Since season 1 until now, there have been numerous metas in Teamfight Tactics that players have explored, many of which have gone beyond the imagination of the engineers at Riot. In fact, they have had to rush to make small or larger adjustments to remove the “overpowered” champions from those metas out of the game.
However, there are two items that have been extremely powerful since their release and are always associated with hot metas like Void Kassadin, Divine Warrior Warwick, Bluetooth Master Yi, or enhancing the strength of the Blender Nocturne and Duelist Yasuo teams… We are talking about Guinsoo’s Rageblade and Rapid Firecannon.
The strength of Guinsoo’s Rageblade comes from the fact that this item helps increase attack speed. For champions whose traits/classes provide significant attack speed, Guinsoo’s Rageblade becomes an essential item. Of course, alongside Guinsoo’s Rageblade, players will also combine it with Infinity Edge, Bloodthirster… but no matter what additional items are included, the first item will always be Guinsoo’s Rageblade.
For example, Draven in season 5 with the Legion trait will gain an additional 25% attack speed, plus 6% from Guinsoo’s Rageblade, which means Draven will receive a total of 31% attack speed. Notably, this percentage from Guinsoo’s Rageblade stacks infinitely throughout the duration of combat. This means that at a certain point, Draven will unleash his attacks with the speed of a machine gun.
Another example comes from season 3 with the well-known meta of Bluetooth Master Yi. When this champion was first introduced, he had an attack speed of 0.85. When equipped with Guinsoo’s Rageblade, it increased to 0.94 and continuously stacks throughout the match. Thus, when Master Yi finishes a fight, his attack speed can reach over 3 attacks per second, an incredibly terrifying number. If combined with a damage threshold of 99 at 2 stars, Master Yi averages over 1782 damage per attack/round even without equipping damage items and without being buffed by his Meditation ability.
Or in season 5, the Blender Nocturne composition is making a comeback with Nocturne 3 Guinsoo’s Rageblade. In fact, even without the Dark Upgrade, just with Guinsoo’s Rageblade and Infinity Edge/Hextech Gunblade/Infinity Edge, Nocturne is already able to carry the team from start to finish. If additionally paired with Ivern triggering the Demon trait, this champion becomes nearly immortal.
A “companion” to Guinsoo’s Rageblade is Rapid Firecannon. There are almost never instances of champions using these items separately, especially the hot meta names throughout the seasons of TFT. This is because, with a composition of 2 Wooden Bows, this item also provides additional attack speed, which is 20% attack speed in season 5, while the Rapid Firecannon of Death provides 40% attack speed when there are no enemies within 2 hexes.
For example, in season 5, Kha’Zix has a fixed attack speed of 0.7, but when using Rapid Firecannon, the attack speed of this champion increases to 0.8. Thus, for some champions belonging to the Legion, for instance, with the existing 31% from Guinsoo’s Rageblade and the 20% from Rapid Firecannon, the average Legion champion like Draven has gained an additional 51% attack speed even before the fight has started. And for this Noxian champion, based on the formula, when he enters the battle, he possesses 1.1325 attacks per second, equivalent to 101,925 damage.
Furthermore, Rapid Firecannon also helps extend the range of basic attacks, leading to the emergence of numerous metas, notably Bluetooth Master Yi (season 3) or Gunblade Kayle and Sniper Kalista (season 4). In fact, if the team composition is arranged properly and has solid frontline champions, the champions wielding Rapid Firecannon can almost be untouchable while they wipe out the entire enemy team.
In the 11.9b patch, Riot still has not touched upon these two items. But players shouldn’t be too worried, because after all, they are only the strongest when in the hands of certain specific names, and Riot likely just needs to remove those champions if they prove to be too “overpowered”.