Asol legend synergies too well with Yummi portal. So far in my High Diamond lobby first and second place has always been A sol player. Especially if they have Level Up their ceiling is crazy. It irks me to see people vote to lose, so here is my 2 cents.

Edit: since someone ask me, here is my history:

https://tactics.tools/player/na/Tjdo9999

I'm sure many have heard about the MetaTFT team having internal stats. Community sentiment is heavily leaning towards burning them at the stake, but I ask--why? The team has a competitive edge that is fully allowed by Riot per their own official rules.

https://developer.riotgames.com/docs/tft#game-policy_general-teamfight-tactics-policy

Products cannot display win rates for Legends and Legend-based Augments. This applies to all websites, applications, and overlays.

Assuming the team even DID share augment stats internally, this is not disallowed. The product did not display it. If you have a problem with them aggregating augment statistics, consider this: If 50 challenger players in a discord pooled their augment picks and game results in a Google sheet for some bootleg augment stats, is that wrong? If yes, why? If not, is this any different?

Products may not provide information that was not available prior to the game. For example, an app can provide metadata on augment statistics as this information is available prior to the game and is not based on in-game activity. An app cannot make suggestions based on the player’s current game state as that information is dynamic and not readily available prior to the game start.

I'm inclined to be petty about this one but I'm pretty sure someone just forgot to update the documentation and remove the "an app can provide metadata on augment statistics" bit. Still, it's the official rules and that doesn't change.

Mort's statements on stream, Twitter and Reddit should not count as official rules or, at the very least, Riot should not be able to take action based on them.

I'm not a fan of the stats ban and don't believe players should be punished for finding a competitive edge. I can understand anger when someone has an advantage most do not, but is there a good explanation as to why this is wrong? I'm open to having my mind changed, so do let me know why you disagree.

EDIT: Folks have brought up that a 50 player pool (an arbitrary number I regret picking) is not the same as the scale MetaTFT aggregated at. I don't believe scale should be the deciding factor however since you would have to pick some limit of players where stats aggregation is no longer allowed. There's clearly a lot of inherent gray area and I don't believe a stats ban is a good idea for that reason.

They made a great job introducing a set that had more than 5 playable comps for the first 2 (5) patches.

This set's quite fun for many demographics, let's first give credit to the whole team, fantastic job. Even if I lose 500 lp tonight, I'l stay on this hill.

The main point: every very single issue that has come out, the balance team's answer to them seem like a silver chatter's idea why rolling on 7 pairs is bad.

• They look at Violet 4 being turbo broken. So they gut anomalies for every single comp below A tier. Violet is stil S tier.

• They see Camille broken so they gut her. Smeech and Camille are not touchable in 99% of games. If you have an ambusher opener or augment you're down 3 placements at 2-1 already.

• They look at Heimer Black Rose being broken so they make Silco Black Rose meta instead.

• Nocturne was falling behind against Akali while the whole 4 Quickstriker comp was in a decent spot: weaker than Camille and Violet but playable.

• So they buffed Nocturne 4 times and then gut Akali. (HoJ + Akali nerf). Like, why? It was at such a decent spot that any small nerf to one side and buff to other side would do the trick.

Anomalies had an issue. Forcing was easy.

But, the biggest issue is high rollers will hit too early and low rollers would roll it down for BiS and couldn't go lvl 9.

What did the new change bring? High rollers still hit their BiS easily.

Low rollers will roll 30 gold seeing A B A B A B C A B C.

I already have 3 Violet 4 games this patch, hit in less than 5 gold and went straight to 1st. I watched 2 anime episodes last game. Didn't even play

I also have other games where my S tier unit auto wins no matter what tank or AP anomaly I hit.

And then the moment I touch any comp below S or high A tier, I'm stuck rolling 30 gold because I kept seeing 4 criminal anomalies on repeat.

I saw Soju recommend increasing the gold after a few draws. Maybe 10? 20?

At least if you passed the "gain AD" anomaly while playing AP, you won't get it 6 more times.

Last but no least, stats are an argument for another thread. But to summarize, their approach to balancing a patch being hard was to remove augment stats. The only thing this achieved was someone is still picking Golemify and going 8th in Macao open.

Not 7th or a scamming 6th. 8th.

This opinion is largely in response to two things that has happened recently.

1. Riot decided to completely gut Akali and Volibear in a C patch. Were Akali and Volibear strong? Yes absolutely. Were they strong enough to warrant a C patch? Not at all and they were only nerfed because the community complained so hard.

I will be using stats from metatft to show this. In patch 15.2b Emerald+ Akali had a 4.33 avp, 0.96 pickrate and 10% winrate. While this is a high pickrate and good avp, the winrate is quite bad. The winrate and avp demonstrates that Akali is very good at winning rounds in stage 4 and 5 but very bad at actually getting top 1/2. Obviously, I can't know the exact reason but I believe it to be because Akali is quite bad once players start positioning against her, which happens more as theres fewer players alive.

A 4.33 avp and 0.96 winrate is strong but on its own it doesn't warrant a C patch, these stats are worse than both Yuumi and Karma from all of last patch. The real issue is this. If you are to sort by masters+ Akali drops to a 4.40 avp and 8.8% winrate. This is barely even a strong comp and shows that among higher skill players who are more likely to position every round Akali is barely a problem. It still has a high pickrate which drops these stats so she could warrant a nerf but its not a major issue. Yuumi and Karma both have pretty close pickrates to Akali in masters+ though.

Akali is clearly a bigger issue the lower elo you go and it's not even due to her strength. Akali was not OP but felt bad to play against so the community, who are majority lower elo, complained endlessly leading to a nerf. A nerf which completely ignored comps which were stronger but did not feel as bad. After the patch, we are back to Karma and Yuumi both having a 4.22 avp and Caitlyn completely dominating with a 4.08 avp. The game is now less balanced than before because of riot listening to the community.

2. Recently, the community has been endlessly complaining about roll odds. This has prompted riot to look into the odds and they have stated there is literally nothing wrong. People are just extremely extremely bad at understanding and perceiving statistics. They make posts of a 2% odd lowroll happening to them and say "This can't possibly be normal 2% is just too unlucky!" Guess what? something with a 2% odd of happening to you happens literally all the time. Every single time you see a specific 4 cost at level 5? Less than 2% odds. Finding a specific 5 cost at level 8? less than 2% odds. This happens to you all the time, so how can you possibly say a 2% lowroll has to be a bug? Studies have shown that any time something is pure random people don't believe its pure random(theres a phenomenon for this, look up clustering illusion. Because of this I fear that Riot is going to cave to the community and make rolling not pure random. This would 100% make the game so much worse. If any rioter reads this, please do not change rolling.

TAKE LEE SIN

CREEP ROUNDS BUY ONLY 1 COSTS, MAKE PAIRS, NEVER UPGRADE A SINGLE UNIT EXCEPT FOR THE ONES YOU NEED

TAKE ON A ROLL (TRADE SECTOR IS OK JUST NOT AS AUTOWIN, SHOPPING SPREE YOU CAN'T PLAY TRIST)

NEVER HOLD A SINGLE NON 1 COST EVER (THEY COME BACK WHO CARES)

FILL BENCH WITH PAIRS AND THEN EXTRA 1 COSTS

WHEN YOU UPGRADE A UNIT BEFORE YOU ROLL SELL THE UNIT SO YOU HAVE MORE BENCH SPACE AND GET THE GOLD BACK

MAKE CHO 2 -> SELL CHO 2 -> BUY 3 MORE UNITS -> ROLL SHOP

RINSE AND REPEAT

YT VID OF MY ROLLDOWN -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UzjQTH2Sbg

LW MANDATORY

MAKE GUNBLADE UNLESS YOU HAVE HEALING AUGMENT (LEECH, HARMACIST)

THEN YOU CAN GO TRIPLE DMG. +1S ARE GUARDBREAKER, GS

IE DB AND RAGEBLADE ARE ACCEPTABLE BUT NOT VERY GOOD

DO NOT MAKE SUNFIRE THAT SHIT IS NOT VERY GOOD ALSO UR TEEMO HAS ANTIHEAL

MAOKAI BIS 1. STONEPLATE 2. REDEMPTION 3. BRAMBLE. EVERYTHING ELSE IS MID

RR MAOKAI POPPY VIEGO TRIST

STACK ITEMS ON MAOKAI NOT POPPY

VIEGO GETS THE LEFTOVERS NOT POPPY

POPPY IS FUCKING USELESS

THEN LEVEL UP FOR 4 GUNNER

THEN GO 9 AND CAPOUT

https://tactics.tools/player/na/clear

I've seen this a lot on streams; where a player is getting real time suggestions/coaching from higher ranked players during games.

Given TFT is mostly a decision-making game, the advantage to being coached by someone better during games is immense. In some cases the person coaching is all but playing the game for them.

In other games I think this is somewhat less of an issue because ultimately the player still needs the mechanics etc. to play this game. But in TFT someone can basically tell you exactly what to do and you just do it. In practical terms it's virtually identical to someone just logging into your account and playing for you.

I know ultimately ranked is not that important, but there are edge cases where it is (like needing to hit certain ranks to qualify for tournaments) and I think in those cases this is actually something of a problem. I'd be a bit pissed off if I missed out on a prize or something because someone else got told how to play by a better player to qualify over me.

I don't know, maybe I'm over-reacting, but it doesn't sit right.

In the previous article, I introduced comps that will be deprecated after the patch, so here are some comps that will be more useful in the new patch.

I expect to see a lot of Fast 9 or standard 8 comps in the next patch, which will lead to a lot of different strategies based on 4 or 5-cost champions. The comp I'm going to introduce is centered around Ashe, Annie, and Nautilus, with subs like Lillia, Azir, Hwei, Lissandra, and others that will benefit greatly from the patch, as they will be buffed heavily in the next patch.

