Following the trend of articles on our website recently, which have been on mastery pages for different roles, the marksmen can't stay behind. Looking at every mastery they can get, we'll try and formulate a number of mastery pages that will complement you, your lane, and your team. Phreak has done an excellent job at creating a number of mastery pages focused on different roles (20 pages in total), but only two of those are then focused on marksmen. Granted that with the item changes, marksmen have either one of two roles, namely spellslinging or critting - since it's hard to imagine a build without (close to) full crit for a marksman nowadays. However, I feel it's key to go over a few things to keep in mind when creating a mastery page for a marksman.

Let's categorize marksmen first. Obviously, there's the long range crit slinging marksmen, the Tristana category. Their main goal is to crit as hard and as often as possible while being as far from harm's way as possible. The second category is the spellslinger, namely your Lucian category: in order for them to get the best out of their damage, they need to weave spells throughout their auto attacks. Our last category is actually the caster, the Ezreal category. These are champions like Ezreal who specialize in using their abilities to get the most of their damage out to the enemy team, but don't lack the ability (hah) to have their auto attacks back them up.

The Long Range Critsman Category

Imaqtpie feels that the movement speed out of combat is pretty handy, and he instead puts his first 5 points in Cunning into Wanderer and follows the same trend from there.

The Tristana category falls under Phreak's "Marksman Crit" mastery page. In Ferocity, they get the 4% Attack Speed as tier 1, complemented by Feast as a tier 2. The Attack Speed is pretty self-explanatory, but Feast is a strategic choice. Since the non-Keystone masteries influence the laning phase more than they do the late game, getting 20HP back from a last hit is extremely valuable when playing a champion that needs to scale into late game. Tier 3 becomes 5 points into Vampirism for that 2% Life Steal. In tier 4, they go with Bounty Hunter. Another strategic choice, as you're going to be getting as many kills as possible - and having 5% extra damage on anyone is invaluable. On the other hand, Oppressor increases damage when a target is locked down. This makes the choice to go for Bounty Hunter contradictory with my previous statement where I said that masteries influence lane more than the late game. If you're playing with a CC-focused support (like Alistar, Leona or Nami), you might want to swap out that point in tier 4 for Oppressor instead. It's hard to come by 3 or more unique kills in lane anyways.

Tier 5 goes 5 points to Battering Blows: free Armor Pen is always a good thing. And when critting, your Keystone Mastery should always be Warlord's Bloodlust, easily the most imbalanced mastery to date (at least until the hotfix comes in): instant life steal on crits and a free Dagger-and-a-half for a good amount of time is insane. In Cunning, the choices are pretty straight-forward. 5 points to Savagery and Merciless because the former helps your farming game early, whereas the latter allows you to play aggressive in the early game if your support allows it. Secret Stash and Dangerous Game are also self-explanatory because each of them have a relatively useless counterpart: 15% extra duration on Red Buff or Baron Buff (the latter of which is hard to come by these days) are pretty mediocre when comparing them to something that's useful throughout not just the laning phase but also into late game, and Bandit is a support mastery. Don't bother.

The Spellslinger Category

C9's Sneaky actually opts to not go all the way down into the Ferocity tree, but rather picks up 5 points in Precision in Cunning, and rounds it out with Thunderlord's Decree as his Keystone. A different spin on how spellslingers use their mastery points.

For those Lucian category marksmen out there, 5 points into Sorcery helps your abilities to hit harder. If it's going to be about abilities 50/50, we might as well get a % increase in spell and ability damage instead 1/3rd of a Dagger. Feast doesn't change, it's just too good for the laning phase. The tier 3 Ferocity mastery is a questionable one, since the Lifesteal and Spellvamp don't amount to a whole lot without shoving your wave - which is not always the best choice - but it's still sustain in a lane where you're bound to be playing pushing games. Alternatively there is Natural Talent, granting additional AD and AP, which is good on champions that are designed to be spellslingers because they generally have some AP ratios tucked in there somewhere (Lucian's W and R, Corki's Q, W and R) and free stats are always good since they're... well, free.

For the tier 4 Ferocity mastery, the same choice applies as it did with the Tristana category: it's a matter of lane matching and team comp. You just can't forsake 7% free Armor Pen since that also penetrates base armor - which the Last Whisper UNIQUE Passive no longer does - and the Keystone mastery is where things get interesting, depending on your build. If you're going to be heavily investing into Crit chance regardless, you're going to want to get Warlord's Bloodlust because it's just that good. If you're going to tuck some heavy Attack Speed in there, Fervor of Battle is insanely good as it amounts to +80 AD on basic attacks at max rank when fully stacked - which happens even faster since you're going to be spellslinging too. The last option is to invest into laning and add that +50% bAD ratio to your single target abilities (think Ezreal, Miss Fortune, Urgot who benefit best from this). It all comes down to preference. As far as the Cunning tree goes, this page is the same as the Tristana category one, aside from one key point of choice: tier 3. Being a spellslinger comes with the downside of having to burn mana, and Meditation gives you close to a free Mana Font passive which could help your lane. This doesn't mean Merciless is any less good though. Just keep in mind that Meditation is also a great pick up.

The AD Caster Category

The Ezreal category dips into the ability amplifying masteries even more. Sorcery is a no-brainer because of abilities. Feast is great still, but if you're going to be out of harm's way for the better part of the game, it might be worth it to pick up Double Edged Sword instead because of the free % damage increase. Natural Talent is just better than Vampirism at this point because of ratios (though Urgot is a bit of the odd one out). This time, I wouldn't take Oppressor over Bounty Hunter this time because, while the lane is pretty vital, ability focused marksmen often have less damage in lane and scale better into the mid game than others, so tipping into Oppressor seems like a wasted slot. Still, because we're marksmen and not mages, Battering Blows is far superior to Piercing Thoughts, and if we're going to be using abilities a whole lot, Deathfire Touch seems like another no-brainer: a free additional bonus AD ratio on low cooldown abilities like Acid Hunter and Mystic Shot is absolutely insane.

Again, don't deviate from the Cunning path too much, aside from the change mentioned in the Lucian section (and this time it's even more vital): the Meditation mana regen is incredible on champions that use a lot of mana for their abilities. Other than that, Dangerous Game and Secret Stash help teamfighting and the laning phase respectively, and Savagery is great for last hitting since ability focused marksmen often have less AD than the regular marksman.

One thing to note is that these pages are all relatively focused on medium to high aggression support picks by your side. If you're going to be playing with the likes of Soraka, Sona or the passive kind of Nami that likes to heal a lot, 12 points into Resolve might prove to be a better idea since that increases the sustain immensely. Imagine receiving heals from a Soraka with Windspeaker's Blessing ("Your heals and shields are 10% stronger.") and you packing Runic Armor ("8% bonus to all shields and healing on you."). You'll never have to leave lane.

These pages serve to give an in-depth look at what the cornerstones of a mastery page are for a given type of marksman. Obviously, when playing certain matchups and certain team comps, you might want to swap out certain points for others: if you're in a tough lane but have a wombo combo team comp when playing Jinx, you might want to take Oppressor over Bounty Hunter for that team fighting presence with Runaan's and Fishbones. Take a good look at what's what and build your best mastery page every game. Coballz out.

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