The War on the WP Mastery

Hey, it's out of control.. it's clear the devs do not want us to heal from excessive debuffs via WP, very clear

We know this by all of the Heal Block nodes, now a new one in the most recent AOA, all the champs kits who disable the Mastery, or reduce it or add some kind of line into the description to remove the chance of getting "free" healing of late.. it's a growing trend with no sign of slowing

It obviously really bothers them, the devs.. the way that the characters and the fights they are designing that apply a lot of debuffs (by their own design) are interacting with WP - so the "solution" has been to just reach into our build and disable part of our masteries via nodes or champ kits.. and I'm so over it

You guys designed WP and the way it works.. you guys designed the champs who throw debuffs.. you guys also design the fights that have nodes that apply tons of debuffs - it's not something that happened to you, you designed it

The part that bothers me the most is that the affect this new design philosophy (slap a Healblock on it/disable WP) completely ignores the fact that Recoil players exist, but we do.. and we're tired of this dynamic

My proposal:
- Just change the Mastery already (issue some type of "rank down" type comp for anyone who wants out .. you're clearly unhappy with how it is functioning
- update the WP Mastery to only apply to damaging debuffs vs non-damaging
- in return, modernize it by making apply to all damaging effects, but not any non-damaging effects.. as this makes more sense to me anyway (it's only "free" healing against non-damaging.. against damaging, it's actually mitigating something as it was originally designed to)

Comments

hungryhungrybbq

Shall I assume anyone who disagrees is happy to have their masteries manipulated by champs and nodes? Because that's the current solution
Forget about WP specifically.. I just don't like my masteries being augmented by champs or nodes period.. they are my masteries
Altering a players masteries should be off the table for champ and fight design imo

SirGamesBond

I disagree

willrun4adonut

Well, I just disagreed because I wouldn't get as high as I do in incursions without WP and suicides. So it's highly subjective I guess, but also didn't like the negative tone you started with, and then followed up in the second post.

hungryhungrybbq

Well, I just disagreed because I wouldn't get as high as I do in incursions without WP and suicides. So it's highly subjective I guess, but also didn't like the negative tone you started with, and then followed up in the second post.

My proposal is to keep WP for all damaging effects.. this includes DE and LC, so I'm confused by your Incursions comment?

hungryhungrybbq

I disagree

Hey, you typed it out at least.. if not giving an explanation 😂

hungryhungrybbq

But it's clear the devs are not happy with the way WP currently works.. and they will keep using other methods to nerf it.. regardless of my opinion or yours, it's happening, they are doing it already (it's been nerfed already, past tense) I'm just suggesting we do it in a different way

NONYABIZZ

Science class used to be my favorite class to fight especially anti venom in AQ because of the free WP healing but now every science champ that comes out disables or stops your free healing in some way 😂
The WP mastery is really only great in questing. Although it is quite useful in certain circumstances in BG, war and with certain NON SCIENCE defenders, it's definitely taken a step back in relevance than when I first got it.
I felt like I had the world wrapped around my finger when I first got willpower 😂. Lmao I miss my noob days (not really).

hungryhungrybbq

Science class used to be my favorite class to fight especially anti venom in AQ because of the free WP healing but now every science champ that comes out disables or stops your free healing in some way 😂
The WP mastery is really only great in questing. Although it is quite useful in certain circumstances in BG, war and with certain NON SCIENCE defenders, it's definitely taken a step back in relevance than when I first got it.
I felt like I had the world wrapped around my finger when I first got willpower 😂. Lmao I miss my noob days (not really).

Yeah, I basically have 2 major issues with the way it's been handled (nerfed without actually changing it)
- I don't believe players Masteries should be disabled in part or in full by champion kits or nodes - we chose, invested in and have employed these Masteries as part of our build and they should be off limits to champion kits and nodes
- The affect this design philosophy has specifically on Recoil players.. WP is an essential part of this build and it completely throws off our entire build by removing WP.. it's not just us losing out on opportunities for "free" healing.. it's compromised our entire mastery build

Wicket329

I am perfectly fine with some fights turning off Willpower. We have mastery loadouts now, it’s not hard to swap between the two in fights where that is necessary. I would like another loadout (standard, recoils, resonate, AWD), but Kabam turning off Willpower to give a fight a proper challenge is fine.

hungryhungrybbq

I am perfectly fine with some fights turning off Willpower. We have mastery loadouts now, it’s not hard to swap between the two in fights where that is necessary. I would like another loadout (standard, recoils, resonate, AWD), but Kabam turning off Willpower to give a fight a proper challenge is fine.

