Masteries are a series of buffs to your champions that you get to pick from three trees (Ferocity, Cunning and Resolve) and can be changed from game to game. I made this article to cover some generalities of masteries. For more insights on mastery picking scroll down to the bottom and check my other articles on the topic.

MOBAfire has its own mastery database if you want to check them by yourself and see how they work.

How are masteries organised?

There are three kind of masteries: 5-point, one-point and keystone. They are grouped in sets of two 5-point, two/three one-point or three keystone, where you have to pick between them.

• 5-point masteries are the less impactful of the bunch. You have to assign five points between two masteries. For example, on the first set of the Ferocity tree you have Fury and Sorcery, and you can distribute 5 points on them however you want. You can put 5 points to Fury or 3 points to Sorcery and 2 points to Fury , for example.
• one-point masteries are more powerful than 5-point ones. You have to pick between two or three one-point masteries, only using one mastery point on them. For example, on the second set of the Resolve tree you have Explorer and Tough Skin , but you can only pick one of them.
• Keystone masteries are the most powerful of all, to the point that they can affect how you should play your game. There is only one set of keystone masteries per tree, consisting of three masteries you should pick from. They work as one-point masteries, but they are significantly more powerful than their one-point counterparts.

Mastery trees are ordered so that you always have one 5-point set, one one-point set, one 5-point set, one one-point set, one 5-point set and one keystone set. Each set unlocks the next one, so you have to pick 17 points on a single tree before getting to a keystone mastery.

You can assign a maximum of 30 points, one per level on your account, which have to be distributed between the trees with up to 18 points per tree. This means you can only have one keystone mastery from any tree at a time and you can only pick it after you got your account to level 18.

What are masteries good for?

Masteries enhance your champion by adding effects to them. Since you have to choose between sets, the masteries you picked should reflect how you play. For example, if you are playing a mage support, so you probably shouldn't pick Feast , since it requires you to farm minions, kill jungle creeps or kill champions, and you shouldn't be doing that too often.

Different kind of masteries give different effects. 5-point masteries only add stats (more attack speed, more mana regeneration, etc), but one-point and keystone masteries add specific effects that sometimes have specific requirements to be used. For example, Runic Affinity increases the duration of jungle buffs, so you need to take blue sentinel/red brambleback in order to notice an effect, otherwise you have wasted one mastery point. Of course you shouldn't be stealing blue/red buff just because you have the mastery. Just try to think it beforehand, so you don't have wasted effects.

Next article on masteries:

Generalities of mastery picking [S6]

More articles on masteries:

In-depth Ferocity tree [S6]
In-depth Cunning tree [S6]
In-depth Resolve tree [S6]