Tristana Flex ---> Masters

Getting to Masters this set took eternity, but I did make it, largely off of the back of this comp:

Here is a pretty basic Trist carry level 6 board. Janna is not consistent because she's a 4 cost, but all of the other units are 1's/2's.  Not pictured is the 3* Ziggs on my bench to force the Yordle Trait to generate 2/3 gold a turn.

Trist comps rarely if ever win, but consistently top 4.  According to my lolchess, 85% of the games where Trist is on my end game board, I top 4 the game.  High-end Arcanist/Challenger/Fast 9 legendaries boards typically edge you out and push you into 2nd and 3rd.

Why Trist?

This comp is very strong against Melee units, Trundle, Yone, Warwick, and yes even Katarina.  Trist's 3* ult knocks back 3 hexes, and if you can get the fight into overtime, Rageblade means that you instantly win against any melee units; they can't close the gap.

Consistency is your second big benefit.  As long as you can get Yordles active early (no later than 2-5), the units find themselves, and the extra money acquired allows you to transition into other comps/builds as needed.  While trying to play Trist, I find it easy to get into Arcanists or other AD carries, Jhin especially.

Carousel Priority

Unit is more important than your starting item here, as the earlier you can put Yordles together, the higher your chance to succeed.  Ziggs/Poppy are of equal value, the tiebreaker being if they have an item they could use, Poppy with Belt/Chain, Ziggs with Bow/Sword.  Even though Bow is the best starting item, I would only take Bow on a non-Yordle if it forced me to take Tear, this comp can only use Tears for Redemption or Shojin Cait.

Starting Item Priority after unit:

Bow > Sword > Glove > Belt/Chain > Cloak
If you start Tear or Rod, do not play Trist.

Bow Ziggs/Bow Poppy are optimal starts.

Socialite

Only play Socialite if it's in the back row.  Moving up a hex hurts Sniper, and is only good if it's one of the far side spots.  No other Socialite hexes are good for you.  Always try to scout the Socialite Hex early, when it's in a good spot Taric is an insane unit.

General Strategy

95% of your games you're going to try to lose streak.  Put in whatever units you can to make Yordles at 2-1 or fish for it in the next few rounds.  Don't put items on Ziggs because they're going to get stuck on your bench.  Don't feel bad if you take 38 damage on Stage 2, once you stabilize you are hard to stop.  Don't level early unless you are streaking/can streak, typically this means you spiked an early Trist/Poppy 2 with a Rageblade.  Level to 5 as early as you can without breaking 50, sometimes this will be at Krugs, sometimes this will be at 3-1/3-2.  

Trist 2 with a damage item is enough to stop taking 10 damage every round, as long as you have Poppy 2/Blitz.  Runaan's/Rageblade are highest priority, IE/DB/GS are decent but not as strong early, HOJ/Last Whisper are pretty terrible, none of the units you care about killing have more than 50 armor and HOJ is just a terrible item that no one should build unless forced to.  Runaan's helps you not get stuck on Vex against Arcanist players, and Rageblade + a Healing item allows you to outrace.

This is your level 8 board, try to end up here.  Tank items on Poppy 3, Damage items on Tristana 3, extra carry items on Jhin, Utility on Lulu.

Set 6 Initial Impressions

Set 6 is great.  Easily the best set thus far, even if we were forced to play the initial patch for the next 3 months.  The only true balance outlier is Twisted Fate, who egregiously has extra Armor/MR.  Yone is too forgiving, Fiora too weak, Lux too punishing.  A few of the augments are not balanced very well (Phony Frontline especially).  This is my entire list of gripes.  I only hope the high complexity and sheer amount of reading don't scare off the casual players.

I hope to see the following for accessibility's sake alone.

• Socialite and Mutant need to be revealed at the start of the game.  It's not fun to repeatedly have to figure these out, especially when they drastically change the power level of affected units.  I am OK with the second Socialite hex staying hidden because revealing will probably just confuse people.
• The first augment should be on 2-1, not 1-3.  Too many of the augments are really committal, and you're often forced to take a massive risk at the very beginning of the game.  

My core argument in favor of these is fun.  Clerical work is not fun.  Having to take a massive risk before the game really begins is not fun.

