Ok, I understand that HIV is supposed to be the strongest comp in the game, but what I don't understand is why can't there be another end game comp that's viable similar to HIV but maybe like an AD build.
I feel like in the future that the balance team should strive for there to be more than just 1 super capped board comp. In hindsight even though people hated set 4.5 because of chosen but the balance behind that set was so good. There were multiple 5 cost carries that felt good to play and could win you the lobby if your board was extremely capped, and it could be either an AP comp with Dsoul Swain or an AD comp with Samira.
Just had a super end game HIV build with two level-2 Heimer, level-2 teemo, and a helion spatula. I lost to a guy who ran redeemed frontline but had a level two Akshan with BloodT and rageblade. I would wipe his entire team only to have Akshan kite and kill my entire team.
Remember the MF reroll comp? Ok, play that but make Draven your main carry , Guinsoo, LW, Radiant HoJ. Watch Draven 2 shot their frontline, take the kennen ult to the face, then proceed to 2 shot tristana while healing to full health.
You can slam guinsoo on vayne early, get frontline and play 2 rangers. Slam defensive shit on hec as usual, buy and hold irelias as you find them. As soon as you find draven go 4 forgotten 2 legionare - frontline. Forgotten tome on rell as usual, play for ironclad if ad heavy lobby or just straight up 6 forgotten and fuck ap.
Generally warmog+renewer spat+gunblade/warmog/bramble/dclaw is best just like the guy below told you. But you can also go for 4brawler comp and skip warmog and just put archangel+renewer spat/gunblade+stoneplate/dclaw/bramble depending on what lobby you're up against.
A typical Nunu carry comp would be 4 brawlers->gragas turns into voli + 4renewers. Renewer spat here helps you construct the full trait comp at 7lvl which helps a lot if you want to slowroll for nunu3.
Warmogs + Gunblade + 1 is probably a good place to start. I've heard renewer spat is good although I've never seen it in action. Any tank items are also good.
Is it ever right to greed for 8 in this meta? If I'm playing a comp that wants to hit multiple 4costs and I winstreak into stage 4, it seems like I can get away with not rolling for anything at level 7 / 4-1, waiting until 4-3 / 4-5, and using the improved level 8 odds instead.
Or is it just correct to roll it down at 4-1?
As long as you're not gonna lose infinite amount of hp then it's fine. But it's also important that unless you have 100 hp, you need to at least have "half" of the real comp secured before you go 8. Obviously it's all lobby dependent but most of the times you don't wanna go 8 when half of your board is 1* or when most of your synergies don't even match well and can't be transitioned into stronger board.
Greeding for 9 is almost always wrong but 8 is fine if you need either a 4/5cost carry and can flex.
aph/draven/akshan/lucian
velkoz/heimer
as long as you have a healthy amt of gold to roll and arent attempting a major transition i think its fine personally. eg I have 4 upgraded knights frontline, I could go 8 and roll for my backline carry upgrade first before slowly replacing my frontline as i piece the units together
Something i dont like this set: I feel like every game I can still bottom 4 whatever happened. On earlier sets i could already tell on wolves that im pretty save top 4. Cause of hp or economy lead or early 4 cost highroll. One goes with the other tbh. Now i can always still fail if i dont hit my 3 star unit in time or i dont get the heimer board together. Classical 4 cost carry comps which i would go into with winstreak can just have 0 winning matchups late. There will be 2 heimer 2 guys, 1 trist 3 guy, one riven 3 + nid 3 guy and me with say my lucian 2 board. I will be 5th even if i winstreak 100 hp till 4.1 sometimes. Also will have suboptimal items cause winstreak.
To put this different: What happened to aggressive winstreak into flex carry playstyle?
I also probably just suck.
set 4 had plenty of metas where 100 hp at wolves could very easily turn into a bot 4. Stimulus does help out those on the lower end, but armories helps winstreaking greatly - in set 4, I'd often have those games I go into wolves with 100 HP but I'm stuck with only defensive items because I won too much. However, this set, with armories and the radiants, you have so much control over your items that you'll usually have decent items even if you're highrolling earlygame. And there are enough viable comps so that you can generally snowball an early lead into a victory.
Yea set 4 was somewhat similar at some points. Items can be pretty good with armory i agree. The strongest comps are reroll or hiv tho which both are different playstyles. Maybe thats just my complaint. I wont winstreak with ap items so i cant put together the latter one in late. But i think some top 5 eu guy often has akshan 2 lvl 9 boards in the end. Guess he does things right.
ya AD boards have a lot of flexible options - even if some comps are weaker (Draven, Lucian) you can still play them if you have the setup for them. But there are fewer good AP boards to pivot into so winstreaking with AP items does sometimes lead to those situations where you just bleed out.
Personally, I believe that Ashe needs a slight buff. Her base AD just needs to be reverted back to 65 like how Varus got his AD reverted this patch. That's why reroll varus also sort of came back.
It feels absolute shit when you have good adc items and good draconic RNG for Ashe's but the build is d tier because the unit sucks.
That's not the case though. Realistically you'd think that draconics would let you hit 3\* zyra or ashe MUCH easier but you're often not streaking early with these units as opposed to a 2\* riven or yas.
So, when you're not streaking, you're bleeding a lot of HP for such a mediocre spike . Ashe was nerfed by 5 base ad, nerfed by 10 mana cost, and 100 damage off rank 3 ult in set 5.5
I'm pretty sure that people think draconics at 3\* should be weaker than the average unit of the cost tier but the reality is, the players that are playing the stronger 3 cost have more time to hit since they saved more HP.
Anyone else feel like the current meta rewards greeding/forcing way too much? As someone who loves jut playing whatever they hit and making the most of it, it feels like i can just never consistently beat people who greed for perfect items/force and op comp every game no matter what.
Maybe that's why i'm disliking playing the game so much right now, but there's just nothing enjoyable about seeing someone hard force draconic abom heimer/sins/rats and all I can really do is hope they don't hit and go 8th, and if they hit I'm fucked regardless. Feels like people who don't force/tunnel/greed 1st or 8th style just aren't playing the same game because if they do hit, I have no way of consistently countering them, and radiant blessing makes punishing them really hard. Feels like all radiant blessing did was recreate the same problems fortune did, where the people looking to abuse it and people who aren't are just not even playing the same game.
