League of Legends Patch 9.16 Teamfight Tactics – enter the Hextech ultimatum

With four League of Legends champions joining Teamfight Tactics, how will Patch 9.16 shake up the TFT meta?

Patch 9.16 has hit for Summoners Rift, but now the newest League of Legends patch is also coming to the Teamfight Tactics arena. The addition of Hextechs, several item changes, and Riot’s continued attempt to make the Wild Origin not terrible, what will the latest patch mean for Teamfight Tactics?

More from League of Legends

• Bee’koz Vel’koz Skin: Splash Art, Price, Release, How to Get
• King Beegar Skin: Splash Art, Price, Release, How to Get
• EMENES retires following leave from Cloud9, cites military service
• EMENES Donezo Manifesto: Former Cloud9 Midlaner airs out grievances
• Team Heretics Perkz: European legend reportedly playing for TH

New champions

The Hextech joins the Rift as a new Origin, made up of four champions. We broke them down with our initial reaction here, but now it’s time to see the gritty details of this new crew of champions!

"Trait: Throw a bomb at an enemy unit with an item, and disables all items in a 1/2 hex radius for 8 seconds."

The intro says that the bomb can be played around, which is interesting. Initially, this trait would straight up disable a random item, so I’m glad Riot tweaked it to not be a hard-counter to items.

Camille

"Ability: The Hextech Ultimatum, roots an enemy and forces her in-range teammates to target whomever she’s fighting. Class: Blademater Cost: 1 Gold Ability Damage: 200/325/450"

The addition of Camille could be a boon to early-game Blademasters like Fiora, Shen, and Draven while also opening options to boost up later units like Draven and Yasuo.

As for her ability, in my opinion, it’s just a better version of Fiora’s ability. It does more damage (200 vs. 100), packs crowd control, and gets her teammates to focus her target.

Jayce

"Ability: Disrupts the enemy frontline by knocking back an enemy unit with his Thundering Blow. He then switches to his Mercury Cannon bringing increased attack speed and ranged damage. Class: Shapeshifter Cost: 2 Gold Ability Damage: 200/350/500"

I think having a new, early game Shapeshifter will be a boon to units like Elise and Nidalee, giving them a way to get that synergy earlier. His ability seems pretty decent, knocking back an enemy unit and then becoming a ranged attacker. The trick will be to see if he can stay alive long enough to transform.

Vi

"Ability: Targets the farthest enemy and charges towards them, knocking aside and damaging every enemy along the way. Once she gets there, she knocks her target up and damages them. Class: Brawler Cost: 3 Gold Ability Damage: 250/450/650"

Her ability is the anti-Blitzcrank, allowing her to access the back line of a team fight and re-orient the enemy’s focus. With Vi, getting tankiness will be a must to make sure she doesn’t instantly die upon charging in. Her ability is also quite high, doing more than double the up-front damage than Blitzcrank or Rek’Sai.

Jinx

"Ability: Gets Excited after her first takedown, gaining bonus attack speed. If she scores a second takedown she pulls out Fishbones, her rocket launcher, causing her attacks to deal AoE damage. Class: Gunslinger Cost: 4 Gold Rocket Damage: 100/225/350 magic damage in an explosion that covers 3 hexes total."

Jinx is going to be very feast-or-famine. You’ll need to have a good frontline to protect her so she can get the ability stacked, but once she does she could be a menace.

Systems

Matchmaking

"We’ve improved how the player matching works to prevent the streaky scenarios where you would face the same player (or ghost army) two or more times in a row. Now this should happen almost never."

Thank God. In a game so heavily-based on randomness, the random chance of getting the same opponent multiple times in a row early game just feels unfair sometimes.

URF Overtime Mode

"We don’t like draws. They aren’t fun. So now, 30 seconds in to every battle, URF Overtime kicks in and speeds things up for 15 seconds. Draws are still possible but there should be a lot less of them. 30 seconds into every battle the URF Overtime bonus will activate. 300% Attack Speed 200% Ability Damage 66% reduced Crowd Control duration 66% Healing Reduction 30% increased affection towards maritime mammals."

I’m sure this won’t be applied to EUW who, I hear, quite like draws. Also happy to see that Urf is going to get even more loving than he was during regular Teamfight Tactics battles.

Ranked Changes

"As intended, everyone will now be demoted if you lose LP in any game you start at 0LP. For Grandmaster and Challenger players, if you’re demoted you will now skip Master and go directly to Diamond 1. This is now true in League of Legends as well. We’ve also made adjustments to LP gains and losses underneath the hood for extreme edge cases. For the most part, you will not see or feel any changes based on this optimization."

Fair warning to all, if you’re at 0 LP you will be demoted, so you’d better play to at least get fourth place.

Player Damage

"Base damage now scales with current stage. Stages 1-2: 1 damage Stage 3-4: 2 damage Stage 5: 3 damage Stage 6: 4 damage Stage 7+: 5 damage"

This is an attempt to make games end a bit quicker in later stages of the game, which I am all for. Now, the minimum damage you take will be determined by what point in the game you’re at.