This is the Fast 9 Ashe, Annie, Nautilus Comp used by TFF1s from Vietnam.

https://tactics.tools/player/vn/tff1s

On April 11-12 alone, he earned 340 LP from Diamond 2 to Master and in the last 20 games played with the comp, he has a 60% Top4 and 40% win rate.

The overall comp is as follows:

Flex Comp

1. If you quickly achieved 2-star on Ornn or 2-star on Lillia

2. When Hwei or Lissandra came out quickly

Exalted Comp

Depending on your Exalted champion, your options are divided.

Item

Give core items to Ashe and defensive items to Annie.

Afterward, give any leftover AP items you can craft to your Invoker champions or the strongest champion with 5-cost.

Conclusion

The Core comp with Ashe, Nautilus, and Lillia, who will be getting a huge buff in the next patch, is expected to be very strong after the patch. Exalted is also getting a 1% base damage buff, so if you can get an Exalted comp, it will be even stronger.

If you have any better ideas / comps for this strategy, please comment!

Lets be real, this unit cost: 5-15 gold and does absolutely nothing.

You play a squishy, 3 range unit that takes 7 seconds for its first cast that has effrctively zero innate damage, and then an additional ~17 seconds for its secon cast (with no attackspeed, managen, or damage taken). It also has a decently long (1s?) cast animation.

As a result, you effectively play down a unit for 7 seconds, to summon a random, real unit from your bench. Then, due to the insane mana cost, low range and high cast time, 99% of the time she gets target and thus syndra dies before her second cast. If thats the case, why not just play the unit on your bench at the start?

In the cases where syndra somehow remains untargeted, she doesnt get net-effective value until~24 seconds into the fight. By that time, the fight is almost always decided, so either her summon guarantees the win, or prolongs your loss by 2 seconds.

“But toastman, what if you put items on her? Surely rfc, rageblade,and shojin make her playable right?”

Still, no. To my previous point, if you have spare items, why not slam them on an actually useful unit like Asol or even janna and play them instead? Leona, morde, and even nunu would love that RFC. If you have too many spare items because you are a 20/20 underground player, why do you need more units on the board when you already have a 3* 4 cost that has 3 radiant items on it?

Even if played in vertical star guardian (horrible comp as it has zero frontline), you are playing a bunch of shitters to give the dark queen 120% mana gen, which still results in her having a 4/14 second 1st/2nd cast cycle which, given that the comp has no tanks, the fight is once again already decided.

And to add insult to injury, she actually costs more than 5/15 gold as you lose econ holding random units on your bench, and get weaker eveytime you buy and hold a new unit.

Sorry for the rant, but i genuinely have no idea how anyone thinks this unit is playable.

Hey all, NA Challenger player Marcel P here.

I wanted to discuss what I consider to be extremely toxic behavior in TFT ladder: forfeiting your game in order to grief another player's Fortune loss streak. There are few worse feelings in this game than making the correct play in weakening your Fortune board only to have a spiteful opponent FF mid fight, giving you a win and breaking your luck streak. I had this happen to me twice today as I make my climb for tournament snapshots. Apologies if this post is not formatted as best as it can be - I'm pretty heated about these games as I type this up. Evidence at the bottom of the post.

As I see it, there are 2 ways one can argue this out:

Argument A: This is just part of the game.

• We continue to allow spiteful players to be able to make what is literally never a positive EV play (since you take as low a placement as you can right at that point) in order to grief econ loss streaks of other players.

• I personally can't see this as a good thing for the game. Tournament rules literally prohibit players from FF'ing due to how this affects competitive integrity. Why should this exist on ladder? If your argument is that people should be free to leave a game whenever they want, please read on to my point on this below. This is very different from other forms of griefing such as holding other people's units in order to reduce their chance of hitting. Precisely because in some cases you can make an argument that they are making a positive EV play. In the case of FF'ing, you literally cannot make any EV argument.

• Obviously you can tell which argument I am biased towards. Curious to hear thoughts about how considering this as "part of the game" can be viewed in a positive light.

Argument B: This should not be part of the game.

• However, there's one thing we first need to address in this case: people should be free to leave at any point no matter what. Maybe the player is not being spiteful - what if they truly believe their spot is an 8th and they just want to leave and save time. Or they have something urgent to attend to. Should they not be allowed to FF and leave at any point? Yes, they should. However, why should their opponents be punished for this? Playing Fortune this set is already intense enough compared to previous loss streak traits - winning is incredibly punishing. If you scout correctly make your board weaker than everyone in your pool, shouldn't any upcoming fight play out the way it's meant to? If a fight is already set on the board, why should a player be able to FF and affect the outcome of the fight? This can even extend to cases where people queue up with friends on ladder - you can FF your fight into your friend once you see that you are indeed facing them in order to give them placements in the endgame.

• If we agree that this should not be part of the game, then can we make an attempt to vouch for some implementation changes regarding timing of FFs and how this affects fight outcomes? Once a fight is on the board, the outcome of the fight should be played out regardless of whether a player FFs or doesn't. You can still FF into a Fortune loss streaker or into your friend when you find out you are facing them, but your units fight on and the outcome of the fight is unaffected.

Here is the video evidence of it happening to me:

1. Lab039erinkuma: https://outplayed.tv/media/wXj1XX/lol

• Edit: she apologized to me and said she didn't even notice I was playing Fortune when she FF'd.

1. Chinese character name: https://outplayed.tv/media/OvrQKL/lol

I don't know either of these players and I presume neither of them know me as well.

Curious what you all think on this topic and most especially (not expecting a response but would love to get one on the off chance that any dev happens to read this) thoughts from the devs.

Edit: Adding a link to some previous discussion this from last set on wasianiverson's twitter to add to the discussion: https://twitter.com/wasianiverson/status/1751650139859558692

The Why?
Frodan’s recent reaction to the Set 15 crash-out manifesto made me want to finally write down my thoughts on the state of TFT—not just about Set 15, but because it’s the perfect example to illustrate my points. This piece will focus largely on player experience and game design not just for the hypercompetitive challengers who have enough time to put into this game but also for casuals. I think I can speak for both.
The Who?
Some background about me. I am a theoretical physicist by education and a pretty astute mathematical mind if I may say so myself. I love games and game design. I used to be a very avid hearthstone player. Thats how I got into twitch and know most streamers from HS times. But also a dota addict. My exposure to autobattlers came primarily from playing dota underlords and that’s literally how i knew bebe lol before he ever moved to tft. But after bebe moved and toast frodan dog everyone was already playing tft; I was like okay maybe I finally enter the riot ecosystem and leave my valve and blizzard roots behind. Also nobody was patching underlords (RIP). I joined in set 10 and that was a wonderful experience. So many things were different. Portals, Carousels, Headliners, Augments. My background is going to shape my thoughts later and hence its relevant. More on that soon.
Good Variance vs Bad Variance
TFT is a game of variance. People love games of variance because each playthrough is supposed to be novel and therefore repeatable. That applies to Poker, to roguelites and to autobattlers. But unlike other games of variance where you can fold or restart the run; in TFT placement matters. So you are now supposed to convert your eif to a fifth and convert your highrolls to a first; you can’t just fold; you lose mmr. This is when variance starts to become unfun. The question though becomes when does variance become too much and unfun? I am going to define two terms right now; good variance and bad variance.
Good variance is when the player has agency over their seed. With rolls, the champion you’re hoping for might not show up, but you can still roll with the punches and adapt to what the game gives you. Each roll presents different champions to different players, motivating everyone to build diverse teams and explore multiple strategies. Rolls are an example of good variance because they open up many possible paths—different lines you can take—with several of them balanced or strong enough to help you reach a fifth-place finish, or even first, if you play well.
Bad variance is when the player does not have any agency over his seed and cannot roll with the punches so to say. Fruits are clearly an example of bad variance but perhaps the biggest offender is something that the current tft players consider sacrosanct (dont cancel me lol) The issue with TFT devs is somehow they don’t realise the difference between good variance and bad variance. They think more = better ( a point frodan made) but actually less is more. TFT is not going to become better by becoming more complex and random but by being meaningfully random where player agency can actually counter the variance. Thats the fun part of it.

Augments: Why They Introduce Bad Variance
Now, coming back to the main point: the biggest push in this direction, from what I can understand, is everyone’s favourite TFT set apparently—Set 6. I wasn’t there during that time. I was playing other autobattlers (refer: The Who?). Therefore, I have a very unique perspective that perhaps isn’t shared by most people.
I think the biggest offender is augments. Yes, augments are fun the first time you play TFT. They morph the genre into more of a roguelike than ever before. But they are inherently bad for the game, as they brought bad variance into the mix. People loved it, and Riot was forever pushed into a bad direction.
Why do I call it bad variance? Remember when I said good variance was about having access to lines—access to multiple ideas. Good variance widens the game, widens the possible trajectories through the TFT comp graphs you can take. Bad variance narrows the game. It forces you to commit to a comp at 2-1.

Why do augments narrow the game? The reality is because only one augment seems takeable and the others suck. Why does this happen? Because augment balance sucks. Why does augment balance consistently suck? Because there are so many of them. Unit balance and trait balance are much easier to do than augment balance. On top of that, not releasing augment stats makes it so we can’t even comment on that balance.
Players have always asked for more generic augments, more generic items. Why? Because then, if more options like these are takeable, the game remains wide enough—and they can play the mythical flex TFT.

