League of Legends: an idiot’s step-by-step guide to the Teamfight Tactics early game

Final minion round (Round 1-3)

Before the final minion round, you’ll have hit Level 3 and likely have at least one additional item component (or else a buttload of gold) at your disposal. This leads to two other important questions, to go along with the two from the opening round:

• Do I spend all my gold, or save it?
• Do I combine my items?

The answer to questions one and two from Round 1-2 remain the same as above, but the answers to the third and fourth questions will depend on what units you can buy (as I said, buy whenever you can get a pair or a 2-star unit) and what items you get.

You should combine items only when you hit on two components that make up a really strong item in the meta. For instance, some of the stronger items would be Rapidfire Cannon (two Recurves), Guardian Angel (BF Sword and a Chain Vest), or Morellonomicon (NLR and Giant’s Belt). If other items become massively stronger than this calculus changes, however, I would say that the following items should not be prioritized early:

• Hush
• Red Buff
• Cursed Blade
• Zeke’s Herald
• Locket of the Iron Solari
• Frozen Heart
• Zephyr
• Sword of the Divine
• Phantom Dancer
• Dragon’s Claw

The reason that these items are bad early is that they either counter certain types of enemies that you might not face early (e.g. if you build a Phantom Dancer and no one ends up building Assassins), their passive isn’t utilized effectively (giving all allies a shield from Locket early is probably underwhelming), or counter a problem you won’t face Hush is great for stopping ults from stacking multiple times, something that probably won’t happen in early rounds. To be clear, the items are good in the mid to late game, but if they are all you can build in those first few minion rounds, you’re probably better off holding off on them.

As to whether to save your gold, generally on the first two shops is don’t bother to save. Your income is so low, you should always be looking to leverage gold for a strong unit to get yourself off to a win streak, meaning you buy to upgrade units or buy the strongest 1 or 2g units available.