Hey guys, DC941 here, today with an article about my two favorite masteries introduced with the preaseason 4 patch. I tested how they work and will explain their mechanics and why they are good. At the end I’ll talk about champions using them well.

The yarn of blades and spells – how the masteries work

Spell WeavingDamaging an enemy champion with an autoattack increases your spell damage by 1%, stacking up to 3 times.

This is pretty straight forward: whenever you autoattack a champion, you receive a Spell Weaving buff which can stack up to three times. The buff decays after roughly five seconds; if that happens, you lose all stacks at once. The thing with this mastery is that its giving you a 3% increase for spells – that is as much as the highest mastery in offense is giving you! It comes with a condition, but its a huge profit for an relatively early mastery point as long as your champions kit supports it well.

You can get a point here with 9 points in the offense tree, meaning the ninth point is activating Spell Weaving.

Blade WeavingDamaging an enemy champion with a spell increases your autoattack damage by 1%, stacking up to 3 times.

Quite similar to its predecessor. Damaging an enemy with a spell will give you a Blade Weaving buff which increases your autoattack damage by 1%, stacking up to three times. It too is lost after five seconds without filling the condition. It is important to note here that Blade Weaving is more liberal than Liandrys Torment with using the term “Spell Damage” – every spell damage in the game actually gives a Blade Weaving stack, while Liandrys doesn’t work for some spells (Teemos “Toxic Shot” or Kog’Maws “Bio-arcane Barrage”). It is again just as good as the capstone for the offensive mastery tree for your spells.

You can get a point here with 13 points in the offense tree if you placed a point into Spell Weaving with the thirteenth point being the one activating Blade Weaving.

Another important thing to note: the increased basic attack damage is also working for magic components of an autoattack: this means that spells like Kayles Righteous Fury are empowered by Blade Weaving.

The two things I really like about this mastery pair are:

• With only two consecutive points, you can almost get the effect of Havoc in addition to the capstone. Note that special damage sources like sunfire cape are still not covered by weaving though!
• It creates a cool new mechanic: seeing these two buff icons pop up simply feels good, even if the impact is rather small (but not to be underestimated!).

The best weavers on the rift – champion kits using the masteries well

To use both Spell and Blade weaving well, a champion needs to use both autoattacks and spells to damage enemies. This is even more enhanced with champions utilizing low cooldowns to abuse the higher spell damage more often without the 5-second-timer running out. Another big point is having to spend 13 points into offense – champions who like to be tanky could use 21 points in the defense tree more sometimes.

The following champions are examples of “must-have” users of Spell & Blade Weaving:

Teemo is the absolute king of weaving. This is not due to him creating cozy plush-mushrooms, but due to the fact that his Toxic Shot profits from Blade and Spell Weaving more than any other spell in the game. The interesting think about this on-hit ability is the fact that every tick of his poison increases the stacks of Blade Weaving – this means that it is almost constantly at 3% damage increase for his autoattacks – which in turn increases the direct magic damage dealt by Toxic Shot. Teemo is also difficult to itemize against since he does very well as hybrid early – the autoattack buff from bladeweaving increases the AD part of his autoattacks too.This right here is synergy.

Ezreal is another great example. His Mystic Shot stacks both masteries at once due to it applying on-hit effects – this makes it both an autoattack and a spell at the same time. It should also profit off both damage increases, granting it a 6% damage increase just trough fully stacked weaving masteries.

Riven has great damage scaling on both her abilities and her autoattacks trough her passive. This gives her a lot of synergy since she applies the increased damage quite a lot. Additionally, she has low cooldowns, which enables her to keep the buff stacked. Her Q is also a 3-in-1 spell, stacking Blade Weaving to the max while only setting one ability on cooldown.

Jax has a neat on-hit ability with low cooldown which also counts towards weaving: Empower. Due to its on-hit nature, its damage is also increased by the blade weaving buff.

Kayle has a very strong AP-scaling on every autoattack – and it is increased by both masteries too! Just like Riven, Kayle is able to stack both masteries with only her E used. It also takes her only three autoattacks to stack both masteries.

Rengar has nice base damages on low cooldown. Also, his Q is an autoattack while being an ability, too – this allows fast stacking for both masteries and also 6% damage increase for it. This is especially huge due to the massive damage his empowered Q does.

Shyvana has absolutely massive base damages which use the %-increases coming from both weaving masteries even better. She can also stack both masteries with ease since her W hits multiple times – just as her Q should give her two stacks from one buff.

Kha’Zix and Zed are not really good in stacking the buffs fast, but their passives are on-hit effects. This means that the magic damage coming from them (which is quite high) profits of Blade Weaving. As AD casters, they also autoattack a lot, which does both stack the buff and use the increased autoattack damage.

In the end, the only champions which can’t really use the masteries well are casters and supports (exception:  Thresh due to his on-hit damage on Flay’s passive) which deal little damage with their autoattacks. They can still use spell weaving, but it is harder to utilize due to their attack speed being low and their range often being a problem.  On pretty much every other champion, both masteries are worth their points – the fact that they increase the respective damage types by the same amount as Havoc makes them really great, especially since they don’t require a special playstyle on most champions due to the forgiving 5-second-timer of the buffs.

Update: after further testing, I found that stacking the buffs via on-hit damage effects does not work as expected. Teemos poison for example does not give a stack with a hit instantly – only the poison tick stacks Blade Weaving! This makes it far weaker on champions like Zed, Kha’Zix, Jax and Rengar than I expected. Even Ezreal should not be as strong. Note that these special cases still profit off of both damage increases though!