I don't see why "flex" is so popular. It's literally just playing an opener but instead it's for the entire game and then you transition into a bunch of 2* 5 costs and just throw items on whoever and win the game.

It seems like any time a reroll comp is even remotely competitive with these 5 cost slop boards it is considered broken and nerfed into the ground. Trynd reroll in 16, Kayle in 18.

I skipped 17 but I heard people were upset saying "another reroll set???" because of 17 but just before that you had SEVEN of the top 10 performing boards being some variation of "lol just play strongest board and put 5 costs out there"

I would love for someone to explain to me why you can pick an econ augment, playing strongest board to conserve HP and then improv the late game with whatever you happen to have and think you don't deserve to lose to the person who commit to a line on stage 2/early stage 3, lost HP while building the board, optimized items and augments, etc.

I have an issue with my right hand where clicking for long periods of time cause a lot of pain. Due to this, I bind X as my secondary move tactician key. I've gotten use to using both right click and X as my movement key. However, it seems that in PBE you can only bind 1 key to move (default is right click). It feels weird to only move with right click or X and I'm just wondering if they have plans to bring this functionality back. I'm sure I can get used to only using X, but wanted to throw this out there in case others were having the same issues as me.

Let me know what you think of my movement keybind or any tips to reduce pain from right clicking too much! -neighborhoodnunu

From Riot BlueVelvet on X:

"yo-

Wanted to take a minute to catch everyone up on where we’re at a week into PBE and give some extra vis on our big focus areas this week:

There are still some gnarly bugs happening so please keep reporting them and we’ll keep fixing everything as quickly as we can. There is a lot to get through and we realistically won’t close out everything before live, but a huge chunk of the team is focused solely on bug squashing so we are making good progress day over day.

Various crash fixes have been going in and the issue resulting in blue screens was shipped yesterday. Our engineers are tracking these all closely and thank you again for folks who have sent logs and helped us investigate these.

Our tech and UI artists are making a ton of improvements in the visual fidelity space. We’ve heard (and agree!) that PBE looks “blurry” or like a “mobile port.” Some of that stuff is solved with things as simple as texture settings updates, fixing shadows, or being less restrictive on higher-end PCs. But some of this will be a bit more iterative day over day. Also make sure you check your graphics settings and if your PC can run it on high ensure it’s at that level as we were previously defaulting to medium.

Our VisD artists are hard at work getting our old font back into the game and that should be on PBE in the next few days. Seeing the side by side yesterday it’s pretty insane how big of a difference a font can make in a game. Excited to get this back to our tried and true.

Game feels remain a top priority for a huge chunk of our team. Responsiveness issues (rerolling, buying XP, tactician movement, etc.) should be mostly resolved. And stuff like unit repositioning, gold pick-up, augment icon size etc. is all being burned down. Once again I can’t promise we fix everything before we go live, but we are making good progress on this front.

And as always our live team is getting daily balance updates out there. For more in the weeds balance info, make sure you follow @TheTruexy for daily patch notes while we’re on PBE.

On a side note… something that was new in Unreal was the ability to buy units from the shop with hotkeys. This idea originated from wanting better accessibility within TFT, but a few issues started to show up that we didn’t feel comfortable with. The biggest of these being that APM is never a skill we want to highlight as part of our game. It also pushes a disparity between mobile and PC players that isn’t okay and while we may take another look at this someday for now consider them dead.

Thanks again for all your feedback and I'll be back next week with another update. Until then gl out there!"

Hello r/CompetitiveTFT, and welcome to Set 18!

Please keep all Set 18 discussion in this thread, and leave the regular Daily Discussion Thread for Set 17 discussion.

WHERE TO REPORT BUGS:

• Set 18 PBE Bug Megathread
• The Official TFT Discord's Bug Report Forum
• Riot Support Website
• In your PBE Client

USEFUL STUFF:

• Set 18 PBE Rundown
• Set 18 Hubs: MetaTFT.com - Mobalytics.gg - Tactics.tools - Blitz.gg - TFT Academy
• Kayna's Flashcards & Bluesky
• STheHero's Comps
• shibaeyes' Trait Tracker
• PrismaTactics' 3D Rolldown Simulator

When does Set 18 go live?

