While many players are still trying to get used to Season 3 of Teamfight Tactics, it’s inevitable that some mistakes will be made in evaluating the strength of the new champions. This leads to many powerful champions being undervalued, resulting in their underutilization by players.
Here are the underrated champions:
Graves
Graves is one of the few 1-cost champions with a powerful area damage skill that blinds enemies for 4 seconds (making auto-attacks miss entirely for that duration). With his abilities, Graves can deal significant damage early on and counter many late-game marksmen and duelists. Additionally, Graves can activate Cannoneer for two strong champions in the early game, Ezreal and Lucian.
With the passive ability Scoundrel, if paired with Darius or Jayce initially, Graves also has a 50% chance to earn 1 gold for each kill. Notably, since he only costs 1 gold, you can easily level him up to 2 stars and sell him without losing any money.
Darius
Among the 2-cost 1-star champions, Darius has the highest skill damage at 400, which can even double to 800 against targets below 50% health. If he can take down a target with his skill, Darius will instantly use his skill again. Therefore, if Cannoneer is activated, he becomes a true money-making machine.
Furthermore, even if Scoundrel and Sorcerer do not increase Darius’s damage or tankiness, that’s fine because his base stats are already quite solid. Thus, you can use this champion as a temporary source of damage (or tank) without needing to activate any traits.
Master Yi
While swordsmen like Kayle or Irelia are highly valued, Master Yi is often “starved” of any items or minimal attention. Regarding Master Yi’s strength, this champion has healing skills, speed boosts for 5 seconds, and deals true damage with each attack. With a few items like Rapid Firecannon, Giant Slayer, and Guinsoo’s Rageblade, Master Yi can shred through opponents even tanky ones like Garen (who is derived from 3 Pilots).
Especially with the passive ability of Raging, if you position him cleverly, Master Yi can gain about 1000 armor and 60% damage in the early moments of each round, significantly boosting his true damage output.
Thresh
Many players prefer the board-clearing ability of Miss Fortune’s Barrage, the hexing capabilities of Lulu that can affect half the enemy team, or Aurelion Sol’s map-wide damage. However, they often forget about a powerful 5-cost champion, Thresh, who can randomly pull one champion from the bench into combat.
Therefore, while the other champions are extremely powerful, Thresh provides them the stage to shine. With two energy-boosting items, the Archangel’s Staff and Spear of Shojin, it’s quite normal for Thresh to pull in 3-4 champions each round to overwhelm opponents with sheer numbers.
Finally, thanks to the two activations of Time Warp and Sorcerer, Thresh can fit into many team compositions, providing immense late-game power.