Champion Mastery is a new progression system in Legends of Runeterra that was introduced alongside the Empires of the Ascended set launch on March 3rd, 2021.
What is Legends of Runeterra Champion Mastery?
Champion Mastery is a progression system in Legends of Runeterra that unlocks new cosmetics for your champions based on how much you play them.
- Your mastery of champions is tracked in your collection under a new tab called "Mastery".
- You earn Mastery Points ("MP") upon completing matches. These points level up your champions from your deck.
- The maximum level of Mastery for each champion is 5. Your champions start at Mastery Level 0.
Below you'll see the different icons displayed under your champions based on their level from 0 up to the max, 5.
Earning Mastery Points (MP)
MP is awarded at the end of every match for each of the champions in your deck. In Vs Player games (Normal or Ranked), a win will award 40 MP for each copy of the champion in your deck (e.g., 120 MP if you have all 3 copies). You will also receive an additional 20 MP if you leveled up the champion, regardless of whether you won the game or not. The amount of MP will vary slightly from these amounts in other game modes.
- Vs Player will award the nominal amount of base MP per match
- Expeditions awards more base MP the most base points to compensate for not being able to run as many copies of Champ cards
- Vs AI will award 50% of the MP that normal Vs Player matches would (20 MP per copy per win, 10 MP per level up)
- Vs Friend will also award less base MP than Vs Player
- Labs will not offer any MP
The fastest way to earn MP for any specific champion is to find a competitive deck that runs 3x copies of that champion and then just play a lot of games with that deck in either Ranked or Normal matches. This will award you 120 MP for each win -- e.g., 8 wins will progress you from Level 0 to Level 1. Don't worry about leveling the champion -- while the additional 20 MP helps, most of your MP will come from wins.
In this example, there are 3 copies of Elise, 2 copies of Azir, and 1 copy of Hecarim. Azir leveled, but neither Elise or Hecarim did.
Mastery Levels
Every champion starts at Level 0 (no crest) and can be progressed up to Level 5.
- Progressing from Level 0 to Level 1 will require 900 MP.
- Progressing from Level 1 to Level 2 will require an additional 1,100 MP (2,000 total)
- Progressing from Level 2 to Level 3 will require an additional 2,500 MP (4,500 total)
- Progressing from Level 2 to Level 3 will require an additional 4,500 MP (9,000 total)
- Progressing from Level 4 to Level 5 will require an additional 9,000* MP (18,000* total).
*Level 5 values are yet to be confirmed in-game*
You can view your Champion Mastery levels by going to the home screen, clicking on your circular Player Icon in the top-left corner, and then clicking the "Mastery" tab.
What Cosmetics Are Available Through Champion Mastery?
These levels will display as a Mastery Crest at the bottom of the cards themselves. The Mastery Crest will appear on the "Versus" screen splashed at the start of each match, when inspecting a deck, or when viewing the corresponding Champion card either during a match or in your collection.
Here's what Jarvan IV looks like at Mastery Level 1.
It is possible the Champion Mastery system will also award additional cosmetics in the future -- for example, Champion Mastery in LoL allows players to use a special emote. Jeff Jew has stated that they want us to be able to "style on our opponents" so we're expecting something very flashy.
Comments
Wow thats a great feature! I love maxing out everything, gonna try to level them all for sure :)
I LOVE this.
Hearthstone releases crap Legendaries all the time, but Runeterra wants you to play with everybody.
This is great. I don't even care what these cosmetics are; just the idea is fantastic.
Champions in LoR fill a completely different role than Legendaries in HS.
LoR has a cap limit on champions in a deck, and champions are build around mechanics. You generally build a deck based on 2 things, the champions you put in the deck, and the core strategy associated with those champions (sometimes flexible enough to have more variants, but generally only 1-2 core strategies exist per champion currently). If your champion dies, you have multiple chances to replay the champion due to allowing 3 copies of a champion in your deck. Losing all your copies, generally is an indicator that you've lost the match (barring special circumstances) since champions are so core to your win condition.
Legendary cards in HS are unique, 1 per deck. And barring gimmicks which allow you to copy them, can't be resummoned. Legendary cards act more like "power plays" in HS. Yes some of them are core win conditions (like Mozaki, ETC, or Antonidas), but often even if those cards are removed, you still have a chance to win the game. The win condition of decks in HS is much more loosely defined by the power of the individual cards, and less about the overall synergy. (Please don't read this as that I'm saying HS doesn't require deck synergy, it does, just less than Runeterra seems to require.)
Lastly, the powerlevel of Champions/Decks in Runeterra is much more closely defined in difference than decks in HS. The top winrate decks in Hearthstone usually boast somewhere around 55-58% winrates, and can be as much as 5-8% of the entire meta, while the bottom meta decks usually have somewhere to 40-48% winrates, creating a discrepancy of somewhere between 10-15% between the best meta deck and the worst meta deck. The top winrates in LoR tend to stay similar to HS, but the bottom meta decks usually never dip below an even 50%. In addition LoR decks/champions since they are so closely tuned, tend to not carve out more than 1-3% of the meta, which means you see a lot more meta variety while playing the ladder.
So in short: "crap legendaries" are more or less power or niche legendaries (maybe even just fun or memey legendary cards), where champions are generally never memey in LoR since they are the core of a deck. (meme cards may be inserted into decks to have fun or support an archetype, like for example The Howling Abyss), but generally the champions themselves originally put into a deck are not memey.
As for the cosmetic aspect of this article, I guess it's cool? I mean it's not anything to write home about, all the "cosmetic" does is give you a leveled chevron depending on how much you've played that champion. Maybe it will evolve into something more, but this preliminary view into the cosmetic isn't anything that is telling me "this really encourages you to play this champion", any more than playing meta decks/champions would.
Your analysis of Champions vs. Legendaries is very sound.
I left this comment before the post was updated with the new images of what the cosmetics will look like (I agree it's not anything too special), but I really just thought it was neat that Riot is putting in this little encouragement to play with all of the cards...which, unlike Hearthstone, they also encourage you to have free if you play enough.
I also left this comment when my frustration with Hearthstone was at an all-time high, and have since quit the game. So it can and should be taken with a grain of salt.
This is very cool, especially considering that cosmetics seem to be LoR’s main income stream. And now they’re making a new type just to give away?
I love it. Definitely encourage player to play their favourite champs. Just like some kind of "main" a champion from League, right.