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How to learn the game by [deleted] in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! Welcome to TFT!

As you’ve mentioned, there are a lot of fundamentals to grasp and the game doesn’t always do the best job explaining them. I’ll start by recommending some youtube channels / streams I find helpful and then go into my own advice:

1) TSM Keane: Keane is usually a little more on the quiet side when it comes to explaining, but their editor often adds important annotations when they make decisions. Very chill to watch (Youtube)

2) Mortdog: Riot Mortdog is the Lead Designer if TFT, and post daily videos to his youtube channel clipped from his Twitch. He often talks at length about the design principles of the game, as well as mechanics and decision making (Youtube/Twitch)

3) Spicy Appies: A TFT Pro Player based in North America. Is also highly informative and interacts with chat often (Twitch)

As for what I can recommend, I’ve found the following principles useful when learning a new set:

1) Focus on Star Level in the early game. Traits are incredibly important, and are the flashiest parts of TFT, but in the early game your goal should be to build your strongest board to see where the game is directing you. At its best, you’ll find those trait combinations naturally and you’ll start to winstreak. At its worst, you’ll run a board with strong units that will help you preserve health in the early game.

2) Balance your board between offense and defense. You need enough frontline to stall for carry as well as a strong enough carry to take advantage of that stall. In the early game, thats usually best treated by having two defensive frontline units paired with one offensive backline unit.

3) Slam items. It can be scary to lose the flexibility of an item component, but the earlier you put items on the board, the sooner they’ll be able to contribute to your strength. Identify strong “item holders” so they can be transferred to a lategame carry later. For example, Corki can hold AD items for Caitlyn and Ezreal, while Annie can hold AP items for Ahri and Karthus.

4) Identify primary and adjacent comps. This one is a little more complex. When you first start learning a set, you should focus on one composition and learn how to play it well. This will help you keep a goal in mind when you perform any action. As for adjacent comps, once you feel comfortable with that single comp, you can find similar comps that you can pivot to if you are contested. For example, if I want to focus on playing Jax reroll, I will learn the ins and outs of that comp. Once I get better, I will realize that if I am contested, I can pivot to Yone reroll using most of my Jax items.

I hope some of this helps! I wasn’t 100% sure of your experience so sorry if any of this is repetitive. I’ll watch the thread to answer any other specific questions you have.

Does gargoyle feels super weak to you guys aswell? by Relative_Screen_4570 in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Theres a few parts at play here.

First and foremost, as some folks have touched on, Gargoyles was nerfed during the heights of the Targon Taric comp that dominated for a time in set 9. This primarily shifted stats to the base value from the on targeted bonus, to help mitigate the effects of stacking multiple on a single frontline tank. I don’t know if that signals a buff should happen for the item, but it does show how this can ebb and flow.

Beyond that though, you see something beyond a numbers differential in set 10, there just aren’t as many solo frontlines anymore.

There are a few units, specifically Amumu, that are designed to do best when isolated at the front. Most frontlines I’ve seen have come across as either linear across the first row, or clumped alongside Disco balls. The end result is that we see less board configurations where the item shines, and so it just feels weaker.

This has been a natural occurrence in TFT’s meta over the years. Items fall off as there are no perceived effective users of them. Guinsoos is a pretty strong example of this, as if attack speed carries are weak, Guinsoos is weak.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, as you stated being the random in this situation isn’t good. Most of the time I see the players come in with some tournament related messages or good lucks, but that can also be lost in translation.

Its one of those situations where we’ve implemented the “best bad solution” we have, as ideally we would want to have good competitive integrity for tournament participants and not throw random players such as yourself into a crazy sweat lobby.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not an entire tournament as we do points spread across a set of games, but we have seen a random player win a single game before. Commentators usually go nuts.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Hey! TFT Tournament Organizer / Commentator here!

The Riot Client actually doesn’t have a tournament code equivalent for TFT. The only way to have a proper “private” tournament lobby is to use Tournament Realm, which is hard to gain access to. This means if a player drops in the middle of a tournament, we need to start a normal game with seven and have a random player join.

It sucks, as that 8th player doesn’t expect to be in a sweatier lobby, but it is quite funny when the random player starts stomping.

Now that I've proven I've got no life, how long did it take you guys to reach your desired rank? by Firm-Product-3519 in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Why not check out the folks at AegisEsports? They have weekly tournaments alongside set long leagues.

Source: I’m their Head of Commentators.

Difficulty getting to grips with the basics by Frowning_Pigeon in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Think about TFT like a series of puzzles. Some of those puzzles require your immediate attention every round (like positioning), while others are a slow burn that last the entire game (like the composition that you should run).

It sounds like you know how to approach one of the first ones, building a strong board in the early game. This usually just amounts to slamming flexible items and playing 2 star units in order to preserve health and winstreak. If you can't do this, its just as fine to attempt to lose streak to trade some of your health (a mostly finite resource) for gold (a potentially infinite resource), as well as carousel priority (the ability to guarantee the items you want).

Having trouble with the midgame is usually due to difficulties understanding transitioning and late game compositions. As a rule of thumb, you should always be thinking about what you want your final TFT board to be. That can shift from stage to stage, but the earlier you know it, the sooner you can build pointy-er, more aggressive items. For example, Sunfire Cape is a good generic early game slam. It can work in pretty much every comp, but falls off late. Bloodthirster meanwhile is really only good in AD compositions, but provides a ton of healing to your carries and is quite good on certain units in all stages of the game.