The cost is 35 units per.. so essentially a 70 unit tax because of a design "solution" they chose to implement?

Squidopus

Altering a players masteries should be off the table for champ and fight design imo

I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory reason why masteries need to be some sort of holy ground that can’t be touched ever. It’s just another aspect of the design space to mess with. It’s not like you’re only complaining about champs like Dust who simply disable willpower anyways, your main post calls out Kabam’s tendency to use heal block nodes as an anti-willpower measure, which is purely a gameplay mechanic. And if you want to make the argument of “I paid to unlock masteries so it’s not fair to touch them”, then really why can Kabam do anything? We pay for champs, maybe I think the onslaught of anti-immortality measures on champs like Wong and Destroyer and Isophyne are unfair to my investments on Herc. I don’t actually think that, but what’s really the difference between those arguments.

The only case where I do think an anti-mastery node was particularly unfair was with the Toad SoS fight, which punished AAR and simply meant you faced death if you had pacify or assassins. The solution to that was imo to just add a node that disabled those masteries, not to remove the offending node which had a purpose in cutting the options, although some people would probably find a way to complain that this purely beneficial move would be unfair too. People already did that when they complained about Leader disabling willpower when he would reverse it.

EdisonLaw

Well for some defenders, turning off willpower is actually a good thing. For example, Leader and Photon have powerful heal reversal mechanics in their kits and if willpower is active, you basically melt from all the debuffs

willrun4adonut

Well, I just disagreed because I wouldn't get as high as I do in incursions without WP and suicides. So it's highly subjective I guess, but also didn't like the negative tone you started with, and then followed up in the second post.
My proposal is to keep WP for all damaging effects.. this includes DE and LC, so I'm confused by your Incursions comment?

Spamming specials would take too much damage, which I had to do at certain times when I was getting weakness when near the opponent, as well as healing on power stings. Just getting health back on LC and DE wouldn't be enough as it just keeps you even, and doesn't heal you up.

hungryhungrybbq

I am perfectly fine with some fights turning off Willpower. We have mastery loadouts now, it’s not hard to swap between the two in fights where that is necessary. I would like another loadout (standard, recoils, resonate, AWD), but Kabam turning off Willpower to give a fight a proper challenge is fine.

Why not change the Mastery if they are so unhappy with how it's working? Is my question though

hungryhungrybbq

Well, I just disagreed because I wouldn't get as high as I do in incursions without WP and suicides. So it's highly subjective I guess, but also didn't like the negative tone you started with, and then followed up in the second post.
My proposal is to keep WP for all damaging effects.. this includes DE and LC, so I'm confused by your Incursions comment?
Spamming specials would take too much damage, which I had to do at certain times when I was getting weakness when near the opponent, as well as healing on power stings. Just getting health back on LC and DE wouldn't be enough as it just keeps you even, and doesn't heal you up.

Ah, I thought maybe you were referring to champs who actually net heal from DE/LC

hungryhungrybbq

Well for some defenders, turning off willpower is actually a good thing. For example, Leader and Photon have powerful heal reversal mechanics in their kits and if willpower is active, you basically melt from all the debuffs

I understand, it's why I proposed that WP no longer interacts with non-damaging effects - this solves the whole issue? Well.. maybe that's an oversimplification on my part

Wicket329

I am perfectly fine with some fights turning off Willpower. We have mastery loadouts now, it’s not hard to swap between the two in fights where that is necessary. I would like another loadout (standard, recoils, resonate, AWD), but Kabam turning off Willpower to give a fight a proper challenge is fine.
Why not change the Mastery if they are so unhappy with how it's working? Is my question though

Because they aren’t unhappy with how it’s working. That’s just conjecture on your part, there’s no reason to believe they are, writ large, unhappy with it. Willpower does still work as it normally would in the overwhelming majority of content in this game, so it’s an unreasonable conclusion to reach, imo. It’s only in content that either really piles on debuffs (which, if it’s PvP, then turning off willpower is actually good for you because despair would eat you alive), or that Kabam wants to add an extra challenge on.

hungryhungrybbq

I am perfectly fine with some fights turning off Willpower. We have mastery loadouts now, it’s not hard to swap between the two in fights where that is necessary. I would like another loadout (standard, recoils, resonate, AWD), but Kabam turning off Willpower to give a fight a proper challenge is fine.
Why not change the Mastery if they are so unhappy with how it's working? Is my question though
Because they aren’t unhappy with how it’s working. That’s just conjecture on your part, there’s no reason to believe they are, writ large, unhappy with it. Willpower does still work as it normally would in the overwhelming majority of content in this game, so it’s an unreasonable conclusion to reach, imo. It’s only in content that either really piles on debuffs (which, if it’s PvP, then turning off willpower is actually good for you because despair would eat you alive), or that Kabam wants to add an extra challenge on.

