In the current Test Realm, the gold key boss drops another iteration of the once coveted mastery amulets. While these amulets do have the potential to offer interesting utility options, they fall short in this meta due to missing a very important stat: block. With the recent critical change making block independent of your opponent's critical it is essential for most schools to maximize their block to increase survivability.
A significant chunk of block now comes from amulets which is why you will now see most schools opting for Rasputin's Tier one amulets(which offer 70+ block rating depending on the school). Now, I understand that offering a mastery with levels of block that match the Rasputin's amulets would make those amulets obsolete. As such I believe a fair amount of block for the new masteries would range from the 50's-60's. In this way players would still be making a block sacrifice to utilize these amulets while at the same time making these amulets viable in the current PvP meta.
Re: Consider Adding Block to the New Mastery Amulets
I consider this a great idea! I really think a addition of small block to these amulets could definitely improve the search/wish for them... mastery amulets are really in very little use at current max lvl gameplay, due obviously to their lack of stats which has become a basic pattern in every top amulet source.
They currently only give a small amount of health and an average amount of resist (3% I seen so far), defense is surely the most popular aspect of amulets in our current meta (just check the popularity of Shane's amulets). Rasputin amulets give over 70 block and 5-6% resist, I do agree that mastery users should make a small sacrifice of stats for the secondary school pip use... both Rat and new masteries share the same lvl and arguable similar difficulty (single fight, cheater boss), so as resist has been cut by half in the new amulets I would say it's very fair block suffer the same decrease, giving the masteries around 35-45 block according to their school or simply 40 to all.
This value is also similar to Divine Influence and Morganthe's amulets, which offer from 40 to 45 block, same resist though these are lvl 90-99 and give additional 30 critical and 2-3% pierce... players using secondary schools typically sacrifice these last two stats or simply don't need/use them so it would still keep up the pattern of lacking stats to those who try to actually hit with an alternative school. Morg amulets also offer two school blades similarly to the new masteries which carries one instead of two.
As Darkmoor's masteries with damage and accuracy clearly did not become popular, I surely hope KI understands what's missing in their high lvl versions and improve them with resist plus block this time... as in this Test we don't have four new dungeons with 2 or 3 sets of gear for 7 different schools, hopefully we can manage to focus their attention in the amulets this time!
Finally, I do hope this small improvement can lead players to search and use this new gear!
Re: Consider Adding Block to the New Mastery Amulets
+1 on this
As well as
Add more health - 90 health is quite small when compared to the health buffer needed to withstand the colossal cheats in some of these dungeons, and the average unblocked colossal Weaver or FFA
Apropos the first, adding at least 50 global block, or a mix of global and some school-specific block, would be a next step in addressing the poor EV from this dungeon as it is now. People are already reluctantly giving up their Morganthe amulets in favour of Rasputin's charms, because 35-45 block is no longer sufficient to protect them from grievous harm. This amulet should be a step forward from Exalted Mastery and Morganthe's amulets, not a step back.
Remove the "No Trade" tag please! This is not fair to wizards who work hard only to receive the mastery amulet for their own school, which they cannot use. All other mastery amulets are now tradable, why hold these hostage for even a few months?
Re: Consider Adding Block to the New Mastery Amulets
I would like to bring up another aspect of these amulets that concerns me at the moment: The exclusivity of universal resistance to the Balance amulet.
I see three potential issues with this factor:
The advantage of using a Balance amulet and of course the disadvantage of using any other. School specific resistance is in a very solid dismiss by nearly all players... the only realistic situation (PvE or PvP) that a prodigious wizard will focus effort for school resistance is tanks with Ward pets though with uni. gear. Making Balance the most popular, players pick their mastery amulet not by the spells but by the extra 3% uni. resist which is just so much more helpful.
The other new amulets become a step back from Darkmoor masteries: The new amulets seem to carry an amount of school resistance, a bit of health and a blade... that's simply worse than their predecessors, the Darkmoor versions with damage and accuracy. Obviously none grows interest in going after an item when you can get a better one 10 before, the new amulets become a "left over" piece.
The new masteries make to nowhere close to the current meta amulets: Top-tier school amulets are far better than the ones released in this update. I do believe mastery users should sacrifice a portion of their stats but if we're to get new masteries, they should have a decent position of in our gameplay especially when it's dropped in a challenging locked boss which is not really easier than other content.
As I also said before, the most popular aspect of amulets in our meta is the defense through resist and block.As universal resistance is already part of the Balance version it's the simplest move to make the others equal... furthermore an amount of block (universal as the top-tier amulets) can make them somewhat fair compared to the pieces players truly farm and use.
I truly hope KingsIsle can understand this and give mastery amulets some respect making a actually fair version of them for high lvl wizards.