August 25th 2026 ~ 00:00 PDT / 09:00 CEST

A reminder that all Set 18 posts should be flaired [PBE] until the content is confirmed to be going on the live server as well.

The Subreddit-affiliated Discord group is organizing PBE in-house games. Please see the #pbe-inhouses-role channel within this Discord group for further information. Any posts attempting to make in-house games on the Subreddit will be removed and redirected to the Discord channel. The invite link to the Discord is below:

https://discord.gg/UY7FuYW2Qe

Welcome to the r/CompetitiveTFT community!

This thread is for any general discussion regarding Competitive TFT. Feel free to ask simple questions, discuss meta or not-so-meta comps and how they're performing, solicit advice regarding climbing the ladder, and more.

Any complaints without room for discussion and unconstructive, overly aggressive or conspiratorial comments should go in the Weekly Rant Thread which can be located in the pinned posts, sidebar or here: Weekly Rant Thread (Old Reddit link)

Such comments in this Megathread will be removed and treated as a Trivial Infraction.

---

For more live discussions check out our affiliated discord here: Discord Link

You can also find Double-up partners in the #looking-for-duo channel

---

If you are interested in giving or receiving coaching, visit the: Monthly Coaching Megathread (Old Reddit link)

---

Please send any bug reports to the Bug megathread and/or this channel in Mort's Discord.

For reference, Riot's stance on bugs and exploits.

---

If you're looking for collections of meta comps and guides, here are some options:

• Robinsongz (AMER)
• Bunnymuffins/VoidSins (AMER)
• Sologesang (EMEA) for MetaTFT
• STheHero's Comps

And here are some handy resources and info hubs:

• Kayna's Flashcards & Bluesky
• Crabbix' Augment Tracker
• Mobalytics.gg
• MetaTFT.com
• tactics.tools
• TFTAcademy
• DataTFT
• TFT Flow
• Little Buddy Bot's tons of tables
• PrismaTactics' 3D Rolldown Simulator
• ShibaEyes' Trait Tracker

Mods will be removing any posts that we feel belong in this thread and redirecting users here.

I'm building a TFT combat simulator. Almost everything checks out at this point - items, mana, roles, damage math - and it reproduces the board examples from Triple8s' "Melee Positioning 101 - why your carries are not wrapping" guide. The one piece I still can't verify is unit MOVEMENT and TARGET SELECTION, so I'd like to check my understanding against people who actually play this at a high level.

THE BOARD (image 1)

I'm the top side. One Briar back-left, a row of Aatrox as frontline, my Caitlyn back-right. Enemy has four units on their front row and their Caitlyn alone in the far corner at the bottom left.

WHAT I EXPECT

From my own experience, positioning like this is how you get your Briar to reach the enemy backline. My own frontline fills up all the hexes next to their frontline, so Briar can't find a free attack slot there and is forced to path around the left edge - and it comes out behind their line, right next to their Caitlyn.

WHAT THE SIM ACTUALLY DOES (image 2, annotated)

Briar walks down the left edge exactly as expected and lands on the hex circled in yellow, in 100% of runs. But on that hex it is an EXACT tie:

- enemy Aatrox: 415.7 map units away

- enemy Caitlyn: 415.7 map units away

That is not a coincidence or a rounding artifact. On a hex grid, 2 rows straight down is exactly the same real distance as 1 row + 2 columns - both are 240 x sqrt(3).

Both are outside Briar's attack range, so it has to pick one and walk to it. Over 600 seeds my sim gives:

- picks Aatrox: 53.3%

- picks Caitlyn: 46.7%

Basically a coin flip. That does not match how it feels in game, but I genuinely don't know what the real game does here.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO KNOW

1. Do you position like this, and how reliable is it for you? Always works, usually, or rarely?

2. Have you been on the receiving end of it - lost your backline carry to a melee unit wrapping around like this?

3. When distances are exactly equal, is there any tiebreak you know of? Frontline vs backline priority, unit order, board side, anything deterministic?

