Pacify Mastery
DrZola
Member Posts: 9,131 ★★★★★
Perusing the forums and looking at my own (and my friends’ recent game anecdotes), I’m curious whether there’s any sense that the Pacify mastery’s often unexpected effects on nodes is a positive or a negative thing.
Like most masteries, Pacify hasn’t really been touched since the concept of masteries began. With the proliferation of abilities and accuracy reduction in game over the past couple of years, I’m leaning toward revisiting the intended effects of Pacify or at a minimum clarifying precisely when and where it’s supposed to work.
Maybe I’m in my own private Idaho on this one. Maybe not. Curious what others think...
Dr. Zola
Like most masteries, Pacify hasn’t really been touched since the concept of masteries began. With the proliferation of abilities and accuracy reduction in game over the past couple of years, I’m leaning toward revisiting the intended effects of Pacify or at a minimum clarifying precisely when and where it’s supposed to work.
Maybe I’m in my own private Idaho on this one. Maybe not. Curious what others think...
Dr. Zola
18
Comments
Shouldn’t that different set of effects be spelled out somewhere (other than on a forums that is loosely organized and frequented by a small minority of players)?
Are those intended effects?
Dr. Zola
Two examples I have witnessed are Slumber, where the stun but not the power lock proc, and flux dispersal where when stunned a heavy attack does not remove charges.
I think this is a symptom of a mastery that was designed in 2015 that was intended to help prevent Magik limbo, SW poison, etc during a stun and greatly benefited champs like Elektra that already had base AAR. Additionally the complex interactions we see today did not exist back then so there may be some unintended consequences.
There are times when the mastery works as intended but can impede your fight flow, for example Thing’s rock stacks.
For me personally, I need points to lead to mystic dispersion and I have just recently swapped out my 2 points in pacify to more points in limber.
I don’t think this is a “bug” but more a change in the complexity of game mechanics which has made a mastery’s initial function somewhat out dated.
But maybe it can be looked at like we do with the suicide masteries. There's times where it's really helpful, and then times where you wish you had it turned off.
I think it goes beyond being just a mastery, and into how AAR in general works in the game. Either Pacify itself gets changed, or the rules of AAR gets changed in the sense of how it can have negative effects.
Only time it comes in clutch is in situations like Claire versus 6.1.5 Crossbones; or something like CMM versus caustic temper doctor strange.
This is the type of discussion that’s useful in forums (and hopefully for the team as well).
I’d be curious to know what some other denizens like @DNA3000 and @LeNoirFaineant and @Worknprogress think as well as anyone else who has constructive thoughts.
Dr. Zola
Could always stop something Thing gaining rock stacks when you want him to just like assassin does. Could stop a champ that gets buffs from being hit when you're using Sym and want to fuel MD.
It's more a question of should ability accuracy reduction always favor the player. I personally like the current way it interacts as that gives an additional level of complexity to mastery/champion choices in certain situations. Having to think more about choices and coming across things that don't necessarily work the way you expected and having to adjust to them has always been one of the more engaging sides of this game for me.
Perhaps it's really time Mastery swaps stop costing us units.
Why is spending the resources to unlock them not enough?
So many questions with masteries that go unanswered over the years.
Then you have to decide whether players being able to freely and quickly change mastery setups is healthy for the game, particularly in competitive areas. I don't necessarily think it would be bad for the game at all but I'm also willing to admit it's still something worth considering
Swapping presets would be great for me—but I can also see how it might be problematic for different areas of the game. For example, if I want suicides for AW attack, but not for my defense, how precisely would that work?
Apart from swaps, there’s a good case to be made to take a look at some of the most discussed masteries and their intended interactions (have to throw a Pure Skill plug in here).
Pacify is perhaps the latest example, and I find myself agreeing with @Worknprogress a bit: it can be an interesting part of the game.
However, I’d rather that interesting aspect be part of the official team communications (example: “Hey Summoners we are introducing a new node called ###—watch out, your Pacify points and AAR champs may make this one act unpredictably!”).
As it is now, many of us just wind up scrounging around on YouTube or chats to figure out what’s happening. Who knows? It’s even possible that some of these “the game is bugged” posts could be reduced if the team cracked masteries back open again...
Dr. Zola
Dr. Zola
Anyway, that’s my two cents about this
At the time, it was a sucky path because I didn't have a lot of options and using the node looked like a lot of fun. Ranked up dormammu only to have the node rarely work. I remember being very frustrated because I didn't know what was going on and there was no explanation anywhere. My thoughts were: pacify was a mastery that benefitted you, no way it could have a negayive impact in any way. This is mostly due to the state of the game and nodes already mentioned in earlier comments.
I guess what I'm coming too is: I agree with Dr Zola and worknprogress, a description would be good so you know it's happening and can adjust and try again. Maybe it's less necessary now (because the issue is widely known now -for example youtubers have mentioned it multiple times) but I still think it could be positive for players.
Mastery swapps? Hell yeah been waiting on that for 2 years let's go!
Its really good and def helps more than Limber
@Campo4
I dont see a problem with free swaps even if we look at war. In high Tier war they swap mastery’s often anyway. This would only make War a little bit more free to play friendly.
Also the fact that some mastery are killing you or give you a big disadvantage when fighting special champs really calls for free swaps. Just to name a few:
Willpower vs Warlock
Dex vs Mojo/Dorm/SS
Suicides vs Void
On the other hand everyone even in lower Tiers would run 5/5 limber and make war overall harder which could be a problem.
But there would be an easy solution. Give every defender in the game the same default mastery page. Or just put in parry and dex. The fact that every 5 champion can have a diffrent mastery setup is actuly annoying at times. This would make the game more clear.
Those disadvantages are all a point in the planning and champ choices as far as I'm concerned. Again, I'm not saying it's inherently bad but it's not even close to as black and white to say yes it's good for the game either.
Might sound like a weird explanation but that was my reasoning.