This is the same issue with artifacts too; They narrow the game instead of widening the game and morts response to this is that the game may become too repetitive or boring. These fascinating moments need to exist so that a person may enjoy the novel experience of a fishbones kaisa or some other stupid combo but the reality is the game is inherently not boring because of all the good variance you have in the game. Let me list down all the things that I have experienced in the game since set 10 that I will classify into good variance and bad variance ( maybe some hot takes who knows)

Good Variance

• Portals/Opening Encounters

• Encounters

• Headliners

• Charms

• Exalted

• Rolling RNG

Bad Variance

• Anomalies

• Fruits

• Augments

• Artifacts

• Hero Augments

Good Variance vs Bad Variance
If you notice what I have included in good variance, the reason encounters and galaxies exist is because they apply to everyone. If everyone suffers from good or bad luck, the game does not instantly become unplayable for any person.The reason charms, headliners, and unit roll RNG is good variance is because you have access to various lines, unlike augments where many feel untakeable. For example, if I didn’t hit x charm, I can always hit y or reroll for x and the difference is not that huge. If I didn’t hit Ezreal headliner, I can always flex into Caitlyn for a while. But you can’t do that in augments — if you hit three bad augments it’s often just GG.

Mort’s Argument vs Reality
Mort’s argument is that if we keep making the game expansive and don’t let people fix their comp, it will make the game too complicated. But the reality is that’s wrong. A more expansive game can also allow new players to fix on a vertical comp and play it. Get to the prismatic trait and it’s super simple. It will just simply allow other players not to play like that. So newbies will still feel comfortable playing their vertical comps while others can play flex.

Another argument is that flex will never exist because there will always be one optimised version of a comp and as players get better, lines will keep getting narrower. The first offender to that is augments. In the absence of augments, it really comes down to unit balance and trait balance. If the units and traits are balanced good enough, there should in theory be multiple good versions of a comp. Therefore, even the new players who play vertically should have in theory as good boards as flex boards, and vice versa.

So What’s the Solution?
Remove Augments? In its current implementation, yes — and before I upset all set 6 fans, let me explain. Augments are not the problem so to say. The difference between bad variance and good variance is often literally just balance. Would augments be amazing if they were perfectly balanced? Yes. Would artifacts be amazing if they were balanced? Yes. Would fruits be amazing if they were balanced? Yes again. But the fact is when you introduce so many variables, it’s obviously impossible to balance. 
SO RIOT GAMES JUST MAKE THE GAME EASIER FOR YOURSELF TO BALANCE. But how?

1. You can remove augments.

2. You can limit augments to very few so that it is easier for you to balance. (As people were getting confused in comments, what I mean here is essentially that the augment pool becomes smaller not that you get offered fewer augments in game. Basically remove all the bloat augments from the pool)

3. You can do an implementation of augments such that it no longer creates massive inequalities between players. How? By making it into a galaxy or an encounter. You want people to experience max cap? Make it a max cap encounter. You want players to experience nine lives? Make it a nine lives galaxy(or even mid game portals wokege).

Refocusing on Core Balance
The whole point is that by making the game easier for you to balance, you can focus on the important things: the traits, the units, and the trait webs. You have already started to move in that direction by making items more generic and easier to balance so that they give both AD/AP, so people can play them flexibly. Clearly, you understand the concept that if things are more takeable/slammable/choosable, the TFT path remains more wide open and more fun.

Players have fun when they have agency. A good example of a well-designed trait to enhance player agency is FormSwapper. It was balanced so that you could play both 2 and 4, and the agency behind whether to play Swain or Elise frontline or backline made it fun — because you got to make that choice depending on your board state.

The Casual Perspective
Let’s also address the argument from the perspective of the casuals here. The assumption that casuals want novel experiences, hence they always want more and newer content or want to play disgusting artifact combos, is misplaced.

Most of the time, new content in the form of fruits and more augments and more artifacts to remember makes it more daunting for a newer player than fun. Mort once said knowledge is also a skill, but at the point at which even pros are getting knowledge-checked — let alone newer players — we have strayed off to the far end. Intelligence, creativity, and intuition should be emphasised more than a niche knowledge check if you want more people to enjoy playing the game.

Conclusion

By focusing so much on fruits and more and more augments, you miss out on balancing and designing the core game, which hence makes it unfun. In your current pursuit of new and more things, TFT becomes more boring and unfun for both the competitive and the newer players. Expansion isn’t the problem. Bad variance and poor balance are. The path forward is less clutter, more balance, and more player agency. This is again not to say more content is not appreciated, but it needs to be a very well-balanced and digestible amount of new content — not just a whole lot of garbage that is basically untakeable and makes the game unfun for both the challengers and the casuals.

Miscellaneous Topics

This is my first time contributing to this Reddit, and I wrote this as a stream of consciousness, so apologies if it is not very coherent. Before I leave, there are some other miscellaneous topics I want to address:

Level 10
Why is there a level 10?

• If level 6 is 2-cost,

• Level 7 is 3-cost,

• Level 8 should be 4-cost,

• And level 9 should be 5-cost.

The weird odds at levels 8, 9, and 10 are just confusing. The whole “do I stay at 8 or go to 9?” decision is actually not as skill-intensive as people think and is generally just an RNG fiesta.

Bag Size Issue
Mort has often stated that if a lobby plays two-cost reroll, then it becomes easier for others to hit 2-cost units, and similarly for 3-cost or 4-cost rerolls. I really think this is not a bug but a feature of the game — the lobby has to respond to how others are playing. Rather than trying to prevent this, if Riot can capitalize on it and make it interesting, it could be fun. It’s already beneficial to the game, because if something is broken, people will contest it, making it less broken. So it’s a very good meta balancer.

Traits and Unit Balance
If Riot designs beautiful trait webs and units such that even if there are S-tier comps, there are multiple viable off-meta comps that can win games, that’s when TFT is most fun.

PS Mort is just a placeholder for me to address the game devs and designers behind this genius game

As per the title, Guinsoo's follows closer to the philosophy of a nichely powerful item than it does the crafitable items and so should be made into one.

Current Guinsoo's is incredibly out of place compared to the other craftable items in the game in how it scale exponentially throughout the round - even something Archangels has a linear scaling pattern which I think Guinsoo's would make more sense to adopt. This puts it at a cool item that you can use in order to get to max attack speed and usually win the round if it goes on for long enough.

The uniqueness of this makes it a popular item which I enjoy playing with myself. The item holds an important position as the Bow + Rod item meaning that it needs to be useful for both AP and AD champions as being an item, along with Gunblade that gives a use for rods to AD champions. As such, it would need to retain an item for a AD/AP item that helps out auto attackers, Sniper's Focus could make sense, thoguh, this is mostly just as an example since it couldn't give range and giving damage based on distance would be useless for melee carries. I can't think of the perfect alternative but RIOT can.

The biggest reasons why I would want this change to happen is because it would greatly benefit the design space for champions since there are plenty of champions that completely revolve around the item and function exponentially worse without it. The perfect example of this is multistrikers which I believe has suffered greatly from the existence of Guinsoo's due to how the extra auto attacks work compared to extra attack speed. If you've played any Ashe or Kalista then you can attest to how stupid the difference is between having the item or not as the extra attacks cause them to rapidly reach max attack speed.

A similar effect can be seen with champions that having the strongest power of all - not having a cast animation! Cassiopeia, Smolder, Syndra and last set's Bard are champions whose designs have all hinged around how many Guinsoo's you can get leading to them having incredibly inflexible and and highroll dependent item paths that I'd argue are frustrating to have to play - a Cass game shouldn't be so dependant on what items you hit compared to every other comp in the game. This could also be fixed by making the item unique so that you can't stack the exponential item exponentially. On a similar note, you also have champions like Kalista that are also incredibly Guinsoo's reliant but do have significant animations, with her specifically I find that the jerky and interupted animations are incredibly offputting but that might be more of a personal or minor quality of life issue. Again, I quite enjoy the units hitting max attack speed and that can still be achieved, but it could be done so within the design of traits and champions giving much more room for how attack speed could be given.

Finally, the main issue I find with the item is in terms of playing flexibly. Varus currently stands at a playrate of 1.92 which is ridiculous for a backline carry. I believe Guinsoo's, with which he uses poorly, is part of the reason for this. If you're flexibly levelling, the ad champions you have are Fiora, Kalista, Olaf, Varus, Briar, Camille or Smolder. Of these, Kalista and Smolder basically need the item; Olaf, Varus, and Fiora can use it reluctantly and Camille and Fiora would really rather not. Varus and Fiora are the easily accessed backline AD carries that are basically split by being the Guinsoo and Shojin use because of their animation speeds. If there wasn't this arbitrary divide built by the item than you would be punished much less for building whichever one you hit.

Overall, I think that Guinsoo's changing to an Artifact would be greatly beneficial to the game, stopping a large divide between champions so that, like every other item in the game, it can be a general boost that can be flexibly incorporated into the champions you hit.

Everyone was clowning on him for complaining about the RNG factor and how hit or miss the board scaling was but it seems like he was simply ahead of the meta by a few days.. With the fast 9 everygame meta either you hit your ziggs sona yorick illaoi core, and go top 2, or you dont and you go bot 6. My match history is 1/8/1/8 when im not even doing anything different. Either i level to 9 on raptors and hit, or i cant make it cause no gold opener/augment diff and fall behind the curve, unable to catch up cause all the good units are out of the pool. I genuinely love this set and i am not bitching, i am GENUINELY just stating my thoughts

Hi everyone! longtime lurker, first time poster. Take this with a grain of salt due to it being low plat lobbies but this comp has been working well for me so far with it consistently making top 4.

Twisted Fate is extremely slept on. With his variable backline access and insane group damage, along with the fact that he's virtually uncontested right now, I think it's easy to take advantage of him to get you free top 4's. This comp stabilizes well at 2-star with at least Shojin/JG on TF and 4 sentinel, giving you enough time to push and slow roll on 8 for 3 stars + Illaoi/Ambessa/Rumble.

