My Mastery Guide

Hey guys.
If you see something you disagree with or have some ideas I missed pls let me know.
English is not my first language so have mercy with me.

First up I will start from a general page for masteries and go into further specialising depending on what things you want from them.

So lets start...

Basics:

I used 40/59 points (P) here.

Offense (22 P):

All mastery with 1/x are stepping stones for the following:

5/5 Precision and Cruelty should be a no-brainer. You need that for damage for almost every champ.

Side info:
• Dont ever put more points into pierce than 1/3. It has less than a 1% critdamage increase (spare Ps at the end are even better in Greater Strenght)

• Courage is very good. I put only 1/3 points into it for now but will come back to it if we have spare points at the end (3/3 suggested if you do content that you need a lot of revives like LoL, AOL, V1, Act 6 etc).

Glass Cannon is just super awesome. 7,2% is a lot of damage for 3 points. And since you hit more than you get hit (well at least I hope so) its worth 100% of the time.

Dispair is a strong utility for 3 points and helps vs all kinds of regenerations in the game when you have a champ with debuffs.
You can argue that Dispair is more situational and I kinda agree (perfect for champs like HT, CapIW and Void)
But even a bleed here and there might help vs that annoying GreenGoblin reg.

Defense (10 P):

All mastery with 1/x are stepping stones for the following:

4/4 in Block Proficiency is a must.
Taking less damage on blocks and parry are 100% needed.

3/3 in Recovery is very nice for every reg in the game.
You can take the 4 points out of Salve and Recovery if you really need them somewhere else but I dont recommend it.

Utility (8 P):

Parry 3/3 is core. You can argue that 1/3 is enough but in "end game" content enemys hit very hard and you dont want to take more damage than needed (looking at you Cull)

Dexterity 1/3 is core as well or you cant evade that projectiles.

Stupefy 3/3 is suggested bc in AW (when enemies run limber) you are thankful for every milisec that parry lasts and in general it might be the difference between starting the next combo or not.

Limber just sucks. Never put points into that aside when you really need to annoy enemy attackers in War or do AOL.

And with that we have the basic trees done. From here on the specialising part will begin. We have 19 Ps to spare.

The are 2 paths that you can choose now:

Do I want to go for suicides (Recoil, Double Edge and Liquid Courage)
OR not.
That will change your playstyle a lot. Some champ use them very well (Ghost, Corvus, Omega, CMM, Magik etc) and some will become very bad with them or will only be able to do 1-3 fights (Void, Carnage, VtD etc)

Keep in mind that Liquid Courage reduces your healing by 30% bc its a Poison effect.

1. You want Suicides:

You need the willpower mastery for that and ofc the suicides.

We need 15 P to unlock Willpower so go for the Greater Vitality (nice to counter some of the - HP% from Glass Cannon) or Pysical Resistance. Makes very little difference. Can also go for Stand Your Ground to gain a bit of utility.

And the Offense tree.

As you can see we have 4 spare points. Things that make sense imo are:

Go for 4 Ps into Petrify/Pacify (Utility tree). Its a nice bonus.

Or go for 4 Ps in Coagulate/Courage (Offense tree)

Since you will lose health when fighting with suicides you will end up a lot below 50% which makes Courage useful.

Coagulate helps you with the damage in the first 16 sec from Double Edge so your champs that are not bleed & poison immune take less damage:

DE = 1,25% damage for 16 sec
LC = 0,6% damage

1,85% -(0,7 × 2 × 1,15 × 0,7)=0,723%

0,723% × 16 sec = 11,6% HP lost

Coagulate 1/3 = 9,6% HP lost

Coagulate 2/3 = 7,6% HP lost

Coagulate 3/3 = 5,7% HP lost

Only DE = 1,25% - 0,805% =

0,445% x 16 sec = 7,1% HP lost

Coagulate 1/3 = 5,1% HP lost

Coagulate 2/3 = 3,1% HP lost

Coagulate 3/3 = 1,1% HP lost

Side info:
• Omega Red becomes bleed immune with 1/3 Coagulate except if he fights a node with " + ×% more bleed damage".
• Nick F has a synergy with Antman/Quake that lets you turn the bleed from Double Egde into a heal at the start of every fight. That makes a lot of suicide unfriendly champs suicide friendly.

