Snarl’s Rants: Is Mastery Worth it?

For the life of me I still don’t know what the difference between having Mastery in an area versus having Expertise in an area, but apparently with Blizzard there is a difference. When I first heard about stat changes for Cataclysm, I cheered for things like the end of Defensive Cap. To Be honest, I think they could have timmed out more, like Spell Penetration for example, but then they added this little stat called Mastery.

Now when it was discussed and if you were to see it applied to say the Holy Paladin, you would think it was kind of cool. If you specced into Illuminated healing, you would tack on a little shield to your healing target in addition to the heal based on your Mastery rating. Sounds kind of cool, huh?

Then why hasn’t it become more important? If you grind through several different classes and specs, you do not really see Mastery as a key component for many classes. It usually is the fourth or fifth priority behind old familiars like Hit, Expertise, Spell Power, Haste or Crit.

So, why did Blizzard add it?

I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but this little stat seems a little bit on the let down side. Do you agree or disagree? Let me know in your comments.