TFT so far
I've been playing quite some Autochess, i've played some dota Underlords, and obviously as much TFT as i could(which still wasn't to much due ~18hour wait times on PBE)
First off i want to say that out of those 3, TFT actually is the one i enjoy the most. Partially cause i can indentify with the univers as a lol player, but also because their are some good ideas compared to the others aswell. One of the things particularry standing out are the shared drafts, which are a great idea and good comeback mechanic and i just love them. Another good thing is the item system, haveing any two component items combine to a full item greatly reduces the RNG compared to autochess.
That said though, i still am VERY dissapointed. It could have been so much better than just an autochess rippoff with some improvements.
There are two big reason why i'm dissapointed with TFT.
The first is that it feels like Riot took auto chess and tried to convert it into the LOL setting, ratehr than taking the LOL univers and building an Autochess like game from it. Now what exactly do i mean with that?
For starters, there are the classes and 'races'. DotA never had much of a background storry and they don't really have classes beyond str/int/agi, so naturally Autochess had to create arbitrary classes and races. In LoL, we have classes, Lots of them even, same with story background for races(or origin) There is no need to creat arbitrary races and classes here, yet for some reason Riot decided to do so which somewhat disconnects TFT from LOL-Lore in a totally unneeded way. When i first heared about TFT, i was hyped about the potential of running for example an Ionian setup vs some dirty noxians. It's would have been a great opportunity to connect TFT with the lore and it has been missed completely. But there are more reasons. For example, one of the things i always liked better in LoL than in DotA was abillity scaleings and the builtpath possibillities, haveing AP scaleings, AD Scalings, skills physicall damage, some even scale of def stats, where as DotA has Basedamages and magic damage on all skills with very few exeptions. Now in TFT, abillities do all magic damage, and only draven and lucian scale of AD. GP haveing barrales, but not criting them? Garen doing magic damage and for some reason getting magic immune(yea, totally not a juggernaut reskin here)? Darius heal not scaleing of %missing hp, nor AD and doing magic damage... This just doesn't really feel true to LOL for me and is a bit of a let down.
Now the second big reason why i'm disappointed is that you did not just take the good stuff from autochess, they also included ALL the bad stuff, which mostly is a SHIT TON of unneeeded RNG. What i mean with unneeded RNG are stuff like crit, the gunslinger, blademaster, glacial, noble 3, demon and ranger boni aswell as items. Now crit and the boni are obvious, but concerning the items: my issue is not them haveing some RNG involved, my issue is that the per creep droprate creastes a MAAAAAASIVE discrepancy between best and worst case. There is nothing worse than haveing two complete items and faceing a setup with two fullgeared champs. This is the one thing that Valves dota underlords does better than the rest: They give you 3 item rewards to choose from if you beat a creep wave, and if you lose you get 1 of them random instead. Thos means everyone always has the same number of items, but you still have some RNG involved in which items you get. Seriously though, the nature of drafting your setup already makes the game pretty rng based at it's core, there is no need to cramp even more RNG into every other aspekt of it! Then there is matchmakeing(within the TFT round): Why have a totally random opponent every round? It's something i hated in Autochess and i hate it in TFT. Cause with the full random matchmaking you get people haveing a winning streak with a bad setup just cause they repeadiatly face the weakest players, while others get junked cause they faces the current top player 4 times in a row. Why not rotate through all other players, or have a top half/lower half pool?
Then there is one non(directly) RNG related bad mechanic that they took from autochess: The win/loss streak system. Asides from how snowbally it can be, it has one big issue: It creates a situation where winning a round is worse for you than losing, meaning you feel bad about winning, but since your HP gettting lower you also feel bad about losing. imo the bonus gold on winning is fine enough. And if not, atleast lower the max streak to 2 and grant an extra bonus for breaking a losing streak so you don't feel bad about winning.
