So the keystones are a complete failure, right?

tXQbsPrjN5·Feb 27, 2016·3 votes·632 views

Broke the game resulting in a ton of needless balance changes to accommodate the keystones and, for what? Variety? Hahahahaha no, Riot doomed the keystones to fail when they decided to be lazy and boil every keystone down to +stats. You know what gives path of exiles keystones flavor. They give a positive and a negative. It turns out that when you just give Zed 200 more magic damage for no reason it doesn't actually alter or enhance any playstyle, it just results in Brand getting nerfed cause no one in your team even considered that DFT is literally just +10000 more damage per Brand spell.

5 Comments

xSleepyFeb 27, 20166 votes

uh, no, actually, they're pretty neat and provide for strategic diversity, lucian for instance can take thunderlords to win lane or fervor to do better damage over long teamfights, jungle graves can take thunderlords to double down on his already crazy burst, or strength of ages from free stats as a reward for farming. Just because a couple champs hyper-synergize with a couple keystones doesn't mean the system is a failure

Big LincolnFeb 27, 20164 votes

no, I like them

they've introduced plenty of variety; a handful of DPS/carry champions can go tankyish, a lot of tanks have access to damage, and it all sort of blends in nicely and compliments most champions

good stuff, IMO

WukongMainFeb 27, 20162 votes

i actually like the direction keystones are going... and with each patch they become slightly more balanced and become more variety. and obviously with such a huge update (the keystones) there are countless things that could result in "OP" from it.. gotta give riot some time to iron out the balance.

DrCyanideFeb 27, 20162 votes

Riot doomed the old masteries to fail when they decided to be lazy and boil every mastery down to +stats

ftfy

HeadbiterFeb 27, 20161 votes

Riot board-post: "We want there to be ONE right mastery combination for each champion."

Fans: "They add so much variety. Look how I can have choice A) or choice B)."

With the old masteries, which had a LOT more alterations to utility and functionality, there were WAY more choices that could be made. Hell, the fact alone that not putting all 5 points in a 5-point mastery or that you didn't even necessarily needed to skill a tree down to the very end dwarves the number of possible choices with the keystone-trees.

Look, might very well be that Riot HANDLES the smaller, simpler keystone-system better. And yes, they MIGHT even be outright better-working than the old trees ever did (ignoring for a moment the reasons behind that).

But I cannot imagine the amount of Koolaid you'd have to drink to look at a system that gives you roughly TWO choices (let alone viable ones) for any champion and call that system "divers". That's like a restaurant replacing a buffet with a two-entry menu and getting praised for "Adding so much stuff".

If you're doubtful about that, ask yourself why, to describe the skillpoint distribution, all you need to say is the champion and the keystone. Lucian - Fervor. Jax - Thunderlords. Brand - Deathfire. If those trees allow for SO MUCH diversity, why can I describe every distribution model with two words? Hell, the perk system in WoW requires more description.

So yeah, diversity is certainly not a good starting block to highlight the possible benefits of keystones.