Recently, the Knight meta has risen to prominence as players discovered Hecarim – a champion costing only 2 gold but incredibly powerful, dealing up to 600 magic damage at 2-star level. Additionally, Hecarim has strong healing capabilities with recovery rates of 300/400/800 for each level.
Another strength of the main Knight composition is that players can be flexible, using these champions either as carry (dealing both damage and defense) or as a high-quality frontline capable of closing in and applying crowd control effects on opponents. These reasons have quickly made Knights a hot meta, and notably, Hecarim is the most favored champion, not only for being strong but also for being relatively easy to upgrade to 3 stars at just 2 gold.
Of course, Riot won’t let any meta become overwhelmingly strong over the others, and immediately, the ‘sentence’ was issued in an emergency patch, without waiting for the official release of patch 11.12. Riot Mortdog – the lead engineer of the TFT project, specifically named the Knights as one of the top targets of this patch.
Riot’s immediate action received immense praise from the TFT gaming community. Additionally, many suggested that Riot should find solutions for other champions that are currently showing ‘dominance,’ such as those revolving around the Zombie composition.
In general, the release of an emergency patch also proves the overwhelming strength of the 3-star Hecarim + Knight meta. Although there are still many other metas that seem stronger than the rest, frequently being spammed, Riot continues to show that they are always very concerned about the player experience in the TFT game.