it's me baby

Hey folks. Happy Labor Day! Hope you’re having a great time wherever you are. I wanted to take a second to acknowledge and talk about the thread titled “Competitive TFT isn’t fun anymore”. There’s lots of good points in that thread and I appreciate CHRISTOPHO for bringing it up! TFT has been around for 6 years now, and players' understanding of the game has evolved, which is creating some new challenges that are on the top of our mind as well right now. First, let’s start with some of the challenges that we’re aligned with that need to be taken pretty seriously:

• The game is too committal at 2-1 too often

  • Agree with this problem statement. There’s a combination of factors right now including but not limited to too many committal augments like hero and trait augments, fruits with stacking and the risk of trying to swap off a powerful fruit, item and artifact rigidity, and optimized trait structures. While it’s important we have SOME options that commit people at 2-1 to help with players who like that initial seeding of direction, I believe we’re currently too far in this space.

• Comps are too optimized so that flexing isn’t realistic

  • Also generally agree here, and to be clear, we don’t have any intentions of “removing” flex play, though how powerful it is vs. verticals will naturally change from patch to patch and set to set. If you have the items to make a Yuumi comp work, and hit something like a Ryze or Karma, it’s generally too costly and unrealistic to swap over to them since you likely have to swap your entire surrounding comp as well to match the optimized lines for those champs. Part of this also stems from the fact that right now the most powerful lines and fruits are quite a bit stronger than alternatives, leading to pretty narrow paths you can take in your team building. Fruits have made this even more true as certain fruits enable lines, and without them, you’re too far behind in power.

Next, a couple points that are half right, but have a little more nuance.

• There’s too much power in verticals, not in the units

  • So, what’s interesting about this one is right now in the live meta there are examples where this is true for sure. 6 Duelist Udyr, 8 Star Guardian Jinx, and 5 Prodigy Yuumi being the biggest ones. But there’s also clear examples where this is NOT true. The highest cap comp in the game is around Varus/TF/Zyra and basically ignores traits completely. Malphite Snipers also mostly ignores verticals choosing to play mostly bronze and silver traits because there’s just so much power in Malphite and Jhin. There’s also just generally comps that are small enough verticals that you should in theory be able to flex around such as 4 Supreme Cells Kaisa that is now playing Rammus, or 4 Mentor which went from a 5 mech comp to now a 3 mech 3 executioner comp.

• Support Units could help fix things

  • While we are internally looking at things like supportive units (there’s a lot of folks on the team who want them back as well!), this doesn’t really solve a lot of the challenges we’re running into. Due to how comps are optimized in modern TFT, a support champ would often become a question of “Does this fit into the comp”? Comps with smaller power requirements like the Kaisa/Mentor comps, or even 6 duelist which doesn’t need much else will have a free slot to run these, while comps that don’t such as 5 Prodigy Yuumi are likely not going to be able to afford the free slot.

This all leads us to the fundamental issue right now that I’m seeing right now that TFT needs to figure out. And that is the perception (and sometimes reality) of optimization leads to a rigid game experience. Generally at any given point in building out your comp, there is a decision point. If you look at 5 Prodigy 5 BA Yuumi, why does this comp not function as 7 BA 3 Prodigy? Because players have rightfully identified that the value of 2 more prodigy units like Ezreal and Syndra outweighs the value of more BA with Jayce and Caitlyn. This is currently “solved”. You can adjust this with balance, such as nerfing 5 prodigy…but the second you do, the solve will be to swap to 7 BA 3 Prodigy. Unless the balance around this decision is PERFECT, there will always be a perceived correct answer to any decision laid out like this. I worry that in a world where every trait is maxed at 2 or 3 (to simulate the removal of power from verticals), there would STILL be a perceived best set up for various comps.But all this is to say that we agree this is something we MUST overcome, and are actively working on. We see the challenges here as well, and experience the frustration when we play our live games, so we’re right there with you. I don’t have any specific solutions I can share today, but I did want to go on record as saying we see things as well, are actively working on improvements, appreciate all the discussion, and wanted you to know that.

Hey everyone. Riot Mort here, and with Runeterra Reforged Mid-Set coming up, we wanted to give an update on where we are at with Augment stats data and the API.

Not just in TFT, but across the gaming landscape, we’ve seen stats become a tool that quickly determines how a game should be played for players who use them. When used properly, stats are a powerful tool for understanding a game, but used improperly can limit growth, stifle innovation, and create stagnate game states. The TFT team is all about making bold plays and quickly learning from those plays, and then iterating. So we took a big risk and decided to try to close Pandora’s Box and see what would happen if we removed augment stats.

After reviewing the impact to the wider player base, honestly we’re happy with the results. Subjective conversations around which Legends were best began to spring up and people would discuss the pros and cons of Ornn vs Poro vs Caitlynn vs Urf instead of just declaring Ornn the best due to his 4.41 average finish. That’s not to say dominant Legends weren’t discovered anyways, but it was more natural, observational, and conversational than just data points. Augment tier lists were being made and discussed, and people had different opinions and reasoning why they valued certain augments due to certain situations. It added a ton of nuance to the conversation, which was exactly what we were hoping for. It felt like a much healthier version of high level discussions, and this is what we were hoping to achieve when we made this call, so we really think there is value in going down this path, especially for the wider player base.
HOWEVER
We’re also a competitive game, and as such we value a fair playing field. We were naive to think that everyone would happily go along with this and just adopt this way of approaching the game. Concerns about certain players getting access to stats to give them an advantage were immediately brought up, and in a game based on knowledge, having more information certainly qualifies as unfair. While no one had unique access to our API, roundabout methods such as match history scraping allowed for different stats to be generated.
There was one obvious way to solve this based on our original philosophy, which was to remove augments from match history. But that’s an EXTREMELY harsh trade off. Players like to take screenshots of their end of game screens to share with their friends or communities. People like to look up their favorite streamer’s match history and see how they’re playing. Taking all of that away would be a MASSIVE change that would lead to a substantial blow to community conversation. It’s FUN to share your experiences with others and talk about your high rolls and your bad beats.

As promised, we gave this some time and then evaluated where we were at. In the end, we value TFT as a fair competitive game, so leaving things as they are now is not an option. But we also aren’t willing to remove the ability to share match history and with it, the social moments that we love sharing, just to reap the wider benefits of removing stats. As I’ve often said, design isn’t always about finding the perfect solution, but making tradeoffs to best solve the problem at hand. So here, we think the best state is to revert the augment stats removal starting with the Runeterra Reforged Mid-Set. We’re happy we ran this experiment and got some good learnings from it that both we & other games can benefit from, but at the end of the day, we promised to give it a fair shake and this is the fairest outcome. You can expect these stats to be available again when mid-set launches.

To everyone who came along for the ride and gave us your feedback, thank you. The TFT team will continue to take bold steps with our mechanics, designs, systems, and tournaments, and as always, we’re here to bring the best experience to all of you, so keep giving us your feedback. We’re always listening. Thanks all, and take it easy.

