January has moved fast for Teamfight Tactics, especially in the competitive scene where the Runeterra Reforged World Champion, Title, got crowned again as a champion in the TOC 7: Mid-Set Invitational.
Aside of the esports hype, we are already at the second patch of the year for Remix Rumble, although a small one compared to Patch 14.1.
However, don't be fooled, these changes are gearing up towards next month’s regional finals with buffs to 4-cost units like Ezreal (who already does well in a few setups), nerfs to the Executioners stars, and the rework to two Pentakill units that will shake things up these upcoming weeks.
Apart from these unit adjustments, there will be important System changes such as the removal of certain Headliner rules that will impact the higher elos. There’s still tons of play time before Set 10 wraps up so without further ado, let’s jump straight into the changes.
Summary of the changes. Source by Riot Games
System Changes
Changes to Portals (the warping ones), Headliner rules, and Quality of Life (QoL) improvements to the game.
Portal changes - Silver Symphony & Decrescendo have been removed. And, Cruel Pact can no longer be offered in the Radiant Blessing Portal.
Streaks - Scoreboard notifications now display at 5 and 8 wins and show the correct streak length.
Recommended Items tooltip updates. According to Mortdog, these changes are to aid new players in their journey and hopefully help them improve at the game.
AD Carry
- Edge of Night → Red Buff
AD Caster
- Edge of Night → Red Buff
- Bloodthirster → Hand of Justice
Headliner Rules change (is bigger than it seems)
- Fixed an issue that blocked units that shared a trait with previously offered Headliners
- Removed the ability to affect Headliner distribution by buying a Headliner
You can check the post from r/CompetitiveTFT that goes well more in-depth explaining the reasoning behind these changes. In summary, it will simplify the hidden rules for Headliners.
Why so? Well, there was a competitive advantage with specific Headliner rules which allowed players to improve odds by buying/selling Headliners. This not only caused confusion for players, but, it allowed odd optimizations that are unhealthy for the game.
Overall, these Headliner changes should make the game more fair and close the gap between the casuals and competitive TFT players.
Traits
Moving over to the fun part. Disco was certainly one of the best comps in Patch 14.1 and a staple not only on ranked lobbies across every region but in competitive as well. That’s why it is no surprise that once Patch 14.2 came, the groove needed to be tuned down a lil bit.
- Attack Speed Per Tick: 5/10/15/20% →5/8/12/20%
- Healing Per Tick: 2/3/3/5%→2/3/3/4%
These nerfs should be decreasing their performance, mainly the attack speed one. Besides that, everything should be equal for the Disco lovers… except for the nerf to the stellar unit of the comp (check the 4-cost section).
In terms of buffs, the biggest one is to Punk. The changes to the Base Health and AD% should make Punk far more rewarding to play. The reasoning for these buffs, according to Mortdog, was to make the Punk lines more viable in high elo.
Lastly, buffs to Mosher, only 10% in 6 Mosher.
Unit changes
1-Cost
The meta of 1-cost was grooving too much with the likes of Nami and Taric, or dominated by the True Damage Yasuo (who has his own reroll comp). Despite these units not being nerfed too much or at all, the buffed 1-cost coming in this patch will put up a fight against them.
First, Jinx and Kennen are the winners of the patch, especially the Punk maniatic unit.
- Jinx
- 45 → 50 AD
- Kennen
- 650 → 700 HP
This Jinx buff along with the Punk trait one should boost the Punk reroll comp's place in the tier lists, we may witness a shift in meta with this one. Kennen buffs instead should make him a more attractive unit to look for in the early game.
One tank unit that is getting nerfed is K’Sante. He was too good for being a Heartsteel Unit, according to Mortdog in his 14.2 Patch Rundown.
Now moving over to the small list of changes. The more significant ones are the nerfs to Yasuo (kind of big), and the buffs to Corki. Below is the list of changes.
- Corki
- 300 → 320% Spell AD%
- Lillia
- 70/130 to 70/120 Mana
- Olaf
- Now categorized as an AD Fighter
- Yasuo
- 300% to 280% Spell AD%
2-Cost
Only buffs coming for the two cost units in this patch. The biggest change has to be the rework of Kayle. Coming second and not too behind is the buff to Katarina that could mark the comeback of her old Crowd Diver reroll comp.
- Katarina
- 140/210/315 → 150/225/340
- Kayle
- Reworked - Now passively deals magic damage on each hit. Spell Damage
- Active now immediately deals the AOE damage and applies Shred. 0/300/120 Mana
Moving over to the small changes, there’s one small buff to Jax. Does this change propels EDM Jax reroll back into the meta? Probably not.
- Jax
- 0.85 to 0.9 Attack Speed
3-Cost
Nerfs to two 3-Cost outliers are finally been issued. In terms of buffs, there are three significant ones, especially the Lulu one that looks great for Hyperpop lovers.
If you played Patch 14.1b, you know the meta was dominated by either Twin Terror’s Twitch/Vex or Executioners. This was due to the high power of one particular Emo unit which stuns the frontline while deleting boards with its ability casts. No more in Patch 14.2.
- Vex
- 1.5 to 0.75 sec Stun Duration
Damage is still bonkers, but the stun nerfs will make this comp much more fragile, especially against the Melee comps which Vex destroyed in 14.1b.
The other OP unit on the chopping block is Riven. It’s not as big of a nerf, sadly, just the Ability AD% is going down by a mere 10%.
Moving over to the buffs side of this section. There are two buffs and one adjustment. Let’s start with the Lulu buffs.