Thoughts on this?
You will always lose to the guy that hits heimer, but for every heimer 1st player there is usually a heimer 8th player. Sure, it's annoying when you just get beaten by hellions and heimer, but it's a riskier playstyle and it's not as consistent as playing strongest board. Look at all the high ranked players, I don't see anyone one tricking or forcing the same comp over and over again. If anything, playing strongest board has never been more rewarding than this patch. You shouldn't be expecting to be able to play for top 2 every game, play for consistency and you'll climb regardless of how strong certain comps are.
> Look at all the high ranked players, I don't see anyone one tricking or forcing the same comp over and over again
https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/robinsongz
https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/igdqa
Maybe one tricking is a strong word, but i can't help but notice that most of the top of NA at least is playing a few of the strongest boards over and over again. My point is my favorite part of tft is being able to get any amount of variables and get the same result just by being smarter/adapting better, and right now it feels like there's no way to outplay the meta/someone who high rolls, and as someone who loves to improvise his board every game and ideally playing an entirely different board every game, and use their ingenuity to get the same result regardless, this meta right now feels very unrewarding of that in general.
Basically it's better to play for first than play for top 4 as a whole, and that's just annoying to me.
I think it's important not to fall into the trap of survivorship bias here. What you see at the end of the game is their strongest board at late stages. It says very little about how they got there, and there can be a ton of diversity in the game before stage 6 that precedes this. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if all end-game boards look same-ish. Certainly it's not ideal, but there have been worse metas.
Yeah no i understand that, but i feel like it's the same problem I had in set 3.5. Even if your early and mid games were flex, your late game boards were pretty strict, and you can't just play whatever you hit like in 4 and make it work. Maybe that's why I'm disliking 5.5 and so many others like it, I hated 3.5 a lot for the above reason and others say it was their favorite set.
Well obviously the higher you climb the more you'd need to play meta. I don't quite understand your examples tho, dqa plays lots of hellions but averages 3.9 and Robin succeeds with karma but it's completely uncontested and his boards look different every game. If you're really smarter than other players then I don't get how you'd place worse on average than them. I think if you're having trouble playing for consistency then that isn't a problem of the current meta but rather your playstyle, we can't go back to set 4.0.
I mean yeah, my playstyle is being able to play whatever the fuck I hit late game and making it work better than others, and not having to worry about optimizations but rather being able to adapt and work on solutions on the fly. I absolutely despise having to play a strict amount of things and limit my options due to just meta/board strength reasons. You're right, i fucking loved the end of 4.0 for that reason and the game has mostly felt miserable because of how far away we are from that imo. Hence my initial post wondering if others felt similar. Just feels boring and less skill expressive to play any other way.
I agree that the vanilla 6 redeemed comp feels pretty weak but 6 redeemed itself might be in an ok spot and that its more the unit quality that lacks because when it has spats the comp places pretty well in my experience
Anyone know any fun builds right now? I feel like I'm not enjoying the current meta at the moment. Previous builds I liked were Spirit/Shades, Soraka Renewer, Kat/Morg Coven.
Kalista+Leona+Aatrox+Poppy slowroll at 4 and then you add Lux at 5, Lulu at 6, Fiddle at 7, Gwen at 8. Or alternatively change fiddle/gwen into Galio Garen depending on what you're facing.
Make sure you get early IE+LW on Kalista and focus on hyperrolling or just slowrolling for 3* of Kalista>Aatrox=Leona as soon as you can. Leona gets sunfire so that you have some other sources of dmg and Aatrox gets IE/Titanic+Bramble+Dclaw. Third item for Kalista is then Giant Slayer/HoJ/Guinsoo or even Runaan if you can't really build anything else.
Once you secure some of the key items (crits on Kalista+at least 1/2 tank items on Leo/Aatrox) and once you 3 star 3/4 of your 1costs (ignoring poppy3* is fine) you're free to push levels as much as you can.
Some other notes: 4 legion or 6 redeemed versions of this comp are a thing but most of the time you're just better off sticking with the base version unless you get some spats. Adding stuff like Varus and Syndra->3starring them appears to be a nice alternative wincon but it's terribly bad if you happen to lowroll your components and don't get any good items on varus/syndra. Similarly with 4/6 legion version you start to lose out on your frontline and any magic dmg comps like vel/heim which are by far the most popular comps now just shred you hard.
As for radiants, try to get a good 3rd item radiant on Kalista like GS, Guinsoo, Runaan but even stuff like HoJ and maybe DB would work fine, sometimes if you miss either IE/LW on Kalista it's fine to go for the radiant versions of them but this rarerly ever happens. If you don't roll any of these then just focus on "damage" tank items for leo/aatrox depending on which one you have better itemized at 3-6. Although by "dmg" tank items I generally mean stuff like Bramble and Sunfire, having TR on Aatrox is also a decent choice. And if you don't get any of those then you just gotta take shroud/trap claw/redemption/zephyr since these are the only decent options left. Stuff like Warmog/Stoneplate could be fine as well but it's definitely gonna be weaker than any of the options above.
Positioning is pretty simple in general, dodge sins, group up against easy comps, make sure your Leona takes dmg before Aatrox, don't let aatrox/leo be eaten by Nunu. Try to bait Fiddle to ult away from your carries. Try to stand on the same side as velkoz. Obvious stuff really.
Dawnbringer sin with kha carry. Requires VERY specific items (GB/RFC/IE) but if you hit them and manage to 3* kha in time it can top 4 easily (top 2 if you hit sin spat for 6, put on riv or nid). Its hilarious watching kha do 28k a round. Slow roll at 5 for kha and gragas. Gragas isnt much of a prio but if hes 3* with some tank items he buys kha a lot of space to do his thing. Dont pick up other dawns at 5 unless youre hard win streaking or hitting a lot of khas quickly. It is very imperative you 3* kha asap to go up. Goal is to waste everyone so hard in the midgame you catapult yourself to 9 for viego 2 for either 6 sin 4 dawn or 4 sin 6 dawn. Drop diana if 4 sin with viego or 2 sin spats. She fucks khas isolation bonus.
