Detailed Preseason-Feedback Part 4: Miscellaneous
I desided to share some thoughts on the preseason, now after i had 1 patch time to make my experience and refine my stance on the chances. i won't focus to much on balance, as balance always is off duering preseason, and riot usually does a good job restoring it towards end of preseason by simple number tuneing. I try to focuse more on issues that reach a bit deeper and are usually not solved by tweaking some numbers, as those are the things that riot nearly never changes once they hit pbe...
It's alot content, so i decided to split it up on serveral posts, hopefully allowing for somewhat sorted discussions fousing on one bigger theme. waring, huge wall of text incomeing!(TL;DR at the end) This is Part 3: Masteries, here are the links to the other parts: Part 1: Items Part 2: Marksmen Part 3: Masteries
Table of Contents:
- Items 1.1 new items 1.2 reworked/changed items 1.3 removed items 1.4 general item changes
- Marksmen 2.1 Caitlyn 2.2 Corki 2.3 Graves 2.4 Kogmaw 2.5 Miss Fortune 2.6 Quinn 2.7 other marksmen
- Masteries 3.1 Generall Impression 3.2 Ferocity 3.3 Cunning 3.4 Resolve 3.5 Missing Masteries
- Miscellaneous 3.1 Tower 3.2. Vision 3.3. Gold 3.4. Jungle 3.5. Other Stuff
- Conclusion for preaseason
#Miscellaneous:
Towers:
Towers sucked hard at 5.22, but the 5.23 buff helped a bit. Now outer turrets have the same effective health as befor, but all other turrets are still alot weaker, and i'd argue that towers already were more on the weak side befor preseason already, and with 
, 
, riftherald, redbuff procing on towers and higher ap-ratios vs towers, there is just more damage vs towers on the rift in general atm.
This menas that Towers are really vulnerable. Dieing vs a Guinsoo's jax a single can easily mean that outer AND inner turret are gone. A succesfull gank mid can easily get 1-2 towers past 10 min, the mappen just oppens up way faster than befor, especially if you specifically aim for it, allowing to snowball harder of any advantage you get.
Aditionally, towers still give little protection even early on. Maybe it's just me, but towers should provid some shelter for atleast the first ~10 min or so.
That's not exactly new this preseason, but a missed opportunity.
Towers give you no defensive boosts, and their damage needs way to long to stack up, while outer turrets can easily get ignored for a while with just 1 armor item on champs with solid basestats.
I think Turrets could use a AS buff, maybe only vs champs to not screw lasthitting beneath the turret. But mostly, I'd like to see the champion-shield that curently is on the inner turret moving onto the outer turret in some form. Maybe working a bit like yasuo's passive, the shield pops if damaged and vanishes after a short time, after that it refreshes over some time. this would allow to get atleast some cs while beeing save from poke, especially in a melee vs ranged matchup, and also makes towerdives more risky early on. Maybe add a shield-generator to the tower, useing teemo-shroom health-system, so that by attacking the toer, you can disable the shield for some time, giving more opportunites to play around that shield. Also, inner and inhip turrets either need some resistances back, or a bit more basehealth, like 4k on inner and 4500 on inhip and 4750 on nexus, which still would be less effective health than befor preseason, but atleast some more than on live.
