Riot’s newest round-based strategy game is easy to learn, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to master. Contrary to what some players believe, Teamfight Tactics isn’t as luck-dependent as it looks. You can win more games regardless of roles if you take the right approach. You need to ask yourself “what is the best Teamfight Tactics strategy?” given certain situations.
The Best Teamfight Tactics strategy – A Quick Rundown
For those looking for a quick answer, here’s our brief rundown on what works most of the time. Take note that there’s no one-fits-all strategy that will win you games 100% of the time. Picking the right strategy depends on each game’s unique situations.
- Decide whether you need to go for a hyper-rolling or an economic approach.
- Be acquainted with the different unit classes and origins.
- Learn proper synergies like sorcerers and dragons, ninjas and elementalists, and imperials and brawlers.
- Understand proper positioning depending on your composition and the enemy team.
All of those sound straightforward right? For a deeper look at how to win TFT games, let’s take a closer look at the points we mentioned above
Teamfight Tactics Strategy | Hyper Rolling and Economic Approach
Like in most turn-based games, players can go for a strong early game or hold out long enough to dominate later on. Let’s take a look at the two most common strategies used in this game.
Hyper Rolling
Hyper Rolling is a high risk, high reward tactic that takes advantage of the abundance of high roll chances during the first few rounds of the game. By saving all of your gold until you hit round 3-1 or just after the krugs are killed, you can end up having Tier 3 units early in the game backed by plenty of tier 1 units.
Hyper Rolling is great for starting win streaks earlier than other players (especially since players going for other tactics will have tier 2 units at best at this point). However, it’s not as effective in games with other players going for the same tactics because you end up getting fewer roll chances and can end up sacrificing the first two rounds for nothing.
Economic Approach
If hype rolling is about getting early leads and win streaks, “going eco” is a more conservative nature. Because you’re limiting your spending early on, you won’t be much of a threat to other players early on. However, by saving enough money to hit certain amounts, you will get extra gold interest, giving you plenty of options once you need to transition to a specific build.
While the economic approach offers better flexibility than hype rolling, it has a very weak early game. It’s common to lose a massive chunk of your health even before you get your first tier 4 unit. This is especially true in games with more aggressive opponents. Last but not least, you have to make your unit choices based on a build you’re planning once you reach the next phase of the game.
Teamfight Tactics Strategy | Knowing Your Classes and Origins
Each unit has a given class and origin. These classifications give the unit certain bonuses that you can capitalize on (or do away with) depending on your preferred playstyle. Here’s a brief rundown of each class and origin to help you make your own compositions.
Classes
- Assassins – 3 or 6 assassins receive a bonus to their critical strike damage
- Blademasters – 3 or 6 Blademasters increases their chances to perform multiple attacks
- Brawlers – 2 or 4 brawlers get a max HP bonus
- Elementalists – 3 Elementalists will summon an elemental at the start of combat.
- Guardian – 2 guardians and their adjacent units will receive an armor bonus at the start of combat
- Gunslinger – 2 or 4 gunslingers have a chance of attacking an extra unit/s within range after attacking
- Knights – 2, 4, or 6 knights block damage from enemy attacks
- Rangers – 2 or 4 rangers get a chance to get a temporary boost to their attack speeds
- Shapeshifter – 3 shapeshifters double their maximum health when transformed
- Sorcerer – 3 or 6 sorcerers will increase the entire team’s Ability Power
Origins
- Demon – 2, 4, or 6 Demons have a chance of burning the enemy’s mana for true damage
- Dragon – 2 Dragons get magic immunity
- Exile – 1 exile unit receives a shield equal to their maximum health if it has no adjacent allied units
- Glacial – 2, 4, or 6 Glacials have a chance to stun enemy units
- Imperial – 2 or 4 random imperials deal double damage
- Ninja – 1 or 4 Ninjas get increased attack damage
- Noble – 1 or 6 Nobles provide 100 armor to allied unit/s and heal a small portion of hp per attack
- Pirate – 3 Pirates provide a gold bonus after combat against another player
- Robot – 1 Robot starts with full mana
- Void- 3 Voidborne ignores part of the enemy’s armor when attacking
- Wild – 2 or 4 wild allies generate stacks of fury that increase their attack speeds
- Yordle – 3 or 6 Yordles will cause enemy attacks against other friendly Yordles to have a chance to miss
Items
The best Teamfight Tactics strategy for the situation will always involve getting core items for your unit composition. You can get items when fighting other players or creeps. Units during carousel rounds may also have items attached to them. Like with the original game mode, items can’t be transferred from one hero to another, so you have to make sure you know which units can get the most value out of your items.
Items can be classified as either general use or class-specific. A general use item will work on almost any composition, but class-specific items can either be must-haves or complete trash depending on your current build. You also have to take note that some unit classes or origins are more dependent on items than others (at the time of this writing, gunslingers are considered very item-dependent).
Teamfight Tactics Strategy | Builds and Synergy
Because of the nature of TFT, there are bound to have “meta” builds or unit compositions. However, the game is also bound to get a series of buffs or nerfs. This means that today’s strongest builds can easily end up becoming weaker after changes where implemented. Knowing the current meta is important, but what matters more is your ability to come up with builds that are properly synergized.
While you’re still getting your feet wet in the game, here are a few great options you can try right now.
Sorcerers and Dragons
This build revolves around having tanky, magic-immune dragon units tanking for a bunch of AP-boosted units. While this composition can have a tricky early game, it is considered one of the most potent team combos right now.
Ninjas and Elementalists
A mid-game-focused build, ninjas and Elementalists combine excellent DPS from your ninjas while being protected by your Elementalists’ bonus unit. It also has one of the most straightforward tactics – just put your squishies on the backline and you should be good to go.
Imperials and Brawlers
This is a great early-game build that will also help you get used to proper positioning. AKA “protect the Draven” build, this composition is also the most forgiving in terms of unit composition because you can use any other knight once you’re done setting up Darius and Garen.
Positioning
The best way to get the most out of any composition is to make sure they’re positioned properly on the battlefield. You’ve probably heard this rule of thumb thousands of times before: squishies on the back, tanks up front. While that saying makes sense, you can’t just start with the same unit positions every game. The best Teamfight Tactics strategy involves being able to adapt your unit positioning depending on the situation. What really matters is knowing why you’re putting a unit in a specific tile of the board. Here’s a quick guide to help you understand positioning.
- You want melee units with AOE attacks to be in contact with as many enemy units as possible.
- A high damage ranged unit will usually have poor defenses, they have to be placed near a corner and behind tougher allied units.
- Units with abilities that go through units are better off placed on one side, since placing them near the center of the board risk “splitting” damage among enemy targets.
- Units have to be positioned in a way that they get their chance to use their ultimates before they die. If they die without being able to ult, pull them back next time so they can survive long enough to do so.
- Assassins will jump to the farthest enemy or jump to the nearest available tile before attacking an enemy. You want to place them far enough to allow the enemy front line to “free up” space for your assassins to jump straight to their backline units.
- If the enemy has assassins, consider putting tankier units BEHIND your squishier carries. This will force enemy assassins to jump to your tougher decoys.
- Some units will have abilities that can displace enemy units. Use those to get to higher priority targets easier.
Conclusion
There’s no reason that you should leave everything to luck just to win a game of TFT. With a proper understanding of the game, you can employ the best teamfight tactics strategy given a specific set of circumstances. Want to learn more about the game? Check out more of our TFT-specific articles here!
