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TFT Balance Issues

Stephenizgod·12/7/2019, 8:30:35 AM·12 votes·8,505 views

So I am starting to notice the same balance trend in TFT as I do in SR, Riot favors "exciting to play" over "balanced to play against" and this is getting worse in TFT. It is a bit of a long read, I am sorry, but there are a lot of things in set 2 that I feel are unbalanced.

  • Glacials: even 2 Glacial can feel like 100% stun sometimes, specially with Olaf. Everything about this needs to change. Glacial stun and Olaf. (also Ezreal, people haven't caught on to how busted he is yet which is surprising). We can all agree that perma-stunning entire team with no way to counter it is not balanced and its not fun right?

  • Magecap: Mages alone are a problem (Brand and Veigar in particular), but the Magecap spat item is absolutely not balanced. It needs to be removed, there is no fixing it. Replace it with Ocean spat or something else idk but its breaking the game. I think removing it is the only way to deal with it, it breaks too many champions and too many comps.

  • Phantom Dancer: item needs to be reworked. Its in every comp because its busted, we need protection against Crits, but not complete negation of crit champs and items. It is also pretty good against comps with NO CRIT which means its performing beyond its intended purpose. Rework or nerf it.

  • Predators: Its stupid that items will proc the execution. That needs to go, I also think Rek'sai should be a 3 cost unit. She is really strong and her ability is ridiculously busted with Predator synergy.

  • Stuns: I think stuns last WAAAAY too long, the CC is fine its necessary for balance, but why does most of it last around 3 seconds? That is about a third of the average round, the only items against CC are not all that great when compared to other items, it feels like a huge loss having to build one. Qiyana is the worst offender though, with only a Shojin she can perma-stun multiple units. Her stun shouldn't be so long and she shouldn't be able to gain all her mana back before the stun is up.

  • 3 Star Units: It is far too easy to 3 star a unit. I know its exciting to have 4 gold units, but where is the balance in that? There is no skill involved, you are guaranteed several 3 star units. Take it back to pure RNG, people shouldn't be rolling non-stop without seeing consequences. Its ridiculous, bring back strategy in team composition and positioning please and get rid of the 3 star Renekton, Diana, Mao'kai, Ivern, and LeBlanc wiping my whole team in a millisecond despite having a level advantage and stronger champs/synergies.

  • Veigar: he gets his own little point here separate from Mages and Magecap. Insta-killing units was pretty strong in Set 1 but only if you 3 star him. Set 2, now he insta-kills 2 units and 3 starring him takes absolutely no effort. He is busted. Mystic and Dragon Claw do absolutely nothing against him, and with Shojin/Seraph he is ulting every second... he is wiping teams of 8 in about 4 seconds. Its absurd.

  • Poison/Singed: Poison is anti-fun comp. We learned in Set 1 when you have a synergy that negatively affects an enemy team with no counterplay, it isn't very fun. By itself though, Poison isn't that bad, annoying sure but not busted. Add in Singed however and now its a serious problem. By himself, he is annoying, but with Poison he is disgustingly broken. Singed needs to be reworked, and maybe Poison might be more balanced. I am not sure how you would rework him tbh, he is fucking annoying to kill and deals the most damage on the match.

  • Summoners: Malzahar, Annie, and Yorick in particular are the worst offenders in Summoners. But the Synergy itself suffers from several imbalances, first being they deal damage to the player even if the Summoners are dead. Thats a huge problem imo. Second problem is targeting. They take aggro away from other units. Its so annoying seeing 3 of your units running around killing Voidlings instead of killing the Malzahar spawning them. This is also a huge problem imo. Personally I wouldn't mind if they were more like Zyra, untargetable, deal their damage then leave. That way you can kill the Malz or Yorick without having to deal with an infinite wave of units, but they still get to dish out damage and have a presence on the board. Alternatively, Summoners can take the Ninja setup, with only 1 Summoner you get a small buff, but once you add in more it goes away. Only when you have 4 Summoners (or whatever number, but definitely more than 3) do you get the full buff. This way it becomes more of an add-on to builds rather than a build itself.

I am probably forgetting something, but I think my point is clear: Exciting gameplay > Balance is not healthy for any game, eventually the lack of balance is going to negate the exciting gameplay.

