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TFT champion selection strats. Help with "Am I leveling the right unit?"

BLACK REALM GOD·7/4/2019, 7:07:14 AM·2 votes·16,525 views

Hello everyone,

If you haven't read my other post about "Early Game Strategies In TFT" please consider giving it a read here on the forums.

I've been seeing a lot of players on the forums complaining about the seemingly random champion pools in TFT lately and so I want to give a go at writing up some tips for those players struggling to win. Please bear in mind that certain aspects I talk about are not 100% proven nor are they immune to change. League is a Moba and so TFT is likely to be updated regularly alongside the main game.

  • First

Let's talk about the champions in the draft at the start of the game. This draft is guaranteed to contain only 2 cost champs and below with zero duplicates. The champs that can spawn in it are :

  • 1 cost (11 champions) Fiora Garen Graves Kassadin Khazix Mordekaiser Nidalee Tristana Vayne Warwick Darius

  • 2 cost (12 champions) Ahri Elise Braum Blitzcrank Lissandra Lucian Lulu Pyke Shen RekSai Zed Varus

at the start of every draft there are only 10 champions in the carousel. I have not found out for certain if the remaining champions go back to the pool. I assume that they do. According to the wiki the draft round is randomly generated. If anyone knows what determines the champs after the starting draft please post it below.

Next, what we know about the pool.

When you buy a champion from the pool or select it during the draft it is removed from that total of x champions. I've been told that there are 1170 champions total to fill the store.

39 copies of the commons 26 copies of the uncommons 21 copies of the rares 13 copies of the epics 10 copies of the legendaries.

That means that only 1 player can have a ranked 3 karthus or other legendary unit as it takes 9 to make a ranked 3.

There are 50 unique champions divided into categories based on gold cost.

In the store you will be unable to find legendaries until level 6 and epics until level 5. at level 3 you can start finding rares and uncommons and at level 2 you're stuck with the commons.

This should not be affected by how much you reroll.

Any champions that you sell or have when you lose the game are redistributed back into the champion pool for others to pick later.

https://imgur.com/7JxKw6x.jpg[/img]

This is an image from an article I found. There are many like it in other articles so I believe it to be true.

so what does this all mean?

  • early on you should consider re-rolling if your comp requires a common champ - (yordles does). it's the only way you'll ever get it to rank 3 unless other players are hoarding it. if you see that other players are then dont re-roll and wait until they sell it for a different comp.

  • dont be afraid to change your comp. Sometimes the comp you're looking for might require something that is just too unlikely to obtain in the current game. An example : I was going ninjas about 4 games ago and I could not find akali. It's because there was literally only 1 in the entire game up to that point and my opponent had her. because I had invested so much gold into re-rolls and scouting I ended up losing when I could have just sold my stock and went for something more plentiful like demons or elementalists.

  • If someone gets a champ to rank 2 and especially rank three consider changing your build to counter that player. They're no longer going to see as many of that champion in the pool due to riot limiting the ability for players to double up tier 3's of the same character, but also because there will be just fewer in general to go around. Just consider that your sign to bow out of wild or to stop trying to build knights. While other players are still bashing their heads into a metaphorical brick wall trying to stubbornly build a comp that is nearly impossible to be built you will be benefiting from their lack of foresight

  • if you can spare the gold and board space try to prevent other players from getting rank 3.

I've updated the post with some more information and removed some incorrect information.

Let me know what you think of my guide. Be aware as stated earlier. TFT will likely change so this will probably not always remain the same. Especially with TwistedFate being added to the pool in the near future.

