know. What use does high OA and DA have for DW pistol build, when your base weapon damage is just pathetic?
As for CC - there’s Ill Omen.
Not to mention it also has an active circuit breaker.
Quite expectable 
.
Patrons OR sources of power. For Nightblades - something like Way of Amarasta/Nidalla/Belgothian with respectible damage types and other features.
Except for Ulgrim, all are. So what, no worshipping?
What, yet another acid/cold exclusive? Pass. Let masteries have their identity and yes, that means no exclusive because they have something else instead.
Nah, Ulzuin is legit the only bitch deity in the game.
1 Like
4 Physical exclusives - nothing wrong. 3rd Acid or Cold one - no way! 
Like what?
A matter of personal taste, of course. For me Necromancer is the worst secondary mastery (if taken for every build archetype, not only DW) but good main one.
I don’t know either. People need to put the Inquisitor back in charge. KEKW This is a disgrace.
I heard somewhere that using Thermite mines and Flashbang on pretty much every (if not all) combo is pita for people - I can see why. To be honest, it’s the developers’ fault for forcing it rather than being creative with item skill modifiers for the class.
Didn’t Zantai say he despises it when everyone uses the same things? Oh well, here we go. The irony 
Ah, it’s not bad as a support for a class that already has access to % reduced damage or has nothing else. Consider you can get similar support from Maiven in Arcanist.
However, it pales beside Inquisitor constant %DR and %RR all in one . % reduced damage is superior to % absorption, both in typical amount and in the order of application.
% skill disruption can be found in items/components and tops at 80% anyways (afaik).
Oathkeeper % crit exclusive can be pretty handy for something that is tricky to stack in large numbers.
On the topics of Exclusives: I do find it an odd that some masteries have 2 exclusives and others have none. Oh well.
Possession stacks with other %damage reductions. Aura of Censure dont stack with similar effects, such as Wacry, Light of Empyreon proc, Soulfire, etc. - that’s the major difference. And its skill disruption is very annoying against reflective enemy, especially for RF and Savagery builds. And unlike other RR skills, it even takes an exclusive skill slot. And even without it, Inquisitor has another skill with better %DR to spam anyways. No, AoC isnt that great really.
I suppose it is subjective. Because if you are physical(and possibly other types of) soldier, you probably are using soldier exclusive and if soulfire, you are likely using Oathkeeper exclusive unless chaos/vit. And Stuff like Empyreon, Oleron’s Blood is fairly niche.
However, The only time you’d not take AoC is when the %RR doesn’t fit. Ie, Aoc has 2 most important offence and defence in one. And spamming HoG can’t overshadow the %RR.
Physical on Primal Bond was completely unncessary and never got why Zantai added physical to it.
And yes, four physical exclusives is too much.
Well I was gonna suggest adding %Pierce to it aswell when playtest started 
1 Like
% Pierce Damage on Primal Bond would have actually been fine. Certainly better than yet another exclusive with physical.
Just remembered that there’s actually five exclusives with physical (Aura of Conviction, Oleron, Mandate, Primal Bond and Bulwark). Yeah, % pierce on Primal Bond would have been better.
2 Likes
Also does anyone actually use Primal Bond for phys builds? Often the other exclusives are just, better. That being said variety is nice.
1 Like
Physical Ritualist does.
Primal Bond is more about tankiness, just like Menhir’s Bulwark, so when there are more offensive options, players choose them (Oleron’s Rage, Divine Mandate).
I took a look at some numbers, and this is incorrect.
If you compare a relatively low-end resistance shred setup (using essence of C’thon for 15% reduced, chaosgaze or black star for 15, and Solael’s witchblade for -35%) against a high resistance enemy (90% for Ravager and I think the highest I saw for any enemy while poking around was 105%), you get numbers which are the most favorable for this theory. Also, we’ll use Demolitionist’s Hellfire Mines, since that has -35% chaos res, vs. -25% for Inquisitor.
Against Ravager, you get 31.75% chaos resist for Occultist and 2% for Demo. Against the 105% enemy, you get 44.5% for Occultist and 14.75% for Demo. For Ravager, this means that each damage point will be 43.6% more effective for Demo, and for the 105% enemy, it’s 53.6% more effective.
Now we need to take into account the actual damage done by the characters. Using Occultist gives you Solael’s Witchfire and Possession buffing your flat chaos damage, and Second Rite buffing your vitality and vitality decay damage. Both of these matter, because generally, a monster that’s highly resistant to chaos is weaker to vitality, and vice versa. The only exceptions I’ve found to that are superbosses like Ravager.
So I looked at some gunslingers of mine that are using Occultist as a support class for chaos. The amount of the damage boost differed from character to character, depending on level, gear, skills used and other things, but it ranged from doubling to quadrupling the damage to turn on Solael’s Witchfire and Possession.
In other words, the bonus of Demo’s resistance shred against a very high resistance enemy was about 50%, while the bonus of Occultist’s flat damage was anywhere from 100% to 300%.
Anytime you’re facing an enemy with less than spectacular resistances (which is most of the time) and if you have a more than minimal resistance shred setup on your characer (which you should), the differences get even bigger.
The comparison I did was with gunslingers, who get the most advantage from flat damage, but I expect it’s still better for 2H ranged weapons, though less pronounced.
The theory is probably true for spells that have little or no % weapon damage. But Occultist is hands-down the best support class for chaos damage on gunslingers, and it’s not even close.