If you’ve noticed, the speed of matches in Teamfight Tactics has slowed down significantly in the current meta. The reason is that a series of reroll compositions have been heavily nerfed, leading to a rise in playstyles that focus on saving gold and leveling up consistently. As a result, many compositions centered around 4-cost carries like Grandmaster, Chemtech, and Marksman are becoming extremely powerful.
Naturally, high-ranked players have turned to another playstyle that relies on 5-cost carries to counter the aforementioned style. In fact, one player even climbed to Grandmaster by “flexing” between various 5-cost carries. So how can you master this seemingly risky playstyle? Let’s find out.
The first thing you need to know is that to find 5-cost carries, you must reach at least level 8 along with a certain amount of gold. This requires players to have a stable economy beforehand, as you cannot play with 5-cost carries while having too little gold. To achieve this, the most important thing is to seek a win/loss streak to maximize your gold income.
If you have a win streak of 4 or more, you should consider leveling up quickly (level 5 by round 2-3, level 6 at round 3-1). This will help you add more units to your composition and maintain a longer win streak. However, this strategy can be quite risky, and the advice is to only do this when you are confident that you have the strongest composition at that moment.
For a loss streak, you need to find ways to take down as many enemy units as possible to preserve health. Blitzcrank is an effective unit when you are on a loss streak, as it ensures that you can take out at least one enemy unit. Moreover, you should also take advantage of traits like Yordle and Mercenary to gain additional gold.
After reaching level 8, the priority for players will be to roll continuously and search for suitable pieces. You should prioritize buying Champion units like Taric and Seraphine, as they will greatly enhance the power of your carries. If possible, you can push to 3 Champions, but if you have technology cores that provide healing, stopping at 2 champions is a better choice.
As for the carries, champions like Kai’Sa, Viktor, and Akali are the pieces you should aim for. All of these champions have high damage output and can effectively carry the team with just 2 items: Guardian Angel and Archangel’s Staff. You can also swap these carries quite easily if you upgrade other units to 2 stars.
For technology core choices, upgrades that directly increase stats, damage, and healing are the top picks when you play with 5-cost carries. Additionally, players can also choose to upgrade the Unique Path for extra stats in the early to mid-game to maintain better health. Besides that, upgrades that provide gold and experience are also good options for leveling up to level 8 faster.