Do you play with Recoils?
I think if you did, you'd notice it's far more than just a few pieces of content here and there? It's the go to "solution" for any and all pieces of content that use a substantial amount of debuffs as part of the design.. there have been numerous instances of this being used in "of Pain" content.. far more than a handful - way more, just as one example, but it's also used on an entire EQ map, it's used in 9.2 if I understand correctly, etc. etc.

hungryhungrybbq

But what everyone is ignoring, is the impact it has on players who use Recoil - it really destroys your whole Mastery build.. but Recoils have become far less popular with the introduction of BGs - but nonetheless.. it has a big impact on Recoil players, either costing them items or 70 units.. we often have to choose between those 2 alternatives

I'd be interested in hearing from players who also use Recoil as part of their full time build.. seems most people are commenting from another perspective regarding whether we do or do not receive "free healing" from non-damaging debuffs as opposed to how it disables a key part of the mastery build for some people

hungryhungrybbq

But yes, we can agree to disagree on the topic of whether the devs are happy with how WP functions.. the instances of adding nodes and character abilities are numerous and becoming far too many to count at this point - they're going out of their way to remove the interaction WP currently has with non-damaging debuffs more and more as opposed to looking at maybe changing how it works (perhaps for fear of backlash from losing "free" healing), but this is my point.. the "free" healing is already being removed.. via nodes and character abilities.. it's already happening - I'm just suggesting we do it in a better way that doesn't punish a certain potion of the player base disproportionately

captain_rogers

Altering a players masteries should be off the table for champ and fight design imo
I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory reason why masteries need to be some sort of holy ground that can’t be touched ever. It’s just another aspect of the design space to mess with. It’s not like you’re only complaining about champs like Dust who simply disable willpower anyways, your main post calls out Kabam’s tendency to use heal block nodes as an anti-willpower measure, which is purely a gameplay mechanic. And if you want to make the argument of “I paid to unlock masteries so it’s not fair to touch them”, then really why can Kabam do anything? We pay for champs, maybe I think the onslaught of anti-immortality measures on champs like Wong and Destroyer and Isophyne are unfair to my investments on Herc. I don’t actually think that, but what’s really the difference between those arguments.

The only case where I do think an anti-mastery node was particularly unfair was with the Toad SoS fight, which punished AAR and simply meant you faced death if you had pacify or assassins. The solution to that was imo to just add a node that disabled those masteries, not to remove the offending node which had a purpose in cutting the options, although some people would probably find a way to complain that this purely beneficial move would be unfair too. People already did that when they complained about Leader disabling willpower when he would reverse it.

We if you start turning off fundamental masteries like dexterity, then the devs are forced to introduce another effect to bypass this dexterity turn off., like silk's dodge.

For examples, all these nodes which put heal block on WP nodes only help heal block immune champs, give them a UNINTENDED unfair advantage.

This will just create a cycle of unnecessary complex interactions

TotemCorruption

I agree that it's no longer that useful to run WP, especially if you don't want to invest the requisite points in defense to reach it.
Pretty much why I run all offense now (or, "eco-suicides" as I call it)

DNA3000

But what everyone is ignoring, is the impact it has on players who use Recoil - it really destroys your whole Mastery build.. but Recoils have become far less popular with the introduction of BGs - but nonetheless.. it has a big impact on Recoil players, either costing them items or 70 units.. we often have to choose between those 2 alternatives

I'd be interested in hearing from players who also use Recoil as part of their full time build.. seems most people are commenting from another perspective regarding whether we do or do not receive "free healing" from non-damaging debuffs as opposed to how it disables a key part of the mastery build for some people

Recoil masteries were never intended to have all of their downsides neutralized by Willpower. While this is a possible build, it has never been the intention to make that a protected player choice. In fact, the very first significant changes to masteries I can recall was the original rebalance of Willpower to ensure it could never fully mitigate the self damage of the recoil masteries. The numbers were *explicitly* changed to work out that way.