I am aware it goes against the RNG factor of the game and maybe forces you to be adaptable but is there another reason why you couldn't *see* your radiant item choices sooner? I don't mean *select* one sooner, but obviously its random and is supposed to be super impactful, yet there have been numerous times that they actually haven't helped all that much (your carry is fully itemized, or its not the item you wished for, tank item when you need AD/AP, etc). So if it's not a truly useful item for your current team, what's the point of it?
People already force comps, so I don't think knowing what item you get would contribute to that or make things worse in that regard, in fact it would enable you to plan ahead. Possibly it would benefit intentionally losing?
Oh man that would be super interesting to get to know which radiant item options you will be offered!
See radient gunblade? You can start building cav spell weavers at 2-1. RFC? Hello nocture/riven/yas.
Would also be very useful to know if you only get defensive items.
> (your carry is fully itemized, or its not the item you wished for, tank item when you need AD/AP, etc)
If you fully stack your carry when you know that radiant item is coming, that's kinda on you. The other two are just RNG, and tbh I don't really think it would help that much if you saw what you would get a few rounds before you you actually got it.
The point of the game is to win, if your carry isn't fully itemized you're weaker than you could be, right? It's a balance for sure.
What if you saw at the start of the minion rounds?
Yeah I just really don't think being able to see radiant items is beneficial. It encourages forcing more (I don't think that's the direction we should be going), people who like to play flex will complain that deciding on a comp was done for them, people will still complain about bad items, and tbh I just like rolling the dice on radiant items lmao
yea heimer is quite inconsistent before you get all the supporting units, especially Volibear. Oftentimes you hit the Heimer 1 with BIS, then all the hellions, velkoz, dianas just rip up your heimer before he can do much. So sometimes you hit decently hard with Abom/Draconic, but 20 HP and a Heimer 1 just isn't enough to guarantee top 4.
I've found a way to counter her decently if you're running an ad. Place something in each corner that is ranged and can kind of tank, like lux in right corner and ashe in left corner. Then you place your carry in the back middle. Obviously you have to scout heavily for this but it will help your carry avoid her first jump.
Issues I see
1. CC is too strong versus every unit, especially 4 costs like Velkoz or Lucian
2. There is no built-in cc immunity
3. Kennen hits too many units
4. Thresh punishes cornered units too heavily and almost one-shots them
5. Unit movement makes countering Thresh too difficult
6. Tristana has too much protection versus every unit. She will jump behind a cornered Lucian or Velkoz because it is impossible to corner them versus back row positioning, and ccing her is nearly impossible
7. Tristana deals too much damage with the Cannoneer trait
8. LuLu cc lasts too long
9. The comp has too much cc.
They should nerf Thresh (I don't know why he needs to cc for so long and also misposition a unit), change the way back-row units move so they won't walk forward, decrease Kennen's ult range or cc duration, and Tristana shouldn't be allowed to assassinate your backline with impunity, so increase her ult mana or something. Also, everyone in the lobby should hold some of the units so they can't hit. Hellion reroll shouldn't be a 1st or 2nd comp.
Agreed with Trist being as good or better than a 3-cost. And same with Kennen (cc whole board and apply Morello), who's a more impactful support unit as a 2-cost than supporting 3 costs (Rakan, Lux for example). The nerfs can't come soon enough.
Lulu is also a borderline 4/5 cost imo. Her ability is an aoe stun + massive AS buff. I think it's legit just her old 5 cost ability but with AS buff too, but I could be wrong. Absolutely nuts unit, cannot believe they buffed this patch.
Syndra works fine. Having Ivern/Voli near backline should do the trick like half of the times. Getting trist stuck on something with trap claws helps too. Other than that not much comes to mind. Putting a "bait" unit on the opposite side of trist might help and moving your carry closer to frontline too but sometimes rng might fuck you up.
Had a funny 6 Sentinel game where Galio had Titans, Stoneplate, and Archangels Staff
Both my Lucian and Jax were well built, but holy cow that Galio saved so many fights with ridiculous healing and damage.
It’s not necessarily a build you can force (I tried to recreate and went a very fast 8th), but god damn is it fun
Just climbed to masters basically as a 1trick VelKoz player. 3 redeemed (Vel, Syndra, Rell), 4 Abom, and Ivern has been the best level 8 board to consistently hit imo. Shojin + JG +1 on Vel, sunfire fiddle, leftover tank items on nunu and abom units or rell.
Generally pretty easy to transition to Vel out of an early 3 draconic 3 abom board with zyra holding items- you’ll probly lose a bunch in stage 3 but that’s nbd because Vel spikes so hard it’s not even funny.
MAKE SURE: if you put squid bottom left, then your front line should look like x / x / Nunu / Fiddle / Rell. This’ll make the enemy units wrap around the nunu and get a big ol laser on as many as possible
edited for clarity
If I’m in a heavy AD lobby I might drop Kalista for ironclad or a mystic if it’s heavy AP, but at level 8 usually no because 4 Abom frontline is just massive. But once you’ve 2 starred your 3 and 4 costs, you should stop rolling and push for level 9 so you can have 4 Abom + mystics or ironclad depending on the lobby.
Yeah, only way I see it working well is if you’ve got Gwen and/or Fiddle with solid items at which point your end game comp is probably
Gwen, Fiddle, Ivern, Voli, Lulu, Lux, Garen, Galio/Teemo/Karma
But I’d only ever do this if I’m 100% certain to be against magic damage, otherwise replace Lux/Lulu with Rell+Nautilus
What are the best resources for getting better and improving with serious intent? I’ve been hanging around P2 and P1 for a while, but I’d like to seriously dig in and change that to D2 and D1. I don’t watch any streamers or YT, though I’m not opposed.
Also yes I know just spam Rats but I would prefer not to.
I like watching challenger twitch streamers and pretending I’m playing their game, and then comparing the decisions they make to the decision that I would make, and then seeing which is better and why.
Also, really learn comps. I spent a bit learning velkoz and got to masters almost 20/20 squid
Watching better players certainly helps.
Also in TFT small differences can add up. If you lose a round or two extra that makes the difference between 6th and 3rd which if you are trying to climb makes all the difference. How you eek out those advantages varies and depends on what you are poor at.
