Becoming the Jordan of Teamfight Tactics

[Radii]

It sure has been a long time since I've posted a dynasty here. I have no idea if anyone will read this but in the past writing things down helps me either way. My hyperfocus kicked in hard on a game I've been playing for awhile with pretty good success, and I'm trying to dedicate myself big time to the next set of the Riot Games Auto-Battler Teamfight Tactics (most of the time to be referred to as TFT). I'm ranked highly (Master for those that know the riot system) and participate in a small $$ league most sets. I don't know if I have it in me to take the leap needed to get up into the top level esports scene for the game, but I'm hoping to take Set 9 very seriously and see what happens.

The Jordan of TFT???

There's a meme in the TFT community asking who is the Lebron of TFT, basically asking who's the GOAT. To paraphrase The Wire - "They mean Jordan, they just don't know it". Right now my level of TFT would be that of someone who was great in high school but never had a chance in College in any division. Maybe we'll track that as we go. To be clear, I'm good at this game. I document it more down the road, but I peaked in the current season at rank #1485 out of about 700,000 players. I'd like to keep pushing higher than that.

What is Teamfight Tactics?

TFT is a deck-building game with a fair amount of RNG and Variance. Lots of poker comparisons can be made. You try to make the optimal decisions with the cards you're given against 7 other individual players.

Your cards are represented as units on something akin to a chessboard that you position every round. The "auto-battler" part of the game is that your control ends there, you fight an opponent and your board fights their board completely controlled based on AI/the instructions native to each unit.

Units have traits that create synergies with other units to increase their power. There are items that you obtain to place on your units as well, and other ways to power up your team. There is no carryover from game to game, you start each game with an empty board and go through the opening rounds to get your first cards to start building your team.

Most rounds you fight against another player, chosen in a (mostly) random way. Everyone starts with 100 health, and if you lose a round you lose health. When you hit 0 health you're out of the game and that determines your placement in the match. Think single table poker tournament. Last man standing wins. The top 4 players in the game gain points, the bottom 4 lose points. "Points" means two different things in this case, a hidden MMR (Matchmaking Rating) and a public ranking. There are mechanics that cause these to not always be identical, but we'll worry about details later.

[Radii]

TFT Ranked System - General Explanation

Ranks from top to bottom:

Challenger > Grandmaster > Master >
Diamond > Platium > Gold > Silver > Iron

TFT is made by Riot games so the ranked system is nearly identical to that of League of Legends. If you play Overwatch, Rocket League, or one of any number of competitive games I'm sure you'll notice similarities.

For the ranks of Iron up to Diamond, there are divisions. The lowest is Iron 4. Once you earn 100 LP (League Points, just their terminology), you advance to Iron 3, then Iron 2, etc. Once in Iron 1, you advance to Silver 4. When you lose games you do lose points. If you are at Iron 3, 0 LP and you lose a game, you would drop to Iron 4, 75 LP. But once you advance to the next tier, you cannot demote. So if you are Silver 4, 0 LP and lose, you do not fall to Iron, you just stay Silver 4, 0 LP.


If you reach Diamond 1 and climb above 100 points, you promote to Master. In Master and up, you no longer have divisions, just raw LP. So if you have 99 LP in Master and win a game, you would just go up to 140 LP (or however much you gain for a win). At this point Challenger/GrandMaster/Master are just the collection of players at this level.

Challenger is reserved for exactly the top 300 players in the region.

Grandmaster is reserved for players 301-1000.

Master can have an infinite number of people in it. Everyone who promoted above diamond and into master, but couldn't quite get into that top 1000.


Ranked Curve

About 1.95% of the ranked player base reaches master by the end of the set. For most of the set (about a 4 month period), this number is less than 0.5%, but as players reach their goal and quit playing a lot of folks in high Diamond make their final push against each other and it bloats things a bit.

[Radii]

My Ranked Journey So Far

Those familiar with the game can see my profile here:

Rhiow - Set 8.5 Stats - TFT Stats, Leaderboards, League of Legends Teamfight Tactics - LoLCHESS.GG

Since TFT came out, there have been 8 sets (or seasons). In the past sets were broken up into two separate parts, so for Set 8, which finishes next week, there was a set 8.0 and set 8.5. These were effectively different seasons where you would finalize a rank in 8.0 and start over again in 8.5. I haven't played every single set, I have taken a few off.


My final ranking in each set:

Set 1: Diamond 3
Set 2: Platinum 4
Set 3: Platinum 4
Set 3.5: Master
Set 4: Master
Set 4.5: Diamond 2
Set 5: Didn't Play
Set 5.5: Platinum 1
Set 6: Master
Set 6.5: Didn't Play
Set 7: Master
Set 7.5: Diamond 1
Set 8: Diamond 2
Set 8.5: Master (this is the current set)

At this point as long as I play the set and take it even halfway seriously, I will make Diamond. It takes some diligence, study and persistence to reach Master.

Peak Rank

Once you reach master level you can just gain LP indefinitely as you continue to play games. Or, more likely, you get stuck b/c you've reached the peak of yoru skill level and you gain a little here and there and then tank your way back down to 0 until you give up. giving up, mind you, as one of the top 5,000-10,000 players out of 700,000+

My peak was at the end of last week. I briefly hit 210 LP, and was rank #1485 out of ~700,000 ranked players in North America. If you remember above, Grandmaster is the top 1000 players, and Challenger is the top 300.

I've hit master a number of times, I usually have one little hot streak to get me over 100 LP, but I have never found the skill needed to sustain it or to make it up to Grandmaster.

[Radii]

Coaching

Towards the end of Set 8 I paid for coaching from a top 100 Challenger player. For those who know anything about the game/scene, my coach is Frodan. He casts events, but he's also a very good player himself. He has a great analytical approach that I vibe with in a big way.

Our first coaching session was about 90 minutes. We discussed my history with the game, my goals, and some basics that he does with everyone. Then he watched me play a game and took notes, pointing out things that I did that were counter-productive to how I described my playstyle, and pointing out mistakes. THERE WERE SO MANY MISTAKES. I was able to make use of this immediately and improve.


I'm owed another coaching session, but we both agreed we would wait until the new set to do it. So I'm hoping to schedule that in the 2nd or 3rd week of the new season. My understanding is that the second session will be 2 1/2 hours, I'll bring a game I've recorded and we'll review it and discuss it together, I'm not sure what else is on the agenda.

For anyone interested, coaching is $80/hr, or $300 for this 4 hour two session dealio, I obviously picked the latter.


Goals

I've broken out my goals into multiple steps:

1 - Reach Master during the first two patches (first month) of Set 9. Typically when I reach Master it's much later in the set. My sense is that I have to let a lot of better players pass through and then I can fight through what's left 2 to 2 1/2 months in and make it there myself.

2 - Reach GrandMaster for the first time. Since I can make the Master rank with some consistency, making it to the next rank up is an obvious goal.

3 - "Final Table" the Aegis Esports AML League This is a league I've participated in a number of times. It runs for 7 weeks, 4 weeks are a regular season where you play 4 games every saturday, then three weeks for a playoffs. This league has a small $$ fee ($10 or $25, I can't remember) and has a payout for the top 8 players. It is well run. There are leagues for Challenger, GM, and Masters players, I of course play in the Master league. My best finish in this league was 10th out of 48 a few seasons ago. I'd like to make the final 8, the final day of the tournament.


4 - Reach Challenger for the first time. There is a huge difference in the top 1000 players and the top 300. This is like most sports or competitive games. The gap between the top 0.01% and everyone else is large. I believe reaching GM this set is 100% reasonable. I believe if I work at it and stay motivated I can reach Challenger, but I don't know if it's reasonable to expect it this set or not.

5 - Play in top level Riot Esport Events. The esports system is evolving, but in Set 8 there were numerous qualifier tournaments available to players in Challenger on the way to final events for each region and the a Worlds to end the season. The stretch goal here is to see if I can crack my way into these qualifier tournaments. It's a strategy game, older folks don't tend to make it b/c they have responsibilities. I have far less than most my age since I am still basically a 12 year old at heart. For now, there are folks with full time jobs who get to the esports level of things.

[Radii]

Set 9 Timeline

Set 9 officially will release on June 14th. It is currently available on Riot's PBE (Public Beta Environment). I tend to not play on PBE until the last few days, as the game isn't stable or balanced in the first week. However, there are some changes to the economic pacing of the game that are being tested and I think it'll take more time to adjust to those, so I'm looking to start playing PBE games immediately.

6/5 - 6/8: The PBE launch hasn't been great, lots of long queues and crashes, I only got in for the first time Monday. I'm not expecting great balance. I do want to do a little preparation here, but I'm playing a llttle NBA 2K and a little Diablo, and maybe casually playing some TFT here and there.

6/9 - 6/12: Starting Saturday with the set release closer, things are more stable, not being patched every day. I'll start to take PBE games as seriously as possible, trying out team comps to see what I like, watching some twitch streams from pro players, at this point I'm still memorizing all of the champions and their traits and what the cards look like as well. PBE games have people of all skill levels so they're not great. I may try to get into some in-houses - games where 8 people from certain discords play practice games together to guarantee a solid skill level.

6/13: The set goes live the next day, so I want to go into ranked with a plan. I want to settle on a specific strategy and start implementing it on the last day of PBE.

6/14: Off we go into ranked and live play! Everyone starts in Iron, but matchmaking is based on where you finished last set. There's a brief time where I'll be playing Master level opponents with an Iron or Silver rank. It's great.

[Radii]

This is very much a fluff video, marketing level, etc. But if you have never seen anything at all about the game, it shows some useful high level information.




Hopefully this embeds correctly. Is it way way too big? Anyway, it's what the game looks like during the planning phase, before you match up with an opponent to fight. This is where you build your team. I've put a bunch of red squares on the screenshot and numbered them:

1 - Bottom Left. This shows your current level, how much XP you need to get to the next level, and contains the UI buttons to buy XP and refresh your shop. Some basics: At level 4 I can put 4 units on the board. At level 5 I can put 5 units on the board. The minimum level once player combat starts is 3, the max towards the end of the game is level 9.

2 - Center Botton. This is the shop. There are 5 cards in the shop, each of them a league champion. Some things to note here: Each unit has a different cost. Gangplank, Ashe, and Nasus cost 1 gold. Camille costs 2 gold, Kai'Sa costs 3 gold. There are a pool of cards from 1 cost to 5 cost. More details on this as we go on. At the top of box 2 in the middle you see the number 4. I have 4 gold, so I can buy Kai'Sa and Ashe, or any combo up to 4 gold.

3 - Right - This is the scoreboard. The player whose name you cannot see is me. The other 7 with a name next to their score are my opponents. This is very very early in the game so four of us still have 100 health. The bottom four players lost the first round, you can see their health values of 98, 96, 96, and 94. The more units your opponent still has alive when they kill you, the more damage you take.

4 - Left - This is a list of your synergies. Back on box 2, note that Camille has two traits: "A.D.M.I.N" and "Renegade". Ashe has "LaserCorps" and "Sureshot", etc. On my current board I'm playing 3 LaserCorps and 2 Brawler. My team gets bonuses based on those synergies. This is core to the gameplay, you want to field teams that synergize well together to give yourself more power.