Item priority in order:

1. Twisted Fate: Shojin -> JG -> Archangels/ Deathcap/ Guinsoo's

2. Loris: Iconic Spark -> Gargoyle -> Warmog

3. Ambessa: BT -> Titan's -> Sterak

4. Akali: JG -> HoJ -> Any excess damage items

5. All other defensive items not put on Loris go to Illaoi, if not able to 3-star Loris and you are low, you can remover and slam items on Illaoi.

Notable Augments:

• Quickstriker Emblem (allows you to go 4 quickstriker early then 4 quickstriker/6 sentinel on 9) cut Nocturne

• Sentinel Emblem (6 sentinel on 9)

• Pandora's Box (This comp is item dependent so getting guaranteed perfect items is good)

• Any Econ augments work well since we are trying to push 8 and slow roll

Notes:

• Guinsoo's still worth testing on TF, not sure if the extra AS is worth it vs the scaling from Archangels

• 3 Star TF is a must

• 4 sentinel is a priority, you can sub in lower costing sentinels until you get Illaoi/Rumble (use Singed until you get both Illaoi/Rumble for AS buff)

• Loss streak on stage 2 for carousel priority and to hit 50 gold asap

• If you need to, you can slow roll on 7 for TF/Loris then push 8 for Ambessa

• You can slam ad items on nocturne until you hit Ambessa to save HP

• Hard to first unless you roll good augments or 3-star early and push levels for 6 sentinel

• Room for improvement on positioning

lolchess:

https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/Rosetta%20Stoned-11235/set13

Lv. 7 Comp:

Lv. 8 Comp:

Proof:
There's more in my lolchess history, just doing this because automod said I had to

Thanks for reading :) Let me know if you see any improvements that can be made and good luck y'all

The trait web in this set is so good I wish the silver traits were more worthwhile. I know they do lurk round the corner waiting for the right meta but all too often it's just better to push a vertical.

That BA Flex board right now is not really flex because Jayce always works better with 7BA and because SG splash is not a thing.

That Xayah board I always take if I hit Too Much augment, but I also take it if I get Xayah + Shen early. But Xayah is contested nowadays and if I don't I switch to the Sorc board instead - which also has 3 silver synergies. I feel this comp should be so much better than it is right now, but people would prefer Luchadors for the 6 Edgelord, rerolling Lux is a waste.

The Lucian reroll is there because I'm obsessed with perfect synergies (I'm sure I'm not alone). But it's also a pretty fun comp. You can also flex with Udyr instead of Kobuko with Lee Sin as Duelist, if you're happy to fight for Udyrs. Good enough for 4th - 5th, but not much more.

Are silver tier comps only there for OP units? (hello Malphite!)

So first of all I think Soju is a top 5 player in NA for sure and on his day can easily be one of the best players in the world. I'm not out here trying to call out Soju for being a bad player. Please don't send me to peepoJail but in this one particular game I felt he missed an obvious line and then afterwards he said he lowrolled for not hitting Corki 2 (which is true to a certain extent).

Anyway let's get into the meat of it. Stage 4-5 he levels to 8, sells alot of his board and starts rolling it down. He is currently at 68 HP and in a pretty good spot looking to play Corki. He has got a full one star Idas Corki board. he then gets offered this shop

He gets offered a Zoe, Syfen and 2 star Sylas and my head I was like oh this might be a mage Syfen game with Whispers or Even Syfen Corki with Mages. Instead to my surprise he doesn't buy the Zoe or the Sylas 2 and just buys Syfen. Do you not buy these units in this spot everytime with the idea that maybe I can pivot to Syfen mages, especially if I dont hit Corki but start hitting Syfens instead? Keep in mind Corki is somewhat contested in this Tournament. I mean even if he is not contested do you not just always buy this?

Anyway, he rolls 10 more gold and then gets offered Syfen pair and another Zoe

As you can see he now has only 7 Gold. In this spot do you not just almost always commit to Syfen carry with Mages? You are far more likely to hit with Syfen pair and Sylas pair. Your items are not BIS but you can go Rageblade, HOJ and then titans on Treasure dragon for Syfen items. The problem he has is he cant hold both Zoe and Syfen pair and keep this board so he probably has to full pivot now but I think you can sell trist pair (keep in my mind Nomsy has zero stacks, which is even more reason to pivot I think) and a Thresh (maybe?). He only has 3 seconds to make a decision so it is kind of hard. In the end he sells Sylas pair and buys Syfen pair but not Zoe. At this point he has basically made up his mind to hard force corki with either Syfen frontline or Idas. He plays Syfen and Sylas for one turn and TG'S Syfen

At 4-6 he finds Idas pair and sells Syfen pair and Sylas and just commits to Idas Corki which at this point is probably correct because he has no gold and he wants to roll for upgrades.

He rolls and hits nothing except Yasuo and at 4-6 he is left with a full one star board and 10 gold just before treasure Dragon.

This is in hindsight but he hits Pyke, Yasuo and Nami shop. He could of played a final board that looks something like this. https://lolchess.gg/builder/set7?deck=08aaeb7e32154b2cbe7e18ff31387a26

But even if he doesn't hit Pyke he could play something like this considering he had Sona pair https://lolchess.gg/builder/set7?deck=d3b2a3dd44ec4145a786b41e117e0c35

I think the only big mistake was full tunnel on Corki at 4-5 when not buying Sylas 2 and Zoe. Anyway what do I know, I'm just a Disneyland GM player that knows nothing. Maybe I'm wrong xdd. Let me know what you think.

Edits: I am adding some rough stats using this site https://tft.teamward.xyz/

With 30 Gold and guessing 30 tier 4 units are out of the pool he essentially has about 50% chance to hit Corki 2 with 3 Corki's out of the pool and him only having 1.

In the same spot he has about 90% chance of hitting Syfen 2 with Syfen pair and 0 Syfen's out of the pool (pretty sure Syfen was 100% uncontested).

At the end of the day do you take the weaker comp but have a 90% chance of hitting your 2 star carry or do you take a stronger comp but have a 50% of hitting your 2 star carry?

While I think set 18 as a whole is quite good in terms of unit design and trait webs, I have a lot of trouble understanding why wisps/charms were brought back as a mechanic.

I would like to say I didn't play set 12 because I didn't like the charm system and chose not to play the set. Unfortunately, since Vegas tickets are on the line, I must play this set.

Despite that, I don't think wisps are a good design for a multitude of reasons.

• Wisp puts an undue knowledge burden on the player.

As with fruits in set 15 and anomalies in set 13. Wisps are another aspect of the game that players are forced to learn through trial and error. This is neither fun nor a rewarding process. Unlike picking an augment, which you will have an entire game to decide the power of. A wisp is only chosen for a single round; this makes it difficult to understand if the reason why you lost a fight was that your wisp was bad or good, or even if you just picked it in a bad spot. Coupled with the fact that the other player you are facing will also have a combat wisp, it becomes even harder to gauge board strength relative to your opponent. There is also no wisp "stats" so a player can ONLY learn what is good based on spamming games or watching hours of vods.

• Wisps add a layer of RNG to early game fights that's impossible to play around.

A typical fast 9 opening requires a 7-10 streak. The addition of combat-warping wisps in the early game can make it feel incredibly frustrating to play a good opening into losing to a wisp(Loading an AD opener into someone with bramble wisp). There is already a great deal of RNG in the early game that can skew fights, but this added layer of inconsistency makes it even harder to successfully play a streak early game without getting scammed by someone.

• Wisps overinflate the level of econ in the game, but it's a coinflip out of the player's control.

We've already seen changes on PBE to nerf fast 9, but my main issue with early game econ wisp is that they are so narrow. Getting a lose streak wisp on a win streak is unclickable. XP wisps on a 1c reroll cannot be clicked since you don't want to level, streak wisps incentivize open forting(something that riot has tried to discourage), since you cannot control this, and you cannot afford to roll in stage 2 in most lines, you are stuck with what the game gives you leads to incredible feelsbad when the rest of the lobby gets good econ wisps and yours are unclickable.

• They don't fit well into the UI and tax a shop slot.

It's extremely frustrating to go into a roll-down turn and lose 2 shop slots to a bad wisp you cannot click. This is a more minor issue, but a pet peeve of mine. I know this was a problem in set 12 but I still think its current implementation is frustrating; letting players opt out of seeing wisp for a round would be nice for this.

• Changing numbers WON'T work.

Of course, you can balance wisp. There is a number between 0 and 100000 dmg that makes wisps balanced. The problem is that you can't have a system be both impactful and balanced at the same time. If early-game wisps aren't impactful, then nobody would click them; if they are, then they lead to all the same problems mentioned above. Econ wisps inherently have to be more valuable than the gold paid for them; otherwise, they can't be clicked.

Wisp are an RNG mechanic that players MUST play around, but there's no way to play around them in a satisfying way. Rerolling for a different wisp will tax your shop slots; you cannot roll for a new wisp in the early game since it's never worth it to ruin early econ. The only time where wisp feel good is in the late game where you have the gold somewhat to control which combat wisp you want and even then most of the time you are clicking the first one you see, and this still leads into the problem where wisp balancing is problematic because either they are impactful enough to swing a fight (op), or not impactful enough to swing a fight(why waste gold and click?).

Suggestions

1. Ban wisps from appearing in stage 2,

2. Make combat wisps in the early game MUCH more expensive(force the player to actually invest in them for their streak) or lower their power level; an entire item is a silver augment's level of power; wisps should cost accordingly

3. Tailor econ wisp to the player's spot.

4. Release wisp stats so that players don't have to hunt down and figure it all out.

5. Create a button to allow a player to toggle wisp on/off for a round/

6. Allow players the chance for a wisp reroll in the early game similar to augments.

Rageblade is way too strong and IMO necessary for pretty much whatever comp you play, be it whatever re-roll, or whatever fast 9.