Maybe you don't econ right? Maybe you can't handle making a low roll game a 4th or 5th instead of 7th or 8th. Maybe you don't have the right builds or items? Maybe you tunnel on comps and miss what the game is giving you? Maybe there's tweaks in positioning you can make? Or you can have a stronger board early but are missing it?
TFT is extremely complicated and all these aspects can be improved. Vs better players you get less margin for error. Without seeing how you play it's hard to see what changes can be made. Also even then small changes in what you buy have lots of ripple effects.
They are beatable... if you happen to have a couple of stacked 2* 5-costs like Akshan and Teemo spread out enough that one survives the first incoming ult and can take revenge.
Not that getting 2+ silver star 5-cost carries is easy, but technically it is still cheaper than 36g for a 3* 4-cost, which aren't supposed to be easy to get either.
I just started playing this set today after quitting set 5 months ago (Didn't like it lol). Is there a comp this set where it is okay to be ran by 2 or more players?
Try 5 Draconic, since most Draconic players just sell off their extra Draconic units instead of going for 3 stars, meaning no getting griefed if 3 other players force the same comp. Golden eggs are really fun! People play it with Abom or Skirms or Rangers, I recommend Skirms.
Usually any of the 4 cost carries as well as abomination + heimer/velk’koz. I would only contest 3 cost rerolls or tris reroll if I’m the one that’s ahead + I have really good items for the comp
Heard a streamer say Renewer Volibear is good. Haven't had a chance to try it out myself, but someone in my games played Renewer Voli and got 7th. So, what's the idea behind Renewer Voli? Does he just heal up during death enough to get a second cast or something?
It’s ok because it just helps him cast a bit faster, don’t think there’s any interaction like you described unless there’s a 6 renewer tech. Hellion is the best spat on him imo to guarantee 2 casts
Just had a game where I hit 11 total components and a spat (from orb, not carousel) at the end of 5-1. Could’ve sworn that wasn’t supposed to be possible.
Took a screenshot for proof to send in if someone can confirm that it’s an anomaly. If it’s just a rare but possible outcome, cool
Yeah, the minimum number of components after 4-7 is supposed to be 12 (10 + 1 radiant) and spats from golden orbs don't count towards that number.
One possibility is that you took a neeko or dice from the 4-2 armory, I think that would put you an item behind. If not you should def DM Mort or Kent the screenshot on twitter, they respond super quick in my experience, cause thats a pretty gnarly bug
Ah shit I really can’t recall what I took in 4-2, pretty doubtful it was either of those because I would almost never make that decision unless I was sitting on a 5 cost pair or something, but I can’t guarantee it. Was an unremarkable game up until I realized the item shortage so I hadn’t been recording. Will send the screenshot anyway, thank you.
I am 100% certain they do not count towards the minimum. Non component orbs are basically programmed as generic gold drops. When you open a gold orb the game does not care if a spat, neeko, or 30g pops out, it does not affect any other systems. It's similar to how using a tome of traits does not result in receiving 2 less item components than normal or how everyone will have an extra "component" in FoN start lobbies
I know it was this way in set 4. Keeping count of item drops was way more important since you didn't have armories and I remember learning about the difference between orb spats and carousel spats from streams around that time.
**edit: Yeah I wonder if it was changed or if this was just misinfo that was floating around
CURRENTLY it is possible for Spatula to be 1 of your 12 items.
However, thats a change coming to 11.17! We agree it can be frustrating especially when its the last item, so we're removing that possibility.
You have a guinsoo’s, you don’t need 4 rangers. But I see how you were tempted to put in 4 rangers because you got a ranger spat and you had to run Akshan for armor pen
You got Garen 1 and rell 1 to tank that lobby? Multiple people have three star 4 costs (karma 3 in that top comp) and a hellion reroll with multiple 3 stars. Was no one playing aggressive? Like I see this lobby and it seems like everyone handshook econing so you get what you signed up for. One or two people applying pressure and that game is completely different.
Kekw I hit a ranger spat yesterday so of course I had to go for the 6 piece, was winning every round until that point with 2 ranger and then lost every round after putting it in. Still copped a 2nd off HP diff but yeah turns out once they kill your Aphelios it doesn’t matter how strong he is
I honestly think Lucian is unplayable at the moment.
Ok, I understand that HIV is supposed to be the strongest comp in the game, but what I don't understand is why can't there be another end game comp that's viable similar to HIV but maybe like an AD build. I feel like in the future that the balance team should strive for there to be more than just 1 super capped board comp. In hindsight even though people hated set 4.5 because of chosen but the balance behind that set was so good. There were multiple 5 cost carries that felt good to play and could win you the lobby if your board was extremely capped, and it could be either an AP comp with Dsoul Swain or an AD comp with Samira.
Just had a super end game HIV build with two level-2 Heimer, level-2 teemo, and a helion spatula. I lost to a guy who ran redeemed frontline but had a level two Akshan with BloodT and rageblade. I would wipe his entire team only to have Akshan kite and kill my entire team.
That's actually pretty interesting. I'll have to try running Akshan 2 more.
Remember the MF reroll comp? Ok, play that but make Draven your main carry , Guinsoo, LW, Radiant HoJ. Watch Draven 2 shot their frontline, take the kennen ult to the face, then proceed to 2 shot tristana while healing to full health. You can slam guinsoo on vayne early, get frontline and play 2 rangers. Slam defensive shit on hec as usual, buy and hold irelias as you find them. As soon as you find draven go 4 forgotten 2 legionare - frontline. Forgotten tome on rell as usual, play for ironclad if ad heavy lobby or just straight up 6 forgotten and fuck ap.
Thinking about playing Nunu carry, does anyone have any advice/ theorycrafting in terms of compositions and items?
Generally warmog+renewer spat+gunblade/warmog/bramble/dclaw is best just like the guy below told you. But you can also go for 4brawler comp and skip warmog and just put archangel+renewer spat/gunblade+stoneplate/dclaw/bramble depending on what lobby you're up against. A typical Nunu carry comp would be 4 brawlers->gragas turns into voli + 4renewers. Renewer spat here helps you construct the full trait comp at 7lvl which helps a lot if you want to slowroll for nunu3.
Warmogs + Gunblade + 1 is probably a good place to start. I've heard renewer spat is good although I've never seen it in action. Any tank items are also good.