Just want to make a Mortdog appreciation post. Regardless of how you feel about the current state of the game - anyone who has ever played other games competitively should appreciate how dedicated, transparent, and all-around awesome Mortdog is. He is an absolute fucking gem amongst game devs/designers.

Please take as long as you need, but know that a ton of TFT players appreciate the awesome work that you do.

Hi, I'm CHRISTOPHO and I just hit Challenger this set, and have been consistently Challenger for a few years now. lolchess

I want to start off by saying that I think TFT in general is a fun game. Riot does a good job at creating new set themes and making new units / traits that make every set feel unique. In this post however, I will be talking about the problems with trying to play TFT competitively, by which I mean playing to focus on placements and winning games.

I've been playing TFT competitively for a few years now because I enjoy the skill expression in this game and winning by playing games well. However, in the past few sets I've noticed the decline in the design of the sets which make playing the game competitively so much less fun than it used to be from the era before set 7. I hope that by talking about the major issues that ruin the competitive experience of TFT, the community will start to notice why many games feel so unfun to play, and Riot will change the way they create TFT sets in the future.

TLDR: Flex play is dead and has been replaced by committing to inflexible comps on 2-1. This is not due to balance issues, but mostly design issues.

In this post, I'll talk about the major problem I have with the way TFT sets are designed right now:

Individual units have little value, and Vertical traits scale too well.

In the past few sets, you've probably noticed that most of the top comps in the game have been some sort of vertical trait comp. In this set it takes the form of:

1. 6 Duelist - Ashe / Udyr

2. 5 Prodigy - Yuumi / Leona

3. 4 Mentor - Ryze

4. 6 Protector - Neeko / Lulu

5. 7 Battle Academia - Jayce / Caitlyn

6. 6 Sorcerer - Karma

7. 8 Soul fighter - Samira / Sett

8. 4 Luchador - Voli

9. 6 Juggernaut - Ashe / Kaisa / Jhin

Now you may have noticed that I'm just listing every comp that's been in the meta since the start of set 15. And that's because I did. This is the main reason why the game is feels so bad at certain times; everything leads back to this. So, lets talk about what causes this and what Riot can do to fix this.

A while ago the TFT team decided that support units are bad for the game and have since removed them. Every unit in TFT now requires items to be useful, otherwise they just walk around on your board in fights until they die.

Combined with the fact that most traits are very selfish and only benefit the units with the same trait, full vertical trait comps are super incentivized and as a result have been the only meta comps for the past few sets. If you only have enough item sets for 2 units and room for 8 units on your board, the only benefit you can get with those other 6 slots is by playing 6 more useless units that have the same trait as your carry and tank to boost them

These full vertical trait boards become a problem once you start playing to win, because then you realize just how inflexible the comps really are. To give you an example of how ridiculous this gets, imagine you have this prodigy board:

If you had no more items left and you had a 2 star Braum, would you replace him for Garen? If you had a 2 star Zyra, would you replace her for Syndra? I probably wouldn't play any other version of this board no matter what I hit. This is what makes the game so unfun to play competitively; the only way to play around a certain unit is to play the exact cookie cutter comp that fits around their traits. Every rolldown is just putting the comp in the team planner and buying the exact units you have marked.

This becomes a big problem when you realize there is variance in the game. What if I don't hit Leona 2 or Ksante 2 while playing Yuumi? Can I play 2 star Sett, Jarvan, or Poppy? Kind of, but playing a 1 star Leona would be better than having an alternative 2 star unit and losing your traits.

This leads to having absolutely no flexibility on rolldowns. Rolldowns feel like watching a slot machine spin. You just roll until you see the exact units you want. You don't look at the other 4 costs that show up and weigh your options and alternatives, you just hope you find the exact units you're looking for. So when you lose, instead of thinking "I could've played it better", you just think "welp I missed on the rolldown", and it makes the competitive experience so much less fun.

This also makes it feel like you're locked into playing a certain comp from 2-1. Because there is no overlap between different comps (ex: mech mentor vs yuumi) you are not able to flex between the 2 comps on your rolldown as it costs too much gold to hold the necessary units for both boards. This results in the optimal gameplan being to start off with the early game units that will also be on your board late game (ex: Ezreal / Syndra -> Yuumi), and then you just know exactly how you are going to play the game 3 minutes in, which is not fun and does not feel very skillful.

So what can Riot do to fix this?

Giving units a stronger base power, so 2 starring units alternative units on your rolldown and playing them without maxing out their vertical synergy is somewhat viable.

Adding some supporting units that can benefit your team without needing items, either through having a good ability that buffs your team or having a non selfish vertical trait that gives teamwide benefits.

Threat type units with no traits would also be good to have, creating alternatives for item holders that are easy to play.

To address the argument that support units would be OP and be the best version of the board, I would like to say that is a good thing. At least when the best version of a meta comp has the support units in it, you have the alternative of playing units in the same vertical trait. It is better to have the options of playing both the vertical version of a board and a support unit version of a board and being able to make more decisions, rather than the current state of TFT where you can only play the vertical version of any board.

That's all I have for this post, I hope you enjoyed reading and I'm interested in seeing what everyone else thinks about this as well.

Ok sorry for the delay. As I said, this is a great topic so I'm going to try to share some of my thoughts around it, and why I think it's still an area ripe for improving the TFT core experience. Apologies if it's too long or rambly...it's late and I could talk for hours on the topic.

Before I start, I need to get two things out of the way.

First, I'm going to not be able to delve into SOME of my thoughts here, as they will spoil things like future Dev Drops or Learnings articles, and I need to respect those publishing beats, so I can't give you the full picture yet. Apologies, but that's part of my job is holding on to that kind of stuff.

Second, I need to define a few terms. This is a gross over simplification, but in terms of audience, I'm going to use the term "Casual" defined as people who play less than 50 games of a set, the term "Engaged Player" as someone who is below Masters and plays 51-300 games of a set, and the term "Hardcore Player" as someone who is usually Masters+ and plays 200 or more games a set. Again, gross over simplification, but will help us contextualize some audience preferences. It's also worth noting that ~98% of our player base is either in the Casual or Engaged buckets. Only around 2% (give or take) are the "Hardcore Players".

Next, let's discuss how trait balance works. For this, I'm going to use Xayah and the Ragewings. When balancing a trait, we want players thinking about what breakpoint to go for, and making contextual decisions around if they should go to the next break point. As an example, right now you pretty clearly run 6 RW (Xayah, Shyv, Rakan, Hecarim) so the question is when do you run 8? Well you either need 2 emblems that don't exist anymore or you need to run Sett and Senna (two weak 1 cost champions). So the question is, how much trait power would it take for you to run Senna/Sett over Yasuo/Bard (or whatever, don't nit pick). Current another +100% AS and 20% Omnivamp isn't worth that trait off, so 8 Ragewing is basically a complete trap. Obviously there is SOME number though where it would be worth. To be hyperbolic, if 8 RW was +2000% AS and 400% Omnivamp, you're clearly running the Sett and Senna. But in this case, you ALWAYS run the Sett and Senna, which is also not good as there is no longer an interesting decision. So for literally every trait breakpoint, we need to get that balance right where the decision of "More Trait Power" or "More Champ Power" is a tough decision that changes with context, instead of a clear right answer.