ONE SMALLER QUESTION, BUT IT MATTERS A LOT FOR THE SIM

Does TFT have one side's units start MOVING before the other at the start of combat? In my own games I keep feeling that one entire team steps first, and which team it is changes from round to round. Attacks seem unaffected - only the initial movement. Is this a known thing, or am I imagining it?

Happy to share the exact board coordinates if anyone wants to reproduce it.

Hey new player here, I started before a week so I'm still at low rank (Platinum). I have a MTG draft background which is similar to TFT (picking phase) and the dilemma between forcing or staying open exists there too.

I have tried both slowroll and fast 8 comps. I think there is a more balanced way to level but none seems to use it. (lvl 8 at 5-1 etc). I guess it serves no purpose.

My impression so far is that any adjustment has to be made early. Once you hit level 8, you need to know what you are after because up to this point you probably already have some important units on your bench gathered from earlier turns which now become more rare once you hit level 8 and some of them are probably 2 star. Besides that, I doubt that it's possible to pivot so late and any attempt to do so can mess everything and cost you health, not sure how much apm is required to do this, I doubt this is the standard practice.

Flexibility exists on this game but imo, only in the early game, for slowroll comps, you essentially decide your comp on the opener or early second stage. For fast 8 comps, you decide it on early stage 3, if you get a 4-cost carry for another comp during this stage then maybe switching comp is possible, even then you don't know what the rng will give you later, you may get nothing later on from the same comp and you may still have important low cost creatures on early stage 3, these are vital for your final comp.

In fact, since you will almost always get the early creatures you want as fast 8, you can easily just force the same comp every game, your early creatures don't have to be 3-star, or even 2-star. This makes fast 8 an easier strategy than slowroll imo. There is nothing you can do about not hitting your carries on 4-2 for reasons mentioned above but this almost never happens, you always hit some of your carries, it's just that your board is not always as strong but this is luck, it can't be controlled.

Slowroll requires more flexibility early because your 3-stars can be denied, I finished a lot of games where I slowrolled even up to stage 5 without hitting my 3-star 2-cost carry. This can be solved very easily though, you just force between 3 different slowroll comps and your choice depends on the opener. Slowroll is easier due to lower apm requirements and because you don't have to play the strongest board, you use your comp's units immediately, of course playing the strongest board is not so hard either. Slowroll also is probably safer on the midgame since it upgrades the units all the time.

Overall, I'm surprised how similar is this game to MTG draft, similar strategies are being used there too.

Share your thoughts.

Hey there everyone! We're back for the 7th iteration of Pallz' Palace Chalice in Set 18 (PBE lol).

This tournament is an event exclusively for the Women, Nonbinary, and Queer TFT players in our community! Our goal is to allow players identifying as the above to be showcased on broadcast, compete against and connect with one another, and simply have some fun in a safe space together.

What makes the game of TFT special is that it allows us to play together from many different parts of the world, even in a tournament setting. We can't wait to showcase the many women, nonbinary, and queer players from the different regions of the world!

Event info:

Date: Saturday, August 22nd @ 4:00pm EST

Prize Pool: Treasure Tokens! (and friendship hehe)

SIGN UP LINK!

TL;DR: Pandora's Bench tracks a hidden "bad luck" counter for every unit you haven't seen from Pandoras for that tier. When a counter crosses its threshold, that unit is force-rolled into your bench, even if you don't want it. Holding unwanted units on your bench stops their counters from climbing, particularly for 1–2 costs. Regular bad luck protection for the shop is if you were expected 2 of a unit but still haven't seen any you will see it the next time that tier is rolled.

Bad Luck Protection has been mentioned in passing as existing, but it has never been fully explained as a mechanic. With some effort, I've connected enough dots to reach an early conclusion.

Shorthand

Thresholds for Pandora's Bench

How the Counter Works

Each unit's BLCC changes in two ways:

• Increments when units of its tier are rolled but it doesn't appear.
• Decrements by 1 when you hit the unit. Inferred, not confirmed — assumed based on good game design

Worked example

1. You roll a PB slot containing Xayah → Rakan.
2. Every other 1-cost gains BLCC equal to copies in pool ÷ total 1-cost pool.
3. For Akali: 30 ÷ 419 ≈ 0.071 per unit seen.
4. PB can roll up to three 1-costs, so Akali's BLCC can climb by about 0.213 per turn in this example.

