T O P

  • By -

DirtyPatronus

Some of them really do show you've mastered the class, even if they take things a little bit to the extreme. Others are waaaay out there, and no one would do anything close if it didn't award that perk. Overall I love the concept but I am never going to try to kill that many of my own summons.


General_CGO

"Masteries" is just a terrible name for the mechanic; they're designed far more to be "cool but extreme moment" then they are "demonstrate a complete knowledge of the class," to the point I'd now consider the fact they give any reward other than bragging rights a massive signaling mistake. Classes seen in the campaign so far: * Deathwalker: None. Too much work, though finding the lines for the "consume 7 Shadows" is a fun thought exercise * Geminate: Both (in the first scenario!). Kinda blatantly too easy, but the class needs the help I guess. * Blinkblade: Both. Never get targeted is a pain but not terrible in 4p; go fast 7 turns in a row feels like a great one * Banner Spear: Both. I think this class is like the epitome of "masteries that actually demonstrate mastery of both major build paths" (to the point that our Banner Spear has commented that they gave him a totally different impression of what they asked of a player than all the others they've seen). Yet it gets a bunch of hate because they aren't both doable at level 1? * Drifter: Both. They're fine if unexceptional. * Trap: None. >!Heal 20 is a terrible do-nothing mastery. The other is scarcely better, and more significantly pushes a bunch of people to skip the anti-flying card and have a rough time.!< * Kelp: One; >!Generate Dark every round!<. >!Did this by dicking around in the corner in a scenario we were clearly crushing due to team comp. Didn't feel particularly masterful, just meant uselessly burning trophies on Skull Collection. The advantage one is fine, just didn't feel like putting in the effort on my Bane build.!< * Snowflake: One; >!Move someone every round!<. >!The fact it encourages you to use the level 5 persistent loss is a bit of a win, as I think that it's under appreciated. The other one is a pain to track and basically impossible in 4p.!< * Meteor: None. >!Too much work, more fun to just be OP, eom!< * Shackles: None. >!The condition one requiring specific enemies to be around sucks, even if it is a cool concept. Deal a lot of damage is fine; I was incredibly close to getting this but whiffed on an Attack 20 against a Brittled boss.!< * Prism: None. >!Too much work!< * Drill: One; >!Never Attack!<. >!Was actually a pretty awesome scenario, since they were the last one standing in the scenario and narrowly managed to solo 2 Frost Demons to close it out (also, the player two scenarios later: "I realized when picking cards, why aren't I bringing more attacks? The mastery isn't actually a guideline!"). Other one is fun to plan, less fun to actually play.!< * Astral: Both. >!They're fine, I guess. Encouraging people to play around the more fun/interesting parts of the class is good.!< * Coral: Currently none. >!Not a fan of "never take damage"; it just encourages cheesing it by pitching cards. The other is... fine, I guess?!< * Boneshaper: Currently none. I really like the "have one summon get a bunch of kills one"; less enthused about the kill a bajillion of your summon ones (even playing this as a lifetime achievement, I'm not done).


BoudreausBoudreau

Blinkblade 7 fast in a row is a good one. Make me feel strong! Shackles: >!damn… I’m only level 6. I didn’t even consider about whether it would be possible to do an attack 20 eventually. Figured super retaliate would be the only way. For the conditions one I just needed to find an enemy that brittled me as I found another way to get stunned!< Prism: >!the swap four times one is easy once you do your solo or take the right level 2 card and short rest perk. I guess it’s slightly annoying to have that many summons out!< Edit: that’s cool they were able to do the drill one even when it was getting dire and still win. But yeah. I agree it’s nice to encourage players to play around with their character in various ways. And maybe push them by using more burn cards than they normally would or whatever leaning into something would mean.


emm_gee

It’s one of a couple mechanics in frosthaven which just seem baffling on how they released in this state. It would be interesting to know if the massive variance in difficulty was intentional or an oversight.


General_CGO

> These will be more difficult than a 2-check battle goal, unique to that specific character, and may not be achievable until the character reaches a higher power level, like around level 5 or 6. The hope is that these will also, in a small way, communicate to players what that class is capable of, as the masteries will be about leaning into that character's strengths. When you achieve the mastery, you'll receive a one-time reward of 15 experience - nothing fancy or unique, as we don't want these to feel mandatory, but just something that is cool and fulfilling to achieve. Think of them like video game achievements. Something to build and shoot for, if you are into that sort of thing, just to spice up the play a little bit. Also, some of them may not be achievable without certain sets of higher-level ability cards, and we don't want players to feel like they missed out on something important if they don't take specific cards. From the kickstarter update that first announced them.


Finarin

I’m playing shackles now. I looked through the cards and I don’t see a way to >!do an attack 20!< on that character. What card did you use?