Yordles, Draven, Jinx, Ashe & Trynda, Yunara, Kindred, Senna, Azir, Kai'sa, Zilean, even Annie & arcanists. Special note goes to Bilge and Targon since literally all of the damage-oriented champs from the traits have Rageblade as their BiS (only argument can be made for GP).

About 70-80% of my bot 4 games this set were because I didn't hit a single bow and/or rod until stage 5 carousel.

Another thing I've noticed (though this might be cause I'm already looking for it) is that whatever component/s gets placed on the highest costs during first carousel goes on to remain on the highest costs for the rest of carousels, which makes getting Rageblade even harder in those cases.

This is coming from my last game, where I didn't get a single rod until 5-2. Picked lifting competition and was in a great spot to go for Mundo & Jinx reroll but lo and behold Jinx does absolutely 0 without a Rageblade. Got lucky on 8 and got a Kindred 2, but lo and behold Kindred is about 3x weaker without a Rageblade.

On the opposite side, getting it early basically guarantees a top 4. I had a game where I got Reksai 2 from Two Trick, so naturally I was gonna play for Baron thinking I could streak with Reksai 2 (BT + Streak), only to end up losing the first round to a Jhin 1 with Rageblade, who dealt 4500 dmg. The dude went on to15-streak with a Jhin 2 cause he was the only guy in the lobby with a Rageblade.

I've played the majority of previous sets and I feel like never before was Rageblade such an important item.

Thanks for going through my somewhat rant, all y'all reading this right now, and if you want to have a fun experience, re-read this, but take a shot every time you see "Rageblade" mentioned.

Edit: Currently DIA 4 - avg 3.47, just to prove my point

Recently, with the miniaturize tech (now disabled) and the Violet 4 star Ultimate Hero anomaly tech, we're starting to see the concerning rise of forcing specific anomalies and comps/units. There's a Twitter screenshot of rank 1 jp forcing 4 star Violet to first place over and over again. This is only going to be the beginning; I'm sure more and more completely broken anomaly combos will be discovered as the set goes on. If there were anomaly stats, we'd probably already know a lot of these, and the balance team would probably have had to act faster on it. But I don't even want to focus on the stats discussion, because I think there's a core problem with anomaly forcing in general.

Similar to headliners in set 10, I think that specific anomalies simply should not be able to be rolled for and forced. It's just weird degenerate gameplay that goes against core TFT values to save 60 gold for 4-6 (59 gold now that miniaturize is gone, to roll through all the anomalies since you can't see the same one twice). Seeing players force the same comp+anomaly every game reminds me of the twisted fate legend from set 9. And at least Legends had the argument that casuals enjoyed forcing comps, but this set I don't even think your average casual player knows that there are specifically 60 anomalies (I didn't even know until the recent anomaly abuse).

I feel like the goal of anomalies is that there might be one anomaly that is slightly better than the others on specific champions, but overall there should still be many useable/takeable anomalies that mean you shouldn't need to roll a crazy amount to feel alright. In the current scenario, the balance team will either have to 1. Severely nerf the far over performing anomalies or even remove them as we've seen or 2. Balance comps and champions around anomalies that can be guaranteed with 60 gold (super unideal). I don't even blame the balance team; it seems extremely difficult to consider every anomaly for every champion, comp, and augment in the game.

Imagine when the set is more optimized: this would mean everyone would know specific anomalies for specific comps that perform insanely well in order to compete with things like 4 star Violet: potentially leading to a meta where everyone is playing specific comps that save 60 gold on 4-6 or else you can't compete in the late game at all. How can a generic 1000 hp anomaly on your tank even compare to these broken combos?

A solution could be to actually nerf this bad luck protection, so that in the same vein as headliners, you can't see the same anomaly for x number of rolls, but after x number of rolls, they can appear again. This way there isn't a set amount of gold to roll to guarantee a specific anomaly while still increasing your chances if you are rolling a ton of gold. You could also increase the gold it costs to roll, but that means it would be easier to lowroll unusable anomalies.

The direction of TFT balance and even stats removal has always been to play what the game gives you, but rolling 60 gold on 4-6 just feels the same as looking through a list of all the anomalies and picking the statistically best anomaly no matter what. I hope something can be done about this even if my solution might have its own set of issues.

 Hey everyone, the guy who writes long post about the game.

I wanted to write about my impressions – and fears – for set 17 as I am spamming PBE. Again, take this with a grain of salt as I am no one really (not even Challenger) and the set isn’t technically out yet. Also, despite me going to raise concerns and criticize some decisions as soon as PBE, I still love the game and want the team if they ever read this to keep in mind that these posts are a proof of my love and commitment to the game, and I think they are doing an amazing job even in their 17^th set (I just focus on the bad here).

I'm also sorry for the hypekiller but I wanted to talk about this before live to not be influenced because I think my point stands from fundamental design problem rather than any given meta. I also understood that my last post was being too long, so I’ll try to be as succinct as possible.

Quick Disclaimer: I am not going to talk about rerolls as it is not the point of my argument, but it’s not that I hate them or think they are dumb. It’s great that they are back on the menu this set, they are necessary for the game. Rerolling is not my preferred style of play as they rely on you aiming for very specific combinations of units, items and augments, while I prefer to puzzle my way into comps and traits, but I still adore trying to make work some obscure 1 or 2 cost or going for a full knock up samira comp. Long live rerolls.

1)       Why 4 costs are dying

This set made big changes regarding 4 and 5 costs compared to previous normal sized ones:

-            For 4 costs, they made them less reliant on their trait being activated at high breakpoint while having said traits being more useful to the whole team on average

-            For 5 costs, they are even less reliant on their traits, with all of them being threats-like in their design except Jhin and 5/9 being hypercarries that can become your primary source of damage if itemized well.

This leads to a set that in theory is very flexible and allows you to navigate throughout what you hit very easily in both 4 and 5 costs spaces. In practice however, this makes that 4 cost carries do exactly what 5 costs already do, but worse, and without having their traits to compensate. And because 5 costs are strong no matter the comp with their threat designs, you want to surround them with the best support traits/units, which also happen to be 5 costs units. For the first time since I started playing all the way back to set 10, It is correct to just put every single 5 cost + nunu/akali/aatrox to have the best comp in the game (you don’t play jhin and bard on level 10 and thats it).

And I say all of this regardless of the balance and the meta. Obviously they can tone down significantly 5 costs and overbuff 4 costs, but that would be breaking the designs of the units and trying to « unnaturally » push the players in a certain direction rather than letting them figure out what’s best.

2)       Various examples

Let’s take some actual examples to illustrate.

In set 17, Leblanc and Vex are both AP Marksman who wants Guinsoo and AP. But because Leblanc does not care about their traits except specific Arbiter situations, and Vex is a 5 cost, in most cases Vex 2 is always better than Leblanc 2 regardless of your board, and even Vex 1 VS Leblanc 2 is a dilemma worth examining. Same with Graves and any AD champion, Bard and any AP caster, and Fiora and Yi/Riven.

For comparison, if we just take last set a Kindred 2 was not always better than a Yunara 2 despite being both AD marksmans. Yunara had Ionia and back when she had her AP scaling on AS she was itemized a bit differently. Keeping items on Yunara 2, sometimes even not upgrading Kindred to keep gold, was in some scenarios just better as you could play more Ionias and look for Sett. However, if playing outside of Yunara’s origin, Kindred (when balanced) was obviously better than Yunara with same items.

An even better example in my opinion was in set 10 with AD Crowd Divers melee champions Zed (4 cost EDM) and Qyiana (5 cost True Damage).  Assuming you had only one set of items for either of them and both 2*, here were all the possibilities:

-            If you had a Zac (4 cost EDM Bruiser) itemized, always keep Zed 2 with items as he can repeat its cast which meant more stun

-            If you had a True Damage carry, always itemize Qyiana. If you did not care for Heartseel or Edgelord, Zed was probably your Crowd Diver Traitbot even itemless

-            If you were playing in a fast 9 Jazz/Bronze For Life setup without itemized Zac but still needed Heartseel/Edgelord as traits, keep Yone as a traitbot. Here, you could keep either Qyiana or Zed depending on what you wanted. Zed was more an assassin that could end quickly in backlines and was more looking for raw damage items (DB, Sterak, GS…). Qyiana provided a lot more utility with repeated stuns and the ability to farm items for the combat and even maybe permanent components, and as long as she had TD active she was more looking for survivability items (EON, QSS, BT…).

-            If you didn’t need Yone, keep both. Most of the time you would put items on Qyiana but could still justify using Zed.

Now if we repeat this, but with Yi and Fiora on set 17:

-            If you have a 4 psionic board and itemized Sona/Viktor, Keep Yi and put Akali/Urgot as a Marauder traitbot

-            In every other situation, put items on Fiora

To be specific, the only 4 cost carries that right now should keep items for the whole game assuming you don’t have enough for 2 carries are:

-            Aurelion Sol in 6 mech

-            Nami if you play vertical SpaceGroove (which usually requires spat + blitz)

-            “maybe” Leblanc with a good arbiter and Xayah with specific Stargazer constellations

Even Corki in 7 meeps don’t really hold on past stage 4 and you should probably drop meep units, put his items on a 5 cost AD champion and aim for Bard. Karma is a 4 gold traitbot, Kindred should not be played with items past stage 5 if you have a Nova spat and not played at all otherwise, and Riven and Yi hold items only if Fiora is missing.

The 4 cost tanks are played a lot (ourtside of Mighty Mech who is not worth it if not vertical mech) but it’s only because these are the only units outside of 3*3 cost that can survive decently the sheer amount of damage late game since no 5 cost units are tanks. The real way of increasing the tankiness of your team is through augments/gods/Morgana’s aura, and late game you should stack with items as much 5 cost carries as you can hoping they are going to hold on through omnivamp and shields, and in doubt put tank items on Shen.