Vision
S-6, he dark age of Runterra. The intent of the vision changes certainly was to make the map a bit darker and mostly to disconnect vision from gold, as well as makeing vision more of a team effort. Theoretical a nice idea, but as so often, the execution is rather questionable. Map is not a bit darker, It is alot darker, nearly like a permanent nocturn ult if it wasn't for blue trinkets, and vision bears harder than ever on support/jungle, and still is somewhat connectd to gold.. I totally understand removeing stealthwards from the shop, it was mostly what enabled certain players to maintain visioncontroll on her own and also prettymuch was what connected vision to gold. But the nerfs to yellow trinket and sightstone are massive and totally uncalled for. 2 wards per player seems resonable given how big the map is and that wardsweeping is possible. ** I don't feel like it's possible for me to really contribute to the vision-game as sololaner anymore!** Yellow trinkets are just out right pathetic at this point, and as a sololaner/botlane carry, you run out of inventory space for the one pink pretty damn fast aswell. Wardstones lasting not as long and haveing less stacks feels really bad as support. It feels like you don't get anything from sustain, as the wardstone forces you to recall frequently anyway, so a high uptime on the map is pointless. The new jungle item is nice idea, but it shairs it's problem with sightstone: you kinda get punished for a high uptime on the map, as you run out of wards way to fast. If you have to recall more often for whatever reason, it not only denies potential map pressure, but also costs xp and gold in the long run... With the lower amount of stealth wards, it's hard to judge the impact on sweeper/oracles. on one side, less wards mean the chance of finding one is probably lower, but on the othereside, each single ward is more meaningfull, and so is destroying it. So it's become a bit more high risk, high reward i guess. The only actuall buff was for the farsight trinket. It's damn good right now, actually providing decent vision coverage due to potentially infint wards and low cd+high range. Though atleast in higher elos, it's still not as much vision as the old vision totem did provide, as the blue wards are easily clearedout, makeing it usually a 1-time ward that is best used defensively. However, the shimmering hope of vision is soon to get nerfed alot, suffering higher cd and less vision range. I could live with nerfing the blue trinket, but only if the rest gets buffed a bit. Right now we need it desperately as a last stance against the darkness. Without it, runterra will be consumed by shadows, and no one wants to know what lurks in them... The absence of vision contributes alot to the current snowballing, especially together with the weak turrets. Once you lost your outer turrets, your hardly save in your own jungle anymore, not to speak of getting down some vision on the enemie side of the map. It kinda forces you to group, which means you loose if your opponents are stronger in teamfights because of goldlead/teamcomp, or you loose to nasty splitpushing, as that probably guinsoo's wielding toplaner will tear through your base in no time if you ignore him. If you roam though the darkness of your very own jungle alone, chances are that you bump into a fed opponent and simply die. Also, most of the snowballing starts from the jungler, as succesfull invades and ganks are much more cummon in the dark. I think getting the map a bit brighter would help alot with one of the most prevalent problem of this preseason
I think there are two ways i see to solve the current issue with vision(numbers are subject to change obviously). One could focus on blue trinket, simply remove the yellow one and mybe give two upgrades for a blue starting trinket, one giving the current blue wards on 60sec cd, but with 3health and without any aditionaly reveal, just a longranged, visible ward, the other one giving the 'new' blueward(reduced vision range, 1 hp), but haveing lower cd and the reveal effect. T_his would mean only support and evt jungler would have stealthwards, most of the vision game would be from blue trinkets, which can be used fro free by anyone and denied for free by everyone._
The other option is buffing yellow trinket, sighstone(+upgrades) and the jungle enchantment while changeing the blue trinket a bit. I think yellow trinket should scale on it's duration, going up to300sec duration with 150sec cd. This way you could keep 2 wards in the map at a time, but you have to be carefully on where to place them, as they have a long cd, makeing it more a strategic vision tool, for when you wnat vision in an area in the near future. If sweeper, would result to strong, maybe refound cd equal to half of the remaining duration if the ward is killed. Sightstone and co need some refile mechanism. I think a chargeing system would be nice, like one charge every x sec, and one for every (not blue-)ward kill aswell as 2 for every riftscuttler takedown, gaining 1 ward stack at 3 or 4 charges. Maybe meddle around with the ward duration and how much wards are filled up in base. For the jungle enchant, it could get a satck everytime you kill a smitten(smited?) monster so it has some conection to smite like the other enchants. Blue trinkets should recive a nerf to visionrange like they do on obe, and maybe again have a max duration, but lower cd, makeing it the tactical vision tool you use than you want vision in an specific area right now, maybe adding a short window of invulnerabillity to the ward, or just generally reveal the aoe for ~10 sec. Add a specific slot for pinkwards, or even a free vision totem on top of the normal trinkets. With pinks for 75g and an inventory slot, the burden of throwing pinks into the rift still lies upon support and jungle most of the time, gnawing on their already lowish income. That would be prettymuch a refined version of the S5 system, just kinda disconnected from gold.
