The Mastery system made me better at the game.

I'm not like a lot of players out there who pick one champion and stick with it. I value new experiences and variety. A large part of League is adaptation and diversity, so it's a damn shame when I face the exact same lineups every game. Oh great, another Master Yi who is going to rush devourer and murderball or go into Sated Madness and not even exit the jungle once until he has Sated Devourer. Another Graves player who has never played Graves before and just picks him because the forums say he's invincible oh look he went 0/10 before the minions spawned.

When the Mastery system was introduced, I decided to try and get every champion to Mastery 5. By the time you reach that point, you pretty much have the champion down pat (unless you're an idiot and bumbled your way to Mastery 5 on an ocean of failures) and you can move on to the next. So far I have 20 champions at Mastery 5, and that's not including the other mess of champions that I was already proficient with before Masteries were a thing, and the ones I'm currently working at.

Before the Mastery system, support role or mid, I wasn't good with Janna, Zyra or Brand. I would have passed them up plenty of times in favor of champions I was comfortable with, like Nami, Lulu or Braum. Now I am. Because I wanted to work towards Mastery 5 for all champions (even if it's ultimately about as relevant as the sports in Sports Illustrated), I've doubled or even tripled the number of champions I'm proficient with! I wasn't sure if I'd ever find a reason to play Anivia; when I started playing back in 2012, I sure as hell wasn't good with her. Now I'm murderballing with her in Ranked! On top of this, I'm able to better understand the nuances and menaces of various champions by playing them extensively, as well as their weaknesses. It comes in handy when you understand how a champion is likely going to behave and how to respond to it.

Unfortunately, I'm about to hit a massive road block. See, I'm a support main... you see where I'm going with this? Rarely am I able to go to another lane to play another champion. I've stretched champion roles and abilities to their very limits to play them as a support, and I don't feel like waiting in Dynamic Queue for 40+ minutes to play Renekton or Illaoi, nor do I want to have to contest for every non-support role every game in normals. It, like everything else, goes right back to the support stigma.