How New Masteries Made this Game Even More Inaccessible @RiotRep

First of all yeah @RiotRep is because you seem to be the only Rioter who seems to give half a crap about responding to boards with any frequency. I apologize for my saltiness ahead of time, the lack of any Riot response (at any time of the year, no "but world's" excuses) has worn me, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people too, down.

Here's the deal. Yes this is a smurf account, but I didn't make it to "stomp" low level games. Me and some friends each have made new "single-champ" accounts to see how far we can get as a team in ranked playing with the exact same team composition. After playing on this and several other accounts lately, I've found the new player experience is worse than ever.

There's always been that trouble of not letting people use smite and therefore keep them from jungling/using jungle items until level 10, and how the difference in runes can lead to some early game advantages to no fault of the losing player, but the preseason mastery changes have completely screwed over any low-level, and ESPECIALLY new players.

The fact that you will play with level 18+'s far before you get to 18 yourself means that they will have a MASSIVE advantage over you in the form of keystone masteries. Simply having access to thunderlord's decree when your lane opponent has nothing to bring to the fight like it means trades almost always go in the higher-level's favor EVEN if the lower-level plays better. I'm no challenger player, but I've got ~5k games total under my belt. I'm struggling to win against players who are legit new at this game simply because their account has access to a completely new power level I am not allowed to access.

This makes it harder than ever to level up new accounts, or to bring someone new into the game when they're met with that brick wall around levels 9-10.

"If you know so much and have played so much you should know how to play from behind"

Well yeah, I do. But for someone who has a decent amount of experience like me, to have this much trouble in an experience for new players shows just how amazingly toxic it is for someone to try and join this community now.

Forget any toxicity from players, you can mute them. Forget any slight number's differences from runes/masteries/summoner spells, they are usually manageable enough, and tend to fall off as builds start to become completed and the number's differences grow smaller. Forget not letting newer players go jungle, I mean it's extremely difficult without a full set of runes and masteries anyways.

BUT

Giving high-leveled players passive/passive-active abilities that can be abused to create large advantages where there shouldn't be takes it one step too far. I've given up on trying to introduce some of my friends to this game because of horrible the new player experience makes it look.

I understand it's cheaper and easier to maintain the community you already have then to appeal to new ones. You have the number one game in the entire world. However players will quit and move on, and you need people to replace them, and I really think (even with a lot of bs that goes on) that you guys deserve to have a thriving community for a LONG time. You've built something amazing.

Just remember how everybody started, and how each season this game becomes less and less accessible for new players. Not because of the game itself, but because of artificial limits that don't help the player learn, they restrict their ability to. And most importantly, their ability to have fun while doing so.

Thanks for taking the time to read my wall of text, have a great day on the rift :)

TL;DR New masteries are balanced if everyone has access to keystones, not being level 18 puts new players at an artificially bigger disadvantage than even standard runes and masteries do without regard to skill.