Teamfight Tactics Champions and Synergies Guide - Find the Best Teamcomp!

Teamfight Tactics Champions and Synergies

The new auto chess had its worldwide open beta launch less than a week ago and it’s a huge success already. Teamfight Tactics is only available through League of Legends client, but it attracted both the LoL veterans and plenty of new or returning players. The launch was actually surprisingly smooth, considering Riot Games’ recent track record with new game modes - anybody remembers Clash?

Some servers had to put up with artificially extended queue times during the early hours, to let the servers survive the barrage of players wanting to try the new interesting thing. Beyond that, the game is actually running pretty well and there were only a few minor bugs showing up here and there.

That's enough introduction, lets dive straight into TFT units, as well as their origins and classes. As you probably know by now, every champion in TFT has at least two categories that they are a part of. Every single one has an origin and a class, but a few of the heroes belong in three categories at the same time. With the exception of Ninjas, you generally want to stack champions that have the same category.   

Important note – synergies only count for unique champions on the board! For example: placing two Dariuses in a single round won’t provide you with the Imperial nor the Knight bonus. If you have another Knight on the board, all three of them will benefit from the synergy.

TFT Champion Origins

At first, let’s take the two unique ones out of the way. The robot is an origin currently exclusive to Blitzcrank – it allows him to have the ultimate ability charged up and ready to go at the beginning of every fight. This way, at the start of every combat he hooks and knocks up a target. Exile is Yasuo’s origin. It grants him a shield equal to 100% of his HP at the beginning of the round, as long as he is not adjacent to any allied unit.

Dragon 

Placing two Dragons in your team comp makes them immune to magic damage. This passive makes them a great counter against the Sorcerers and Elementalists. There are two Dragons in the game -  Shyvana and Aurelion Sol. Remember not to stack magic resist items on them!

Phantom

Having two Phantoms on your board makes one random enemy unit start the combat with only 100 HP. With a little bit of luck or AoE damage, you can instantly delete this character at the beginning of the fight. Mordekaiser, Kindred and Karthus are all a part of this category. 

The Phantom passive adds another element of randomness to the game. If you get rid of one of your opponent’s strongest champions you might auto-win the round. If the curse is placed on a less useful, weak unit, it’s not going to mean that much.

Void  

Triple void makes your whole team ignore 50% of the enemy units’ armor. It works great against armor stackers and Nobles. The four Vodlings in the game are Kassadin, Kha’Zix, Rek’Sai and Cho’Gath.

Both first-tier units in this category: Kassadin and Kha’Zix can actually scale surprisingly well into the late game if you itemize properly. Kassadin excels with attack speed and tank items, while Kha’Zix is a powerful assassin that can make use of some extra attack damage.

Pirate 

This origin has an interesting and kind of a gimmicky passive. If you have at least three Pirates, after every round against other players you’ll get a treasure chest. It can contain from 0 to 4 extra gold coins. The money generation can be useful if you can get the bonus quickly and without losing too much HP. Champions that form this category are Graves, Pyke, Gankplank and Miss Fortune.

Imperial 

having two of them makes one random champion from this category deal double damage, collecting all four of them gives every one of your Imperials this powerful bonus. Units of this origin are Darius, Katarina, Draven, and Swain. Banking on being able to find all of them is definitely risky, but this synergy is really strong and each one of the Imperials has a great potential to hard carry with the correct items.

Ninja

This is probably the most unique synergy in the game. Having only a single Ninja makes them deal +40% attack damage. This bonus goes away if you have two or three of them, but having four grant +80% attack damage on all of them. These four Ninjas are Shen, Zed, Kennen, and Akali.

This weird dynamic makes a single Shen or Zed really powerful in the early game and Akali a great addition to every mid and late game team that needs some raw power. You should never have two or three Ninjas on the board due to the anti-synergy.

Getting all four of them is good, but significantly weaker than the Imperial synergy and really risky since you have to pray to the RNG gods to get them all quick. Four ninjas + another assassin give you a nice double synergy that can let your Akali shine, but it’s not the most reliable strategy.

WILD 

if you have two of them, they will generate fury stacks with every auto-attack. Each stack gives a 7% attack speed that caps at +35%. If you have four Wilds, your whole team gets this passive. The champions that form this category are Nidalee, Warwick, Ahri, Rengar, and Gnar.

