Lightweight Equipment Mastery

Effects

**Lightweight Equipment Mastery**, or **LW Equipment Mastery**, is a Mastery available to all heroes. When taken, it does not have any immediate effects. However, after it has been taken, every 15 seconds, 200-250 minerals (at random) will be subtracted from the player, and a chat message will be sent saying that they have received 5%/10%/15% (etc.) Lightweight Equipment Mastery Research. Each 5% gives a small amount of cooldown reduction to most hero spells, and mana cost decrease, duration increase, or range increase to certain other spells. If you have all the minerals available when research starts, it takes 5 minutes to receive all of this Mastery's benefits. When all 100% has been received, a chat message is sent to all players, saying that a player has completed all Lightweight Equipment Mastery bonuses. This mastery is useful on most heroes, but is especially useful on primary spellcasters like Nova and Tassadar, and while Predator is not a primary spellcaster, all of its spells benefit from the reduced cooldowns. However, it is not generally extremely useful in the early game, as most heroes do not have sufficient energy or energy regeneration to keep up with their reduced cooldowns. This can however be offset with Energy Mastery.

Listed below are all effects that Lightweight Equipment Mastery gives.

* CD = Cooldown
* DUR = Duration
* s = Seconds
* EN = Energy cost
* RNG = Range

## Core users

While reduced cooldowns is useful, especially in the late game, not every hero needs these improvements. Certain heroes, however, benefit strongly from the reductions.

### Swann

By reducing the CD of all his turrets, this mastery alone is the biggest DPS increase for swann, and should be taken straight after haywire for maximum efficiency.

### Nova

Between Lightweight Equipment Mastery and Stay On Target, Snipe's cooldown is reduced to 0. However, Snipe still has a 1 second cast time.

Between LW Equipment Mastery and Havoc, Strafe has its cooldown reduced to 7 seconds, with a duration of 4 seconds (5 seconds with Focused Attacks). This serves as the majority of Nova's damage output, both against large waves of Roaches and Zerglings, and against large enemies like Hive Guardians.

### Tassadar

The reduction of CD on thunderstorm is the strongest part of this mastery, as it allows you get 3 second cooldown on your storm with two moonsoon talents, and thus make it possible to spam the storm once you've achieved enough energy regeneration. The FF range increase is nice, but not mandatory at all.

### Predator

All of Predator's active spells have their cooldowns reduced by LW Equipment Mastery. Probably most significantly, this takes Corona down to a 10-second cooldown, making it an extremely relevant source of damage output. The extra Battlecrys and Phalanxes are good for extra survivability (not that you really need that as you're already indestructable), and the extra Demoralizes are good for extending the life expectancy of adjacent Extremely Big Guns.

## Interaction with other Masteries and Perks

Lightweight Equipment Mastery consumes Minerals to perform its upgrade steps. Once the Mastery has been taken, these expenses cannot be cancelled and will be paid automatically if the Minerals are available. If the Minerals are not available, research progress will stop, and every 15 seconds it will check again and try to proceed.

Three Perks can also interact with LW Equipment Mastery.

* Compartmentalization removes the Mastery Point cost of LW Equipment Mastery, allowing it to be selected at the beginning of the game.
* Mercenary gives the player an additional 5000 Minerals at the beginning of the game, and after every boss or Hive kill, giving a source of income to finance this Mastery.
* Absorption gives the player additional Energy and Energy Regeneration when they cast spells. This can also help offset the additional energy consumption that comes with LW Equipment Mastery's cooldown reduction.