Twisted Fate

Twisted Fate is probably the best unit that's ever been in TFT.  1 cost, 1 auto to first cast, huge AOE, reasonable base damage, Range, good traits, decent base HP... AND 5 EXTRA ARMOR AND MR?  Something always slips through the cracks early in a sets life cycle, and here it's TF.  Unlike set 4.5's Rakan, who basically made every fight go to overtime and killed the entire team with Sunfire Cape at 2 star, TF is a fun unit to play with that's just too powerful, nothing egregious.  Maybe it's a little egregious that 2 star TF is an acceptable carry into the end of the game, especially with Morello and maybe a GA too, but he's certainly not shining at that point.

If you get the privilege of starting Rod/Belt TF so that you can fish for early Morello, you're really doing it.

I think you might be able to play Vanguard/Mystic this set with Braum/TF/Darius, filling out the rest of your comp as needed, but only because TF is so overpowered.  Hopefully I'll get to try it once.

No More Demotion

One of the best general changes this time around.  Demoting sucks, and it's a huge incentive for people to stop playing or make alt accounts and grief bad players.  Especially with end of season cosmetic rewards on the line, this is a fantastic change.  Everyone has gone on that awful streak where they play 20 games while tilted, drinking, limit testing, and demote from Master to Diamond or worse.  I personally know someone who demoted from 750 LP GM to Diamond 1 in the span of a week.  Their (I)dentity is safe with me.

Quick Thoughts:

Best/Worst Unit by Cost

• (1) Best: TF, obviously.
     Worst: Ziggs, can lose to creeps
• (2) Best: Swain, CC/Good Traits/Resilient.
       Worst: Kog'Maw, 30 AD KEKW
• (3) Best: Zac, great CC/Good Traits
       Worst: Lissandra, buggy and narrow
  
• (4) Best: Yone, stupidly forgiving
       Worst: Fiora, stupidly low damage
• (5) Best: Yuumi,  Good at everything except actually killing units
       Worst: Viktor, takes 8 years to cast, bizarre ult targeting

Item Priority

1. Rod:  Morello and Spark are the best items.
2. Belt:  Strong and versatile.
3. Sword/Glove:  Comps that want these items really want them.
4. Bow:  Similar to Sword/Glove but worse.
5. Cloak/Tear:  Usually easy to come by later in the game if you need them.  Largely taken to insure Bluebuff or Runaan's respectively.
6. Chain:  None of the chain items are good except for Titans.

Until next time,
Kevin

Set 5.5 Quick Thoughts

Haven't written in FOREVER so here's some quick thoughts on set 5.5 patch 11.18.

Starting Items

Tear > Sword/Belt > Bow > Chain > Cloak >>> Rod

Rod is awful, do not start it.  The only early item you can make with it that's not overly comital is Rageblade.  Spark is an underpowered item and requires a 2 star tank, Gunblade is weak early, Locket is a weak item at all stages, Archangel is really comital and only good on Vlad and a few others.  Morello is a good item but isn't going to save you HP early unless you have something that pairs really well with it like 4 Knight/4 Brawler/Abom.

Comps that need Rods either need one for Rageblade or two for Deathcap (Karma).

Tear

I really like starting Tear right now because comps that use Tear can use a pile of them, with spreads like Blue Buff HOJ Karma with Redemption frontline (4 whole tears!).  The best early game openers right now involve Ziggs and Brand, who absolutely excel with Blue Buff.  You get griefed if you open Tear and hit Cloak/Bow but then you can make a Runaan's and play Jax/Kayle/Lucian (it's actually good I swear).

Best Comps

The best things to play right now are Yasuo, Aphelios, Karma; Lucian and Kayle are good but are a step below.  Nocturne/Sins is insanely good but is too reliant on Sin Spat/Radiant RFC, with the added fail rate of, woops I didn't hit Nocturne 3 guess it's an auto 6th.

Yasuo: Runaan's/JG/Flex, Legionnaire 2/Nightbringer 4 is important and it's pretty flexible after that.  You don't have to go for Yasuo 3 if you're not hitting a lot of Yasuos, but unless you're really high HP it's probably going to be a bot 4/4th.  Yasuo was probably broken in half when everyone was playing Lucian Galio and people either were missing something or playing it wrong, and now it's even better.

Aphelios: Deathblade is like playing a different unit, other two items are more flexible.  Akshan 1 isn't always better than Aphelios 1 because reasons, despite being a legendary AD carry that uses 95% of the same items.