2. You dont want Suicides:

Now we have 3 main points to look at:

• Willpower (Defense)
• Mystic Dispersion short MD (Utility)
• Deep Wounds/Assassin (Offense)

As you know we have 19 Ps to spend.

Willpower costs 8 Ps
MD (4/5) costs 7 Ps
Deep Wounds and Assassin each 5 =10 Ps

From these 4 mastery only 2 are general: Assassin and Willpower.

Imo Willpower is very strong and everyone should have it. I know some ppl dont value it too much but it becomes useful in so many matchups from early game to end game.

Assassin on the other hand is nice to have but not to useful imo. Yes you can burst the last 18% with a nice SP2/3 but I dont run it more than 1/5.
But here it comes to personal perf.

Do you use a lot of mystic champs like Doom, Magik, Voodoo, Calire, SS then MD is what you should go for.

Do you use a lot of bleeders that benefit from Deep Wounds like Nick F, Carnage, Venom, Domino, SS etc then go for that.

Lets say you dont need MD and go for the other 3 and have spare points. You can always put them into Courage or Petrify/Pacify.

This is an example if you dont want Willpower:

This are my mastery for over half a year now and I love them.

Keep in mind that I use this "half suicide" build with only Double Edge and Deep Wounds for champs like Omega Ghost Nick F CMM Domino Venom and HOPEFULLY Corvus and Thing in the future.

Hope this guide can help someone.

Comments

MRMOJO77

Actually I used to be part of a mastery chat where we went through and figured a lot of masteries. And four in precision is more than adequate so you can gain a point from there. And two in the Perry mastery is more than adequate So there is another point. But your builds are okay

Djin

What about masteries like Mystic Dispersion are they worth unlocking? If yes then which one.

Actually I was looking forward to unlock Pure Skill.
I just ranked 4 my 5* Killmonger.

Seraphion

What about masteries like Mystic Dispersion are they worth unlocking? If yes then which one.

Actually I was looking forward to unlock Pure Skill.
I just ranked 4 my 5* Killmonger.

I have wrote something about MD. It is worth it if you have the right champs for it.

The other "class masteries" suck aside from tech maybe.

Crits do almost "true damage" anyway so pure skill wont bring you anything.
Same reason why pierce is not good

Blackbeard

May i ask which guide or website you used to build it? Not asking about the mastery setup actually, asking about the builder.

Fred_Joeity

It’s AuntM.ai

Blackbeard

Thanks a lot. Cause the old github one only shows pi growth. This one is more informative.

spaceoctopus

There’s virtually no difference between cruelty/precision at 4 and 5. I believe it’s Brian Grant that has a video showcasing that. Save yourself the two points and put them to use elsewhere.

Fred_Joeity

Cruelty between 4/5 & 5/5 has about a 3% damage difference. Maybe not too much for most champions, but it’s an alright boost if you have nothing better to put points into if you have a Ghost or Corvus

Seraphion

There’s virtually no difference between cruelty/precision at 4 and 5. I believe it’s Brian Grant that has a video showcasing that. Save yourself the two points and put them to use elsewhere.

I agree with 4/5 precision
Cruelty still gives a damage boost tho. Ofc it depends on how much cruelty the champ has naturly (the higher the cruelty the lower the %damage increase)

SummonerNR

How can there be a natural limit (or a “diminished returns” factor) to Critical Damage ?
That is increased DAMAGE, not the % based Critical Rate which would naturally reach some upper limit of percentage.

That would be similar to a limit on “+ Attack” increases, which I doubt exists.

Seraphion

How can there be a natural limit (or a “diminished returns” factor) to Critical Damage ?
That is increased DAMAGE, not the % based Critical Rate which would naturally reach some upper limit of percentage.

That would be similar to a limit on “+ Attack” increases, which I doubt exists.

I see your problem.
Since the update when 12.0 came they put in a system that scales.

