Let's Fix: Masteries

Masteries

What are they?

League of Legends players can edit their Runes and Masteries and Runes to customize any champion as they see fit. They provide maybe a ~5% boost to a champion's early game power, waning to somewhere around 2% later on. Since everyone at level 30 has equal access to masteries (and to a lesser extent the runes) there's not really a problem with balance. If the Offensive page is OP then everybody uses the Offense page and nobody gets a real advantage.

Luckily they are balanced enough that even that is not an issue. Your choice of Masteries is usually a reflection on your personal preference of playstyle. Some champions are a bit limited in their selection: an AD carry for example will run 21/9/0 with little variation. Others however get a bit more choice in the matter. As Warwick, I might run down the Defense tree if I plan to try to outsustain the other guy and transition into a tanky initiator, or I could run a more Offensive build if I plan to gank and go all in for the kill.

Where to Look: Card Layout Quandries

The layout of a card is incredibly important to players new and old. How much thought goes into these initial decisions? How much is random choice and how much is optimization?

Above we have a typical magic card. The first thing a player notices is the picture, covering up the top half of the card. Then, a new player will usually look to the card name, where an experienced one might look first to the mana cost in the top right or its stats in the bottom right. Those stats are then compared to certain base stats we've become accustomed to and you get a gut feeling for the strength of the card on a whole. Meanwhile, the newer player is reading the name and then skipping the mana cost to look at the text.

New players take the card as a whole, where experienced ones understand that you don't need to look at the flavor text, set symbol, or artist name, and only rarely the card type. That information is there when they need it, but it's not immediately relevant.