Gold:
I touched it already, gold gain has been increased, so have gold costs. However, it has been a bit disproprtional. Overall, the costs have been increased some more than the gain, especially for ap, ad-caster and juggernaut. The highest increase probably was to ambient gold with ~8%( more for the lowest gold team-members), which theoretically should help slightly vs snowballing, as this gold is equal no matter how each team performs. Kill-streaks now give global gold, and more gol totall, which again theoretically helps vs snowballing. No wards to spent tons of gold on (though you still have pinks), so some more gold for other things, though it means less safty so either you get less cs because you play it save, or you eventually feed their jungler, so depending on how it goes, either massively accelerated gold gain for your opponent, or no real net goldgain from not spending gold on wards Killgold wasn't increased, so a relative nerf to killgold.
So much for the bright side. Coming to the income changes that many didn't notice and that contribute to the stopfest of this preseason: Way higher gold value of minions early on, nearly 9% on melee-minions, ~25% on casters and siegeminions, while decreasing the gold growth per minute. This means falling behind in farm early has a bigger impact than befor, so more snowballing from lane. The lower gold growth also means catching up in farm later on is a bit less impact full, so(sligthly) less comback through stall and farm. Assist streaks Removed! This is a big one. One would think the higher shutdown gold helps for combacks, but unless someone got fed on solo kills, the lack of assist streaks nutralises that, giving you probably less total shutdown gold on a team than befor. it leads to that awfull scenario in which you feel like there is no comeing back vs a snowballing team, but yet it feels(atleast from my experience) nigh impossible to solocarry on your own. Picking up solokills is of little matter if you can't convert them into something bigger. If you get two solokills, a single shutdoen+assist on you already equals the global gold. You still have an advantage over you opponent but THE REST OF YOUR TEAM GETS PUNISHED BECAUSE YOU GOT THOSE KILLS!!. So makeing soloplays, doing something 'good' is 'bad' for the rest of your team. For example, you play top, get a close solokill, and thx to that advantage pick up a second one, then he calls his jungler for help and they manage to kill you 2v1. You gain 600 g from the two kills, your lane opponent(asumeing he got the return kill) gets 320, the jungler gets 170, mid and bot get 20. You might say 20 is not much, but if now those two also take rift herald from it, that becomes 70, which can already make a difference. Also, it's mostly the raw concept that concerns me. My allies getting punished because i do well simply does not feel right, no matter how you put it.
Jungle:
Despite nerfs to all jungle camps, life in the jungle has become a bit harder as the start items are a bit less efficient, especially talisman even after the buff, though clearing is now petty ok.
However, life in the jungle is also less rewarding now, as the jungle items no longer give bonus gold on big mosters, so despite the small gold values increases on big monsters, you loose out on money compared to befor while goldgain for nearly everything else has been increased.
At the same time, the prices for 
went up by 20%!
Warrior atleast gained some serious ad, but runglaive even lost stats in the process, beeing in a pittyfull spot right now(not s single runglaive jungler reaches 50% winrate atm, they all dropped by atleast 2% with the preseason)
stayed at the same price, but lost some AS.
As a result, escapeing the jungle(ganking) is rather mandatory, and with the little vision especially early on, it's also rather profitable.
However, if you fall behind as a jungler, or don't have good ganking opportunities, you have a problem as farming the jungle is not very attractive, unless all you need is xp, as it actually gives more xp than befor.
The gold from junglecamps should be a bit bigger, and jungler items need to become cheaper.
Also, i really have alot mana problems now, the 150% reg in jungle is certainly less than the old manadrain, and runglaive, which for many would bring the needed mana, is now far out of reach with the higher cost, lower goldgain. The saveing grace should be hunters potion, but that item currently is mostly a noob trap. Most junglers that would want it have to start with 3 pots to get their first clear, and spending 400 aditional gold on that hunters when your first item already takes awfully long to complete is pretty bad, especailly because you need the second jungle item to gain the full xp rewards from the jungle. Tbh, the only solution to this i see is makeing hunters cost 150g, giving no mana, upgradeing for another 150 to a hunters that gives slightly more hp but mostly some well needed mana.
