Looking Back

Let's talk about how we did applying our major learnings from the first set to RotE, including ways we hope to continue improving going forward.

We want to keep random effects in positive and controlled spaces.

We made progress here, but not as much as we could have. While it’s true that some of the more insane things like Phantom and Hextech were gone, there were still some effects that were random and fight-deciding. At the beginning of RotE, Mountain was often considered “Reverse Phantom,” though it didn’t end up being as impactful as was originally feared.

The bigger issue was our spell targetting.

Having so many champions with randomly-targeting spells led to a lot of extreme variance in fights. Taliyah and Azir were especially rough because they started with very high mana pools, which led to fights being decided by where their first cast went. Some random spells worked out quite well (Malphite and Lux) and added a healthy amount of fight variance. AoE Spells with variance make positioning a rich decision-making challenge, while single target CC spells that start early end up feeling like dice rolls.

For the next set, you’ll see a LOT less random targeting on spells and more focused on specific things you can play around. For example, one new spell is always aimed at the enemy with the most attack speed. This will allow you to use your game knowledge to outplay opponents more often.

Hold us to a higher standard for balancing the game so that a wider variety of comps can win in a given patch.

This is another one where we made significant progress compared to the launch set but didn’t nail it. The balance of Rise of the Elements was overall much better than the launch set, with way less outliers. But it also had its share of misses. Singed at launch, Brand in 9.23, Amumu in 9.24, “blender” Nocturne and Azir, and Yorick & Zed all jump out as clear balance issues that were a bit dominant in their given patch.

That being said, two things greatly helped balance in RotE. One is that the set’s design allowed counter options to come up in a lot of cases, so even if something was dominant, there were traits like Mystic and Cloud that could still give you a leg up. The other was that we were quicker to adapt when things became dominant. Strategic B-patches to target big outliers were helpful in bringing things to a more balanced state quicker. We also took a lighter-touch approach to balance, which led to less dramatic meta shifts, so people weren’t as thrown off patch to patch.



So while we made progress, we can still get better with balance. Continue to hold us responsible in making more comps viable patch to patch.

We’re aiming for less frustrating and fewer disables overall.



This is one we pretty clearly met. Compared to the launch set, there were just FAR fewer disables. The only really frustrating one was probably Olaf being Glacial Berserker. Someone with a 1.5 attack speed (or more) who AoE cleaves and freezes multiple champs was probably a bit over the line. Even when he was balanced or even sometimes underpowered, it just FELT frustrating to have your whole team frozen. Disables are healthy for keeping the pace of the game in check and creating tension in the battles, but when they get overwhelming (such as Launch 6 Glacial) that balance goes away.

Moving forward we will still have disables, as they are a key part of TFT champ design, but we’ll be keeping an eye on them and providing strategic and tactical ways to play around them.

Rise of the Elements will have more traits in the “soft counter” space.

This was a success, but also taught us a lot. Gone from the launch set were things like Dragon (100% magic damage reduction), and in its place were things like Mystic and Cloud. These traits allowed you to adapt and make smart decisions based on your opponents, but weren’t foolproof win conditions against certain comps. This was successful.

But we learned that even better-designed traits like Mystic still leave people feeling like they were hard countered. In addition, there were still a few traits that had that “hard counter” feel. (4 Desert vs 6 Warden being the biggest example). With this in mind, expect us to continue using soft counter traits even more while avoiding hard counters altogether.

Rise of the Elements will ship less total content patches, but each one will be larger.

While it’s true that we didn’t ship any content patches with only one champ like we did in the launch set, we’re still not happy with the way our content patches are coming out.

There were basically two major patches in Rise of the Elements that added content:

9.24: Added Lucian, Senna, Amumu, Soulbound, and UI improvements.

10.1: Added Leona, Karma, Lunar, and Item Reworks.

Other than that, patches were typically balance changes and small systemic adjustments (such as removing Spatula from the carousel). We feel like having two content patches that aren’t that big isn’t the best we can do, so for Galaxies we’re going to take a different approach. We’re going to launch one mid-set expansion, focusing our efforts on one specific cool moment to come back and see all the new stuff.

B-Patches will be extremely small and only for nerfing strong outliers.

We did this one really well. 9.22 and 9.23 didn’t have B-patches. 9.24 had a large one due to the holiday, but otherwise would've been fine. 10.1 had a small B patch that did exactly as we described (only nerfed 3 outliers), and 10.2 didn’t have a B-patch.



Our goal is to keep changes at a smaller and healthier amount than what we did in the launch set, and we seemed to hit that with RotE. The next step is to try to lessen the number of actual balance changes needed each patch so that things aren’t shifting around as much. That said, the B-Patch rules will continue into the next set, with us only using them to nerf outliers in extreme cases.

Rise of the Elements will have less bugs and issues.



We feel like we hit this in the sense that there were way less bugs this time around. Ranked was never taken down for example, compared to the launch set where we had to bring ranked down a few times at the start of patches. That being said, we still have a ways to go in this area as there were quite a few bugs that persisted for too long.

Zyra plants getting targeted by spells, Kindred’s spell not being able to crit with Jeweled Gauntlet, Quicksilver blocking the damage on spells with CC in them… These are just a few of the things we let slip through for too many patches. Each individual bug is not massively impacting, but the combination of them all leave TFT still feeling a bit incomplete. We’re going to continue to improve.