Karma: Blue Buff/Shojin are absolute requirements, and one good damage item like Deathcap or Giant Slayer.  2 Item Karma will work for way longer than it has any right to, as long as you have a lot of frontline Karma will do well.  The dream is stacked Garen 2 but Galio 2 is very good as well.

Jax/Draven/Lucian: All of these comps are backup plans for Aphelios, or if you hit them early/2 star them early.

Rerolling

Most batches of early units can be successfully rerolled if you have a bunch of copies of them.  I've had success/seen other people succeed with the following:

Gragas/Sej/Vlad/Soraka

I've seen Khazix used with Gragas as well.  Soraka is the carry here and needs Archangel or Morello (an item that scales with fight length that isn't Rageblade)

Olaf/Irelia/Senna

Olaf 3 is a monstrosity of a unit but REQUIRES Runaan's.  He has a tendency to get glued to a tank the entire fight, and his passive healing gets doubled with Runaan's.  He plays like weird Jax but the units you can pair him with are better.

Hellions

Tristana is a pretty functional carry but so are Kled and Ziggs.  Ideally you get strong enough to go fast 8/9 and pivot into something else, or play an entirely golden board with MF/Thresh at 6.

Vayne

Needs to be hit reasonably early as the primary strength here is streaking through the end of stage 3 into the beginning of stage 5 easily.  Vayne like Olaf needs Runaan's (it's as close to double damage as it gets while allowing you to not get stuck on a drain tank like Hecarim/Galio/Jax).  Vayne does mostly physical damage because of Forgotten, but is better with items like JG compared to Last Whisper because of the passive. Ideally you want to secure Runaan's/Rageblade and a Trapclaw, with either a good damage Radiant for Vayne or a good tank one for Hecarim

Closing Thoughts

This patch feels pretty skill rewarding and balanced, although I wish Velkoz and Heimer were SLIGHTLY better.  I'm sitting around 590ish LP right now and have felt pretty competitive in all of my games despite being easily the lowest LP player in all of my lobbies.

Don't be a Dirty Wukong Purchaser

DON'T BE A DWP

 Sometimes I'm furiously hitting the 1 key to scroll through opposing boards, and a certain gigantic golden monkey will catch my eye.

Please, for the love of god, stop buying this chosen.  Seriously.  Enough.  It doesn't matter if it's Vanguard, it doesn't matter if it's Divine, it's not a remotely playable chosen.

Back before the 11.6 changes, the chosen chance was 33%, and you had to be a lot less discerning with what chosens you bought.  I'll admit, I used to be a Dirty Wukong Purchaser, or DWP, but back then we were desperate.  If you didn't buy that Chosen Wukong, you might not see anything better for the entire stage.  Wukong might as well have had the tagline, "Hey, at least it's not Fiora"!  We live in a different world now, with Cultists and Brawler chosens ruling the early roost, and everyone else opting for some sort of Spirit or Fortune opener, many people choosing not to play units whatsoever.  

Wukong, irregardless of positioning, will lose to a similar strength Cultist board.  He will die to either Sivir or Kalista before he does much of substance.  Wukong also loses to Brawlers, they have too much health and will always outlast his Divine passive.  Forget it if there's a Shyvana involved, he's getting toasted even with far greater cash on board.

One of the biggest ways to define the impact of a specific unit is if it can allow you to beat or lose well against boards that have more money/resources on them.  Wukong will not do this.

That leaves us with Fortune and Spirits, both of which actively want to lose.  And the maniacs who don't play any units.  Which would lose to a Fiora 1 board.  

The cost to play Wukong is that you can't hit another chosen.  No chosen 2 cost high rolls, no Cultist Twisted Fate or Elise.  You're stuck with Wukong.  There's no reroll potential after the nerfs, where it barely existed originally, it's totally absent now.  Buying a Wukong chosen gives you a near guarantee of an awkward WWLWL path into Krugs, which will costs you huge amounts of gold in the long term.

In terms of other, more insidious costs to pay, you won't win out in Carousel priority, and you won't adequately save HP.  In bad match-ups, you get absolutely smoked.  In good match-ups, you would have won with no chosen at all.  Wukong only really sends you towards Neeko or Kayle, because he is good with Divine and Vanguard units, respectively, but otherwise offers no direction.

