@Meddler support masteries (especially mage supports)

SonicÐeHedgedawg··3 votes·662 views

First off, I want to say that I really love the new mastery system, but I want to get straight to the point so you don't have to do a bunch of unnecessary reading:

Since the new mastery system dictates that you can't put all 30 points in one tree, I've found some "I'm forced to choose a useless mastery" situations for certain supports.

The best single example I can think of is mage supports.

Depending on whether you are a poke-heavy mage (Brand) or a burst mage (Zilean) you're probably going to want Deathfire Touch or Thunderlord's Decree (respectively) as your keystone, and that's all fine. The problem comes lower in the trees.

The tank-heavy resolve tree doesn't really play to their strengths, so they are in all likelihood going to go 12/18 or 18/12 ferocity/cunning, which means they are forced to either take double edged sword (which, as frail ranged champions can be more trouble than it's worth) or feast, which, as a support champion encouraged NOT to kill minions, is a wasted mastery.

Honestly that's about the only problem I'm having (outside of some assassins that really don't need buffed potions or buffed jungle buffs), and I really think that all I need in place of those masteries is just a third option, like Spell Weaving/Blade Weaving in ferocity or Exposed Weakness in cunning.

Obviously those are just examples of replacement masteries, and I really don't care what extra mastery option goes there as long as it feels like a reasonable, competitive alternative. Can you just let me know your thoughts Meddler? Or, if you don't really have any thoughts yet, can you look at those decision points and come up with a preliminary opinion?

7 Comments

disregardable2 votes

I think feast would be a good idea, actually. It has a pretty long cooldown and on aoe mage supports like Brand/Zil it's pretty hard not to pick up a couple CS.

SonicÐeHedgedawg3 votes

Feast has a 20 second cooldown.

Minions spawn every 30 seconds. If you're taking a minion every wave, your carry is going to be livid.

Sure it DOES heal you a very small amount (20 HP) if you do accidentally kill a minion. But that amount is so small, and you should be killing minions so rarely, that the mastery BARELY exists.

Still it's better than Double Edged Sword where the mastery may actually make your champion a little WORSE.

That's my problem though, yeah, the masteries do have some edge cases where they aren't utterly terrible, but they are really really inefficient, and it feels bad to be forced to pick one, it to be forced to go into the otherwise unattractive resolve tree

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

I actually do have a problem with the masteries.

Red tree: Ferocity

Made for... well... the keystones make it for ADC's, Yi, Trynd, and Yasuo. Not much else (meybe poke mages/tank killer mages, as it provide %armor/mr pen and DoT)

Green tree: Resolve

Tank stats with a bit of roam thrown in. Good for? Full tanks. Off-tanks will want the red tree for additional early damage (which is when off-tanks really shine)

Blue tree: Cunning

As in life, cunning is pretty much the most important for most classes.

It has one of the jungler masteries on the first tree, with movespeed on the other, effectively limiting the speed of junglers (making it harder to gank, as well). This makes it a necessary tree for junglers (though tanks will still want their 18 into resolve, with 12 into this).

It's got the bandit mastery in the second level, meaning supports are forced to put at least 12 points. After that, 5% Cdr is right after, a valuable stat for supports, forcing supports to put 18 points into that tree.

On the third level of 5-point things, we have Precision, 3 + 0.3 per level Armor and Magic pen.

And I am a little confused, since "Battering Blows" is flat while "Piercing Thoughts" is %. Must be a mistake...

Anyway, Precision grants 8.4 Armor and Magic pen at lvl 18, pretty valuable.

Especially against squishies.

Meaning? This is the mastery for Assassins and Burst mages.

But then let's look across from that.

Intelligence

5% Cdr + 5% max Cdr.

What mage doesn't want that? What spell based assassin doesn't want that? Cdr used to be at the top, now it's all the way down there. This further reinforces this as the tree for Assassins and Mages.

Now let's go to the Keystones.

1: Stormraider's Surge Dealing above 30% of a target's max health within 2 seconds grants you 35% movespeed for 3 seconds.

Wow. That's amazing for assassins, especially those without escapes.