Crit damage works like this:
Base crit damage = +50%

If you had 0 crit damage rating and your non crit attack would do 100 damage
= your crit would do 150 damage

When you have 1.000 crit damage rating you gain + 166,7 + 50 (base) = +216,7% increased damage on a crit

When you have 2.000 crit damage rating you gain + 250 + 50 (base) = +300 % increased damage on a crit.

As you can see the first 1000 give you
~ +167% and the 2nd 1000 give you +83%.

You can do the math for yourself on auntm.ai.

There are 2 numbers that get generated into a %. Crit damage rating and everything else (crit chance, block profi, armor etc)

That why you never see a skill say: spiderman get + 20% crit rating. It always says something like +8.000 crit rating.

Seraphion

You can disagree but that makes it still right haha

mortenhy

Pretty good guide. Sorry for the english Spelling, I am danish, but the only thing i disagree on is limber.. I know most of the players woyld disagree but I have 5/5 in limber. Maybe it is because I am not that good, but it saves me quite often in arena.

Seraphion

Pretty good guide. Sorry for the english Spelling, I am danish, but the only thing i disagree on is limber.. I know most of the players woyld disagree but I have 5/5 in limber. Maybe it is because I am not that good, but it saves me quite often in arena.

I see. In arena you can take a few punches here and there tho. And arena is normaly really not the place where you need spcial mastery for. But I understand your point.

SummonerNR

Where do you find the numbers 166,7 for 1.000 and 250,0 for 2.000 ?

Is it just from testing trials ?
If so, would have been easier to just give specific actual damage examples instead of some other numbers that don’t say where they come from.
So you could then project that out to comparing damage like the first example of a 100 Damage if non-crit giving 150 if Crit (without any additional boost from CritDamage).

Instead of comparing flat numbers to percentage numbers.

Of course, doesn’t help when countries decide to use different notation standards for their number systems (decimals vs commas).

Does +Attack boosts result in similar “once you get higher, the effect of additional +Attack is less and less beneficial” ? I just don’t recall hearding that Damage type increases are on a curve before, that’s all.

Seraphion

Where do you find the numbers 166,7 for 1.000 and 250,0 for 2.000 ?

Is it just from testing trials ?
If so, would have been easier to just give specific actual damage examples instead of some other numbers that don’t say where they come from.
So you could then project that out to comparing damage like the first example of a 100 Damage if non-crit giving 150 if Crit (without any additional boost from CritDamage).

Instead of comparing flat numbers to percentage numbers.

Of course, doesn’t help when countries decide to use different notation standards for their number systems (decimals vs commas).

Does +Attack boosts result in similar “once you get higher, the effect of additional +Attack is less and less beneficial” ? I just don’t recall hearding that Damage type increases are on a curve before, that’s all.

first:

you can check my "1000" crit damage rating and the % they will turn into on auntm.ai website. (like I wrote in my comment)
go to "stat calc"and put in the numbers you want to test.

if you want to simulate damage vs 4* R5 champs use the challenger rating "100"

if you want to simulate damage vs 5* R4 champs use the challenger rating "110"

if you want to simulate damage vs 5* R5 champs use the challenger rating "120"

the flat numbers will "turn" into % numbers
this is how the game works

last:

no damage is always flat stacked together

+Attack boosts DO NOT result in similar “once you get higher, the effect of additional +Attack is less and less beneficial”

the flat numbers that become less powerful the higher they go are:

crit chance
crit damage
armor
physical resist
energy resist
block broficiency
block pen (as far as I know)

if you want to read more about that:

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/176360/frequently-asked-questions-about-combat-and-combat-mechanics#latest

SummonerNR

Ok, now (from DNA's thread) see how you’re calculating the extra Crit Damage percentage (relative to non-crit hits) that you add on top of the non-crit Damage.

A 0 Crit Damage value champ will give ( 100% (non crit amount) + 50% (Crit Bonus) ) * the actual amount of normal non-crit Damage.
50% value coming from ( [ 0 / (0 + 1500 + 500 ) ] * 5 ) + 0.5. Which just using case of 4* 5/50 as example so Challenger Rating is an easy 100, thus the extra 500 in denominator above is from 5 * 100.
Or for assumes non-crit hit normally dealing 100 Damage would result in 150 Damage.

