Sayonara 21/9 masteries!

So as you all should know by now, the Preseason patch just hit the PBE and the mastery changes look like they're actually going to be a huge factor in how you play now (like they said, no more micro-math optimizations).

The first thing everyone should notice right off the bat is that you can only put a max of 18 points into a single mastery tree. This is going to shake things up a LOT. Some of the big changes that go along with that are probably that there is no longer an offense, defense, and utility tree, instead replaced by a resolve, cunning, and ferocity tree.

• Resolve is your go to tree for all things tank. It has a fair amount of utility, as well as some major buffs to durability and in-fight survival. This one seems like the replacement for defense, but it offers a lot more variety
• Cunning now has an interesting mix of some damage steroids as well as a smattering of very support-like utility options, this tree could easily be taken by a utility based carry and they would do fine. Replaced utility tree mostly.
• Ferocity is the major damage tree with some impressive steroids and a lot of scaling heavy choices. In general, these new trees seem to aim for a larger impact on the game, and many have pretty solid AD, AP, or HP ratios attached to them.

The other thing to note is that there are effectively 6 independent trees worth of masteries, allowing you to mix and match with a lot more variety than before. You can go with crazy options now and these new masteries force you to make really impactful choices about how you play your champ ("do you need to kite enemies more, or are you a team player who is shielding allies?" types of choices). In a way, it may seem more limited (you can't choose all of the health bonuses and all the resistance bonuses at the same time), but that limitation actually forces more variety and meaningful choices based on your champion and your play style.

Now if only Riot could be this effective with that Runes rework...