2: Thunderlord's Decree Your 3rd attack or spell on an enemy champion shocks the area around them, dealing 10 per level and 20% of your bonus AD as well as 10% of your AP.

That's... incredibly easy to proc.

10% bonus AP scaling for Mages, with bonus base damage as well (imagine an extra 10 damage at lvl 1, and 180 at lvl 18). it's easy enough to proc that even if you miss an ability, you can make up for it with an auto attack. It gives you more all in potential, but has a considerably long cooldown.

Let's look at how it affects Assassins.

AD assassins have 20% bonus AD scaling on their auto/ability. AP assassins have 10% AP scaling Both get additional base damage.

It's not likely you'll have to assassinate multiple people in 30 seconds, so the cooldown isn't as important.

Now, let's go to burst ADC's, like Luci.

His W+auto+passive auto automatically procs it, giving him amazing trade potential, though the cooldown is more of a concern.

Thunderlords is a pretty versatile mastery.

3: Windspeaker's Blessing Your shields and heals are 10% stronger. Additionally, your target's resistances are 15% stronger for 3 seconds when you heal or shield them.

Basic support mastery. Tanks might make use of it (the ones with self shields/heals), but they'd have to give up all the defensive stats in the green tree, especially the resolve keystones.

So what am I trying to say?

Rito, you put Tanks in the green tree, ADC's and melee carries in the red tree, and everything else in the blue tree. Because of this, way too many classes use the blue tree, meaning some will have to choose less than suitable masteries for the stronger ones at the bottom, while ADC's and Tanks are happy going full out on their respective trees. No matter what path you go on the green tree, it's still a great defensive tree. Not so much with the blue tree.

SonicÐeHedgedawg1 votes

So I don't think it's QUITE as dire as all that, but I'll try to unpack your post to address everything but address it as concisely as possible.

1 - ADCs really do feel the most optimized, with a clear path down the ferocity mastery tree that doesn't seem to involve many tradeoff decisions, your only real decision point seems to be your keystone which has options based on whether you are crit heavy, attack speed heavy, or ability/poke heavy, but, honestly, I think that feeling of obvious optimization stems largely from how same-y the goals of different marksman are. YES poke mages will have to give up some things in cunning to get Deathfire Touch, and burst assassins will have to give up some penetration to get Cunning keystones, but they don't actually get LESS than ADCs, they just have more variety and options for his they want to build, but that comes at the tradeoff of not being able to grab EVERYTHING they might like, which, honestly, is a decently fair trade.

2 - junglers and supports are FORCED into cunning, which isn't fair.... But this isn't exactly true either. Yes, there are super useful masteries in there, buy unless you WANT one of the cunning keystones anyway, nothing is forcing you go the full 18 in cunning, everything really necessary is in the first 12, so you can still go 18/12/0 or 0/12/18 and the new mastery system preventing more than 18 points being spent in any tree means you won't be any further behind other champions who went 18 in ferocity or resolve. It only restricts you from going 12/0/18 or 18/0/12 which is not a particularly hefty penalty, and Is the price you pay to ALLOW you to do these things. Again, a fair tradeoff, the only exception to this is things like Evelynn that get so beat to hell in the jungle they often have to use their 12 in resolve just to sustain rather than being able to ever use the ferocity tree, which doesn't feel super, but is more a problem with those champions and the jungle than the masteries themselves.

3 - arbitrary stat lockout. THIS... is actually a legitimate problem, though slight. When role-specific masteries are matched counter to generalist picks, it means that champions needing a role specific mastery are arbitrarily locked out of generalist picks. The most exteme and indicative case of this, I think, is movespeed and junglers: in tier one cunning, they give up out of combat bonus movespeed to gain bonus damage to jungle monsters, and in tier 2 resolve, they give up bonus movement in river and brush in order to TAKE less damage from jungle monsters. This makes junglers arbitrarily slower than most other champions simply because they gimp themselves to take movement speed, which gankers would, actually, probably like. Maybe this is intentional though, and Riot has balanced junglers assuming they will be a little slower so they can't cover the map and gank quite as easily without giving up some clear speed and clear safety, which seems like a fair tradeoff, but hurts because everyone else CAN get this movespeed for free. This, however, while it doesn't feel great, doesn't really hurt TOO badly either.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

{quoted}

So I don't think it's QUITE as dire as all that, but I'll try to unpack your post to address everything but address it as concisely as possible.

