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Defense Mastery Tree is really outclassed by the Offense tree on most champions

FalconPawwwwnch··11 votes·2,830 views

9-21-0 is a useless mastery combination and has been since the beginning of the season. The only champions that you should be going 9-21 on are full tanks, and even then in some cases 21-9-0 is better.

21-9-0 is better on Marksmen, mages, assassins, most fighters, while defense tree is pretty much only good on tanks and a very few select fighters.

The main issue is that the offense tree has so much multiplicative scaling while the defense tree really doesn't. 5% bonus damage to low targets times 3% bonus for 21 points times the multiplicative 1% for 3 stacks on spellweaving/bladeweaving, along with the best mastery in the game (dangerous game). Defense tree has mainly flat masteries and the ones that are multiplicative are extremely niche (-10% on crits only), the worst mastery in the entire game (runic blessing), the overnerfed perserverence mastery, as well as the fact that defense in general is really outclassed by offense right now makes the defense tree really underwhelming.

Champions that used to go 9-21-0 in Season 3 and even more champs that used to go 9-21 in Season 2 like Jax, Irelia, Darius, Lee Sin, Jarvan, Olaf, Lee Sin, Warwick, etc, go 21-9-0 because the defense tree does almost nothing for late game since defense is pretty useless late game regardless, and not going 21 in offense makes their offense fall off VERY hard. The main issue here is that BEFORE, the %pen mastery (10% and 8% in Seasons 2 and 3, respectively) was accessible with only 9 points in offense, meaning that tanks/bruisers actually had a late game if they went 21 in defense. Now that's not the case.

In Season 2, the defense mastery was standard for bruisers and tanks, while the offense tree was standard on mages and marksmen (and the very few assassins that were used), but now the balance between the two is very skewed. The fact that Riot has no immediate new masteries for Season 5 shows that the entire tree won't be reworked for a while, but will some small changes be done to affect this?

15 Comments

Fadedpf9 votes

"Oh boy 5 armor for 3 points?" How about 6% armor and magic pen for 3 points. Yeah... please make utility and defense a little more useful rito

EndlessSorcerer4 votes

Oh boy, 6% armor and magic pen for 3 point? How about 20 armor and 10 Magic Resistance for 4 point. At least compare masteries on the same tier.

Fadedpf5 votes

That mastery is useless for laning and wont be good unless you actually have 4 teammates around. By then if you are grouped to take advantage of that, they have a fed carry with penetration and good aoe damage. Making you die fast, so much for resistances.

Knight SoIaire 3 votes

and when did we have a system of materies and runes that actualy promoted customization ?

ImHerVoice1 votes

season 2/3 had decent trees to fuck around with imo

Knight SoIaire 1 votes

yeah the masteries can be unique and stuff but all in all i never realy felt them having loads of impact

riot likes ballance so when i think about my runes i usualy find myself stuck at a point where i feel like all the gains i can get from a rune/mastery are taxed in such a way that will make other runes/mastereis as effective, or that rune is so bizzare that it just wont be effective.

if there would be a big diference in results from champ to champ i would like the system but atm you can make 2 runepages and 2 mastery pages (ad and ap) and it will give you the results you would get with all that bizare mastery setup and by looking at masteries and runes of some other guys in lol i noticed that ppl rarely hold that many rune or mastery pages

ImHerVoice1 votes

the impact is never supposed to be large, its supposed to maximize certain aspects of gameplay/gameplay style. Not have some huge impact. 21/9 is for the harassers who think they can get a kill 9/21 was for the people who couldn't win pre level 9/6 very well and needed the extra hp/armor to farm passively against harassers.

And then there was some 0/21/9's that would take the mana and movement speed buffs/spell vamps while farming under turret for awhile until mid/late game (zac/nasus/vlad would be these 0/21/9 that would use the spell vamp/mana regen to farm safely etc)

Knight SoIaire 1 votes

im speaking from my experience from season 4 when i realy started experimenting with masteries and runes before that i didnt realy care nor played ranked much it didnt realy matter what setup did you run becuase in most cases your actual combat effectivenes stayed almoust the same

Magma Lux Mid2 votes

I've noticed I do worse going 21/9 on Shyvana than 9/21. It may be I'm not taking the right offense tree, so who knows. On Thresh/Braum I usually go 0/21/9. On Soraka I go something like 0/17/13 (can't remember off the top of my head).

Wheatloaf1 votes

I go 21-0-9 on mages and ADCs because I believe in myself :c

Kingsgrave1 votes

21/0/9 is just so useful on everything. Reduced cd on TP, more ms, more mana regen, a butt ton of damage

So good

Sohleks1 votes

Yeah, 21 in defense isn't very useful in laning compared to offense. I think that's the crux of the issue. It's great for 5v5 fights like on aram because of legendary gaurdian, however it takes time for those kinds of encounters to happen on SR and ultimately you still need to build tank and eventually you will still get outscaled by carries and become killable.

FantasySniper1 votes

I actually think that 9 / 21 / 0 is pretty damn useful. If you're a bruiser, it makes sticking to targets a ton easier, and it's enough defense to last until you get you have finished your damage item and are building tanky.

That said, they really need to improve the Runic Blessing mastery, and maybe move Enchanted Armor up the tree so it can be more powerful and replace it with something else.

SenDo01 votes

Don't forget going 21 points in offence has so many other advantages: 1) taking objectives faster 2) more champion focusing power 3) easier to last hit minions 4) better pushing & wave clear.

To balance these things, defence should be a lot stronger! Even to the point where a 9/21/0 ADC beats a 21/9/0 ADC in a mirror duel by a comfortable margin.

To say it provocatively: Offence is always useful (except when idle or stunned), while defence is never useful (except when being targeted/focused).

Sasogwa1 votes

I think something that could be great in the defensive tree is like (ultimate) instead of +3 armor/mr per champion close

-> +1 max HP per point of bonus armor/bonus mr.

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