Other Stuff:
Winnions: Beeing from EUW, i have no experience with winions on life, but seeing how preseason already is rather snowbally, i do not see any reason for this change to come at all, i can't think off anything positive that might result from it, besides maybe games ending faster after they already have been won/lost, saveing some time...
Minon blocking: yeay, its been mentioned alot on the forums and they draw it back in 5.24, but for the sake of completeness: Minion blocking is fucking awfull! I understand that they want to get rid of the old bug where you would sometimes get stuck within minions for serveral secs, but if i have to choose between getting stuck once like every 20 games or running against a sometimes even invisible wall all game long evry game, it's an easy choice.
Minion Focus: Maybe thats just me, but i do feel like ranged minions koordinate their attacks more now, usually all hitting the same target at nearly the same time, bursting it down like a tower or worse. It's really hard to cs once a few casters stack up, especially because the visuals and the damage point still don't seem to fit perfectly, crepps often die seemingly random from ~30% hp.
AA-animations: Again, it might just be me, but have Atack frames been nerfed across the board, especially fo ranged champs? My AAs just feel sluggish, like if i haad forgotten my AS runes(which i didn't double and tripple checked on that in the beginning of the preseason) . I often end up cancleing full AAs rather than the backswing because the need longer to complete than what my muscle-memmory tells me. Some friends of mine had a similar experience, so it might not just be me beeing strange, though i haven't seen any comments on such an issue on the boards so far. Together with minion blocking and focus, my cs went down to wood 5. I have no data to back it up, but if i had to guess, i'd say i'm 10-20cs short at 10min compared to befor preseason. Feels horrible.
Minion agrro: Well, i guess some more have noticed the red berserker minion on the first wave mid. However, minion aggro always was a iffy thing. I often get aggro from one or more minions and just can't loose it. My current beliving was that if you attack neither the minion itself or an enemie champ while it gets attacked by your minions, it does switch aggro to your minions. But sometimes that simply does not work, and getting a damn angry cannon minon attached to your face in the early levels hurts alot and can actually decide the lane. I really hoped they would look at the aggro system, but i guess that won't happen this preseason.
TP Nerfs: I still like Tp, it's back to where it was befor it got the tower-buff, and together with the new masterie and cdr boots, you can get it to a pretty low cd. I still prefer it toplane most of the time, and i regret it most of the time if i don't take it.
boot enchants: I really like that changes, the free homeguard frees you up to take other enchants, and since the price came in line, prettymuch all other enchants are viable. Though i would like a clearer destinction between aclarity and furor, like aclarity giving 10ms flat and another 25 out of combat while furor gives 14% on damage, with half duration on aoe and no or very reduced effect on dots, so one is for out of combat, the other for in combat mobillity. it would also be nice if distortion ads something to other summoners aswell, so it doesn't feel somewhat wasted if you only have one mobillity summoner. It could be something ms reliated, like Exaust stealing some ms, Ignite giving bonus ms towards the target, heal getting a longer duration on the speedbuff, cleanse giving a speedburst similar to quicksilver, and smite maybe simillar to ignite on challanging, higher ms steal on chilling smite, or increased duration, and a speedboost after placeing a ward with trackers, and some speedburst on killing a smitten monster for smite in general.
Start Time: Games 'start' 15sec earlier. A great change, i can't find anything bad on it.
TL;DR:
- Towers still fall way to fast
- Towers offer to little protection early on
- Despite the powerfull blue trinkets, maps are darker than ever befor. Once the current nerf on PBE hits live, The rift will be consumed by shadows.
- Goldgain has over all increased, but not as much as the item costs, While shut doen gold has been increased, assist streaks have been removed, so actually less shutdown gold for comebacks
- Gaining solokills kinda hurts the rest of your team with the global shutdown once you die.
- Early jungle has become slightly more difficult
- hunters potion is a trap
- jungle gives less gold than befor while jugnle items became more expensive
- jungle gives a bit more xp