Storm Raiders Surge and Warlords Bloodlust

Are actually the only two masteries that really do what riot wanted to do with keystones, but stormraiders is probably doing it better.

These keystones are supposed to be flexible picks that you would get depending on the game. I'm looking at a ryse who took stormraiders to deal with a tahm kkench in lane. That's awesome. It actually impacts the game, but it isn't over felt. It just makes ryze safe against the tounge lash and ganks.

That's the sort of think riot wanted masteries to be. Something that will change gameplay and strategy without dominating the game. I think thunderlords is the worst. It either get abused by dot mages for a burst of dmg they rnt supposed to have (morgana support) or it just adds even more dmg to an easy to do zed or leblanc combo.

I don't see how thunderlords changes a matchup like storm raiders. TBH It would be much better if thunderlords applied much less dmg early, but applied a really strong and really temporary slow. Think .5 second sillian slow, that's ona 45 second cooldown. That would change certain lane matchups up. If you go aggressive at the wrong time, you get a hard slow and eat a nid spear. If you are against a dominant laner, you can proc the thunderlords slow and help your gank out. That makes a discrete impact. One strong moment that allows thunderlord to shine, rather than a ton of tiny moments every 20 seconds that oppressively add up over time.

I think the mastery that adds armor to heals and shields is good. It allows heals to be nerfed so they are smaller in magnitude (so that you cant just 0-100 an ally in 20 seconds like soraka does), but well timed heals and shields can become more powerful than they were because they prevent burst kills (which they wouldn't do without the armor). This mastery isn't in the best spot right now, but it has the right space to grow.

I think that the undying grasp mastery is too dominant in its realm because there aren't good options otherwise. I think that the bond of stone is overshadowed by the windspeakers blessing. I think that the free sion passive from the other defensive tree keystone is underwhelming and doesn't at all do anything to change a lane matchup much less someones build path in interesting ways. It probs makes cho a lil overpowered if anything.

I also think that keystones should all be in one unified teir. I dont see a strong reason to restrict choices. I see the keystones as something that can make the game more diverse. Its taking a step backwards if you restrict choices. Like you get 17 point in any tree and you get access to all of the keystones. That way you can sort of have generic masteries and really give a lot of time for your consideration of which keystone to take in champ select.