Utility Mastery

Part 3 of my mastery commentary.  For Offense Mastery, go here.  For Defense Mastery, go here.

First Tier

Spatial Accuracy: Reduces the delay on your Teleport spell by .5 seconds, and decreases its cooldown by 5 seconds.


Firstly, I like the Teleport spell.  While I do not see it used as often as Flash, Ignite, Ghost or Cripple, I do see it used and I think that it's a worthwhile spell.  I am less clear on whether or not this mastery is very good.  Firstly, the normal cooldown of Teleport is 5 minutes, from which 5 seconds seems insignificant.  The normal casting time of Teleport is 4 seconds, and from this .5 seconds does seem significant.  This is doubly so, because unlike recalling Teleport is not interrupted by damage: this mastery makes it more viable as an escape tactic (though if you wanted to escape, Flash or Ghost are better options). Overall, I think Teleport is not improves significantly by this mastery.

Good Hands: Reduces time spent dead by {3.33/6.66/10}%.


Firstly, what do good hands have to do with this mastery?  More seriously, this talent is only useful if you're dying, and one should probably not plan on dying.  However, dying is a reality in the game, especially for...well, everybody.  Tanks are designed to get right in the middle of the enemy team.  Carries are always focused.  Supports will try to get in the way to save the carries.  Anyone may get ganked if they overextend or travel alone.  I'd say that, depending on your playstyle (but not really), this is a useful talent, especially late game when time spent dead is long.

Perseverance: Increases your total health and mana regeneration by {2/3/4}%.


Woot, more regeneration!  ...But, really?  Say you had full ranks in this mastery: even if you had an astronomical 100 health per 5 seconds, this would contribute only 4 more.  If you had 25 health/5 sec, this would contribute 1 more.  That just doesn't seem very significant: regeneration is much better handled through items and runes.  However, starting off at 2% makes this worth a 1 point dip if you don't want to go all the way.

Haste: Increases the movement speed of your Ghost spell by 6% and its duration by 1.5 seconds.


Ghost is a tremendously useful spell, and mostly because it can be used whenever moving faster seems like a good idea.  The reality is, moving faster always seems like a good idea; however, when you're chasing someone at 50 health, or the one at 50 health being chased, moving faster REALLY seems like a good idea.  This mastery can give you the edge to win that race.  Or, since your opponent has Ghost and this mastery, putting a point in this mastery can make it so you won't automatically lose this race.  Either way, even for just that extra edge, this mastery is a good idea.

First Tier wrap-up: I don't see a clear winner between Good Hands and Perseverance, and each is more or less useful to different builds.  Between Spatial Accuracy and Haste I'd say that Haste is the clear winner, but this hinges pretty strongly on the spells that you use.

Second Tier

Awareness: Increases the amount of experience a champion gains by {1.25/2.5/3.75/5}%.


Awareness is THE reason that most builds put at least 8 points in utility.  This is because having a level advantage over your opponent(s) can be very significant, and this mastery can help you get that level advantage.  I highly recommend this mastery.

Expanded Mind: Increases your champion's mana by {1.25/2.5/3.75/5}% of your maximum mana.


This mastery is incredibly poorly worded: you, the summoner, don't HAVE mana, so what is this mastery talking about?  A more comprehensible wording might be "Increases your champion's mana by X% (of their maximum mana)".  However, this mastery currently (according to the bug report forums) only increases your champion's mana by X% of their BASE maximum mana.  So, in reality, this mastery is pretty worthless.

Second Tier wrap-up: Put all your points in Awareness.

Third Tier

Greed: Generates 1 gold every 10 seconds.


Initial reaction: more gold is good, right?  Well, here are the numbers: most champions spend 10 to 15 THOUSAND gold to finish a build, during a game which lasts usually between 30 minutes and 1 hour (I kind of made up these stats, though I think they're accurate).  This mastery generates 6 gold every minute, 60 gold in 10 minutes, 180 gold in 30 minutes, and 360 gold in 1 hour.  The amount of gold this mastery adds to your totals is paltry at best.

Let's take an even deeper look.  Passively, every champion generates 14 gold per 10 seconds.  That means that this mastery really increases your passive gold generation rate by a little over 7%.  However, this is still very little when compared to gold-generating items like Heart of Gold (all give 5 gold per 10 seconds).  Ignoring items for a second, a normal champion passively generates 84 gold a minute, 840 gold in 10 minutes, 2520 gold in 30 minutes and 5040 gold in 1 hour.  This says that half to two-thirds of a champion's gold earned will come from minion/monster kills, champion kills, and structures destroyed.  So, this mastery provides a small increase to the gold-gaining method that is secondary to most champions.  Overall: I don't think this mastery is worth a point.

Meditation: Increases Mana regenration by {1/2/3} per 5 seconds.


As the wiki points out, this amount is equivalent to a Faerie Charm (180 gold).  Overall, even though it is a relatively small effect, I'd say that this mastery is worth a few points, especially since the bonus is available at the very beginning of the game.

