Unpopular opinion: The new blue essence is better in almost ever way. For free to play anyway.

The new blue essence is flat out amazing. Youre going to get more stuff in the chest especially if you are a smart player. Shyvana cost 1,980 blue essence if you have a shard but gives about 380. In store she cost 4800. So you are getting an insane deal (2440) if you buy shyvana with a champion shard. This completely negates any problem with gaining essence as instead of buying champions with flat essence you should buy champions with shards and essence for true value.

The only possible problem is the mastery six/seven gating due to this. I specifically play alot of mundo yi and amumu. This means i will easily be able to get mastery 7 with both as i get them easily from shards. its practically free really. Unfortunately if youre a 6300 essence player you dont get as good a deal. Even if you get a champion shard for the champion you want (highly unlikely) you are more likely to disenchant to buy a different champion rather than waste a shard for a pretty show of how much of your life you wasted.

.................................................................................This is the end of the base information. I'm going to call Essence dust because thats what its normally called when you destroy something for its base element.

Now lets look at the difference between the two to get mastery 7.

Mastery 7 cost 3900 dust.

If i wanted to get mastery 7 on Dr mundo it would take me a shard which can come in a level up chest or the actual dust. If i get the shard i either spend 3900 dust or i lose 270 dust. this is a 3630 dust difference. Or you are spending about 14.4% of the original amount.

On the other hand if i wanted to get mastery 7 riven it would take me a level 10 super chest to get a chance for one. if i am lucky enough to get it you either spend 3900 dust or lose 960 dust. you are spending about 25% of the original amount. Literally double what you could have spent if you just decided to play mundo.

Lets move onto the biggest problem with this. If you wanted to buy shyvana for 1980 dust. You could either spend 2 riven shards to basically get shyvana, or about 7 mundo shards to get a single champion. You are basically doubling what you have to spend in order to get mastery 7 at this point. Riven shards are worth so much more than mundos even know they are treated equally in the mastery system.

The easiest way to solve this problem is give larger champions (6300) minor shards that drop in all boxes. You could basically have whatever ratio you want to turn them into normal shards. Causing a minor shard to give mastery seven would solve alot of problems in the massive imbalances between champions players love. 

I only mention this because right now the system basically says "oh you love your champion and want to show off your skill? Well screw you if youre a riven main but i love you mundo mains out there." This isnt even with the biggest extremes. Imagine the nunu mains.