If you haven’t noticed, Teamfight Tactics currently offers much less gold than previous seasons, making win/loss streaks easier to achieve than before, but it seems to be counterproductive. Moreover, the damage based on the match duration from the Chosen is too high, so the final rounds tend to depend more on who survives, which often relies heavily on luck rather than a truly dominating team composition.
Therefore, in the latest updates from Riot, they are trying to change this to make Teamfight Tactics fairer and more interesting. Riot Statikk posted these updates on Reddit a few hours ago, through which we can see that the damage from the Chosen has been reduced, but the damage from surviving units has increased, and the conditions for achieving win/loss streaks will be tougher. Specifically:
Player Damage
The base damage of the Chosen has been reduced from 0/3/4/5/10/15/20 to 0/1/1/2/5/10/15 based on the stage of play.
The damage from each surviving unit after the round has increased from 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10 to 2/4/6/8/9/10/11/12/13/14. Riot Statikk further explained that the damage based on the number of units will count as the first 4 surviving units dealing the above amount of damage; starting from the 5th unit, each surviving unit will deal an additional 1 damage to the opponent’s Chosen.
According to the Teamfight Tactics design team, this change aims to reduce the excessive safety of current team compositions. Teams like Brawler, Vanguard, and Guardian only aim to use their tankiness to win; they often only have 1-2 surviving units after each round but still deal significant damage to opponents due to the old damage calculation rule.
With this new system, your composition must survive in larger numbers to quickly take down opponents; otherwise, the opponents will have time to turn the tide if they are lucky enough. Perhaps defensive playstyles like 4 Vanguard/4 Guardian + 4 Mystic will no longer be as strong.
Gold Earned
Win Streaks
Old
2 wins = +1 gold
3 wins = +2 gold
4+ wins = +3 gold
New
2-3 wins = +1 gold
4 wins = +2 gold
5+ wins = +3 gold
With the increased requirements for achieving a 3 gold win streak, the ability to snowball from the amount of gold will be much harder and only reserved for strong compositions from the start or players with high “luck”. This indirectly weakens the strategy of leveling up to 8 early to acquire 5-cost units to carry the team since the amount of gold is no longer as plentiful as before, making leveling up much slower.
In summary, these updates from Riot aim solely to reduce player reliance on super 5-cost units like Gangplank and Miss Fortune. You will need to play according to a distinct composition that you build from the start, rather than just playing any team and stuffing that beloved pirate captain into your lineup.