The Pilot – Spy team has been an incredibly stable composition in Teamfight Tactics, with comprehensive offensive and defensive capabilities that can be extremely annoying if equipped with enough items early on. At levels 6/7, it is quite challenging for any composition to take down the Super Robot, not to mention the terrifying damage output from the Spy units.
After the nerf to the Dark Star and Star Guardian in patch 10.8b, the Pilot – Spy team has become even stronger due to facing fewer counters than before, and this composition is firmly positioned in tier S (extremely strong) on most statistics platforms. Recently, Riot Mortdog, the lead designer of Teamfight Tactics, released a video explaining patch 10.9, in which they will take action to reduce the power of this composition both directly (nerfing the Super Robot) and indirectly (adjusting the appearance rates of the units). Details:
The changes to champions will not differ too much from the PBE server, you can find out more HERE.
Patch 10.9 will introduce 2 new Constellations, details available HERE. An additional detail is that in the Star Cluster Constellation, during the second shared pick phase, all champions will be 2-cost instead of the usual mix of 2-cost and 3-cost champions.
Changes to the system
One upgrade to items that Riot Games is implementing in the upcoming patch 10.9 is that players will not be able to sell a champion holding an item or open a loot box containing an item when their inventory is full. This will help players avoid the unfortunate loss of items, and according to Riot Mortdog, players will always have 4 items after the first 3 rounds of monsters, 1 from the shared pick phase, and 3 from the PVE round.
We can see the most significant change in this system regarding the appearance rates at levels 5 and 7, where the appearance percentage of 2-cost and 3-cost champions has slightly decreased, while the 1-cost champions have increased. According to Riot Mortdog, the strategy of stopping at higher levels and rolling for 3-star champions has occurred too much and is extremely powerful, while rolling for 3-star 1-cost champions is too difficult.
This change in rates will indirectly nerf compositions that rely heavily on important 3-cost champions that need to be upgraded to 3 stars. The first name that comes to mind for players is Shaco, and another important unit of the Pilot – Spy team, Rumble, will also be affected. However, this change is still not the final nerf aimed at this composition.
Changes to traits – systems
Duelist: The activation rate at the threshold of 6 units decreases from 60% to 55%, while the attack speed bonus increases.
Pilot: The base health of the Super Robot decreases from 1800 to 1500. The Pilot unit no longer receives energy from splitting.
A significant nerf for the Pilot as the Super Robot will now be much more fragile than before. Remember that the Super Robot has already been nerfed in terms of being weaker as the game progresses, and now upgrading Rumble and Annie will be harder, and damage from upgrading Shaco will decrease. It can be said that the Pilot – Spy composition has been comprehensively nerfed with just a few minor changes to the system like this.
Mystic: The guaranteed critical health threshold against opponents decreases from 50% to 40%.
Chrono: Reworked from increasing 15/35/75% attack speed every 4 seconds to increasing 15% attack speed every 8/4/2 seconds. The first attack speed increase always occurs at the beginning of the battle phase.
Starship: Energy gain per second increases from 20 to 40 (Aurelion Sol’s energy changes from 30/80 to 40/120)
The remaining changes to traits – systems are very minor and do not significantly impact the power of the compositions. However, the Brawlers – Cannoneers may suffer more as the 4 Brawlers will be slightly weaker than before, and Cannoneers will require more damage from items to compensate for the reduced extra attack hits.
The final notable change is in the 2-cost champion tier, where Rakan has been slightly weakened due to his annoying ability to reliably knock up backline enemies, and his skill range has now been slightly reduced. Similarly, Yasuo, instead of easily one-shotting an opponent’s carry, can now only select the farthest target at a range of attack + 2 spaces.
Lucian receives an upgrade, specifically a bug fix where his double shots will not be lost if the target dies while he is dashing.