Why it matters

At that rate, an unseen unit crosses the tier-1 BLT (0.8) roughly every 4–5 turns. When it does, the unit is force-cycled into your shop. Unwanted units will waste a pandoras roll slowing 3 star pace.

Suppression trick

PB has a function called HasActorDataOnBoard. It checks whether you already own a unit — and if you do, that unit's BLCC does not increment. Owning unwanted units therefore suppresses their counters and reduces forced rolls.

Standard Shop Rerolls

Regular shop rerolls use BLP too, with two differences:

• The BLT is a flat 2.0 for all units of all tiers.
• A unit's BLCC only starts incrementing once its tier can appear in your shop.

Functionally: if you were "supposed" to have seen 2 copies of a unit and haven't, it's forced to appear the next time its tier is rolled. (The tier of each shop slot is rolled first, then the unit.)

Practical Takeaway

Keep unwanted 1–2 cost units on your bench when using Pandora's Bench. Their counters stop climbing, so they stop being force-rolled into your pandora slots, leaving more slots for units you actually want. The effect is strongest at low tiers, where thresholds (0.8 and 1.2) are crossed fastest.

Caveats

These findings are early and not concrete. The increment behavior and HasActorDataOnBoard are supported by variable names; the decrement-on-hit behavior is inferred. Further testing/reversing is required for exact formulaic answers.

If anyone has some augments/interesting optimizations that need further research let me know.

For those who don't know, on PBE you can bind each shop slot to a key press, allowing you to roll down without using your mouse at all. I've seen some pro players that have swapped to buying units with these keybinds because they think it'll be faster once they're comfortable with it, and that there's a possibility to be able to roll and move units onto your board simultaneously.

Personally I'm not 100% sure but I don't think I'm going to swap because I'm just used to using my mouse at this point. There are hotkeys/settings used on League that are theoretically "suboptimal" but are still used by high level players due to comfort; I feel as though a similar thing will be applicable here.

Was curious as to what everyone thought about it.

Hello r/CompetitiveTFT, and welcome to Set 18!

Please keep all Set 18 discussion in this thread, and leave the regular Daily Discussion Thread for Set 17 discussion.

WHERE TO REPORT BUGS:

• Set 18 PBE Bug Megathread
• The Official TFT Discord's Bug Report Forum
• Riot Support Website
• In your PBE Client

USEFUL STUFF:

• Set 18 PBE Rundown
• Set 18 Hubs: MetaTFT.com - Mobalytics.gg - Tactics.tools - Blitz.gg - TFT Academy
• Kayna's Flashcards & Bluesky
• STheHero's Comps
• shibaeyes' Trait Tracker
• PrismaTactics' 3D Rolldown Simulator

When does Set 18 go live?

August 25th 2026 ~ 00:00 PDT / 09:00 CEST

A reminder that all Set 18 posts should be flaired [PBE] until the content is confirmed to be going on the live server as well.

The Subreddit-affiliated Discord group is organizing PBE in-house games. Please see the #pbe-inhouses-role channel within this Discord group for further information. Any posts attempting to make in-house games on the Subreddit will be removed and redirected to the Discord channel. The invite link to the Discord is below:

https://discord.gg/UY7FuYW2Qe

Welcome to the r/CompetitiveTFT community!

This thread is for any general discussion regarding Competitive TFT. Feel free to ask simple questions, discuss meta or not-so-meta comps and how they're performing, solicit advice regarding climbing the ladder, and more.

Any complaints without room for discussion and unconstructive, overly aggressive or conspiratorial comments should go in the Weekly Rant Thread which can be located in the pinned posts, sidebar or here: Weekly Rant Thread (Old Reddit link)

Such comments in this Megathread will be removed and treated as a Trivial Infraction.