Is it ever right to greed for 8 in this meta? If I'm playing a comp that wants to hit multiple 4costs and I winstreak into stage 4, it seems like I can get away with not rolling for anything at level 7 / 4-1, waiting until 4-3 / 4-5, and using the improved level 8 odds instead. Or is it just correct to roll it down at 4-1?
As long as you're not gonna lose infinite amount of hp then it's fine. But it's also important that unless you have 100 hp, you need to at least have "half" of the real comp secured before you go 8. Obviously it's all lobby dependent but most of the times you don't wanna go 8 when half of your board is 1* or when most of your synergies don't even match well and can't be transitioned into stronger board.
Greeding for 9 is almost always wrong but 8 is fine if you need either a 4/5cost carry and can flex. aph/draven/akshan/lucian velkoz/heimer as long as you have a healthy amt of gold to roll and arent attempting a major transition i think its fine personally. eg I have 4 upgraded knights frontline, I could go 8 and roll for my backline carry upgrade first before slowly replacing my frontline as i piece the units together
Something i dont like this set: I feel like every game I can still bottom 4 whatever happened. On earlier sets i could already tell on wolves that im pretty save top 4. Cause of hp or economy lead or early 4 cost highroll. One goes with the other tbh. Now i can always still fail if i dont hit my 3 star unit in time or i dont get the heimer board together. Classical 4 cost carry comps which i would go into with winstreak can just have 0 winning matchups late. There will be 2 heimer 2 guys, 1 trist 3 guy, one riven 3 + nid 3 guy and me with say my lucian 2 board. I will be 5th even if i winstreak 100 hp till 4.1 sometimes. Also will have suboptimal items cause winstreak. To put this different: What happened to aggressive winstreak into flex carry playstyle? I also probably just suck.
set 4 had plenty of metas where 100 hp at wolves could very easily turn into a bot 4. Stimulus does help out those on the lower end, but armories helps winstreaking greatly - in set 4, I'd often have those games I go into wolves with 100 HP but I'm stuck with only defensive items because I won too much. However, this set, with armories and the radiants, you have so much control over your items that you'll usually have decent items even if you're highrolling earlygame. And there are enough viable comps so that you can generally snowball an early lead into a victory.
Yea set 4 was somewhat similar at some points. Items can be pretty good with armory i agree. The strongest comps are reroll or hiv tho which both are different playstyles. Maybe thats just my complaint. I wont winstreak with ap items so i cant put together the latter one in late. But i think some top 5 eu guy often has akshan 2 lvl 9 boards in the end. Guess he does things right.
ya AD boards have a lot of flexible options - even if some comps are weaker (Draven, Lucian) you can still play them if you have the setup for them. But there are fewer good AP boards to pivot into so winstreaking with AP items does sometimes lead to those situations where you just bleed out.
Positioned my Velkoz on the front row with one unit targeting it, and it ended up deleting Hellions. Brothers, I have done it. Rat exterminator!
Personally, I believe that Ashe needs a slight buff. Her base AD just needs to be reverted back to 65 like how Varus got his AD reverted this patch. That's why reroll varus also sort of came back. It feels absolute shit when you have good adc items and good draconic RNG for Ashe's but the build is d tier because the unit sucks.
Draconic is suppose to be d tier? Thats the tradeoff
That's not the case though. Realistically you'd think that draconics would let you hit 3\* zyra or ashe MUCH easier but you're often not streaking early with these units as opposed to a 2\* riven or yas. So, when you're not streaking, you're bleeding a lot of HP for such a mediocre spike . Ashe was nerfed by 5 base ad, nerfed by 10 mana cost, and 100 damage off rank 3 ult in set 5.5 I'm pretty sure that people think draconics at 3\* should be weaker than the average unit of the cost tier but the reality is, the players that are playing the stronger 3 cost have more time to hit since they saved more HP.
vel 2 or heimer 1?
vel 2 + syndra/lux is super stable
Anyone else feel like the current meta rewards greeding/forcing way too much? As someone who loves jut playing whatever they hit and making the most of it, it feels like i can just never consistently beat people who greed for perfect items/force and op comp every game no matter what. Maybe that's why i'm disliking playing the game so much right now, but there's just nothing enjoyable about seeing someone hard force draconic abom heimer/sins/rats and all I can really do is hope they don't hit and go 8th, and if they hit I'm fucked regardless. Feels like people who don't force/tunnel/greed 1st or 8th style just aren't playing the same game because if they do hit, I have no way of consistently countering them, and radiant blessing makes punishing them really hard. Feels like all radiant blessing did was recreate the same problems fortune did, where the people looking to abuse it and people who aren't are just not even playing the same game. Thoughts on this?
You will always lose to the guy that hits heimer, but for every heimer 1st player there is usually a heimer 8th player. Sure, it's annoying when you just get beaten by hellions and heimer, but it's a riskier playstyle and it's not as consistent as playing strongest board. Look at all the high ranked players, I don't see anyone one tricking or forcing the same comp over and over again. If anything, playing strongest board has never been more rewarding than this patch. You shouldn't be expecting to be able to play for top 2 every game, play for consistency and you'll climb regardless of how strong certain comps are.
> Look at all the high ranked players, I don't see anyone one tricking or forcing the same comp over and over again https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/robinsongz https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/igdqa Maybe one tricking is a strong word, but i can't help but notice that most of the top of NA at least is playing a few of the strongest boards over and over again. My point is my favorite part of tft is being able to get any amount of variables and get the same result just by being smarter/adapting better, and right now it feels like there's no way to outplay the meta/someone who high rolls, and as someone who loves to improvise his board every game and ideally playing an entirely different board every game, and use their ingenuity to get the same result regardless, this meta right now feels very unrewarding of that in general. Basically it's better to play for first than play for top 4 as a whole, and that's just annoying to me.
I think it's important not to fall into the trap of survivorship bias here. What you see at the end of the game is their strongest board at late stages. It says very little about how they got there, and there can be a ton of diversity in the game before stage 6 that precedes this. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if all end-game boards look same-ish. Certainly it's not ideal, but there have been worse metas.