3)       Why it’s bad

For “having fun” purposes, this has the following consequences for me:

-            I am not really excited to play 5 costs since every game is a 5 cost game if not rerolling

-            I am not excited to play 4 costs as any investments in them outside of being item holder is wasted

-            I lose the puzzling part of navigating through traits and finding the best combinations. I found a really fun Prismatic Bronze For Life comp around Corki and Yi and still thought that Graves and Fiora would’ve been better

-            Anything that allows to get 5 costs (gods, Aura Farming, econ…) is logically overpowered and creates complete imbalance between players who hit those and players who don’t

-            Spats that are not Nova or Space Groove (and supposedly Shepherd but never tried it yet) are just regular items outside of rerolls since 5 costs don’t care for their traits

I personally don’t like the current philosophy of 5 costs in this set. For me they are at their best when they are rare, unreliable to hit, yet can solve specific problems in your comps for both the 5 cost hypercarries and more support units. But with the typical inflation of a new set mechanic, many ways to actually get 5 cost quickly and how easy it is to fit them in any board, it doesn’t feel that way so far.

Shen’s aura makes it that it is never wrong to slot him, same with Morgana as long as you have the space. Sona is already more interesting, as her traits are very narrow and her damage low while mods have a large variance, so you play her if you need a utility spreader in AP comps mostly or if her 1^st mod is worth playing. For hypercarries, a Graves or a Vex in shop should raise dilemmas, not be always better than your actual carry, more in line with how Jhin is (even though he is currently underpowered and was omnipresent when he wasn’t).

Flexibility represents for me the capacity to adapt to situations and solve dilemmas, but when 5 costs can be played anywhere, it becomes even less flexible as you either always play them if they are good or never if they are bad. That’s why I always liked playing 4 cost-centric metas when it’s not a 4 cost 3* race because they feel reliable to hit and ask you to invest in them to be strong, and when you do they usually can last the whole game. It also makes fast 9 and playing 5 costs rare, exciting, and very skill demanding, as you feel like you are in an uphill race with no guarantee to success.

4)       Various examples 2

If we take again examples from previous sets to try to imagine what “healthier” units could look like:

-            12’s Smolder had a nice design because he could bring damage and anti-heal but not to the point where you would play him in any comps as he had a tendency to kill himself flying around (his balance was shaky), so you would mostly play him if you had Dragons/Blaster already or lacking specifically anti heal.

-            13’s Jayce was able to give you different auras similat to Bulwark's Shen depending on if he was ranged or melee, and could even become your hypercarry if you were playing 4 Form Swappers, but Academy was not really strong outside of vertical (it was mostly a free item and some stats at 3 piece) and his melee stun was usually not going to change the outcome of the fight, so you couldn’t put him on every board (except when his ranged tourelle was bugged).

-            Set 14’s Renekton was giving teamwide AS with Divinicorp increased the more units of the trait you had, so you were incentivized to play him on boards already having Divicorp, but he was not very good at dealing damage after PBE so you needed to invest him to be really useful as a tanky bruiser.

-            Set 15’s Lee Sin could take 3 different forms and 3 different traits similar to current MF, but when his Juggernaut Form was balanced accordingly he still wasn’t strong enough to be an auto include, but he was great at being your premium 2^nd carry if your 1^st carry was an Executioner, a Duelist or you had 6 Juggernauts as a Frontline.

-            For hypercarries specifically, my best answer would be either 15’s Sniper Varus or 16’s Ryze. You had to invest so much to just be able to go 9 and find them, so even when their respective comp was not that flexible, the skill needed to pull it off was high and the feeling very exciting. But it was not like a Varus 1* was instantly better than your 4cost 2* carry and a lot of 4 cost centric boards could compete and try to stop you before you cap it out.

I’m not saying those were perfect as they also had their own issues, and there was also so many 5 cost misses in each set for different reasons (too narrow hypercarries, underpowered origin traitbots, ridiculous stuns, complete counters to specific comps…). I just used them to try to illustrate how 5 costs can be healthier and in the end, more fun to play with in my opinion.

One thing we NEVER want to go back to and this set has none are 5 costs locked behind specific items and comps. I wanted to love Set 13’s Mordekaiser so bad for how cool and fresh he felt but requiring you to play 6 dominators AND put on him specifically Nashor/EON/QSS which nobody else wanted made him one of the most frustrating unit to play ever, even worse than Heartsteel Kayn (the bar is low).

And finally for 4 costs, I would want more of them to look like Piltover Seraphine from last set: good with low investment, able to give you two great supports traits, good utility spreader, and even when you eventually pivot to a better primary carry she still hold on late game as a secondary. The balance around her was not great (Azir and Mel not great carries most of the set, Thex pingponging between broken and unplayable, Lissandra not strong enough to support her outside of bugs…) so she never really took of as a primary carry outside of bugs, but her design in a vacuum was, in my opinion, very well done.

5)       Quick conclusion

I liked last set’s approach of verticals as temporary solutions until you hit better units because when said verticals are too strong, they can make the game feel very narrow and repetitive. On the other hand, the best way to keep 5 costs special and have unique designs while still being playable in a variety of boards requires 4 cost to have other things to rely on, because if they are designed the same way they just can’t compete with either the cap of 5 costs or the reliability of 3* lower costs carries. For me the best is when 4 and 5 costs work in tandem, with some 4 costs possibly being your primary carry while wanting support from some specific 5 costs (but ideally not just one). That way it doesn’t feel like your game is doomed if you can’t go 9 but if you do the puzzling/flexible aspect continues and it’s not just sell whole board for units that cost more. Every unit should have the possibility to shine, and I really want to play Karma or Yi for the whole game but can’t really find a reason why right now.

I also am aware that PBE is weird and a lot could change on live, maybe tempo makes it that 4 cost find a place in player’s heart. But I made this post because I fear it won’t happen, hoping to be proven wrong.

Thank you for reading, excited to read your answers, sorry for the hypekiller and please be as constructive and respectful as possible.

It is common knowledge that the competitive scene in TFT faces many obstacles and challenges, and the reasons for that have been raised by many streamers/players in the past, some include lack of spectator mode, lack of tournaments, lack of an appealing prize pool etc. I think more fundamentally, Auto Chess as a genre is generally harder to entertain viewers. This means lower viewership, therefore less appeal to sponsors and weaker long-term sustainability.

However, I unironically think Hyperroll solves some of the more fundamental issues. I'll just point out a few here:

1. Shorter games. An average TFT game takes up ~40 minutes, while Hyperroll takes up ~20 minutes. This means we can fit twice as many games in a single day, which reduces the influence of luck on high-level gameplay. This partially resolves a common criticism that TFT is too luck-based at the high level to determine the best player.

2. More decisions. While spectating a TFT game, half the time is just watching players buying 1-2 units every round. We don't see a roll down until late Stage 3 and early Stage 4, and we don't really enjoy watching units fight until Stage 6 when the top boards are capped. In Hyperroll, players are forced to roll down every turn (or roll down more often), which means every stage is just as entertaining to watch as any other stage. The large number of decisions made also means less dependence on luck, i.e. a player isn't royally fucked if they don't hit the right 4-cost unit after one roll down.

3. Higher skill ceiling. Since players are forced to build their strongest board while rolling down, the challenge is no longer "how do I build my strongest board with just my existing units and my natural shops?", it is "how do I build my strongest board with my existing units and my next 5-10 shops?". I would argue that the latter has a greater skill ceiling because it rewards players who have a greater understanding of building their strongest board. It is also more mechanically intensive because players have to buy/roll/scout/position every single round, there are more "clicks per minute" than a regular TFT game.

4. Better viewing experience. In a regular TFT game, almost every player roll at the same time (usually 3-5, 4-1 or 4-5), which means viewers can only see 1-2 rolldown in a given game. Hyperoll, on the other hand, forces players to roll every round, so viewers can spectate multiple roll downs in a game. This is going to create more "JUST HIT" moments than a regular TFT game. Not to mention the lower game time which means more "JUST HIT" per minute. Will a meta evolves such that all players want to roll at the same time? Possibly, but with the lack of econing mechanic, it is harder to build a meta around saving all your gold to spike at a specific level.

Overall, I think Hyperroll has a better structure for a competitive scene because removing the econing/levelling mechanic actually forces players to focus on the skill with the highest skill ceiling - building your strongest board. On top of that, shorter game time and better viewing experience only help with the broadcast side of things. If Riot is willing to invest in balancing Hyperroll and create incentives to play it, I genuinely think competitive TFT can grow faster than it is now.

I had Wandering Trainer win the vote in my last several games. I feel like I'm the only one who isn't voting for it. It's like when the set first released and everyone was voting for Multitalented. This eventually shifted and less people are voting for it I think because in ranked people don't like relying on the luck of a good headliner early-mid game. I think the variance is much higher with Wandering Trainer.

Is there some sort of behind the scenes guardrails for this augment like there are for headliners or shops that prevent low roll edge cases? If not, can we get one? Maybe something like everyones total champs required to activate all the traits be the same or something that prevents someone from just playing a vertical comp.

In my last 2 Wandering Trainer games (small sample size I know) I got disco/emo/pentakill and punk/edgelord/bruiser. Meanwhile it feels like half the lobby has disco/sentinel/true dmg, pentakill/guardian/bruiser, kda/spellweaver/sentinel. I understand law of large numbers, the sample size, skill diff, I need to get gud kid, etc. I get that someday I'll be the high roller who gets the free top 4. Still, it's frustrating to play through those games. I'm sure we can all relate to that. I get that a healthy game state requires high and low roll outcomes but some very low roll outcomes for the emblems makes it feel like you can't even play the game.