This origin is really strong early, but they don’t scale really well. Rengar is definitely not the best Assassin in the game, Ahri is decent, but pretty much everybody will prefer Aurelion Sol in her place and the tier 1 units don’t scale that well, even with items. It leaves Gnar as the only potential hard-carry. If you have Nidalee and Gnar in your comp arealy you can get Shyvana or Swain for extra shapeshifter synergy.

Wild is great if you want to get through an early game without losing much HP, but later you should transition into something that scales better. This synergy is heavily countered by armor, dodging and strong burst that doesn’t allow them to fully stack the bonus attack speed.

Yordle 

If you have three of them, all Yordles have a 20% chance to dodge auto-attacks, if you have six the bonus grows to 50%. It’s strong against auto-attackers. The champions that are a part of this species are Tristana, Lulu, Kennen, Poppy, Veigar and Gnar.

To be honest, I haven’t seen too many people trying to stack Yordles in my games. 6 Yordles with one extra Sorcerer can be a good strategy. It hard counters certain compositions like Nobles and Wilds, but the passive dodging almost useless against strong spell casters like Sorcerers and Elementalists.

Noble

three of them give 35 health on-hit and extra 100 armor to one of your Nobles. Having all six provides this bonus to all of your champions of this origin. To get this powerful passive you’d have to collect: Fiora, Garen, Vayne, Lucian, Leona, and Kayle.

At first, this composition has been dubbed the most overpowered in the game, sometimes even compared to the Yu-Gi-Oh! Exodia. There are a couple of problems with that. First: the bonus for three Nobles is not that great, you need to get all six of them to be really strong. Adding the fourth or the fifth one doesn’t really provide you with anything and you have to collect them anyway.

The second drawback is: it has multiple counters that are actually much easier to assemble. Granted, six Nobles counter most Wild, Blademaster, Gunslinger and sometimes even Assassin comps. However, they get soft countered by the triple Void armor penetration. Moreover, Nobles lose pretty handedly to Sorcerers and Elementalists, since they deal mostly with magic damage as they rely on spells.

Glacial

Stacking Glacials gives all your units of this origin a chance to stun targets on auto-attack. For two Glacials it’s 20%, four extend it to 30% and the cap at 6 is 45%. Reaching it requires finding: Braum, Lissandra, Ashe, Volibear, Sejuani, and Anivia.

In my opinion, this strategy is actually the safest bet, mostly due to the fact of how smooth the transition is. Not only the bonus gets better every two levels, instead of three, but adding the third and the fifth Glacial are further power spikes since these champions will also use the on-hit passive.

Since the stun can proc on auto-attacks, the build scales tremendously with attack speed. Usually, these builds rely on classic front-to-back compositions with full attack speed Ashe as the massive carry, almost always paired with a second Ranger to buff her even more.

Item-wise Zeke’s Herald provides AoE attack speed steroid that you can put on all your Glacials to proc more stuns. Furthermore, Sejuani works really well with mana, since her Special Ability is a giant AoE crowd control. Items like Titanic Hydra or Runaan’s Hurricane let you hit multiple enemies at once and stunlock them even harder.

Demon

Collecting Demons allows them to consume the enemy’s mana and deal true damage equal to the mana that they depleted. For two of them, it’s 40% on hit chance, four make it 60% and six up it to 80%. There are seven units of this origin in the game: Elise, Varus, Aatrox, Evelynn, Morgana, Brand and Swain.

Even though the passive seems pretty powerful, not that many people decide to stack Demons in their games. Not that many comps rely on their Special Abilities what would make this origin vulnerable to counters, but I don’t think that it’s the main reason.

First of all, Elise is really weak, Varus is not the most reliable marksman due to the long casting time of his ultimate and Evelynn is not that strong either. At the same time, there are no Demons in the first tier which makes stacking them a little bit more difficult. At the same time, Aatrox and Brand are really powerful units that can be set up as carries in respectively Blademaster and Elementalist comps. Both of those champions can deal tons of damage with Spear of Shojin, while Brand can also use some more mana or AP.