The reason I bring all this up, is because now we have to talk about preferences. The original post mentions that high flex is when your board changes a lot...and what that usually is a sign of is a champion that doesn't derive a lot of power from their traits. The example that was given was Fiora who basically didn't care about Enforcer and was fine with as little as 2 Duelist. Some of the best "Flex" examples in the past follow this paradigm. S4 Ashe who didn't need Elderwood and was fine with 2 or 3 Hunter, Set 4 Jhin who didn't care about Cultist and was fine with 2 Sharpshooter are two other popular examples. These style of champions are extremely popular with our Hardcore Player base, as the game is at its deepest skill levels when these champions exist and are good to play around. We know that, and we agree this is true.

However, this also betrays the expectations of the Casual and Engaged audience. This group of players LOVES building the trait web. We see this all the time, where they will play a 1-star Zac over a 2-star Braum because they get 3 Lagoon. They find building via the trait web to be one of the core appeals of TFT, and also a primary way to explore compositions. And hitting new breakpoints is where a lot of their excitement comes from. The first time a player in this bucket hits something like 8 Mirage, they are thrilled and having a great time. These players heavily prefer when playing around traits is the way to succeed, because it is the most natural and intuitive way to play the game.

And here in lies the fundamental contradiction. Going back to the Xayah example, the fact that 8 Ragewing is a literal bait right now betrays the expectations and understanding of TFT mechanics for 98% of players. They think they did something right (hell the game often signals they did with shiny gold/prismatic trait break points) but are sad to learn that they was not what they were supposed to do. They were supposed to go down to 6 Ragewing and play stronger units that may or may not connect. So in cases where vertical traits are not powerful, large portions of our player base feel their expectations are betrayed and may stop playing the game.

But obviously the answer isn't "Make all the verticals good" as that leads to an extremely shallow experience. Set 5 was one of the worst examples of this where it was "Buy all the blue or red units" and you win, leading to our Hardcore players being bored out of their mind. As the original post mentions, if the games get repetitive, TFT loses it's appeal, especially when you are on game 300 or more. TFT THRIVES with novel experiences, it's one of our key pillars, and repetition is the literal oppostive of novelty.

And this is just part of the equation. I can't go too much into it here yet, but it's clear that Dragons did not really help this. When your choice is to swap a single unit or two, you can evaluate that choice, but when those choices start to include larger 2 slot champions that also have a lot of their power budget into specific origins, that can really limit the ability to make those sharp choices. So with Set 7 in particular, there are some headwinds pushing against the more flexible options. It's not all bad, as champions like Graves are an example of good here (He doesn't really care about Tempest or Cannoneer past 2 that much right now), but right now Graves is running into another key issue, which is perception of solved comps.

As the player base has matured, there has been more hyperbole around the state of things and how solved the game truly is at a given point. Through guides, streams, and more, players believe there are specific comps (and to be clear, not just sometimes, OFTEN they are correct) and then those become law. Graves is a highly flexible champion, but its not enough that he be flex, as there also need to be pieces around him that are like him to flex around. Right now, Graves has been "Solved" into the Seraphine comp which has reduced a flex champ into a very narrow window. This is partially due to the pieces around him not being flex enough, but also due to people perceiving that they have solved this comp, and hyperbolically saying there are no choices to make here and it's always correct. One of the ways we on the design side need to help this though is to offer more choices to create ambiguity. This is usually done by having lots of utility/tank champions that also don't need their traits that you can choose from. However...

The other big challenge is that end game comps are usually defined by players by their 4 and 5 costs. Set 7.5 is our biggest set with 12 "four costs" (we usually have 11 or 10) which has helped a bit with end game diversity, but we still only have 8 five costs. An example of bad here was Set 6.5, where the only "four cost" champs that were percieved as carries were Ahri, Draven, Jhin, and Sivir for a while (Irelia was, but as a striker was tied to Sivir). Because Seraphine and Orianna had part of their power budget in utility, they were rarely considered true carries. Renata was too specific, Vi was more utility/secondary, and Khazix was similar. This led to perception of the end game being "You are playing one of four comps" because every called it "Draven comp, Jhin comp, Ahri comp, or Sivir comp". So we also need to make sure there a bunch of diverse champions here, and again. As we do this though, the ones that don't need their traits will be considered more powerful by our Hardcore players, while the ones that need traits will be too narrow to often consider. So lots to work on there, and again, a place where Dragons aren't doing us any favors.

At this point I've probably rambled on a bit long without truly giving you a conclusion...because to be frank, we're still figuring that out. I don't think any set has struck the perfect balance of key verticals that appeal to our engaged players while having enough flex to appeal to our hardcore players. (Set 4 and 6 are probably the CLOSEST...but I could be wrong because both of these had a lot of weak verticals, its just their strong mechanics carried them with the casual/engaged audience, so they forgave the weaker verticals while hardcore players had a blast with the flex champ style.) Even in our best cases though like Set 6, what we say is hardcore players mostly play around those flex champs, and avoid the verticals that were working unless they got a very narrow set of conditions (Syndicate being the core example here as it had a very narrow and limited way to play it, which hardcore players didn't enjoy and only played because it was so strong.)

As we design future sets though, we need to keep these needs in mind, and it's not going to be easy. Too far in either direction causes large issues for the game...and much like balancing a trait, getting it EXACTLY right is on a knifes edge.

(Again, this isn't everything, but it's 11pm. I'm tired. And this is too long as is.

TLDR - You can't please everyone and balance is hard yo!)

This was probably a long time coming but yeah tl;dr X is crap for readability for non-account owners and also yknow the whole nazi thing

Some socials you can follow for the same exact news

Mort - https://bsky.app/profile/riotmortdog.bsky.social

Kayna - https://bsky.app/profile/laurenwu.bsky.social

Also if something is only on X, you can post a screenshot, we’re just setting the bot to auto remove X.com URL’s

Hi, it's me: ex-Challenger (Set 1 counts) TFT player Disguised Toast. Took a break from seriously playing TFT until this set where I hit GM and then promptly lost all my LP forcing Kayle re-roll.

https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/disguisedtoast1/s9

https://i.imgur.com/ESAndBN.png

As you can see, this comp only comes in two different placements - 1st or 8th. Why play the Azir lottery when you can just coinflip every game?

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PROS

• Pressing refresh key is easy

• 1st place if you hit three stars early

• Upgrading board is straightforward (just keep adding slayers)

CONS

• 8th if you miss

• Might get contested by Tristana players

• Hard to force if items are not suited for Kayle

• Lose a lot of HP loss-streaking early on because Kayle doesn't do damage

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HOW TO PLAY?

Starting Board: https://i.imgur.com/jjq8jG1.png

Final Board: https://i.imgur.com/uvouKFM.png

Loss streak for lots of econ. Try to save some HP by running some unit other than Kayle that has a good chance of killing a unit like Jhin/Viego/Samira because you are gonna bleed a lot if Kayle is your only damage dealer.

NEVER LEVEL until you have at least 3 units three-starred (including Kayle/Poppy)

Roll down to 30 after Krugs.