Asides from those issues, there are some others that are hopefully just caused by the early beta state of the mode. Obviously there are some buggs, Ai issues and stuff, like melees not moveing even though there would be a free spot to get in range, but since it's 3 or more tiles away they go '...nope', assasins focusing frontline, lulu ulting a fullhealth target with no enemie nerby and so on... But the thing i miss the most are unit details, you have no idea how much AD, AS, Armor, MR or AP a unit has, nore do you know what exactly AP(called spellpower in TFT for some reason) does on any given champ, all you can do is guess. Another issue for me are the optics for higher tier units. The silver/gold and sice increase are often pretty subtle and hard to recognize, but mostly i miss the 'WOW' factor on getting high tier units that i have in Autochess. I really would love to see skins beeing used, possibley even allowing the players to use skins they own to replace the silver or gold tier visuals on their champs.
Now i guess the classes/races stuff won't change, so lets take a look at what we got, both from how it captures LOL into TFT and in terms of balance.
First onto the overall balance: I feel like it's pretty close to normal LOL, you've got some busted stuff, alot borderline usless things and tankiness feels totally pointless. That might be slightly exegerated, but only slightly. I feel like one of the big issues for tankiness in TFT is that the tanky perk-boni are flat values while many of the champs are low tier, so it starts out decent and scales poorly. Knights for example have !!!3!!! tier 1 units, while brawlers have i tier 4(cho which actually is strong) and then only tier 3,2 and 1 while gaining a flat hp bonus which is nice early, but has little effect one most units are at 2 or 3 stars. Same with the flat damage reduction on knights even though it scales harder at higher knight tears, they still die rather quick when faceing the multuiplicative DDs. I think getting WWand Reksai buffed and up one tier would help, same with makeing Garen tier 2 with 50 more hp and Darius tuer 2 or even 3 with some buffs.
Big part of poor tankiness might be items, as tank itmes(just like in the real game) suck ass. The armor component is 20 armor, the ad component is 20 ad. Now i don't know if armor works the same here as in the normal game, but if it does, that's horrible. 700g worth AD vs 400g worth of armor and i think ~520g worth of hp. Anyway, brawlers feel like the weakest class in the game by far, they have extremly poor damage exept voli(and he only in certain situations) and besides of chogath also not great utillity, while their tankiness doesn't feel exeptional either. I only ever see them succed if used to get the void bonus, or a single WW for the wild bonus. but no one ever stacks brawlers for their own sake, cause they are awfully weak. As for knights, they atleast have a strong early, garen is probably the strongest tier 1 unit and darius isn't bad either, with garen even scaleing as a DD with the right items if you can get him to lvl 3, and with Seju and Kayle they have some potent high tier options. However, i haven't seen a succesfull 6 kight setup so far, they deal overall to little damage and you just feel how the 3 tier 1 units dropp later on, and even though 80 flat damage reduction sounds strong, they still die supprisingly fast. They can work well to get some other synergies and be some frontline, but going full knight just doesn't work from my experience so far. Now the nest defensive class, guardians(why not wardens like the tank subclass?) Only two units, Leona and Braum, with leona beeing a questionable choice imo. It's a 30 armor bonus to potentially all your units, which sounds ok but actually doesn't feel like it does anything at all. Also, braum him self is pretty weak, no damage and often he only has the mana for his E once he's already dead. Whish he'd use his ult instead. But since you only need two of them, they are nice to have if you go for either glacial or noble. Which brings us to the last defensive perk: Noble. 35heal on hit+100armor sounds absurd, and in the earlygame, it is. If you get it on the right unit(yay, more rng), this bonus can easily win you a fight all on it's own early on. However, later on the regen is less relevant and it gets easyily bursted through, and even with a full bonus for your entier team, it still was not as strong as you'd expect. I've run full novble 2 times and faced it once, and it never was great, maybe i had bad luck with items/unit levl or just faced absurd setups, but it just once again felt like tank stuff doesn't matter at all.
