The League of Thunderlords, can it be changed?
As everyone has learned, hard way or easy, Thunderlords is the Keystone to get. Only in very rare situations do you grab anything else, that being the crit healing mastery on Yasuo (even then some people grab thunderlords), Bond of Stone on tanks that benefit more from it, Grasp of the Undying on Trundle and Illaoi, and maybe... MAYBE Fervor of Battle on Jax or Kog Maw.
Even with these, some can argue that Thunderlords is the better choice for a better early game, to help you snowball. Which is why more often than not, you'll see 8-10 Thunderlords in a single game. Right now? It's the League of Thunderlords.
So what can be done? Well, if you nerf the damage, then you kill the entire purpose of it's existence, which is to give you a strong burst for the early game. But the problem is, there's nothing to lose from gaining it. It's the strongest overall mastery to have right now and the sad point is, the team with the most thunderlords wins the fight. (Not always of course) As it makes killing one target and proc'ing 5 thunderlords on said target so much easier to do.
Look at the other keystones, such as Stormraider's Surge. Now, if you told me in season 4, there would be a mastery that would grant you 35% movement speed if you take away 30% of a champion's health in 2 seconds, I'd think that it would be the best mastery for Talon/Zed/any assassin ever. I would think, "Wow that is SUCH an awesome mastery!"
Then you tell me about what Thunderlords does... and I would think, "Yeah Stormraider's Surge is nice... but why not just take the mastery that'll just... kill them?" And that's the problem with Thunderlords. Why take anything else that'll probably just prolong getting a kill, when you could just take the mastery that'll simply kill them. Which is the reason you see a ton of thunderlords in every game.
With thunderlords being what it is, it denies variety in the meta. When you don't have it and you're laning against someone that does, you feel like you're at a disadvantage. Yes, with Grasp of the Undying, you're able to heal during the trades so you can sustain, which is helpful, but it's going to take you a little longer to ramp up and get a kill, than it would the other laner that took the thunders.
So, what can be done about this? How can thunderlords be nerfed without it being useless? These are my suggestions.
- Removing it and replacing it with something else. Thunderlords was fun and it was a nice wild ride through the preseason, but this mastery simply cannot exist the way it is. My suggestion is just to simply replace it.
DoFr made a forum post about bringing back Arcane Blade, something that I believe should replace thunderlords with a little rework.
Perhaps, make it so that after a few seconds of charging, it empowers your auto attack to deal 5-10% of your ap as an on-hit magic damage on your AA. Or something like that, or maybe something different. Whatever it would be, I think that would be cool.
- Increasing the Cooldown of thunderlords and removing the ability to proc it with auto attacks.
This is just a random suggestion, but I think that by making it harder to proc, or by making it so that it doesn't proc as often, it may or may not reduce the impact of it. Allowing for a better choice on different masteries.
I have no idea of these are good suggestions or bad, but...I do think that a few people will agree that Thunderlords needs to be nerfed, reworked, or removed/replaced.
Tell me what you guys think. Good suggestion? Bad? Okay?