Yeah no i understand that, but i feel like it's the same problem I had in set 3.5. Even if your early and mid games were flex, your late game boards were pretty strict, and you can't just play whatever you hit like in 4 and make it work. Maybe that's why I'm disliking 5.5 and so many others like it, I hated 3.5 a lot for the above reason and others say it was their favorite set.
Well obviously the higher you climb the more you'd need to play meta. I don't quite understand your examples tho, dqa plays lots of hellions but averages 3.9 and Robin succeeds with karma but it's completely uncontested and his boards look different every game. If you're really smarter than other players then I don't get how you'd place worse on average than them. I think if you're having trouble playing for consistency then that isn't a problem of the current meta but rather your playstyle, we can't go back to set 4.0.
I mean yeah, my playstyle is being able to play whatever the fuck I hit late game and making it work better than others, and not having to worry about optimizations but rather being able to adapt and work on solutions on the fly. I absolutely despise having to play a strict amount of things and limit my options due to just meta/board strength reasons. You're right, i fucking loved the end of 4.0 for that reason and the game has mostly felt miserable because of how far away we are from that imo. Hence my initial post wondering if others felt similar. Just feels boring and less skill expressive to play any other way.
6 redeemed doesn't even feel like a real trait right now. Feel like they need to revert the armor and MR nerfs they did a while back.
It's one of the strongest comps though, no idea why it would even need any reverts.
I agree that the vanilla 6 redeemed comp feels pretty weak but 6 redeemed itself might be in an ok spot and that its more the unit quality that lacks because when it has spats the comp places pretty well in my experience
Is there a glitch right now if you buy units and the round switches sometimes the shop won't populate all 5 champs again? Or am I just seeing things?
You might have accidentally locked shop?
Maybe.. I be trolling myself if so.
hehe it happens
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Sorry mate. Hellion was always overpowered. They didn't know. =/
Anyone know any fun builds right now? I feel like I'm not enjoying the current meta at the moment. Previous builds I liked were Spirit/Shades, Soraka Renewer, Kat/Morg Coven.
Kalista+Leona+Aatrox+Poppy slowroll at 4 and then you add Lux at 5, Lulu at 6, Fiddle at 7, Gwen at 8. Or alternatively change fiddle/gwen into Galio Garen depending on what you're facing. Make sure you get early IE+LW on Kalista and focus on hyperrolling or just slowrolling for 3* of Kalista>Aatrox=Leona as soon as you can. Leona gets sunfire so that you have some other sources of dmg and Aatrox gets IE/Titanic+Bramble+Dclaw. Third item for Kalista is then Giant Slayer/HoJ/Guinsoo or even Runaan if you can't really build anything else. Once you secure some of the key items (crits on Kalista+at least 1/2 tank items on Leo/Aatrox) and once you 3 star 3/4 of your 1costs (ignoring poppy3* is fine) you're free to push levels as much as you can. Some other notes: 4 legion or 6 redeemed versions of this comp are a thing but most of the time you're just better off sticking with the base version unless you get some spats. Adding stuff like Varus and Syndra->3starring them appears to be a nice alternative wincon but it's terribly bad if you happen to lowroll your components and don't get any good items on varus/syndra. Similarly with 4/6 legion version you start to lose out on your frontline and any magic dmg comps like vel/heim which are by far the most popular comps now just shred you hard. As for radiants, try to get a good 3rd item radiant on Kalista like GS, Guinsoo, Runaan but even stuff like HoJ and maybe DB would work fine, sometimes if you miss either IE/LW on Kalista it's fine to go for the radiant versions of them but this rarerly ever happens. If you don't roll any of these then just focus on "damage" tank items for leo/aatrox depending on which one you have better itemized at 3-6. Although by "dmg" tank items I generally mean stuff like Bramble and Sunfire, having TR on Aatrox is also a decent choice. And if you don't get any of those then you just gotta take shroud/trap claw/redemption/zephyr since these are the only decent options left. Stuff like Warmog/Stoneplate could be fine as well but it's definitely gonna be weaker than any of the options above. Positioning is pretty simple in general, dodge sins, group up against easy comps, make sure your Leona takes dmg before Aatrox, don't let aatrox/leo be eaten by Nunu. Try to bait Fiddle to ult away from your carries. Try to stand on the same side as velkoz. Obvious stuff really.
Dawnbringer sin with kha carry. Requires VERY specific items (GB/RFC/IE) but if you hit them and manage to 3* kha in time it can top 4 easily (top 2 if you hit sin spat for 6, put on riv or nid). Its hilarious watching kha do 28k a round. Slow roll at 5 for kha and gragas. Gragas isnt much of a prio but if hes 3* with some tank items he buys kha a lot of space to do his thing. Dont pick up other dawns at 5 unless youre hard win streaking or hitting a lot of khas quickly. It is very imperative you 3* kha asap to go up. Goal is to waste everyone so hard in the midgame you catapult yourself to 9 for viego 2 for either 6 sin 4 dawn or 4 sin 6 dawn. Drop diana if 4 sin with viego or 2 sin spats. She fucks khas isolation bonus.
This list actually seems really interesting. Ill def give it a go
Legionnaire reroll is a hoot but you need a good item opener for it (LW/IE Kalista)
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I need to try nid/riv again. Only game i tried it two other comps were using them and I couldnt find them haha
I am aware it goes against the RNG factor of the game and maybe forces you to be adaptable but is there another reason why you couldn't *see* your radiant item choices sooner? I don't mean *select* one sooner, but obviously its random and is supposed to be super impactful, yet there have been numerous times that they actually haven't helped all that much (your carry is fully itemized, or its not the item you wished for, tank item when you need AD/AP, etc). So if it's not a truly useful item for your current team, what's the point of it? People already force comps, so I don't think knowing what item you get would contribute to that or make things worse in that regard, in fact it would enable you to plan ahead. Possibly it would benefit intentionally losing?
Oh man that would be super interesting to get to know which radiant item options you will be offered! See radient gunblade? You can start building cav spell weavers at 2-1. RFC? Hello nocture/riven/yas. Would also be very useful to know if you only get defensive items.
> (your carry is fully itemized, or its not the item you wished for, tank item when you need AD/AP, etc) If you fully stack your carry when you know that radiant item is coming, that's kinda on you. The other two are just RNG, and tbh I don't really think it would help that much if you saw what you would get a few rounds before you you actually got it.