Obviously there's an exception to every rule, and playing your best means knowing when to break them.  If I could put 4 Vanguard together, I would probably buy Vanguard Wukong, and the same goes for 4 Divine.  If I had a Nidalee 2 and a Tristana 1, I would probably buy either one because I'm in the classic "just add frontline" spot.  Would I ever buy Wukong at 1-2 or 1-3, something I see happen in more than half my games?  Absolutely not.  You don't even have a fully established board yet, and you're already hitting yourself in the shins with a hammer.

Please keep Wukong Chosen in the shop, where he belongs.

TL;DR Wukong chosen guarantees a mixed streak to Krugs, has no reroll potential, and deprives you the ability to hit better chosens.

Set 4.5 Hardstuck's Guide Part 1, the Early Game

Set 4.5, a Hardstuck's Guide Part 1

If you can't seem to climb, or even learn, you're not alone in Set 4.5.  This set is obtuse and has variance jacked up to 11.  While I'm no expert at this set, I've managed to stay in NA GM, and I have a few things that seem to work consistently.

Starting Items:

Bow is the best opener, it's not even close, but you shouldn't start it every game.  Bow is so contested that you can expect all 7 other players in the lobby to all go for a single bow, this is a frequent occurrence especially once you get higher up the ladder.  First Carousel is mostly RNG once you're competing for an item.  Even if you are clicking faster, or even substantially faster than your opponents, clicking to move at the exact right moment is an ever-shifting 1 frame input influenced by unit collision and your ping.  I like to solve this problem with basic math, am I willing to go for 50% or 33% of a bow, or is 100% odds of  Rod/Chain/Sword better?  If you lose Carousel, you are likely going to get stuck with Tear/Belt/Cloak, which has the potential to really hurt your equity in the game, meaning your average placement in the game will likely be lower.  If there's minimal contest, or only one other player going for bow, go for bow. 2 is sketchy but up to how you're feeling, and 3 other players means avoid.  There's numerous things that go into playing opening Carousel, but that's a subject for another article.  My item priority would be.

Bow >>> Sword > Rod/Chain > Glove > Cloak > Belt > Tear

The basic methodology for what to start and why is a combination of how good the item is in multiples, or how important an item that you get to build from that component is.  Bow is highest priority because of RFC, which often can go together with Runaan's Hurricane, meaning you'll want a whopping 3 Bows for a unit like Olaf.

Reroll Comps:

The first real decision you'll have in a given game is whether to play a reroll comp or not.  Reroll comps are popular, meaning that each player playing for reroll in a given game will help each other hit desired units.  9-18 one cost units missing from the pool is a huge help in hitting the 1 cost you're looking for.  Multiply this by 3 or 4 depending on the lobby's population of reroll players, and you get anywhere between 27 - 72 units missing from the pool, the equivalent of 3 entire 1 cost champions getting deleted from the game.

Where am I getting 18 units from?  It should be your goal when playing a reroll comp to both 3 star your chosen unit, Nidalee, Yasuo, Nasus, and also 3 star some filler unit, like Garen, Fiora, or Wukong.  While spending gold to reroll, it often only takes a bit more mental effort to pay attention to another unit, and nothing more.

Reroll Position:

In order to play a reroll comp you need to be in reroll position.  This means that at the start of the game, you're only looking to keep units that directly support the comp, and otherwise you make maximum interest gold each round.  If I am playing Nidalee, I will only keep Nidalee, other Warlords and Sharpshooters, but if I can make 20 Gold vs. 19 by selling a Garen, I will.

DO NOT LEVEL.  Once in a while, you will have already leveled early, and you hit a Chosen Nidalee while you already have a Nidalee 2 in play.  In this instance, it's a good idea to transition toward Nidalee reroll, meaning selling other units to make interest thresholds, and keeping all Nidalees/supporting units.

At 3-1, you have your only major decision point in a reroll comp, whether to "hyper roll", meaning you roll until you hit your 3 star Chosen, or "slow roll" meaning you only roll until you hit 50 gold to maintain maximum interest income.   The typical bar is 6 of the unit, meaning that if you have 6 or more Nidalees, you hyper roll, 5, you slow roll, 3/4 at 3-1 you shouldn't play it and you abandon rerolling to go fast 8/9 instead.  Nidalee in patch 11.3 is a special case, and I would still try to reroll for Nidalee at 3/4 Nidalees if I was uncontested with no more than 1 Nidalee user in the lobby.  Nidalee 3 is better than most 3 star 4 costs, the unit is legitimately broken.