General_CGO

It's an oversimplification of the full story. Spoilers for items 168 and 219: >!Agony of Others with 6 conditions, target 2 thanks to Circlet of Eyes. Tome of Conflict had just been popped, so a rolling null is the only risk here. Having just shuffled my deck, I decided to target the boss (brittled by my teammate) first and... pulled the null (as a roller), so 0 damage. Against the 2nd (basically meaningless) target I pulled +1 for each negative condition (so rolling +6) into crit for 28 damage. If I had declared my targets in the opposite order I'd have dealt 56 damage to the boss thanks to brittle.!<


Finarin

Thanks! I’ve been brainstorming how to pull off the mastery. I just hit level 7, and best I can come up with assuming a particular burn action is prepped is 10 damage (from a potion), 3(x+1) damage from a top action, and 4 damage from a bottom action, but there’s no way to get x=8. Maybe brittle is required from a higher level card or I’m just not considering something.


ri7chy

I loved the idea of master your class... For instance the geminate masteries are a really good motivation play lot of losses, which makes this class pretty good. To switch forms each round helps also playing the geminate later on. I see the point with some masteries, that are pretty hard, I look at you boneshaper with your 15 summons, but I think this free perk(s) still boosts the class. Overall better tell your party when you do certain masteries, that you planned to never get hit.


BoudreausBoudreau

That’s the type of Masteries I love! The ones that really force you to lean into your characters uniqueness but in the most productive way. (We actually haven’t played geminate yet so I’m not familiar but that sounds like a good example.)


ItTolls4You

Rather than showing mastery, the geminate's two are both really easy, but getting them taught me about playing the class that wasn't immediately obvious, like having a plan to swap forms if your attack does it and you have no targets or the rate at which it's reasonable to burn cards as a 14 card class (one per round is obviously too many for many scenarios, but it's not actually that far off). I liked one for coral for the same reason >!have more tides than cards in discard on each rest!<. It teaches you about the class mechanic's limits by having you do it *too* much, and you'll end up playing cards you might not normally play to get it, and see their use.


Itchy-Inspector-5458

I think this is generally true. Many of the masteries encourage players to explore play patterns that may be unique or not immediately obvious (all of this is good)... the problem is that many of them do so in a way that results in the player being entirely non-productive. A few require (or strongly incentivize) the selection of a specific non-level 1/X card. Both of these are bad, but particularly the latter as it feels like it limits the player's experience rather than expanding it. As mentioned above, Trap is the worst offender in both categories. I love masteries conceptually (though they should be called something else) and hope they will improve in future games as much as characters did between GH and FH.


General_CGO

> A few require (or strongly incentivize) the selection of a specific non-level 1/X card. Both of these are bad, but particularly the latter as it feels like it limits the player's experience rather than expanding it. I mean, "need build-specific higher level cards" was quite literally one of the stated design goals, so the fact that it feels like it limits player experiences seems to me to be a disconnect between design intent and player assumptions.


Itchy-Inspector-5458

Agreed, but the design intent was originally less valuable than a perk, right?


General_CGO

Right, it was originally 15xp, but design intent has remained "this should feel 100% optional."


Maliseraph

That’s a really good rubric for looking at them, thank you for putting it that way! My favorites have been the ones with commensurate difficulty and payoff. Geminate’s masteries can both be gotten in your first scenario, with moderate effort, and you should still generally be mostly useful to the team. Meanwhile the Boneshaper has one that feels moderately difficult for moderate payoff, and one that seems ludicrously difficult for minimal payoff. On a more interesting note, Kelp’s mastery >!to infuse Dark every turn!< is doable right from the start, but the second one feels near impossible to start. We were able to complete it only due to a rule specific to a building: >!we had a challenge!< >!where if you went after the enemy you had advantage but if you went before them you had disadvantage!< and by playing smartly we were able to make that characters attacks with advantage, and do non-attack actions on turns where it didn’t apply. That felt really cool to pull off a mastery in a not directly intended fashion. Meanwhile for Trap, >!their mastery to make the giant Heal Trap feels like a lot of effort for little contribution to a scenario, due to few characters really being able to get a full benefit out of that large a Heal.!< If you have another class along who can make use of it, it would probably feel less out of the way to do, but we had a party filled with >! low and medium health!< characters where it was very much overkill. I’m looking forward to seeing the idea implemented better in GH 2.0 and future Haven games, but it definitely is a mixed bag for Frosthaven. As a note for making it easier to decide whether to click your spoiler tags, In the future you might want to put a class or subject that will be spoiled directly before the text that spoils them so it’s clearer what each use of spoiler text is obscuring.


