Anybody else feel like new masteries kicked diversity in the face?

I Main Swain·Dec 12, 2015·6 votes·417 views

before I could go a seemingly limitless number of different mastery builds. When i went to rebuild my masteries after the patch, I saw that so much less was viable because it feels like you're forced to go for the keystones. Heck, before I could just go 30 0 0 or whatever if i wanted to, but now you literally can't do that because you can't pick all of the masteries in each tree. I now have a total of 4 AP pages: ap mage, ap bruiser, ap support, and ap jungle. before I think i had at least 6 or 7. I know i cant be the only one who feels like this.

10 Comments

Hayaishi2Dec 12, 20152 votes

what diversity?

Khell DarkWolfDec 12, 20152 votes

I agree, it did take out creativity in using the masteries differently.

I used to do that all the time.

Sona PingDec 12, 20151 votes

Do I feel that the diversity of masteries has been reduced? Not really; it seems pretty much the same. There was pretty much just the one, maybe two, combinations for a champion-and-role and all the other possibilities would have been lumped under "below standard". There were some cases where you could like mix things up, like take a different combination for an easier jungle clear on tanks that needed it, but for the most part it was pretty set. You have a damage champ in a lane, you take 21 in Offense, you take the middle-left masteries if the champ scales with AD, middle-right if AP, and that was it. You did have some choice, you could choose getting Double-Edged Sword, or Expose Weakness, or taking out a point to get Feast but that was pretty much it. You didn't have actually have a choice like over 90%+ of the time, unless that is you wanted to choose something that just performed worse in game.

I Main SwainDec 14, 20151 votes

what you're talking about with the old masteries was entirely choice. Now you have no choice a great portion of the time, considering the "pick one or the other" addition along with the fact that keystone masteries are almost a necessity, largely blocking out the option for a more balanced rune set rather than being almost forced to focus on a specific tree. not only that, but they also changed a lot of the masteries to force you to burn more points AND reduced the number of masteries they had, reducing your options even more.

Sona PingDec 15, 20151 votes

But you really didn't; not if you were looking for the effective options.

Yes, you could choose to take points and put them into, say, Blade Weaving and Spell Weaving for example. But those two masteries are only really good on certain sets of champions and for most everyone else, one would be taking points away from masteries the champion would perform better with in order to do so.

I'll state it differently because I want to be understood. A person could choose a wide variety of masteries and you could choose different masteries based upon which ones they liked. However, based upon the champion and how they work, there were only a few actual choices one could make in a tree, if one wanted their choice of masteries to be among the best performing combinations.

When the only choice is between Option A and Option B which is just a numerically worse version of A, there isn't really a choice at all.

I Main SwainDec 15, 20151 votes

I entirely disagree with this. Maybe YOU felt like there were only a few viable masteries, but there were maybe a grand total of 4 masteries that I never used in any of my rune pages. I would much rather have a huge variety of fairly good options than a set of specific, limited options that are really good at what they are designed for.

Sona PingDec 15, 20151 votes

You completely misunderstood what I wrote; "there were only a few viable masteries," was not what I was saying at all. Because, you see, you say "there were maybe a grand total of 4 masteries that I never used in any of my rune pages." For me, it was about 2.

Before explaining, let me ask you a question (I'm not trying to have a go, by the way): What was your mastery page for, say, Swain in Season 5? What did your offensive tree look like?

I Main SwainDec 15, 20151 votes

I didnt have champ specific pages, i went build specific. so if i was playing an ap champ and i wanted to be a bruiser, i'd take my ap bruiser page. if i wanted to be really offensive, i'd take my general ap page. usually for swain, i used either a page geared towards heavily offensive play (bonus regen's, bonus ap and magic pen, extra armor, etc.) or i would use one for more passive play (lots of regen, bonus hp, and armor, then a little ap and pen). my favorite kind of mastery pages tho were the ones with tons of utility, especially lots of bonus speed. id play trundle and start boots and have just short of 400 ms to start.

SymbolicFearDec 14, 20151 votes

I feel as though the new masteries make too much of an impact on the gameplay, when a mastery does half the work for you, then its a problem. Plus, the diversity in champions played is already an issue. Juggernauts top every single game, 1 of 4 marksman paired up with 1 of 5 supports bot lane, with a devouring jungler. The only role that see's diversity is midlane, and even that is dying because of the outrageously stupid zed buffs.

I Main SwainDec 14, 20151 votes

tbh i think the diversity issues is mostly residing in the masteries and items. the way they slated them made some champs gods over the others. (vayne is even stronger fml)