Mastering Weapon Mastery: A guide to Weapon MasteryBy KristyanaCurrent Version: 1.1 Hey all! Kristyana here. I thought I would have another week or so to write this guide but unfortunately the devs dropped Weapon Mastery a bit earlier than anticipated. No worries though! After testing it extensively, there are quite a lot of changes to different aspects of the game. This guide seeks to lay out those changes to the combat system and skill points, along with helping to understand how to get the most out of weapon masteries. This guide is rather short and may be expanded upon as people learn new things or changes are made. There's a lot of info here though, including some things others haven't noticed. Weapon Mastery is a new concept to DCUO as part of the revamped skill point and combat system. There were a lot of changes made across the board. You get new attacks, new options for doing damage or your support role, and new innates to play with. While the the largest change brought with Weapon Mastery is the combo system, there's also other other changes that aren't as noticeable at first but are no less important. Changes to innates Weapon Mastery brings a revamp to the skill point trees, or more specifically the innates. This is something you should be aware of whether or not you decide to use weapon mastery to the fullest. The changes are as follows: The initial bonus you get to a critical stat (critical healing chance, critical attack damage, etc) for speccing into a weapon has been changed. Placing one point into a weapon now gives a flat statistic (+5 precision for example) There are no longer any +20 Might, +10 Precision, or +15 Restoration bonuses in the first tier of innates. These have been replaced with more critical modifiers and a new Power innate. Cunning/Critical Power Chance has been removed. Critical Power Chance has now been dispersed through all 11 skill point trees and can increase by 1 point per tree. To unlock this, you have to spend three skill points in the correct statistics: +12 Power, +7 Dominance, or +5 Vitalization. Every weapon will have one of these statistics in the first tier of innates. Because of the changes, there's less might, precision, and restoration spaced out across the trees. When you log in for the first time and check your stats, you'll notice this. However, because the innates were replaced with critical modifiers, your critical chances and magnitudes will be raised higher than they once were. Sadly, there's no stat that reflects this, so you'll have to add up all the numbers the old fashioned way. You may want to respec or change your armories to reflect these new changes. The New Third Tier innates Weapon Mastery brings with it a brand new tier of innates down at the bottom of each tree. These are the same across all 11 weapons. You need to spend 21 points in a tree to unlock them. Each innate can be unlocked a total of three times: +30 Restoration +8 Vitalization and +25 Power +50 Health and +7 Dominance +25 Might and +25 Precision These are rather expensive to get down to, but may be worth it depending on if you choose to master a weapon or not. Passive Buffs with Weapon Mastery Weapon Mastery allows you a new way to spend your skill points to provide access to new attacks and advantages. Some of these advantages are passive, and some are active. To activate a Weapon Mastery, you must spend a total of 20 skill points in a weapon tree, making sure to grab every attack that is a pre-requisite. You'll then have the option to spend another skill point to master the weapon. Just by mastering a weapon, you gain the following: Your critical weapon attack magnitude gains +20% when using that weapon (this is a +20% buff to Ranged weapons, and a +5% buff to Melee weapons) You gain a flat +25% control resistance when using that weapon (no change to Melee weapons, +25% for Ranged weapons) Certain attacks for that weapon do additional damage Unlike standard skill point unlocks, these bonuses do NOT stack if you have more than one weapon mastered, and you have to be using a mastered weapon in order to get these passive buffs. Weapon Mastery Combos The shining feature of Weapon Mastery is that you're able to use different attacks that you can combo into. Each weapon will combo into two other weapons, giving you two ranged attacks and two melee attacks. With four combos for each weapon, that's a total of 44 new attacks. Some make sense, others...well... To unlock a Combo, you need to have the following: The weapon you