Thoughts on TFT

Thoughts on TFT: 1: Item spawn rates 2: Character Targeting and Assassin Jump Patterns 3. Ranged Assassins Possible? 4. Closing thoughts (Gunslingers, Units locked in Place, Character Positioning)

1. Item Spawn Rates In the current state of the game items can be the most impactful portion of the game and based on which items you acquire can help you decide which character build path you wish to follow for the rest of the game.

Example 1: Carousel choice BF sword

Ex1 Possibility 1: I pull a tear from the neutral rounds following the carousel. Now that I have Tear and a BF sword I would like to run a build focused around a high powered caster spell since after the initial pulse I will be able to maintain a volley of spells from that unit. (Varus, A Sol, etc)

Ex1 Possibility 2: I pull a giants belt from the neutral rounds following the carousel. Now that I have Belt and a BF sword I would like to run a build heavy in ranged units so that I can maximize the attack speed up time from the Zekes. (Kayle, Kindred)

Example 2: Carousel choice Needless Rod

Ex2 Possibility 1: I pull a Giants belt from the neutral rounds following the carousel. Now that I have a Belt and Needless Rod I would like to run a build around a character with sustained magic damage phases. (Garen, Swain, Kat)

Ex2 Possibility 2: I pull a Bow from the neutral rounds following the carousel. Now that I have a Bow and Rod to make rage blade I would like to build around a unit that scales well with attack speed. (Vayne, Draven)

The reality of the game in its early state is that there will be several games where you will complete the first three neutral rounds and not acquire any additional items from these waves and you could look at other players and they will already have acquired two or more additional items. With these items these players are now able to form a plan around the items they have and follow a build path that fits their situation. At the same time you are stuck in limbo looking at your lonely Needless Rod or BF Sword.

Two possible solutions to this problem could be:

First to follow the Underlords route where you allow players to select one item from a list after each completed neutral round. With this mode you could have all tier 1 items from all early rounds including the golem round and wolves round. Then when you reach the neutral round with the enraged raptors you could introduce one Tier 2 item into the loot list. From that point you would introduce an additional Tier 2 item to the list after each consecutive neutral wave.

The second possibility is to force drop exactly one item from each of the early rounds for every single player. Then when you reach a certain round (I.e. Wolves or Enraged Raptors) increase the number of dropped items to two. This could continue where every round after dragon you get three or four dropped items.

2. Character Targeting and Assassin Jump Patterns

I mention character targeting because in situations when playing against assassin builds the character targeting seems illogical or unrealistic. I say this because when I build around a couple rangers or casters with a strong tank line I feel like assassins seem to just take advantage of my carry units. What I mean by this is that assassins appear to choose their destination location after the initial movement of my front line pieces.

The way this situation plays out is my front line moves forward opening a gap for enemy assassins to jump into my back line. While the assassins are in route to assassinate my back line the enemy Garen 3 has stepped forward and forced my back line units to target him. Assassins land at open spaces surrounding my back line and then proceed to remove all my carries without a single bit of resistance.

I understand that my squishy carries should be at a disadvantage in a 1 on 1 against an assassin but if I was playing a game on Summoner’s Rift I would try to the best of my ability to not let an assassin delete me.

Possible solutions to this problem:

Change the destination selecting parameters for assassins. i.e. don’t allow the initial stealth entrance to select a space that was occupied by a unit at the start of the round. I feel that this would be similar to how auto chess plays out and may not be the feel you intended with TFT.

The second solution would be to change ranged targeting mechanics.

Example: Ranged unit can target up to 3 grid units away.

Ex Possibility 1: Current target is 3 grids away, No units move within 1 or 2 grids of range unit. Three targets are present at 3 grids distance. Target remains on current target.

Ex Possibility 2: Current target is 3 grids away, One unit moves within 2 grids of range unit. Target changes to nearest target. This could be varied so that ranged units only do this if they are being targeted by one of these nearer units but I think a more realistic situation would be if ranged units focused on the targets at the closest grid position to them.

3. Possibilities for ranged assassins

The next step in my learning process of learning assassins was I switched over and played an assassin build to see how it actually played out. My build ended up being a six assassin and four ninja build. As noted from my previous section the assassin build was highly effective in situations where I would face a typical tank and carry comp. I started to notice potential limitations when facing compositions that would stack an Aurelion Sol behind a pack of ranged type units.

What happened in these situations is the ranged team could pack tightly in a corner and lock themselves into that tight grid during the entire fight. The way this ended up playing out is Assassin team jumps in. 5 of 6 or 7 of 8 units can find a target to engage. One or two of the units cannot do anything and stand around waiting for their chance to target an enemy. Aurelion Sol Charges up and proceeds to remove the entire team in about 5 to 10 seconds.

Recommendation: It would be helpful to introduce some two or three grid assassins into the game. These units could be set to jump to a random distanced from their selected target within the range of their attacks. Although this may not give assassins a win in this type of situations it would help the assassin build feel like every unit has a purpose in these situations.

4. Closing thoughts

When I decided to put this post together I wanted to discuss my thoughts on character positioning and gun slingers. At this time I feel mostly disarmed against stacked ranged and their abilities to protect one spam caster. It seems the best way to counter this type of build is to play a similar style. At this point I am not certain if this lack of experience or a balance issue and I would like to face it more often to develop a conclusion.

The gunslinger builds at this point overall feel weak but in the right situations where you manage to get the correct parts and maybe a Runaan’s Hurricane to supplement one of your gunslingers the build feels somewhat viable. I still need more time playing with this build to see if there is a way to find consistency with it.

Potential Bugs:Warwick ultimate on character as it dies. I haven’t really played much Warwick since it happened because it cost me a round. The situation that happened is Warwick jumped on a character to ult it as it died. When Warwick completed his ultimate he remained in his spot for the rest of the round and didn’t even defend himself when being attacked.

Karthus Ultimate interaction when Gnar ults at the final moment of the cast. I had a situation the other day where I was running a sorcerer build and had a karthus in my back line. During a fight Karthus was casting his ultimate. Right around the time when he is supposed to cast his Requiem, Gnar used his ultimate and tossed Karthus off of his path. The Karthus ultimate failed and the mana he had acquired was gone. (i.e. no cast and all mana was spent). My guess is this is probably working as intended but just wanted to throw it out there in case this should be different during a TFT game.

Thanks