TFT Champion Classes

Guardian

If you have two Guardians in your team, they will grant all the adjacent allies extra 40 armor at the beginning of the fight. These two units are Braum and Leona. This is also why Braum is a great addition to a Noble comp and Leona works great with Glacials since they can get you this defensive bonus.

Elementalist  

Champions that belong to this class stack mana two times faster than the others. Having three of them give you access to Daisy – the tanky golem that will be summoned at the beginning of the fight. The four available Elementalists are Lissandra, Kennen, Brand, and Anivia.

Elementalists are extremely powerful in the midgame. Getting the golem fairly early is super overpowered and Brand has some really powerful stats. They are a great category to transition into during the midgame. Most of them also have some really powerful ultimates that can gain a lot from the Sorcerers’ boost. This class will gladly take any ability power and mana items.

Ranger

Stacking this class allows the ranger to get double attack speed for three seconds, every three seconds. For two of them, it’s a 25% chance, for all four it goes up to 65%. The Rangers in TFT are Vayne, Varus, Ashe, and Kindred.

Players very often build double Ranger comp, since the attack speed buff is really nice. This class needs a strong frontline to safely dish out the damage. That’s why getting Mordekaiser and Kindred is a great addition for both the Glacial and Noble comps. This way you get an extra Ranger, another frontliner and the powerful Phantom bonus.

Four Rangers is possible, but difficult to pull off. Having four squishes in the backline limits the number of champions that you can put in the frontline. If your tanks aren’t durable enough, you may not last long enough in the fights. This comp is also heavily countered by Assassins. The items you want on your carry Rangers should give you attack speed and life steal. Phantom Dancer is also a great lifesaver against Assassins.

Brawler

Collecting Brawlers makes the units of this class get extra health. Two of them grant +300 and four of them up it to +700. There are five Brawlers in Teamfight Tactics: Warwick, Blitzcrank, Rek’Sai, Volibear and Cho’Gath.

With Rek’Sai and Cho’Gath, you can easily stack Brawlers and Voidlings at the same time. People do not really build their compositions specifically for this class. Flat bonus HP can be really useful early on, but it doesn’t scale that well. Brawlers can definitely make use of armor and magic resist, Cho’Gath can also utilize mana items really well since his Special Ability is a giant AoE knock up.

Gunslinger 

Stacking this category gives Gunslingers a 50% chance to hit extra enemies with basic attacks. With two of those champions, you can hit one extra enemy, with four of them you can hit everyone in range. The units are Graves, Tristana, Lucian, Gangplank and Miss Fortune.

Getting to four Gunslingers is actually not that difficult and you can even replace one of them as you get Miss Fortune later in the game. They are a powerful combination that mixes a lot of auto-attack damage with powerful Special Abilities of GP and MF against high armor enemies. The biggest downside is the fact that you collect a bunch of ranged damage dealers without any frontline, so you might consider this when filling out the remaining slots of your team comp.

Basically every one of these champions can carry with the right itemization. Lucian can be a double-edged sword because sometimes he uses his ultimate dash to kite enemies and dodges skillshots, but in other situations, he’ll jump straight into enemy AoE spells. Gunslingers can definitely use AD, attack speed and life steal, while Gangplank and Miss Fortune also work well with some mana and AP.

Shapeshifter

Placing three Shapeshifters in your team, makes them gain +100% maximum HP after they transform. Every character in this class uses their ultimate transform ability when they reach full mana. There’s one Shapeshifter for every unit tier in the game. Nidalee, Elise, Shyvana, Gnar, and Swain.

You always want to make sure that your champions from this class manage to use their Special Ability before they die, especially if you have the bonus active. That means that mana and tank stats are really good on them. Of course, some of them will also make great use of damage items and ability power.

Knight 

Stacking members of this class gives them a flat reduction in the incoming basic attack damage. Two Knights get 20, four get 40 and getting all six makes it 80. To max out the bonus, you’d have to collect all of those: Darius, Garen, Mordekaiser, Poppy, Sejuani, and Kayle.

This passive makes them really strong against comps focused on auto-attacking – especially Rangers, Gunslingers, and Blademasters. The drawback of a knight comp is the low damage output and relative vulnerability to spells. You don’t really have the possibility to kill enemy Sorcerers or Elementalists quickly. This can likely allow them to use multiple rotations of their Special Abilities and finally kill your beefy team.