Recoil was always intended to be a high risk high reward mastery with an unsustainable downside. The content increasingly reflects that design aesthetic. To the extent that some players complain that it is increasingly difficult to just run recoil everywhere, I believe the devs would say that was intentional.

This does not "punish" a segment of the playerbase, because "players who use recoil" are not a protected class of player, any more than when the devs rebalance a champ it punishes the players who especially like the way that champion works. Masteries are a tool to solve problems, and players are supposed to adjust their use of tools to the situations in the game. They are not supposed to say "I'm a recoil player, and the game must protect my choices so I can continue to be a recoil player."

willrun4adonut

But yes, we can agree to disagree on the topic of whether the devs are happy with how WP functions.. the instances of adding nodes and character abilities are numerous and becoming far too many to count at this point - they're going out of their way to remove the interaction WP currently has with non-damaging debuffs more and more as opposed to looking at maybe changing how it works (perhaps for fear of backlash from losing "free" healing), but this is my point.. the "free" healing is already being removed.. via nodes and character abilities.. it's already happening - I'm just suggesting we do it in a better way that doesn't punish a certain potion of the player base disproportionately

I run it full-time, with the exception of Necro and Carina's challenges. I do all of those as fast as I can so I can then turn them back on. EQ, regular questing, arenas, AoA/WoW/etc (most of the time for them), and I use champs that aren't 'suicide friendly'. Don't have a problem with them adding occasionally nodes/champs that remove WP as it can normally be worked around.

WednesdayLength

In almost every case of a champion shutting of willpower it's to the attackers benefit

Squidopus

Altering a players masteries should be off the table for champ and fight design imo
I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory reason why masteries need to be some sort of holy ground that can’t be touched ever. It’s just another aspect of the design space to mess with. It’s not like you’re only complaining about champs like Dust who simply disable willpower anyways, your main post calls out Kabam’s tendency to use heal block nodes as an anti-willpower measure, which is purely a gameplay mechanic. And if you want to make the argument of “I paid to unlock masteries so it’s not fair to touch them”, then really why can Kabam do anything? We pay for champs, maybe I think the onslaught of anti-immortality measures on champs like Wong and Destroyer and Isophyne are unfair to my investments on Herc. I don’t actually think that, but what’s really the difference between those arguments.

The only case where I do think an anti-mastery node was particularly unfair was with the Toad SoS fight, which punished AAR and simply meant you faced death if you had pacify or assassins. The solution to that was imo to just add a node that disabled those masteries, not to remove the offending node which had a purpose in cutting the options, although some people would probably find a way to complain that this purely beneficial move would be unfair too. People already did that when they complained about Leader disabling willpower when he would reverse it.
We if you start turning off fundamental masteries like dexterity, then the devs are forced to introduce another effect to bypass this dexterity turn off., like silk's dodge.

For examples, all these nodes which put heal block on WP nodes only help heal block immune champs, give them a UNINTENDED unfair advantage.

This will just create a cycle of unnecessary complex interactions

Idk man, I think the heal block immune champs getting an advantage against heal block nodes is pretty intentional. I would argue that was the strict intention of the design choice even.

And Silk’s dodge is nothing new. We’ve had it since Nightcrawler, who is much older than any sort of dex-disabling effect. In fact, arguing Silk is an example of the effects of dex-disabling champs is a bit of a weird argument to make because as far as I can tell she actually predates the first champ who had an inbuilt way to disable the mastery (Photon). You can’t really call Silk a response to a problem that wasn’t around yet.

It’s just how the game rolls. Things progress and new things become meta because they beat old things. I don’t agree with all the ways this has manifested (Some of Serpent’s kit chief among them), but there’s always gonna be a level of “we made a new thing to beat an old thing, now we decided to make a new thing to beat that new thing”. Mystics punished buffs, including dex, and that was a big problem. Kabam made buff immunity. Then Kabam decided that there needed to be a new buff-punishing mechanic in neutralize, which beat buff immunity. Now some sciences like QS and Photon have counters built in for that (QS does not even attempt to trigger dex precision, and Photon is immune to neutralize). It’s how things go, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

GrassKnuckles

A reminder that if you had Willpower vs the defenders who intentionally turn it off, they would not be hard defenders anymore, thus going against what they were designed to be.

Also for Photon specifically, enjoy getting your precious WP mastery heal reversed via despair and her personal petrify. You are literally better off without it.