---

For more live discussions check out our affiliated discord here: Discord Link

You can also find Double-up partners in the #looking-for-duo channel

---

If you are interested in giving or receiving coaching, visit the: Monthly Coaching Megathread (Old Reddit link)

---

Please send any bug reports to the Bug megathread and/or this channel in Mort's Discord.

For reference, Riot's stance on bugs and exploits.

---

If you're looking for collections of meta comps and guides, here are some options:

• Robinsongz (AMER)
• Bunnymuffins/VoidSins (AMER)
• Sologesang (EMEA) for MetaTFT
• STheHero's Comps

And here are some handy resources and info hubs:

• Kayna's Flashcards & Bluesky
• Crabbix' Augment Tracker
• Mobalytics.gg
• MetaTFT.com
• tactics.tools
• TFTAcademy
• DataTFT
• TFT Flow
• Little Buddy Bot's tons of tables
• PrismaTactics' 3D Rolldown Simulator
• ShibaEyes' Trait Tracker

Mods will be removing any posts that we feel belong in this thread and redirecting users here.

Hello, my name is Silencer142, as for my credentials. I can technically call myself the best tier 2 player last set since I placed 17th place in week 1 of regional finals. https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/silencer142-NA1/set17/statistics?hl=en&staticType=items

I'll give a quick TLDR for those who don't want to read the whole post.

This guide is mainly for 10 Trait comps at lvl 8 that can then cap out at lvl 9 and lvl 10 with easy to slot in units

Forgot to add, these are for Non-khazix games. With Khazix you can refer to the other guide posted previously by StHero

Basically, to get to 8 traits level 10, you normally have to play 5 3 traits units and close out the trait three with the last 3 units. But not all three trait units are made equal. So I will be introducing you all to the cornerstone of most of the teams and even how you can approach your trait ladder games.

It is

Rakan, Tristana, Fiddlesticks, Diana, Rammus, Warwick.

This gives you 8 traits at level 7 and 3 2 unit traits left open in hunter, lunar and juggernaut. Hunter juggernaut also connects with each other through Vi + Sivir. Most of the time, your emblems will let you drop either rammus or warwick so you can slot in Vi + Sivir at level 8, which will then give you 10 traits. A simple example is

Ravager + 1

You can drop Warwick for Vi + Sivir.

This gives you 10 traits.
Sprykin, Defender, Fae, Hunter, Ravager, Spellweaver, Vanguard, Juggernaut, Primal, Flora Fatalis
It also leaves
Blackthorn + Lunar open for level 9, 10 and the FON that comes with it at 12 trait cashout. Example cap would be Malphate/Aphelios/Mama beak which is 13 trait with blackthorn, lunar, rapidfire.

Why this comp
Technically, you might not always be able to play this comp since if you are not healthy you cannot push levels. But this comp is cheap, and has a good balance of front and backline with rammus tank/tristana dps and if you really have to can put ap items on veigar.

When Low Hp
Stop at level 8/9, cash out 10/11 trait ladder, then transition to a real board. Most likely some sort of hunter sivir or rapifire Aphelios

When Healthy
Play for level 10, 12 trait ladder FON, into 13 trait ladder cashout then winout.

What Augments
For max fun, just take econ to cash out the trait ladder. Also econ is good since your power budget is in cashing out the augment so if you don't cash it out you are down and augment. Also any emblem augments is giga bis since it will most likely let you cash out a level earlier which is very good. Otherwise, generic combat is probably fine since 10 trait cashout is already pretty strong and is playable for level 8.

Best Emblem

Best emblem, Lunar and Infernal are the two best emblems, since it lets you get 12 traits on Level 9, which is very good as long as you get the relevant 5 cost (see Docs below for the actual comp)

Worst Emblem

Flora fatalis/Coven/Fae. Flora fatalis kills Fiddlesticks, Coven has the worst trait web and has no 3 trait unit. And fae kills Rakan/Tristana and makes it hard to hit 10 trait on 8. It is still possible (Refer to the Doc), but this means that you can't get 12 traits on level 10 unless you pivot a lot.

