Grasp and Bond of Stone are crappy keystones.

Schàdenfreude·Dec 28, 2016·40 votes·1,324 views

But Riot doesn't seem to notice XD

18 Comments

MelledoneusDec 28, 20165 votes

Bond of Stone also does not feel impactful even when strong.

RalanrDec 28, 20161 votes

Bond of stone is too passive for a keystone.

Yet I will still take it on support tanks because only Alistar has enough spammable CC to proc it whenever I want.

MelledoneusDec 29, 20162 votes

I think you're mixing up Colossus and Bond of Stone.

RalanrDec 29, 20162 votes

The tanks I run in support are Braum TahmKench and Alistar . Only Alistar can proc it enough for it to be worthwhile on him. The other two I go bond.

SlythionDec 28, 20163 votes

they aren't terrible, just overshadowed by CotC

Tribbles FoxfolkDec 28, 20167 votes

{quoted}

they aren't terrible, just overshadowed by CotC

??? Yes they are. They're awful. Bond absorbs almost no damage and Grasp does a tiny amount of damage/healing. There is no reason to pick Grasp/Bond > CotC currently as long as your champ has a single CC ability.

MorgManBasherDec 30, 20161 votes

Figures bronze players are uping you. lol People don't see the power of Bond of Stone so they assume it's bad even though it's the superior choice for most tank supports. Get a fat shield? Cool, I'll ignore you and kill your ADC since you don't have bond of stone to tank damage for him.

If you have bond of stone and Knight's Vow you are tanking a lot of damage for your ADC.

ACENOXDec 28, 201610 votes

take a look at every single other keystone

then take a look at bond of stone

AirKingNeoDec 28, 20161 votes

Yeah but Grasp is still viable. Though it needs TINY BUFFS, I feel it's kinda the perfect "safe lane" keystone.

SanKakUDec 29, 20161 votes

Warlord's only works when you have missing health, next one only works if you are attacking champions, next one only does noticeable damage if you're building AP and/or AD.

Next column, one of the better designed keystones is Stormraider's surge, it has a cooldown and cares more about the state of the enemy champion than the state of yours. Imagine if Warlord's gave you 80 percent lifesteal or something bonkers like that, but only for 4-5 seconds or something like that and only once your health dropped by a certain percentage? And they could slap a cooldown onto that. Would be so much better than what we have now IMHO. If you're going to buy AD anyways, why not get an item that has that and lifesteal? After that is an ability that cares about your AP/AD amount being high but is a little more forgiving for supports in providing a source of damage as it scales also with champion level as opposed to the one in the left column. Unfortunately, it has a cooldown, but the cooldown is at a good spot compared to CotC at least. Might be overrated, but not by much. It does a good job at providing that extra oomph that players look for in a keystone. And finally for the middle column, we have an ability that grants benefits to shields and heals which most players can't be bothered to max out anyway until late game. A joke for most players, but players that understand the value of teamwork will grasp its power.

And the right column, we have grasp, a viable option for champions that intend to be in combat for a long time and also scale with health in some way or another. Would you be surprised to know that it gives Aatrox some pretty relevant damage in the early game? Moving on, we have CotC which is grossly overrated and is in what is IMO a much worse spot than Thunderlord's Decree. If only they double or triple the duration, it would be a solid keystone IMO. would rival Thunderlord's Decree or even be better than it. And finally, Bond of Stone...the best way to get value out of this is to buy MR, armor, and health...3 stats that people usually don't buy, and if they do buy one of those, it's only the health...but notice I input the and word instead of the or word. You need all 3 of those stats or the keystone is not very good. If you build all of those stats though, it can be the best keystone in the game.

I think Bond of Stone's main problem is players feel glued into a style of play they aren't fond of. People don't like to tank or to sit there and take punishment for the sake of a dumb ally. If keystones had toggles, I could see people running around with a turned-off-Bond of Stone all the time because they don't want to take damage for their ally.

I think Bond of Stone's biggest obstacle to favoritism is the fact there are so few pure tank champions in the game. Even if they scale favorably with armor/MR for defense, most tanks do not get damage for their tank stats. I hope they will be coming out with a Tank Update after the Galio rework to address this issue.

