Some thoughts for now, sorry for the long post.
Improving underwhelming Masteries in general
-
Battlemage
I think Battlemage overall is a better class than people think, it’s really tanky, good for beginners, very good for hardcore, works well with forcewave due to mental alacrity and has some decent endgame variety with 50 shades of krieg set (mindwarp, theodin scepter, lucius’ blade arm) aswell as physical AAR and spellscourge and potentially also physical forcewave.
Now I am totally aware that when it comes to kill speed and clearing crucible all of these builds are better as a DK, Spellbinder or Templar except for spellscourge and maybe lucius’ blade arm.
So while I think the class itself is better than most people think (low dmg, high tankyness + nullification), it could still need more unique builds. Lucius’ blade arm was a great addition and maybe more items/sets like this could be introduced.
When it comes to Battlemage’s masteries and their skills, terrify is a terrifyingly terrible transmuter. One way to improve on it would be higher values for its RR (~6-7 per point) or to remove its RR and give it a debuff that affects bosses aswell like e.g. fumble. OR give terrify freeze RR (no idea if that’s possible), so that battlemage can do warcry + OFF, a combo no other class could do. -
Pyromancer
DW ranged Darkblaze, Obsidian Juggernaut and couple of fire/burn or chaos casters come to mind. All of which are rather squishy unless you play Juggernaut with SR set. At least this class has some very unique builds and also the new rag’nadar’s maw gun is very interesting. -
Commando
indeed… similar to how battlemages are most of the time overshadowed by deathknights, commandos are by warlords. The recent Shar’Zul buff has hopefully helped though? Other than that Turrion’s is pretty much the only build unique to commando.
It’s not a bad class at all imo (like battlemage), but overshadowed and has very few unique builds (less than battlemage and sabo even).
- Defiler
Melee Defilers use either dw blazehearts + Justice set, which has no necro support, or used to use old iskandra’s set for aether afaik. I have not seen new setups with e.g. Krieg or Bonemonger set yet (maybe because they are just terrible?). Also Light’s Defender + Aether Jacks conduit should make a decent Defiler, but worse than Purifier.
Very good example on improving an otherwise underwhelming class indeed.
- Saboteur
Either that or simply buff both for Saboteurs. The last changes that were made to N&O, which made only demo benefit from the acid conversion were a good way to improve sabo instead of infiltrator. Maybe improve those Sabo specifiy bonuses even further?
Improving on any of the points Ceno listed would help saboteur.
Feel free to try this build instead if you wanna try Grenado Sabo. Rimetongue makes you lose so much damage due to its fire to pierce conversion.
Skills & Items
- Vindictive Flame
+1 to this^.
-
Grenado
Increase projectile speed please. Maybe a small damage buff, other than that it’s fine imo. -
Devouring Swarm
Would also be a little better with higher projectile speed and a little longer duration. I personally don’t like the idea of making it spread like Ill Omen aswell, RR would have to be reduced by a lot to balance that. -
Callidor’s Tempest
100% agree, also Harra’s set is too squishy for a melee caster imo.
- Doom Bolt
I’ve played two Doom Bolt builds, one vitality and one lightning and on both of them I wish I had the +radius from Clairvoyant’s Wand. The skill is really easy to miss (at least for me) and it already rewards you with double damage for perfect hit in the center. Imo the base skill should have at least +1m radius to have better AoR on non Clairvoyant’s want setups. To compensate reducing the +2m radius to +1m on Clairvoyant’s seems fair.
- Curse of Frailty
As long as it’s a lowish amount (similar to its physical RR), I’d agree. Chaos builds are in a much better spot after the global chaos res reduction to enemies though.
- Veterancy
I think the skill has its purpose as a one pointer in some builds for physique reduction on cunning dump builds, other than that it’s underwhelming (unless maybe for full HP regen builds, which I’ve never played).