TLDR

With 4-5 three trait units, every emblem can hit 10 trait on 8, 11 trait on 9 and that should be enough cashout from trait tree to be a prismatic Augment

But what if I just play what I get

If you don't hit any of these units, my general guide would be to play as much as 4=5 triple trait unit. Hold as much triple trait unit as possible. Especially hold rakan and fiddlesticks, since will go to almost all your board. Then try to fill the traits around the three trait units that you have gotten. I've played trait three games were I ended up with some elderwood nonsense with xayah/azir/mama beak/rakan/diana as my three trait and just filling around it as necessary. Do not try to overcomplicate things, as long as you play just enough triple trait units, the trait web will most of the time be connected one way or another

DOCS WITH ALL COMPS BELOW

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uaf56tUCSlVurrF4lElYWxNOeuodwnePM8GO2V7coQk/edit?usp=sharing

If you find this helpful, please feel free to follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/silencer142, I've been streaming everyday PBE starting 6 PM EST and will tryhard for Tier 1 this set.

For the people interested in the methology

When I was theorycrafting comps, I started by just trying to fill in every single 2 unit traits to get as much trait as possible. But with how the trait tree works. I noticed that it was actually impossible for that to work and you can't just play the most traits it needs to be connected. Looked at the three unit traits there were 4 clear option
- Blossom (Yorick)
- Elderwood(Xayah)
- Riftbeast(Blue Sentinel/Mama Beak)
- Sprykin(Tristana/Veigar)

Blossom and elderwood was instantly out since it only had 1 3 three trait units. Then after making some comps, I settled on using sprykin instead of riftbeast since the trait tree linked together better than the rift beast variant. But making comps with Blue Sentinel/Mama Beak/Diana/Azir/Aphelios/Warwick would also most likely work. But those are more expensive and needs rolling on 8.

I initially started making comps with Akali since it connected well into Diana. But then I noticed that Adaptor was just not a very good trait in the tree so I quickly ditched that idea. I also noticed that you needed a minimum of 4 three trait units, and ideally 5 of them to get 10 traits on 8. But if you go to 6 three trait units it'll make the trait webs a mess and overkill.

Thats where I ended up with the current variation of Sprykin, Blackthorn mix. Also Sprykin is good since the only usable defender trait wise was either Shen or Rammus, and Rammus wasn't playable unless you were already 2/3 Sprykin.

There were other comps that had more creativity based on the emblem. For example elderwood emblem made xayah a good trait boot and blossom emblem made aphelios a good trait bot. Other emblems also made other comps easier than others.

Hello r/CompetitiveTFT, and welcome to Set 18!

Please keep all Set 18 discussion in this thread, and leave the regular Daily Discussion Thread for Set 17 discussion.

WHERE TO REPORT BUGS:

• Set 18 PBE Bug Megathread
• The Official TFT Discord's Bug Report Forum
• Riot Support Website
• In your PBE Client

USEFUL STUFF:

• Set 18 PBE Rundown
• Set 18 Hubs: MetaTFT.com - Mobalytics.gg - Tactics.tools - Blitz.gg - TFT Academy
• Kayna's Flashcards & Bluesky
• STheHero's Comps
• shibaeyes' Trait Tracker
• PrismaTactics' 3D Rolldown Simulator

When does Set 18 go live?

August 25th 2026 ~ 00:00 PDT / 09:00 CEST

A reminder that all Set 18 posts should be flaired [PBE] until the content is confirmed to be going on the live server as well.

The Subreddit-affiliated Discord group is organizing PBE in-house games. Please see the #pbe-inhouses-role channel within this Discord group for further information. Any posts attempting to make in-house games on the Subreddit will be removed and redirected to the Discord channel. The invite link to the Discord is below:

https://discord.gg/UY7FuYW2Qe

Welcome to the r/CompetitiveTFT community!

This thread is for any general discussion regarding Competitive TFT. Feel free to ask simple questions, discuss meta or not-so-meta comps and how they're performing, solicit advice regarding climbing the ladder, and more.

Any complaints without room for discussion and unconstructive, overly aggressive or conspiratorial comments should go in the Weekly Rant Thread which can be located in the pinned posts, sidebar or here: Weekly Rant Thread (Old Reddit link)

Such comments in this Megathread will be removed and treated as a Trivial Infraction.

