The beginning of the end is here -- we are officially on the TFT worlds patch! Usually this is the most balanced part of the set and hopefully we can see a set achieve its true potential.
Let's start with the good news. This patch has many, many viable comps that can top 4 and win. And nearly every comp has variations and small tech to gain significant edge. Players who possess deep expertise in comps and have strong line recognition skills are heavily rewarded. Every type of style can succeed -- high tempo winstreak, open fort lose streak, reroll, 4-cost standard, fast 9, and even open flex. Augment data looks quite good with most choices ranging from 4.1-4.8 range, indicating that it's rare you will ever have dead augment scenario.
And now the bad news: the problematic aspect of charms are back where it's enabling reroll comps to dominate. Due to charms inherently being tied with frequency of how many shops you see, reroll is spiking lobby tempo considerably. Compound this with the TFT's bag sizes and draft mechanic and you get crazy games where it seems everyone hit except you. You may often find yourself completely steamrolled at all points of the game if you have a weak opener because you are forced to lose streak Stage 2, get wrecked by golden 1-costs on Stage 3, then go through the gauntlet of who hit their 2 and 3-cost carries. There also is a ton of misleading, bad stats out there which may bait you into taking a bad line which will end up in a straight bot 4 in most games. More on that later.
Let's go through it piece by piece so we're all on the same page, starting with the top comps in the game and understand why.
S-tier: 6 Scholar Ryze, Witchcraft Flex, Two Tanky Honey, Bastion Ahri, Portal
You may notice one thing in common thread in the S tier -- almost every comp plays through Ryze or Ryze-adjacent comps. And yet no numbers got tweaked with Ryze this patch! This is due to the fact that Ryze is one of the few units in the game able to pierce through insane 3* reroll frontline. He has the ability to burst and shotgun down a super tank while also picking off backline with good positioning and items. Some of his worst matchups like Fiora Gwen are struggling more this patch to find their footing. And to top it off, there are a wide range of augment and emblem outs you can play towards, giving you immense flexibility on high-variance portals like Make Em Cook, Prismatic Party, and Loot Subscription.
The other half of it is how Bastions are now shaping the meta due to their resilience and cheap costs. Similar to Vanguards, there are many low cost Bastions that are easy to upgrade for instant frontline and has potential to winstreak early-mid game. Ahri's buff is a huge boon to the line as an item holder or primary carry. Ryze functions great as a secondary carry or even utility item holder (Shiv / Morello) while Ahri scales the fight. Meanwhile, other boards that haven't hit will struggle to get past the Bastion wall which is a huge problem with some of the A tier comps that are dependent on burst to function well.
the default standard Bastion Ryze board with no emblems
The only exception is the immense power of Two Tanky Honeymancy. The double Honeymancy gives extra bees to scale your firepower and the health stats makes units like Blitzcrank 3 immensely difficult to deal with. The most common variation is Kogmaw, but there are also Ziggs or even Veigar primary carry variants. Both hero augments of Zap Attack and Sweet Tooth fit nicely. The comp is quite flexible as long as you have 3* frontline.
A-tier: Wukong Jinx, Mages, Dragon Shapeshifters, Eldritch, Multistrikers, Kalista, Karma, Hwei, Warwick
3-cost super tanks define a big portion of this tier as Wukong 3, Vex 3, and Morde 3 tend to drive most tempo in Stage 5. If you spike it early in Stage 4, you are likely to top 4. The most common backliners to pair with them are Jinx (Wukong), Seraphine/Soraka (Vex), and Hwei (Mordekaiser), but there are other variants which you can mix and match. For example, there are variants of Mages and Hunters that play Vanguard frontline due to Galio and Rumble connecting quite well to a bunch of carries. However, as mentioned lots of these comps are burst-oriented and that lines up poorly with how Bastions gain tankiness at the start of combat which neutralizes a significant portion of their damage. In some instances, your comp doesn't work, such as the 6 Hunter trait not killing a single unit until too late into a fight and failing to trigger the AD bonus. However, the ceilings of these comps are quite potent and can win lobbies often with the right setup.
The exception 2-costs that perform well are Eldritch Syndra and Kassadin Multistrikers. However, they are rarely solo carries and dependent on hitting other units such as Nilah 3 or Ashe 3 / Hecarim 3 to close out games. Warwick is performing surprisingly well despite being decoupled from Corrupt Vampiric Scepter, but he falls off immensely hard after crushing the early game so be advised you're very likely to land 4th every game with him.