19 Comments

AmazingJubJub12/7/2019, 7:27:54 PM3 votes

{quoted}

  • Glacials: even 2 Glacial can feel like 100% stun sometimes, specially with Olaf. Everything about this needs to change. Glacial stun and Olaf. (also Ezreal, people haven't caught on to how busted he is yet which is surprising). We can all agree that perma-stunning entire team with no way to counter it is not balanced and its not fun right?

I think a starting solution would be to change the threshold for glacial, 3,6,_ or something along those lines. Just to make it a bigger investment instead of just WW + Olaf. So comps that are rolling all of their $ like Predator Poison currently can't pick up Glacial for "free" as well.

  • Magecap: Mages alone are a problem (Brand and Veigar in particular), but the Magecap spat item is absolutely not balanced. It needs to be removed, there is no fixing it. Replace it with Ocean spat or something else idk but its breaking the game. I think removing it is the only way to deal with it, it breaks too many champions and too many comps.

I completely agree

  • Phantom Dancer: item needs to be reworked. Its in every comp because its busted, we need protection against Crits, but not complete negation of crit champs and items. It is also pretty good against comps with NO CRIT which means its performing beyond its intended purpose. Rework or nerf it.

I've talked about this item numerous times with my friends as well. I think they either have it function to be similar to in game PD and give you an absorb shield when reaching lethal damage that could be perm, scale off total health to add value to tanks, or decay off after trigger in 3 secs etc.

The other way would be to have it block a singular crit every 1-3 secs similar to TFT QSS.

The last way to fix this item without changing how it works it to rework Crit entirely. Remove the base 25% on all champs put more crit % on crit items and or the Assassin perk. So it functions as an assassin counter play item. As well as rewarding players that want to make crit builds in a lobby that refuses to build around it.

  • Predators: Its stupid that items will proc the execution. That needs to go, I also think Rek'sai should be a 3 cost unit. She is really strong and her ability is ridiculously busted with Predator synergy.

I agree remove items procs killing units.

  • 3 Star Units: It is far too easy to 3 star a unit. I know its exciting to have 4 gold units, but where is the balance in that? There is no skill involved, you are guaranteed several 3 star units. Take it back to pure RNG, people shouldn't be rolling non-stop without seeing consequences. Its ridiculous, bring back strategy in team composition and positioning please and get rid of the 3 star Renekton, Diana, Mao'kai, Ivern, and LeBlanc wiping my whole team in a millisecond despite having a level advantage and stronger champs/synergies.

I think 3 star units are in a good place so that early game players still have an option to fighting late game players.

The main issue is other than Singed most other late game options don't feel strong enough at tier 2. Even some 4 costs like Twitch feel too weak. I also don't think Poison should be as easy as it is to obtain. Possibly even change it from 3 to 4 to trigger which would require you to hit all of them making it a purely late game option.

I think Kog'maw should transition to a higher cost unit 3-5 w/ a possible ulty change of hitting 2-3 tiles so it misses less often but a increased mana pool if it becomes to oppressive. I think if Poison was purely a late game tech as well as mystic to counter things like mages it would be in a good spot. It also would then make predator players think more on leveling.

  • Poison/Singed: Poison is anti-fun comp. We learned in Set 1 when you have a synergy that negatively affects an enemy team with no counterplay, it isn't very fun. By itself though, Poison isn't that bad, annoying sure but not busted. Add in Singed however and now its a serious problem. By himself, he is annoying, but with Poison he is disgustingly broken. Singed needs to be reworked, and maybe Poison might be more balanced. I am not sure how you would rework him tbh, he is fucking annoying to kill and deals the most damage on the match.

Solutions I can see for this are to create a new tier of $6 or add Singed to $7.

If that isn't the case nerf his damage tremendously. Have him focus on purely being a disruptive unit. Right now he does 200/400/2000. I think it should be more along the lines of 50/75/1000.

And to compensate change Twitch or Kog to be the main poison damage dealers or just have poison just be a tech to slow down casters/Olaf mana. Nerf damage on all Poison units in that case with a bigger focus across the board on being disruptive. Which would be in a good place if they also do the before mentioned cost increase to Kog.

Sire Hippington12/7/2019, 4:53:59 PM3 votes

I think one issue you've forgot is ocean.