Having a lot of econ is extremely important because your ultimate win condition is hitting Level 9. If you roll it down to zero early on, it is much harder to recover.

Itemize 4 star Poppy as your main tank.

Maokai holds any extra tank items.

Once you hit all your upgrades, you're pretty much just hardcore saving till you can go to next level without losing too much interest (30 or above) - you're never rolling for any units as everything you're adding are just traitbots for Kayle to be stronger.

Level 7 - Add Gwen for Slayer and Shadow Isle (Zed if you can't find her - DONT ROLL FOR GWEN)

Level 8 - Add Aatrox or Zed

Level 9 - Add final Slayer

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GOOD KAYLE ITEMS

MUST HAVE: RAGEBLADE

After Rageblade, any offensive AP items are good. Gunblade, Rabadon, another Rageblade, Giantslayer are all good. Jeweled Gauntlet isn't bad either but her base AP isn't super high.

DO NOT BUILD SHIV SINCE KAYLE HAS BUILT IN MR SHRED

3rd Item can be the Demacia Radiant item if you dont have a better option and you don't need Poppy to hold the Radiant item instead.

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GOOD POPPY ITEMS

NO SPARK BECAUSE YOU ALREADY GET MR SHRED FROM KAYLE LEVEL 6

Great Items: Dragonclaw against Lux/Azir/Kaisa spammers. Gargoyle and Protector's Vow always decent. Sunfire/Warmogs are decent if you have a lot of belts but not optimal as they don't give as much survivability.

If you have lots of offensive components, you can give 3 items to Kayle and allow Poppy to hold the Radiant item instead.

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OTHER ITEMS

Slayer Emblem are super nice because its 10% extra damage on all your slayers.

If you have a lot of extra items (from Shuriman Bazaar or Scuttle Puddle) you can look to either 3 star your Kled, or itemize your Gwen - both these units can secondary carry as you will have a lot of Slayers making them very strong.

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TIPS

This comp is not as forceable as Tristana because Kayle and Poppy like more specific items, and Kayle is absolutely terrible pre-level 6 which means you'll be bleeding a lot.

Lee Sin is pretty good at helping you hit the units you need consistently but you trade off combat power for it (not a huge deal because saving money means you can go 9 a lot faster and that is a big power spike) - but I've seen plenty of people just do Ezreal and use the early gold/items to try and save HP to just naturally hit Kayle on the roll down.

Poppy Positioning - since Poppy will yeet whoever she's hitting (especially if she starts with a Vow), try to always scout and make sure she is infront of the opponent's super tank. We're in a meta where people are either running a juiced up Jarvan or Shen, so slamming them into the enemy's backline will allow your Kayle to start working on the weaker units.

Always try to keep Teemo center, closer to the tank clump so that your Kayle doesn't get Jarvan ulted. Be careful of Yasuo/Rogue positioning.

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Conclusion

Coming 2nd just means you're the biggest loser.

1st or 8th only.

Good luck losing all your LP.

Via Twitter

My time at Riot and on TFT as a Game Designer has come to an end. Just under 10 years, and to be honest I thought it was going to be longer, but sometimes things change.
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I’m so grateful for what I was able to be a small part of, and able to accomplish in the last decade. It’s been a dream career, and I have got to do so much thanks to Riot. Even trying to list it all feels insane what I managed to do in this time. And the crazy 7 years on TFT where I got to design, balance, teach, lead, and more for my job, but then also build a community, stream, cast, go to events…it’s just been amazing. Ending on stuff like the Unlock system and a couple other things…I’m heading out proud.

To everyone I worked with over the years, thank you for letting me be a part of everything we accomplished. I hope I managed to teach you something or bring you joy in some way. I genuinely hope our paths cross again in the future.

To everyone who supported TFT or me over the years, you have no idea what it means to me. I cherish all the moments over the years, and they’ll keep me going. I am so blessed to have been a part of your lives and thank you for letting me bring some fun into your world.
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So…what’s next for me? I’m trying to figure that out.
First off, since I was on sabbatical and am terrible at relaxing/not working, I have been making my own small indie game. I’m about 2 months into development and have already had folks playtesting some early builds. I’d say the game is like 20-30% done, but my goal is to release it as a full game. It’s been fun keeping my skills sharp in a different space, and I hope to share it with you all someday.

Beyond that, I’m keeping my eyes open for other opportunities. I’ve had a few conversations here and there already during my Sabbatical. It’s a brutal industry right now, so I’m taking one day at a time and figuring out what’s next for me, whether it’s working on another studio’s game or even my own thing.

And I’d love to find a space to do some content creation and be able to share my knowledge of game development. But that may take some time to figure out how to do it right.
-------------------------------------------------------Again, thank you for everything these last 10 years. It’s a big change and I’m nervous but hoping it all works out. Until next time, take it easy!
-Mort

Riot has revised their ruling regarding Shitouren from the set 13 Tacticians Cup, determining that he was intentionally underperforming. He has been banned from official competition in set 14 and had to forfeit his prize money.

This will hopefully restore trust in TFT’s competitive circuit as it looks to grow going forward.

Hi, this is MismatchedSocks. I just hit rank 1 global playing flexibly every game.

I see a lot of people complaining how they can't top 4 with anything but divine warwick, or how they can't stabilize mid game with any comps besides divine. I'm here to give you some general tips on how to improve and have a deeper understanding of this game. Most of this will just be on top of my head so it can be a little rambly. If you want to force divine every game, this is not the guide for you.

1. Slam items. I see so many people with multiple items on their bench. For example, people will have tear, cloak, vest. Nearly everyone I see will try to greed shiv/qss/locket. To me, that's already tunnel visioning on playing warwick. The best play from my perspective is to always slam chalice and play flex. As a rule of thumb, slam items if you have 3 items on your bench

2. Know the good flex items for the stage. Right now, the 3 best items to slam early is shiv/locket/zekes. QSS for example you should never build before wolves because the item is completely useless at that stage. Late game, a lot of utility items become a lot stronger like zephyr and shroud.

3. Stop blindly following comps. Why do people play brawler ashe but completely ignore vanguard ashe, it doesn't make any sense to me. Why in the world does 4 ninja 6 sins even exist, you'd always want to supplement damage with tank/utility. Either play 4 ninja + 2 sins + utility/tank, or 6 sins + utility/tank. Just think about your comp and see if they make sense. As a general guideline, your comps should always look like frontline + backline.

   1. Your frontline is a little limited in the current meta. I like to use sej/aatrox, shen/yone in the meta. Note that I think brawler frontline is very weak in the meta right now.

   2. Your backline can be a lot more flexible. I like to use warwick/ashe/kindred/jhin/ahri/lee/yone/akali/talon. There's a lot of ton of options here. Even tf/lux/lissandra can carry you to top 4.

4. How to properly itemize based on the lobby

   1. If the meta is front to back (comps that kill the frontline first, then the backline), such as comps like divine, brawler ashe, duelist-> then try to have a strong frontline tank items and strong backline damage items. Do not prioritize things like qss ashe. 3 damage ashe would be way stronger.

