If we're looking at the masters, could we fix up some of the awful mastery spells (not auras or toggles)? Some of them may be situationally powerful, such as Ribcage or DPalm, but there's two main problems when you pick out a Mastery spell.
1. You must give up one slot of extremely valuable space on your hotbar to use them when it could be spent on a more important or even more powerful spell that isn't a Master. Given how situational some Masters are - like dpalm, as I said - it just seems unwise to take them at all. This isn't even counting the fact that certain mastery spells are just better than others.
2. Auras/toggles/stances exist that augment *all* of your spells *without* taking a slot off your hotbar to do so. If you could choose between taking Blade Storm or allowing your spells to do 10% more damage without a downside, wouldn't taking the latter always help you despite how cool Blade Storm is?
Let's take Fire/Holy as an example. Instead of taking Judgment Beam, which has a recharge time and eats one of my hotbar slots, why wouldn't I take Primordial Flame for the 15% extra damage that it would provide every single one of my spells? Boring? Sure, but undeniably effective. The DPS increase or situational coverage of the master must be worth more than the value I'd get from an aura or stance, and for the vast majority of masters, that's not the case.
A Master should be powerful. I shouldn't feel forced to blow at least one of the two points I get on an aura or stance that I don't care about just to stay competitive.
1. You must give up one slot of extremely valuable space on your hotbar to use them when it could be spent on a more important or even more powerful spell that isn't a Master. Given how situational some Masters are - like dpalm, as I said - it just seems unwise to take them at all. This isn't even counting the fact that certain mastery spells are just better than others.
2. Auras/toggles/stances exist that augment *all* of your spells *without* taking a slot off your hotbar to do so. If you could choose between taking Blade Storm or allowing your spells to do 10% more damage without a downside, wouldn't taking the latter always help you despite how cool Blade Storm is?
Let's take Fire/Holy as an example. Instead of taking Judgment Beam, which has a recharge time and eats one of my hotbar slots, why wouldn't I take Primordial Flame for the 15% extra damage that it would provide every single one of my spells? Boring? Sure, but undeniably effective. The DPS increase or situational coverage of the master must be worth more than the value I'd get from an aura or stance, and for the vast majority of masters, that's not the case.
A Master should be powerful. I shouldn't feel forced to blow at least one of the two points I get on an aura or stance that I don't care about just to stay competitive.