Consistently placing in the top four, let alone winning lobbies, is a hard task. You've probably spent a ton of time figuring out your strategy, what compositions you like, and what items you want to build. Unfortunately, auto-battlers are super RNG-reliant and won't always go your way. Don't worry though, I've got a few tips that can make playing games of Teamfight Tactics and gaining LP a bit easier!

1. Don’t play the same way

You’ve probably heard that the best way to play Teamfight Tactics is to “save this amount of money”, “level on this stage” or “spend your gold here”. The fact of the matter is that auto-battler games are heavily RNG-reliant games. You won’t roll the same champions, items, or fight outcomes every game. Heck, you might not even see similar rolls for a whole day. Players tend get stuck trying to build a composition they saw on a livestream or chasing a composition that smashed their previous lobby. You need to be flexible and change your game plan on a game-by-game basis, sometimes changing mid-game based on what champions and items you’re being given.

Just to really hit home the RNG point, here's a chart with your odds of rolling champions at all levels. Nothing is guaranteed outside of tier 1s at levels 1-2. Clearly being flexible is a must in Teamfight Tactics.


2. Scout your opponents

Something that I hear a lot from Teamfight Tactics players is that they can’t find ‘X’ champion to make a tier 2 or 3 or can’t find ‘Y’ champion to round out their composition and don’t know why. In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to forget that there are a limited number of champions at each tier, with the lowest tier having the most duplicates. In order to account for the randomness of rolling for champions, you need to be diligent in scouting your opponents to see who is building what and if someone is contesting your champion pool.

Seeing someone building your composition isn’t necessarily a reason to panic, it just means you need to play differently and try to grab copies of the champions you want earlier than they can (or if you can’t, you want to start thinking about your pivot composition). Being stuck with a bench full of potential unit upgrades while slowly losing is a terrible feeling and can be avoided easily with good scouting.

The other purpose of scouting is to see how you can position your units. Where are the enemy carries, assassins and tanks. Where should you put your units to better set yourself up for victory. Can you bait an assassin into fighting a tank? Can your assassin one-shot their carry at the start? Can you get huge value from an AOE ultimate by moving your units? With so many factors to account for, you can’t possibly win every fight by just looking at your own board. The example below could have potentially been changed to get to the carries on the left quicker, and deal with the frontline easier (Red = carries you need to get to; Blue = carry champion, but no items or tiers so it's a bait; Green = Frontline, no damage, but slows your composition down).

3. Spend your gold differently

Generally I’ve seen two schools of thought when it comes to how to save and spend gold in Teamfight Tactics. The first being the conservative “save to 50” strategy, where you spend your extra gold (over 50) unless you need to dip below 50 for a tier up, level up or to simply stay alive. While this strategy is good in the mid game after you’ve hit the gold threshold, you sacrifice valuable resources beforehand in health and champions along the way. So while you hit a power spike eventually, it means you have much less room for misplays.

The second strategy being to stay between 25 and 50 gold for the whole game. You’re not punished as heavily mid-game for hyper rolling, while still buying and rolling for units. At the same time, you reach the late game with a healthy economy. This strategy has two main flaws, you’ll most likely lose to hyper rollers, but not as bad as players saving their gold. However, once you hit the point of the game where players have the ability to spend massive amounts of gold to level up or buy champions, you’ll find it harder to compete as your economy won’t be able to match up for as long.

Basically, both main strategies have their flaws and shouldn’t be solely relied on. Through your scouting you should be able to get a sense of what the lobby is doing. Are you playing with more aggressive players who are spending early, or are you playing with more passive players trying to survive until the later stages? From there you should choose whether you want to add to the aggression, follow the pattern, or find some middle ground. Being aggressive in slow lobbies can mean placing higher (and gaining some amount of LP) by killing players off early, but fizzling out towards the end. Playing slower means you’ll have to curb aggression, but be better set up to contest first place should you survive to the late game.

4. Build items at the right times

Having items adds another form of RNG and strength even when two players are building the same composition. However, another pitfall that many players may fall into is building an item as soon as they get both components. Understandably players assume that their plan for the game will work out and that by getting this piece completed, they’re advancing it along. Teamfight Tactics isn’t that straightforward though, and often you’ll find yourself needing to change your strategy mid-game for a variety of reasons.

To compensate for this, something players can do as a safer alternative is to put a single item component on a champion that they intend to use. This way, you’re giving your board a bit more power, while not committed to an item and/or champion so wholly. While it will still feel a bit bad to sell a tier 2 champion to get a component back in the situation that you need to change your gameplan, it’s much better than spending all of your money and just losing while forcing a composition.


Items also aren’t necessarily needed early on, they’re obviously insanely strong against boards without any, but you can win without them. Saving components until you have a wide variety of items to choose from makes your composition more flexible and gives you better odds of winning.

5. Watch high elo players

Whether it’s a livestream or a video, watching high elo players can improve your gameplay dramatically. Obviously you shouldn’t try to emulate everything you see, as they’re most likely changing their own tactics based on the game, but look carefully at what they’re doing. Oftentimes these players will explain their reasoning for doing certain things, which allows you to think about what you would do. If you agree with them, listen to what conditions are being met to make them want to make this choice. If you disagree, think about why you disagree. Is it because you would want to stick with the composition because you like it or is there a more concrete reason? Oftentimes you’ll begin to learn why to do things you don’t do or why some things you think are right may not be the best decision.