Teamfight Tactics Patch 14.3b: Light Touch Before Regional Final Season
With the Teamfight Tactics competitive season reaching its most important phase as Regional Finals are almost here, every balance decision counts as the balance team at Riot Games aims to make the biggest tournaments of the season the best they can possibly be.
With that said, the latest patch of TFT, 14.3 didn't put the game in an optimal setting heading into the first weekend of Regional Finals so in a post made by TFT Lead Designer Stephen "Mortdog" Mortimer, it was announced that TFT will be receiving a mid-week update to clean up some problems. The new b-patch for 14.3 addresses some concerns and is now live at the posting of this article. Here is everything players need to know about TFT 14.3b.
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Trait changes
The majority of the small b-patch comes in the form of nerfs to the two problem traits of the patch, Punk and Heartsteel. Punk isn't getting any actual nerfs to its trait but its main augment, Extended Play, is being disabled for the duration of 14.3 as it was overperforming according to Mortdog.
According to MetaTFT.com, before the b-patch, Extended Play was by a wide margin the best-performing augment in the entire game boasting an average placement of 3.84 which is a full 0.2 higher than the next closest augment, Scrappy Inventions (which is also getting touched).
Riot Games
As for the other trait getting nerfed, Heartsteel has been a problem in high-rated lobbies as the risk versus reward was not being seen on the risk side. To prevent the high-roll econ trait from ruining Regional Finals, the trait is seeing a slight nerf not to destroy the metagame but to put the trait more in line. Also, the Heartthrobs augment is being disabled just like Extended Play as touching the augment is being deemed to risky according to Mortdog.
- Heartsteel Heart Multiplier: 1/2.25/5.5/18x to 1/2/5.5/18x
- Extended Play has been disabled
- Heartthrobs has been disabled
Champion Changes
Since the bpatch was created with the intent of touching Punk and Heartsteel, the team didnt want to just spend the resources on the two traits. As a result, the team decided to take a look at a couple of overperforming champions and give them "a slap on the wrist" as Mortdog outlined in his post on social media Wednesday.
"These are some of the smallest nerfs we've ever done as we do not want to change the meta much at all." Mortdog said.
The nerfs are to Zed, Kayle and Riven. Kayle was starting to see some play as a main carry option in Pentakill comps before the bpatch, 8bit Riven was also seeing a rise in play and so was EDM Zed. Because of the trends, Riot decided to error on the side of caution just in case the comps broke the game during the critical part of the tournament season. Like Mortdog said, these nerfs are hardly nerfs at all but its better to be safe than sorry.
Kayle
- Ability on-hit damage: 35/55/80% AP to 35/52/75% AP
Riven
- Ability damage: 90% AD to 85% AD
Zed
- AD: 75 to 72
