The new Mastery: Neidan - First impressions and thoughts?

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

Hi there,

I've just started a new character (Starting from scratch. And I mean scratch.) and trying the new mastery. My first impression is that it seems like a very interesting and versatile mastery. What immediately catched my eye was Huagdi's Favour (Far to the right on the tree) and the effect of dealing extra damage and petrify. The last additive is dealing AoE damage which seems like it has a nice mix of defense and offense with the lightning and petrify. The last one takes a while to get to but I think that has potential.

The next thing that catched my eye was the aura that seems very good. Aura of Tranquility (Second last on the tree). Damage absorbtion, a nice chance of retaliation and physical/elemental resistance? Hell yeah. The additive gives dodge and projectiles dodge chance as well as reflected damage, which is also very nice.

The other abilities look interesting too of course, especially the ones that work with potions.

What is your first impression and what do you think which mastery would this pair well with?

[Čmaroljub Grozni]

Also starting from lvl1.
I'm going with Nedian and Defense. With Aura of Tranquility, this combo will probably be among the best tanks in the game.
The LMB skills is something that I will ignore and respect out of it asap. LMB skill with a 10 sec cooldown is a no from me.

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

As far as I can see that LMB skill has no cooldown or do you mean something else? You probably mean the breath attack. Yeah I'm not gonna take that one too. The other one though seems nice. It's probably an oversight that it isn't flagged as LMB skill ^^ It's likely that that the LMB assignment was meant to be for the other one :D

[Čmaroljub Grozni]

引用自 Sehrael：

As far as I can see that LMB skill has no cooldown or do you mean something else? You probably mean the breath attack. Yeah I'm not gonna take that one too. The other one though seems nice. It's probably an oversight that it isn't flagged as LMB skill ^^ It's likely that that the LMB assignment was meant to be for the other one :D

Yes, I was thinking about breath attack (it has *assign to LMB yellow text*)

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

Spear mastery could work well too and complement the trigger chance of the actual LMB skill. Dream could be interesting if you just want to complement the Neidan as main mastery for one extra aura (Empathy or Convalescence?) and the passive line next to it. Maybe the clone is useful too, but don't know. Admittedly defense mastery has a lot of synergy if you're using a shield.

[Ethinil]

From scratch here i am !
:D Neidan ofc, but ... with what else ? :s i have no clue °° Pure tank ? seems a bit boring ? Maybe something with lightning or fire ? what do you think ?
Idk the effects of the new potions, are they that good they have a skill to proc them ? :D

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

Well, it wouldn't be the last LMB-attack build I'd make lol Lightning... I don't know. The mastery gives Dex and Int so I guess... No, don't mind me. I have no idea. I still haven't selected a second mastery because I'm the most indecisive person in the world, heh. I'm leaning towards Defense or Hunter though. More towards Defense in that case, but still undecided.

[LotusBlade]

The whole new mastery lacks core. It has great aura bonuses, some pets, some smoke, some lmb attack, a grenade... But it is not a real mastery, it is good at everything and at the same time it is bad at everything. No real synergy between skills. And it gives int + dex, which makes even worse. The skills also split among fire, lighting, retaliation and poison, it just makes no sense to me.

Feels like this mastery should be third after your main and secondary, which is impossible without cheaty mods.

Starting with it just not interesting, there is nothing for you to play with. The main dmg comes from auto-attack with lighting, but it is not reliable thanks to 50% chance to fail and it's actual good boost requires 40 points in mastery, pf. I know, a lot depends on equipped items, but what if you started from zero?

And dmg numbers are tiny, like 6 fire and 3 poison in 3 seconds per skill point, seriously? Where are % dependence on your dmg? Even half-maxed this skill fails to kill some 5 lvl creatures and, in fact, is just reskinned version of Deam Mastery wave skill.

[Syn]

引用自 LotusBlade：

The whole new mastery lacks core. It has great aura bonuses, some pets, some smoke, some lmb attack, a grenade... But it is not a real mastery, it is good at everything and at the same time it is bad at everything. No real synergy between skills. And it gives int + dex, which makes even worse. The skills also split among fire, lighting, retaliation and poison, it just makes no sense to me.