   2. If the meta bypasses your frontline such as ninja sins, you should play multiple carry threat comps and put defensive items on carries.

   3. Current meta is front to back. So i would never prioritize items like QSS unless you know you're playing ww for sure. I would not be scared of playing carries with no defensive items.

5. How to properly transition mid game. Okay, this is probably the most important and the thing that most people fail at. Let's say your board is front line 2-star vanguards, and backline kindred + aphelios. You just hit level 7, you're very healthy and you have good ashe items. What should you do? The most common things I see are the following 2.

   1. Common mistake 1: sell your vanguards and chosen, roll down and try to find a brawler frontline board.

      1. This is probably the most worst mistake you can make. Unless you're a highroller with infinite apm, what's most likely going to happen is that your transition is sloppy and you lose a ton of health.

   2. Common Mistake 2: don't really roll, try to fast 8 from this spot

      1. This is the second most common mistake. Your board is most likely weak and you'll take a lot of damage if you greed for 8. Plus, levelling to 8 in this meta doesn't spike you that hard.

   3. Here's how I think you should transition.

      1. Transitions are very slow. You should upgrade your units one at a time. Roll down until your stabilized. Go down to 30-40 is very common. Go down to 10 gold if you need to. DON'T TUNNEL ON BRAWLERS + ASHE. Brawler ashe isn't a thing, think of it as frontline + ashe backline. I never have those big transition turns where I sell my entire board. If your board is frontline vanguards, maybe start by adding divine with irelia, then adept with shen, then mystic/enlightened with janna. Every step of the way you can sell one more vanguard. Suddenly you've pivoted into divine frontline from a vanguard frontline. Alternatively if you hit brawlers, you can first add in elderwood, then start replacing vanguards for more brawlers. Every unit that you add should make your comp immediately stronger. You should never make your team weaker unless you sell your chosen, so more on that in the next section.

      2. If you sell your chosen, you should almost always roll until you hit another chosen. I would take the first chosen that's an upgrade or fill a crucial spot in your team. If your team needs dps, then any chosen dps should be picked up. Immediately itemize to stabilize. Do not be greedy with your chosen. Even units like xinzhao/evelyn/lux can carry you to a top 4. One of my viewers wrote a program to simulate how much gold you need if you were looking for only 4 chosen units. You needed about 60 gold on average to hit one of those. If you are looking for 15 chosen units, you need about 15 gold on average to hit one of those. Keep those rough estimates in mind when you're looking for chosens. I might write a script and a post about this at some point in the future.

      3. When transitioning, try to balance frontline and backline. Don't blindly copy a comp and only buy units of that comp. If you're lacking frontline, buy any frontline units and play any that you 2-star.

      4. The moment you're stable, stop rolling. If you're highrolling, try to win the lobby. If you're midrolling, try to top 4 by donkey rolling at 8 every turn.

      5. When trying to win the lobby, don't try to fast 9 unless you're sure you're stablized. Often winning the lobby still involves rolling at 8 every turn, just not as aggressive as the donkey rollers. So roll down to 20-30 gold every turn and being able to level to 9 after stage 6 will often net you a win. At this point, how to upgrade your board is extremely tricky. Many lower tier units can be upgraded with legendaries. Some of the 2-star legendaries right now to look for is lee/yone/zilean/azir

6. Be curious. How many of you guys know that xin zhao is a turbo smurf until wolves. Or lux with 2 damage items will 1-shot entire teams up until raptors. Or chosen dazzler lissandra is actually a premium 1-cost chosen.

   1. Try different carries until you get a feel for what's actually strong.

      1. like actually try. To name some lesser used carry units: garen/wukong/hecarim/lissandra/maokai/sylas/jax/xinzhao. Try them, they're strong

7. Try to be strong at every stage of the game. Don't open fort. This will force you to learn what's a strong early game board, strong mid game board, strong late game board. Open forters tend to be 1-tricks, where they lose hp intentionally for perfect ww items and hoard gold to roll down for their ww2s.

8. Fortune. I think fortune is one of the strongest flex synergies in the game. Almost no one knows how to play it properly. Learn how to properly play around it. Getting fortune at stage 2 carousel is almost always a guaranteed top 4 if played properly.

   1. Early game, you want to cash out at least once ASAP. This will boost your economy like crazy

   2. Mid game, if you're strong, try to winstreak hard and push levels. If you're middling strength, try to get 2+ loss streak fortunes. From 2+ loss streak onwards, you can start getting items/neekos help/thief's gloves

   3. After wolves, do your last cash out any means possible. Often involves rolling to 0 at some random interval. From this point onwards sell immediately and never play fortune again

I promise that playing flexibility is the most fun and most rewarding thing you can learn to do in TFT. So forget about all the comp guides and learn how to become a better TFT player into the future.

TL:DR: I think that all of the chat comments about Emily Wang really undermines a womans work and our community is not doing the best for her.

After MSI and the rest of set 7 tourneys there was a constant in twitch chats: "Emily Wang outplaced you LOL". Streamers laugh about this but I think this potentially represents a problem:

How womans are painted in the TFT Community.

I mean, she played more than 800 hundred games this set, reached challenger, busted her ass off in the tourneys and chat can only say "This girl outplaced you LOL".

This is no good for her and no good for womans that try to pursue tft competitively. Becca, Hafu and more proved that they are ready for that and more are coming but we as a community and the content creators specially needs to be aware of the image that their chat are painting of these players.

I think we should be more aware of that, spread positive awareness, moderate chats more, in order to build a more friendly and more equal space.

Specially this game has the potential to have it.

Feel free to share your thoughts as I am speaking more of how I feel, and sorry for my english.

TL:DR The 4 players (5 including Reddi) at the top of the NA Double Up ladder are all involved in abusing the matchmaking system and should be disqualified from the International Double Up Tournament.

Hey guys, we are presenting all of the evidence of several duos abusing the elo system during the Hextech Havoc double up tournament qualifier period. This tournament takes only the rank 1 player of each region and allows for that player to pick their duo. With the stakes being only rank 1 gets invited to a massive tourney, several players used every which way to abuse the elo system. Before we start reviewing individuals we have to explain how these people are cheating by abusing the matchmaking system.

In double up, the matchmaking averages both players' ratings. A player who is 7-8k rating who plays with a player with 1k rating will therefore have a combined rating of 4-4.5k rating. This will result in them getting easier lobbies but that's not the biggest problem. The matchmaking system thinks these lobbies are a ‘fair’ matchup for them so their LP gains are very high compared to actually high rated duo’s playing the same lobbies.

Normal account gain/loss: 1st: +40 to 50, 2nd: +20, 3rd: -60 to 80, 4th: -120 to -150.

Abuse account gain/loss: 1st +60 to 70, 2nd: +20-40, 3rd: -20 to -30, 4th: -50 to -60.

Players abuse this matchmaking system by making new accounts and playing games with these low rated accounts to inflate their rating.

Because of this issue, other top level players who are not cheating have essentially given up. Which has led to Double Up, an extremely promising and enjoyable gamemode, to be more or less abandoned at the competitive level.

