Teamfight Tactics Advanced Tips and Tricks

by MismatchedSock

This guide is a directed towards those who have the fundamentals mastered, but want to improve their gameplay even further. It’s meant as a starting point to challenge yourself to think of even more advanced tips. I will refrain from adding my own opinions about the game and focus on facts over opinions. In this post, I chose a few tips and tricks that aren’t that public knowledge, but I use pretty frequently.

1. Early game positioning vs Nasus, Renekton, Orn, and Volibear.
   1. If you have Maokai and Ivern as your frontline units, you can manipulate your positioning to minimize the impact of enemy 1-tile AOE units.
      1. https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgYmSOZmBgYGRNA5GMzBEMIAAAD1kBLg%3D%3D
      2. By putting Maokai directly in front of Nasus, and Ivern 2 spaces away from Maokai. Maokai and Ivern can tank damage, but Nasus can only hit one unit with his ult.
   2. https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgYmROY2BgYGSNBpGMzBEMIAAAD5sBLg%3D%3D
      1. The vice versa positioning is not true. In this case, Maokai would walk up to Nasus. Both Maokai and Ivern would get hit by Nasus ult.
   3. In most games, you have to scout where most people place their Nasus, Renekton, Orns/Volibears. But in a few games with hexes, almost everyone places those units on those hexes and it becomes really easy to use this trick.
   4. This trick applies for any ranged frontline (like Ivern, vlad). Mostly used for early game.
2. Putting in only 1 unit for minion rounds (stage 1-2, and 1-3) to gain an extra gold 20% of the games
   1. At stage 1-2, you be should selling your 2-cost you got from the first carousel. Buy a 1-cost units that can solo the round. This will increases your chances of hitting 10 gold to make 1 extra interest of gold DRAMATICALLY (I probably make an extra gold 20% games)
   2. The following units can solo the round guranteed: Nasus, Renekton, Diana (place her on the right side of the map so she jumps and kills the ranged minion immediately). Vlad can solo the minions most times, but sometimes he crits too much and kills the minion as he drains it and doesn’t heal and he’ll lose the rounds. Warwick can only solo the minion if you put a belt on him. I don’t know about Ivern (if anyone knows, please let me know)
   3. Most people don’t know this, but the amount of gold you gain in your first 3 rounds is: +3, +5, +4 (not 100% sure about the +4)
   4. The reason why this is so important is because this is a important gold threshold. Counting the 2 gold you get from selling the initial minion. At stage 2-2, you have 5 gold. If you put in 2 units, you have 3 gold left for interest. Riot Mort has mentioned that blue boxes can drop 5 gold or 6 gold, hence you’ll never make interest. If you instead put in 1 unit, you have 4 gold left for interest, any game where you get 6 gold from a blue box, you get to make interest. Or any game where you get 2 grey boxes that contains 3 gold each, you get to make interest. This 1 gold you get at this round is so ridiculously powerful (probably translates to 3-4 gold) by the end of the game.
   5. You can apply a similar logic to stage 1-3.
   6. I learned this trick from naturesbf :)
3. 4 mystics DOES NOT give diminishing returns vs 2 mystics
   1. How magic resists works is that if you have 1000 hp, adding 40 magic resists gives you 400 additional hp vs magic damage.
   2. If you have 1000 hp going from 40 magic resist (2 mystics) -> 120 magic resist (4 mystics) is going from 400 additional hp to 1200 additional hp.
   3. Why people think there is diminishing returns because they’re looking at percentages.
      1. imagine a 1000 hp unit. If you put a belt on it, it gets a 20% hp boost (1200 hp)
      2. If you put another belt on it, it gets a 16.7% hp boost (1400 hp), but this is not diminishing returns. It takes just as long for enemies to get through the first 200 hp vs the second 200 hp.
4. Keeping Zephyr units on the bench
   1. When you have a zephyr unit, place it on the bench and put it into play at the last second.
   2. Opponents can’t see items on bench (or rather it’s difficult), so they have to mentally keep track that you have a zephyr. With 7 opponents, this is a challenging task.
5. Lining up vs Qiyana
   1. If you line up your units against the left wall or right wall, Qiyana can only hit one unit with her ult. This can be done on any row
   2. https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgZmG1Y2D0Z2Bhi2FgYGBhdweSjMyM%2BYxAmgEAHekByw%3D%3D
      1. Qiyana will jump to Varus and either target Varus or Malzahar. Her ult will only hit one unit.
   3. This is most often done due to hexes or locket.
6. Manipulating Singed
   1. Singed is a big portion of the meta right now, and if you’re facing a stacked singed, there’s a few ways you can counterplay it. The key is that singed always runs to the furthest unit, and when he gets there, he looks for the furthest unit and runs to that unit and repeats the process.
   2. Countering singed with singed: https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgYmYLYGBgYGH0AJKMzEwgDgMDAA02AQI%3D
      1. Your singed will run to their singed, their singed will run to your singed. Once they get to their destinations, they will run back towards each other. Your twitch will be completely safe. This is often intentionally done when their singed is more stacked than yours.
   3. Countering singed with assassins
      1. https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgZmHMYWBgYGGzB5HsuUCSiYk5AMRh9GAAAQAkzgHd
      2. Singed will run towards Annie, Zed will jump to the enemy Twitch. Once singed reaches Annie, singed will run to your Zed. Your Azir will be completely safe.
7. Poisoning Assassins with Singed
   1. When Assassins are jumping to their target, they can be poisoned by Singed’s ult.
   2. https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgYmINYGBgYGH3AJKMLIz2DCAAAAz8APU%3D
      1. Zed will directly jump over Singed and get hit by poison.
   3. This is very important as it can often delay Zed’s first ult cast by about 7 or 8 autos.
8. Using Master Yi and Kindred as backline assassins
   1. If you position Master Yi and Kindred correctly, they can actually assassinate backline units after taking down the initial tank
   2. https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgZmTyZ2BgYGRzAJHsUUCSFVmIhTkJRLLagUh2dwYQAABJEgKi
      1. In this case, Master Yi will kill Yorick, then target Varus (instead of Sion), then Zyra, then Kindred.
   3. With a Zephyr, this becomes even easier and more OP. Shadow comps tend to build a lot of Zephyrs so this is very helpful.
      1. https://www.proguides.com/teamfight-tactics/team-builder?map=eJxjZGJgZmTyZ2BMYmBkc2BgYGBkjwKSrCAxBqgQC3MSiGS1A5Hs7gwgAABbmQMF
      2. In this case, Master Yi will run past yorick, kill Varus, Zyra, and Kindred.
   4. Personal opinion- Master Yi is a very good carry to stack cause you can run 4 mystics with Master Yi carry.
9. Zephyr targetting
   1. There was a video released by Bunny Muffins a while back that you can hold and drag the Zephyr unit, space back to your board and place the zephyr unit at the very last second.
   2. Personal opinion- If there’s several good zephyr spots in a game, I think you should always use your zephyr to target the strongest person in the lobby you can’t beat that you haven’t fought in a while.
   3. Personal opinion- damage oriented comps (like shadows) tends to want to Zephyr frontline units.

I think if that even if you only have a tiny edge over the other TFT players, over a large amount of games, that will translate to a huge amount of LP gain. I have a lot of personal opinions about things like items, team comps, etc, that I didn’t put into this post. Mainly because I don’t think it will help people become better TFT players in the long run. Maybe I can discuss it in the comments if anyone is interested.