Insight on the Utility Tree Changes

This post is about the upcoming changes happening to the utility tree and a little bit of predictions and reasonings to why certain mages in the mid will become the meta post-change hitting LIVE servers.

Let's talk about the biggest change first off all, which is 3 Mana Regen per 5 seconds being increased to 1.5% Missing Mana per 5 seconds but going down the utility tree quite a bit and where the mana regen used to be is being replaced with a flat amount of Mana.

So straight off the back this is a massive nerf to the standard 9 in utility towards mages because they relied so heavily in getting through the early game until they get their dedicated Mana sustain item like Morellos, Archangels, or Grail. If you go more points in the utility tree or even 21 utility then this is a buff and the new mana regen mastery is a 75% increase in regen if you have a chalice without counting for the item's base mana regen.

Math in majour regen values are: 2.5% MAX Mana per 5 seconds for Blue Buff OR 0.5% MAX Mana per second 2% MISSING Mana per 5 seconds for Mana Font [Chalice Passive] OR 0.4% MISSING Mana per second 1.5% MISSING Mana per 5 seconds for the 3 points in the new utility tree mastery OR 0.3% MISSING Mana per second

So with Chalice and let's just say 21 utility for simplicity, you have 0.7% MISSING Mana per second and upon reaching roughly 40% of your total Mana this is an equal regen to Blue Buff and anything lower is MORE regen than what you get from Blue Buff; again this is not taking in chalice/grail's base mana regen. In short, 9 in utility for mages is a nerf, but if a mage can go more into the utility for the 1.5% MISSING Mana or even 21 utility then this is a majour buff; not everyone can do this since they rely heavily on 21 offense, but a certain class of champions can which are Utility Mages and a lot of aspects in the utility page they can abuse.

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Okay, so the mages I think will have great benefits from going 21 utility will be the likes of Zilean, Lulu, and Orianna as a top 3 since these are all mages that are not reliant upon their damage but rather their utility, another high contender is Anivia but due to her very high skill cap [she is the hardest champion to both play and master by a lot] I will not include her, even though she benefits equally to 21 offense because of her high damage output and 21 utility because she has high utility and sustain damage from her ultimate (aka Anivia is an utility hyper mage).

Basically having 3 mastery points to increase Mana Font's value indirectly by 75% is pretty significant especially on already Grail users and if you go 3/4 of the gold masteries these champions benefit a lot, especially Orianna and Lulu, where the pick pocket mastery gives on-hit gold on of champions who have passives that encourage basic attacking; with extra benefits for increase ambient gold and starting gold allowing these champions to get their items faster and reach late game slightly earlier. Another benefiting factor for 21 utility [which will benefit Anivia the most because no mobility] is the 21st point for roaming mobility in case you ever want to roam to the side lanes, but it is also useful to just get to lane slightly faster.

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Anyways, I believe I talked about my majour points I wanted to talk about and little bit of a prediction to what I think will rise in the meta thanks to the upcoming mastery changes.

So see you guys around and have a nice day! ~ Stacona

tl:dr : utility mastery changes is a nerf for standard 9 utility, but a buff to deeper in utility masteries or even 21 utility