As we are all too familiar, there are two main forms of damage in Teamfight Tactics: magical damage and physical damage. Additionally, there are a few champions with skills or items that provide true damage, but this is usually limited to a certain amount. Simply put, true damage is too powerful and cannot be countered.
Returning to physical damage, in recent patches, we can easily see its dominance. While there have been some Mage compositions that have managed to reach the top, physical carries remain the most stable and effective option for ranking up. It’s no coincidence that SyFen, despite being nerfed significantly in the last patch, is still an incredibly strong champion.
This has caused headaches for Riot Games in their balancing efforts. In fact, in his latest update, the Teamfight Tactics project director – Riot Mortdog stated that physical damage is currently much stronger than magical damage. He also revealed that the entire physical damage system will be revamped in the future to address this issue.
Riot Mortdog: “In short, this is the issue with physical damage. Physical carries will deal 100% of this type of damage. Meanwhile, magical carries still deal a considerable amount of physical damage. This makes the value of magical items much lower compared to physical items.
At the same time, the base physical damage stats of each champion will scale with levels. Therefore, 3-star champions like Varus or Katarina in the past can deal enormous damage even without holding many items that provide physical damage stats. This led us to the decision that we need to revamp this system.”
Indeed, the way the damage system in Teamfight Tactics operates is facing some issues, making physical damage overwhelmingly strong. However, we must fairly recognize that the items for magical carries are falling behind compared to physical items. Therefore, it’s understandable that magical carries appear weaker.
For example, the Giant Slayer item, which is crafted from Wooden Bow and B.F. Sword, increases all damage dealt, including from skills. In contrast, magical damage items cannot achieve this since most of the items crafted from Rabadon’s Deathcap only increase damage from skills. Perhaps Riot Games should find ways to boost the power of items crafted from Rabadon’s Deathcap so that magical carries are not left so far behind anymore.
