Season 3: Offense Masteries

The masteries revamp is too big a topic to tackle in one post, unless you're one of those noble souls who enjoys reading fifty page white papers, so I'm dividing it up into three obvious sections. Today we'll be covering the new Offense masteries.

You can follow along using these mastery calculators:

Season 2: http://leaguecraft.com/masteries
Season 3: http://www.finalesfunkeln.com/s3/

There are only two new masteries in the Offense tree, the least of any, but they are interesting nonetheless.

Spellsword is a one point mastery adds 5% of your AP to your auto-attacks. 5% isn't much, but for one point it's a reasonably strong mastery. AP champions who do a lot of auto-attacking, such as Teemo, Diana, Twisted Fate, and Eve, could certainly get some mileage out of it, though most won't.

Frenzy is another one point mastery that grants a 10% Attack Speed buff for two seconds after a crit. Lethality, everyone's favorite Crit Damage mastery, is its prerequisite. It's an interesting concept, but ultimately feels fairly weak. By the time you have enough Crit to reliably proc the buff 10% Attack Speed will hardly be noticeable. It is only one point, but it's nothing to write home about.

The only mastery outright removed from the Offense tree was Vampirism. Anyone seeking that 3% Life Steal must now venture into the Utility tree instead. Everything else should be familiar, if jumbled around.

The first tier in Offense now sports the Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction masteries, instead of Flat AD and AP. This decouples them from the Penetration masteries they were previously prerequisites for. Having them as prerequisites was always slightly awkward as they aren't otherwise tied to one damage type. Moving them to the first tier also makes picking them up easier for those who would dive deep into the other mastery trees.

The AD and AP per Level masteries fill the holes left in the second tier. What I find interesting about this change is how valuable it makes the first nine points of the Offense tree compared to the rest. The difference in offensive power between a carry who goes all the way into Offense versus one who invests in other trees is very, very slight. Also, Demolitionist has been renamed Destruction and now increases damage done to towers by 2.5-5%, though it costs two points instead of one.

The third tier is almost identical, minus the absence of the AD per Level mastery. Interestingly, this encourages players to take Havoc. It's the only mastery in the tier which isn't one point with a prerequisite, and most champions won't be interested in the masteries they've already skipped. While Havoc has been buffed to 2% from 1.5%, it's still a fairly weak mastery. This is part of why going further than nine points into Offense isn't as good as it might first appear.

The fourth tier contains Spellsword, Lethality and the Flat AD and AP masteries that used to be in the first tier. These latter two have been buffed by 50%, but are still fairly weak compared to their per Level peers. Lethality has been increased to two points and is half as effective for ranged ADs, essentially dividing its value per point for them by four. Again, the relatively weak nature of this tier calls into question the value of pushing forward.

The final two tiers are almost identical, save for the presence of Frenzy in the penultimate tier and a slight change to Executioner. Executioner now increases damage by 5% against targets at less than 50% health, versus 6% at less than 40%. This makes the mastery stronger as it is now slightly harder to leap frog the benefit when bursting an opponent. Sunder also benefits from the Penetration changes I discussed yesterday, increasing its potential effectiveness by up to 220%. These tiers are strong, but given all the questionable points that had to be invested to reach them they are, by proxy, also questionable.

Offense may be the weakest of the three trees post-revamp, and that may be slightly intentional. The community has a great deal of inertia when it comes to ideas and changes, and in Season 2 the Offense tree was arguably the strongest by far. Its slight disadvantage in Season 3 may be compensation for its current greatness.