5 - Lower Left'ish - This is your bench. In the bottom of the red box is a bow. That's an item component. Looking ahead to box 6, you can see over some of my units are icons, those are completed items that I've put on my units. There are a set number of types of components (8 I think?). Combine any two components and you complete an item. Items give your units bonus stats and effects.

6 - Middle - This is my board. I'm level 4 so I've put 4 units on the board. The other half of the board will be filled in by my opponent when the round starts and we'll fight. I have tanky units up front, damage unit in the back. There is a ton of depth to this that we can go into later.

7 - top - We're on stage 2-2, there are 28 seconds for me to take actions before the board is locked and the fight round starts.

8 - (not really, there's a box I forgot to label, above box 2) - lower middle. There are units not on my board, but that I've purchased. This is my bench. I may want to play these units later or see which ones I can upgrade.



Whew, ok, that's a ton. Probably too much. Whee!!!

[Radii]

Units and Star Levels

In the above post we looked at a screenshot of my board. A core gameplay component is upgrading your units. In my shop was a Gangplank. He costs 1 gold. That card by itself is a 1* Gangplank. If I collect 3 of that card, it will upgrade and become a 2* Gangplank. If I collect three 2* Gangplank's they will combine and become a 3* Gangplank. That requires buying 9 copies of the card. 1* Units are weak, 2* units are the standard form that most players aim for, 3* exist only in some circumstances and are usually incredibly strong, relative to their cost and other 2* units.

Champion Pool

Of course, resources must be limited for strategy to exist.

There are 13 1-cost units. There are 29 copies of each of them in the full deck. All players share the same pool. So if I buy a gangplank and he's on my board or on my bench, there are only 28 others left. The more that the players buy, the harder it becomes to find more.

1 cost: 13 unique units, 29 copies of each
2 cost: 13 unique units, 22 copies of each.
3 cost: 13 unique units, 18 copies of each.
4 cost: 12 unique units, 12 copies of each
5 cost: 8 unique units, 10 copies of each

By the end of the game, most teams want to have the more expensive units on the board, and there are far fewer of those. This creates much of the conflict in the game. Can I find build a team that isn't contested (my key units aren't also being taken by other players)? The higher level you are, your odds change for each shop to have a higher likelyhood of higher cost units. It costs gold to level up, it costs gold to refresh the shop to buy more cards to build your team, and of course it costs gold to actually buy the cards. Managing your gold is the primary skill in the game.


Economy

For player rounds, you gain a set amount of gold just from moving from round to round. You gain 1 gold if you beat another player. You also gain interest. If you have 10 gold saved up, you earn 1 extra gold in "interest". 20 gold saved up - 2 extra gold. This goes up to 50 gold, where you would earn 5 extra gold. You also gain bonus gold for win streaks and loss streaks. A streak of 2 or 3 earns you 1 extra gold. A 4 streak (4 wins or losses in a row) is 2 gold. 5 wins or losses in a row is 3 gold. If you are dealt a bad hand at the start, you may want to lose your first 5 rounds in a row in Stage 2 to try to maximize your economy, and use it to make a comeback later on.

You gain 2 XP per round automatically. Levelling from 1 to 3 happens naturally without spending any gold. From there:

3->4 - 6 XP
4->5 - 10 XP
5->6 - 20 XP
6->7 - 36 XP
7->8 - 56 XP
8->9 - 80 XP

On that screenshot above, box #1 shows the button to buy XP. You spend 4 gold and buy 4 XP. So if I've explained it halfway decently, you can start to see how TFT becomes a game of managing one's economy. If I never refresh my shop and delay using my gold to level, I can get to 50 gold for maximum interest and have more gold than everyone. But at a certain point I'm losing way too much health and must level and build my team out to try to keep up. Figuring out your current situation to know how to maximize your economy while still fielding a strong (enough) team is huge here.

Game Stages

In the screenshot in the previous post, at the top it showed "2-2" That's stage 2, round 2. We use stages to discuss the pacing of the game:

Stage 1: You fight minions - AI, that drop gold and item components. You build your starting team this way. There are three minion rounds. You come out of this stage level 3.

From there all other stages look the same:

Each stage has 7 rounds: 2-1, 2-2, 2-3 you fight players, 2-4 in the middle is a "carousel" round, it's kind of like a draft, lowest health goes first and can pick up a unit and an item to advance their team. 2-5 and 2-6 are two more player combat rounds. 2-7 is another minion round where you can expect an influx of gold and items.

Stage 2: Typically by the end of stage 2 you are level 4 or level 5. Lots of early game decisions here, this is already too busy a post, more on that as we go.
Stage 3: You have to spend gold to do it, but the convention is that you level to 6 on Stage 3-2. Most of your team is 1 cost and 2 cost units, you'll get some 3 costs and maybe luck into a 4 cost.
Stage 4: Level to 7 on 4-1. At this point most people start finding the 4 cost units that will form their end game team.
Stage 5: Levelling varies heavily from here on out. Most people will end the game at level 8. Going to level 9 opens the door to very powerful 5 costs, but you dont always get here.


There are variations to this. remember I mentioned how you can buy multiple copies of the same card to 2* a unit, and if you buy 9 copies you can 3* it? Well there is a strategy called "re-roll" where you stay low level on purpose and try to 3* lower cost units. This is in contrast to the standard strategy where you go level 7 and level 8 to try to make a board of 2* 4 cost units. The meta-game around these things changes over time, but for not just be aware that there are different strategies and I've laid out the "default".


Again, that's FAR TOO MUCH INFO. But here we are.

[Radii]

If anyone plays TFT at all I would love any level of engagement here! Of course everyone is welcome. Questions about the game or any system within the ranked environment or whatever. I have helped some friends who are in silver/gold/plat and really enjoy that, so feel free to drop anything about your games here too!

If no one plays that's on FOFC, I get it. Doing this will hopefully keep me more engaged and help me either way.

[Radii]

Every set Riot replaces a lot of the champions, origins and traits in the game. So most of what is currently happening on PBE - the beta prior to set 9 going live, is learning all of the new units and traits. The closer I am to having all of those things memorized before real ranked games start, the better. I've now played enough that I've started to formulate my strategy. If you play a little TFT, you'll know what this means, if you don't, don't worry about it. The fun of this dynasty will be figuring out what info to share for people that don't play.


My current PBE Strategy - Just to give myself some direction as I learn

This is just a cut and paste on the notepad++ doc I put together last night:

Try to flex between:

Shurima Azir Carry

Zaun Zeri Gunners

Frejlord Aphelios DeadEye


Front Line:

Bruiser/Bastion (maybe juggernauts?) frontline units:

Renekton/Cho/Maokai/Poppy - 1 costs
Kassadin/Vi/Sett/Warwick - 2 costs
RekSai/Taric/Garen/Darius - 3 costs
Sejuani/Shen/Nasus/Jarvan - 4 costs


Back Line (ranged AD):

Jhin/Kayle/Samira/Trist - 1 cost
Ashe/Jinx - 2 cost
Akshan - 3 cost


Other early game units:

Shurima: Cassio, Taliyah
Gunners: Ekko, Jayce (Jinx stays)
Deadeye: Ashe/Soraka/Lissandra (invokers/Frejlord)


Build around Rageblade ideally.

Azir: Rageblade/RFC/JG
Zeri: Rageblade/IE/(Mobalytics says Titans, really?)
Aphelios: Rageblade/IE/GS

Tons of:

Bows -> Azir
Mix -> Zeri
Swords -> Aphelios

[Radii]

That'll be all for now to get us going. Part of me getting better is recording my games and VOD reviewing my games to find my own holes and fix them. Perhaps I'll try to get some stuff uploaded to youtube based on that.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Radii

If anyone plays TFT at all I would love any level of engagement here! Of course everyone is welcome. Questions about the game or any system within the ranked environment or whatever. I have helped some friends who are in silver/gold/plat and really enjoy that, so feel free to drop anything about your games here too!

If no one plays that's on FOFC, I get it. Doing this will hopefully keep me more engaged and help me either way.

Too involved for me (requires more consistent effort than I can muster for anything these days) but I support your effort & will try to keep an eye on the thread.

[Radii]

TY Jon!

So what I think I'm going to do is categorize each post based on the level of detail within the game required to understand it. A lot of things once the season starts you can just follow along with results, the study that I do to try to get better, the process of improving. I'll label those posts as such. Some posts go very deep in the weeds of how the game plays and if you don't understand the game there won't be as much value.

I think for now I'll use the labels of Strategy vs Game Details. Strategy posts discuss high level concepts without getting too in the weeds. Things common to anything of a competitive nature. Game Details discuss units and in game tactics. Some posts might have a high level introduction followed up with game details.

[Radii]

Strategy

We're still about a week away from the set going live. I'm still playing semi-casually on the beta environment to learn all of the new details of the set so I can go full speed on release day.

The last major patch went in today. The game will remain stable until next Monday or Tuesday, where they will release one final balance patch before live. At this point there is value in refining a strategy to use on day 1, because major bugs and major imbalances have been fixed for the most part.



Game Details

A number of top players release their own tier list of TFT comps. RobinSongz is a top ladder and tournament player that I like a lot. He has a website dedicated to the game, and he released his Set 9.0 Comp guide today:

Robinsongz Set 9.0 Comp Guide

There are a lot of playable team compositions, but I tend to find that if I focus on 3 or 4 at most I will have the best results. I aim to play the same 3 comps most games, and to be aware of other ones in case I get a super strong opener I can deviate. 90% of the time though I want to use the same comps.

I've taken my early comp strategy list and refined it, picking 4 comps that Robin suggests and making notes on the details of them. Soon those notes will be second nature, but for now having them written down will help.

I'll put the updated details of my intended play strategy in the next post.

[Radii]

Game Details

I want to play these 4 comps in 90% of my games. However much I play on PBE I'll be trying to do that and see how it feels.:

Aphelios

Front (2 bastion): Sej/Taric/Shen
4 Deadeye: Aphelios/Ashe/Akshan/Urgot
Utility: Lissandra (gives Freljord/Invoker

Carry Items: Rageblade/DB > IE/GS/RH/GuardBreaker
Tank Sejuani

Zeri

4 Zaun/2 Gunner or 4 gunner/2 Zaun (Zeri/Jinx/Urgot/Ekko for Zaun)

Frontline: Sion/Sej
Utility: Liss/Ashe for 3 Freljord


Rageblade/IE/GS > DB/RH/GuardBreaker

Kaisa

4 Challenger: Warwick/Kaisa/Kalisa/Yasuo
4 Juggernaut: Garen/Nasus/Aatrox/(WW?)

+ Gwen

Kaisa: Shojin/Archangels > GB/GS/Rabadons/JG/Guardbreaker


Azir

4 Strategist: J4/Azir/Teemo/Taliyah
3 Demacia: Garen/Lux
3 Shurima: Nasus
2 Multicaster/2 Sorc: Swain/Lux

Can play 2 strategist or drop sorc for other tech, or for 5 Shurima (7 with a spat on Shen).