plan on using mastered The weapon you want to combo into mastered The attack you want to use from the combo'd weapon specced into (some attacks need this, others don't. For example, you don't need to purchase Doom Spin in the Two Handed tree to master it, but you do need to purchase it if you plan to combo into it from Brawling) Once you have these prerequisites filled out, the available combo should become available in the skill tree to spec into. The tooltip in the description box will tell you what steps you need to perform the combo. It will usually be an additional hold attack at the end of a finisher or in the middle of a combo. Combo attacks have some fairly high modifiers compared to normal attacks, with the largest hits being the combos that are riskier to pull off. Try practicing on trash and against sparring dummies when you find a combo you like either conceptually or because of the benefits it provides. The timing should become second nature after some practice. The combo attack bases its damage off of the weapon you have equipped, not the weapon you combo into. You don't even need a weapon of the combo'd type in your inventory. The hit counter works the same way, and is based off the weapon you have equipped. This is what makes the Brawling - Shuriken Storm combo so deadly for controllers as you can get up to the Superhuman! tier in about six seconds. Using Powers with Weapon Mastery There are also benefits to using powers with Weapon Mastery. If you use a power right when a combo attack finishes, you'll hear a sound and a red circle will flash around you. These can be tricky to time right, but when you learn the timing, you reap the following rewards: Your critical attack chance for that power is multiplied by 360%. This is not a stack, but a multiplier to your attack chance. If you have a 10% critical attack chance normally, it will be increased to 36% on that attack. In fact, if you raise your critical attack chance high enough (You can raise it to a total of 28% through mods, skill points, and innate powers) you are guaranteed a critical every time you pull off a successful combo'd power. Your critical magnitude for that attack is multiplied as well by an unspecified amount. This varies from combo to combo, depending on the difficulty of the attack to pull off. For some weapons, the increase is gigantic. From testing, the Brawling into Home Run combo seems to be a little over 250%. I doubt it will be possible to test everything and find a definite answer, but you'll get a good idea over which attacks do more damage based on the next advantage... As a support role, you get a reduced power cost for the power you successfully cast at the end of a combo. This is a percentage and varies from combo to combo, once again depending on the difficulty. I've included a chart further down the page that shows what the power reduction percentage for each combo is. It is worth noting however, you only gain these advantages if the power in question has no cast time and, in the event of damage, does damage instantly.If you use something with a cast bar such as Mass Detonation, you will not see any benefit from the combo. Similarly, if your power sets up a damage DoT, you will only get the added buffs on the initial hit of damage and not the subsequent tics of the DoT. This leaves you with a few different options as a DPS, depending on your playstyle or powertype. Do you decide to try and chain combos looking for huge crits from powers, hitting less often but harder? Do you decide to chain easy combos into cheap spammable powers to keep up a steady burn? Or do you continue to play normally? All three are viable options now. To master or not to master? It's going to be impossible to unlock absolutely everything you want for your role now, and will be for quite some time. It will take at least 250 skill points to unlock everything including the last tier of innates, so you'll have to specialize your builds again. If you don't plan on using a weapon mastery combo, the advantage to mastering a weapon comes down to being able to use the last tier of innates. It takes 24 skill points to master a weapon and max out one of these innates. When you master what you want, you'll find you may not have enough skillpoints to master a new weapon if you don't have a full 24. In that case, you need to decide if the skill points would be best spent elsewhere in first or second tier innates instead of trying to get useless innates in preparation to unlock the third tier.