And a 1000 Crit Damage value champ (or with Synergies/Masteries) will be...
( [ 1000 / ( 1000 + 1500 + 500 ) ] * 5 ) + 0.5. Which is a bonus amount of 1.67 + 0.5, or 2.17 times the base non-crit amount. So the net amount would be 317 Damage (relative to a normal 100 Damage Attack).

** That's where your numbers started to become unclear, comparing differential amounts of just the bonus Critical portion of the hits, between one level of CritDamage rating and another. Instead of comparing grand total amounts.

And I can then see how the numerator/denominator calculations, multiplying by 5 and then adding 0.5, would only ever become 5.5 (or 550%) at a maximum, no matter how high your Crit Damage value. So in essence, there is a % cap. Just not 100% like other values, but 550% instead.

But your 3 examples of Zero Crit Damage Rating (netting you a 150 Crit Attack on what otherwise is only 100 if it was non-crit), versus Crit Damage Rating of 1000 (netting a 317 Crit Attack on what otherwise is only 100 if non-crit), versus Crit Damage Rating of 2000 (giving you a net of 400 Crit Attack).

Those 1000 or 2000 are Crit Damage Rating values that are already out ahead of what the MASTERY Levels for Gr.CRUELTY are, which are only 95/190/285/380/475.
And most champs may only have an inherent amount of Crit Damage Rating of between 200 and 1000, so at best (aka Sym.Spiderman at 979 or Gamora at 815) with Mastery you are not even reaching 1500.
So Level-5 of Cruelty would still give you a good amount of extra for your Crit Hits.
Or anyways, if you were to decide Level-5 was NOT worth it, then you could actually say that having NONE in Cruelty would be an arguable option as well.

* now, if you are talking about some very few cases such Corvus with his extra 3000 Crit Damage per persistent charge (so easily 9000 and potential 12000 by end of quest), that would COMPLETELY curve any Crit Damage Values from Mastery, Synergy, etc, so low as to make all other sources relatively meaningless for him.

Sorry to everyone else for the TLTR.

Seraphion

Oh I said 5/5 cruelty was always worth it.
Precision is okay on 4/5 as many others wrote. I just wanted to give the side info that there is a scaling factor in it 😅

With the hugh numbers from 1k and 2k I just wanted to give a visibal example of scaling. Not to give reason that 5/5 cruelty was useless.

English is my 2nd lang so maybe I exaplained it bad.

And yeha I agree with all of your points

mortenhy

Hey guys.
If you see something you disagree with or have some ideas I missed pls let me know.
English is not my first language so have mercy with me.

First up I will start from a general page for masteries and go into further specialising depending on what things you want from them.

So lets start...

Basics:

I used 40/59 points (P) here.

Offense (22 P):

All mastery with 1/x are stepping stones for the following:

5/5 Precision and Cruelty should be a no-brainer. You need that for damage for almost every champ.

Side info:
• Dont ever put more points into pierce than 1/3. It has less than a 1% critdamage increase (spare Ps at the end are even better in Greater Strenght)

• Courage is very good. I put only 1/3 points into it for now but will come back to it if we have spare points at the end (3/3 suggested if you do content that you need a lot of revives like LoL, AOL, V1, Act 6 etc).

Glass Cannon is just super awesome. 7,2% is a lot of damage for 3 points. And since you hit more than you get hit (well at least I hope so) its worth 100% of the time.

Dispair is a strong utility for 3 points and helps vs all kinds of regenerations in the game when you have a champ with debuffs.
You can argue that Dispair is more situational and I kinda agree (perfect for champs like HT, CapIW and Void)
But even a bleed here and there might help vs that annoying GreenGoblin reg.

Defense (10 P):

All mastery with 1/x are stepping stones for the following:

4/4 in Block Proficiency is a must.
Taking less damage on blocks and parry are 100% needed.

3/3 in Recovery is very nice for every reg in the game.
You can take the 4 points out of Salve and Recovery if you really need them somewhere else but I dont recommend it.

Utility (8 P):

Parry 3/3 is core. You can argue that 1/3 is enough but in "end game" content enemys hit very hard and you dont want to take more damage than needed (looking at you Cull)

Dexterity 1/3 is core as well or you cant evade that projectiles.