1 - ADCs really do feel the most optimized, with a clear path down the ferocity mastery tree that doesn't seem to involve many tradeoff decisions, your only real decision point seems to be your keystone which has options based on whether you are crit heavy, attack speed heavy, or ability/poke heavy, but, honestly, I think that feeling of obvious optimization stems largely from how same-y the goals of different marksman are. YES poke mages will have to give up some things in cunning to get Deathfire Touch, and burst assassins will have to give up some penetration to get Cunning keystones, but they don't actually get LESS than ADCs, they just have more variety and options for his they want to build, but that comes at the tradeoff of not being able to grab EVERYTHING they might like, which, honestly, is a decently fair trade.

2 - junglers and supports are FORCED into cunning, which isn't fair.... But this isn't exactly true either. Yes, there are super useful masteries in there, buy unless you WANT one of the cunning keystones anyway, nothing is forcing you go the full 18 in cunning, everything really necessary is in the first 12, so you can still go 18/12/0 or 0/12/18 and the new mastery system preventing more than 18 points being spent in any tree means you won't be any further behind other champions who went 18 in ferocity or resolve. It only restricts you from going 12/0/18 or 18/0/12 which is not a particularly hefty penalty, and Is the price you pay to ALLOW you to do these things. Again, a fair tradeoff, the only exception to this is things like Evelynn that get so beat to hell in the jungle they often have to use their 12 in resolve just to sustain rather than being able to ever use the ferocity tree, which doesn't feel super, but is more a problem with those champions and the jungle than the masteries themselves.

3 - arbitrary stat lockout. THIS... is actually a legitimate problem, though slight. When role-specific masteries are matched counter to generalist picks, it means that champions needing a role specific mastery are arbitrarily locked out of generalist picks. The most exteme and indicative case of this, I think, is movespeed and junglers: in tier one cunning, they give up out of combat bonus movespeed to gain bonus damage to jungle monsters, and in tier 2 resolve, they give up bonus movement in river and brush in order to TAKE less damage from jungle monsters. This makes junglers arbitrarily slower than most other champions simply because they gimp themselves to take movement speed, which gankers would, actually, probably like. Maybe this is intentional though, and Riot has balanced junglers assuming they will be a little slower so they can't cover the map and gank quite as easily without giving up some clear speed and clear safety, which seems like a fair tradeoff, but hurts because everyone else CAN get this movespeed for free. This, however, while it doesn't feel great, doesn't really hurt TOO badly either.

What I meant is that the Cunning tree is made for Supports, Junglers, Assassins, and Mages. So with only 2 paths, some of the paths are not gonna be great for your role (though most are generally good), meaning sometimes there's no good masteries for you.

But the main question is why does the Cunning tree hold so many roles?

  1. Assassins don't want red keystones. They want Stormraiders/Thunderlords and the rest into red. The penetration in red is %, which isn't as effective against squishies.
SonicÐeHedgedawg1 votes

[{quoted}](name=da plazma pika,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=UuF3mUqe,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2015-11-21T16:16:03.713+0000)

  1. Assassins don't want red keystones. They want Stormraiders/Thunderlords and the rest into red. The penetration in red is %, which isn't as effective against squishies.

They aren't really losing out then, are they, because they get everything they want from the 12 points they put in ferocity.

The only real pain point I think they have is in the tier 2, first key mastery in cunning, because, while bonus buff duration, and bonus potion duration are both OKAY, they probably don't really need either.

Penguin Eclipse1 votes

I actually think they dropped the ball on support masteries. Particularly for anyone with a heal/shield with Windspeaker. It just so happens that it helps the very same poor of champions who have been lacking in the last 2 seasons in the support role. But rather than fix why they were lacking, they create a mastery that was basically made mandatory. That sounds too much like a quick fix.

It's a good mastery that shouldn't need to exist. I'd much rather take a mastery of my choice that enhances my playstyle. Not one that just makes my champion as good as they should already be.

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