4.2 HS and Mastery

[Samus]

Been away from the forum for a while and I've completely lost track of what HS does now and what our mastery is now (plus how does Mastery on gear effect it?)?

Could some one just give me an over-view I've taken a quick look in the 4.2 thread but I don't have time to read through it all.

Cheers

[Fetzie]

Mastery increases your block chance, and should be on every item. If it isn't on an item, reforge so that it is.

Holy Shield makes your block value 50% instead of 30% for 10 seconds every 30.

[Samus]

Cheers I also got this reply in a different thread randomly.

Now it increases how much your shield blocks by 20% for 10 seconds on a 30 second CD. It's a nice mini-CD, use it when there's a lot of melee burst damage.

Mastery hasn't changed (unless I missed something).

[Koatanga]

Mastery simultaneously got worse and more important.

It's "worse" in that 1% block means less overall mitigation in 4.2 than it did in 4.1 (1% block was worth .4% dodge/parry in 4.1, but will be worth .36666...% dodge/parry in 4.2 assuming HS on cooldown which isn't an optimal way to use it but represents the highest possible uptime on a non-existent Patchwerk-style encounter that is only used as a napkin maths figure not to reflect actual encounter design and your mileage may vary - actual real block value is said to be an improvement assuming HS is used intelligently).

But CTC becomes even more important, because your 20% block increase for 10 out of 30 seconds only matters if you actually block. It would suck to pop a block cooldown for an expected spike only to cop an unblocked hit to the face. Since mastery remains the cheapest way to attain 102.4 combat table coverage, you simply gotta have it.