Azir: Rageblade + 2 AP Items
Tank J4


There are many teambuilder websites that let you theorycraft, the images make things take up too much space so I like to make my own notes I can reference in game so I can see details of all 4 comps on the 1 screen. That said, here is Robin's sample Azir board, this is the kind of thing we're going off of to create this text:

[Radii]

Strategy

One of the most difficult things to figure out in a dynasty like this is how to introduce readers to the game in a coherant way. I'm not trying to become a content creator here so I want my time to be focused on the game, not on becoming a master of video editing to create my own introductions.



Here is a video that was created in set 1, years ago now. The game is very different but the core concepts that are given in an introduction still hold. For visual learners this is probably better than anything I've tried to type so far.

Only the first 4 minutes matter, the last minute he's going into the real money shop. There is zero "pay to win" element in this game, only cosmetics.

[Radii]

Game Details

The set is live and I have insomnia, so lets get going! I will not write up every game like this, but I haven't shared much from a real game yet so lets celebrate the start of set 9 with a little depth.

Game 1:

Legend - Twisted Fate - I took all three of his augments - these augments will allow me to have more items than anyone not using TF and to greed for perfect items. "pandora's items" causes all items that i leave on my bench to reroll into something random every stage. When they turn into something I want to use, I put them on a champion.

Everyone starts Iron IV but our rating from the last set is used for matchmaking. That means I'm in Iron, the lowest division, but in a lobby full of Master ranked players from the last set. That means there is no grace period where I get free wins until I climb towards my normal rank.

It's quickly obvious who played a lot of PBE and who didn't. I'm 100 health at wolves (10 straight wins)

I end up running Bastion for my front line (tanky units that gain a bonus to magic resist and armor for the first 10 seconds), with Kalista carry - a 3 cost unit that will do good damage and holds the items my late game carries want very well.


4-1: I'm Aiming for Aphelios or Zeri (will be common theme) based on the items I've made so far.

4-2: scouting reveals two aphelios, 0 zeri, we play zeri unless given 3 aphelios first


4-7: Still 100 health through raptors despite playing greedy.

5-3: We're down to the top 4, still 100 health. Others at 75/24/21.


5-5: first loss to kaisa/8 void (which gives a very strong baron unit)

In the end (the journey is often more intresting than the final few fights in TFT) I was able to beat the void player with Baron, but unable to beat the other person using the same strategy as me - Twisted Fate Legend, 6 zeke's herald items, but he rerolled 3 cost units while I played 2* 4 costs and his comp beat mine very hard in the end.


Apparently I start Bronze 4, not Iron 4 (maybe master+ or Diamond+ get this small benefit). Early on I will get very large gains for top 4s, this was worth 192 LP which bumps me all the way up to Bronze III 92 LP




I took a bunch of screenshots but they're like 1440p. I'll get another one written up soon with screenshots that I scale down to size. We'll get there lol.

[Radii]

Game Details, with Highlight

Game 2:

2-2: Very Early Warwick 2, will likely carry me to 5 streak.

2-6: We find an Urgot (4 cost Zaun/Deadeye) which fits my board perfectly. We are indeed 100 health at Krugs (the first minion round after player combat starts). I don't think we are quite as strong as last game, but still off to a great start.

3-2: I make an extremely aggressive play by leveling to 7 on this turn. That takes me down to 20 gold, and if I lose any of the next 3 rounds or so I will fall behind the lobby in economy. I think it'll allow me to streak through wolves. I easily win on 3-2. There is one opponent who is very strong and I think I beat him if I do this.

3-5: I hit a Zeri which I like better than Urgot, I sell Urgot and make the swap. On 3-5 I do lose to the dangerous opponent, despite being level 7 to his 6. But winning on 3-2 and 3-3 was enough to allow me to recover my economy

3-7: I'm in 2nd with 93 health. 3rd has 60, the two of us at the top are really beating up the rest of the lobby. I'm going to be greedy here and not roll any at 7, I may lose a couple more rounds but will have a ton of gold at 8 to finalize my team comp.

4-3: I take two bad losses and go level 8 and roll a bunch. I hit a 2* Nasus who doesn't really fit in my comp but will do for now - he's a tank, and my Warwick/Sett Juggernauts were not holding up anymore.

4-5: I hit Zeri 2 but have not hit a Sejuani which is critical for my comp. I roll back to 10 again, after this we'll just save up until stage 5.

4-7: After 4 rough losses I end the stage with a win (would have been ok losing for the streak gold). I'm in 3rd but only 45 health.

5-1: I hit a single Sejuani and round out a comp with 4 zaun/4 gunner/2 Freljord and 2 Juggernauth for now b/c I am playing nasus. With 2* Zero and 2* Nasus I think I'm strong enough to top 4 from this point and hope to stop rolling all my gold every round. I think 2nd is the best I could do and 5th is the worst I could do.

5-3: Adjustment to drop out of 4 Zaun to play Bruiser (Sion with Sej) and to go up to 3 Freljord with Ashe.

5-6: We've lost our last 3 rounds and 5 still remain. We've taken close losses and still are in 3rd with 17 health but this is going to be close. On stage 5-6 I get a huge win over one of the top 2 guys, and someone drops out. We have secured a top 4. We'd like to find a way to get 3rd or maybe even 2nd.


6-1: The 3rd (me) and 4th place players win over the 1st/2nd. Still 4 left and it's even closer.

6-2: I lose to the guy in 4th, now I'm in 4th. Another loss and I'm out. Scores are 30/15/11/2, I could still get 3rd.

6-3: I outposition the player in 1st and beat him! Someone finally goes out andI've made top 3! Of the two left I can beat one of them, so this will mostly come down to RNG bssed on who I match up against.


6-5: I am matched up against the ghost of the player I don't think I can beat. But ghosts are usually weaker :fingers_crossed: I beat the ghost with 1 unit left!! And in the other fight the lower opponent loses and is out 3rd. I've got a top 2!

The program I use to capture highlights so I can review my play makes it very easy to upload to youtube, so I uploaded round 6-5 which was the very very close round that secured me a 2nd place. If I lose this round I'm out 3rd. My carry (Zeri) is the back left unit). I assume I am losing as their front line collapses around Zeri very early into the fight but I hold on just long enough.




6-6: I probably don't win under any circumstance but here I get outpositioned hard and lose badly.


A VERY exciting game of TFT, one where I could have gone out 5th but managed to get 2nd instead. I don't get a lot of 1sts, and in this one 1st felt completely impossible, but 2nd feels extremely good.



Result:

2nd, +193 LP, up to Bronze I 89 LP.

[Radii]

Strategy

A couple notes, if I keep getting top 4's my MMR will continue to go up and I'll be facing grandmaster players soon. So it still will feel a bit paradoxical but what usually happens here is I will have a good start b/c I played on PBE and have more practice than most, but very soon I will run into players who also have practice and are probably better than me. In any one game I can hang and might do well but over time against that group I'll get smashed into the ground. It's fun when your rank is Silver when that happens.


The other note is pointing out that I played Zeri in my first two games, and minus some small variation played the same team comp. This is where we start talking about the fact that there are only 4 team comps I really want to focus on, at least for now. Playing a narrow number of comps will let me gain proficiency with them and I'll navigate them better and better. Here I didn't find my main tank right away but easily slotted in a substitute (Nasus) and kept him until nearly the end of the game.

So I have 4 comps I want to play, and two of them - Aphelios carry and Zeri carry - are likely to be the dominant two out of even that list of 4. If the game gives me a heavy start towards something else I'll try my best to play it, but usually I won't really branch out until the second patch changes the meta up a bit and I need to adjust.


One last note, in my last post I said "I don't get a lot of 1sts" - typically my playstyle makes me one that is more of a "top 4 player". I will gain top 4's at a higher rate than average but will get 1st less than average. I do want to improve upon my 1st place rate, I think it's far too low most sets, but in general I'm happy with this playstyle and general trend.

[Radii]

Spamming Games

As the day went on I started screen sharing with a buddy of mine of a similar rank and playing a bunch. My prediction from above came true, these games got VERY difficult very fast.



Game 3 - 5th place

Game 3 I had a terrible opener and ended up trying to play Kaisa, a composition that consists of 4 juggernaut (a front line that takes reduced damage) / 4 Challenger (an offensive steroid type trait). Kaisa is the 4 cost carry of the comp. I played this a lot less in beta and was just not comfortable at any point of the game. Happy for a 5th.

LP Change: None - the first 5 games are placements, where bot 4's don't count against you.


Game 4 - 5th place

5th with Aphelios. A pattern starts to emerge - I am struggling to build strong early game boards that do not lose a lot of health. Additionally, Aphelios was heavily contested, but I committed to it by selecting a Deadeye augment on 3-2. Aphelios is a deadeye. I only hit one of them, and never 2* the unit. Two people in the top 4 also played him.

Still in placements so LP is unchanged.


Game 5 - 5th place

A second attempt at Kaisa. Here I take a transformative augment on 2-1 called March of Progress. It is extremely strong, but I haven't played this version of it. You cannot level up any yourself by spending gold. You instead gain XP for free, but a set amount of it based on your current level. It's strong because you generate tons of gold that you only have to use for rolling and buying units, the levelling is done for you. But I was not familiar with the pacing of the augment and it threw me off.

This completed my placements, I place in Bronze 1 with 96 LP.


Game 6 - 4th

Another game where I just took massive damage early. Another pattern emerges, in a lot of these games one or two people have a lot of health and everyone else is just on the brink of death far earlier than normal. I end up playing Aphelios but because my health is so low I stay level 7 and try to 2*& my board. I succeed, and that allows me to get a 4th where an 8th was very possible.

4th place - gain LP (don't remember how much exactly) - promote to Silver IV


Game 7 - 2nd place

I once again play Kaisa, the 3rd time in 7 games, this was not what I expected to be playing most frequently, but this time I have a very strong opener and find an early Kaisa and am strong throughout the game. I actually 3* a 4 cost, which is usually a 1st place, but my opponent was able to make it to 8 void, which spawns baron nashor on your board (the big monster in league of legends). Turns out a 3* nasus cannot kill Baron right now. That probably indicates something is unbalanced, but hey, 2nd!

2nd place - large LP gain (about 100) - up to Silver III


[u]Game 8 - 8th place[/U[

My first dead last placement. I tried to play Zeri, but was playing it from behind after losing big early and just petered out and never stablazied my board.


Game 9 - 5th

Back to my most common placement of 5th, my 4th kaisa game out of 9 games total. This is not bad, I'm learning a lot here about how to play Kaisa and will be better for it very soon.


5th - I'm left with 0 LP in Silver III. If I bot 4 my next game I would demote back to Silver IV.



Game 10 - 4th

Aphleios my good friend, thanks for not letting me demote. I am strong early game and I hit my comp perfectly, but this lobby had two prismatic augments and the lobby ended insanely strong. Me hitting very well was not enough. a prefect Garen Reroll, a Teemo 4*, a Viego/Katarina Rogue reroll that all hit perfectly as well finished ahead of me.


4th - gain of 22 LP - Silver III 22 LP



Most games should have a level of detail between those first two and this block here. But I do play with friends or chat w/ friends while I play from time to time and will have a dump of games like this with no detail.