While i think the idea of the buff it self is fine, the way it is implemented comes with huges issues. Right now, there are only 5 oceans in the game(and lux+quiana), with 2 of them beeing mages, two guardians and 1 tier 5 This means the number of comps that can actually use them is very low. Sure, you can squeeze in the two guardians in many comps for the 2ocean bonus, but if you want the 4ocean bonus that really starts to be impactfull, you're basically limited to mage+2guardian(which also is THE meta comp, and that's no cooincidence) Now if you look at the mage+warden stuff, they basically have 60% of all CCs(ignoreing glacial) in the game, and with the high managain those CCs get a very low CD, which is a huge part why those comps dominate as much as they do.

Imo the ocean buff should change to a 3/6 with 25/55 mana gained. This makes ocean quiana and nami more interesting and nerfs the ocean for mage comps from 35 to 25 mana. Also, i really hope they add some other oceans to open up the buff to more comps.

ThunderCraft12/7/2019, 7:11:01 PM3 votes

i agree with 3 stars units this new version of TFT is rampant with them, in old TFT you dont see this much 3 stars champs something is wrong with the RNG of this set.

what i have noticed riot is giving losers this incentive to keep playing with a massive comeback but i dont like it as is super cheesy.

Ipheya12/7/2019, 10:56:00 AM2 votes

{quoted}

  • Glacials: even 2 Glacial can feel like 100% stun sometimes, specially with Olaf. Everything about this needs to change. Glacial stun and Olaf. (also Ezreal, people haven't caught on to how busted he is yet which is surprising). We can all agree that perma-stunning entire team with no way to counter it is not balanced and its not fun right?

Glacials are strong just because of Olaf and Volibear, because they share the Berserker trait. I already made some suggestions as to how I think they should be changed. Olaf must have a duration of around 8 seconds to his ability, maybe he could become tier 5 too, but then someone from tier 5 would have to take his place. At the moment, however, the real issue is his synergy with Berserkers along with Volibear. Having 6 Berserkers allows him to stack 12% attack speed with every single attack because of Guinsoo's Rageblade, as well as having a chance to freeze not just the target, but up to 3 other units too. This is extremely problematic and glacial would NOT be effective at all without the Berserker synergy that comes for free with Olaf/Volibear.

  • Magecap: Mages alone are a problem (Brand and Veigar in particular), but the Magecap spat item is absolutely not balanced. It needs to be removed, there is no fixing it. Replace it with Ocean spat or something else idk but its breaking the game. I think removing it is the only way to deal with it, it breaks too many champions and too many comps.

Some mages like Syndra and Brand are too strong, however I believe the problem is not really the chance to cast their ability twice but the synergy between splash damage and Morellonomicon. Because you can counter magic damage with Mystics and Dragon's Claw but you can't really counter percentage damage to every unit on your board AND healing reduction. This applies to every big AOE spellcaster and this is why Singed wins with no effort. If you think about it, yes 6 mages have a lot of magic damage, but they also lack attack damage, defense and sustain (in most cases), so it's a trade-off.

  • Phantom Dancer: item needs to be reworked. Its in every comp because its busted, we need protection against Crits, but not complete negation of crit champs and items. It is also pretty good against comps with NO CRIT which means its performing beyond its intended purpose. Rework or nerf it.

Couldn't have said it any better. Phantom Dancer at the moment gives Armor, Attack Speed, immunity to critical hits, chance to dodge attacks. Basicly it's just as good if not even better than Quicksilver, Trap's Claw and Iceborn Gauntlet. It needs to negate the critical damage not dodge the attack. Other items are supposed to do that, this one can't have both.

  • Predators: Its stupid that items will proc the execution. That needs to go, I also think Rek'sai should be a 3 cost unit. She is really strong and her ability is ridiculously busted with Predator synergy.

Riot make this happen already.

  • Stuns: I think stuns last WAAAAY too long, the CC is fine its necessary for balance, but why does most of it last around 3 seconds? That is about a third of the average round, the only items against CC are not all that great when compared to other items, it feels like a huge loss having to build one. Qiyana is the worst offender though, with only a Shojin she can perma-stun multiple units. Her stun shouldn't be so long and she shouldn't be able to gain all her mana back before the stun is up.

Qiyana should have 2 seconds stun duration, but i don't see any problems other than that.

  • 3 Star Units: It is far too easy to 3 star a unit. I know its exciting to have 4 gold units, but where is the balance in that? There is no skill involved, you are guaranteed several 3 star units. Take it back to pure RNG, people shouldn't be rolling non-stop without seeing consequences. Its ridiculous, bring back strategy in team composition and positioning please and get rid of the 3 star Renekton, Diana, Mao'kai, Ivern, and LeBlanc wiping my whole team in a millisecond despite having a level advantage and stronger champs/synergies.