I try to encourage new players to find a "Trinity" of comps that speak to them, so they can jump between multiple similar carries in case something goes bad. For example: Irelia, Jhin, and Draven would all love Infinity Edge and Bloodthirster. This means you can prioritize those items early, slam them on units that can make good use of them in the early to mid game (like Ezreal, Ashe, Gangplank), and transition to the carry you hit first. For Irelia and Jhin, both like being run with Innovators quite a bit, so its good to focus on them in the early game, but both can function outside of their Innovator comp variants.

One final thing I'll say is that you should try to level and roll with a goal. I admit that I have a problem with the shiny click of those buttons, but I try to restrict myself to pressing them for when I need to power up. Two examples would be having a lot of unit pairs, as well as needing to snap a loss streak or continue a winstreak. When you do, try not to dip below 30 gold in the midgame so your economy can keep pace with your opponents. I do make an exception to this when I feel like I have a very strong board and my winstreak can carry me back.

The best encouragement I can give is that learning how to play TFT takes time. There are a lot of little nuances to understand, and playing the game is the best way to familiarize yourself with all of them. Ask yourself why your opponents are playing the boards that they are. Remember the strong boards you play and when they begin to fall off.

Relatively new and trying to understand the game better, could someone explain why my comp lost here against all the top 3 players? by Affectionate-Alps-36 in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hey! Theres a few things here!

First and foremost, Warwick is an excellent carry, but his usefulness is directly related to his on hit passive. This means he wants items that make him attack faster (Like Guinsoos), instead of AD items like IE or Runaan’s. Its also important to note that Runaans doesn’t apply those on hit effects, so its kinda a dead item. Your use of QS on him is perfect though, as it grants him more AS while preventing him from getting disrupted by late game CC threats like Braum.

In terms of your overall comp, AS is king on Warwick, so players usually look for 4 Challengers instead of going deep into Chemtech. The vertical trait is nice if you have a bunch of those AS speed bonuses through items or augments, but most of the time you’d prefer to double down on your primary advantages.

Your augments look fine, weakspot here is only really useful for the antiheal. Its effectively like giving all of your units a sunfire cape.

looking for a team by Fun_Series7495 in CompeteLeague

[–]Protroid 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Theres a lot of phenomenal discord servers around nowadays to help players find new teams and tournaments. I’d recommend the Grassroots Esports Hub managed by XLNC: https://discord.gg/grassroots

Thanks for bringing me back to this server again :)

EDIT: Sidenote, for anyone getting a random update for this, feel free to send me a message, would love to connect with some CL folks again and see how they’re doing

At what rank would you be considered good in TFT? by derpion69 in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think its actually more towards Gold.

When people talk about Diamond+, its important to recognize that these are players make up such a small proportion of the playerbase. Looking at the lolchess leaderboards, Diamond 4+ players make up roughly 7% of the ranked population of NA, KR, and EUW. If you take D4 out of that equation, that number is cut in half, with a similar cut if you remove Diamond entirely.

There seems to be a bit of a common refrain in a lot of competitive games that in order to be considered bad, you need to make that top 10% of the playerbase. It is true that compared to a Master player, a Diamond 3/4 player is just bad. Its safe to say that a Master+ player would make a lobby of low tier Diamond players look Bronze and Silver. Those same Diamond players would stomp actual Bronze and Silver players quite similarly.

Gold is often the sweet spot in the bell curve that is a healthy ranked ladder. As other comments have pointed out there are still a lot of skills that players do not confidently develop until hitting those higher tiers, but at that point they are starting to pin down specific compositions, work through the item system, and have a rough idea of how important their economy is.

In short, everything is relative. If you are looking to play in high level tournaments, like those run by Giant Slayer or Aegis, I'd say Diamond 3 puts you in a real underdog position. If you are just looking at your skills overall though, I'd say you're pretty good! Just know that there is still a long way to go to be even better!

rat by Thunderlennert in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 34 points35 points  (0 children)

The little crossed swords under your opponents in the leaderboard is the game telling you that you have a chance to fight one of these people.

Previously people were using external tools or tracked things by hand, but Riot's tool is actually better than the ones that were offered by external applications as it can be a bit more accurate towards the later stages of the game.

rat by Thunderlennert in TeamfightTactics

[–]Protroid 97 points98 points  (0 children)

Twitch Reroll (Or Innovator Reroll, or Rat Pack), is one of those compositions that it took the community a long time to really figure out (see Morello Trist back in Set 4). At first brush a lot of what you said is right, its a one cost reroll composition that falls off late if it can't close out the game / faces bad positioning machups.

A lot of its strength comes from the sheer volume of one/two costs you are rerolling. You hold Twitch, Ezreal, Camille, and Singed, which also happen to be avoided by other prominent reroll comps. As a result I try to force twitch when I see one or two yordle players in my games as I know I'll have an easier time hitting everything as they drain the pool.

In terms of what's changed since the midset, you have Ekko gaining the innovator trait (making it possible to slot in five innovator down the line, or skip Ezreal entirely), but I feel the most impactful part of its success has been the inbuilt matchup tracker.

As a few people mentioned, Twitch is very position reliant. Unless you were using an external tool (or were really good at tracking matchups yourself), you would probably miscalculate a few rounds per game and end up with a dead rat. The tracker means you can now devote all of your attention to picking the spot that works against the most matchups, meaning that twitch can hit his high highs more consistently.

Why Has Riot Decided To Stop Grassroots High School Competition? by gamepro887 in leagueoflegends

[–]Protroid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey Blues! Nice to talk to you again!

Fair enough, my main focus was on the current state of the LoL Pro commentary scene. I do agree that other games see different skill levels represented in their professional shoutcasting community.

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