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Keystone Masteries

Smitemuffin··3 votes·355 views

I can't be the only guy who's noticed this, one third of the Keystone masteries (Thunderlord, Grasp of the Undying, Strength of Ages) are just inferior little tweaks to the ones we're allowed to play (Deathfire, Warlords, Bond of Stone). The numbers very clearly skew wildly in favor of one mastery over another in all of these cases.

Dictating a max of 5 points per tier removes all creativity from masteries. What if I'm a jungle Jax and I actually want 5% to both attack speed and CDR? I'm not stacking crit, I'm not hitting someone 8-10 times and I build on-hits over AD/AP, so you know what that means? That means an entire set of Keystones do nothing for me. I'm not gonna pop somebody by a third in >2 seconds, I don't have heals or shields, and Thunderlords is 1/8th of a single proc of Grandmasters Might...every 30 seconds. So Cunning offers me nothing either. Well, let's try resolve: I'm not gonna stack hp, diverting damage from an ally to a carry is just the opposite of how carries work and...hey. Strength of Ages might actually be...oh, nevermind. The game is completely decided by 10:00 and I'm jungling. So I'll never get it stacked anyway because I'll lose all my jungle to the enemy team if we're behind and my adc will swipe half my jungle if we're not.

How did we go from nearly every champ being viable to...this? It's kind of sad, really.

1 Comments

lofi n chillhop3 votes

there are certainly a lot of holes in which champions benefit from the masteries change and which don't, and the masteries design is unbalanced in many ways. if I go first tree, I'm forced between laned sustain and double edged sword... that's just, it's not a decision. either I can use double edged sword or can't. and there are many champions where I want the penetration, but don't use any of the keystone masteries, like tanks.

in the second tree, I rarely want either increased buff or increased potions. it feels like a wasted mastery no matter who I'm playing. then later in the tree if I take the pen, it feels strictly inferior to the first tree, it's less percentage total and isn't even there until "late" game. then if you compare the cooldown restrictions of the two keystone masteries from second tree to first, you got extra damage every third ability or attack versus every damage source. the better scaling doesn't matter at that point. and then movement speed once in twenty seconds if you managed to do a lot of damage? versus a lot of healing every other second? the movement speed should just scale off the damage you do and both should have a four or five second cooldown.

then the third tree.. i like the first tier very much actually, the second tier is ok. but the third tier, like the only thing I remember from it is the bond of stone, every other mastery is just a joke compared to the other trees...

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