Teamfight Tactics beginner tips, how to become a better player and win more

Teamfight Tactics (TFT) can seem daunting at first, this is especially true if you haven’t played the parent game League of Legends as you’ll have no clue what each hero is capable of. Even if you have played League of Legends, unless you’re a total LoL nerd (like me) you most likely haven’t played every playable character that LoL has to offer.

But once you start playing the game and researching the best TFT builds, things start to become a little clearer. However, there will be some things you’re still not quite sure of and things that make you think ‘am I doing the right thing?’. Well fear not, this guide aims to fill the gaps in your knowledge with some awesome beginner tips:

Synergies win games

Synergies are probably the most important aspect of winning games, if you’re unsure of what these are then the chances are you’ve never won a game. Synergies appear to the left of the screen (see image above) and each character has at least two different attributes (Class and Origin), such as ‘Ninja’ and ‘Blademaster’. In most instances you’ll need more than one character on the board in order to unlock the synergy for that class (except for Robot and Ninja where you get a bonus for just having one).

To give you an example of how these synergies work, look at the build below which combines Elementalist + Sorcerer + Wild + Yordle characters:

By using this build you acquire the following bonuses:

1 Ninja = +40% Damage

3 Elementals = Start combat with a Golem plus Elementals gain double mana from attacks

3 Sorcerers = Double mana from attacks plus 35% spell damage

4 Wilds = All characters gain 7% attack speed (max 5 stacks)

3 Yordles = 25% chance for Yordles to dodge/miss attacks

As you can see, strategically choosing your team so you can get the best bonuses possible is a huge factor in winning a game; notice how I said ‘best’ instead of ‘most’? This is because each class bonus has tiers, which means the more characters you have in the same class the better the buff you receive. One example of this is the ‘Wild’ buff – if you have two Wild characters, the ‘Wild’ buff will provide a buff only on your Wild characters (2 of your characters in this case), but if you have 4 Wild characters the buff will be placed on all of your characters.

Some builds will only give you, say, two real bonuses, but these will be powerful buffs to your characters. For example, an assassin build which will provide you with an increase of 350% critical damage.

Horde gold at the start

For every 10 gold you hold you gain an extra 1 gold per round, up to a maximum of +5 gold per round (if you hold 50 gold), so to have the optimal gold income you should horde your gold at the start of each game, even if it means taking a few losses, which isn’t actually a big deal (as explained in the next tip). Once you have 50 gold then you can start spending, but try not to let it drop below 50 unless you ‘need’ to in order to level up or look for a champion, but even so try not to let it drop below 40. At the same time you don’t really want to hold too much gold, as holding anything over 50 gold is pointless.

Taking a loss early on can be good

At the start of a game it doesn’t really matter if you lose a fight. In fact, most of the games I’ve won have started with me losing, as early on you take very little damage and there’s actually a few benefits of losing in the early game. The first of these advantages is gold income; as mentioned in the previous tip, you need to horde gold early and that’s much more important than winning your first few fights, so never re-roll your champion selection even if it means you’ll lose a fight. You also get a gold boost if you end up on a losing streak, which boosts gold gain further. And finally, being at the bottom means you get to choose a champion first when you get to the carousel round, which is a big advantage.

Generally, after the first carousel round is when you want to start winning games or at least not losing so badly.

Items are super important

Items are the second most important part of winning after having a good team composition and synergies. If you have good items (on the right champions) and a good team comp you don’t need any gold, and you could even have a champion less than everyone else and still win.

As a new player you might not know (or you may have found out the hard way) that when two items are placed on a champion they transform into a more powerful item. Knowing this as well as the different recipes is hugely important, as you’re not able to move items between champions, so you have to get it right the first time.

There are various cheat sheets available online (ours is here) which will tell you all of the item recipes, so all that’s left for you to do is decide which items go on which champion. As a general rule of thumb, attack speed and damage will go on your damage dealers such as Rangers, defensive items such as armour or magic resist will go on your tanks e.g. Brawlers/Knights/Fuardians, and magic power items will go on Elementalists and Sorcerers. I know that sounds obvious but I’ve seen so many people put damage items on tanks.

It’s also not a bad idea to swap up your team composition if you’re not getting item drops which match your current build. Obviously you don’t want to get rid of a rank 3 champion, but there’s usually always one or two champions you can swap out – like I said before, items are super important.

One final point on items, when you’re picking a champion in the carousel round, don’t choose champions based on who they are, you should always choose based on the items they have (you’ll see the item picture above the avatar). The reason for this is that champions are easy to come by, but items are rare. Of course there are some exceptions to this rule if for example you need one more champion to be able to finish your 3 star champion (or even your 2 star champion if it’s a high end champion such as Miss Fortune).

Don’t blindly follow build guides

New players tend to find a build online and stick to it religiously. That’s not necessarily a bad thing since you’re still learning the ropes, but it’s also not the best way to play by any means. By playing this way you’ll be wasting an unbelievable amount of gold re-rolling the champions to try and find what you need, which in some cases you might never find.

Instead, you need to be flexible. Some champions will appear more often for you and these champions will vary per game, so for example if you’re trying to build a Glacial team but you’re getting a lot of Wild champions and hardly any Glacial champions then you should change your strategy.

Obviously this is easier said then done, especially when you’re new to the game and don’t know which champions fit where, and the best tip for this is to revert to my first tip about synergies. All you have to do is check the different classes you have already and the classes the champions have in the champions select board, then look at the bar on the left side of the screen to see which class type you need to activate a buff. For new players I would suggest you try getting as many of just three class types as possible, and then once you know a bit more about the game you can build more complex builds (complex doesn’t always mean better).

Focus on champion upgrades

It’s easy to get carried away trying to build the perfect team composition but you should always focus on upgrading your champions (this is done by collecting three of the same champion). An upgraded 2 star champion has around double the health and power as a 1 star champion, so upgrading a champion is arguably better than completing your composition. This brings me back to my second point about hording gold, if you follow the gold tip you should have enough gold to complete both your team comp and your champion upgrades.

So that’s it, my best tips for players just starting out in Teamfight Tactics. Think I’m missing one? Let me know in the comments and I will get it added to the list.