The War on the WP Mastery
hungryhungrybbq
Member Posts: 2,243 ★★★★★
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)
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)
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Comments
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
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).
- 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
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.
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.
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
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
Pretty much why I run all offense now (or, "eco-suicides" as I call it)
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."
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.
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.