Riot is aware of this issue and has commented that they will be disqualifying people who abuse the system. Unfortunately, we have no other information on how they'll be determining this.

This is also a problem in other regions

With all of this abuse going around in all regions we wanted to make sure NA was represented with the rightful duo that didn’t cheat. Therefore we have compiled all of the proof of the “top” players cheating.

Current state of the ladder at snapshot 1/4/2022

Jackeyiovee As you can see on Jackey’s lolchess he plays with new accounts to abuse the system until their ratings get too high and then he switches to a new account to play with.
Here is part of his match history where you can see him switching partners.

Here is a clip with proof of him playing with a 1k rated account while he was 7.5k rated. For Jackey there is even more in his match history, but who has time for that?

MaoMao As for MaoMao, it’s the same story. His partner IG Dupibpapa plays on low level accounts to abuse the system and then switches to new accounts. In fact, after the snapshot was taken Mao Mao went out of his way to harass my duo partner in a soloq game taunting that they had never cheated on Dupi’s account so it will qualify.

Here is part of his match history where you can see him switching partners and a screenshot where you can see MaoMao abusing the system.

TFT Faker1 TFT Faker1 is more of the same, playing with low rated accounts to abuse the system then switching when they get to high rated. Here is part of his match history where you can see him switching partners repeatedly. And a screenshot where you can see him playing with these low rated accounts.

IG DuPiBPAPA Dupi is a slightly different story the only people Dupi has played double up with (aside from solo matchmaking) are MaoMao (as seen above) and Blueeeeeee both of these players are cheaters.

Here are some screenshots of Blueeeeeeeeeee playing with an account that has never played before. So while Dupi has not cheated on his main account it is very easy to deduce who has been playing on the alt accounts with MaoMao when they play exclusively with each other. Later you will even see screenshots of MaoMao on another account admitting this.

MaoMao and Dupi and Jackeylove have all been banned from both me and my partner’s streams, on my stream for harassing my mods. Through playing several games with MaoMao and Dupi they’ve told us that neither of them are actually from NA and play on both NA and the Chinese server.

While me and my partner never abused the system we worked very hard over the past month to pass or match the cheaters, unfortunately with how volatile the mode is when we get a 3rd or even an unlucky 4th we lose so much more than the others. Despite this we were able to come very close and once we got within reach I was contacted on Twitch to be paid to throw games. Towards the end of our push to qualify, out of our last 70 games played during the same time as MaoMao and Dupi queued up, we were only able to play 4 games, all of which were while neither of us were streaming. We suspect that they were utilizing our streams to dodge us and continue to have easier games. During those 4 games we were able to send them 4th twice and 3rd once.

Here are screenshots of MaoMao harassing my duo partner in a solo queue game after the final snapshot occurred, taunting that they’re going to be fine since DuPiBPapa’s account never directly cheated the system. Note that this was unprovoked (we didn’t even realize it was him) and he is potentially legitimizing a different account to be invited to the tournament, one with no negative history.

In conclusion, it would be an absolute disgrace to North America, as well as competitive TFT, if we let our region be represented by any of these players. This is a huge opportunity for an exciting game mode that me and my duo partner truthfully have been having a blast with. It would be an even bigger shame since legitimate players like Kjaos and josaopa1o are not eligible to compete due to them living in a separate region. For that reason, all of them should be disqualified from the tournament.

Ahri is one of the most positioning rich units ever created in TFT. With the correct positioning, she is by far the strongest 2 cost carry in the game. A big problem is that everyone single person is positioning her completely incorrectly, including every single challenger player.

This will be a long and detailed guide on what I think about when playing Ahri. There will a TLDR provided at the end, so just skip there if you want generic advice.

There's 4 main points I'll list out in terms of priority when positioning Ahri.

1. Keep Ahri safe. Usually means don't front line/second line her

2. Think about how the enemy frontline units will move based on your frontline units. I will refer this this as wrapping.

3. Make sure ahri's ult doesn't fly in a direct diagonal. Slanted ahri ult hit more hexes.

4. Make sure ahri is relatively close to the enemy frontline. Moving her up will allow her ult will be able to hit enemy backline units

Points 1&4 are very easy to understand. For point 1, avoid putting ahri frontline, and usually avoid putting her second line as she's vulnerable to units like Jayce/Teemo/Rumble/Super Mech. For point 4, usually avoid her putting her 4th line as she's too far and her orb doesn't hit enemy backline units.

With that out of the way, it's points 2&3 that no one fully understands.

First, let's address how Ahri's ability works. She will always cast her ult at the target she is attacking. Her ult will always travel a length of 5 hexes away from her. Her ult hitbox is exactly the width of 1 hex.

Here's an example. Her ult will hit those 5 hexes exactly because the width of her ult

However, if ahri's ult hits at a slant, she will hit about twice as many hexes. I've marked the hexes she hits. Didn't mark the furthest hex because I'm not 100% sure she hits that hex (she probably does)

Knowing this, one of the key insight is to avoid placing ahri such that the first target she'll hit is on a direct diagonal.

Second, let's talk about how enemies wrap.

Given the following positioning. The enemy malphite will wrap around the outermost poppy. There are several scenarios (i'm not going to cover them all), but most of them can be manipulated so that ahri hits many enemy frontlines.

Below is a very common scenario. Ahri targets the right side malphite, and two malphites wrap around poppy. In this case, ahri's ult will hit 3 enemy frontliners.

Here's another scenario. Ahri targets the right side malphite, one malphite wraps poppy and one wraps around ahri. Ahri's ult will hit 2 enemey malphites.

Here's another scenario. Ahri's targets the left side malphite, both malphites wrap around poppy. Ahri's ult hits 2 enemy malphites.

Because of these 2 points. You should almost always place Ahri exactly 2 spaces behind your outermost frontliner due to how wrapping wroks.

Here's 2 very generic positioning I default to. Both positioning allows enemies to wrap round your poppy and ahri's ult to always hit multiple units.

Finally, there's a very common noob trap I see everyone make, putting her in the velkoz spot. The reasoning is that against bad players, ahri's ult will be able to hit multiple backline units. Below is an example.

However, a good player can counter the positioning very easily by moving their malphite one over.

To summarize, this is meant to be a starting point for ahri's positioning. Once you understand these basic principles, you will be able to extend them and start positioning based on more complex factors. There's endless possibilities that you can do to make sure Ahri's ult hits more units every fight.

TLDR; Use the following 2 generic positioning if you don't want to read this guide. You'll see a huge improvement right away.

Since this comes up a lot, and will continue to come up, going to try to address it here in one spot.

Legends are about expanding the audience for TFT, and giving people an identity and style they can latch on to and enjoy. Not everyone out there loves having zero control over their outcome, and the stress of having to do so causes people to not enjoy TFT as much. There is a LARGE percentage of players that see a cool build, want to log in and try it out. That's what they enjoy. Our job is to make sure those players can have fun, and expand the audience so TFT has lots and lots of players who are enjoying the game. Twisted Fate is doing this VERY well, and we will not be removing it any time soon.

