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Mastery Level 6 & 7 Crafting Gates

Ashfl0w·5/19/2016, 2:11:16 AM·7 votes·1,415 views

Hi all! I'm a bard main.

Bard

He's the only champ I have Rank 5 Mastery on. Not the only one I play, but the only one I cared enough about for a while to play consistently to rank 5.

New Champ Mastery levels were introduced this patch. Sounds cool, right? I already knew about the crafting gates (i.e. you need 500 blue essence or a champ shard/permanent), but for some reason I had hope that I would magically be able to get to level 6 anyways. Got me. Downloaded the patch today, played two bard games and got two S ranks in a row. Sweet, I have two bard tokens. What do I do with them? They're just sitting there like all my other unattainable loot. If anyone actually had a champ shard for their main to use for level 6 today, I'm jealous of their good fortune.

Meanwhile, the only feasible method of ranking to 6, blue essence, is itself gated behind chests and keys. Chests are no problem, they're skill-based and relatively predictable. I have four of them. I have two key shards. Even if I do somehow have champ shards or essence locked away in one of those four unreachable chests, they are gated behind a completely RNG based system of unlocking via keys/fragments. I actually do have two champ shards atm, for nasus and nautilus, but together they only add up to about 480/490 blue. Rip.

Verdict: The dual-gating of crafting feels AWFUL to play around. I thought never getting key fragments was bad enough; now that there's another superficial gate to play around, the game feels more grindy than ever, which is something considering the overwhelming task of buying all champs when you first begin (but that's another topic).

I know there are champ shards/equivalent available for ip through the store coming some time in the future (soon™), but that's not the only problem, and it does not change the fact that the prices of "mastery" are exorbitant.

On the plus side, "bard shard" sounds cute, even if I'll never have one.

Thanks for reading and considering.

Unless you didn't, in which case tl;dr: New Mastery levels are exciting but feel bad to play around. Too much luck is involved, prices are too high. Crafting needs its own balance team.

4 Comments

WngNut5/19/2016, 2:22:36 AM1 votes

In my opinion they should have released the RP/IP shard with level 6 and 7, but I've never really had an issue with how crafting is though. Of course it's not going to be super fast to get keys, riot is giving you the chance to earn PAID content for FREE. No one seems to understand how nice that is. Even if I only get one permanent unlock a month it's still FREE.

Anarchist Matt5/20/2016, 9:28:54 AM1 votes

Having the same problem. The requirements are 2 tokens and 1 Champion Permanent. The large animation displays 2/2 tokens and 0/1 in the other category (champion permanent, I assume). Now, i can only assume "champion permanent" does not mean owning the champion. What the heck does it mean? I do own Leona, and don't want to have to wait for a lucky champ shard in a chest, or waste blue essence to unlock the achievement. I put in a support ticket. Hopefully we'll get some answers soon. Very frustrating.