I know, you're all already aware that you have to head to Fort Talos' dungeons in order to quickly become a master, but it's probable that you're doing it wrong.
Let me explain:
Mastery increases when you use a fighting style skill, but what counts as usage of one? That would be when you successfully hit or inflict damage with it. Note: whether it's one or the other, lowering the damage output of your techniques will allow you to gain more mastery.
How can we exploit this knowledge? Simple, start by grouping up all of the dungeons' soldiers in one room andSee the second comment's last paragraph begin harassing them with skills until their defeat. Repeat this process once or twice to find yourself at full mastery.
By making use of this strategy, I was able to make my 120 strength savant go from novice to master in only two cycles.
Hopefully this guide helps you save 15 minutes of your time. Note: this strategy likely functions this way by turning the damage that a technique inflicts into mastery exp. Knowing this, the more enemies you hit at once, the more damage you inflict with one skill, the more exp you get (this whole mechanic is pretty convoluted).
I went and tested this again, it turns out that it isn’t because you’re hitting multiple enemies at once that it’s beneficial but because you have the lowest power output and hit more than two attacks on them (making you deal more damage in total).
Now to know whether or not it saves time to group them up, we have to calculate the amount of times we use the skill and the amount of time it takes for them to respawn.
It takes 4 second for the cooldown of crash to be over (can be cut to 1 or 2 if one optimises a powerless intensity armourset).
You have to make use of 9, 18, or 27 crashes in order to take down all guards (counted per room and not per guards, so missing can happen).
This means that you have to wait 32/68/116 seconds to clear all rooms at minimum, and you will have to wait 24/0 more for the next cycle to begin. As opposed to waiting 0/4/8 seconds to defeat them all at once and 60 more for the next cycle to begin.
In the end, this is highly dependent on your fighting style’s minimum power output.
If you inflict less than 144 damage per crash (DOT included), the latter (grouping them up) will be better (unless you use intensity).* If you deal more however, the former (not grouping them up)</mark will be better.
So, what's the real trick then?
Using intensity, no power, and not grouping them up.