I haven’t seen many mastery build posts on here and I’ve seen people asking for help with them on various stream/discord chats, so here’s some suggestions.  Any notes I post in the builds of this deck reflects what I felt was strong for the Mastery maps that I soloed.  I am not sure if these are the most optimal setups, so take my notes more as suggestions than a guide.

I have soloed almost every mastery map except C6M Unholy Catacombs (feels excessive for most solo players) and C6M Ramparts Siege (probably could have soloed but friends were doing it).  I feel that the majority of Mastery can be soloed by any player that takes the time to at least prep most, if not all, the unique heroes (weapon, armor, relics, shards) and understand how to build against the restrictions given.

I’ll be covering general placement patterns in each individual hero build, so I won’t be posting layouts.

If you have any questions, suggestions, typo discoveries, etc., please leave a comment below, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

UPDATES:

• Nov. 28 – all hero build notes finalized to C7
• Nov. 28 – added post-mastery results to deck page, removed Adept build due to being outperformed by other options (will post later as a general build)
• Nov. 28 – finished all of Mastery; lots of notes to update within the week
• Nov. 25 – C6M has 1 map left, but I won’t be updating my notes until I clear most of C7M
• Nov. 20 – still trying to complete C6M; will not be doing full solo C6M due to some of the excessive restrictions
• Nov. 18 – added Adept Notes, updated all hero builds to my C5 Mastery experiences, and remade deck (site doesn’t let me add new build to existing deck)
• Nov. 16 – updated all hero notes on C5 except for Abyss Lord and Adept (coming soon)
• Nov. 15 – completed C5 Mastery Solo and will update notes as soon as possible
• Nov. 8 – tested Heavy Cannonball changes and updated Squire notes
• Nov. 7 – all heroes updated to C4 Mastery
• Nov. 7 – updated notes on Apprentice, Mystic, Dryad, Lavamancer, and Abyss Lord defenses
• Nov. 6 – completed C4 Mastery Solo and continuing hero build notes
• Nov. 6 – updated EV2, Gunwitch, Monk, and Squire sections to C4 Mastery

POST-MASTERY RESULTS:

These listings are in no particular order.

= My Strongest DPS Heroes/Builds =

Boss killing, lane clearing, and assassin killing were some of the major features I wanted in my hero lineup.  I frequently used a combination of these heroes for various roles.

Dryad (AP Starfall)

• combined with her defenses, her corrupt form allows her to dominate a large majority of maps
• equipped with a Sparkle Party pet, she can very easily clean up assassins with a few starfalls (stun nearby bosses/minions as well for optimal effect)
• corrupted starfall is costly, but it has the ability to burst down anything fast as long as there aren’t geodes present

EV2 (AP Proton Charge)

• Proton Charge is very effective at clearing lanes, air, and most bosses (Siege Roller is the exception) from a safe location
• equipped with a Sparkle Party pet, she can clean up assassins with her Proton Charge (line up bosses/minions as well for optimal effect)

Abyss Lord (AP Knights)

• Knight of the Abyss clears and CCs ground units pretty effectively as long as there are a lot of minions
• often hard to keep up mana when dealing with single targets, which means bosses are sometimes an issue when they are by themselves
• having a spammable CC makes it easy to get an assassin off you (precast a bit after you see the telegraph)

Mystic (HD Call to Madness)

• Call to Madness shuts down a minion group and heavily damage them, allowing you to multilane
• Shadowflame Dagger’s secondary attack bounces between targets, so ground or air groups are easy to kill

Gunwitch (AP Ice Needle)

• effective at killing and controlling Siege Rollers with Ice Needle
• several CC options let her control damage from minions and bosses, depending on the situation (e.g. Book Drop on a minion group to repair a wall so it takes no damage)

= My Strongest Builders =

My primary goal for soloing a lot of maps was trying to reduce the number of lanes I had to watch.  These were the majority of the defenses that made it possible.

EV2 (Node Builder)

• Weapon Manufacturers and Proton Beams (with Frosty Beams and full tier upgrades) can shut down lanes on their own on a lot of maps
• Vicious and Deadly Strikes can make it possible to use Weapon Manufacturers on C2/C5 Mastery maps

Dryad (Slimes and Hornets)

• playing actively on Dryad (and maintaining corrupt form) allows these defenses to hold down several lanes
• with corrupt form, slimes slow down minions while hornets finish off any stragglers
• with enough upgrades, hornets can often tear apart all bosses except Siege Rollers
• Deadly and Vicious Strikes on a World Tree makes placing Dryad defenses significantly more convenient and can reduce DU costs
• clever placement and/or range shards on Dryad traps make it possible to use for C2/C5 Mastery maps

Monk (Flame Aura and SGT)

• Flame Auras are great at covering lanes and can hit ground and air (within its sphere), making them a versatile and convenient damaging defense for most chaos tiers
• Sky Guard Towers with both Vicious and Deadly Strikes can cover a lot of ground for anti-air

= Most Used Defense Shards =

I’ve found shard use to only be slightly different than what is optimal for C7 Trials.  In general, you should use whichever combination gives you the highest DPS if that is your goal.  These are some notable general shards I used in most of my damaging defenses.

Defensive Critical Strike

• probably the most important and overlooked shard for damage defenses in Mastery
• enables high defense crit chance which we normally get from ascension if it wasn’t capped
• allows efficient use of the standard crit shards (Power Transfer and Defensive Critical Damage)

Defense Rate

• generally useful for certain defenses in the early Chaos tiers because defense speed is nowhere near speed cap
• can be paired with Destruction as a substitute to Defensive Critical Strike paired with a crit shard

Deadly Strikes

• great for most damaging defenses that need the extra reach
• stacks with Vicious Strikes allowing some defenses to perform their roles better: World Tree makes Dryad building easier, SGT has more map coverage, Ramster can AoE farther to reach ranged minions, etc.

SPECIAL MENTION

SimonB, a consistent top 10 Mastery racer, has some footage of his solo mastery clears here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuOsF0woa0rSoJ-_77GbU8A/videos

While he doesn’t directly explain his process, I still feel that his videos are still very informative for learning map placement and various strategies.  Some of the builds and strategies I used were because of what I learned from the videos.