Victory Loot
When it comes to traits that provide healing, Victory Loot is often compared to the Blessing of Heaven trait. However, over time, this technology trait has gradually revealed critical weaknesses, resulting in a mere 46.7% top 4 rate for players who choose Victory Loot. We must remember that this trait does not directly increase healing stats or lifesteal for champions; it only activates when your unit eliminates an opponent.
The consequence is that despite having a very appealing number (healing over 700 health), when considering the total actual healing, Victory Loot falls far behind Blessing of Heaven. In fact, if you encounter “bad luck” and cannot upgrade your champions or possess a strong carry, this technology trait may not have any effect since your team cannot eliminate opponents. Therefore, the advice here is to choose Victory Loot only when you are confident in having a significantly stronger team compared to other players.
Pandora’s Box
There is a principle in Teamfight Tactics that items are always a crucial part of determining a team’s strength. Therefore, crafting items early is extremely important to help players maintain a lot of health and even secure winning streaks. However, the Pandora’s Box trait operates contrary to this principle by requiring players to hold multiple component items to aim for a certain “signature” item (usually Infinity Edge) for a carry champion or according to the player’s preference.
And the unfortunate part here is that the items exchanged through Pandora’s Box are completely random and not according to the player’s wishes. If you’re lucky, you might get the “signature” item after just a few rounds, but in the case of “bad luck,” players will face many difficulties waiting for their desired item to appear. Clearly, with a meta that still has quite a few reroll compositions, choosing a trait that relies too much on “luck” is incredibly risky.
Recycling Factory
The idea of this trait is fundamentally to support flexible play and “pivoting” late in the game, where you can craft items early and then switch to a different item type. However, in practice, players often choose to craft the “signature” item early and give it to units holding the items. Meanwhile, in actual matches, the Recycling Factory trait is almost only selected when you need a certain component item during a shared draft or when the current item is too poor.
Therefore, the Recycling Factory trait faces significant issues as it is only truly necessary late in the game, but at this stage, players need traits that provide greater stats. The result is that although it is chosen quite frequently, the Recycling Factory trait only has a 43.7% top 4 rate. Perhaps Riot Games needs to buff this trait a bit to make it competitive with other options. Until we wait for Riot’s decision, players should avoid choosing this trait unless the item options are too poor.