Keystones force champions that want to go down one tree to go down another. Pre-season fix where?

WoonStruck··3 votes·453 views

Tell me why the majority of mages are forced to go down Cunning over Ferocity just because DFT sucks for the majority of mages, and it scales better for ADs even.

Tell me why ADCs get a free pass at damage masteries because you gave them two (technically 3) powerful keystones in Ferocity.

Tell me why Cunning has literally two of the most exclusive keystones in the game, then the most generic one that forces the majority of mages down it.

Tell my why Tanks' tree is worthless outside of keystones, yet they still have to go down it, and they have some of the worst keystones in the game. Olaf, a champion that would generally like a defensive tree, is forced to go down Ferocity because Fervor is literally the only decent keystone for him.

Riot, why is this a thing?

Fix masteries. Fix keystones. You should be addressing this.

You said old masteries weren't interesting because they didn't give you real decisions, but what you've put in its place is legitimately 100x worse in that regard.

And no, the new tank keystone doesn't fix this problem. It basically invalidates Bond of Stone as a keystone. This means champs like Olaf, Morde, Nasus, Mundo etc have little-to-no reason to go down resolve at all. Grasp is pretty damn weak now.

None of the new masteries do either. They make the problem worse. The tank ones fix nothing and the ferocity/cunning ones exacerbate the damage creep already in the game.

3 Comments

Ravenous Howls3 votes

Welcome to the League of Damage and exciting games b/c everything that is not an ADC dies like it was tissue paper soaked in lighter fluid left next to an open flame!

Especially the tweaks to the resolve tree are a giant kick to the crotch in regards to tanks, Juggernauts and Bruisers. None of the new options will benefit them nearly as much as the new amount of damage given in the ferocity tree will give to the problem champions that are current now. In fact I am willing to bet ADC's and poke champs are going to become even stronger and more problematic over the next few months...

Ralanr2 votes

Honestly I don't think 9 keystones are enough to express diversity with champions. TLD and other generalist keystones will always be decently powerful because if not then champions that don't work with specific keystones will get shafted.

Then we have keystones that are too niche to be useful. Like stormraiders surge or wind speakers. I don't know any champions that heavily rely on surge, and windspeakers is mainly used on Soraka.

I really like keystones, but they haven't had a great track record.

Rebonack2 votes

The whole concept of a 'Tree' is the problem, I think. In order to get one particular effect you need to invest in the whole tree, whether it is actually useful for you or not. Dividing things up into categories is fine (DPS, Burst, Sustain, Utility, Defense) but pigeon-holing people into one of those categories is bad.

The basic concept behind Keystones isn't bad. Distilling Masteries down into a small number of game-changing options is a neat idea. But Riot didn't go far enough. I would much prefer a system where we have five or so Masteries under each category and you get to pick three of them from any combination of catagories. And that's it.

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