I've seen many times consequences for rolling 3 star units. It definitely has it's drawbacks. Are you suggesting to reduce the champion pool even further? This is not related to positioning either. Having 3 star units is a minor issue, and not a balance one. Anyone can try their luck and roll for a 3 star, that's what the game is made for.

  • Veigar: he gets his own little point here separate from Mages and Magecap. Insta-killing units was pretty strong in Set 1 but only if you 3 star him. Set 2, now he insta-kills 2 units and 3 starring him takes absolutely no effort. He is busted. Mystic and Dragon Claw do absolutely nothing against him, and with Shojin/Seraph he is ulting every second... he is wiping teams of 8 in about 4 seconds. Its absurd.

His problem is the maximum mana being too low, he should have a starting mana of 50 and a total mana of 80. And 3 starring him does take some effort, there are only 18 among 18*11 other tier 3 champions.

  • Poison/Singed: Poison is anti-fun comp. By itself though, Poison isn't that bad, annoying sure but not busted. Add in Singed however and now its a serious problem. By himself, he is annoying, but with Poison he is disgustingly broken. Singed needs to be reworked, and maybe Poison might be more balanced. I am not sure how you would rework him tbh, he is fucking annoying to kill and deals the most damage on the match.

Again, Morellonomicon blends in perfectly with Singed and that's why he deals so much damage. I'd rather have him with higher stats (higher HP, higher defense, higher damage on his ability) but without CC immunity. Because that's the issue with him, and I understand that just removing his CC immunity would gut him and he would have no reason to be a tier 5 champion anymore.

  • Summoners: Malzahar, Annie, and Yorick in particular are the worst offenders in Summoners. But the Synergy itself suffers from several imbalances, first being they deal damage to the player even if the Summoners are dead. Thats a huge problem imo. Second problem is targeting. They take aggro away from other units. Its so annoying seeing 3 of your units running around killing Voidlings instead of killing the Malzahar spawning them. This is also a huge problem imo. Personally I wouldn't mind if they were more like Zyra, untargetable, deal their damage then leave. That way you can kill the Malz or Yorick without having to deal with an infinite wave of units, but they still get to dish out damage and have a presence on the board. Alternatively, Summoners can take the Ninja setup, with only 1 Summoner you get a small buff, but once you add in more it goes away. Only when you have 4 Summoners (or whatever number, but definitely more than 3) do you get the full buff. This way it becomes more of an add-on to builds rather than a build itself.

I don't like the ninja idea on summoners, and I like the way summoners are right now.

Kelvynn12/7/2019, 10:33:21 PM1 votes

Imbalance is when 1-2 things are dominating everything else. You are listing NINE different things, and only a few of them combine together. The rest are used in completely different comps. How do all those imbalanced things work against each other? Do Glacials shut down Mages? Can Veigar shoot summons faster than Malhazar and Annie produce them? Can Qiyana's stun save you from the Poison? Etc, etc, etc.

It's a big game of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock! Just replace it with 'Glacials-Mages-Summoners-Poison-Eggroll'. [(https://youtu.be/x5Q6-wMx-K8?t=20)]

And I suspect it's exactly what Riot wants.

TheUncleShen12/7/2019, 11:07:11 PM1 votes

Iv read your balance issues and 100% agree with your points and how its negatively affecting the game. Glacials and especially olaf whom people spam the same build (Rageblade x 2 and RFC) is not fun. Watching my team get put down by one unit who just perma freezes is very demoralizing to play against.

Mages are also really ridiculous considering two of them are already ocean (Vlad and Syndra). Mage caps are probably the most built items and it works well on just about anyone. Pair that with the ocean buff and you have your team being wiped out double casts.

Additionally lets be honest, predator in general is a silly and very random thing to add. The mere fact that Predator is a thing and Kog maw, who can be turned into a literal machine gun is not fun. Pair that with the tankier predators like Warwick and Skarner you cant touch anyone. Rek sai and her Ability also need some scaling. People build AP on her and iv seen the bite one Shot my tankiest unit.

Overall I used to like TFT and the idea of it. As of late however im slowly starting to just get demoralised when I play it and even sometimes borderline sad, because I myself just finish in such low positions despite trying to have a decent composition , yet im herw getting stunned for 10 years by god knows who, Smashed with ults in my face by mages twice or maybe 4 times (Veigar). There is no fun anymore in TFT if you just want to learn.