Overall when I look at my opponents I am still seeing players that were master and grandmaster last set. These are opponents that match and sometimes exceed the peak of my skill level. These are very challenging games, they're great to test me and force me to refine elements of my game quickly to keep up.


My intention - not for dynasty reasons, but for improvement of my own skill - is not to normally play this many games without a break to review and write up something. I want to play less games in a single stretch and dedicate more time to some kind of study, whether that be watching a streamer or reviewing my own games. But, it's the first day of the set and there's a lot of hype that comes with that, so it's ok today

[Radii]

Strategy

I'm in a discord with a streamer who is sharing a lot of guides and tips from challenger players in his circle and I spent a good bit of time yesterday figuring out how to apply some of it to my own gameplay.

I got some good info on the Zeri comp I was playing a lot on how to play it better, but the biggest thing is a line being referred to as "Kalista Flex" that I'm pretty much in love with. Kalista is a 3 cost challenger, she does great with one attack speed item (rageblade usually). Challengers are pretty solid overall, the "flex" part of the comp is that you can 3* Kalista and use her as your main carry, you can use Kaisa - a 4 cost challenger. You can use another 4 cost Challenger in Yasuo, or you can use one of two tangential units, Urgot or Gwyn, also 4 cost carries. You pick based on which units you're being given and which items you're being given. The tank line is flexible as well, there are lots of 4 and 5 cost tanks that are good and you just use the ones you hit, forcing a specific synergy doesn't seem too critical with the tanks.


So, given the adjustments I've made above:

Gameplay/Results

Zeri - 5th - I appear to be the master of almost making top 4 but not quite... 14 games, 5 5th place finishes. My first try playing an augmented Zeri comp, taking out the Freljord units and playing a stronger front line instead. But I didn't build a last whisper, which shreds the enemy's armor, and that cost me I think.


Kalisa Flex/Kaisa Carry - 1st - My first win of the set comes in game 12. The special properties of this portal/universe gave us two tactician crowns, an item that allows you to play an extra unit on your board. So at level 9 I had 11 units. So did all of my opponents. I ended up itemizing Kaisa and Yasuo a bit, and was able to use the new tech that I learned in the Strategy section to grab a win. This promoted me to Silver 2.


Kaisa Flex/Urgot Carry - 6th - I took a break after this one because I honestly got a little tilted at the result. I thought I played really well and thought I had a top 4 for sure. But I just lost my last 5 or 6 rounds in a row and went out 6th.


Kaisa Flex/Urgot 3* - 1st - I had a great opener, Viego 2 with a Challenger Emblem, 4 Challenger on 2-1, and I won my first 13 rounds before any losses. I levelled aggressively and applied a lot of pressure on the lobby. I went 7 on 3-5 (usually done on 4-1) and hit an Urgot 2 on a big rolldown. I rolled some more on 4-1 and hit Kaisa 2, both of these things much earlier than normal. I eventually hit an Urgot 3. 3*'ing a 4 cost unit is usually supposed to be a free win, and this case it absolutely was.

The second win in 3 games promotes me to Silver 1.


Current Rank: Silver I - 44 LP.

[Radii]

So we're recovered from what I'm pretty sure was food poisoning, maybe with some other stuff? I haven't really played at all for the last week. The first patch went in today. Lets review where I'm at and what went wrong the first patch:



- I'm currently Plat III. Despite a stated goal to take the game seriously and to work to improve in a systematic way, this is the worst ranking I've held after one patch in a couple years now.

- This set is different and really fun, so I found myself doing none of the things I wanted to do to study and just spammed tons of games. I wasn't looking at stats sites and wasn't studying streams and some of my ideas were just dead wrong, so we got stuck at a pretty shit rating.


Dedictated Study

So how do we fix this and get moving for real starting now with this next patch and with me feeling good enough to focus for the first time in about a week?

1) Watch a challenger streamer for at least 1 game a day, preferably 2 (about an hour but if I watch a VOD I watch at 1.5x speed). The top streamers answer questions constantly and drop small tidbits of knowledge constantly. FOCUS is the key here. I have streams up all the time but if I'm playing a game myself or reading reddit I'm not actually taking in info.

2) Record and review one of my own games for every 20 games played. This more than anything feels like "homework" but it also is super rewarding. But apparently I need to set a rule to follow through and do this.

3) Data Sites - TFT Meta, Stats, Comps, Match History and more Teamfight Tactics tools contains a ton of data on augments, team comps, items showing how they're performing in real games (not a 'tier list' but actual data). For some reason I wasn't making use of this site in my play nearly as much in the first week.

4) Limit FOR FUN plays - I was insistent that I could make the Caitlyn legend work and that she fit my playstyle, despite no top players using her and knowing she was generally considered bad. I don't know why I did this but yeah, no more of that.



So there we go, lets get back to it.

[Young Drachma]

Glad you're feeling better!

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Glad you're feeling better!

Thank you sir!

[Radii]

The 36 hours after the patch were possibly the strangest in the 4 year history of this game. Balancing games is hard, sometimes you nerf/buff and create a new meta that's just completely broken. That happened here, but in a really odd way. One specific legend, Draven, got buffed while a lot of things around him got nerfed and the game was just insane.

All of a sudden the meta was to take Draven, all his augments, and just go level 8 as soon as possible and 3* 4 costs. Usually you'll see a single 3 star 4 cost maybe once every 10 game from anyone. That person is going to win the game. It's hard to do. For 24 hours after the patch, there were 4-7 of them every single game. It was WILD.

Study

I tried to play a couple games in this crazy meta and was failing. I spent about 90 minutes studying, watching the VOD's of two streamers that I like, one of them, Robinsongz, is a top 10 player who I have in the past found that I can usually emulate fairly well for my level.


Gameplay

I played a bunch after this little study session and went top 4 in 8 of my next 10 games.


Rank

During this very weird day of TFT I went from 0 LP in Plat III to 79 LP in Plat II. That's a gain of 179 LP which is very significant for one day.



The weirdness from the patch was hotfixed last night, and I seemed to start struggling again, so we're going to be starting today with some more dedicated study to try to latch on to the quickly shifting metagame.

[Radii]

Friday - Session 1

Game 1: 7th, -33 LP, attempted to play vertical sorcerers with Lux carry, lost a ton of damage in the midgame. I also forgot to switch legend from Draven to Ezreal, whoops.

Game 2: 5th, -10 LP, 6 noxus with Darius 3/Kat 3. I was top 4 for most of the match but just took absolutely forever to hit the last katarina. Could have maybe salvaged some HP with better positioning but needed to just hit to top 4 most likely.

In between games I'm watching Robinsongz, the streamer that historically I've learned the most from, for 10 minutes or so on 1.5x speed to watch what he's doing and pick up any info as he answers questions from people.

Game 3: 1st, +45 LP. With the help of a challenger heart and ionia emblem from two of my augments I went 6 ionia/6 challenger with dual yasuo and kaisa carry, one of the top meta comps for awhile now and probably my favorite to play. Was able to pull off a first with the extra power given by the synergies.

Game 4: 5th, -10 LP. Very frustrating one, I had a terrible stage 2 board and lost all 5, but I was able to turn that around into another strong 6 challenger/6 ionia board, I was 5th by 2 HP, and going into stage 6-1 all 5 of us had 15 health or less.

Game 5: 3rd, +19 LP. Shimmerscale item opener, gambler's blade on a kalista on 2-1 was good for so much gold, but I committed to a kalista reroll on 3-2 by taking Chalelnger heart, and then gave up the augment as I hit Azir instead (who is not a challenger, so I was basically playing without one of my augments vs everyone else not doing that) Someone hit Aphelios 3 to easily win the game, but if I had hit a little better I could have maybe gone second - or not committed on that 3-2 augment and taken something more generic. But still, 3rd is fine. But this one could have been a bit better.

Game 6: 2nd, +32 LP, Promoted. 6 Invoker, Karma reroll, I seem to do really well with this whenever I try it out.


And with that, we're up to Plat 1, almost diamond, embarrassingly late. 43 LP gain in this 6 game set.



This shows my results in my last 20 matches. A 4.5 average rank would be perfectly average. The 3.9 shows I'm climbing very nicely during this small stretch.

[Radii]

Friday - Session 2

Game 1: 6 Noxus, I committed too early to this and ended up holding hands to a bot 4 (holding hands = two people playing the same comp when it really only supports one, so you doom each other). 6th, -20 LP

Game 2: Very solid Azir game, ended up with two shurima spats to go 7 Shurima, I couldn't quite take down Kalista 3, opponent found two Ionia spats and was equally strong in their vertical. 2nd, +32 LP

-- pretty long break here, duo'd on an alt with a friend of mine and then took a diablo break.

Game 3: I was all set to play kaisa/yasuo like normal, I had IE/Rageblade/HoJ on a kalista, hit level 8 and rolled, and I 2*'d Aphelios and Urgot instead, so I pivoted my board entirely into aphelios, and eventually hit Aphelios 3. Yesterday that's nothing special, but today, that's a 1st! 1st - +45 LP

At this point I'm at 79 LP in Plat I. A 2nd, and maybe even a 3rd would promote me to Diamond. Or we lose a bunch and run it down. Could go either way!

Game 4: We choose run it down. This was a triple prismatic game, these games are wild and the aggression in them can be off the charts b/c everyone has so much power. I hit a very strong aphelios board... for a normal game, but everyone else just hit way way harder. The items given to me by my legend augment were absolutely horrible. I had a long early win streak but once I started losing it was straight down. 6th - -21 LP

Game 5: Oh man, truly running it down. This was a very out of sorts game where I was weak early, rolled some at 6 and didn't stabalize, and had a frankenstein board on 7 that didn't really work and I never managed to upgrade. Oof. 7th: -34 LP

A break to watch a Robinsongz game on his VOD to try to re-center after those two rough games.

... later ... and more breaks to play on my alt with a buddy, so we stop here for the night.

I end the day in Plat I somewhere around 20 LP. A nice gain on the day.

[Radii]

New Patch Study

One exercise my coach had me do last set was to look at every 1 and 2 cost unit in the game and put them in tier lists, if you could only hold one unit b/c you didn't have enough gold, which one would you choose, etc. Doing that for this patch based on my experience so far should help with my early game strategy.



My 1 cost tier list. 1st row are S tier, then A tier, B tier, C tier, basically. Ionia (Irelia and Jhin) feels like the strongest opener. Bruisers (Renekton/Cho) provide great front line. Viego is just a very strong 1 cost item holder. Malzahar offers Void along with Cho which is another very strong opener. The third row has a couple decent item holders if I can't get Jhin/Viego/Malzahar.

This is highly subjective and more of a "solidify your playstyle so you have less tough decisions in actual games" exercise, than one of obejctive truth.





Two costs. In S tier Sett and Zed have the same Ionia trait as my top 1 cost units. Warwick shares traits with those Ionia units and is generically strong. Soraka just seems like a very strong 2 cost. On the second row are units that seem generically good, fill out other good traits, but aren't in my very favorite openers. Third row I don't really ever mind playing these guys, but they are always filling out something else. 4th row are units that many people consider quite solid but I have just had zero luck using them and their synergies in my own openers so I avoid them.