On the damage side hwowever, we got mostly %increases, assasins getting high crit multiplyer(though i haven't had a succesfull assasin setup my self so far, to rng reliant and need the right items i guess), gunslingers haveing a chance for hitting multiple targets, which obviously scales well with igher unit levels and items. Ranges can double tehir AS, blademasters have a decent chance to double(tripple) hit, so all scaleing directly of the units damage.
Sorc give a flat APSpellpower vlaue, but since no one really knows waht exactly that does it might be multiplicative after all, and even if not, it increases from 35 to 100(tripple value!!) at 6 sorc and can be increased by 50% from rabadon, and so far Sorcerres have been my by far most succesfull class, they just obliterate the enteire screen come to lategame unless they face dragons while lulu turns anything into better tanks then the actuall frontline champs, work well with many other perks(knights, assasins, elemetalists, they even made me win with some brawlers), and unlike the AA based classes they don't even rely on items that much.
An odball are shapeshifters, they are dps champs but also turn tanky if they have their perk and transform, and thx to the easily optainable wild boost they do have huge dps with gnars CC to back it up. For me the second strongest strat and like sorccers not that item reliant. The only downside is Elise, cause she's usless no matter what.
Rangers and gunslingers so far felt like they rely on getting one unit fed with good dps items but they can escalate if that happens, and baldemasters feel like assasins with no mobillity, they die to quick to use their potential damage and have little to compensate that, the only exeption is Draven who is just busted if he gets items(even more so with the imperial boost), and shen as his dodgefield makes him a solid frontline for that Draven.
Elemantalists are a nice addition to already functioning setups, the bonus golem is nice but not to strong, but they just pack powerfull individual casters that work nice with the sorc bonus but also help with some synergies.
Asides from tankiness feeling weak, the biggest issue imo are items.
There are just some items that are WAY to strong, and others that feel pretty bad.
Now to start it off, about ALL tankstats feel to low in items. ALL of them.
But more importantly, there are just some effects that are to strong. 
is redicolous on some champs, especially Lulu who spams her ult with it, esepcially if she gets some extrea AS, turning her team near immortal.
is absurd and it feels like some units have been balanced around it, cause their base AS is so poor that they feel dysfunktional without it, like Vayne who easily becomes near twice as strogn with that item alone.
Also is insane, the dodge effect is so damn powerfull unless RNG-sus hates you and it pairs well with the next abomination: 
the lifesteal value is hug, and to top it all off you get mr to protect vs burst. I faced a double BT+PD Draven and he would 1vs9 my setup, same with a graves useing that items. it's such a busted comby for champs with empowered AAS.
Though casters have some toys aswell, 
its totally absurd on any spam/dot cast, 5% hp/sec is a massive burn.
paired with the sorc bonus is absurd aswell
Tank items for most however feel pretty bad, especially 
good early, but the flat shield falls of hard later on
same with ionic, the 100 damage proc just doesn't cut it once units are lvl 2+
Mana also is a strange thing. It is created by reciveing/dealing damage, and it feels like it actually is based on HOW MUCH damage you take/deal, so dps items often end up generating alot more mana than mana items, while tank items REDUCE the mana you gain. That also leads to 
feeling usless, no stats but mana and jet a lets you spam soooo much more.
However, there is something good to say about items: any 2 components give one complete item, which reduces RNG and makes sure you get some complete items not matter what while also beeing easy to understand. And then there is the spatula. That items is so awsome, cause it creates upgrates that add a class/origin perk to your champ, allowing for crazy compositions. Imo that item should have twice the normal droprate as it opens so much interesting options and is just by far the most fun and unique part of the TFT item system. We need more Spatula!!!!
Now lets take a look at how well the champs and items have been transfered from LoL to TFT, because once again i think riot should have stayed closer to league
Starting with items:
Why is MR+AS not 
? Wit's is THE iconic mr+as item of the game, and on SR it's also the ONLY...
But instead, we have 
, an item that half the players don't know and with an effect that has nothing to do with it's 3v3 version.
Then we have a silency shive thingy, like what? Why not use 
or atleast old 
for the mana+mr instead of a new item+icon.