The most common tank stat that translates into raw damage is health by a long shot. Armor is next, and I think you can count on one hand the number of champions that do so. I don't think you even need all 5 fingers. Isn't it literally just Rammus and Malphite? And nobody scales with MR for damage. No, Galio doesn't count. MR converted into AP is just a placeholder, they literally haven't thought about tweaking his kit since they day he hit live servers. Sad that they insist on waiting for the full rework to do something so simple as to increase movement speed from E by MR or literally anything else.

IA9hRfpP5qDec 28, 20163 votes

Keystones need to decide what they want to be...

Either something that has a visible and meaningful effect Like the colossus thing , you feel like "Oh wow , I get a shield! I'm glad it picked this keystone"

VS Bond of Stone which was a passive effect You don't feel it does anything unless you have a calculator and analyze numbers after the game.

All keystone masteries should move to something that has a visible , meaningful and has impact because that creates fun for the person.

Yeah, Grasp also seems meaningless because it barely does anything.

DanjengDec 28, 20164 votes

Fervor of Battle is hardly noticeable, but very impactful. 64 AD at level 18 is a pretty significant power from a mastery (used to give 112 on hit damage instead, which was even stronger).

CatastropDec 28, 20163 votes

Grasp has potential if they just focus one aspect instead of having it be caught in between damage and healing. Bond is actual trash.

SanKakUDec 29, 20163 votes

I disagree. I think the other keystone is the bad one. It has a half minute cooldown. Bond of Stone is on all the time for the damage reduction and Grasp of the Undying is ready every 4 seconds during combat. Anyone that understands time management would realize they are losing games because they pick a keystone with a cooldown that is much higher than it needs to be, with a shield that gives way more extra health than it needs to give. TBH, Cloak of the Colossus or Courage or whatever it's called feels more like a midway point mastery than a boss mastery. If they wanted to make it better, they could lower the cooldown and the shield value. Another viable option would be to extend the duration, maybe double or triple it to make it feel more unique. The short duration it has now, it's practically worthless in my book. I can't understand why people think CotC is even viable at the moment except for if they're playing an obnoxious champion with a lot of burst damage and has to wait for long ability cooldowns anyway.

I know every player's style is different, but I just can't get behind CotC being good. Sure, it can be amazing for countering or empowering first blood attempts, but you could argue the same for Thunderlord's Decree, and that is another overrated keystone if you ask me. What good is getting a few early kills if it makes it harder for you to scale into the late game? It's like taking a bunch of flat stats, AP, MR, armor, AD...at no heed to your late game potential. You might make some players rage quit, but patient players will hang in there until they get stronger than you and can turn things around.

JVlasterQuinnDec 28, 20162 votes

Buff Bond of stone and grasp to see whats going to happen..they are going to break the game. Bond of stone is % damage reduction wich is a pretty good stat to have. Buff it to 6-10% and u can tell you we will see more of it than CoC because on the long terms it will be stronger than CoC.

LovelleDec 28, 20162 votes

I'm pretty sure Riot knows. Both are working as intended.

MorgManBasherDec 29, 20161 votes

I actually think bond of stone is better to take on some supports than Cotc even to some that can use it. Yeah you get a nice big fat shield, but when you are ignored it can really suck. If you look at probuilds a lot of taric players despite being able to use CotC actually use bond of stone for further protection to their ADC.

The biggest thing about bond of stone is you can't really see it. It's not as bad as people think it is, you just can't see the effects.

PartholonianDec 29, 20162 votes

CotC is awkward on Taric anyway, he CAN proc it, but not reliably. Same as Tahm Kench. And in both cases, a purely selfish shield may not be ideal, they won't necessarily be focused.

I agree on bond's power being mostly hidden, though. Maybe they should replace it with a proc that transfers a percentage of your current health to a wounded teammate when they are a certain amount lower than you, on a cooldown. And instead of a small % damage reduction, which is also hidden power, replace that with something like Malphite passive that you can see when it's on, when it's off and when you're benefiting from it.

Or to make it simpler, combine the two effects: when you or an allied champion near you takes damage from an enemy champion, the lowest current health allied champion near you gains a shield for X% of your maximum health, Y second cooldown. Can proc on yourself if no nearby ally has lower health than you.

In a 1 on 1 that practically is Malphite passive, but for a tanky jungler or support you can protect your squishies just by showing up to a fight. And it doesn't demand something specific from your kit the way CotC does -- it will almost always be helping someone on your team live longer.