My tier list for 1 cost chosens:

SS: Nidalee (Either)

Nidalee Best in Slot: Spear of Shojin, JG, Flex item such as QSS, Gunblade, IE, Second SoJ/JG

S: Nasus (Syphoner)
S- Nasus (Divine)

Nasus Best in Slot: Titan's, JG, Flex item such as Second  Titans'/JG, IE, Bramble, DClaw, GA

Nidalee is more broken than Nasus, but Nasus is also insanely broken.  It's not uncommon for Chosen Syphoner Nasus to winstreak through stage 2 without leveling or sometimes even making any items at all.

A: Yasuo, Wukong

Yasuo Best in Slot: IE, Titan's, Flex item like Hurricane, Last Whisper, Deathblade, Second Titan's.  QSS is essential in some lobbies, worthless in others.  Adept is the main reason to want QSS because it drastically slows how fast Duelist can ramp up. 

Wukong Best in Slot: Hurricane, Deathblade, RFC.  BT is also good, multiple Hurricanes is good, HoJ is good.  QSS is not good, neither is GA.

Strong, but reliant on hitting specific items/specific other units and you also don't have the luxury to spend too much gold looking for them, because you need to hit level 8 for Yone/Lee Sin/Ornn

B: Fiora 

Fiora Best in Slot: ???  The strength of Fiora as a reroll is that she works surprisingly well with random items.  I've seen Shojin's, Gunblade, Sunfirecape, JG, and numerous other items used.

Still better off not playing this as a reroll comp.  Fiora is bugged and frequently casts at improper timings (such as without enough mana to cast, it's bizarre, or gaining mana while not taking damage with Riposte).  This unit is incredibly strong in either iteration, but you'll need a trait bot for Duelist/Enlightened respectively, she sucks without both.

F:  Brand/Tristana

Neither of these units are playable as a reroll comp, but I see my opponents try often.  You need to hit the respective units without rolling at all, and you also need perfect items.  If you find yourself in such a situation, by all means play them, but know that you only will be in a situation to play them by playing the game incorrectly.

Trista Best in slot: Rageblade/QSS/Hurricane

Brand Best in slot: Luden's/Blue/QSS

 Not Rerolling:

If you don't plan to play a reroll comp, you should plan to level after 2nd Carousel, and again either at 3-1 (if on 3/4/5 Winstreak) or 3-2 (if not).  If you're trying to lose with Fortune and don't have a solid loss streak established or a high gold opener, do not level in stage 3 because you'll be too broke. 95% of games should involve leveling at 3-1/3-2.  If you don't think you can figure out when to level, just level at 3-2, it's a safe default that can't go that wrong.

Welcome to Set 4.5

When the first mid-set update, Galaxies 3.5 came out, it breathed new life into TFT, and made a good set and fun game even better than before.  Set 4.5 is not looking to continue that trend.

Festival of Beasts is Just a New Coat of Paint

Rather than really change up the formula, mid set updates are supposed to build upon what a set is doing well, while taking out or changing around the stuff that doesn't work.  Last mid-set we saw the removal of Kayle, which was a balancing nightmare, with only Vayne and Urgot as truly problematic additions.  Now we're looking at Aurelian Sol, Tryndamere, Olaf, Samira, Swain, the return of Kayle, and the bizarre buggy mess that is Sett. Ornn is also looking to have some problematic gameplay, but I think the jury is still out on if that's really the case.

 Problematic mechanics in TFT are pretty well defined:

•  AOE Spells that hit everything (Asol, Kayle, Samira)
  
• Reset Mechanics (Darius, Talon)
  
• Drain Tanking (Swain, Tryndamere, Olaf)
  
• Scales with game duration (Veigar stacks, Ornn artifacts) 
• 1 Hit/1 Spell kills (Lee Sin, Urgot) 
• Aggro Drop (Set 3.5 Vayne, Set 4 Shades)
• Perma Stuns (Set 1 Volibear, Set 2 Olaf)
  

While a lot of these mechanics can be fun to play with, or give an important strategic tool, too many of them at once destroy the fun of the game; watching your team fight as a team.  Set 4.5 didn't remove problematic champions, and added a huge assortment of them.  While I can't predict if this set will be fun (I'm happy to give it a few weeks), I can say for certain it's unbalanceable.