In patch 11.17, Riot Games has nerfed a slew of powerful 3-cost champions in Teamfight Tactics such as Riven, Yasuo, Nidalee… This has significantly weakened slow-rolling compositions at level 7, allowing a familiar yet strange team comp to rise to the top, which is Vayne – Reaper. According to statistics from the specialized site Metatft.com, the Vayne – Reaper team has an impressive 57.7% top 4 placement rate, the highest among the meta compositions in patch 11.17.
The first reason this composition has become stronger in patch 11.17 is that Vayne received a buff to her base attack damage. For champions like Vayne, who usually equip many items to increase attack speed, the aforementioned buff significantly enhances her damage output. This gives Vayne players a greater opportunity to take down opponents and build a winning streak.
Furthermore, this interacts very well with the Reaper trait’s gameplay in season 5.5, which accumulates damage with each round won. The increase in Vayne’s damage creates a massive snowball effect for the Reaper team. With this advantage, you don’t necessarily need to rely on expensive carries at the end of the game to secure a top 4 finish.
In terms of building the composition, besides purchasing all Vayne units in the shop, you should also acquire Knight units like Leona and Poppy. These units are quality, low-cost tanks early in the game that give Vayne enough time to take down the enemy team. If you can grab Thresh early on, the snowball effect of this composition will be even greater.
The advice is not to spend gold on experience while playing this composition. You need to keep your level as low as possible to upgrade Vayne to 3 stars. However, if after the second shared pick round you can only acquire 3 Vayne units, it is advisable for players to change compositions. This is because the chance of rolling 6 Vayne units before stage 3 is extremely low. If you try too hard to roll, it will only hurt your economy and the strength of your composition compared to your opponents.
Once you achieve a 3-star Vayne, your next goal should be to level up to 6 as quickly as possible and strive to reach 4 Reaper units. This will greatly enhance the attack stats of Reaper units and share the damage output burden with Vayne. Additionally, Miss Fortune is also a must-buy unit to counter the healing abilities of opponents without needing to combine items like Fire Cloak or Morello’s Evil Tome.
In the late game, you only need to add Rell and Jax to increase the armor of the composition to secure a top 4 position. If you feel you still lack crowd control, Ashe is a good choice with her Ultimate, Enchanted Crystal Arrow. In case you obtain items that increase AD from the shared pick rounds, you can consider adding Aphelios or Akshan to supplement your damage.
For item building, Guinsoo’s Rageblade and Runaan’s Hurricane are still the top choices for Vayne. For the third item, you can add attack speed with Rapid Firecannon or damage output with Infinity Edge, Bloodthirster. Additionally, you should also keep an eye on crafting Zeke’s Herald to provide extra attack speed to Vayne in the late game.
