League of Legends Teamfight Tactics: 10 tips for your final ranked push

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League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games. /

With Teamfight Tactics and League of Legends ranked seasons ending soon, here are 10 tips that you should keep in mind every game to help your chances to climb!

League of Legends Patch 9.21 cycle will bring the Teamfight Tactics ranked season to a close before the release of Set 2: Rise of the Elements in Patch 9.22. If you’re still struggling to try and hit the next tier, whether it be Silver, Gold, Diamond, or whatever, here are 10 tips that you should be keeping in mind whenever you load onto the Arena.

1. The early game is just about surviving

Riot recently bumped up the base damage in the early game, meaning that you’ll lose more health when you lose the first few PvP rounds. Losing early rounds isn’t the end of the world, but falling behind 15-20 health before the second carousel will put you in a tough spot.

As I said in my early game guide, the key in the first few rounds is to put out the strongest units possible. Take pairs and upgrade units to 2-stars whenever you can and use that early experience level up before the first PvP round if you can leverage a good early synergy like Knights, Brawlers, or Assassins.

However, this doesn’t mean you should level up if you don’t already have that extra unit to make the synergy, and you should definitely not be re-rolling in the early rounds. The key here is not to try and build synergies, but build strong units and take the synergies if they present themselves.

2. Know when to spend and when to save

As a general rule, in the early game of Teamfight Tactics you should spend to preserve a winning streak. That means buying powerful units that you can replace the weaker ones on your board, leveling up to get another unit out there to complete a synergy, or even just re-rolling for 1g units when you already have a strong 2-star copy (like a Garen, Nidalee, or Varus) to go for a 3-star down the line.

If you’re losing, though, in the early game you want to be saving more. Try and get to that next interest breakpoint so you’ll have more gold at the start of Round 3. That’s where you should spam sell/re-roll trying to get better units at a higher tier.

3. Start setting a comp in Rounds 3-4

This is the “transition” or mid game phase of Teamfight Tactics. Here, you want to start focusing a bit more on finding units that will synergize. That doesn’t mean you must stick to Sorcerers if you get a 2-star Veigar and Lulu early, but that is a good indication that you should at least start transitioning towards that. If another, better comp doesn’t materialize for you before then, stick with it, but by the end of Round 4, you should know, basically what units are going to be permanent members of your roster.

4. Items should guide the comp

By Round 3, you should have components for at least two items. Based on the items you have or can craft, you should have an idea of what comps you should be looking to build. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, the general principles would be:

If you have AP or mana items items, look to build Sorcerers/Elementalists
If you have AD items, look to build Blademasters/Assassins
If you have HP, look to build Shapeshifters/Guardians
If you have armor or MR items, look to build Knights/Brawlers
If you have Attack Speed items, look to build Gunslingers/Rangers

5. Don’t force a comp if it isn’t coming to you

Not to be too Yogi Berra, but sometimes you just have to play the game that’s given to you. If you’ve had games where you’d really like to build Knights, but you just keep getting Rek’Sai and Volibear, that’s the game giving you a sign.

In all likelihood, if you look at the other players’ boards, you’ll see a lot of Knights being built, but probably not a lot of Brawlers. Any time you’re getting a lot of units of one particular Origin or Class, you should consider whether they might synergize with your items and comp because there will probably be more available units in the limited unit pool out there for you to build. It’s better to take a less-than-stellar comp and get strong units than try to force a great comp with bad units.

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