Kayle
At the start of Season 5, Riot Games advertised that Kayle, upon reaching her final Ascended state, would be the most dominant carry in Teamfight Tactics history. This unit is indeed very powerful and once topped the meta with the Kayle – Knight composition, along with an extremely annoying defensive capability. However, at this moment, this composition can’t hold up in the meta as the core of the team – Kayle has been nerfed severely.
Firstly, in patch 11.12, the number of hits required for Kayle to gain damage immunity was increased to 10. Even this number was further raised to 15 in patch 11.13, and the damage during her final ascended state was also heavily nerfed. These significant power reductions have made Kayle’s damage output and self-protection capabilities far too weak compared to before. Therefore, risking an investment in Kayle in the current meta will only lead to losses.
Jax
Although not nerfed as severely as Kayle, Jax faces a major issue in that the current meta does not support building melee carries. Essentially, in Season 5, players have too many useful tools to counter “carry” champions with short attack ranges. With items like Fire Cloak and Storm Bow (both regular and Dark versions), melee carries like Jax can be “softened up” too easily before they even reach the enemy’s backline.
Moreover, the continuous abuse of champions like Rell, Ivern, and Volibear by players also makes Jax easily controlled in each round of battle. Clearly, when unable to attack, Jax does not receive any healing from Divine Hand or Bloodthirster, making him very vulnerable and leading players to defeat. The advice is to only play a Warrior composition with Jax as the carry if you have the Celestial Scarf; otherwise, it’s best to skip this team composition.
Aphelios
When mentioning Aphelios, we immediately think of a unit capable of dealing damage over time as well as burst damage at a good level. Such a champion should ideally become a super strong carry, but in reality, Aphelios is not that dominant and is even absent in the current meta. A major weakness of Aphelios and other Marksman units is that they lack the capability to deal strong damage per hit, except for Vayne. Therefore, Marksman units must have adequate “core” items to be strong.
Clearly, the dependency on a random factor like item drops has caused the Marksman system, including Aphelios, to lack stable power. This makes the Marksman team in general, and Aphelios in particular, not an effective rank climbing option in the current version. Perhaps this will change in Teamfight Tactics season 5.5 when Aphelios receives a significant buff in damage output capability.