Utility Mastery: Increases the duration of neutral monster buffs by {15/30}%.


An absolute MUST for junglers.  In addition, this mastery serves many champions who might want to pick up one of the buffs very well.  Overall, though this mastery's usefulness is dependent upon playstyle to a certain extent, it is a very good mastery.

Insight: Your Clarity spell will now grant the same amount of mana to allies as your champion receives.


This sounds kinda cool, but its usefulness is reduced by the fact that Clarity is a little-used spell eclipsed by many better ones.  For reference, Clarity restores 160 + (lvl * 30) mana to champions within a 600 radius, with a cooldown of 3 minutes.  Mana problems are more common early game when this spell is weakest, so it would be good for one to three more spells while laning (depending on the champion).  There are certain circumstances where a champion just needs a certain amount of mana to get back in the game: Annie, for instance, gets her mana back if Disintegrate kills its target, but still needs the mana available to cast the spell.  Otherwise, the spell seems circumstantial or not very powerful, and this mastery does not improve it enough to make it a viable option.

Third Tier wrap-up: Meditation wins, with Utility mastery following by being less universally useful.  Of course, if you don't have mana and you aren't jungling or getting buffs often, this tier just isn't for you.

Fourth Tier

Quickness: Increases your base movement speed by {1/2/3}%.


The description of this mastery is wrong: according to the wiki, this mastery simply provides a percentage boost to movement speed like an item would.  This is pretty cool in my opinion.  In my discussion on Ghost I mentioned that one always wants to move faster: here, even if you start the game at 300, this mastery will raise you to 309, and even more once you buy boots.  Overall, pretty good deal.

Blink of an Eye: Reduces the cooldown of your Flash spell by 15 seconds.


This mastery reduces the cooldown on Flash TO 4 minutes.  Overall, 15 seconds does not seem like a significant improvement.  However, this mastery is helped by the fact that Flash is one of the most commonly used summoner spells, and even small improvements are improvements.

Fourth Tier wrap-up: Quickness is better in my opinion, but the two really aren't very comparable.  Each is acceptable in its own right.

Fifth Tier

Intelligence: Reduces your champion's cooldowns by {2/4/6}%.


This is, I think, one of the best reasons to put 21 points into Utility.  Everyone benefits from cooldown reduction (with maybe a couple exceptions), and 6% is a healthy chunk of the 40% maximum.  This mastery therefore reduces the need for runes and items adding cooldown effects.  This mastery gets two thumbs up.

Mystical Vision: Increases the duration of your Clairvoyance spell by 4 seconds, and reduces its cooldown by 5 seconds.


Mystical Vision unfortunately has to sit next to Intelligence, and is therefore obscured.  However, it's actually a good mastery.  Clairvoyance as a spell I do not see used often, and I think it should be: it reveals any area of the map for 6 seconds, with a 55 second cooldown.  This can be used for many things: check dragon, check baron, check red/blue buffs, check bushes (I think), and anything else you really want to look at.  The best part is that you don't have to be too stingy because the spell is back in less than a minute.  It's no replacement for wards, but it will certainly help a lot.  Now, the mastery: the duration is increased by 67%.  That is a significant increase: however, since the use of this spell is mostly to check an instantaneous state (there or not, for the most part), that extra 4 seconds will probably not amount to much.  Also, 5 seconds is not a lot, but compared to the original cooldown of 55 seconds it's relatively significant.  Overall, Mystical Vision does not improve Clairvoyance a lot, but its bonuses aren't miniscule either.

Fifth Tier wrap-up: Intelligence is the clear winner, but Mystical Vision should not be discounted.  Or, rather, people should use Clairvoyance more often.

Sixth Tier

Presence of the Master: Reduces the recharge time of your summoner spells by 15%.


Very cool.  Most spells have significant cooldowns, and this mastery essentially takes 3 seconds out of the cooldown for every 20 seconds of cooldown the spell originally had.  Since most spells have a cooldown of over 200 seconds, most spells' cooldowns will be reduced by at least 30 seconds.  Also, this percentage decrease is applied before other masteries that affect the recharge time of a spell, thus increasing the usefulness of these masteries rather than decreasing their usefulness.  Lastly, since every summoner has two spells and all spells are affected, there is absolutely NO ONE who does not benefit from this mastery.  Well, if you never use your spells then I guess this is worthless, but if you never use your spells you're probably doing it wrong.

Utility Mastery Tree wrap-up: This is a good tree.  Going 21 points into Utility is more useful to casters because of the increases to mana regeneration and cooldown, but there are many aspects of the tree that are useful to everyone: most significantly, the increase to experience gained in tier 2.  Also, unlike the other two trees, many of the effects in the Utility Tree provide consistent benefit throughout the game: decreasing time spent dead is actually better late game, increasing experience is constant, move speed is constant (and gets better when you buy boots), cooldown reduction is constant, and summoner spell recharge reduction is constant.  Overall, this is an excellent tree that will provide constant advantage to you throughout the entire game.