After the official launch of Season 9, many team compositions and playstyles have proven to be extremely strong and capable of dominating Teamfight Tactics. In patch 13.12, the prevalence of Aphelios or Zeri was quite common as these two champions were exceptionally powerful at that time. By the 13.13 update, Azir, Lux, and the Ionia race emerged with tremendous strength.
Due to these overly strong team compositions and playstyles, Teamfight Tactics Season 9 often falls into a state of imbalance. In fact, many players have directly asked the Project Director of Teamfight Tactics – Riot Mortdog if he regrets creating Azir, Zeri, and so on. However, Riot Mortdog’s answer regarding what he regrets most in Season 9 was extremely surprising to the players.
“What do I regret most in Season 9? That’s the design of the Yordle race’s effect being quite poor. You know, Yordle is only truly worth playing when there are 3 three-star champions in the composition. Before that, Yordle was an incredibly weak race and not worth investing in at all,” Riot Mortdog shared during a live stream.
In fact, Yordle is not the first race Riot Games has applied a 4-star upgrade mechanism to. Specifically, the Lunar race in Season 4 also had a similar mechanism where it could promote a carry to 4 stars to support the team. However, this playstyle proved to be quite unbalanced as Lunar champions could be extremely “useless” if not upgraded. As a result, this race was removed in the mid-season 4 update.
Therefore, a similar situation could occur with Yordle in Season 9 if Riot Games feels it is no longer suitable. Hopefully, in the upcoming versions, Riot will make reasonable adjustments to help Yordle achieve a better balance state.