Fervor of Battle overperforming or AP keystones lacking?
Basically the title.
This is something to consider before considering upcoming changes on other factors such as itemization.
The optimal case on Fervor is extremely good. Fervor now rests at a place where it is attractive for both ranged carries and melee dps champs which is great. I very much enjoy using this mastery, in fact I am sometimes adopting it for frozen mallet Gnar to deal significantly more damage to targets I catch or kite. Fervor grants massive overtime damage.
Deathfire touch on the other hand is just is not in a place where it feels well placed on all but the most persistent dot dps aoe mages. Even on its stronger cases DFT feels a toss up between it or Thunderlords.
Thunderlords is a nice little boost to trades and burst. But it doesn't provide super scaling bonuses compared to Fervor. Thunderlords IMO is more pitched for laning or pick based assassinations. It is not a hyper scaling mastery, unlike those that are in ferocity.
Fervor is definitely one cause of the influence champs like Master Yi have on the game currently. The resurgence of fervor mastery also brought Kalista clearly ontop of the pro level meta again. And yet a bad fervor nerf would easily send us back to ditching it for thunderlords.
It's just the optimal case of Fervor is a tad too strong IMO, or most AP champs lack a keystone with competitive scaling, which isn't fair IMO, making masteries a skewing factor in class balance.
DFT may need reconfiguring so it is less selective of its best case without being OP on some... Which is hard because mage spells and mage roles vary a bit more wildly than fighters.
Hopefully with the upcoming mage update the AP side of masteries get a glance.
