@Meddler: Are Masteries Worth It?

In the Mid-Season followup dev blog, there's been mention of plans to address masteries once more (red post #33 mentions this, and I think I may have missed other links across Boards) for Preseason. Considering how this season featured the biggest overhaul of the game's masteries in its history, I think it's probably worth deciding if masteries even need to continue existing at all.

First off, the good: some masteries are genuinely helpful, in the sense that they give champions options that they couldn't otherwise afford in-game. Grasp of the Undying is a good example of a helpful mastery, in spite of its balance issues, as it gives many tanky champions just enough sustain and extra damage to become worthwhile top laners. Masteries like Thunderlord's Decree, Fervor of Battle and even Stormraider's Surge also add some gameplay, which is particularly good in the early game, when the laning phase can otherwise become somewhat boring. There's also the basic satisfaction of giving your champion stats and bonuses they synergize with, and generally customizing your champion in your own manner, that makes masteries appealing.

Now the bad:

• Masteries don't offer real choice: This is an issue also brought up by Rioters in Preseason 6. Generally, any given champion has only one or two truly viable mastery builds, and those choices often boil down to rote applications of roles (e.g. if your champion is a tanky support, then the optimal path is Bond of Stone + Bandit), and occasional imbalances, such as League of Thunderlord's early on. Since masteries are a pre-game choice, there's only a limited amount of prediction and reaction you can make, which consequently means that mastery "choice" usually tends to be an unchanging, by-the-numbers selection of whichever mastery page corresponds best to your champion.
• Masteries are far too complex for what little gameplay they provide: One of the greatest achievements in Preseason 6's mastery overhaul was the concentration of often diluted stats into more concentrated, noticeable effects. Even so, the mastery system is still full of stat buffs and effects that struggle to make themselves felt past the laning phase, and beyond that it might not even be desirable for masteries to make themselves felt: whenever keystone masteries like Thunderlord's, Grasp, Deathfire Touch, etc. become truly noticeable, they often feel frustrating, and it's likely that they've negatively impacted on the game as a result (many players have complained about there being too much damage in the early game, for example). Unlike in-game power, like items and jungle bonuses, masteries are difficult to gauge, and we can never realistically expect to keep track of literally 10 different bonuses for each player from the get-go, even if they were worth taking into account.
• Masteries are a logistical nightmare: Let's face it, nobody likes when masteries get changed. Yearly overhauls are bad enough when they force every player to redo up to 20 different mastery pages, but even patch-to-patch changes get frustrating when they make players rewrite portions of their builds. Not only is this bad for players, but it also makes life more difficult for Riot, who already has to take into account a huge amount of interlocking systems (e.g. champions, items, the map, etc.) and has to factor in an extra system with every decision (i.e. "If we change X champion or item, what are the changes this mastery makes them broken?"). Many champions have suffered in this season precisely because they happened to synergize too well with certain masteries, which also further limits their options, and generally masteries can often muddy up balancing whenever another part of the game receives changes.
• Masteries are just another barrier to entry in a game that desperately needs to be more accessible: We often joke about League's new player experience, but it truly is an urgent problem that will cost us all if it doesn't get addressed urgently. Beyond the brutal learning curve, counter-productive tutorial and hostile player environment, though, is the problem of power: the difference between a player with no runes and masteries, and one with a full set, equates to just about to a full item, which is an absolutely massive lead, and not only makes it harder to jump into many critical parts of the game (jungling, for example, is nearly impossible without a proper rune and mastery setup), but also completely distorts a player's first impressions: not only are they losing simply because they're less experienced, they're often losing because they're just flat-out less powerful than their opponents, and thrown into a game balanced around a higher power level.

You might notice that these same arguments all pretty much apply to runes, though that's probably worth its own discussion.

The TL;DR to this is that masteries often feel like way too much effort for what they're truly worth, and I personally think it might be better to remove the mastery system entirely and shift that power to itemization, i.e. through more starting gold and more item options (it might be interesting to see mastery effects like Thunderlord's, Grasp, Stormraider's and Dangerous game on items, including starter items). Items offer the cleanest, clearest champion customization out of any system in League, including stat-based customization (that's probably even what items do best), and I strongly believe that shifting all the power from masteries (also runes) into starting gold and itemization would, at worst, incur no change in choice or gameplay, and at best allow for both less needless complexity and greater overall depth of gameplay, as well as significant gains on Riot's side in simplifying future balance and design work.

Alternatively, the question here should be: if masteries are worth it, what makes them worth keeping, and how should that be emphasized? If, for example, masteries need just a few more options to offer a degree of customization items can never provide, what kind of work should be done in Preseason to open up these choices and generate more interesting gameplay both in and out of matches? What is it that masteries do that items and other in-match systems don't, and how should Riot go about making that contribution even more unique and fun?