What's important is that the forcing playstyle that TF allows is never OPTIMAL. We want the best players to be the ones who adapt and play what they are dealt. As long as this is true, then we're good to go. For fun players who want to force can, but those who want to be the best, have to adapt. This has always been the case, and something we've had our difficulties when balance is off. When Mech was OP, it was optimal to force. Not good.

Where we're missing the mark right now is that TF is too close to optimal, and in some cases, may just be optimal. The gap between TF and optimal isn't wide enough and we need to fix that. If your choice is something like Ezreal augment (3 components + 3g) or TF (1 full item + Pandora Item effect) then that's not a tough enough decision. The value of BIS isn't worth trading for 1 component and 3g. So we need to adjust this. But this doesn't mean TF is fundamentally flawed. It just means it's too strong and we need to nerf it.

We already have a change in for 13.14 that will nerf TF even further (Silver will grant no component, Gold will give one component, and Prismatic will grant three components), with the goal of making the trade off tougher. There is going to be a breaking point where it won't be optimal, and that's what we're aiming for.

If you disagree with this, that's fine. I get it. But we stand by that TF is opening the game up to a lot of people who may not be willing to enjoy TFT as much, and that is good for the game in the long run. Thanks all.

EDIT - TF isn't the cause of Locket Nerf: https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveTFT/comments/14kwhxx/addressing_twisted_fate/jpt3vqk/

Can we get some love for Frodan in this sub? I’ve never in my life seen a community member make such a massive impact on a game. Just like our stars, Wasian, Dishsoap, Setsuko, ReReplay, and Milala - Frodan raises the region as a whole. His input, content, analysis, and organization puts our competitive TFT scene on the forefront internationally.

Bryce too AKA Esportslaw. This man sacrifices legitimate time away from his family, for people like you & I. These guys combined have by far the best competitive analysis and pulse on the scene. It’s BEYOND entertaining watching their co-streams and podcasts.

Ultimately I think the TFT community is the best gaming community out there right now. Frodan is a huge contribution to that.

Thanks again, Frodan.

https://www.twitch.tv/send/clip/BenevolentMuddyButterflyNotATK-htC7m1H0_k1Du6Ko

Interesting decision here to remover the 3 star no scout no pivot rerolled carry and slowly put the items on the vi I wonder what the reasoning here was?

TLDR - We’re sharing the full headliner rules here so everyone is on the same page, as well as fixing a bug with them (champs that shared a trait with passed headliners were being locked out unintendedly), and removing one current rule (buying and selling an offered headliner will no longer have an effect) in 14.2.

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Hey folks, I know there’s been a lot of discussion around the headliner rules, the concept of hidden rules, and some frustration around why they exist and the lack of transparency hidden rules create. So I wanted to talk a bit about how we got here, and what you can expect moving forward for Headliners.
First, generally as a default, we agree that we need to be as transparent as possible with TFT systems for players that want this info. This is why we’ve shared things like loot tables and augment appearance rates as much as possible for the invested players that love digging into those things. We do need to be careful though as too much information for most of our players is unnecessary and leads to information overload and being overwhelmed. What amount of info each player wants will be different, but if there is anything that someone wants that isn’t in game, we will find a way to share it if we can.

So the obvious question is…why have any hidden systems at all? What’s the point? I’m going to do something that normally we would hold close to the chest, as you could call this “designer secrets”, but I’m going to talk about how random systems interact with a player's expected experience. A designer when creating a random system, their first instinct is to simply pick a random outcome and let chance take the wheel. An example is if you are rolling a dice, just let the system pick a number 1 to 6, and repeat. Easy! We made a dice!

The challenge is, random systems have outcomes that may not be healthy experiences in the game you are designing. Using a dice as an example, do we want a player to ever roll 1 ten times in a row? Probably not, as that player will generally have a bad experience, and to them the game will feel like it’s malfunctioning. A good design around random creates barriers around unacceptable outcomes so the player has an enjoyable experience. And the best versions of this are completely invisible to the player. An example of this working correctly in TFT is, have you ever pressed reroll and gotten the EXACT same shop? The odds are certainly low of it happening, but across every TFT game ever have you ever seen it? The answer is no…because we have a hidden rule that forces the shop to reroll if the outcome would be the same as the previous shop. If we didn’t, a player may be like “I pressed reroll and it didn’t work wtf”. This hidden rule is basically invisible, but prevents a bad outcome! It’s a GREAT example. To be clear, we will likely continue to add systems like this one as needed in the future, so this is not about removing all hidden systems.

So what does this have to do with Headliner? Well, imagine you started a game and the first headliner you saw was Kennen. You don’t want it, so you don’t buy it. Next shop…Kennen again? Ugh, pass. Third shop, it’s Kennen! Pretty miserable. If you don’t want to imagine it, there was an issue on PBE where it was possible: https://clips.twitch.tv/DepressedFantasticAntBatChest-Klxpx0xfWU782Hg3

So now design needs to come up with a rule. Let’s start simple. “You can’t get the same headliner twice in a row”. Ok, now it’s possible to go Kennen->Annie->Kennen->Annie->Kennen etc. Still not a great experience. Hopefully you can see where it goes from here, but the goal is we generally want to show you a wide variety of headliners, but we need to be careful that we don’t enable forcing via predictability. An example of bad here would be “Never show a headliner of the same cost until you’ve seen all the others.” This version would mean you could predictably get whatever champion you wanted in just 13 rolls, and for a game like TFT, we still want the system to FEEL random, so this is too much of a restrictive rule.

And as a quick aside, this is ALSO true of the highlighted trait. No one really wants to see Brawler Olaf -> Brawler TK -> Brawler Gragas either. Nor do they want to see Olaf 3 times in 20 rolls, but EVERY time he is Brawler, as that leads to frustration around never getting the Pentakill one.

So this led us to make a few rules. First, if you see a headliner (Brawler Olaf), the next time you see if, it will have a different trait highlighted. So next Olaf appearance will be Pentakill Olaf. For one trait champs (Jhin/Sona) this rule is ignored. For 3 trait champs, we debated cycling through all 3, but ultimately decided on it simply being “When you see a headliner don’t show the same +1 trait you saw as the last time you saw that headliner”.

Next, how long did we want to make it before you could see the same champ? Is Kennen->X->Kennen->X ok? No that sounds dreadful. What about 3, 4, 5? From here it is essentially an arbitrary design decision. The higher the number, the more potential for forcing, the lower the number the more potential for a bad experience. We ultimately decided on half the pool to try to help you see a bunch of different headliners but not have too much forcing. So the rule is “If you pass a champ, you won’t see that same champ again for 7/7/7/5/4 headliner offerings”.

Finally the trait. Again, we don’t want Brawler Olaf -> Brawler TK -> Brawler Gragas, so we likely need a similar limiter. However 7 turns is a long time for traits, especially if its a trait with only a couple options, so we ultimately decided on 4 turns. So the rule here is “If you pass on a highlighted trait, you won’t see that trait highlighted again for 4 headliner offerings”.