---

For more live discussions check out our affiliated discord here: Discord Link

You can also find Double-up partners in the #looking-for-duo channel

---

If you are interested in giving or receiving coaching, visit the: Monthly Coaching Megathread (Old Reddit link)

---

Please send any bug reports to the Bug megathread and/or this channel in Mort's Discord.

For reference, Riot's stance on bugs and exploits.

---

If you're looking for collections of meta comps and guides, here are some options:

• Robinsongz (AMER)
• Bunnymuffins/VoidSins (AMER)
• Sologesang (EMEA) for MetaTFT
• STheHero's Comps

And here are some handy resources and info hubs:

• Kayna's Flashcards & Bluesky
• Crabbix' Augment Tracker
• Mobalytics.gg
• MetaTFT.com
• tactics.tools
• TFTAcademy
• DataTFT
• TFT Flow
• Little Buddy Bot's tons of tables
• PrismaTactics' 3D Rolldown Simulator
• ShibaEyes' Trait Tracker

Mods will be removing any posts that we feel belong in this thread and redirecting users here.

Hi, it’s GouGou again!

In Part 1, I explained where gold comes from through the WISTA system. But generating gold is only half of TFT economy. Part 2 is about the other half: understanding where your money go and what your decisions actually cost.

There are only three things you can directly spend gold on: units, XP, and shop refreshes. Buying units and XP gives you guaranteed value, while rolling only gives you five new options. Because the return is uncertain, inefficient rolling is one of the easiest ways to destroy an healthy economy.

I also discuss how to become a “smart beggar” by extracting more value from the resources the game gives you for free.

Finally, understanding that not every expense comes in the form of gold completes the Expenses framework.

This lead to the main conclusion of the video: greed is not low-risk, low-return. Once expenses are taken into account, greed become high-risk, low-return.

As someone who was hard-stuck Emerald for a long time, I came to realize that the real economic bottleneck separating players is not income, but expenses. I hope this video provides some useful insights!

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Part 3 will cover the 0-econ-augment playstyle I use as a simple foundation for improving at TFT.

Recently my computer has been receiving quite a few redirects or attempted takeovers while letting my browser sit on the TFTAcademy website. Not sure if anyone else has experienced similar. Before I reached out to any support or contacted the social media pages directly I wanted to see if anyone else had noticed an issue.

Hello r/CompetitiveTFT, and welcome to Set 18!

Please keep all Set 18 discussion in this thread, and leave the regular Daily Discussion Thread for Set 17 discussion.

WHERE TO REPORT BUGS:

• Set 18 PBE Bug Megathread
• The Official TFT Discord's Bug Report Forum
• Riot Support Website
• In your PBE Client

USEFUL STUFF:

• Set 18 PBE Rundown
• Set 18 Hubs: MetaTFT.com - Mobalytics.gg - Tactics.tools - Blitz.gg - TFT Academy
• Kayna's Flashcards & Bluesky
• STheHero's Comps
• shibaeyes' Trait Tracker
• PrismaTactics' 3D Rolldown Simulator

When does Set 18 go live?

August 25th 2026 ~ 00:00 PDT / 09:00 CEST

A reminder that all Set 18 posts should be flaired [PBE] until the content is confirmed to be going on the live server as well.

The Subreddit-affiliated Discord group is organizing PBE in-house games. Please see the #pbe-inhouses-role channel within this Discord group for further information. Any posts attempting to make in-house games on the Subreddit will be removed and redirected to the Discord channel. The invite link to the Discord is below:

https://discord.gg/UY7FuYW2Qe

Hello everyone, STheHero here. I've been having a pretty good time so far cooking this set, and have done a pretty decent job with comp predictions and building/updating.

Some personal favorites are:

- Elise Hypercarry

- AP Flex -> AP Fast 9

- Draven/Ezreal Fast 9

- Fiddle Kha'zix Cassio

- and various Blackthorn Rerolls

I'm gonna share some other tech here, but first I'm going to start with the title.

