Preseason 4 Masteries Judged: Part 1 - Offense

A significant (and daunting) part of Preseason 4 is the full collection of new and reworked masteries. It will take time to adjust and optimize, but, if you want a head start, here’s some help. This article is the first in a three part series that goes through each mastery tree to pick out the OP, good, bad and horrible. First up? Offense!

The Offense tree has changed quite a bit. However, the core is still there -- you are presented with many obvious choices that you switch between depending on whether you’re AD or AP.

 

Doubled-Edged Sword: If you’re not playing a melee champion with good gap closers or a ranged burst champion, this mastery could do more harm than good. Melees receive an impressive amount of damage for only one point, but if that melee is easily kited, it just makes the kiting more painful because of the increased damage you receive. Sustained ranged damage champions like marksmen can be easily hurt by this mastery when focused or even dueled since focus and burst damage (e.g., from assassins that are already incredibly dangerous) will cause this mastery to deal more damage to you than it gives.

Ranged burst champions deal with this better since they can offload damage quickly and have some hope to outpace the received damage (though I wouldn’t recommend it). The real winner with this mastery are melee mages like Gragas, who has high burst coupled with ranged spells (Gragas also receives 10-18% damage reduction from his W, mitigating the downside of this mastery).

Verdict: An excellent value when picked correctly; avoid it on marksmen but pick it on mobile melee champions and some burst champions.

Fury & Sorcery
These two have been changed in the same way: a buff from 4 to 5%. You still pick them for the same reasons, too: choose Fury if you’re a marksman or AS-dependent champion, otherwise choose Sorcery. When in doubt, choose Sorcery since CDR is the more valuable and universally useful stat.

Verdict: The same, but good; you need these to climb up the tree, so it’s just about choosing which one.

Butcher: Another minimally-changed mastery. This gives you very little damage, which makes it fairly useless. If you really need the help last hitting it’s something you can take, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Verdict: Next to useless.

 

Expose Weakness: This is a strange mastery and it’s helpfulness is slightly hidden since it doesn’t directly give you more damage. However, it can increase team DPS by a sizable amount. This mastery applies to any target, so Dragon and Baron go down faster with it.

One interesting use of this mastery is for both the marksman and support to pick it so that it acts like an actual, direct 1% damage increase in lane (Note: as you will see in my sample pages later, both marksmen and supports that dip into Offense happen to have a point readily available for this).

Verdict: Recommended mainly if you have the extra point laying around.

 

Brute Force → Martial Mastery & Mental Force → Arcane Mastery

Not much to say here: these are the new default paths for AD and AP champions and deliver a good amount of flat AD and AP.

Verdict: Highly recommended; the best way to continue to move up the tree.

 

Feast: This mastery is useless. 12/6 HP/MP per wave/every 30 seconds (assuming perfect CSing and non-siege minion waves)? This is a pitiful amount of regeneration. What makes this mastery even worse is that it requires you to get another awful mastery (Butcher) if you want to get it. Other choices are way better.

Verdict: Horrible.

 

Spell Weaving → Blade Weaving 

A mystery. In the games current state, these are not good. A few hybrid champions can use them, but the surrounding masteries increase damage similarly (or more) without a needed windup (e.g., dropping 2 points in Archmage on Teemo or Kayle: lose 3% bonus AP for a 1-3% basic attack and spell damage increase). If more changes that favor hybrid builds come, these will be great, but, as is, you’ll want to pick something else unless you have a special (and rare) build in mind.

Verdict: Useless in the vast majority of cases.

 

Executioner

This mastery is outstanding. 5% is the highest percentage damage increase in the tree. Three points will let you use this from half HP onwards on an enemy, which is an impressive amount of uptime.

Verdict: Take it!

 

Warlord & Archmage 

The same situation as the Brute/Mental Force progression -- these are standard, solid picks. A note: Warlord is restricted to bonus AD while Archmage has no restriction, making Archmage significantly better overall.

Verdict: Great picks.

 

Dangerous Game: Remember: 5% MISSING HP and MP. This mastery is impressive. On characters like Riven and AD assassins it will help create more baits and 1 v 2 double kills and on bruisers and tanks it will add extra tankiness. This appears less useful on carries, but it still has the potential to enable clutch plays and save you when you’re being focused. The amount might not seem like a lot, but that instant boost can make all the difference, even if it’s just beating out your opponent’s Ignite in a close duel.

Verdict: High clutch play potential that is easy to get because of a good prerequisite (Executioner); highly recommended.

 

Frenzy: A lower floor and higher ceiling than last season. This can cause your DPS to skyrocket -- it’s just under the attack speed of a Zeal at full stacks.

Verdict: A 100% pick on any champion that itemizes crit chance (e.g., marksmen and Tryndamere).

 

Devastating Strikes: There is far less penetration in the new mastery tree. In the old tree, the penetration masteries were no-brainer picks, which makes them even bigger now. You will have less penetration from masteries than last season . . . unless you’re a semi-hybrid. Champions like Corki receive a stealth buff from this mastery reorganization since they get dual penetration at no extra cost.

Verdict: Amazing and an essential pick.

 

Arcane Blade: Unchanged from Spellsword other than moving up a tier. A significant hidden damage bonus for any AP, it’s a one-point wonder that becomes a mini-Lich Bane late game. The fact that this gives you a little auto damage early and then scales throughout the game makes it one of the most efficient mastery points in the game.

Verdict: Truly top tier; a must-have for AP champions.

 

Havoc: Boring but good. 3%, always-on damage for one point is an obvious choice (as the highest tier mastery always is).

Verdict: You’re this far up? Always get this.

 

Sample Mastery Pages:

Marksman (21 points)
Ranged, Offensive AP Support (9 points)
AP Carry (21 points)
Tanky Bruiser Jungler (9 points)