Also, more RNG, just what we needed -,-
Why is Armor+HP Redbuff and not 
? was the first and for some time the only amor+hp item, it's the most iconic armor item and for most people also the first that comes to mind then they hear armor+hp
What's up with Armor+MR beeing swordbreaker? 
exists, and 
/
would fit here aswell
Which brings us to beeing armor+AP. Sure, we lack AP+Armor items, though 
would be an option, and would be more fitting for the armor+mr item
Why is 
HP+MR? It has nothing to do with the item and we have 
as the prime mr+hp item.
is AS+AD, and impo it should replace 
as such, why have that extra crit RNG...
Why is HP+AP with a hp-burn and not 
???
Why is ther no cirt chance(on items) yet we have all those zeal items?
I'm still kinda fine with beeing a defenisve AS item, though the current dodge is balancewise questionable
But 
beeing MR is wierd.
beeing the double AS item is somewhat strange, but i guess it has a place, just not for melees Seeing a Nida(cat) stikeing into thin air to kill someone is just dumb.
Not really sure on the double MR thing, dragons claw and magic immunity is rather fitting, bud i'd still rather see some of the actual lol items are used, like 
or 
(i know it's used for the extra unit slot, but that could be done with any item, like 
or banner of command)
AD+mana beeing feels wrong either. Yes, it's a spam more item, but it doesn't offer mana and is a massive balance issue, i'd prefer 
or even 
instead
beeing an MR item is bad for balances and doesn't fit, rather get 
as ad/mr
could be from double 
, i wouldn't miss 
and the extra RNG power it provides.
Ionic Spark beeing MR+AP??? That items was HP+AS
If you want MR+AP, or dig out the abyssal scepter or the ancient version of 
Overall, since items are combined on champs, i think we could diffrentiate between melee and ranged items.
Keep 
as ad/as item for melees, makes Ionic Spark the ranged version with a chain lightning every 3 hits.
Make 
ranged only and 's the melee full AS item, which helps with exploit cases aswell as wierd situations
old AS/AP space could be filled by 
would be to similar to Ionic Spark, so mabye replace it by 
Now for champs(asides from haveing the wong damage type on abillities and ?? scaleings?
Why is kassadin not an assasin, espacially with his non cast abillity? him ruftwalking the backline would be VERY fitting. wouldn't even mind him beeing a hybrid class at a higher tier, similar to gankblank beeing gunslinger+blademaster.
Why is nida not useing her Javelin Toss into Pounce onto the farest distance target? it'd capture her playstyle alot better than the heal.
Why doesn't Elise use her Cocoun(the iconic abillity) into Rappel onto the target, might make her less usesless aswell
Why does shyvana jump away and turn into ranged? That's the opposite of what she should do, though it arguably is how she currently works with the AP builts on live i suppose. Fix the Dragon, Riot!!!
Why is Shen a blademaster and not a guardian?
Why is leona not a knight?? Sword, Shield, shinny armor, you don#t get more knight than that, and she's an agressive playmaker, so guardian isn't exactly fitting either. Poppy could swap with her, she's alot more Gurdian than Leona, and at the same time alot less Knight.
Why is Voli Glacial and not Wild? He's not really frost themed beyond his surroundings.
Why isn't reksai useing her Q after the tunnle(which is awully slow, often targets nothing and only hits one target)? She really could use a buff to her damage, i get sad every time again when i see her scratching a squishy. Or she could actually get an aoe knockup to bring some utillity, but so far she just tunnles in, leaving her carries unprotected and then getting ignored till her backline is dead. she's about as usless as elise outside of the void bonus.
Braum imo should use his Ult. Yea, the E also is iconic, but it often comes in to late or when he's not focused at all and it really feels like he's lacking impact and often goes unnoticed, as in TFT there aren't the big moments of blocking a crucial missle with it. Get him tier 4 guardian with the ult, get poppy tier 3 guardian with hers, have leona as a lvl 3 knight with a bit lower duration on her ult.
