Supports once again have an experience disadvantage. - Wall of Text - TLDR at bottom.

Welcome to preseason six where Riot has thrown out all the old masteries, and ushered in a new wave of balancing nightmares. Keystone masteries are the major offenders right now, but I feel like the changes to cunning/utility tree has been passed over in a surprising manner. With mastery tree changes Supports have lost an important source of continual experience. Inspiration one of the most core masteries of season 5 utility/cunning tree did not find itself readmitted into the preseason six.

       Whilst following along with preseasons big mastery overhaul, prerelease I noticed this omission. I was worried about the potential impact then, and would wait to see what Riot had planned for Supports.  What was planned would be mana regen, and gold income changes on support items that for the most part match the accelerated flow of the game, which would lead to Supports at least not falling egregiously behind in gold compared to their fellow teammates. Gold income outside of farming cs is core to Supports, however nothing had been done to make up for experience loss from masteries. 

      Now having gotten my hands on preseason gameplay I can say with certainty that Supports have gotten the short end of the stick this preseason.  In my experience supports receive much less experience than their fellow teammates thanks to gameplay, and Meta mechanics limiting their experience gains. Supports will always try to funnel as much gold, and experience onto their adc partner at a competent level of play. 

     As games progress in time there is an increasing disparity in a Supports level in comparison to their adc, and other teammates. A support is supposed to fulfill multiple tasks in game to help their team win at a competitive level. From warding the map, removing enemy wards, roaming, babysitting, making sick engages, frustrating disengages, and in general just being an asset to their team they have a hefty role to fulfill. A Support in preseason 6 is now punished for performing all but one of these tasks. The only way you get reliable levels now as Support, is if you sit in lane leeching experience from wherever your adc goes to farm.  This means that while you go to ward the map, or roam you are actively losing potential experience for not sitting in lane. As someone who has been a Support main since season four I can tell you this just feels awful. Experience gains for Support only get further decreased as the game progresses, because grouping towards mid to late reduce minion experience gains significantly. 

      It is now the norm for the Support to be experience starved. All too often I see Supports with a level disparity of two, or three levels below their team if not more depending on how well their game is going. All of this because one mastery has been omitted this preseason, Inspiration was a huge boon for Supports. Inspiration enabled Supports to fulfill tasks many players take for granted without incurring a huge experience deficiency. Levels are extremely important to every character in the game, watching one role fall so far behind in comparison to the others should be the cause of ringing alarm klaxons.  We’ve got Supports with reduced survivability due to level deficiency in a preseason landscape where ad Assassins are about to get a new toy to kill them with. If things don’t change soon I predict there will be a mid-lane Assassin Meta specifically targeting weak supports in order to snowball the game, and kill everyone else.  We’ve lived through a similar Meta like this before, which was curbed by significant support buffs that came in season five. I’m not sure it’d be healthy for this games state for such a Meta to reoccur, if anything it’d be a regression of every support change riot has enacted in the past. 

       Overall I can say that change is good, it ushers in new concepts into the game that keeps things fresh, but it should not be a massive oversight to the overall health of the game. Supports experience gains something easily overlooked, is going to matter more than ever as the Meta evolves. The simplest way to curb this issue would be returning Inspiration to the cunning tree, perhaps as a tier 5 mastery in between intelligence, and precision. Give it a new paintjob tweak the stats so it falls in line with other masteries, and we’ll have supports experience woes sorted. This shouldn’t be that much of an issue considering the “Assassin” mastery they added earlier made it in with such ease. Cunning can just be a bloated tree if it’s catering to so many different roles, and I see no reason why Supports should be ignored in a tree that has been theirs for so long now. 

     TLDR: Supports have fallen behind in experience gains due to the removal of Inspiration mastery this preseason. Leading to Supports incurring an experience deficiency doing tasks like roaming, warding, and eventually grouping instead of babysitting their farming adc to leach experience at all times. Being three levels behind everyone else feels terrible when you are actively punished for trying to perform your role as Support. I predict that with Supports being so weak due to not having survivability stats from levels, a Meta will evolve to snowball the game off them with midlane Assassins, or just about every other role really.  To fix this I propose Riot reintroduce Inspiration mastery into the cunning tree smack dab in the middle of Intelligence, and precision as a Tier 5 mastery with retuning as befits its position on the tree.  Hear your supports pleas give us our experience back!

I’m interested to see what everyone else has to say on the matter, I’m rather worried if I’m the only one perturbed about support changes this preseason.