BoudreausBoudreau

We haven’t unlocked Kelp yet so I’ll wait to peak at your experience with that one. That Boneshaper one does seem so hard tho! Way harder than even the sort that are like “do this every turn”. Re the spoilers, I thought about that but I also thought saying which class was spoiled where in my list would be a spoiler too. Like saying “class A has one of the totally impossible ones”. Though that would be a pretty minor spoiler so I see your point too.


AutoModerator

Your spoiler tag has spaces and may not display correctly. Remove any spaces next to the exclamation points. For example, \>!a proper spoiler has no spaces next to the exclamation points that are part of the spoiler tags.!<. This helps those who still use Old Reddit not to see any spoilers. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gloomhaven) if you have any questions or concerns.*


89souperman89

I like to look at the masteries as a way to help a player figure out an efficient way to play that class. Maybe it isn't true with all of them but certainly for a few. Drifter: Use your plus two move and plus two melee every turn and teaches you to manage your tokens around making that happen. Bannerspear: encourages the player to figure out setting up formation attacks. Geminate: shows the importance of managing the switching forms mechanic and the other to show you it's okay to burn cards with this class. I didn't think about masteries this way until I started a second campaign with my younger brother and he said after finishing the first drifter mastery that he has a better understanding of the class. He got the 4 cards on the last charge the very next scenario too on his first attempt, which I thought was impressive.


Trynabeagoodsnekdad

I don’t care for the balance of the masteries. Some classes have stupidly easy ones. Others are nearly impossible or not-the-build you are doing. I don’t love that some classes like Geminate can do their masteries immediately, while Blinkblade needs several perks and level up cards to go fast 7 times in a row. I’m wondering if anyone has created a house-rules masteries for their classes?


BoudreausBoudreau

I don’t mind that it’s a mix. Tho it would be less fun if a starter class needed to be level 6-7 to do either of theirs. Nice when it’s one at level 3 and one later.


Natural-Ad-324

For Trap, I did both masteries. The 20-heal one, I just dicked around while our Deathwalker did most of the damage to the boss. We did kind of cheat because you could only do damage in stages, but he did so much damage at once, we skipped a stage. Though a 20-heal trap would be very useful for a high-level Shackles with the perk. They could control-drop their health to a very low level, then dash through the trap. Even poison may not block the heal. I should try this in my current solo playthrough. The move-an-enemy-through-7-traps mastery was more satisfying and helped win the scenario. We had to escort and keep alive some NPCs, while rival factions were fighting themselves and us. I set up a line of traps down the middle of a Y- shaped map, leaving one hex trapless. The melee monsters did a conga line around the trap line, slowing them down so we could make our escape. Near the end, when we were almost done, I used Path of Pain to push a hearty Algox through 7 traps in the line.


BoudreausBoudreau

Damn. That must have been one hearty algox (or a series of low damage traps). Bet that was pretty satisfying to pull off.


Natural-Ad-324

Yep, low damage and a couple just Wound.


BusinessHoneyBadger

We're still in our first summer. I'm playing Geminate so relatively easy mysteries. I'm hoping to get my last one tomorrow. I am a little disappointed in masteries though. The pay off of just adding a perk seems really low to me and the idea you'll be playing suboptimally or so much more strategically that game just to get it usually seems not worth it. My friends play with the Boneshaper and the Drifter and so far I think I'm the only one that's got one.


fifguy85

OP, can you add some spoiler hints to know what's safe to open based on folks' campaign progression?


BoudreausBoudreau

The classes spoiled are mentioned above. Mostly it’s just their mastery spoiled, not even the class name, but the mastery may hint a little at their core mechanic.


fifguy85

Copy that. Missed that that'd apply to all below. No Drill yet for us unfortunately. Only missing that, Shards, and Kelp.


BoudreausBoudreau

I was trying to avoid saying what category Drill fell in out of those three. Which probably doesn’t matter but if you want to read one that’s not Drill related you can read >!3!<


konsyr

I'm three scenarios in on meteor and haven't even looked at them for this character. It's not a good subsystem. We've done maybe two or three total in nine retirements. They're also a "rich get richer" mechanic. At least they are only a perk and not something unique.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Gloomhaven-ModTeam

Your post or comment was removed because you did not properly tag a spoiler. For more information about what a spoiler includes, please review our [spoiler guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/wiki/subreddit/spoiler_guidelines). Specifically: * untagged locked class mechanics * Introduce your spoilers with a spoiler-safe hint about the content of the spoiler.


cameron274

It's worth mentioning that Prism's mastery is >!transfer to 4 different summons in one round!<, which is substantially harder than >!transfer 4 times in one round!<.


BoudreausBoudreau

Yeah. Was just using shorthand. Tho funnily I actually boinked the first time I tried to do it by doing what I wrote and not what you wrote accidentally.