On the other side of the spectrum are the heavy resource-intensive comps such as Dragon Shapeshifters which is essentially a true Fast 9 comp dependent on hitting 5-costs. The comp has immense win-out potential but is highly inconsistent due to the amount of punishment you will take from the rerollers. Karma Preservers and Chrono variants are in the same boat with the highs being very high if you can land the insane What the Forge combos or max cap situation with 5 costs. But even being one round late stabilizing on Stage 4 will land you deep in the bottom 4.
On the previous patch, we saw Kalista gatekeep a huge portion of the meta due to her raw power level and stability during the mid-game. This patch, they tuned down Rakan which makes it much easier to burst him down at 1* and punish Kalista players who are behind. Right now, Faerie Kalista is much more of a top 4 oriented comp than winout, but it’s still quite potent from lose streak. And in some ways the comp has become even more consistent due to the number of rerolls pursuing Vanguards and Bastions as frontline so Rakan is way less contested.
B & C Tier: The Rest
The difficulty in these lower tier comps is that they all highly depend on multiple conditions being fulfilled. Any comp in these tiers theoretically can perform well but on a much rarer scale. Varus as a primary carry can succeed but usually you need perfect items, immense econ, and to immediately hit when needed otherwise 1* Varus will fail to burst anything. Frost is struggling to activate even a single time, especially if you're stuck on Olaf 1. Warriors are gated entirely by the emblem, having good augments, and hitting multiple 4 costs. And there are several Hero Augments that just need the stars to simply align of perfect items and not be contested by other rerollers.
Right now to actively climb and succeed in the meta depends heavily on two things:
1. Line Recognition - Your ability to correctly identify what your opening shops, items, and augments best play towards
2. Managing your tempo to keep pace with the lobby
#1 is what most experienced players on the set can do without blinking. Bow, Tear, Rod, and Sword openers are all clearly defined in terms of what you can and can't play. Most players understand that Stoneplate is the best overall defensive item in the game right now. What separates the players who can excel in this meta is #2, those who manage their tempo carefully and can precisely spike their board strength when needed.
Tempo is one of the trickiest concepts to explain because its quite abstract and it varies game to game pending on things like the portal, what tier augments are presented, and whether something wild like a prismatic orb drops from Mortdog's attic.
The simplest explanation: Tempo is your overall board strength relative to everyone else in the lobby.
At Stage 3-2, it's extremely common for most boards to be at level 6 with a couple upgraded 1 and 2-cost champions. If you are level 5 with no upgrades or items completed, you are significantly behind tempo because you are expected to spend resources to actually be competitive in fights. If you are at level 7 at 3-2 with several upgrades, you are very far ahead of tempo and will likely be crushing fights, dealing max player damage with a 6-0 or 7-0 victory. The higher the lobby tempo, the stronger the average board will be. The stronger the average board, the more damage players will generally be taking if they are caught lacking. An easy description of high tempo lobby is Prismatic Party because everyone will have Tier 3 level augments that will spike the lobby every stage.
But this doesn't necessarily mean you should be spending an excessive amount of resources to be strong right now. You may be led to believe you should be rolling aggressively at specific times to be strong always. That is only true sometimes. Instead, the key to identify how to be strong on Stage 4 onwards. I can't even tell you how many times I have seen players win all 10 rounds of Stage 2 and 3, only to lose every round from Stage 4 onwards into a 6th or 7th. If you sacrifice all your hp to go to fast 8 on Stage 4, you absolutely MUST spike decisivelyand stop losing otherwise you will get blown out. This is why previously Kalista was a favorable lose streak line to play for compared to others because you could simply hit Kalista 1 and Rakan 1 to stabilize. That is less the case now on top of reroll comps loading in with 3* carries ready to nuke your 1* tank.
And that's inherently where this meta can become quite difficult. The nuance of when you should be rolling, greeding, slamming, or pushing levels varies wildly game to game. It depends on how many players are rerolling, how fast they are hitting, and how your board is likely to compete against it.
Alright, so we yapped a ton about what makes TFT a complex and hard game. What's the actual solution then?
If you're completely lost and bleeding tons of LP, here's our suggested course of action:
1. Stop playing wide. It's wild to say this in a meta where we have 40 comps on the website that can succeed, but you likely are stretching yourself thin and getting beat by players who know their comps better than you. Only play a few lines and develop deep mastery of the comp. To start, consider learning the Bastion Scholars of when you can play Ahri reroll vs Ryze with emblems vs Ryze without. That alone already gives you many different options with a simple AP item opener with an econ augment at 2-1. Then you will realize some spots that have openers like Ionic Spark + Blue Buff can link to other comps like Mages, Hwei, or Karma. But that comes once you establish strong baseline knowledge of a strong S tier comp like Bastion Scholar.
