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Mountain Hexes Kinda Suck, change my mind (pls do, i really dislike them)

Skniddlz·12/10/2019, 6:52:02 PM·2 votes·947 views

Hi. This a rant about Mountain Hexes in TFT. You were warned.

I really like the concept of the hexes that got added to TFT with the Rise of the Elements update. It changes up how your pieces have to be placed and for what types of Champions you like to go with that "Two-Items-Substitute-Carry" kind of style. You have to decide wheter or not you like to create a Three-items-hypercarry or not and what champs you like to put on those spaces in the later game.

That holds true for the fire, water and cloud hexes.

Now here is why i think mountain hexes are bad for TFT:

  1. Your luck dependency is far higher in the early game.

If you have a certain team comp in mind and get one of those acceptable (front line) pieces in the first caroussel, good for you. If you're looking for that sweet spatula in there, you are more likely to pick a unit you want to sell anyway, and by that losing the health on them, which creates a disadvantage vs the people who get those lucky rolls in the first few rounds. Feels bad man. Get rekt Neeko.

  1. The moment when you get a nice few mid to late game rolls and change your entire board is worse.

Similar to my afore mentioned point, you have a bad feeling about changing greater parts of your board, due to a change in your strategy (which is one of those hype moments i like about TFT). Doing a risky roll and outsmarting your opponents with a clever team comp feels really good. It feels worse, when you have to sell some dirty Renekton, who has stacked up 300hp and you were not entirly sure to begin with, but well, he was all the rolls had in store for you. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  1. Mountain hexes barely work as the "third item".

You surly had one of those moments, when you just finished a tier 4 unit to lvl2, gave it two finished items and put is on a hex for that extra last bit of power. Doesn't work with the 30hp you get from mountain in the next round, you probably dont even notice a difference. For any other type of hex you can almost always notice a vast increase in power for that unit (unless you decided to overcap your pieces' mana, but why would you do that?). Unless you had placed a Mundo or Thornmail-Warmog-Ionic-Braum in there within the first few rounds, it does not seem like a "carry-bonus".

In Conclusion:

Having mountain hexes feels like glueing one champ (who in most cases is just there to tank a few hits) in place for the entirety of the game.

I get that Riot tried to change the pace of one match with some different idea. But i honestly don't think, that this approach worked for a game like TFT. The current design of mountain hexes adds an additional layer of snowballing to the games, which can allready be kind of frustrating if you're unlucky with your rolls and your opponents spamming those predators, who keep eating your team for the first half of entire match.

Why not replacing it with something like: "A unit on this hex gets 15% extra max HP" or similar? it will grant you access to the same tanky style comps without restricting your choice of pieces to the early - mid game units. Something that has a steady amount of power for the whole game (just like how the increase of power of the other hex-types comes with units power). Imagine finishing a lvl2 Malph with a neat choice of items, putting him on that type of hex and the % bonus beeing effective right away. Sounds like a lot more fun to me.

Ok, that's all i had in mind for now.

Keep in mind that everything above is just my opinion. I would like to be more excited about the mountain games and not be like "ugh it's a mountain game again." That's all.

Though this was a rant, i'm open for opinions. For some quick overview i added a poll.

PS: English isn#t my first language and my phrasing is probably somthing similar to the abilities of a 3rd grader, pls be nice. :<

4 Comments

grimphoenix12/11/2019, 8:14:28 AM2 votes

i absolutely love mountain hexes, your first reason is absolutely a positive to me, not a negative, if you get stupid lucky and the janky carousel hitboxes give you the spatula you deserve at least a small nerf, though 30-90 hp isnt nearly enough to make up for the stupidity that is spatula, second, try putting your low hp carries on the mountain hex for a while, trust me, it makes them much harder to kill and much more likely to survive if they get leblanc'd or nocturn'd (other assasins barely see play, phantom dancer is the most unhealthy item in the game), the hp they get is much more significant if they start with less. and lastly the bonus is kept if you move the unit off the tile, so you can stack up on hp, then swap units out to give someone else a bit more bulk, which is awesome. one of my favorite tactics is to stick a nocturn or olaf onto a mountian tile and let them stack up health until you get a third item you want on them, then moving them off and fully equipping them, meaning you have a fully item stacked carry with a few hundred bonus health. on the subject of unimpactfulness, i agree, but the problem isnt the tiles themselves, its how health is displayed, if the markers on the hp bar were less health (100 instead of 500?) it would be much easier to see how quickly your unit gains health and would feel more impactful. I do absolutely admit that rerolling your team comp can be a big issue with mountain tiles, but once again that can be preference, if you prefer to play a bit more conservatively and stick to your guns on a team you absolutely love them.

TL:DR mountain has some issues but i think they are good for the game, they encourage a different style of play that makes mountain tile games feel different then other tiles and i think that is a big positive, especially considering it is only one in every few games.

Sire Hippington12/10/2019, 11:43:29 PM1 votes

I have mixed feelings for them.

I totally agree with point 1 and 2, if you don't get a uinit that can use it well early on and get a fitting composition around that, it's pretty bad, and switching up the setup later on is horrible with mountain.

However, for me mountain has the most desticnt meta from other elements. The current meta comps work on any element, but transfering from druids to a singed/zed goodstuff comp can be less effective at mountain, so some of the meta comps are a bit worse. But mostly, it enables some carries and with that comps that won't work in any other element. It's ideal for elector/warden, a orn with ~600 more hp lategame can tank alot more than usuall which oaried with electro can contribute to alot damage. Some champs that usually are either to squishy or lack damage like jax or yasuo can just get titanic and become carries for your team(got first place vs meta comps in both cases), and you can really get hypercarries cause the hp sticks to the champ even after you move it away, meaning you can get 3 items+the bonus hp later on.

So while i really dislike the early luck dependency and snowballiness, i also love how it creates oportuinites for comps that wouldn't work with any other element, shakeing up the stale meta a bit.

Sirfetchd2112/11/2019, 1:43:54 AM1 votes

Yeah I kinda hate the stacking although it is an interesting concept. Short term it just feels unimpactful. Maybe the 30hp boost stacks as normal but is linked to the tile instead of the champion? Feel this would be more useful in pretty much every case.

Late game you could make a carry a lot more survivable but would come at the expense of an item.

True Garen12/13/2019, 10:39:43 PM1 votes

3700 HP Gold Diana would like to have a word with you...