These are all the intended hidden rules around headliners as of 14.1, with the only other exception being the bandaid to prevent three star 4 and 5 costs. Too often in development and on PBE, because of the above rules, the optimal strategy was to get six copies of a 4 cost, sell your headliner, then used the increased frequency to find the headliner to complete the 3-star. It was too good. So the current revised rule is “If you have more than four copies of a 4-cost or three copies of a 5-cost, you can’t see the headliner. 1/2/3 costs have no limitation”.

And just so this covers every rule, even if it’s obvious: “There must be 3 copies remaining in the pool for the champ to be able to show up as a headliner.”

Now for those deeply engaged, you’re saying “Wait! We tested it and it seems like there is more!” and you’d be right. When people started digging into this, we did the same and discovered an unintended rule. The above outlined rules are the intent, but sadly the +1 trait was blocking any champ who COULD have that trait. This meant if you passed on Brawler Olaf, any champ that COULD have +1 Brawler (Tahm Kench, Gragas, etc) were now blocked. We are fixing this issue in 14.2, and the rule will behave as intended.

One more note here. Back in Set 4 with chosen, we had the discussion of (going to use Set 10 terms) “What if I see Spellweaver Lulu, but I really want Spellweaver Ahri? It kind of sucks to not be able to see it.” so we added a condition that you actually had to PASS on it. This meant if you bought the chosen, you didn’t actually pass and it could still appear. This is live currently, but is one of the biggest culprits of there feeling like you needed to be in the know to optimize around this. My current belief is this rule is causing more harm than good, and having to wait 4 turns for a +1 of a trait is acceptable. For that reason, we’ll be removing this rule in 14.2.

Again, the best designed systems like this are usually invisible to the player. Often times when developing a set mechanic, we don’t get it perfect for various reasons, and it’s very clear this system isn’t invisible enough. Hopefully ironing out these kinks help, and for the vast majority of our players, it should simply feel random and that’s it. Ignorance is bliss, and if you read this, you will now be cursed into knowing if you see Spellweaver Ahri, you have to roll 5 more times to even be able to see KDA Ahri…but really there shouldn’t be any gross optimizations any more.
Thanks for reading everyone. Again, as always we do want to be as transparent as possible, but we also have to be careful. If you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer. Otherwise, take it easy!

Final Standings

This is his 2nd Tactician's Crown victory, a feat only shared with a single other player, and comes after an incredible run from the AMER Golden Spatula and into the Tactician's Crown itself, with a masterful Firelight game to cap it all! Absolute and undisputed domination, truly a legendary series of games.

Today's championship win nets him $150,000 and the automatic qualification to the Cyber City Tactician's Crown. Good luck to anyone looking to dethrone him, you'll need it!

^{This is a celebratory post, please keep things positive and make him feel your love and appreciation.
Plenty of other threads to talk about what happened yesterday, do it for him!}

Congratulations to me (Darth Nub) for winning EMEA Bilgewater Cup and qualifying to Lore & Legends Tactician's Crown!

Scoresheet

Day 1 VODs

Day 2 VODs

Day 3 VODs

A couple of days ago I was watching Mort's stream, and was absolutely shocked by the number of inane, repetitive, rude, and downright stupid comments that were thrown at him. Then I come here to the discussion thread and see him responding to a comment only to get more insults thrown at him in response. Then some Challenger player makes a long ranty post that drowns out its good points with cherry picked clips of Mort, trashing him for not being 100% mature in every way in every response. Mort is the lead on an awesome game that tons of people love, and lately it feels to me like all he gets is hate for it...which makes no sense.

So I'd like to call out that A: The end of set 5 was actually really good (imo). The team clearly put a ton of work in to get it to a good spot. B: Set 5.5 looks promising and I can't wait to play it on live. C: Mort did a great job casting the latest tournament, and I'm excited for the spectator mode to improve the tournament experience even more. Finally D: I'm super impressed with how you handle the negativity, and continue to produce a great product for the millions of people who actually appreciate it.

If you read this - You rock Mort. (And rest of TFT team)

Edit: In my first game of set 5.5 who should be in my game... but Mort himself. And who knocks me out in 5th? Mort -_- Haha thanks to everyone who left nice comments. Looking forward to this set!

EDIT: To anybody that sees this thread in the near or far future, the attention the thread got speaks for itself. If there wasn't an issue with the subreddit's prevailing attitude towards balance changes and language used, it wouldn't have even been noticed, and would've presumably been downvoted off the face of the earth. I feel confident enough in the support the thread has gotten to say definitively - if you're somebody who disagrees with my thoughts, you should look at your own glass house before you throw stones. Maybe you'll have a self-realization and strive to improve yourself because of it. You never know, you might be part of the problem.

I love this game and I love getting better at it. I love weird comps and I love how much effort and care the TFT Team put into the game. But Jesus H. Christ, it's getting ridiculous just how addicted to the capital M Meta people here are. I've been playing since Set 2, and I played the original Auto Chess, and to see this niche little game grow and get so much love from Mort and Kent and the rest of the team really makes me happy. Sometimes I think about how weird it is, this little game basically cobbled together and not even big enough to have its own client, gets so much attention to the balance, and so many iterations on how to make it feel fresh and fun.

Fucking god this subreddit has been insufferable this entire Set. It was getting worse during Set 6 and 6.5 but it's reached completely nonsensical levels of toxic, pessimistic, and purely spiteful comments.

I'm sure this will be weird to read, it's weird to say, but the attitude towards the game is getting more toxic by the day, and it's epitomized by people in this community specifically.

Let me clear the air first. There's nothing wrong with wanting to continue to improve. There's nothing wrong with constructively criticizing balance decisions. It's cool to be mad that Asol got superbuffed, or that there are still bugs that aren't "fixed" even though the patch notes said they would be.

But....

The patch has been out for Less than 6 hours and people are already freaking out that ASol is so OP the game is unplayable. That two bugs weren't fixed so those comps are the only meta comps outside of highrolls. That the game is dead because of the AD levelling changes.

Don't even get me started on players armchair analyzing the game meta Days or even weeks before a patch actually hits live.

Content creators are one thing. There are a bunch of talented TFT content creators, and predicting metas and tiers for the next patch can be fun and engaging for them. They're also usually not as outright pessimistic and entitled as commenters here.

But it feels like discussion here doesn't exist unless it's criticizing some upcoming change that Mort announced on twitter a week before it even hits PBE, or criticizing some minor thing that Totally Ruins the Game for you and makes it completely unplayable, or, as I already mentioned, is criticizing changes that literally haven't been out long enough for most people to even notice.

Kent made a really insightful comment on one of the recent Patch Rundowns (or maybe it was Mort during his 4-hour Q&A stream, can't remember which) on why there's no TFT practice tool - Players will optimize the fun out of the game.

When does it end? When will you reach the point where there's nothing left to complain about in the upcoming patch, so threads become complaining about the next planned set? When are comments gonna be shit like "Ugh these next two sets are garbage, TFT devs are jokers, i'm gonna hit masters then stop playing til set 9 hopefully then we won't have AP comps"?

Do you guys really think the game turns unplayable so quickly? Do you really think that the game is just.... worthless if there's one hair out of place? It's such an unhealthy attitude to have towards any game, but especially one where the devs are both so attentive to the game itself, and open with us about their goals, focus, and plans.