the broccoli tft thesis

the ideal tft player possesses knowledge of every single possible line in a set, which enables them to choose the best line when given a set of starting items, augments, and units

meta is not everything as there are usually plenty of playable off meta lines - however these usually require uncommon knowledge as the spot you play them from isn’t always clear

TFT is an inherently unbalancable game, in which the game state at the highest level of play will constantly shift per patch - elite players will understand this and play around what is broken and what counters what is broken. Lower skilled players will complain that their favorite comp is no longer playable and force it anyways

therefore, in order to reach high elo you need 2 key things:

• a high level ability to study and apply knowledge (yes I mean studying as if you were in school)
• lots of time to spend studying

the two types of patches

imo, there are two main types of patches in tft:

• patches where uncontested, off meta lines are the most consistent, as minimizing the amount of rerolls leads to higher placement
  • example: in set 7.5 the dragonmancer nunu comp aka the “throat goat” comp was pretty much unbeatable by most conventional comps
    • however, the lagoon board which was generally considered to be bad at the time was a hard counter to nunu that not many people knew about, this made it a consistent way to climb because you could beat anybody in the lobby that was forcing nunu
• patches where contested meta lines are too strong, in which there is no other option than playing to bleed out slowly if you don’t have a spot for the meta comp
  • example: set 13 14.23B patch, violet gets buffed and the pit fighter family reroll comp is averaging 3.X
    • you either get a good spot to play violet at the start or you’re just trying to play for top 4
  • example: in set 7.5 the seraphine graves patch aka “chinese seraphine” was about who could force the comp the best
    • nothing could beat it when played well - except for the very conditional fast 9, but even that wasn’t a complete counter
    • lagoon was the only consistent counter to that comp at the time, so when lagoon got nerfed to be unplayable, sera graves became unbeatable