What to master first My personal recommendation from testing all roles is to spec out the first tier of innates in every weapon tree like you normally would for your role. These innates are still the best for you to take and will give you the most bang for your SP buck. Afterwards, it comes down to personal preference, but the general idea is to master weapons that have useful innates for your role in the second tier. For example, as a healer, you'd want to master Bow over Dual Pistols because Bow has restoration in the second tier of innates. With support roles, it's pretty cut and dry but with DPS the line blurs. The following is a list of how you should spec to get the most out of each role. In general, spec these weapons first before others: Healer Weapons with Restoration in the Second Tier Bow Brawling Hand Blasters One Handed Rifle Staff Two Handed Weapons with no Restoration in the Second Tier Dual Pistols Dual Wield Martial Arts Shield Tanking This maxes out both Health and Dominance. This definitely applies to fire tanks but could also apply to rage and earth as well, although there's more wiggle room for damage as a rage tank. Weapons with Dominance and Health in the First Tier Brawling (also includes restoration in second tier) Hand Blaster (also includes restoration in second tier) Weapons with Dominance in the First Tier and Health in the Second Staff (also includes restoration in second tier) Dual Wield Weapons with Health in the First Tier and Dominance in the Second One Handed Rifle Shield Two Handed Weapons with Health in the Second Tier Bow Dual Pistols Martial Arts Ice Tanking This deserves its own section because Restoration was dropped from the first tier of innates and the second tier of dominance does not contribute as much to your shield strength as the second tier of restoration. When you get to your third tier of innates, you will want to get the +30 Restoration innates over the +7 Dominance/+50 Health ones. Try to get both if you can, or if you don't have enough SP to fully master another tree. While the Dominance/Health innates will increase the amount of pure damage you can take, the increase to your shields from Restoration is free HP your healers don't need to worry about. It also makes the Regenerative Shielding mod more powerful. Weapons with Dominance and Health in the First Tier and Restoration in the Second Brawling Hand Blasters Weapons with Dominance in the First Tier and Restoration in the Second Staff *The following three categories are interchangeable as they will either give you 42 restoration or 42 dominance in tank role before the last tier of innates, both of which will strengthen your shields by the same amount. I would personally max out the first category over the others as the added health will increase your survivability Weapons with Health in the First Tier and Restoration in the Second One Handed Rifle Two Handed Weapons with Dominance in the First Tier Dual Wield Weapons with Restoration in the Second Tier Bow Useless weapons Martial Arts Troller The following maxes out vitalization. Weapons with Vitalization in the First Tier and Dominance in the Second Two Handed Rifle One Handed Dual Pistols Weapons with Vitalization in the Second Tier Brawling Dual Wield Hand Blaster Martial Arts Shield Weapons with no vitalization or dominance in either tier Bow Staff DPS There are no longer +Might and +Precision in the initial tier of innates, so there's no "max this out first" unless you're trying to stack precision or might with a specific critical modifier. Weapons with +30 Might and increased Critical Attack Chance Two Handed Weapons with +30 Might and increased Critical Attack Damage Brawling Dual Wield Martial Arts One Handed Shield Weapons with +18 Precision and increased Critical Attack Chance Staff Bow Hand Blaster Rifle Weapons with +18 Precision and increased Critical Attack Damage Dual Pistols This should help you plan out your skill points. Tips for each role when using Weapon Mastery In my opinion, if you're going to use Weapon Mastery as a support role, you're going to want quick combos and spammable powers that you can weave into your rotation. It's not even really needed honestly, as the power reduction is very small for these attacks and they leave you unable to respond as quickly to emergency situations as quickly as you may like. The difference here would be a very specific build for a support role – the battle healer/troller/tank. These builds are rare to begin with and may be rarer still with all the new innates, but the idea here would be to max out your critical chance as high as possible so you can get a (nearly) guaranteed crit everytime you use a power that has a damage component to it such as a taunt or a debuff. I'm not familiar with healing outside of Electricity and some Celestial a long time ago, so I can't really comment how viable a build like that would be for other healing roles. It does, however, work wonders on my Battle Troller build. I haven't found a tank build I like for it quite yet but I'm still experimenting. If you're like most trollers and even some healers in group content, your goal is to build up your hit counter to the second or third tier before dumping a heal or an instant recharge. There are a few quick weapon mastery combos that will build these up, the quickest of which is Brawling into Martial Arts' Shuriken Storm. It's a very quick combo that you can do twice to hit the second tier, and you gain the benefit of reduced power cost if you time your recharges at the end of the combo. If you do decide to use combos as a support role, try to find a weapon and a combo'd weapon that has innates best suited for your role. For example, if you use Brawling as an ice tank, you have a choice to either combo into Martial Arts or Two Handed. From the list above, you can see that Two Handed is one of the strongest choices for an ice tank in terms of innates while Martial Arts is the worst. For DPSing, I would recommend maximizing your critical attack chance. You should be doing this anyway, but having a critical attack chance of +28% or higher will guarantee you your power will hit a critical on every single weapon mastery combo. I've had great success with using cheap spammable powers that benefit from a PI – even better if you're a powerset that uses Enduring Damage. The 60% damage buff from Enduring Damage works with Weapon Mastery combos. Random stuff Below is a chart that shows all the different combos. It also shows how much your power reduction for a power is if you use it in a support role. Let me know if there's anything else you think should be added, or any questions you may have.
