Defense Mastery

Part 2 of my Mastery commentary.  For Offense Mastery, go here.  For Utility Mastery, go here.

First Tier

Mender's Faith: Reduces the cooldown of your Heal spell by 30 seconds.


For one, I don't think Heal is used a lot at higher level play, already making this mastery less useful.  As far as I can tell, Heal is not a bad spell.  What kills this spell (and thus this mastery) are two things: one, even with the mastery you have a 4 minute cooldown.  Granted, you won't be getting into teamfights every 30 seconds, so this might not be much of a problem, but the spell can't be used for maintaining hit points while laning very well.  Secondly, and more importantly, there are just better spells out there.

Resistance: Increases your champion's magic resistance by {2/4/6}.


While that's not a lot of magic resistance, you really can't have too much magic resistance.  I don't have a good sense of the relative ease with which you can get magic resistance as compared to armor, so I'm not sure whether Resistance or Hardiness is better (we'll let their dependent abilities be the judges later).  Because this is straight up magic resistance, it's most useful early game.

Preservation: Increases your health by 400 for 120 seconds after casting your Revive spell, and reduces its cooldown by 20 seconds.


I am dimly aware that some builds may use this spell and this mastery if total destruction death plunges are on the agenda.  Other than that, I can't see anyone taking revive unless they really like dying (or just can't seem to avoid it well).  Either way, try to get good enough that you won't need the spell, because a 9 minute cooldown is not significantly improved by 20 seconds off (even with a bonus 400 health for two minutes).

Hardiness: Increases your champion's armor by {2/4/6}.


My comments here are pretty much the same for my comments on Resistance: it's not a lot, but you can't have too much armor.  It will be most useful early game.

First Tier wrap-up: Resistance and Hardiness are the co-winners, go with whichever you want more (and probably both eventually).

Second Tier

Strength of Spirit: Increases your health regeneration per 5 seconds by {0.33/0.66/1}% of your maximum mana.


This mastery is a little hard to judge.  The easy part is: this mastery is useless for champions without mana.  For champions with mana this could be pretty cool, and it gets substantially better as you get more mana.  It certainly makes mana boosting effects more useful, and as a mastery it doesn't lose relevance as the game progresses.

Evasion: Increases dodge chance by {0.5/1/1.5/2}%.


This mastery doesn't add much of a dodge chance, but it is improved by the fact that dodge chances are pretty rare: certain champion abilities, runes, Ninja Tabi, and this mastery are the only ways to dodge attacks.  Total dodge chance is calculated multiplicatively, so the more sources of dodge you get the less effect each source will have.  That makes this mastery most useful if you don't plan on having a lot of dodge sources.

Second Tier wrap-up: If you don't have mana, you will end up with points in Evasion.  While neither mastery is bad, I think Strength of Spirit probably wins at face value.

Third Tier

Defensive Mastery: Your champion takes {1/2} less damage from minions and monsters.


This sounds like a pretty small and pretty limited bonus.  I'd say that junglers may find it worth a couple points, but as a third tier mastery those junglers would have to be going 15 to 21 defense.  As for minions, ideally you are letting your minions take the brunt of the damage.  But, if you are taking minion hits (either clearing waves or ganking), 2 less damage every hit over many hits could add up to not dying.  This mastery is most useful early game.

Nimbleness: Increases your movement speed by 10% for 5 seconds after dodging an attack.


If you plan to be dodging attacks, this is pretty awesome.  Everyone has had trouble running away from some pursuer(s), and this mastery could give you the edge you need to get away without dying.  Also, I think that this is a unique effect.  The flip side is that this is only useful if you are dodging at least a certain percentage of attacks: unless you use Evasion runes, this effect will not be worth it for most champions.

Harden Skin: Blocks {1/1.5/2} physical damage.


Two damage seems pretty insignificant, but I cannot place whether or not it truly is.  You could stack it with Defensive Mastery for even more reduced damage against minions and monnsters, I suppose.  This is another mastery whose effect is most useful early game, with diminishing usefulness.

Third Tier wrap-up: I think this is overall a lackluster tier: Nimbleness is really useful only to certain builds, and the other two have dubious value.  It may be more worth it to spend points in tiers one and two.

Fourth Tier

Veteran's Scars: Increases your champion's health by {12/24/36/48}.


Like many masteries in this tier, giving a flat bonus makes this more useful early game.  Forty-eight health is not insignificant, so for some extra padding at the beginning of the game this might not be a bad idea.

Willpower: Reduces the recharge time for your Cleanse spell by 20 seconds.


Cleanse is not a bad spell, but I don't think it's one of the best or used that often either.  As a fourth tier mastery, considering how often Cleanse is used, this is pretty weak.

Fourth Tier wrap-up: Veteran's Scars wins.

Fifth Tier

Ardor: Increases your Ability Power and bonus Attack Speed by {1.33/2.66/4}%.


Ardor is weird: many things increase your attack speed, but Ardor is the only thing that increases your increases to attack speed.  More simply put, Ardor multiplies your bonus attack speed by 1.04: if you had 55% bonus attack speed, Ardor would make it 57.2%.  If you had 165% bonus attack speed, Ardor would make it 171.6%.  Unless you have a build that increases attack speed more than 100%, Ardor gives you effectively less than 4% bonus attack speed.  As for AP, every little bit helps.  Overall, this is not a great mastery: the people who benefit from attack speed and AP are not the people who are putting 21 points into this tree (most of the time).

Reinforce: Your Fortify spell causes turrets to deal 50% splash damage.


I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is pretty damn cool.  Until the later game, champions rely on minions to take turret aggro while whittling them down.  If you happen to take Fortify, this mastery will clear out the minions waves much faster, leaving the pushing champion exposed.  Of course, you have to take Fortify as opposed to a potentially more useful spell.  And you have to have put at least 17 points into this tree.  Overall, this could be worse.

EDIT: in my last couple games I played Amumu, took Fortify and had a point in Reinforce.  I managed to kill or damage some unwary champions who simply didn't expect the splash damage.

Fifth Tier wrap-up: Ardor is weird and underwhelming: you might be better off with the tier 3 damage reduction.  However, if you plan to take Fortify, get Reinforce.

Sixth Tier

Tenacity: Decreases all damage dealt to your champion by 4%.


You wouldn't really want this unless you were planning to take a lot of damage.  If you're playing a tank, you're planning to take a lot of damage.  If you're playing a tank, you should get Tenacity, QED.  EDIT: By the math, if you have Tenacity and are fighting a champion with Havoc (offensive mastery), you will take 99.84% of the damage that champion would have dealt if he or she did not have Havoc.  Hence, from a purely oppositional perspective, Tenacity beats Havoc.

Defense Mastery Tree wrap-up: One thing I notice about this mastery tree is that many of its bonuses are flat, and thus more useful early game.  This has interesting implications: it helps you be a tank early, and pretty much lets you out on your own later.  This also means that it can be useful to people who don't want to be tanks: junglers who want a little more survivability during their first few levels may find a few points in this tree very helpful.  It can also (potentially) help a squishier laner stay in the lane longer at the beginning of the game. Overall rating: not bad.