Champion Mastery is a Sham

aceofsween·6/6/2015, 11:22:53 PM·125 votes·8,037 views

When the Champion Mastery system first came out, I was kind of intrigued. It was a way to show skill with a particular champion. However, it's implementation is flawed, and points essentially amount to whether you win or lose, not how you perform. The strangest part is that the system actually does seem to know when you're performing well, even in a loss. I've seen grade S to A in a loss, so something under the hood is working (one would think).

But it doesn't seem to have any bearing on how many champion points you are awarded at the end of a match. Most recently, I finished a game as Elise going 6/2/0 (our Caitlyn was constantly DCing, so we surrendered at 20:23). At the time, I had the most gold on our team, 3rd most gold in the game, and was responsible for 6 of 10 kills we amassed. I finished the game with an A+ grade, which I think that was reasonable. And out of curiosity, I hovered over the number of champion points I was awarded...

I got +37 for that game. A+ rank, only +37 points. Compare this to a game where I went 0/8/4 as Riven feeding my ass off. That game we still won, and I got over 1000 pts for a C performance. (By the way, If that was a C, what do you have to do to get a D?)

In the end, the only thing Champion Mastery tracks is how often you win the game with a particular champion, which I find shortsighted and foolish.

84 Comments

Jrud6/6/2015, 11:32:15 PM46 votes

Agree... points should be based on performance (because obviously the are good at measuring it) and not on win/loss

DrNova6/7/2015, 6:16:48 AM26 votes

This is how I look at champion mastery.

Its generally useless, but as a normal gamer, I like earning things, even if useless.

When I see someone in a match with a 4/5 rank, I assume they have alot of experience with the champ and there is a chance they are more dangerous.

Its early enough that you see one and you have to respect it, possibly. In a year when everyone has all the high pick champs tagged, it will mean less in that aspect.

Narasimha6/7/2015, 2:05:21 AM11 votes

If I recall correctly, they wanted it to be tied to win/loses because otherwise, people would just start farming their K/D/A. If you're winning, you just keep farming for kills and prolong the game. If you're losing, you just say 'fuck the team', and start fishing for kills without worrying about winning.

LankPants6/7/2015, 2:46:35 AM6 votes

I've always thought that as your rank gets higher a win or a loss should matter less. An S+ loss should be worth ~80% of an S+ win with something around a B being the point where the system acts like it does now.

Jeddy0176/7/2015, 4:08:06 AM6 votes

When it comes to Champ Mastery, The points are meaningless.Their just there to speed up or slow down your "mastering". The tiers are just a way to show off.That's all it's there for. The end game grades is the important & only useful thing here.The grades allow you to gauge you performance on a champ & where you stand in terms of mastery.If you,on average,get "S"s & "A"s,you can say you pretty much mastered the champ.If you get "C"s & "D"s,then you need to work on several things (to bad the players can't tell what are factored into these grades).

Hellioning6/7/2015, 7:08:42 AM5 votes

It's more of a grind system than anything else; I'd rather they just give flat points for win/loss and tie in the grades to another system.

skyfall6196/7/2015, 4:25:39 PM3 votes

i agree dude. some can get a d- and get 1200 points while you get a s+ and get 200 points. the system if very misleading. it makes people who performed bad think they still did well even tho they got carried while the guy that broke his back trying to carry his team will be stuck thinking "if only i had a better team".

Old Man Teeto6/7/2015, 5:56:33 AM3 votes

Riot attempted to take Champion Mastery from Heroes of the Storm (Which has you level your hero and as you gain you unlock things -- such as_ base model recolors_) Which gives sizable experience even on a loss, much more than the ratio for League

They then removed all the rewards that the HotS model has (Gold, skin customization, etc) and said "well shit, we don't want something that requires EFFORT to introduce" so they put titles which at no time show, and a single universal emote.

They then arbitrarily put a game by game "rating" that can be inflated by simply winning the game hard and fast and doesn't reflect who your opponents are.

Big Bang Bob6/7/2015, 8:46:49 AM3 votes

The funny thing is, Riot should already know about this. If they check the general situation on the boards when Champ Masteries were released (which they should when they release new content) they would have seen similar complaints.

Saianna6/7/2015, 9:20:44 AM2 votes

This update is kinda like Riots wants to tell us "I want to have as cool looking interface as HotS have, but i'm too dumb to copy them properly"

Koldheartedjsp6/7/2015, 3:52:43 AM2 votes

20:23 is the number we care about here i think

how long did the riven game last?

alohabroha6/7/2015, 4:57:21 AM2 votes

Because win or loss is the most objective thing to base it on.

