Riot, I've always hated the % armor/MR mastery
It just is so niche. The dynamic is quite clear; you have flat hp5 vs % bonus armor. This is clearly supposed to be:
- Pick hp5 if you want ealry game durability to help you snowball!
- Pick the bonus resistances if you want late game durability so you can dominate then!
Except it's not. It's not enough that you want late game durability. You want late game durability AND invest a huge amount of gold into resistances. Not just any defense. It HAS to be resistances. This would be ok for a deeper tier like tier 3 or tier 5 because it's resolve. However, literally everyone benefits well from 5/6 tier 1 masteries. Some people benefit more from some than others, but even a mage could use AS if they really want their timing for lasthits in lane more than raw damage (it's a stupid example, but whatever.) The difference is that you don't need to invest anything in these 5. They are definitely most useful on certain champions and roles.
But even if you are a tank, you HAVE to build armor or MR to get any benefit out of unyielding. Mages don't have to build AP or Mpen to get mileage out of natural talent or piercing thoughts.
Why can't this mastery simply be "Gain 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 armor and magic resist per level (10 at lvl 18)" like the other late game masteries? Especially tier 1. Even if ADC decided that it was a good idea to grab late game armor/mr instead of learn to position better in teamfights and grab the really nice 2 hp5, so what? What if supports got +5 minion damage instead of +12 ms in the water? Who cares? Unyielding does not present much if any strategic choice as it only really helps noticeably under certain conditions on SOME champions instead of being relatively ubiquitous on pretty much everyone like the other 5.
When it was 10%, it was pretty damn noticeable, but now that it's 6%, it's barely worth anything, especially with games not even getting to late game a lot of the time. Does it honestly really matter if you can get 3.6 more armor from Randuin's if you have to give up what amounts to 30-50% of your base health regen for most champions at lvl1? After all, health regen is what wins top lane, helps you clear safer, and in a lot of cases lets you win bot lane.
It just seems so ridiculous that this one mastery sticks out as being niche when the other 5 don't need you to build anything to start earning benefits.