The next exercise is one I've done before for other patches, and that's to describe my strategy in detail. I should keep that strategy in mind games even as the items and units that I get deviate a little and might send me down little one offs that probably won't work out as well.


Current Strategy

I play the Ezreal legend. His augments give you extra items, his 2-1 augment is especially strong. On 2-1 I look to see if I have an incredible augment that I might take that isn't Ezreal and his items, but most games I take the items. I like playing aggressively early and playing for win streaks, so I slam items rather liberally.

I prefer to play around 4 cost carries, with Ionia (Yasuo/Kaisa), Azir/Lux, and Aphelios being the three comps that feel the most comfortable and viable to me. The first two of these are highly contested, sometimes I participate in the Kaisa lottery, or the Azir lottery even when contested, sometimes b/c my items are so perfect that I feel it's worth it, and sometimes because I just lack the creativity to see an alternative out.

That said, I also do like leaning in to some of the 3 cost rerolls that are usually less contested if I get the right spot for them. Noxus has two different rerolls, I like the Darius/Katarina one, and I really like 6 Invoker with Karma carry. Those really cannot be played if contested, so I need the right opener with the right items and to be able to scout and feel like I won't be contested.


So that describes 6 different comps, but in reality the first three are the ones I intend to play about 75% of the time.

Doing these exercises in my coaching session last set really helped me out a lot, so doing them every patch as the meta shifts I feel will remain very helpful.

[Radii]

Saturday:

Game 1: 6 Invoker game. I kept my outs for kaisa available but Invoker was uncontested. I easily top 4'd even without finding any 3 stars. Invoker is a comp that carries Karma, a 3 cost unit. These comps usually require you to 3* a few units to win. Since I didn't, I went out 4th, but that felt very solid. 4th: +10 LP - (P1 34 LP)

P1 = plat 1, tracking my current spot.

Game 2: Azir/Lux, I had a void opener and thought I was playing sorcs of some kind or going to try to transition it into Ionia/Kaisa, but I hit an Azir in stage 2 and ran with it. 3rd: +20 LP (P1 54 LP)

Game 3: 6 sorcs with lux carry. I couldn't 2* my Jarvan, critical front line unit, because someone else 3*'d it. I was in 3rd almost the entire match but everyone hung on with 5 health or less, I ran into the 3* jarvan and then the other top 2 player and went out 6th. Really bad luck there I think. 6th: -20 LP (P1 34 LP)


Lets make a note that 6 sorc/lux is not on my list of comps in my strategy. That doesn't mean I shouldn't or "can't" play it, but if I end up in a similar spot again I should consider if I really need to play something that I'm not practicing quite as much, or if I can find a way to pivot into something else that is something I'm working on more actively.


Game 4: Attempting to play Aphelios, took augments that gave me a TON of AD, and never hit aphelios. Played Zeri, who got nerfed into the ground. It's a frustrating 6th. 6th: -20 LP (P1 14 LP)


Definitely break time, not just b/c I'm not doing so hot, played some with a buddy on my alt so I need a reset regardless!


Game 5: Another sorcerer board like in game 3. I hit the Think Fast augment on 4-2 which allowed me to 2* my entire level 7 board, including critical 4 costs Jarvan and Lux. That let me coast into a top two, unfortunately even though I went level 9 and capped my board pretty well I couldn't beat the Ionia player. 2nd: +33 LP (P1 47 LP)

Game 6: Hit Kaisa 3, win game. 1st: +45 LP (P1 92 LP)


Game 7: Played Aphelios, was pretty dead set on that from the start, hit it decently well but couldn't 2* my front line and just fell apart. This comp needs a little more stall than the other top comps to do well and I couldn't provide it. 7th: -34 LP (P1 58 LP)



I'm a bit too tired to play my best so we call it here. I did gain some LP but it was minimal. A lot of days will be like this though, ups and downs ending up mostly where we started. I'm slightly annoyed that it's happening in Plat, but I'll get there.



For reference, my current rank of Plat 1, 58 LP is rank #14,675 in North America and is in the top 2.4% of players in the region. For the standards I want to hold for myself I want to see that improve ASAP, but it's not bad.

For additional reference, I ended the last set rank #3692, in the top 0.49% of players.

[Radii]

Sunday Pt 1

Game 1: Interesting game. The meta has settled where over half the players are playing Ionia (kaisa/yasuo usually) or Azir/Lux dual carry. I don't really enjoy these kinds of metas where a couple things are insanely contested. But this game I got a Noxus opener and ran with it, no one played Azir, only one person played Kaisa/Yasuo, a couple people played some unique stuff I havne't seen before. Good fun. 2nd: +31 LP (P1 89 LP)


-- This is now the 4th time I've gotten within striking distance of promoting to Diamond. At 89 LP a 4th won't do it, but a top 3 will.


Game 2: And for the 4th time, when I could promote to Diamond, I bot 4 instead, lol. Very difficult early game, I found an early Azir but it didn't stabalize me because I never made a front line. I had 1 nasus, 2 Jarvan, 1 Aatrox, 2 Shen, 1 Sej... all of the 4 cost front liners, I would play anything I 2*'d, who cares about getting the ideal synergies. But no, nothing. 7th: -34 (P1 55 LP)


Game 3: We hit a very solid Ionia comp, and piloted it to 3rd. It was frustrating in a sense, as I had outs to cap my board much higher with a Bel Veth and a duplicator, but couldn't find a second to get her 2*. With an ionia emblem she becomes incredibly strong in this comp, but we still put together a very solid top 4. 3rd: +19 LP (P1 74 LP)


If you're looking at the numbers, you note +31 for 2nd, -34 for 7th, only +19 for 3rd when that was 20 or 21 recently. The longer we linger without climbing, the more our MMR becomes damaged. In a perfect world we gain the same for 2nd as we lose for 7th, etc. But the reality is that never happens except for top players who get to Master very fast. For everyone else, this will get worse and worse. +40 for 1st, -60 for 8th is not uncommon.


At 74 LP we would need a top 2 to promote.


Game 4: We continue alternative top 4/bot 4, this one is a close 5th, but a 5th nonetheless, playing Azir/Lux with a non-standard front line. We hit well enough to not lose a ton of LP, but we needed a little closer to the ideal to top 4, this was overall a very strong lobby, so closer to perfection was required. 5th: -10 LP (P1 64 LP)

[Radii]

Strategy Review

We've played enough games since the hilarious Draven day that I want to check in on the team comps I'm playing. A few posts ago I outlined my strategy and listed the following team comps as the ones I planned to lean into:

Ionia (Yasuo/Kaisa), Azir/Lux, Aphelios, Noxus, 6 Invoker

So over my last 20 games, what have I actually played, and how am I doing with each:

Noxus: 5th, 6th, 2nd
Ionia: 1st, 5th, 7th, 1st, 3rd
Azir: 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 7th
Invoker: 2nd, 4th
Aphelios: 1st, 6th, 7th
-----------------
Sorcerer: 6th, 2nd
Zeri: 6th



Thoughts on this small sample size of data

-- I play Ionia the best and it's the strongest in the data, makes sense.
-- Aphelios feels like it sucks
-- Zeri does suck and I should rather surrender than try that again
-- Invokers don't do quite as well in the data but I really like them
-- Sorcerers could replace Aphelios as the other 4 cost comp, the problem with sorcerers is that Lux is the main carry there, and she's also used in the Azir comp which makes her too contested in many games. The point of the comps outside of Ionia and Azir is to find things that are not very contested, so that's why I don't add Sorcs to my list.


Updated comp thoughts:

Ionia/Azir - lean into them hard like everyone else, that's being done for a reason
Invoker - Only with a strong start for it but yes yes.
Noxus - Require a stronger start to be willing to play this, I think that is my failing with it.
Aphelios - I don't think I can drop this, it's viable, just suck less, I guess

Rek'sai - this is a bruiser reroll comp that uses similar items as Noxus and Yasuo in the Ionia build. I might need to consider it as well.


Overall though, I have played the two strongest comps in the meta 9 out of my last 20 games and I've done well with them. Many others are forcing their way into those two comps 15 out of 20 on average. At the very least if I have the option of uncontested Aphelios or contested Kaisa, I should choose contested Kaisa.


Lets gooo.

[Radii]

Sunday Part 2

Game 1: - It's Aphelios lol. And it's Aphelios with terrible items, but we had great early and mid game tempo with Akshan, the 3 cost in the same synergy (Deadeye), and it allowed us to cling to a top 4. 4th: +10 (P1 74 LP)


Game 2: - An Ionia game with a twist. Instead of Kaisa holding AP Items, I ran 4 Invoker and used the 3 cost Ionia, Karma, as the carry. She's the same carry in the 6 Invoker comp I like a lot. I got a very good Invoker augment and ran 6 Ionia/4 Invoker to great success. Once I 3* Karma I didn't lose another round and won with 69 Health (oh yea). 1st: +46 LP (D4 20 LP)



DIAMOND, FINALLY!!!!

Crossing over to Diamond jumps me up to rank #10,780 in North America, the top 1.75% of players. It looks like that top 3000 range, or top 0.5% range that I usually strive for is somewhere in low Diamond 1 or high Diamond 2, but honestly, the next goal is Master, lets get back to where we've been many times ASAP, and then try to reach new heights.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Eyeballing your gains/losses by game certainly feels like this has a similar "play fewer games in shorter bursts for leveling purposes" leveling meta that seems to be the way to go in Valorant (the example of this sort of leveling I'm most familiar with)

Your gains seem highest in your first and/or second matches, anything past three matches in a sitting seems to be where losses are more common.

Does my eyeball analysis match reality there? And whether it does or doesn't, do you have that internal sense of it?

That just feels so contrary to the "just one more turn/game" vibe that so many of us tend to praise in other games.

I think that's one of the reasons I've never gotten into anything structured like this, it just feels too contrary to have I've spent what is now decades playing games/wanting to play games.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Eyeballing your gains/losses by game certainly feels like this has a similar "play fewer games in shorter bursts for leveling purposes" leveling meta that seems to be the way to go in Valorant (the example of this sort of leveling I'm most familiar with)

Valorant is a Riot game as well, so Valorant/League/TFT likely all share very similar ranked systems, but I can't touch first person games so I have zero experience w/ Valorant to compare.

Your gains seem highest in your first and/or second matches, anything past three matches in a sitting seems to be where losses are more common.

That's very interesting. It's not something I've tried to analyze myself. I don't "warm up" in a non ranked game, so my first game of a day I would assume can be highly variable, and then I'd settle in for the second game.

Past that, what you're seeing makes sense, because this is a game that rewards high concentration/focus. There is something I could be doing in the game and something I could be thinking about every single second. And that's mentally exhausting.

I probably haven't been noting it much, but I am being very intentional about trying to be as close to 100% as possible for every game on my main. It is very tempting/possible to go on autopilot, to stop scouting, to stop thinking about your next turn, your positioning, etc, and it will make a real difference.

Does my eyeball analysis match reality there? And whether it does or doesn't, do you have that internal sense of it?

