For Teamfight Tactics players, changes to items are just as crucial as updates regarding traits, systems, or champions. In fact, adjustments that increase or decrease the power of items can significantly change the meta and impact the strength of various team compositions. Therefore, balancing the power of items is extremely important for Riot Games.
However, the reality is that things are not as simple as they seem, and there are times when Riot will buff items that are already considered strong or don’t need adjustments. Riot Mortdog recently acknowledged this when he discussed the adjustments made to Blue Buff in patch 11.24. According to the Teamfight Tactics design lead, very few players were using Blue Buff, so they had to buff this item even though it was not weak.
Riot Mortdog: “Honestly, sometimes I feel quite exhausted every time we balance items. Take Blue Buff as an example; there are many champions we thought would use this item, but in reality, no one uses it. Therefore, we had to overlook the balance factor to buff Blue Buff and help players pay more attention to it and use it more often.”
In reality, before being buffed in patch 11.24, Blue Buff was already a strong item that provided abundant energy to champions. This item is particularly powerful when used on certain champions with low maximum energy, such as Lux, Malzahar, and Ziggs, as they can cast their abilities continuously.
However, aside from the aforementioned spell damage units, there are hardly any other champions that utilize this item. This is simply because energy is not a priority concern for non-Mage team compositions. It wasn’t until Riot buffed the energy provided by Blue Buff to 50 that other champions like Twitch, Viktor, Orianna, and sometimes even Samira started to use this item.
As a result, team compositions like Twitch and Samira with Blue Buff, spamming their abilities, have emerged and are proving to be quite strong. Fortunately, these team compositions do not seem overly strong or unbalanced, so Riot’s decision to buff Blue Buff is acceptable. However, if they were to do the same with an item focused on dealing damage, such as Statikk Shiv, it would pose a much greater risk of imbalance.
Although Riot Games has its own reasoning for making such adjustments, the consequence is that they sometimes create extreme imbalances in Teamfight Tactics. Hopefully, they will consider their adjustment decisions more carefully in future patches.