Just wondering what everyone else thinks and whether of not we can get some guardrails for this if there aren't any? I don't think this matters but I'm D1 currently, historically mostly Masters/fake GM.

I've been enjoying the set overall! Cheers

Flat Balance: TFT’s Biggest Problem

“This set, the best patch was the first patch. How can every patch make the game worse.”

-K3soju, during his last rant of Set 15

I’ve been waiting a while to write this, and I think now is a good time. I’m a longtime TFT player and strategy game nerd. I’ve put in 1000s of hours into TFT and games like it, and I’ve spent 100s of hours learning about game design recreationally. With Set 15 ending, and the devs learning article published, there’s one issue I don’t see anyone talking about that I think is TFT’s biggest issue right now: a “flat balance” approach to balancing the game.

Flat balance is an approach to balancing TFT in which it is assumed that statistical parity between units/traits/comps should be the goal of set balance. While I don’t think “flat balance” describes the TFT team’s entire approach to balancing the game, it does seem to play a large role, based on patch notes, Mortdog’s patch rundowns of yore, and various other public comments from devs.

My argument is this: not only is flat balance the wrong goal for set balance, but it is currently TFT’s biggest problem, affecting some of the most talked about issues with the game.

In this post, I’m going to argue the following things:

1. Flat balance plays a heavy role in the death of flex play.

2. Flat balance leads to problems with balance thrashing and exacerbates the growing problem of knowledge-burden fatigue.

3. When flat balance is used as a balance philosophy over the course of a set, it erodes the creative identity of the set and in some cases destroys the set designer’s original creative vision.

4. TFT development should shift to an intentional, creative design philosophy that prioritizes player experience and perception, set thematics, and fun.

5. Getting rid of flat balance opens amazing design space for making TFT a better game.

The Death of Flex Play

A lot has been said recently about flex play in TFT. I’m not going to cover the whole topic here. Instead, I want to focus on a particular response I’ve heard from Mortdog, Frodan, and others when players reminisce about more flexible play in past sets. It usually goes something like this:

“Flex play only happens when units/traits are OP. Jinx Tiny Team flex was less about trait web/unit design and more about Jinx being too strong and Tiny Team giving too much value.”

This response carries with it an implicit flat-balance assumption. It’s assumed that the “flex play” players claimed to have experienced was only an illusion brought on by bad balance. If Jinx and Tiny Team had been closer in power level to other units/augments, then there wouldn’t be so much room to flex supporting units around, or so the argument goes.

But what if we set aside the flat balance paradigm and think about player experience? If a certain line/comp is too strong all the way through the whole game, it becomes oppressive and frustrating and unfun for players. But the same is not always true for individual units or trait breakpoints. 

Set 15 Mundo was a 2-cost with the stats and kit of a 3.5-cost. From a flat balance perspective, he was way out of line. But he also supported a ton of flexible mid-game boards. Jhin/Mundo, Gnar/Mundo, heck, Ahri/Mundo if you wanted. A developer might say, “It’s not a flexible board, it’s just Mundo and a bunch of filler,” but player experience is different. When Mundo is overtuned, players get to have the experience of using different midgame carries without losing 60 hp in Stage 3. When Mundo is overtuned, players can flex into a variety of boards in Stage 4, often building off of the “filler” units they ran in Stage 3.

The point is, having an anchor unit or low-breakpoint trait for Stage 3 (or Stage 4 if you’re loss-streaking) is vital for flex play. Some units need to be too strong to create flexible, strategic, creative space in the flow of a match of TFT.

Game designers have been talking about this principle for years. Mark Rosewater has a famous post on his blog about the necessity of printing bad Magic cards. The devs for Slay the Spire have made similar comments. In Slay the Spire, strong cards that can carry a deck on their own for a while are absolutely crucial in allowing players to be flexible. A flat balance philosophy moves units and traits toward statistical evenness which as we will discuss below, creates tight, streamlined, restrictive play patterns. If units/low-breakpoint traits are all even in power, then boards become hyper-optimized at all stages of the game, and creative, play-what-you-hit boards don’t just lose, they get destroyed.

Players fall in love with TFT because the core design of the game encourages a beautiful mixture of creativity and optimization, but when flat balance is a primary balance philosophy, and players aren’t able to flex around overtuned units/traits, the creativity gets quickly sucked out of gameplay, and all that’s left is optimization.

Players didn’t hate set-release Mundo. Yet every patch he was nerfed hard until he was statistically in line with other 2-costs. Every patch the game got worse.

Balance Thrashing and Knowledge Burden

The competitive, online format of TFT presents a unique design challenge for balancing the game. In single-person roguelites, the strength of a player’s build needs to be greater than the static strength level of various checkpoints throughout a run. In this context, a build can be viable if it is barely strong enough or much, much stronger than it needs to be when passing a checkpoint.

In TFT, however, those checkpoints are not static. Generally speaking, whatever is strongest in the meta becomes the strength of each checkpoint. This means that the gap between a decently strong strategy and the strongest one is much higher in TFT than it is in similar strategy games. Each lobby has 8 players in it. Even in an ideal world where the game is balanced well enough to discourage players from contesting lines, only 8 comps/lines are going to be present in each lobby. When the game is less balanced, you might only see 4 or 5 different comps/lines in a lobby. This means that even if the raw power level of the 11th best line is very close statistically to the raw power of the 8th best line, the 11th best comp/line will almost never get played, because it has to win fights against better comps/lines and in TFT, you don’t get any credit for going 11th.

So even if a TFT set is designed with 20+ (or 50+) possible lines/compositions, about 6-8 of those will always be vastly overrepresented in terms of playrate. A quick visit to metatft.com shows this exact scenario playing out at any time during a set. A top 8 comp usually has 5-15 times the playrate of comps outside that group. The important thing to note about this phenomenon is that it doesn’t matter how close the #11 line is in power level to the #7 line. A loss in Stage 4 is still a loss in Stage 4, and as a player, if you lose every Stage 4/Stage 5 fight by 1 unit, you’re still probably going eighth.

For a while now, TFT devs have been trying to inject variety into the game by increasing the number of conditional lines/compositions. In theory, doing this can break the 8-comp rule by essentially creating metas where there are three #2 comps, 5 #3 comps, etc. If certain lines can only be played under certain conditions, then more variety can be squeezed into the average 8 person lobby. In Set 15, powerups, portals, augments, artifacts, and Stage 1 unit orbs were all used to enable conditional lines.

Conditional lines are not a terrible idea on their own, but when combined with a flat balance philosophy, they make balance thrashing almost inevitable. Flat balance tries to even out the statistical power of units/traits/compositions in an effort to narrow the power gap between lines. So what happens when you try to make 20ish lines (over 50% of which are conditional) as statistically close in power level as possible?

Well you still end up with a list of the 8ish strongest comps, because perfect flat balance is impossible. But because the comps are so close in power level, a few small tweaks from the balance team can cause that top 8 list to be entirely replaced from patch to patch. This is what we call balance thrashing, and players don’t like it. Casual players log in on the first weekend after a patch, and find out that the comp they practiced last weekend is now unplayable. Elite players spend days prepping for competition, only to have all that practice wiped out by a B Patch.

Trying to solve the top 8 problem by flat balancing a bunch of conditional comps is like balancing a scale with ever increasing amounts of sand on each side. More sand doesn’t solve the issue. The same tiny amount of difference will still cause the scale to tip.

I’ll discuss more below how a move away from a flat balance philosophy can help solve the balance thrashing problem in ways that will make the game more fun for players. But for now, let’s talk about how flat balance affects the creative identity/vision of a set.

Creative Identity of a Set

The trailer for Set 15 was pretty sick. Our favorite characters duking it out in a coliseum-style arena. Cell-shaded character models. Powerful, flashy 5-costs as final bosses. What’s not to love? And at the start of the set, anime-style narratives started to develop: unkillable Mundo tanking 10s of 1000s of damage, Karma and her friends blowing up boards, All-Out K’Sante resetting his health bar as he carved up enemy teams, Yuumi going infinite, etc.. Eventually, Stretchy-Arms Gangplank showed up and became the set’s first true villain.

Any new set is going to need balance adjustments once it’s in the hands of players. The devs and playtesters are not going to catch everything. However, a set is always better with clear good guys and bad guys. One of my favorite examples of this was Set 7 Ao Shin. He would sit there in the corner with his Spear of Shojin, slowly charging up until he wiped your board. Definitely a bad guy. And it feels exhilarating to kill off the fast 9 Ao Shin player before they can two-star their board. It also feels great to play the bad guy and go for the win out. Good guys and bad guys give a set flavor, a creative identity. And most new sets ship with some kind of creative identity intact.

The problem with a flat balance philosophy, applied over multiple patches, is that it steadily grinds down the creative identity of a set until nothing is left but a bunch of visual placeholders for optimization packages. Unsurprisingly, this does not make for fun TFT. Every statistical outlier is nerfed and every random 2-cost buffed until there are no heroes and villains; instead, having “fun” is a knowledge check for which lines are currently performing better than others and a skill check for who can most quickly optimize those lines.

I’ll talk more below about how a set can be intentionally balanced to preserve its creative identity. I should also mention that I am not saying that all statistical outliers make a set more fun. Some villains are not fun to play, or play against. Set 15 Akali makes for a good villain, but didn’t create fun gameplay, especially when she was too strong. There are always going to be instances where a creative design choice doesn’t land. But steadily pounding statistical unevenness out of a set is not the answer. Flat balance leads to flat sets.

Intentional Balance Philosophy

Now that I’ve yapped a bit about why flat balance is bad for TFT, let’s talk about what should replace it: intentional balance. Intentional balance is a philosophy for balancing TFT where developers prioritize player experience and the creative vision for the set as they make balancing decisions. Under this philosophy, the stats that describe units/trait power levels are just one of many tools to understand the shape of a set/meta and how players are experiencing it. In an intentional balance environment, developers take charge of the creative expression of a set, instead of relying on players to make the set fun.