So with the above, I can spot when I'm far enough off my game that it's time to stop. But perhaps there is a downturn where I don't fully recognize that it's starting to happen.

I think that's one of the reasons I've never gotten into anything structured like this, it just feels too contrary to have I've spent what is now decades playing games/wanting to play games.

You could 100% play this game in this manner. I reached a point where I got very good at the game by just doing what's fun for me, play a ton of games and watch streamers play too while I work or when I'm not playing. But I clearly hit a skill cap where if I want to improve past that, I have to take it more seriously and be intentional about how I try to keep getting better (which is, of course, the point of this dynasty).

But most players don't do what I'm doing. They just play a ton, maybe they read reddit or have a favorite youtuber that gives advice or has tier lists or whatever, and that's it, and for most people that's enough. I'm just obsessing

[Radii]

Something else to point out is that I usually make a note of when I take a long break, but I tend to take a break of some sort between every game. In every game like this I find that if I immediately queue into the next game my play nearly immediately suffers. I also gamify cleaning and stuff around this. So today for example I would play a game, go spend 5 minutes cleaning, play the next game, etc.

Sometimes I don't feel like doing that so I just turn on a streamer's VOD and watch him play one stage while I sort of reset and get ready for the next game. That's definitely a me thing though, and it works off wins and losses. If I won and my game was easy I might autopilot a little easier in the next one, and if I lost any frustration or tilt will go into the next one.



The last thing I'll point out is that I went from Plat 2 to Diamond 3 in 3 days. That's quite a bit, maybe I'll keep flying up to Diamond 2 or Diamond 1, that'd be nice, but historically in this game I get to high diamond I get STUCK, sometimes for 2 or 3 patches (4-6 weeks) before breaking through to Master. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but yeah, we're getting to the place where I might start to have horrible losing days, climb to Diamond 1, fall all the way to Diamond 4, etc. So that'll be fun.

[Radii]

I played 1 addtional game yesterday after hitting diamond and got another 1st, whee. I'm also on vacation all this week.

Monday


Game 1: We get a very strong void augment on 2-1 with a void opener, I'm able to ride that to an easy top 4, playing rek'sai and kaisa dual carry, but this needs Reksai 3 to seal the deal, and I did not get that. 4th: +10 (D4 75 LP)


Game 2: I have a strong opener with Shadow Isle and Viego 2 with good items. Think Fast on 3-2 was maybe a questionable decision but I was able to use it to find a Lux board that led me into Sorcerer (still not on "the list" of preferred comps, but maybe it really should be). This is another game where I was strong until stage 4 and just bled out, but it was good enough for a top 4. 4th: +10 (D4 85 LP)


Game 3: So there is a strat with the Aurelion Sol legend, which gives augments that accellerate XP, to full open fort (play zero units) in stage 2, this causes you to take max damage, but you get first pick on carousel for items, and you get a 5 loss strea for maximum gold. Well, we had two people doing that. A 3rd wanted to hard force zed from a loss streak and decided to do the same. So for all of stage 2, THREE people played no units. I don't like that strategy at all in the first place, but here it was hilarious. It allowed me to play Zeri, who is pretty much trash right now, but I won streaked so hard that and three people were basically not in the game, it gave me a easy top 2. 2nd: +32 (D3 17 LP)


-- That second place promotes me to Diamond 3. At present Diamond 3 - 17 LP puts me at rank #6,480 in the top 1.03% of players in North America

After a slow start we're quickly getting up to where we expected to be.


Game 4: Triple prismatic game, which is always highly accellerated and feels like playing the lottery with your LP at times. I took Void Crown which committed me to Reksai and trying to get 8 Void which is a huge end game power spike but difficult to reach. I was strong early and mid, I eventually hit 8 void and 3* Reksai but got smashed by a totally standard Azir board (well, with it's own power from their prismatics). We'll take 4th. 4th: +10 (D3 27 LP)


------------------

long break here to play some on my alt w/ a friend and do some other stuff

------------------


Game 5: It's another Karma Reroll game. Honestly I have so much success with this any time the opportunity presents itself this is my preferred comp. I coasted into a top 4, but I was a little slow in hitting Karma 3. I think this was a mistake where I could have rolled it down to try to hit a couple rounds before I did, and it would have made a difference. Still a solid result. 3rd: +17 (D3 44 LP)


Game 6: We end up with Kalista early and try to play the normal Ionia/Challenger thing, but we get a lot of Kalistas that take too long to 3*, Yasuo and Kaisa don't come for too long and it's a 6th. 6th: -24 (D3 20 LP)


+17 for 3rd but -24 for 6th is a bad sign, maybe some folks are duo'd in my game and there are more lower ranked people for some reason, but this could start to become a slog the rest of the way to master real fast. It already does become rough b/c I get closer to my skill cap so there's more variance, but when you're losing more for losses than you gain for wins by a large amount, it's hard.


Game 7: Well I haven't placed 8th in quite some time, so at least there's that. I had a decent Invoker opener, but I was contested. I was keeping an eye on the guy contesting but he wasn't going to budge. I hit an early Azir and tried to transition into the Azir/Lux comp, but I lost every round in stage 4 and just followed through to die in early stage 5. 8th: -20 (D3 0 LP)



Despite games 6 and 7 I climbed a bit today. I'm probably done for the night (though we'll see, my sleep gets messed up on vacations and I might stay up late). My next coaching session is tomorrow, so that's going to be exciting.

[Radii]

Coaching Session

2 hour coaching session, we talked some theory and did an exercise and then I played two games while screen sharing. In our first coaching session he had me rank all of the 1 and 2 cost units in a tier list and we discussed it. The first coaching session was in the last set, so I've done that exercise on my own in the new set with the new units. This exercise was to do the same thing but with items, specifically discussing which items you would slam early game. I did that ranking, then he asked me to justify each item that is in S or A tier as to why it's there, and then we talked about his perception of items, and he shared his own tier list. This helped a lot, item slams can feel complicated and if you make bad items it can make your late game a lot harder as you try to figure out what units fit. I've been adjusting item priority based on reading reddit and watching streams already, but this really helped accelerate that. My perception of items was very close to his on most of them, but there were a few outliers where I highly overvalued or undervalued a couple of them.


Game 1

For this game the coach didn't comment much. I talked through my thought process and he made notes. After the game we reviewed the notes. I did ask him for answers once or twice. It was a pretty big highroll game where I got 8 challenger (6 is usually the max, got two augments to give me the ability to add more), I misplayed a few rounds pretty badly, but recovered and got a 1st.

Afterwards we talked about the notes he made on the game. The big notes is that I was selling the wrong units to make econ in the early and mid game, holding on to a pair but the 2* wasn't good enough, and selling the perfect 2 cost unit to add in at level 5 or 6. I played Yasuo/Kaisa and I learned a ton about itemizing and positioning Yasuo that I think will immediately help in my own games.


Game 2

Game 2 was also yasuo/kaisa, I ended up with a challenger emblem and an ionia emblem that allowed me to play 6 of each (it's usually 6 ionia/4 challenger). Game 2 there was a lot more backseating. I indicated that my biggest struggle right now is playing stage 4/level 7. There are two dominant comps, people roll earlier than in most other metas, and it's just very complicated to navigate. So in this game my spot on level 7 ended up being extra difficult, and he walked me through it with some suggestions in real time. Backseating even in a 1 on 1 setting can feel awkward, there's not enough time, but in this case it really helped me see some things that I wasn't doing and to see his thought process on how to navigate what is currently the most difficult part of the game.



This was super good. For those curious, I paid $300 for 4 hours of coaching between two sessions, the first back in May during set 8.5 and the second now. We'll see how much benefit I see from it. I've got the disposable income and the desire though so it feels very much worth it just for the insight and learning experience.


Tuesday Starting Rank

With the first and second back to back I'm now at Diamond 3 - 74 LP. From here some things click and I climb pretty fast, or I get confused trying to implement new things and run it down while I figure out how to do things better on my own. Lets see!

[Izulde]

If he hadn't been there to talk you through the second game, what do you think you would have finished in that one?

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Izulde

If he hadn't been there to talk you through the second game, what do you think you would have finished in that one?

4th or 5th most likely, my early game was strong so it wasn't a disaster, but he was able to keep my board as strong as possible when I wasn't hitting exactly what I needed in ways that I would not have spotted on my own. In a meta where there are two dominant end game comps, there are tons of situations where you aren't hitting exactly what you need, because everyone else wants the same stuff you do, and you have to figure out how to make the best of it. This isn't exactly uncommon, but higher rated players will spot more outs and be more creative than the rest of us plebs, for sure.

[Radii]

Tuesday


Game 1: Played Yasuo/Kaisa again from a pretty strong opener, but this was a triple prismatic game and while I hit a solid board, my level 7 spot was difficult while some other folks were highrolling out of their minds. In most games this would top 4, maybe even go 3rd, but here it's a 5th. I think I made some better early game decisions based on the coaching session, but level 7 is just HARD, and this one was extra tough. 5th: -10 (D3 64 LP)


Game 2: More Yasuo/Kaisa, I was able to recognize that I was strong enough at level 7 to stop rolling and that helped me go 8 with enough gold to roll and eventually to hit 9. This game may have been a 3rd or 4th previously but was a 2nd to a capped out warwick augment. Feels good! 2nd: +32 (D3 96 LP)


A top 4 in my next game would promote to D2.


Game 3: Another triple prismatic lobby. I built another extremely strong kaisa/yasuo board... except that my kaisa items were not ideal. I got Ahri but not Ahri 2, and all the way at the end of stage 5 there were still 7 people alive. 6 of us were at one life, and my kaisa got zephyr'd which caused me to go 7th. Extremely unfortunate. I think I played is very well, overall. Other than not dodging that one zephyr. 7th: -40 (D3 56 LP)


Triple Prismatic lobbies are always wild, extrodinarily high variance, and 2 of these 3 games have been triple prismatic. I think I'm playing really well and implementing new things pretty nicely. Hopefully we don't get that anymore.



-- I ended up not feeling great in the evening and didn't play any more games, unfortunate, b/c I was excited to play a ton after the coaching.

[Radii]

Wednesday

We've got time for 1 game before a doctor's appointment.

Game 1: An absolute train wreck of a game. We slam a magic shred item in Ionic Spark and get no more magic damage items the rest of the game. We're decently healthy early which means we pick very late, and only get tank items. We get very unlucky and only get tank items off both Krugs and Wolves. We simply have no damage. We could make it work if we get a good rolldown on 4-1 at level 7 (meaning we hit both kaisa and yasuo), but instead, we 2* Aphelios and find 2 Urgots. Aphelios, if you remember, is a comp I've come close to making "off limits" or at least removing from my basic strategy list b/c I just never have good results with it. But it's what I hit so I chose to try to make the best of it. I got 6th, which honestly, may have been the best I could have done. This would be an interesting one to review if I was recording to see if I could have done better. 6th: -24 (D3 32 LP)


Speaking of recording, I haven't recorded a game to review in awhile. I should do that this afternoon if I'm up for games after my appointment. Referencing the mental health thread in the general forum, this is my Esketamine treatment coming up today, and sometimes I'm fine after them, sometimes I'm kind of a zombie the rest of the day.