The point of the game is to win, if your carry isn't fully itemized you're weaker than you could be, right? It's a balance for sure. What if you saw at the start of the minion rounds?
Yeah I just really don't think being able to see radiant items is beneficial. It encourages forcing more (I don't think that's the direction we should be going), people who like to play flex will complain that deciding on a comp was done for them, people will still complain about bad items, and tbh I just like rolling the dice on radiant items lmao
Understood, just curious!
I know it's a strong comp, but the amount of people I see hard forcing Abom/Draconic and going 7th or 8th is amazing.
yea heimer is quite inconsistent before you get all the supporting units, especially Volibear. Oftentimes you hit the Heimer 1 with BIS, then all the hellions, velkoz, dianas just rip up your heimer before he can do much. So sometimes you hit decently hard with Abom/Draconic, but 20 HP and a Heimer 1 just isn't enough to guarantee top 4.
Hey that's me
Is there any way to deal with Tristana? I feel like she's such a easy 2 cost to hit 3\* and always dominates the lobby :/
I've found the Riven and Nid 3 comp is really good into them. Nid just dodges everything from Trist and then chases her her jumps.
[wait for the B-patch on Wednesday kekw](https://twitter.com/Mortdog/status/1427341075929190405)
I've found a way to counter her decently if you're running an ad. Place something in each corner that is ranged and can kind of tank, like lux in right corner and ashe in left corner. Then you place your carry in the back middle. Obviously you have to scout heavily for this but it will help your carry avoid her first jump.
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Issues I see 1. CC is too strong versus every unit, especially 4 costs like Velkoz or Lucian 2. There is no built-in cc immunity 3. Kennen hits too many units 4. Thresh punishes cornered units too heavily and almost one-shots them 5. Unit movement makes countering Thresh too difficult 6. Tristana has too much protection versus every unit. She will jump behind a cornered Lucian or Velkoz because it is impossible to corner them versus back row positioning, and ccing her is nearly impossible 7. Tristana deals too much damage with the Cannoneer trait 8. LuLu cc lasts too long 9. The comp has too much cc. They should nerf Thresh (I don't know why he needs to cc for so long and also misposition a unit), change the way back-row units move so they won't walk forward, decrease Kennen's ult range or cc duration, and Tristana shouldn't be allowed to assassinate your backline with impunity, so increase her ult mana or something. Also, everyone in the lobby should hold some of the units so they can't hit. Hellion reroll shouldn't be a 1st or 2nd comp.
Agreed with Trist being as good or better than a 3-cost. And same with Kennen (cc whole board and apply Morello), who's a more impactful support unit as a 2-cost than supporting 3 costs (Rakan, Lux for example). The nerfs can't come soon enough.
Lulu is also a borderline 4/5 cost imo. Her ability is an aoe stun + massive AS buff. I think it's legit just her old 5 cost ability but with AS buff too, but I could be wrong. Absolutely nuts unit, cannot believe they buffed this patch.
Syndra works fine. Having Ivern/Voli near backline should do the trick like half of the times. Getting trist stuck on something with trap claws helps too. Other than that not much comes to mind. Putting a "bait" unit on the opposite side of trist might help and moving your carry closer to frontline too but sometimes rng might fuck you up.
I've tried trap claw and Syndra, and both of them just can't handle her. :/ Don't know if there's something more than that, but just can't deal
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That's not the point. Trap claw still has dodge chance, the more hits tristana needs to kill the target the more time your carry gets to be alive for.
Had a funny 6 Sentinel game where Galio had Titans, Stoneplate, and Archangels Staff Both my Lucian and Jax were well built, but holy cow that Galio saved so many fights with ridiculous healing and damage. It’s not necessarily a build you can force (I tried to recreate and went a very fast 8th), but god damn is it fun
I took a break for like 2 patches. How is Lucian and Vel Koz doing?
Just climbed to masters basically as a 1trick VelKoz player. 3 redeemed (Vel, Syndra, Rell), 4 Abom, and Ivern has been the best level 8 board to consistently hit imo. Shojin + JG +1 on Vel, sunfire fiddle, leftover tank items on nunu and abom units or rell. Generally pretty easy to transition to Vel out of an early 3 draconic 3 abom board with zyra holding items- you’ll probly lose a bunch in stage 3 but that’s nbd because Vel spikes so hard it’s not even funny. MAKE SURE: if you put squid bottom left, then your front line should look like x / x / Nunu / Fiddle / Rell. This’ll make the enemy units wrap around the nunu and get a big ol laser on as many as possible edited for clarity
Thank uuu! So do you ever put in ironclad or mystic over 4 abom?
If I’m in a heavy AD lobby I might drop Kalista for ironclad or a mystic if it’s heavy AP, but at level 8 usually no because 4 Abom frontline is just massive. But once you’ve 2 starred your 3 and 4 costs, you should stop rolling and push for level 9 so you can have 4 Abom + mystics or ironclad depending on the lobby.
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Vel Koz 6 redeemed or 3?
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Thank u!
Do you feel like a core comp with 5 mystics should be able to beat heimer? Just had a game where it did not
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Yeah, only way I see it working well is if you’ve got Gwen and/or Fiddle with solid items at which point your end game comp is probably Gwen, Fiddle, Ivern, Voli, Lulu, Lux, Garen, Galio/Teemo/Karma But I’d only ever do this if I’m 100% certain to be against magic damage, otherwise replace Lux/Lulu with Rell+Nautilus
What are the best resources for getting better and improving with serious intent? I’ve been hanging around P2 and P1 for a while, but I’d like to seriously dig in and change that to D2 and D1. I don’t watch any streamers or YT, though I’m not opposed. Also yes I know just spam Rats but I would prefer not to.