Stupefy 3/3 is suggested bc in AW (when enemies run limber) you are thankful for every milisec that parry lasts and in general it might be the difference between starting the next combo or not.

Limber just sucks. Never put points into that aside when you really need to annoy enemy attackers in War or do AOL.

And with that we have the basic trees done. From here on the specialising part will begin. We have 19 Ps to spare.

The are 2 paths that you can choose now:

Do I want to go for suicides (Recoil, Double Edge and Liquid Courage)
OR not.
That will change your playstyle a lot. Some champ use them very well (Ghost, Corvus, Omega, CMM, Magik etc) and some will become very bad with them or will only be able to do 1-3 fights (Void, Carnage, VtD etc)

Keep in mind that Liquid Courage reduces your healing by 30% bc its a Poison effect.

1. You want Suicides:

You need the willpower mastery for that and ofc the suicides.

We need 15 P to unlock Willpower so go for the Greater Vitality (nice to counter some of the - HP% from Glass Cannon) or Pysical Resistance. Makes very little difference. Can also go for Stand Your Ground to gain a bit of utility.

And the Offense tree.

As you can see we have 4 spare points. Things that make sense imo are:

Go for 4 Ps into Petrify/Pacify (Utility tree). Its a nice bonus.

Or go for 4 Ps in Coagulate/Courage (Offense tree)

Since you will lose health when fighting with suicides you will end up a lot below 50% which makes Courage useful.

Coagulate helps you with the damage in the first 16 sec from Double Edge so your champs that are not bleed & poison immune take less damage:

DE = 1,25% damage for 16 sec
LC = 0,6% damage

1,85% -(0,7 × 2 × 1,15 × 0,7)=0,723%

0,723% × 16 sec = 11,6% HP lost

Coagulate 1/3 = 9,6% HP lost

Coagulate 2/3 = 7,6% HP lost

Coagulate 3/3 = 5,7% HP lost

Only DE = 1,25% - 0,805% =

0,445% x 16 sec = 7,1% HP lost

Coagulate 1/3 = 5,1% HP lost

Coagulate 2/3 = 3,1% HP lost

Coagulate 3/3 = 1,1% HP lost

Side info:
• Omega Red becomes bleed immune with 1/3 Coagulate except if he fights a node with " + ×% more bleed damage".
• Nick F has a synergy with Antman/Quake that lets you turn the bleed from Double Egde into a heal at the start of every fight. That makes a lot of suicide unfriendly champs suicide friendly.

2. You dont want Suicides:

Now we have 3 main points to look at:

• Willpower (Defense)
• Mystic Dispersion short MD (Utility)
• Deep Wounds/Assassin (Offense)

As you know we have 19 Ps to spend.

Willpower costs 8 Ps
MD (4/5) costs 7 Ps
Deep Wounds and Assassin each 5 =10 Ps

From these 4 mastery only 2 are general: Assassin and Willpower.

Imo Willpower is very strong and everyone should have it. I know some ppl dont value it too much but it becomes useful in so many matchups from early game to end game.

Assassin on the other hand is nice to have but not to useful imo. Yes you can burst the last 18% with a nice SP2/3 but I dont run it more than 1/5.
But here it comes to personal perf.

Do you use a lot of mystic champs like Doom, Magik, Voodoo, Calire, SS then MD is what you should go for.

Do you use a lot of bleeders that benefit from Deep Wounds like Nick F, Carnage, Venom, Domino, SS etc then go for that.

Lets say you dont need MD and go for the other 3 and have spare points. You can always put them into Courage or Petrify/Pacify.

This is an example if you dont want Willpower:

This are my mastery for over half a year now and I love them.

Keep in mind that I use this "half suicide" build with only Double Edge and Deep Wounds for champs like Omega Ghost Nick F CMM Domino Venom and HOPEFULLY Corvus and Thing in the future.

Hope this guide can help someone.

It is me from Youtube, just wanted to say thank you for the guide, I am only 3. way through, but the more I read the more, the more I learn 👍

urzafrank

Hey guys.
If you see something you disagree with or have some ideas I missed pls let me know.
English is not my first language so have mercy with me....