[Radii]

Wednesday Part 2

I'm recording my first game to VOD review later.

Game 1: Another tough early game, with one early game decision that might have really made this one difficult. I ended up getting two of the same 3 cost - Jayce - very early and held on to them, never 2*'ing him and he's not great just 1*. Probably should have ditched him, it made my stage 2 shit. I got lucky rolling on stage 4 and hit a deadeye board with Akshan (instead of the Aphelios that I struggle with). I thought I had a sure top 4 but a couple of the guys below me got real strong and I went out 5th. 5th: -10 (D3 22 LP)


Game 2: I want to play Akshan, I've made tons of AD items to play him (plus Aphelios or Urgot), but when 4-1 comes, what happens? I instead just get a ton of copies of the most contested unit in the game, Kaisa. So we transition to Kaisa/Yasuo. I have two generic items good for Kaisa and Yasuo uses AD, so it's fine, but the rest of the comp is crazy contested and I never 2* Yasuo or Shen. I do luck into a top 4, as 3 of us die on the same round going 4/5/6, but I win the tiebreaker to go 4th. 4th: +10 (D3 32 LP)


Game 3: I had a void/sorc opener that leads itself to Azir/Lux pretty naturally. I hit one azir, one lux, two others were playing the same comp, and I never hit another of either one. I thought I was stable and went 8 (an attempt to play more aggressively, more for a top 2 than just top 4), which maybe was a mistake, or maybe I just got unlucky. Either way, it's a 6th. 6th: -23 LP (D3 9 LP)


Game 4: This is my 3rd triple prismatic game in my last 7 since coaching. I've bot 4'd every one of them. I hate them so much. I think I played my sorcerer line decently, and honestly it was one round away from being 3rd, but also one round away from being 7th. So falling 5th is probably not something to complain about. 5th: -10 LP (D3 0 LP)



I'm looking forward to reviewing the game I recorded. I like to wait a little while so any thoughts i had during the game have faded a bit, so I'll do that later tonight or first thing tomorrow. This could easily just be random variance, it could be a bit of an adjustment since I climbed a number of divisions quickly, it could be trying to play differently after coaching and not implementing things correctly yet.

[Radii]

VOD Review/Introduction Video

I decided to record the VOD review of my game yesterday. For the first ~12 minutes or so I also gave an overview of what the UI looks like, the terminology I use in posts, trying to cover some basics of the game in general. The full video is about 45 minutes, I wouldn't expect anyone to watch that. But if you're interested in learning more about the game the first 10 minutes might be useful. I watch a lot of content at 1.5x so hopefully that would be viable here too.




Competitive League

I participate in a competitive league run by an organization called Aegis. They run three leagues, one for Challenger players, one for Master/GM players, and one for Diamond players. This is based no where you finish in previous sets, so I participate in the Master/GM league.

League Format

For the next 4 weeks, every Saturday at 2pm I'll play 4 games for the league. 1st earns 8 points, 2nd earns 7, 3rd earns 6, down to 1 point for 8th. I don't think the number of players have been announced yet, it's based on signups, etc. Usually there are 40 or 48 players in the league. At the end of 4 weeks the top X (usually 16 or 24) advance to a 2 week playoffs where they have a playoff format to determine the champion.

This league has a $20 entry fee and prize money is given to the final 8. I'm going to be on the low end of this group of players, since it contains Grandmaster players, so I don't expect to do great, but the competition is really good and the league is run well, so it's a very good learning experience for me. Back in set 7.5 I finished 9th, but back then Master was it's own separate league from GM so I was on the high end of my league.

Once it's all put together I can share links to the standings and all of that.

[Radii]

That video is currently only available in 360p, I assume the better options become available as it finishes processing so you may want to wait on that.

EDIT: It says it'll take 80 minutes to finish processing for HD, I'll update once that's done.

[Radii]

HD resolutions are now available on that video, have at it!

[Radii]

Thursday

There were no hugely obvious lessons in that VOD, but still it's always beneficial to watch my games back. I chatted with a buddy of mine last night and I think my biggest problem is trying to greed for 7 and 8 both without rolling enough.

Lets try a new format here. Too cluttered? Useful?

Game 1:

I hit an early Azir after slamming one of his best items (Rageblade) very early, the game pretty much played itself after that, I hit well, and a strategist heart gave me 5 strategist which is very strong (4 is usually what you end up with, 5 is a stretch trait). I was on my way to a win I believe until my opponent in the final 2 hit Kaisa 3. I was one away from Lux 3 myself, alas.

Composition:

5 Strategist/3 Shurmia/3 Demacia

Azir/Lux carry, Jarvan/Nasus tank, Swain/Garen/Taliyah/Teemo provide utility/traits
5 cost Ksante added at level 9

Augments:

2-1: Buried Treasure 2 (Gold) - gives gold and item components
3-2: Long Distance Pals 2 (Gold) - the units furthest from each other share some stats, making them stronger
4-2: Strategist Heart (Gold) - Gain credit for having +1 Strategist

Key Decision: Taking Long Distance Pals on 3-2 instead of taking the default legend augment that gives more items helped my combat strength in stage 3 and let me win streak.

Game 1 Result

2nd: +32 LP (Current: D3 32 LP)


I'm still planning on writing up all games of the same session in one post, I just wanted to see what this looked like.

[Radii]

Thursday Cont


Game 2:

I had an early Shurima opener with a 1 cost that I like a lot, Cassiopeia. That leads itself pretty naturally into Azir. It's not my preferred opener, Ionia is way stronger, but it's what i hit and I did well with it. I got a 2* Lux on my level 7 rolldown, eventually got the full comp together and managed a 3rd place. There were two other Azir players and Nasus/Azir especially were hard to find, but a strong early game allowed me to bleed health slowly and still place well.

Composition:

Azir/Lux carries, Jarvan/Nasus tank, Swain/Teemo/Taliyah/Garen utility/traits

Portal & Augments:

Portal: Yordle Pordles (twice per stage, get a free high tier champion - "high tier" relative to current stage)
2-1: Buried Treasure 2 (Gold): Gain gold and item components over the next few stages
3-2: Big Grab Bag (Gold): Item Components + Gold + Reforger
4-2: Magic Wand (Gold): Gain Rod, all units gain AP.

Key Decision: Taking items instead of combat on 3-2, I was getting lots of tank items and felt the need for a chance at more dmg items, plus the gold to accellerate tempo - I was in 2nd above 90 health at that point. Ancient Archives on 3-2 was a bit unlucky. I got an Ionia spat and Invoker spat. Challenger would have given me a good chance to win. Ionia gives me a line of 6 ionia/6 challenger which can be very strong too. Ionia is crazy contested so we try to ride 6 ionia/4 challenger with 1* yasuo/2* kalista to level 8.

Result:

3rd: +18 LP (Current: D3 50 LP)


-------------

Game 3:

A Kalista (3 cost challenger who is very strong and leads perfectly into the ionia comp) out of my first orb makes the early game easy. The Challenger Emblem on 2-1 makes it even easier. Ancient Archives and another Spatula off Carousel make this a rather unique composition. If I got 8 challenger I think I win, and what I did make was very very strong, but it fell short of two other incredibly strong boards.

Composition:

6 Ionia/6 Challenger/2 Invoker/2 Juggernaut

Yasuo/Kalista (with Ionia Spat)/Kaisa/Bel'Veth (Ionia Spat) for damage
Shen (Challenger Spat) "tank"
Warwick/Sett/Irelia provide some stall and fill out traits

Portal & Augments:

Portal: Shuriman Bazaar (gain 2 components instead of one every carousel)
2-1: Challenger Emblem (Gold) - gain an item that you put on a unit to make it a Challenger.
3-2: Ancient Archives 2 (Prismatic) - Gain two Tome of Traits - you open these and choose from an emblem. Trying to use this to get 8 Challenger unlocked.
4-2: You Have My Bow (Gold) - gives a bow, and gives bonus attack speed to your whole team.

Key Decision: Judging my board strength on 4-2 to be strong enough to go 8. I had 6 Ionia/4 Challenger, 2* Kalista with Ionia Spat which is very strong, 1* Yasuo/1* Shen. If my judgement is wrong I'm dead. If I'm right I can maybe play for first.

Result
3rd: +19 LP (Current: D3 69 LP)


Post Game Note: I think my "key decision" was high risk/reward, and correct in hindsight. I survived well enough to go level 8 and roll, barely, and I hit Yasuo 2 which got me to start winning. It was very close to backfiring though. Seeing how strong everyone else got if I stayed 7 to roll more I likely cannot top 4 in this lobby.

------------------------

Game 4:

Dravens Axe opener leads me towards heavy AD comps and pretty early on it's obvious I'm angling for Aphelios. My early game isn't great so my health is lower than I'd like it to be through stage 3. We hit a relatively uncontested Aphelios and use the extra gold generated by Draven's Axe to roll for Aphelios 3, hitting on 6-1 and easily winning the lobby.


Composition:

Aphelios 3 carry
Urgot/Akshan/Ashe secondary dmg
Shen/Sejuani tank
Taric/Lissandra traits


Portal & Augments:

Portal: God-Willow's Grove (you can use a unit on your bench to provide synergy to your team)
2-1: All That Shimmers (Gold) (choose from a special shimmerscale item, these are gold generators)
3-2: Big Grab Bag (Gold) (item components, didn't like any combat choices)
4-2: Contagion (Gold) - causes the highest health enemy to take 20% more damage. Every 5 seconds "infect" 2 more units to take increased damage.

Key Decision: 2-1 augment and the item from my shimmerscale choices drives the entire game. Most of my 2-1 Augment choices are generic and don't force me down a specific path. This one didn't force Aphelios but it locked me out of Azir.

Result
1st: 43 LP (Current: D2 12 LP)



A spectacular 4 game stretch gets me promoted to Diamond 2 and we'll take a break there.

[Radii]

E-Sports

Set 9 Aegis Marauder League - Google Sheets

Above is the link to the standings and schedule for the League i'm participating in. Aegis is the name of the org that runs it, Marauder is the name they give to the Master/Grandmaster league (I think i've mentioned, but they also have leagues for diamond and challenger players above and below us).

There are 48 participants. So I'm guaranteed 3 weeks of play. Even though the 4th week is still the "regular season", they'll eliminate the bottom 8 players. They try to not have you play when there's nothing to play for, some people won't show up if they're in that spot, etc. My name in game is Rhiow. The current standings even with no games played are sorted by current rank. At Diamond 2 I'm right in the middle of the pack. The folks at the top are currently Master.

This league gets referred to as AML. I'm excited for the first week of games tomorrow!


Riot Competitive

The first major event is this weekend for the top players in the scene. There was a snapshot of the ranked ladder at a certain point last weekend. Players ranked 33-160 will compete this weekend (Saturday and Sunday), with 32 of them advancing to next weekend, where they will meet up with the players ranked 1-32 - who basically got a bye into the second weekend. The top 4 players will quality for the Set 9.0 finale, everyone else will earn qualifier points.