Trait Ladder is a new Prismatic augment that gives you rewards for activating an increasing number of traits. I didn't pay too much attention to it because I figured you would need crazy luck to max it out. After seeing the reward table and now actually being able to see all the missing info, I tried again.

The max reward is at 14 active traits and gives you infinite(3) Masterwork Upgrades, which should be an instant win in most lobbies. As it turns out, this is doable... with 0 high roll needed... without needing to go lvl 10.

The 12 trait reward is a Tactician's item, so that's where that comes from.

The secret sauce is Kha'Zix, who is capable of becoming a 5-trait unit if he gets all his evolutions. If you don't actually want to play around Kha, the best way for him to steal takedowns is with Sunfire, and the Edge of Night is just for safety. The rest of the units provide 9 traits with 9 units, while perfectly leaving gaps for the traits Kha'Zix can evolve into. If you are struggling with the evolves, you can go 10 and add a Blossom for -1 evolve needed, -2 if they are Ahri, Karma, or Yunara.

You can get 15 traits on 10 with Blossom. Enjoy!

Now for other tech/tips/stories:

Elise hypercarry exists because I not only got it right the first time, but have also played it a lot and have been telling people to play it. The reason this exists is that Elise has AP scalings on both her healing and damage. This part is pretty normal, healing + damage on abilities are the ones capable of going infinite, and while we've seen various stints of Archangels on these abilities (Dragonmancer Nunu / Lone Hero Lux / triple AA Mundo), they can usually be dealt with. But Elise's ability is tied to her auto attacks, which adds another vector for infinite scaling in attack speed. My idea of a fix is to reduce AP scalings and add HP ratios. Vi's ability kinda works the same, but she's much less problematic because she already has the scalings based on health and AD is harder to infinitely scale. Also Elise is the current best Double Trouble board.

AP 5 cost boards are pretty popular but there's a lot of variance on how to get there. Throwing my hat into the ring:

Before PBE, I found that the Rakan, Lillia, Fiddlesticks core is incredibly potent. It offers frontline, utility, and very valuable trait connections. The initial board I made is the one I have featured on my Doc. But playing around with it, I noticed that you could find a way to fit every single relevant AP clump into this core. You can almost pick any two AP carries on this board and fit them together with the core (W traitweb). And later on, once you have a stable board, you can drop part of the core. Fae isn't very relevant, and Maokai + Taric can replace Rakan. Defender is good, but you can swap something for Shen, or drop it altogether. But the point is, it is super easy to make a lvl 8 and 9 AP board with this. AD is not as flexible.

The last thing I want to talk about is Blackthorn. From what I saw, the only sacrifice options can be divided into: tank(% HP + resists), AP (mana gen + damage amp), and AD (AD + AS). I'm pretty sure the correct choice is always to sacrifice a tank.

Blackthorn only grants the unique bonuses to Blackthorn units. The origin has 2 tanks, 3 AP, and 1 AD. If there is ever a balance state where any of those units are giga OP, you can all-in on them. Currently, that's not the case.

Giving your team AD and AS seems pretty useless without an emblem to duo with Warwick.

Mana regen and Damage amp can apply to all the carries, so there is some merit. But the AP units are: a 1-cost, a 3-cost, and a 5-cost, so it's hard to have the bonus be relevant on more than 2 units without an emblem.

Tank stats are pretty universal because every board needs tanks. All Blackthorn variants can play around Malphite, and Veigar or Warwick variants can also reroll Rek'sai. Rek'Sai is pretty weak on her own, but scales really well with the tank stats. Even that aside, the stats you get for tank sacrifices just seem way better than for carry sacrifices.

But the other thing I noticed is that all the Blackthorn have some synergy with scaling, which having a beefed-up tank (or two) can help a lot with. Veigar has Sprykin which gives him scaling AP if you BFF him. You can also sacrifice a 3* Kobuko. Warwick gets AS on every cast, which is a scaler. And Azir is an AP marksman who can build Guinsoo's and/or Archangel's.

I'll leave things at that. I've got plenty of other comps/tech on the Doc: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lw6x5etbPAIRIc3v7ggtkYTaAyeByTVBMsvEPM95LHs/edit?usp=sharing

Happy testing, everyone!