The preseason is a confusing time. Some things that were strong are weak, some things that were weak are strong, and ranked queue is chaos. Like most champions, mid laners have many more feasible mastery choices than they did before. Much depends on preference, but I'm here to help you sort through it all and play your best.

This here is one possible layout for your average AP mid laner. I have numbered each tier where you might reasonably choose the other option – there are a lot of decisions to make. However, I feel like some options are more realistic for lower levels of play. That includes my own level, mid Plat, and below.

Option #1, for instance, is between Feast and Double Edged Sword. As the name suggests, Double Edged Sword comes with a substantial drawback: 2% increased damage to yourself as most mid laners. Some people will tell you that if you're taking damage as a squishy mid laner, it doesn't matter if you're taking 2% increased damage because you're already dead, but this is an exaggeration. Most of the time, especially as you duel the other mid laner, you're going to just about break even with this mastery. With Feast, you get a reliable 1 health per second as long as you're getting last hits. You will always benefit from this, so I recommend it on just about every mage. Melee champs like Zed obviously have greater incentive to take Double Edged Sword.

For option #2, you definitely have to evaluate the importance of Spell Vamp on a per-champ basis. Still, it may be worthwhile to point out that different stats have different gold values. We calculate this by looking at the most efficient way to build a particular stat and seeing how much gold that particular stat costs. AD and Life steal certainly have some value to AP mid laners, but let's ignore them for the purpose of weighing Vampirism against Natural Talent. Amplifying Tome costs 435 gold and grants 20 AP, which comes out to 21.75 gold per point of AP. There is no pure Spell Vamp item in the game, but Hextech Revolver grants 12% Spell Vamp and 40 AP. If we subtract the value of the AP, 1% Spell Vamp comes out to be 27.5 gold. Vampirism, therefore, grants 55 gold worth of Spell Vamp versus 326.25 gold worth of AP from Natural Talent, but that's only at level 18. The gold value of Natural Talent becomes approximately equal to Vampirism at level 3 and then surpasses it at level 4. When you consider that AD is more valuable to an AP mid laner than Life steal, Natural Talent seems to come out on top.

Option #3 forces you to predict what kind of game you're going to have. If you're a high-damage champion without a reliable way to CC a champ and then deal damage while they're still CC'd, like Zed, Bounty Hunter will almost always be the better choice. If your combo does make Oppressor a viable option, like Ahri, then you've got a decision to make. Bounty Hunter does twice as much bonus damage and is constantly in effect, but takes time to ramp up. You benefit from Oppressor right away. If you're going to choose Bounty Hunter, you need to be confident in your ability to get those kills. I invite you to go through your match history and see how Bounty Hunter affected or would have affected a few games. Once you get three unique kills, Bounty Hunter is already better than Oppressor in every way, but that may come very late or not at all. In a losing game, Oppressor will usually have been better. In my own experience, you can reach that 3-Bounty milestone between 12 and 18 minutes if you're the one carrying. If someone else on your team turns out to be the star of that game, it may only come at about 25-32 minutes, once the game is already largely decided. On champions that can properly utilize Oppressor, it's probably more often the better choice, but it's important to note that even just one or two kills on Bounty Hunter will sometimes be better if you're doing a lot of poking. Ahri can make good use of Oppressor, but she also throws out a lot of lone Q's. Like Vampirism/Natural Talent, you have to use judgment on this one for each champion, but my advice is to tend toward Oppressor when you can.

The shift in power among champions as a result of the preseason changes is largely a result of champions' differing ability to utilize the 18-point "keystone" masteries. Luckily, Deathfire Touch is good on most AP champions. Poke champions get to activate and benefit from Deathfire Touch as often as they land poke, and assassins get to pile that damage onto their already lethal all-in. Some AP mid laners, like Azir, and most AD mid laners prefer a different keystone mastery. I'll go over those as well as a few others in a follow-up article about exceptions to the general rules I'm putting forth here!

Cunning has a little something for everybody, so it's usually going to be your best bet for dropping those 12 remaining points. Again, there are exceptions, and I'll get to those next time.

I listed the first tier as an option because there is definitely an argument to be made for Wanderer, especially at higher levels of play, but I feel strongly that you should be taking Savagery, particularly as an AP laner. You're probably already accustomed to having Savagery's antecedent from the 2015 Offense tree, so make things easy on yourself and choose it again. 3% movement speed out of combat is nice, especially for roamers, but there's nothing more important than last hitting.

The second and third tiers both provide very tempting alternatives. Particularly when it comes to Runic Affinity versus Secret Stash, I don't think you can go wrong. If you aren't regularly being given blue buff, then Secret Stash is probably the better choice, so I'd go with Secret Stash in solo queue just in case you run into that jungler who keeps taking it for himself. It's nice to have when you're in a losing lane.

Merciless is very good but not mandatory. 5% increased damage is substantial but you have to consider than it's not that often you're attacking targets below 40% health. Meditation is a lot of mana, so take it if you need it. However, if you're competent at managing your mana or you intend to build Morellonomicon first, I would recommend Merciless. Reserve Meditation only for the most mana-hungry champions, like Anivia.

Dangerous Game is great and will almost always be the better choice, but Bandit should not be overlooked. Bandit provides gold whenever you damage an enemy champion (on a 5 second cooldown), 3 for ranged and 10 for melee. Some champions will be able to rake in a lot of money with this, especially melee champs with a reliable ranged ability. Dangerous Game is very, very good on Zed but it's tempting to turn his shuriken into money-making machines. In any case, pick Dangerous Game.

That's it for this quick guide! Next time I'll go over mid lane champions that uniquely call for unordinary builds, like Azir, Annie, Yasuo and Zed.