My issue with Strenght of ages keystone.

Spoofghoul··1 votes·442 views

The keystone is nice because it gives health which is fine and all.

But..

The sustain part is pretty pointless imho. Tanks/fighters/juggernauts are the ones most likely to use this keystone, Alot of them have innate sustain already like Darius or Illaoi. Fighters like Mundo or Xin also have alot of sustain. And then finally there is tanks who usually already have plenty of base health regen and tend to buy items which increase this, the same goes for jggernauts and fighters these also have decent hp regen and often buy items which boost this.

Which leads to the following point the sustain part only starts when your stacking is complete, which will take a while if you are not jungling. By the time you finally get those 300 bonus hp you often wont need the sustain anymore. It would be very usefull in lane but laningfase ends before the mastery is fully stacked.

So when would this bonus sustain actually be usefull, well in siege situations where you want to bully the opponents away from their tower or when opponents try to do this to you. But, and this is where things get painfull, you wont get the cannon minions, that APC midlaner just oneshot the entire minion wave, adn if the APC did not kill the cannon minion the ADC surely will. So the one instance where you can actually use the sustain part of the mastery in a meaningfull way, you will be denied by your own team simply because it is more effective to just clear out the minions asap.

Then there is the final part, the sustain part of the mastery becomes incredibly useless once you get a warmogs. And if you dont get warmogs on your tank/fighter you most likely have other items which boost your sustain plenty already like titanic hydra, spiritvisage or banshees. Or you already have a good deal of innate sustain.

So half of this keystone seems to be utterly useless. Which is why i see most tanks, fighters or juggernauts run either bond of stone, grasp of undyieng or thunderlords. Because 300 health just doesn't seem to hold up vs the power of the other available keystones.

My suggestion would be to do one of the following things, or a combination fo them;

  1. Remove the sustain part and have Strenght of ages give more health.
  2. Have Strenght of ages give half the sustain before it is fully stacked.
  3. Give the sustain when a nearby cannon minion/jungle camp gets killed by an ally.

3 Comments

Critmaster Garen1 votes

for some reason riot doesnt get this. i think theyre turning the 20 hp heal into a max hp % heal for a cannon minion next patch. of course thats still gonna be as absolutely fucking useless as the 20 hp, since by the time you have that ability stacked youre not sitting in lane farming against your opponent anymore, where that sustain would be useful.

we really dont need it, when were just pushing out minion waves. and when it comes to healing up after a skirmish, the bonus wont be noticable next to other sources of sustain like lifesteal.

instead they should make it heal when either an enemy champion or an allied champion in range dies, or just have it give more health from the start.

Spoofghoul1 votes

Yea but we have dangerous game already so that would be too much overlap

I think having it give half the sustain before its fully stacked could be a solution as well as when allies kill cannons/camps you still regenerate hp.

If Riot wants to keep the sustain then these are some ways to make it work otehrwise its just consuming part of the powerbudget wihtout granting anything for it, in which case more flat hp would be better.

Partholonian1 votes

Pretty sure that the sustain already applies no matter who kills the cannon minion.

I wouldn't mind if they increased the cap though. 300 does seem rather low, by the time you've proced GotU twice you have gained almost that much and dealt extra damage.

On the other hand, if you have some form of health scaling, which a lot of tanks and some juggernauts do, then max health has benefits beyond just making you take longer to die.

P.S. Any jungler that takes it probably builds Cinderhulk, so it's actually 345, but it shouldn't be only for junglers, the base amount needs to be good enough to make it attractive to laners too.

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