MalaceX6/7/2015, 6:04:46 AM2 votes

I'm not sure how the Champion Mastery works exactly. I never really look at the points gained. I mostly look at my grade. I will say that it's not all about kills. I went 30/3/14 with Graves yesterday and I only received an A+. I think this was because my cs/farming was low for the length of the game. I was fine with that and think I understood the reasoning behind it.

I'm not sure of all of the factors in the Champion, but just take it a game at a time. Just keep in mind that once you reach level 5 with a champion, the points do keep adding up. What will be interesting to see is how many levels Riot adds past 5 levels. I have still yet to see a lot of people with level 5 badges on their champs. Maybe that says more than we know or currently realize.

Lugg6/7/2015, 7:11:31 AM2 votes

It isn't really mastery, it is experience with that champion. You get points whether you win or lose, so just play enough and you get the max ranking.

Vistha Kai6/7/2015, 9:28:52 AM2 votes

IMO, there should be two things:

  1. Experience - how much you played with a champion working pretty much as is now.
  2. Skill - using only performance part of current system and working as an arithmetic average. e.g. how you currently calculate average champion KDA.

Here I made Champion Mastery not garbage after 10 seconds of thinking about it.

Icepaw6/8/2015, 10:18:09 AM2 votes

Champion Mastery is not a sham. Show me one official statement that claims this is a skillbased system? Its not! It never has been, and just because you think it is, dosent make it a sham. Champion Mastery does only show to a ceratint extend how much you have played a certain champ. Yes, you get a grade at the end of each game, showing how you did in that game, but those two systems are completley individual.

Champion Mastery points are base more on time used than anything else, and since its a system where you cant loose points, its outright idiotic to think this has soemthing to do with skill.

Now, that said, why would you care of the rank of a players champ? 1: We assume that people normally play to win. 2: We assume that most of the playerbase have normal cognitive abilities.

If our assumptions are correct, a player that has spent more time with a champ, will perform better with this champ, because they have experience in playing him. It wont say anything about the persons general LoL skill, it will only tell you he has picked a champion he knows, and that he is more likley to play at the upper level of **his own **skill tree. Whever in the division system that might be!

thundarlips6/8/2015, 2:22:17 PM1 votes

This entire champion mastery system should just be called boy scout pin shirt..you get a bunch of pointless pins representing mild achievements. It's like Riot created a whose line is it anyways scoring technique.

TaoistMaster6/8/2015, 2:35:09 PM1 votes

Thanks.

Had no idea it was a sham.

But yeah, the grading system does seem to work well. Agreed.

Riot, listen to your community here, and adjust the mastery system.

Turlet8116/8/2015, 3:05:43 PM1 votes

Literally, the same exact thing happened to me, I went 0-9-2 with Riven (DONT MOCK ME) and i got about 2000 points of champ mastery and I played one game with support Janna, and I did really good, but we lost and I only got about 200-300 points

1Maza6/8/2015, 3:54:41 PM1 votes

It's the same with Ranked. Rito doesn't care how good you actually are at te game or at a champion. They just want to make players grind so they'll keep playing and spend more money. The Elo system, Ranked, and the Champ Mastery system. They're all jokes.

FooDang6/8/2015, 4:44:28 PM1 votes

Why are people still complaining about this? Its just a "cool" and "fun" feature for people to grind for. Why is this in gameplay and balance board? It has zero effect on gameplay and balance. The only useful thing it shows is that a person has played the champ more than once or twice. Other than that its just a "cool guy" badge that some people think will make them cooler than other people for some reason.

You should make a thread like "Hey RIOT, are you going to implement champion mastery skins in the future?" because that makes more sense than this pointless whine-fest.

AmazingGoat6/8/2015, 4:50:07 PM1 votes

Disagree. Winning is the goal. Win or lose as a team. Go play a 1v1 game if you want your performance to not be tied to your team's.

WolfBV6/8/2015, 8:25:07 PM1 votes

If you get a D- then that'd mean, compared to others, you are the worst at that champion during that specific game. So yeh, you wanna get a D as Riven? Just let them kill you a lot and try not to get kills or assists.

Ark Angel HFB6/8/2015, 8:43:38 PM1 votes

Is winning not the biggest measure of your performance?

Archeanthus6/9/2015, 1:03:05 AM1 votes

Hey I'm so glad to see others thinking the same way, I have the same opinion as well. I wrote about it at pretty great length here http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/BqkzR5w2-champion-mastery-not-so-much, basically said the same thing but in more words, but I also came up with an alternative suggestion. Check it out if you want. Upvoting this thread!