18 Comments

JustSomeGuyTho7/4/2019, 8:18:48 AM2 votes

Having played a good 20 some-odd matches now, my philosophy is to save my money and hope but never count on seeing a 1, 2 or 3 cost champion hit level 3. The reason is that a level 1 champion that costs 4 or 5 is generally as good or better than a level 2 of any lower cost. Also, the larger the team you have, the more benefits you can afford to stack up based on their origins. Therefore, paying up to get a larger team that has 1 or more level 2 champs of 4 or 5 cost with lots of benefits is better (with few exceptions) than a smaller team that has level 3 champions of 1, 2 or 3 cost. In the last few stages, you can afford to spend 20+ gold looking for cost 4 and 5 champs also because they show up a lot and you need fewer of them. (3 in total to get a level 2.) This almost guarantees you to get something useful if you save up your gold up until this point in the match. Whereas, with the lower cost champions, there are so many of them the odds you'll see 9 of them in the same match is fairly low, even when blowing through your cash to reroll. It's best to focus on a couple that make up the core of your team and pick them up when you can, but never reroll to find them. Then, when you are rerolling to get your 4 and 5 cost champions, if you manage to pick up the last few you need haphazardly that will just be icing on the cake. In other words, the lategame champs are heccin' lame and you wanna try to get level 2's of the champs you use in the first 2 rounds almost entirely to synergize with them. You don't even really need level 3 champs to win matches, as long as you manage to line up 2-3 really strong buffs from their origins that work well together. You can get by with 6-7 level 2's that all share the same origins and have useful abilities. This is why it's better to focus on only buying what you need to get by until round 3.

hrooza dota 7/4/2019, 9:13:16 AM2 votes

This is an image that I found on someone's article about TFT. There appear to be many others like it around the web. If you take a look you might notice something interesting.

https://imgur.com/7JxKw6x.jpg[/img]

notice it says that there are only 39 champs that cost 1 gold and 26 champs that cost 2 gold.

it says 39 of each champion there is 39 garen and 39 vaynes in the whole pool

also theres no way theres total of 109 champions because games always have more then that

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/2094/q77oJD.jpg

in this one for example it have more then 109 in their comp alone, not counting bench or the shop it self

BLACK REALM GOD7/4/2019, 7:20:22 AM1 votes

If you liked this guide check out my other guide about some early game compositions that might help you win.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/teamfight-tactics/YaNEE8mf-tft-early-game-strats

Tormentula7/4/2019, 7:56:58 AM1 votes

So to be clear, if for example in the first phase I grab an Elise and intend to try and bring her up to gold, which would require 9.. there's a strong possibly only 8 could exist in the whole game? Or there's a possibility there's only 9, but because one other player has an Elise in their bench, its impossible for another player to achieve that? Is it always a flat number of that champ that exist or is it random? (as in, is there always X amount of a champ in the pool, or is it random on how many do actually spawn in that pool?)

Pxerkza7/4/2019, 11:28:29 AM1 votes

so i had a game where i 3 starred 3 units my 3rd 3 star was 2 fights before the game ended and i had 4th 3 star cooking i literally needed 1 more zed

the thing is nobody in the game ever bought a zed/tried assassins/or kept one i was checking every round while there were 3 3star warwicks in the game i was thinking i wouldn't 3 star my warwick since 1 already had his 3 star and another dude had 2x 2 stars and yet i 3starred mine before the dude that had 2x 2stars while i had only 1x 2star

and yet the 9th zed wasn't in the game because after i leveled up to 7 and finished my build i spent every point of gold towards trying to get that 9th zed for around 2 full rounds i spent over 100 gold i think it would be very helpful if riot introduces a way to be able to tell if the champion numbers exist in the game so we can make the choice to invest

Panthaz897/4/2019, 2:44:38 PM1 votes

the champion pool has that number for EACH champion...there are 39 each of T1 champs and 10 each of T5 champs. Otherwise I wouldn't be so consistent at getting T5s to level 2 and had a lvl 3 Yasuo and lvl 2 MF in the same game which is 15 T5 champs. There is WAY more than 109 champions in the pool its just that once you level up to 6-9 your chances of getting a lvl 1-2 chance drops dramatically and most people don't buy all the T5s so they normally will appear once you are lvl 9.