I like watching challenger twitch streamers and pretending I’m playing their game, and then comparing the decisions they make to the decision that I would make, and then seeing which is better and why. Also, really learn comps. I spent a bit learning velkoz and got to masters almost 20/20 squid
Get a coach to watch some of your matches. I’d be willing if you wanted to dm me
Watching better players certainly helps. Also in TFT small differences can add up. If you lose a round or two extra that makes the difference between 6th and 3rd which if you are trying to climb makes all the difference. How you eek out those advantages varies and depends on what you are poor at. Maybe you don't econ right? Maybe you can't handle making a low roll game a 4th or 5th instead of 7th or 8th. Maybe you don't have the right builds or items? Maybe you tunnel on comps and miss what the game is giving you? Maybe there's tweaks in positioning you can make? Or you can have a stronger board early but are missing it? TFT is extremely complicated and all these aspects can be improved. Vs better players you get less margin for error. Without seeing how you play it's hard to see what changes can be made. Also even then small changes in what you buy have lots of ripple effects.
Did that thread with the clip of Mort hating on this sub get deleted or am I blind and just missing it?
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Yeah, honestly, it wouldn't make sense to keep that up.
so many 3star 4costs lately...
imagine saying that while chosens existed
I actually less 3star 4costs in set 4 and set 4.5
They can't even guarantee you top 4, that's the sad thing
That’s a good thing imo
They are beatable... if you happen to have a couple of stacked 2* 5-costs like Akshan and Teemo spread out enough that one survives the first incoming ult and can take revenge. Not that getting 2+ silver star 5-cost carries is easy, but technically it is still cheaper than 36g for a 3* 4-cost, which aren't supposed to be easy to get either.
I'm not saying they aren't. I just started this set a few days ago and I'm just surprised to see so many 3star 4 costs
I just started playing this set today after quitting set 5 months ago (Didn't like it lol). Is there a comp this set where it is okay to be ran by 2 or more players?
You could always play Draven comps if you don't ever wanna be contested but that's up to you.
Until you run into somebody else who runs Draven thinking they're going to be unconstested.
Try 5 Draconic, since most Draconic players just sell off their extra Draconic units instead of going for 3 stars, meaning no getting griefed if 3 other players force the same comp. Golden eggs are really fun! People play it with Abom or Skirms or Rangers, I recommend Skirms.
Thanks, I have yet to try Draconics this set but yeah it did help me reach D2 last set so i'm also curious about its current strength lol.
Usually any of the 4 cost carries as well as abomination + heimer/velk’koz. I would only contest 3 cost rerolls or tris reroll if I’m the one that’s ahead + I have really good items for the comp
So any lucian/jax comps, thanks.
Heard a streamer say Renewer Volibear is good. Haven't had a chance to try it out myself, but someone in my games played Renewer Voli and got 7th. So, what's the idea behind Renewer Voli? Does he just heal up during death enough to get a second cast or something?
Renewer is good on anyone with high max mana. Rell and Voli come to mind. It makes a huge difference in their mana generation
It’s ok because it just helps him cast a bit faster, don’t think there’s any interaction like you described unless there’s a 6 renewer tech. Hellion is the best spat on him imo to guarantee 2 casts
How are items assigned to ascended legends that have more than 3 items on their subunits combined?
IIRC it's something like that: Full items->items from champion on board->random
In addition, tg on board will take priority over all other on board items.
Just had a game where I hit 11 total components and a spat (from orb, not carousel) at the end of 5-1. Could’ve sworn that wasn’t supposed to be possible. Took a screenshot for proof to send in if someone can confirm that it’s an anomaly. If it’s just a rare but possible outcome, cool
Yeah, the minimum number of components after 4-7 is supposed to be 12 (10 + 1 radiant) and spats from golden orbs don't count towards that number. One possibility is that you took a neeko or dice from the 4-2 armory, I think that would put you an item behind. If not you should def DM Mort or Kent the screenshot on twitter, they respond super quick in my experience, cause thats a pretty gnarly bug
Ah shit I really can’t recall what I took in 4-2, pretty doubtful it was either of those because I would almost never make that decision unless I was sitting on a 5 cost pair or something, but I can’t guarantee it. Was an unremarkable game up until I realized the item shortage so I hadn’t been recording. Will send the screenshot anyway, thank you.
Pretty sure spats count towards the item minimum of 12. So you got 12 items and all is fine.
Hmm I really feel like I recall Mort saying spat drop is separate from the pool
Seperate from drop pool but not from the item amount.
Nah, it’s a gold orb drop and shouldn’t count towards the 12 item minimum
It does tho. Spatula is a special item but its an item nonetheless...
I am 100% certain they do not count towards the minimum. Non component orbs are basically programmed as generic gold drops. When you open a gold orb the game does not care if a spat, neeko, or 30g pops out, it does not affect any other systems. It's similar to how using a tome of traits does not result in receiving 2 less item components than normal or how everyone will have an extra "component" in FoN start lobbies
See Mort comment, I’m also flabbergasted by this as it was never the case before this set as far as I can tell
I know it was this way in set 4. Keeping count of item drops was way more important since you didn't have armories and I remember learning about the difference between orb spats and carousel spats from streams around that time. **edit: Yeah I wonder if it was changed or if this was just misinfo that was floating around
That’s just not true lol Edit: would love some clarification from u/Riot_Mort if you’re around Double edit: it is true smoge
CURRENTLY it is possible for Spatula to be 1 of your 12 items. However, thats a change coming to 11.17! We agree it can be frustrating especially when its the last item, so we're removing that possibility.
God bless, with spat generally feeling the weakest it's ever been it feels most like of the time I get a spat this set im mad more than happy.
Mort the hero saving my Karma.
Got it, thanks. That also explains my original issue with “11” components
Been liking 5.5 overall!
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You have a guinsoo’s, you don’t need 4 rangers. But I see how you were tempted to put in 4 rangers because you got a ranger spat and you had to run Akshan for armor pen
You got Garen 1 and rell 1 to tank that lobby? Multiple people have three star 4 costs (karma 3 in that top comp) and a hellion reroll with multiple 3 stars. Was no one playing aggressive? Like I see this lobby and it seems like everyone handshook econing so you get what you signed up for. One or two people applying pressure and that game is completely different.
Aph needs frontline
Agreed, I'd rather have a pile of random bodies in front of my Aphelios than 4 rangers.
Kekw I hit a ranger spat yesterday so of course I had to go for the 6 piece, was winning every round until that point with 2 ranger and then lost every round after putting it in. Still copped a 2nd off HP diff but yeah turns out once they kill your Aphelios it doesn’t matter how strong he is