There a few ways of pulling off a Knights comp, getting Kindred for the Phantom passive is a good start. Magic Resist items can let you survive the spellcasters (Dragon’s Claw provides 83% resistance to magic damage). Morellonomicon on Garen enables him to actually become a damage threat and carry some fights. You can also get a high tier unit with strong base damages like Brand, Swain or Miss Fortune and put a Knight’s Vow on them, to get them the bonus damage reduction.

Blademaster 

getting multiple Blademasters on the same team gives them a 45% chance to perform a multi-strike. With three of them it’s a double attack, with six it goes up to a triple-hit. All the units in this class are Fiora, Shen, Aatrox, Gangplank, Draven, and Yasuo.

The most interesting aspect of that is the Gangplank since he belongs to both the Blademasters and Gunslingers. This leads many players to attempts of combining both of those classes and getting tons of extra attacks. You can add the Blademaster class to another champion with the Blade of the Ruined King. Players often give to Lucian or Graves to give them both of those bonuses.

Units like Aatrox or Draven can carry fights extremely hard, with Aatrox relying more on his special ability (which means that mana items are good on him) and Draven being a true auto-attacker. Gangplank can also deal with a ton of magic damage with his powder kegs.

Assassin

Collecting Assassins gives them extra critical strike damage. If you have three of them it’s +150%, for 6 it goes up to +350% which is a huge amount of extra damage. A well-itemized Assassin with this bonus can often one-shot an enemy with a single crit. Furthermore, every one of them starts the combat in stealth and jumps across the board trying to get to the farthest enemies, most favorably - carries. The units in this class are Kha’Zix, Pyke, Zed, Evelynn, Katarina, Rengar and Akali.

There are a few problems with going for six Assassins. First of all, your team will usually be really squishy. It might not matter if you manage to quickly delete the enemy main damage dealers, but if you don’t – they will start killing your team really fast. Secondly, both Zed and Akali are Ninjas, meaning that you shouldn’t play both of them unless you get the remaining two as well.

An interesting adaptation that I’ve seen is building a Youmuu’s Ghostblade – the item that adds the Assassin class to another champion. Giving it to a tank makes them jump straight into the enemy backline and makes it easier to build up the synergy.

Almost every champion in this class can carry really hard, but they’re extremely item-reliant to do so. All of them can use extra AD, but Kha’Zix is surprisingly good with tank items, Pyke needs Spear of Shojin (or even two) to be really effective and Katarina needs as many mana items as you can get. Her ultimate is an extremely powerful AoE damage tool, but making sure that she’s able to cast it on multiple targets is the difficult part.

Sorcerer 

Stacking Sorcerers gives extra ability power to your whole team. With three of them it’s +35, with six it’s +100. It not only empowers every champion of this class not called Kassadin but also amplifies the ultimates of the rest of your team. There are seven Sorcerers in this game: Kassadin, Ahri, Lulu, Morgana, Veigar, Aurelion Sol and Karthus.

This synergy counters all the armor stackers, especially the Nobles. Stacking attack speed and tank items on Kassadin actually make him a really good frontliner that’s also a Sorcerer. If she lives long enough and casts multiple ults, Lulu can significantly increase the durability of your team. Most of the comps that I’ve seen or played used Aurelion Sol as the primary backline threat since his Special Ability is a really powerful nuke that can hit multiple targets works similarly to Varus’ ability, but it’s faster and wider.

The biggest problem with stacking Sorcerers is not the possibility of getting hard countered by other players. It’s the Dragon. Having six of them Sorcs makes it basically impossible to defeat the NPC Dragons in the late game. That makes you not only lose HP but also miss out on the chance of getting some more items. That being said, you can lose to Infernal Drake and still win the game, it’s just not something we would recommend.

Item-wise, we already talked about Kassadin, who’s an exception. The rest of Sorcerers work really well with mana and AP. If you have a good frontline to keep your Aurelion Sol alive, you can also place a Spear of Shojin on him. 

That's all the champion categories currently present in TFT. As you can see, there's plenty of possibilities while constructing a perfect team comp.