- Lulu
- 120/180/280 → 150/225/360. Third Cast Spell Damage
It only affects the third cast of Lulu's ability, but the extra damage paired with her already good crowd control effect is going to do wonders for the Hyperpoppers, or maybe makes room for a new OP reroll Lulu comp.
These are the set of remaining changes for 3-cost units.
- Miss Fortune
- 280/280/290% to 295/295/305% Spell AD%
- Urgot
- Now deals 50% bonus damage if his ability only hits 1 target
- 175/175/180% to 160/160/165% Spell AD%
Miss Fortune buffs improves further the powerlevel of the Big Shots. Lastly, Urgot changes weaken his early game damage in exchange for a better late game with bonus damage to single targets (perfect to deal with the Blizcranks' or Thresh’s in the late game).
4-Cost
Probably the most significant changes are the ones to the four cost units in Patch 14.2, especially the Pentakill rework.
First, let’s start with the Big Shot star, Ezreal.
- Ezreal
- 350/350/700%→370/370/740%
- Single Target Spell AD%
This is only affecting his Single Target Spell so Ezreal overall should not be much stronger. The thing is that the Ezreal’s buff alongside Miss Fortune ones could mean that the Big Shots lines will end up dominating the meta, as by just looking through sheer stats, Big Shot comp is already averaging 4.07 in placements.
Now looking over the reworked unit, Karthus is getting a massive overhaul that will change Pentakill comps overall.
- Karthus
- Reworked - Karthus's ability will now always crit if it's able to. Karthus gains bonus AP based on his critical strike chance (1 to 1) No longer gains mana from kills. Karthus 4 Gains 30 AP each time he casts
- 30/120 to 15/105 Mana
- 270/405/900 → 175/260/580 Spell Damage
This will for sure nerf the Karthus/Akali comp with the lowered damage on the first casts. The good news is that comps that let Karthus ramp up his damage overtime will see much better results.
Moving over to the stellar Disco unit nerf, Twisted Fate had to be taken down from the dance floor, or better said, his absurd damage is taking a hit.
- Twisted Fate
- 30/105 to 30/120 Mana
- 50/75/225 to 45/70/225 Card Damage
These changes will make one and two-starred Twisted Fate into a more bearable unit for the other players facing against him. Still, Disco overall should keep its place among the strongest comps of the game, but not as high in the tier lists.
Lastly, on the small side of changes, Poppy is getting a buff to her on-hit ability healing. How would this change affect her? We need to wait until the patch goes live to find out.
- Poppy
- 5% to 5/5/10% Ability Heal on Hit
5-Cost
Only one change to Sona. Mostly QoL stuff (Quality of Life).
- Sona
- Ethereal and Concussive Sona can no longer target training dummies and Illaoi tentacles. Kinetic Sona will no longer use healing auto attacks on training dummies and Illaoi tentacles unless there are no other allied champions alive
Headliner Bonuses
The TFT Dev team sneaked a nerf to Headliner Yone, this should hurt his Crowd Diver comp. In the buffs side, we got a huge buff to Headliner Kai'Sa.
- Kai'Sa: 15% AD 25% AD (Still has the +2 range & Further Dash)
- Yone: 200 HP & 20% AD 150 HP & 15% AD
Augments
Tons of changes to Augments. The biggest one is the nerf to meta-defining augment Twin Terror. Below is the complete list of changes, but let’s say that the Last Stand nerf and the buffs to Bigger Shot look interesting.
All
- Twin Terror I & II
- Critical Strike Chance Removed
- HP: 250/350 → 350/500
- Attack Speed: 25/35%→35/50%
Gold
- Bigger Shot
- Damage: 75% → 85%
- Heartthrobs
- Reworked: You now gain 20% more Heartsteel Hearts.
- Last Stand
- HP: 180 to 160
- Armor/MR & Omnivamp: 18 →16
- Submit to the Pit
- Armor/MR/AP/AD/AS: 3 → 4
- Too Big to Fail
- HP Explosion: 40% → 35%
Silver
- Good for Something I
- Gold Drop Chance: 30% 35%
- Late Game Specialist
- Gold: 30 → 33
Item changes
Only two and both of them are nerfs. The biggest one is the Goldmancer’s Staff one.
Goldmancer's Staff (Artifact)
- Gold per drop: 2 →1.
Thief's Gloves
- Less likely to roll ideal items at levels 7,8, and 9.
If you managed to get this far through the article and want more... well, here’s the BUG FIXES LIST!!!, or you can check LeDuck’s guides to improve your Avg. placements.
Bug Fixes List
- Emotional connection now no longer reduces your units max mana to 10 the first time you take the augment
- Radiant Nashor's Tooth correctly grants Attack Speed on-cast to Twisted Fate
- Lucian's number of shots correctly scales with the displayed tooltip amount. Now scales 1 shot per 20% AS instead of 1 shot per 40% AS
- Nashor's Tooth will apply Attack Speed before Lucian's cast rather than after
- Lucian's number of shots will no longer scale past 5.0 Attack Speed
- Thresh can now properly damage CC immune units
- Akali no longer sometimes messes with non-Akali's Headliner traits
- True Damage Akali can no longer bypass the 3 star 4 cost rule
- Scrappy Inventions now gives components as intended
- When Superfans pop off items, those items now return to your bench at the appropriate speed
- Salvage Bin can no longer grant a Spatula as its random component
- The Disco Ball is no longer permanently deleted by Recombobulator
- Heartsteel's 3000+ heart cashout now has the correct odds for each cashout
- All Squink's head no longer explodes in size when spamming Taunt animation