The community doesn't help either. Many times iv taken the blunt of peoples words for simply stating that "Wow, olaf is a bit silly don't you think?". Only to be met with the typical insults that league players throw out.

Thank you for making a post about this I really hope riot read this, and stop releasing cash grab little legends and just fix the game.

Rygee12/8/2019, 6:05:52 PM1 votes

Glacials: even 2 Glacial can feel like 100% stun sometimes, specially with Olaf. Everything about this needs to change. Glacial stun and Olaf. (also Ezreal, people haven't caught on to how busted he is yet which is surprising). We can all agree that perma-stunning entire team with no way to counter it is not balanced and its not fun right?

I feel like when I go glacial, they never proc stun. Positioning of champ and target select make glacial perma stun not super easy. Also, in this RNG, it is isn't easy to FORCE the perma stun build. You have to get the items on the right champ. I also find Kindred, Ez, Veigar, and other one hit wonder champs cant take olaf down pretty fast. This build is over played, and I think people have figured out good counters to it. I agree there should be a cooldown on it, however, so you can't go back to back.

Stuns: I think stuns last WAAAAY too long, the CC is fine its necessary for balance, but why does most of it last around 3 seconds? That is about a third of the average round, the only items against CC are not all that great when compared to other items, it feels like a huge loss having to build one. Qiyana is the worst offender though, with only a Shojin she can perma-stun multiple units. Her stun shouldn't be so long and she shouldn't be able to gain all her mana back before the stun is up.

This shit is broken broken broken broken BROKEN. I have fights where champs are just sitting idle the whole time. I swear I have been stunned by a Vlad with no items. The CC is just busted or bugged or something. It is bad enough it takes some champs 3-5 seconds to even get into the fight, now you need to wait another 3+ seconds for the stun to go away. Have you seen a Sivir with Rageblade, Runaan's, and Sword Breaker? Ot just give a silver Ashe Sword Breaker or Hush. You just perma silence/disarm the champ.

Veigar: he gets his own little point here separate from Mages and Magecap. Insta-killing units was pretty strong in Set 1 but only if you 3 star him. Set 2, now he insta-kills 2 units and 3 starring him takes absolutely no effort. He is busted. Mystic and Dragon Claw do absolutely nothing against him, and with Shojin/Seraph he is ulting every second... he is wiping teams of 8 in about 4 seconds. Its absurd.

Veigar has taken on 5+ champs by himself when he is 3 star with spear or seraph. He auto kills two targets, refreshes in 2 seconds and repeats. Put him in your back line, and champs cant target him or get to him unless you have assassin. He gets free reign on the board. I absolutely hate seeing him get 3 star every game then insta climb to top 2.

Summoners: Malzahar, Annie, and Yorick in particular are the worst offenders in Summoners. But the Synergy itself suffers from several imbalances, first being they deal damage to the player even if the Summoners are dead. Thats a huge problem imo. Second problem is targeting. They take aggro away from other units. Its so annoying seeing 3 of your units running around killing Voidlings instead of killing the Malzahar spawning them. This is also a huge problem imo. Personally I wouldn't mind if they were more like Zyra, untargetable, deal their damage then leave. That way you can kill the Malz or Yorick without having to deal with an infinite wave of units, but they still get to dish out damage and have a presence on the board. Alternatively, Summoners can take the Ninja setup, with only 1 Summoner you get a small buff, but once you add in more it goes away. Only when you have 4 Summoners (or whatever number, but definitely more than 3) do you get the full buff. This way it becomes more of an add-on to builds rather than a build itself.

Summoners need to have summons die when they die and they need to be untargetable. I am also super sick of seeing my powerhouse champs work on a voidling. If you have a Yorik in the mix, his stupid summons refresh their health on death of a light champ and it just prolongs how long you are stuck fighting a summoned critter.

So many things wrong with Set 2 it is such a disappointment. I felt really good about Set 1 once I understood the concept. You could actually strategize for early, mid, and late game. You could counter and you could also share champs but build comps differently. In this game, its just way to unknown as to what is going to happen and then it is too late to fix anything when you realize it. I got Gold II last season for the short time I was doing ranked and this season I am stuck in silver because I can't get consistent games. Even when you DO get a good set of champs, you have to deal with the above mentioned issued that can just wreck it all.