So About Those New Masteries...

I was incredibly excited when I saw the new masteries. I tried every combination I could on as many champions as I could on the PBE. My hope was that each keystone mastery was going to be ridiculously powerful in its own way, making it so that every champion could carry when played well and that the same champion with two different keystone masteries could be played completely different. While I think that Riot has achieved that goals with a few of these masteries, many others feel lackluster and substandard by comparison.

Warlord's Bloodlust This is what I was expecting with keystone masteries. When you look at this mastery you can't help but think how OP it would be on certain champions or certain situations. It makes your imagination wander with possibilities, theory crafting and number crunching to maximize your potential. However, it has ZERO use for AP champions.

Fervor of Battle Another keystone mastery that makes my jaw drop with possibilities. When I think of this ability on a fed champion with BotRK or sated devourer (or both) I shudder at the thought. Unfortunately, this keystone mastery is also useless on nearly all AP champions.

Deathfire Touch This is the first keystone mastery that looks intriguing for AP champions. However, because the DoT applies over 3 seconds and doesn't stack it feels kind of underwhelming. If I'm sitting at a comfortable 500 AP that's a measly 100 damage over 3 seconds. I can do more damage with auto attacks in that time. Nothing about this mastery feels overpowered like Warlord's Bloodlust or Fervor or Battle.

Stormraider's Surge On paper this keystone mastery is very enticing for assassins. It pretty much guarantees no escape for your target. However, it just perpetuates the feast or famine nature of assassins. If you are fed and ahead this keystone mastery pretty much guarantees at least one kill. If you're behind its completely useless. Overall, it doesn't really feel that amazing and I can't see it being useful on many champions besides hardcore assassins.

Thunderlord's Decree This keystone definitely has some potential. At max level it gives me an AoE burst of 180 + 20% bonus AD + 10% AP. However, on closer inspection we can see its not all that powerful. Using my previous example of a champion with 500 AP, this gives me an extra 230 AoE damage. Oh yay, an ADC can hit for more bonus damage than that with one crit. To make matters worse it has a THIRTY second cooldown. That's right, this keystone mastery will at most be able to get proced once every team fight.

Windspeaker Blessing This keystone seems absolutely horrible to me. Oh yay, my heals and shields are 10% stronger! That equates to about 1 extra auto attack worth of damage unless you have an absolutely insane amount of AP. What's more intriguing is the bonus 15% to the target's resistances. This could actually be useful except that the person who is most likely to receive your shields and heals is the ADC or APC who doesn't build any resistances, making this part of the keystone also pretty useless.

Grasp of the Undying Can't lie, I like this mastery. Not only does it give some great sustain for bruisers and tanks but its damage also scales on your HP, allowing you to stay relevant late into the game and make it harder for people to ignore you. If you have 3000 HP this translated into 90 health stolen, which is far from OP. However, it only being able to proc once every 4 seconds is a major let down. Warlord's Bloodlust outscales this ability hard, making tanks and bruisers less favorable over attack speed and crit based champions.

Strength of the Ages I think this keystone wins the award for most useless mastery. When fully stacked it grants 300 HP and 100 HP of healing when killing a siege minion. Oh yay, that means I can survive 1 more non-crit auto attack from the enemy ADC! Seriously though, this is pretty pathetic for the final reward for specializing in Resolve.

Bond of Stone On the surface this seems like a pretty awesome keystone. However, if enemies deal 3,000 damage to you or an ally (pretty reasonable burst) this keystone mastery only reduces that damage to 2,760. That's a pretty inconsequential difference for a tank and still a dead carry if that damage is dealt to an ally.

So what's my point in all this? My point is that only 2 of these keystone masteries are at the power that they should be. We shouldn't be calling for nerfs to Warlord's Bloodlust or Fervor of Battle, we should be calling for buffs to the other keystones. Post your ideas for buffs to keystones here. Remember that the point of these keystones are to make your jaw drop a little bit and they should be on equal power level with Warlord's Bloodlust or Fervor of Battle. Here's a few I thought of:

Deathfire Touch Deathfire Touch now scales with 15% ability power and stacks, but each stack deals 20% less damage. For example, if I had 500 AP the first stack would do 150 damage, the second would do 120, the third would do 90, etc (for single target spells.)

Stormraider's Surge In addition to the bonus movement speed, If a target has a bounty deal an additional 2% damage to that target per bounty tier (max 10%.)

Thunderlord's Decree No longer has a cooldown but a target can only be damaged by a single Thunderlord's Decree once every 30 seconds. After casting 2 spells Thunderlord's Decree can be proced with an auto attack or a third spell.

Windspeaker Blessing Your heals and shields are 20% stronger. When using a heal or a shield on an ally, increase their resistances by 2 x your character level for 3 seconds.

Grasp of the Undying Now procs on the first auto attack after you use a spell (1.5 second cooldown.)

Strength of the Ages Only grants 10 health per large monster or siege minion. No limit on the amount of health that can be gained. Heal 1/2/3/4 health for every minion or monster slain near you (healing amount at levels 1/6/11/16.)

Bond of Stone Now grants damage reduction based on how many allies are near you and gives more damage reduction to your ally the closer they are to you. Gain 5% damage reduction + 3% for each nearby ally. A percentage of the damage your allies would take is taken by you instead (maximum 20% if you are right next to your ally.)

Now those look like some pretty impressive keystones! I'm sure all of you can think of some ridiculously OP things you can do with these keystones but that's the point. These keystones give you ridiculous power that YOU choose based on YOUR champion and YOUR play style. These keystones help give you the power to carry if you play well, regardless of what your role is. Anyway, I can't wait to see what other ideas people come up with.