Mid-Set Explanation

Set 9.0 runs for 3 months, then is replaced by set 9.5. The theme of the set (in this case, portals and legends) remain, many of the traits and units will remain, but about 1/3 to 1/2 will be replaced. This is the way TFT has operated since about set 3. This is the last time we'll do this. For Set 10 and onward it's just one large set. But here, we have 9.0 for a couple more months then 9.5. From an e-sports perspective, the World Championship takes place on 9.5. The final tournament of 9.0 is called the "Mid Set Finale" where the winner gets an automatic placement into worlds. For 9.0, there are two major tournaments leading up to the mid-set finale.


I follow this stuff pretty closely and will give small updates to that. And it does kind of lay out the goals that I have for this dynasty. The stretch stretch stretch goal would be to get good enough to try to get into that top 160 to play in major events. Obviously I'm an extremely long ways off from that which is why I have a number of other goals in between to reach for.

[Brian Swartz]

I have basically zero knowledge of these kinds of games, so I'm going to use this dynasty as an opportunity to learn as you go through your journey.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I have basically zero knowledge of these kinds of games, so I'm going to use this dynasty as an opportunity to learn as you go through your journey.

Awesome! Feel free to ask any questions. Figuring out how to present a game to an audience that doesn't play it is an interesting challenge.

The genre started with a game called Dota AutoChess. Auto-Battler is the term I hear used most but some will still call the whole genre autochess, and then Riot Games does what they do best - take the concept and apply their IP. There were a few other games before TFT but I think they flamed out.

[Radii]

Friday

My push up to Diamond 2 has me rank #5,194 in North America out of ~671,000 players that have played ranked in the region, good to move into the top 1% fo the first time at 0.7739% of the player base.

Game 1:

Void/Sorc start, but it's a rough one, we have pairs for all of our units but 2* none of them. We're at 48 gold going into Krugs, but 78 health. I thought we were about to all in on Azir/Lux but on 3-2 we hit Void Crown and decide to play for Baron (the bonus unit that comes with 8 void that is extremely strong). We go 8 on 5-1 with only 17 health left and highroll a Bel'Veth (hitting a specific 5 cost at level 8 is not reliable), saving the game. I win streak for quite some time with 17 health but eventually lose to a capped Azir board, a 2* Heimer was able to deal with Baron.

Composition:

8 void/2 bastion/2 bruiser/2 sorcerer

Rek'Sai 3/Kaisa/Bel'Veth/Baron Nashor for damage
Shen holds void emblem and tanks
Cho'Gath/Vel'Koz/Malzahar/Kassadin for traits
K'sante in at level 9

Portal & Augments:

Portal: Glasc Industries (gain gold for completeing items)
2-1: Buried Treasures II (Gold) - Items and gold for the next few rounds
3-2: Void Crown (Prismatic) - gives me a void emblem which allows me to go for the 8 void chase trait
4-2: Contagion (Gold) - Infect the highest health enemy causing them to take more damage, infect more every 5 seconds.

Key Decision: Choosing the Void Emblem on 3-2 which committed me to a specific line.

Result
2nd: +31 (Current: D2 43 LP)



Post-Game: The safe play would have been to do something different on 3-2, not take the Void Emblem but take items and gold. I had a good line into Azir going, but it's contested so we weren't guarenteed, but it would top 4 much more frequently. The Void Emblem was the "1st or 8th" play - the way TFT players refer to high risk/high reward. If I hit Bel'Veth to get Baron I top 2 with a good chance to win. If I don't hit, I very likely cannot top 4 at all. As one of my favorite streamers used to say when asked what his plan was in a certain situation: "Just hit!"

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Game 2:

We have a void/sorc start similar to game 1, but with a 2* Malzahar and 2* Renekton right away for a lot more early game strength. My stage 3 is terrible, and my committment to Ionia with my 3-2 augment was a mistake/mis-read. We crash and burn to a 6th.

Composition:

6 Ionia/2 Challenger/2 Invoker

Kaisa/Yasuo carry:Shen tanks:Karma/Taric/Sett/Zed/Ahri for traits

Portal & Augments:

Portal: Ecliptic Vaults - gain gold every time you select an augment
2-1: Buried Treasures 1 (Silver) - gain gold and an item component the next two rounds
3-2: Gargantuan Resolve (Gold) - Gain a Titans Resolve (good yasuo item), it's stronger than normal
4-2: Social Distancing 2 (Gold) - Units not next to another unit at the start of the fight gain bonus stats

Key Decision: 3-2 Augment, Gargantuan Resolve instead of the standard items + gold. I scouted and felt there were going to be a lot more Azir and Sorcerer players and less Kaisa/Yasuo players and decided to trust that read. The Titans is great on Yasuo but kind of forces me in that direction.

Result
6th: -25 LP (Current: D2 18 LP)


Post-Game Note: There ended up being 3 kaisa players and only 1 Azir. There were early items that do far better on Azir, but the players I expected to transition to Azir did not. I never 2*'d Yasuo or Shen, two of the 3 key units to get this comp to succeed.

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Game 3:

No big win streak in stage 2 but we're pretty strong with a 3 Ionia opener. We do get on a nice 5+ round win streak during stage 3 but some unlucky matchmaking has it ended on the last round of stage 3. We hit our comp during stage 4 and even 2* Shen, but need to hit Kaisa and Yasuo 2* still. We have the health (55) to sustain a couple losses. We take two real bad losses on 5-1/5-2, hit Kaisa 2 on 5-3, and hit Yasuo on carousel, and expect to top 4 after that. I do top 4, but just that.

Composition:

6 Ionia/4 Challenger/2 Invoker/2 Juggernaut

Kaisa/Yasuo (Damage)
Shen/Sett (Tank, since Sett had tank items)
Karma/Warwick/Irelia/Jhin (Traits)

Portal & Augments:

Portal: The University - first augment will be prismatic
2-1: Buried Treasures 3 (Prismatic) - a component and gold for the next 5 rounds
3-2: Sentinel's Spirit (Gold) - makes the ionia trait bonuses stronger
4-2: You Have My Sword (Gold) - Gain a sword, team does more damage

Key Decision: 3-2 Sentinel's Spirit - this hard commits us to Ionia, specifically 6 Ionia, not 3 ionia with more challengers. Unlike last game where taking an augment that committed me felt risky, this is a much, much stronger augment and with an Ionia start is automatic.

Result
4th: +10 LP (Current: D2 28 LP)


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Game 4:

We get a Draven's Axe opener which is going to generate a ton of gold for us. We have no damage but a strong front line, which is perfect for this item. We generate 20 gold in stage 2 but are super weak. We push 7 early and have 4 deadeye with an early Aphelios but we're getting trashed. We hope that Aphelios 2 on 4-1 saves us, we're at 43 health at that point. 4 of us are low at the end of stage 4. We're competitive but never quite stable enough to climb into the top 4.

Composition:

4 Deadeye/3 Freljord/2 Targon/2 Bastion/2 Invoker

Aphelios/Urgot (Damage)
Shen/Sejuani (Tank)
Akshan/Lissandra/Taric/Ashe (Traits)

Portal & Augments:

Portal: Ornn's Forge - Gain an Ornn item on 2-5 or 3-5
2-1: All That Shimmers (Gold) - Gain a shimmerscale item
3-2: Unified Resistance (Silver) - 3 or more units in the same row get extra armor and MR
4-2: Long Distance Pals 2 (Gold) - the two units furthest from each other gain stats (Aphelios and Shen here)

Key Decision: 2-1 All That Shimmers. I got 50 extra gold out of it, the last time I took this I got 1st with Aphelios 3*. But this game I wasn't strong early game, so I was having to roll more early and just never quite got there.

Result
6th: -24 LP (Current: D2 4 LP)


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Game 5:

We have a 3 noxus opener, something that could be good to reroll Darius and Katarina if we can get some wins early and if it's uncontested. This works out perfectly as we lose our first round but win the next 11. On 4-3 we have 40 more health than 2nd place. At this point we will start to lose badly until we hit Darius 3/Kat 3. It's bad, we lose our next 4 and are no longer in 1st despite our huge lead. And yep, the nightmare happens. We cannot 3* darius or katarina, lose our last 7 straight and go out 6th despite being at 98 health on 4-3. I think it's the right decision still. No one else was contesting me, my odds to hit were much higher than this. Entirely unlucky? I'm not sure on that. But I think we top 4 from this spot more often than not.

Composition:

6 Noxus/3 Shurima/2 Strategist/2 Juggernaut

Darius/Katarina (Damage)
Nasus (tank)
Azir (secondary damage, sorta, with Noxus Spat)
Kled/Swain/Cassiopeia (traits)


Portal & Augments:

Portal: Petricite Forest - All units are larger and have 150 bonus health
2-1: Buried Treasures 1 (Silver) - item/component the next 2 rounds
3-2: Total Domination (Gold) - Noxus Units Execute enemies at low health.
4-2: Gifts From the Fallen (Gold) - Gain stats (4% of a bunch of things). Every time one of your units dies in a round gain that amount of stats again (the last men standing are very strong)

Key Decision: 3-2 Total Domination Augment. This 100% commits me to Noxus reroll. I'm on a 6 round win streak which is critical for Noxus (Noxus gains stats for each unique opponent I've killed, so getting wins early is key), so this feels like a no brainer.

Result
6th: -4 LP (Current: D2 0 LP)



The way the ranked system works is that you always fall to 0 LP first, and then if you bot 4 again, you demote. That's why I only lost 4 LP for a 6th.


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Game 6:

Shadow Isle/Rogue opener with Viego, who is a strong item holder. Likely Azir angle. We hit an early Azir (2-7) and a Swain for 2 Strategist and start to slowly transition our board in that direction. And sometimes, 4 other people decide to play the same comp. I do hit a 2* Azir and 2* Nasus during stage 4, but Lux/Jarvan are only 1*. But there's so many copies out, when I hit level 8 on stage 5 I hope to just survive a bit while waiting for a couple people to die so my odds of finding my units go up. This comp runs 4 4 costs, and I only 2* 3 of them. I think all four are really mandatory.

Composition:

3 Shurima/3 Demacia/3 Strategist/2 Sorcerer/2 Multicaster

Azir/Lux (Damage)|Nasus/Jarvan (Tank)|Swain/Taliyah/Sona/Ryze (traits)

Portal & Augments:

Portal: Immortal Bastion - place a flag on the board, every unit next to it gains bonuses. Do not like.
2-1: Buried Treasures 2 (Gold) - Items/Gold
3-2: Cybernetic Leech 1 (Silver) - Units with items gain omnivamp (heal off all damage)
4-2: Know Your Enemy (Gold) - Deal increased damage after killing your first unit

Key Decision: Honestly hard to say. Most likely decisions around when and how much to roll. But 5 way contested there was only so much I could do. I did lose badly during stage 3 which set me up to be one of the bot 4 if I didn't hit harder than others. Perhaps I should have been able to see that coming and rolled on 6 a little bit.

Result
5th: Demote to Diamond 3 75 LP


Demoting is fine, there's a lot of ups and downs here. The Noxus game was particularly rough, and while I think I played the last two games well, I do note as Jon pointed out that my last couple games were my worst ones.

That 6 game stretch is worth a break I believe.