Just a few days ago, Riot Games announced the biggest changes in patch 12.14, leaving many players stunned. First, Riot decided to reduce the power of all AD stats, with the growth rate when leveling up champions dropping to 50% instead of 80% as before. This has rendered a series of compositions that revolve around 3-star champions both weak and a waste of gold.
Next, Riot has overly buffed Dragon champions, especially Aurelion Sol and, to some extent, SyFen. As a result, a host of familiar carries like Olaf, Xayah, and Varus will “fall by the wayside,” while Dragon champions rise to dominance. This has caused many TFT masters to express extreme dissatisfaction, claiming that this is a grave mistake by Riot.
Top 4 Challenger player – K3soju: “What am I reading here? They have ridiculously buffed Aurelion Sol and nerfed Xayah to the ground like this? Then look at Varus or Olaf, with these nerfs, they can’t be played anymore. And what do we have in this new patch? Everyone is playing Dragon champions with Shi Oh Yu, SyFen, then switching everything to Ao Shin and Aurelion Sol, right?”
Conceptually, we can understand that Riot wants to highlight the power of Dragon champions since they are “astronomically” priced. However, the drastic reduction in power for other carries has made the gameplay of TFT potentially very poor, as Dragon champions seem to be the almost only way to win.
Remember that a common feature of Dragon champions is that only one character can be used in the composition. Meanwhile, the appearance rate of such champions is shared with other 4 or 5-cost characters, making the chance to obtain the desired Dragon champion quite low. As a result, players are likely to find themselves in a situation where they are competing for a key Dragon champion and unable to build their desired composition or “pivot” to another strong setup.
Of course, we still have to wait a few more days to see the true strength of the champions after the 12.14 patch update. If other carries outside of Dragon champions turn out to be too weak, hopefully, Riot will take reasonable steps to buff them.