Hope this guide can help someone.

This is a great guide. Hope you are still playing and having a good time

Seraphion

Thx. Yes I'm still playing and the only thing I would add would be my current mastery full suicides page:

KarmaConnect

I found a the most efficient setup for my tastes. If want to play suicides or not i can just change the offense mastery tree without having to change defense and proficiencies tree. Usually i play suicides during the AW off season and with Suicides Off during the season. But there are many mastery setups for this game and also depends on what content you are playing. With this in mind i always keep:
Proficiencies tree with at least 16 points.
Defensive tree with at least 20 points.
Offensive tree with 23 points.

First here is my Off Season Setup

I only play suicides because of Arena. If you dont play Arena you can definetly tackle all content in this game without Suicides.

What i like about my setup on the defense Tree is that Coagulate makes characters like Guardian (2points), Magneto and Omega Red (1 point) Heal 100% from bleeds, specially when im on suicides. Those 2 points in Coagulate i can change to Resonate if i ever need to tackle a node that requires Weakness Debuff.

In the proficiencies I always have md max ready for my mystics and if i need to activate limber i have enough points to do so and still have md pretty high. I absolutely love Petrify. I can stack 10 hits and the opponent would still not have 1 bar of power if i hit them while they are stunned from parry.

If i ever need to turn off suicides i just change to this:

This One would be my go to setup to tackle any Story content, including War. I dont like assasin, it makes you mess up against Thing when he is low health (Specially in the Abyss and in AW fights.) Since it only trigger when 18% health left, by common sense you can deduce that if you have already done 82% of the fight without assasin you might aswell finish without it. Also Courage only triggers while low in health, thats why i dont max it. 80% of the time im not getting hit so unless you are the type of person that uses alot of revives then you dont need Courage Mastery. Glass Cannon is absolute Garbage, 7% attack? really? Use simple math, you would need 15 hits in a fight to actually have an advantage over someone with glass canon Off. It would be like having 1 extra hit after #15. I only need Despair if im playing AW. Usually when i have to tackle a healing node in Side quest or EQ or Story i just use champions that dont need Despair like Warlock or AA or Mags on metals for example.

In my opinion, this for my playstyle, is the most efficient setup. Defensive Tree and Proficiencies Tree almost never get changed unless im playing the Abyss while packing Aegon. In the Abyss the setup is completely different in all Mastery Trees.

Seraphion

@KarmaConnect

I agree with most of your points.

Especially with Petrify. I love it so much.

I also like more points in Coagulate bc it makes non immune champs a lot more viable.

I like MD 4 more than 5 but I guess that comes down to preference. With Symbiote Supreme and Diabolo 5 is best imo.

I don't know why you would max Salve (2 points for 180 hp is worthless imo).

I would rather put them in greater Vitality, perfect block or stand your ground but that is a minor thing.

The only thing I 100% disagree with is Glass Cannon. Don't forget the multiplier damage from crits, the scaling with armorbreaks and that a lot of debuffs also scale with attack rating (1 example would be HT's incinerate or nova flames)

You said yourself you don't get hit often so the -%hp should no bother you too much (and if it still would you could counter it a bit with greater Vita)

winterthur

Thinking to give up 4 points in Assassin, 1 point in Precision, 1 point in Cruelty (total 6) and add to Block Proficiency (+3) and Perfect Block (+3) but it feels like a downgrade and I still cannot have access to Willpower or Glass Cannon yet.

Seraphion

@winterthur

You also have 4 points in Limber, 1 point in Dexterity and 3 points in Pacify that you can use elsewhere imo

And recovery is one of the best defensive mastery aside from block proficiency

winterthur

Is maxed Pacify not good to deal with (for example) Magik's Limbo?

winterthur

Just read Pacify is bad news against Colossus.

Seraphion

Is maxed Pacify not good to deal with (for example) Magik's Limbo?

Well you can increase your chance to not hit limbo by 30% but against 1 champ that is not worth 3 points.

There are also better counters like Gulk Omega Gambit AA Quake Blade etc