A big issue with players, even those in Masters, is that they don’t understand everything that goes into TFT and can’t solve problems presented to them unless they see a top player solve it for them. I hope to help here with some tips on key fundamentals to improve your climb.
When trying to climb to Masters, a lot of players just look at a comp list on Mobalytics or from a top streamer and copy and paste what they see. However, when a new patch comes out, many of these players are confused as to what they need to do and feel like they have to relearn the game.
A major goal of mine with these articles and my coaching is to teach fundamentals so that, when a new patch or set comes out, you have the tools to solve the problems yourself and not rely on outside resources. While easier said than done, I hope this article can help you with a few key fundamentals to climb and learn at the same time.
While the basics are relatively simple, positioning is something we overlook a lot. Even top Challenger players don’t actively position for certain aspects of a fight. It’s hard to keep track of everything the players in your pool have and can do but I hope talking about a few things here will help.
Everyone knows to put their carry in the corner and frontliners, well, in the front. But sometimes it’s important to target a specific unit first and shift your team towards that unit or have your carry focus it and make sure it’s on the same side. Let’s look at an example.
We see Lillia has carry items and will be in the front quickly on the right side. If we have our carry on the same side it will focus her first and eliminate the only damage dealer. We can apply this to a lot of fights as we generally want to decide who to focus first.or best way to deal with the primary enemy carry.
We also can note some key things, such as the right corner having priority so only 2 people can surround our carry, or on the left side we can’t get wrapped by the enemy units like a Shi Oh Yu being at the top corner. Having some positioning knowledge like these few points can go a long way.
Building items is something I've touched on when it comes to tempo, but let’s go over some fundamentals of it and see what you’re doing and what players aren’t considering.
When you make items on Stage 2, you are generally slamming items to win streak or are flexible items that can save HP. I don’t like to commit to certain lines until around 3-2 once I have more items and certain augments. Once I know what lines I can play, I can decide which components can’t be used as they make key items, such as a Bow for Xayah to make Guinsoo's, Giant Slayer, and so on. Once you have those core items for Xayah, it becomes much easier to slam extra bow items like Zz’rot for Sejuani or Titan’s on Jayce or Shyvana and so on.
Set 7 was very defensive focused as you wanted to slam items like Sunfire and Gargoyle’s Stoneplate. We have gone the other way with an offensive focus in the mid set thanks to hefty nerfs to tanks and defensive items. While item slamming can vary with playstyle and comp preference, knowing what to prioritize and why can go a long way.
While the answer to augments might be to use Tactics.tools, people are still not playing towards their augments. While easier said than done, some key basics can really improve your understanding of how augments can guide your gameplay.
We generally take a generic augment to keep our options for comps open, but even these arguments can greatly impact what boards give us our highest cap. For example, Thrill is strong for hypercarries that will get kills consistently, but Celestial Blessing is generally stronger late game and better for units that might not one shot or provide consistent DPS like Xayah and Daeja.
We want augments to mainly enable the comp and fill out a checklist of what conditions our team needs to succeed. For example, if we get a healing augment then we don't have to build items like Bloodthirster on our Olaf or Hand of Justice on Daeja, which lets us cap out our board higher with more damage or we can commit resources elsewhere.
The Seraphine comp has different variations to run, and augments/items can help you decide which line to take. If we get Better Together, then obviously we want to play towards that augment by building aura items and build that variation. This is a pretty obvious case, and other times it takes time and studying to know which augments synergize best with a comp.
Remember that as you climb, it’s not about something being fine or good, it’s about knowing what is optimal and getting as close to it as possible. We have to make suboptimal choices in the short term for the long term and vice versa.
It’s hard to know the answer to everything and what is optimal but learning what conditions you generally need to meet can help you solve these problems on the fly rather than relying on watching someone solve it. You know you need anti-heal for example, and if our items and augments don’t solve the problem, it’s good to know that Pantheon can apply anti-heal as a worst-case solution, or if our comp isn’t doing enough damage we can look for ways to add a secondary carry or enable our primary carry to do more, like having Shyvana with Xayah does both.
Our items, units and augments culminate in filling out requirements for our comp to top 4 and thus succeed. But knowing what you want to gain from these fundamentals is crucial. Even if Tactics.Tools tells us an augment has 4.0 placement, knowing what allows this and when to best use it matters a lot more than just the number. Look at units it pairs with, other augments and how those affect the placement and so on. Contextualize the data to draw proper conclusions and apply your fundamentals and playstyle to climb to the top!
