Masteries need to change -- here's some ideas! Feedback appreciated

Meowkey·8/16/2015, 7:48:53 PM·2 votes·558 views
League of Legends Mastery Redesign 0.1

I'll try and be concise since I feel my points will be lost by too much elaboration of what I want to say. There are some issues with the mastery pages in League of Legends that I feel can be fixed through some redesign. This is my first iteration (something I did between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. because why not) for an example of what could be done and any type of feedback would be appreciated!

Here are some problems I feel were prevalent:

  1. Some masteries felt unthematic towards their category (i.e. rather defensive effects in offensive masteries, such as Feast or Dangerous Game). In my opinion, the effects of a mastery are more important than their trigger in terms of categorization (as an example, a mastery that gives health when you deal critical damage would belong in a Defense tree rather than Offense). One of the biggest changes I tried to implement was the application of ability power masteries and cooldown reduction towards the Utility tree strictly.
  2. There was some design inconsistency between the trees, though this is not necessarily a bad thing (i.e. there are currently 38 offense masteries, 34 defense masteries, and 33 utility masteries). I tried to unify the format of the trees with 33 points to allocate between each of them. More can be easily inserted, though this is a starting point for demonstration. Along with this, I tried to make each mastery scale with 3 points to allocate in a specific investment. I feel this has several strengths: for example, this helps newer players with fewer points to spend have more visceral choices at the get-go rather than feeling the need to put 4 into a specific mastery against a 1 point wonder.
  3. A rather bland setup. Most roles have hardly interchangable masteries, i.e. ADCs. Though this mastery tree setup does not entirely solve that (I tried to make each tier at least have multiple choices even between a specific role or character), I have a potentially separate and related solution for this I'll go over in a moment.

Here are some problems I feel are prevalent within this setup:

  1. Balance. Any feedback on this would be appreciated, but for the most part I am attempting to simply get concepts down.
  2. Missed opportunities. This can easily be fixed by simply adding another column of masteries towards specific tier(s). I feel most this way about the way I've set up the Defense mastery tree, with interesting masteries such as Second Wind now out of the picture.
  3. There's probably another weak point that I'm neglecting to mention, but you can! What could be improved with this setup?

As a continuation to point number three of "problems I feel were prevalent," I feel a part of this was that masteries were rather impresonal to champions. Heroes of the Storm, by example, has a much more personal hero development: talents are chosen as you level up which specifically tune your capabilities (arguably this is a replacement towards items, but I feel items suffer the same effect in League of Legends; this is for another topic, however). Due to the nature of masteries requiring a generalized and applicable mannerism towards everyone, there's also less opportunity for any individual mastery to be incredibly powerful (understandably, masteries should not be overbearingly impactful as player skill should be the main factor). Thus, despite masteries offering customization, it doesn't feel they offer... well, customization opportunities.

Thus, I suggest a new agency for masteries: the addition of personal champion masteries. How would this work? I made my mastery tree with this potential setup in mind. My own recommendation for such an approach would go as such:

  • Every champion has 9 personal masteries; 3 for each tree, furthermore divided into three tiers of power.
  • These personal masteries would be unlocked through an investment in the globally accessible masteries. As a specific example: -- To automatically unlock a champion's tier 1 offense mastery, 3 points in the offense tree would be needed. To unlock their tier 2 offense mastery, a total of 9 offense tree mastery points would be needed (double the previous requirement, and added on). To unlock their tier 3 offense mastery, a total of 21 offense tree mastery points would be needed (similar math applied here). This works up nicey towards many of the common 21-9 setup of mastery trees now, and allows better opportunities for "balanced" mastery setups.
  • This type of potential identity towards masteries is very important as it can open new playstyles for champions!

This is understandably a very large undertaking to assume with such a large champion roster--but an investment I feel is well worth it, and one I'd be personally willing to complete! However, to start for the purpose of discussion, I'll give some champion mastery examples of a champion I feel I'm most familiar with--Lux Lux!

Here's what I have in mind for what an example set of champion specific masteries (with regards to Lux specifically) could be. As a disclaimer, I'm coming up with these on the spot and balance is super subjective for this! Please try and look at this as a concept for the most part. Understandably, this will add a large and dimensional sum of power across the roster, but I feel what can be gained from this is far more important.

Lux's Offense Champion Masteries Tier 1 (requires 3 points): Prismatic Barrier's shielding effect increases Lux's attack speed while active by 25%. Tier 2 (requires 9 points): Lucent Singularity deals 1% increased damage for every enemy champion damaged at the same time. Tier 3 (requires 21 points): Light Binding now deals 5% increased damage against enemies under any movement impairing effect. Lux's Defense Champion Masteries Tier 1 (requires 3 points): Triggering Illumination on an enemy champion now restores 1% of Lux's maximum health. Tier 2 (requires 9 points): Enemies damaged by Lucent Singularity are continually slowed for another 1 second. Tier 3 (requires 21 points): Prismatic Barrier's shielding effect received is increased by 1% for every previous receiver within the ability cast. Lux's Utility Champion Masteries Tier 1 (requires 3 points): The range of Final Spark is increased by 10%. Tier 2 (requires 9 points): Light Binding can now affect a third victim, at a quarter of the full effect. Tier 3 (requires 21 points): When Illumination is applied on an enemy, that enemy is revealed in the fog of war for 3 seconds at a very small radius.

Have better ideas for Lux's champion masteries, or better yet--concepts champion masteries for your own favorite? I'd love to read them here!

Once more any type of feedback from the forums (or maybe even Riot? summoner 31 ) is incredibly appreciated!

Google doc link: here!

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