- Arcane Will & Nullification
Arcane will is pretty mediocre indeed, but Arcanist is also strong enough overall.
Nullfication is REALLY good at soft cap, it doesn’t need a buff imo.
- Aura of Conviction
Censure > Conviction on basically every elemental build, maybe I misunderstood your wording.
^is something I wanted to suggest for a long time already.
- Blade Trap:
What about Blade Trap indeed? Why is nobody talking about it? Did people already accept that it’s trash and will never be used? I think Blade Trap is a cool skill and has really good potential on e.g. Phantasmal Blades builds, but it lacks item support. OFF got couple of useable items/sets with freeze RR, and blade trap got… rimetongue set? I’m not 100% familiar with trap res on enemies across the board, but they seem similar to the values of freeze res. So why does rimetongue’s trap RR not match mage slayer’s freeze RR? There is also a conduit for blade trap, which has the same low value (30%) for trap RR that the OFF conduit has for freeze RR. Another possibility would be to give the new Bloodfeast’s Mark ~20% trap RR.
- Olexra’s Flash Freeze:
Agree with what @Evil_Baka said.
Removing the freeze RR on Luminari Regalia while increasing the freeze RR on this conduit aswell as on night’s embrace’s active to up to ~50% freeze RR would be apprechiated.
- Dreeg’s Evil Eye
Agree.
-
Quillthrower of Dreeg
Kind of terrible item right now. It needs a %WD mod for DEE instead of flat damage for ABB or you instead make it the ranged version of the Amarastan Crusher, 0 CD ABB. It would need attack speed then. -
Horn of Gandarr
It’s supposed to either be a meme damage spell with decent proc synergy for devotions or to be used as a damage debuff similar to Warcry. The problem is that it’s only useful for builds that don’t use Aura of Censure or any other damage reduction. For those specific builds that can use it however I think it’s a good ability. Increasing the physical damage reduction debuff to 25% at soft- and 30% at hardcap and/or increasing it’s duration to 6 seconds would be great imo.
-
Counter Strike
specific issue with the bloodknight set could be resolved by giving the set a much stronger damage mod to counter strike or make the base non retal damage of the skill scale a lot better with points. -
Mortar Trap
What’s the current situation with “The Big One”? I have never played a mortar build yet, but I’ve seen several people say it’s straight up a dps loss. If that hasn’t been fixed yet, it should be with next patch. -
Raise Skeletons
Could Will of the Crypt have its phys to vit conversion moved over to master of death instead? Would free up damage for fire and aether skeletons. Also it should get %aether damage aswell now. -
Call of the Grave
Still very underwhelming skill with low satisfactory impact, you one point this, you press it basically whenever it’s off cooldown, basically nothing happens. This might aswell be a toggle like Bonds of Bysmiel unless it gets changed to something that feels like it has an impact. Maybe add total speed for pets to this? -
Master of Death
Overall rather underwhelming aswell imo, %OA is useless on pet builds. Could change that to some defensive stat, like some CC res. -
Hyrian’s Bulwark
1+ nightblade is literally useless afaik and +2 celestial presence is not good enough to not go for mage hunter. A elemental dmg mod to either IEE or Aegis of Menhir would be nice. -
Mythical Stormreaver
lightning cadence’s damage feels a little underwhelming, especially due to the fact that you have to use savagery every now and then in between. Increasing the damage mod a little would be nice. -
Bone Lance
#buffbonelance2020 -
Cold Grenado
doesn’t have the same damage as e.g. fire shieldbreaker with adversary and is a lot squishier due to the class and on top of that needs to be more in melee range while shieldbreaker can just kite. The playstyle and squishyness is hard to adress with balance patches, but the damage could be improved on. I feel like it would be a fair trade for a build like this to have at least the same or ideally even more damage than e.g. an adversary shieldbreaker when it feels that squishy due to being a sabo and having to be more in melee range.
This feedback is based on generic gameplay experience, I can post videos if nessessary.