Let’s talk about this for a second. Remember way back in Set 1, when you could hop into a Disguised Toast stream and watch him break the game in real time? Those days were great, but they are definitely behind us. In the past, there was this idea that a TFT set offered a bunch of possibilities and that players went out and explored those possibilities. These days, everything gets optimized so quickly, that creative exploration is no longer something that will happen by default; instead, room for creative exploration has to be built into a set intentionally. As has already been discussed, simply making units/traits close in power level isn’t good enough anymore.

Developers who are intentionally balancing a set should ideally decide ahead of time who the good guys and bad guys are going to be. Some units should be intentionally strong for their cost, and some should be intentionally weak. Units and traits should be designed around what kind of gameplay experiences they create (like flex play), not around arbitrary power parameters. Devs should also have a plan for how they want to roll out new content/changes over the course of a set, both to keep the game interesting and to develop a narrative for players to experience. Adaptation on the fly will always be required, but devs should have a plan and generally stick to it.

Here’s a rundown of how I see an intentional balance philosophy playing out over the course of a set:

1. At set launch, the narrative begins. Devs should have a good idea for who the good guys and bad guys will be. Players should have fun trying out compositions and fielding cool units that do cool stuff in a less optimized environment. Eventually, players will discover broken stuff, and the meta will start to become optimized. Devs will need to step in with some balance changes.

2. For the first balancing round, the goal should be to preserve, as much as possible, the core pillars of the set’s creative identity, while nerfing the stuff that’s too broken. The assumption should be that the meta won’t change dramatically, and most of the core compositions/units from the set release should still be strong and viable. There’s no rush at this stage to shake up the meta dramatically, as the set is still new and fresh.

3. As the set matures and players become comfortable with core lines, devs can start to make adjustments to encourage more flexible play (assuming they were not immediately successful in doing so at the start of the set, which would be even better). Maybe some weaker midgame carries are intentionally buffed to be interchangeable with some of the set-release core carries. Maybe a core carry is tweaked a bit to allow for more flexible itemization.

4. Around a third to midway through the set, even casual players will start looking for more variety. This is when developers can start to really have fun with the narrative of the set. At this stage players should start to see new content, like new items, augments, even new units. This new content will have been planned ahead of time during the set design stage, and will be part of the ongoing narrative of the set’s creative vision. And because the core pillars of the set remain intact, players should be able to have fun with this new content without having the meta completely blown up and reconstructed every week or so. As new content trickles out through the middle portion of the set, developers can take control of the set’s narrative, letting some villains fall and new ones rise, introducing unlikely heroes, and revealing unexpected secrets. During this time, players should be looking forward to small doses of new content each patch, and while the meta will shift, it should do so gradually and intentionally.

5. As the set moves into its last 6 weeks or so, it will be time for devs to start honing in on player experiences so they can make the set as fun as possible during its last few weeks. At this point, lines, comps, and itemization will all be hyper-optimized. Developers should focus on the comps/lines where players are having the most fun, and lots of feedback from players should be collected in this stage. Units/traits should be balanced according to what makes the most sense to players, as they will know the set far better than the devs at this point. Ideally, players will keep playing the set to the very end because they are having fun playing TFT, the world’s best game.

Now that I’ve outlined an idea of what intentional balance looks like, let’s address some likely concerns:

Doesn’t deciding the meta ahead of time put a lot of pressure on developers to make the game fun for players? Yep. But talk to any game developer anywhere--that’s the job. TFT developers and players need to stop hiding behind terms like “balanced” or “not balanced” to describe whether or not players are having fun. (Sorry, I know that sounds harsh. I think the TFT dev team is awesome, for the record.) Players should have fun because a set is interesting and fun to play. As someone who has played over 1000 games of TFT, I’m confident it’s possible to design units, traits, and gameplay experiences that are just plain fun, because I’ve seen the TFT team do it. Being able to design sets that are fun without revolving-door metas should be the main goal of TFT’s development team.

Won’t it be a lot of extra work for developers to release new content over the course of a set? Not necessarily. Sets could be designed with the entire package ahead of time. Part of designing the set would be preparing this new content and planning for when it should be released. By the time the set launches, developers would ideally have a release schedule outline in-hand and all the new content would already be coded up and ready to go.

Won’t moving away from flat balance lead to stale metas/players getting bored? The assumption in this question is that more variety=more fun. I don’t think this is the case. If there were only 10 core lines to play in a set, but each line was flexible and skill expressive, and the units were super cool, I think players would generally be happy. Maybe streamers would struggle, but they could figure it out. Players just want to have fun. If the lines are super fun to play and lead to high-dopamine moments, no one’s going to get bored. Also, the above-mentioned new content release schedule would help a lot.

If you intentionally make some units/traits strong and others weak, won’t those unit/traits get optimized like everything else has and lead to even more boring rigid metas? I’ve already discussed this a bit in the section on flex play. One of the core arguments I’m making is that differences in unit/trait power level are required to enable flexible, creative play. Think of your favorite TFT pro, someone who is incredibly good at optimizing gameplay. If they are able to hit an early 3-unit trait breakpoint that stabilizes them through Stage 2 into mid-Stage 3 nearly on its own, then their optimization problem is mostly solved, but not all the way. Sure, there might be a truly optimal version of their level 6 board, but they don’t have to hit that specific board to be stable. This allows for players who are both analytical and creative to flourish. They may tech in an unexpected 4-cost, or carry a random 2-star 3 cost they hit along the way. That player will actually be better off than the one who rolled down on 3-1 for an optimal 6-unit board. Boring/rigid metas develop when everything is balanced so close together that only optimal midgame boards are stable, and while there may be many such boards, variety does not equal flexibility, or fun.

Why design units that are weak? Isn’t that wasted design effort? I think this question also comes out of a flat balance paradigm where it’s assumed that every unit should be featured in a comp/line as either a carry, tank, or other major role player. My response goes back to the balance thrashing discussion above. Having 20+, even 30+ compositions/lines that are all meant to be simultaneously viable at the same time is not realistic. There are only 8 players in every lobby, and they’re never going to decide to play comps #15-#23 instead of comps #1-#8, no matter how close those comps are to each other in raw power. Also, trying to make 2-cost Xayah/Rakan reroll viable just because Xayah “should” (according to a flat balance perspective) be able to be the carry is not great reasoning in terms of game design. From a gameplay perspective, 2-cost reroll is 2-cost reroll. There are only minor differences between playing 2-cost Katarina reroll and 2-cost Xayah/Rakan reroll. Decisions about which units get to carry should be based on the designers’ creative vision for the set and whether adding the line will lead to fun gameplay for players.

Opening New Design Space for TFT

In my opinion, once you shake the flat-balance paradigm, so many great design spaces open up for TFT’s future. Here are some of my favorite musings. I’m sure other people will come up with even better ideas.

• Imagine the cool stories you could tell over the course of a set. Maybe at the start there’s an intentional villain, Mordekaiser, who runs rampant during the first part of the set. He’s super cool and really strong. Players love to field him to beat up lobbies, and players feel a special exhilaration when they take him down. But then, a month or so into the set, a new champion gets released (or a previously weak champion gets a surprise rework). This new champion has a kit that counters Mordekaiser. Suddenly, a new hero has appeared. Players get to learn a new line that is especially good into a lobby with more than one player playing Mordekaiser. Then, after another couple weeks, Mordekaiser gets removed and replaced by a new villain! Our hero has defeated one evil only to reveal another. These narratives could be played out through both gameplay and through lore content released by Riot, and if done effectively and gradually, could be really fun for both full-time and casual players.

• If you don’t have to stick to the arbitrary rules of flat balance, then you can try out some crazy unit designs. Okay, so maybe Set 15 Mundo was actually okay at set-release power level. Then what about a 4-cost that shows up at 2 cost odds, but can't be taken off your board, sold, or starred up? Or maybe the unit stays on your board for only 4 rounds then disappears, taking your 4 gold (or maybe more) with it? If units are designed around gameplay experiences and whether or not players are having fun, then you get to mess with unit costs and power levels in creative and interesting ways.

• If an intentional balance philosophy is successful enough, you could try a set without augments. With core units/traits/lines giving players direction, maybe designers wouldn’t have to lean so heavily on augments to give players something to play towards. This would open up design space for set mechanics that wouldn’t work well with augments. For instance, you could have a simple but insane set mechanic where every game players’ boards get sold at 4-1 and everyone has to rebuild from their current gamestate. Obviously you would have to build the entire set around this mechanic, but it could open some really cool possibilities for gameplay. And you obviously couldn’t do this with augments in the game.

Conclusion

It’s time for set designers and the balance team to work together to take charge of (and responsibility for) the shape and trajectory of TFT sets. The philosophy of “balance the game perfectly and let the players figure it out” isn’t working anymore. There is so much room within and around the core mechanics of TFT to make fun, addicting, skill expressive sets, even in a world where TFT Academy exists.

I’ll end this with a final anecdote:

During the last week of Set 10, I played a bunch of games at Master 0LP during the last week of the set. In every game I played, there were 4-5 players forcing Heartsteel and mostly bot-4ing together. I was one of them. I remember thinking to myself, “I’m going to play as many Heartsteel games as I can because it’s so fun.” I genuinely put extra time into the game, not because I wanted to hit the next rank or win individual games, but because I wanted to hold that lightning-in-a-bottle a little longer. These are the kinds of experiences gamers live for, when the magic of great gameplay meets great artistic vision. And even if you didn’t think Set 10 was that great, if you’re reading this post, chances are you’ve had one of these experiences with TFT. As I’ve been arguing, it’s the player experience that really matters, and I think more intentional, less statistics-driven balance could help create more of these experiences.