What about trolls and resto? It's just as vital to our shields as anyone else. I usually scrap vit altogether when I do my PvP spec.
Nice bit about getting both the melee and ranged bonuses for a mastered weapon. Really helps make the ranged weapons a lot.
Kristyana, i have a question. A few days ago i read your "inconsistencies with criticals" post, and i noticed you did a really good job testing. I noticed you compared regular hit damage range and critical hit damage range from several weapons. Couldn´t get out of my mind how faster weapons like DW and 1h hit as hard as brawling (slower weapon), and how a fast weapon like MA hits considerably less than DW/1h but has a higher critical magnitude range mastered. So, at this point if i ask you what melee weapons do more damage overall ( with quick fast combos and then with slower combos) which weapons are the ones your testing show are better?
Regarding Ice tanking and the WM innates, you are placing a higher value on +90 Resto (+90 effective health) versus +21 Dom/+150 Health (+192 effective health.) After looking at it again, I believe you get more overall benefit from the "tank" innate. I believe players should grab them both no matter what as the benefit from just 3 SP is insane either way but I was wondering about the reasoning behind that recommendation. Excellent guide. Thanks for taking the time to post it.
Awesome stuff man! Thanks! So from the above is it safe to say there's a direct correlation between Power consumption deduction and Crit Magnitude? Longer combo give both?
It's not so much which weapons do more damage overall as what combos do. If you look at the chart for power reduction, you'll see that some combos have a larger power reduction than others. While I don't have the exact numbers (and I doubt I'll be able to test them completely) the same trend holds true for the critical magnitude the combo gives. So if you use One Handed, the Dual Flurry combo should hit for more than the Stunning Swipe combo. The reason it's difficult to test to get exact values is because of the sheer range of the base damage on some powers. The higher end of a crappy combo may be higher than the lower end of an awesome combo. I'd have to compare several thousand criticals, and at the moment I just don't have that kind of time. The reasoning behind the recommendation is because restoration and dominance stacks for shield strength, and tanks usually get enough dominance through their gear for CC effects to land. Under the old innates, +15 Restoration was better than +7 Dominance for this reason, and it's also why the +7 Restoration is better than the +2 Dominance in the second tier. +30 Restoration will strengthen your shields much more than +7 Dominance will. You may end up with overall more effective health, but effective health that comes from shields is free health that your healers don't need to replenish. I agree you should take both if you have the SP, but if you don't, Restoration is king. Restoration also increases the amount that the Regenerative Shielding mod heals you for. Yep. Back in the first iteration of Weapon Mastery, Tanks and Trollers got a dominance boost that worked the same way. The longer the combo, the higher the reduction/critical. Yep!
I know how the shield mechanic works. The reason the t1/t2 Resto is better than Dom isn't because we get enough Dom from gear, it's because 15 > 14 and 7 > 4. This simple math is also why Resto mods are better than Dom mods. I do not dispute that 90 Resto will add more to the shields than 42 Dom. However, I question the wisdom of trading 150 health for 48 absorb and a small boost to Regenerative Shielding heals if what we're after is maximum survivability. So long as the entire attack is absorbed, the stronger shield > more health. However, once an attack hits for more than the absorb value of your shield, HP takes over. If our shields are getting chewed through, that health pool is all that's left to save us. In alerts and on trash, the shields are all we need. On a boss, especially when we aren't overgeared, modding and speccing for maximum effective health is the way to go. If I'm taking an 8k hit, I'll gladly sacrifice that small bit of shielding for the larger health pool. This is all moot right now. In T5s, if it eats our shields, it's probably a one-shot anyway and nothing in the bit of T6 content we have right now comes close to burning our shields. We'll see how this plays out in DLC11 with the new raids.
I always thought the 360% crit chance was added onto whatever we already had, no wonder I didnt see my power crit every time. Great guide
Sorry if this has been said allready, I haven't completely read though all posts yet. Shield is also the only weapon, which doesn't have any crit heal boost. That's why this weill be my last choice to spec into. Atm I have only one point spent into shield as healer, so I can equip the styles, if I get a shield-drop.
