Get off my armor class!

Some of the first meaningful details of the Mastery system were unveiled today. It's not much, and the concrete details offered don't apply to warlocks, but one notable bit that all clothies will appreciate is this:

You will also gain a small amount of Mastery by wearing gear of your intended armor type (such as plate for paladins)

This isn't likely to be the end of boomkins and ele shamans looking to cloth for gear, sheer abundance of caster cloth will always make it a fall back plan when elemental doesn't get an spirit-free pair of boots some tier, but hopefully mastery will be a strong enough stat that it'll be a meaningful contribution, particularly if combined with some reforged spirit, it may become a better item than an ideal cloth.

If this same armor class bonus scales with itemlevel, it might make for some interesting consideration in gear, but it's not likely to be an immense one unless they chose to make this armor class mastery bonus significant enough for hybrids to take spirit gear over better cloth items. Itemlevel could be about as good as intellect is currently - it helps but is generally safe to ignore, and it's on everything anyway. Thankfully, if this is the case, it only applies to armor slots, not jewelry, weapons, or trinkets. So, there'll be no mastery bonus for using a high level healer trinket instead of a good but lower level DPS one, trinkets will still stand on their own.


Some of the mastery bonuses shown thus far are quite interesting. All the trees previewed today and at Blizzcon have one simple % increase to damage or healing, basically the hole where all the plain jane talents are being dumped. Some trees only have increased crit, crit bonus, or haste, but some have quite interesting effects. One of Holy's mastery bonuses is a HoT tacked on to all direct heals.