Feels like this mastery should be third after your main and secondary, which is impossible without cheaty mods.

Starting with it just not interesting, there is nothing for you to play with. The main dmg comes from auto-attack with lighting, but it is not reliable thanks to 50% chance to fail and it's actual good boost requires 40 points in mastery, pf. I know, a lot depends on equipped items, but what if you started from zero?

And dmg numbers are tiny, like 6 fire and 3 poison in 3 seconds per skill point, seriously? Where are % dependence on your dmg? Even half-maxed this skill fails to kill some 5 lvl creatures and, in fact, is just reskinned version of Deam Mastery wave skill.

I agree. The wave reskin, the fact that the LMB skill tag is misplaced, the numbers on the skills. Everything screams rushed and half-baked to me.
There is indeed not a single skill that could really carry the mastery on its own. Overall it's a weird caster mastery based on elemental damage. "Wave reskin" is at least doing flat amount of ele dmg later on, but until then ...

The potion trigger skills are cool in concept, but they will not work out if they just trigger with that marginal chance. The energy regeneration passive doesn't even tell you how small that chance may be. I don't think 100% with all points (think +4) invested would be overpowered at all for them.

The aura is very strong, no doubt about that, but it consumes sooo much mana that it may not even be worth it to build around that restriction to sustain the aura.
And no, the energy leech skill will not help here, you will regret having invested into it when you're up against bosses. Trap talent, trap mastery.

Maybe the minions are nice, but only if they are indeed pets, the game just fails again and again to simply tell you in the tooltips. I kinda doubt it though.

[Asturaetus]

Sadly haven't got the time to play myself yet, but does anyone know if AoE upgrade of the new LMB skill ('Huagdi's Favour' was it) works with ranged weapons? Me and my Niddbow desperately want to know.

[Gadse]

引用自 LotusBlade：

The whole new mastery lacks core. It has great aura bonuses, some pets, some smoke, some lmb attack, a grenade... But it is not a real mastery, it is good at everything and at the same time it is bad at everything. No real synergy between skills. And it gives int + dex, which makes even worse. The skills also split among fire, lighting, retaliation and poison, it just makes no sense to me.

Feels like this mastery should be third after your main and secondary, which is impossible without cheaty mods.

Starting with it just not interesting, there is nothing for you to play with. The main dmg comes from auto-attack with lighting, but it is not reliable thanks to 50% chance to fail and it's actual good boost requires 40 points in mastery, pf. I know, a lot depends on equipped items, but what if you started from zero?

And dmg numbers are tiny, like 6 fire and 3 poison in 3 seconds per skill point, seriously? Where are % dependence on your dmg? Even half-maxed this skill fails to kill some 5 lvl creatures and, in fact, is just reskinned version of Deam Mastery wave skill.

Agree with you.
Best thing about this Class are the Minions and the Aura that makes you tanky. Maybe even the x chance to reduce enemy resistances by x.

You get fire damage, elemental damage, lightning damage, poison damage, frostburn damage and vitality damage. Its just waaay to random and the damage numbers are weak. There is in my opinion no reason to use this class other for a pet build or to give you defensive bonuses ( which the latter is boring imo.)

[Snowpig]

tried the minions at level 40 yesterday - they do decent damage with the extra skill, but the cooldown on casting them is a tad too long, especially if you take the flame aura and the minions switch to suicide mode.

I made a level 40 yesterday, skilled only the mastery with focus on bomb & minions and could take out the first boss in Act 5 with some crappy gear from the shop

[Fluxia Lumionia]

To me, the main thing that it seems to have big synergy for is gathering up a bunch of enemies at at time and then blasting them. lots of stuff seems to proc off enemy death or potion use.

[Lord Honorius]

i made a storm/ neidan character . with squall and the lightning attack . tranquility and the aura of storm. all potion skill maxed and i literally face tank everything in mage gear.