2. Learn what are the ideal openers. Ideal openers are a combination of good items + good augment + good units for the line. Remember, everyone in the lobby is trying to line things up. If you have a great augment like Learning to Spell, but you have no Mages and held Twitch Nomsy with Sword Glove, your spot is not great. If you take a Hero Augment with multiple copies of that unit but have no item slam, your spot will have much lower AVP than expected. Make sure everything lines up for you to generate econ and have strong tempo. Here's another example: Don't just aim for Varus because you have All That Shimmers + Gold Collector if you don't have upgraded backline or strong AD slams like Infinity Edge. What good will that do you if you have Twitch 1 with just Gold Collector? If you have a tank item, you can instead take Mogul's Mail now instead and play it on Blitzcrank 2 to get guaranteed gold and lean into other reroll comps.
3. Identify what stabilizes your board on Stage 3, 4, and 5. If you are having trouble with that, as a general rule of thumb, always make sure whoever is holding your items is upgraded. For example, you may want to end up keeping items on Ahri 2 instead of moving immediately to Ryze 1. That's not always the case (for example, Smolder 1 in Dragons should hold items), but for many comps this is most certainly the case. Carry Kogmaw 2, not Jinx 1 mid-game. Play for Ezreal 2 instead of Varus 1. Let Akali hold items until you find Hecarim 2. So on, so forth. If you don't know BIS, refer to things like the TFT Academy tier list or your favorite stats website.
4. Understand when you can and can't play contested. Believe it or not, you can actually succeed in this meta if you are contested on your comp. To be more precise, sometimes you simply won't have the time to pivot. If you have Learning to Spell Mages and you see someone take Mage Crest to contest you, it's often better to stay the course and deviate slightly. That's where the "variations" of the comps come into play for TFT Academy. They're often good backup plans in case you are contested or presented a unique pivot opportunity. In the Mage example, you can simply forgo rolling for Vex and Veigar and play Vanguard Mages instead with Blitzcrank 3 as your primary tank while letting the other player chase 7 Mage Vex 3. You both can top 4 in this instance and even go 1st/2nd. Other similar examples are Jinx (can play Kogmaw), Witchcraft (many flex options), and Syndra (Shapes, Eldritch, or Vanguards). However, this is not true for every comp. Hwei reroll, for example, cannot be contested because you don't have other variants you can play.
If you have no idea what units to play, one suggestion can be to use a source like MetaTFT that can help show you ideal boards to get to where you want to be.
Here is an example with Mages showing you what the ideal units you level for at 5, 6, and 7. But again, in these situations it's up to you to learn if you should Item Remove off Galio 2 to put items on Vex 1.
BAD DATA!
One final tip: there is a ton of bad data out there. One example we can point towards is looking at raw augment stats.
When sorting by what are the best performing augments at 3-2, it may look like Faerie Crest and Faerie Crown are some of the best augments in the entire game! But what happens if you filter out 9 Faerie to take away scenarios where players are hitting the crazy capped auto-win boards?
Wow, that is VERY far from the best augment in the game. It looks like 9 Faerie was heavily skewing and pushing the augment to look like a 3.7 but in reality it performs at a much lower baseline. This doesn't necessarily mean that Faerie Crest is never take either, but be extremely careful about what actually is good. Stats can easily be misleading. There is a ton of bait out there. To be truthful, we sometimes fall into traps as well, but thankfully we have a great community who keeps us accountable to ensure we cross all our Ts and dot our Is. If you ever catch us in a spot, please let us know so we can fix it! We would hate to also be tricked by the very thing we warned against.
As always we end with the best openers for you to consider on Stage 1 and 2. The strength of these openers largely depend on upgrades and items so don't only hold the best units if you are giving up pairs of other solid units.
S tier: Mages Vanguard (AP), Frost Hunters (AD), Zoe Poppy Portal (AP/AD)
A tier: Bastion Scholar (AP), Shapeshifter Dragon (AD), Honeymancy (Flex), Eldritch (Flex)
B tier: Witchcraft (AP), Faeries (Flex), Multistrikers (AD), Sugarcraft (Flex)
Good 3-costs to keep from orb for Stage 2: Wukong, Swain, Morde, Vex, Hecarim
These are the standard openers you'll often see. The more effective boards you can build for cheap, the higher the tier. This is because you're more likely to 2* units and snowball momentum. If you need to 2* a unit to be effective (example: Nilah 2), then it makes it hard to justify holding for the unlikeliness of upgrading + impact on your economy.
That's all for now. Thanks for being a loyal Patreon sub! If you have any further questions, feel free to drop them in our Discord server. See you on ladder!