Masteries: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 We’ve been living with the new Season 3 masteries for a while now. However, just like up to the end of Season 2, people are still testing and tweaking to find out exactly what works the best. There are still plenty of good masteries that are underused and bad ones that are overused. I’m going to take you beyond the obvious (the ward and biscuit from “Explorer” and “Biscuiteer” are really good! I know, you’re shocked) to point out some mastery choices you’ve been missing out on.

Disclaimer: Masteries are often very playstyle dependent. While I do believe that my reasoning and/or math shows the definitive usefulness/waste of some masteries, others will obviously be tainted by my own bias that comes from my personal playstyle (“Perseverance” is probably a likely candidate for this conflict). With that out of the way, I bring you . . . 

Masteries: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Offense

-/ Sorcery > Fury: In general, it makes more sense to get Sorcery over Fury because the amount of CDR you get is worth more gold than the attack speed from Fury. CDR is also useful on more champions and is harder to easily buy items for.

- / Brute Force > Mental Force: I believe that anyone who gets this far should pick this up, even AP mids. Like with flat AD runes on AD carries, they help last hitting and in early dueling. The equivalent flat AP here (“Mental Force”) will not provide as much damage early (because it has to be converted by AP ratios) and will be just as comparatively useless late game.

- Spellsword: Essential on any AP mid -- it’s a mini Lich Bane! It’s a one-point wonder and is like a scaling Brute Force. Moving this point to something else at this tier will simply not get you as much (it’s far better than 1 or 2 AD or AP).

Defense

- Perseverance: This is hugely overrated by those who get it. If you’re low on HP then you’re probably not sticking around for long. It’s not even that much regen. The nearby HP/AR/MR are all better choices that provide persistent effects and give far better defense against burst damage (but mainly the tier one HP to get to the amazing Veteran’s Scars).

-/ Tenacious > Relentless: This one is fairly easy: it boils down to Tenacious being universal and Relentless being for one thing. For comparison, think about how often you buy Mercury Treads and not Boots of Swiftness. Relentless is very situational and, unless you can predict that, say, Ezreal is definitely buying an Iceborne Gauntlet on a team with Trundle, it probably doesn’t make sense to get.

- Defender: Perhaps the most overrated mastery of them all. Flat AR/MR is best in the early game . . . where you rarely face more than two enemies at once. The tier two AR/MR is usually better! This mastery is a gimmick, especially because lots of stuff around it is way better and will give you far better effects later in the game when more enemies will be around (see: Reinforced Armor, Juggernaut).

- Legendary Armor: This mastery is practically useless. Why? It’s based on BONUS, not base, AR and MR! For most of the game this gives you almost nothing, especially with all the HP rushing going around. If you itemize for the most EHP, you rarely get over 200 AR/MR (and a good 50ish of that is base). 3 points for 7.5 endgame AR/MR? I don’t think so (tier 2 is better . . . again!).

- Reinforced Armor: Like Ninja Tabi, this gives you a lot more than you might think. This is not only huge late game against AD carries who get crit, (i.e., all of them), but it helps soften the blow of potentially lane/fight-changing early game crits. This is a real one-point wonder.

Utility
More than any other tree, I find Utility to be heavily dependent on your playstyle. You probably know why/when most of the masteries here are good. So, I’m going to keep this section short and just give a few tips for the rarer ones:

- Improved Recall: An okay last point dump for laners (especially those who split push).

- Expanded Mind: Pretty useless now; Season 3 has awesome mana items and the two CDR masteries here (“Mastermind” and “Artificer”) are very good.

- Scout: Next to useless. Enough said.

- Strength of Spirit: Simply not worth it for almost anyone who goes this far into the tree. Most mages/characters who get mana items don’t go full Utility and, in addition, are usually more worried about burst damage (since most of them are squishy carries), which this doesn’t help against.