Hello TFT players! Happy New Year and we hope everyone is having as fun and safe of a holiday season as possible. Since nothing has changed, I’d like to dedicate this TFTuesday to three-star champions as I see a lot of misconceptions and suboptimal decisions revolving around them.
Tip – Know When To Hold And When To Fold
TFT is still fairly unsolved, meaning a lot of play revolves around feeling. So, I can’t give you a lot of hard rules around three-starring units. However, I do think a pretty universal rule of thumb is that if you’re below 20 gold and only have one extra of the unit you’re thinking of three starring, you should almost always sell the extra for interest provided nothing else is sellable.
Now, it also depends on the unit you’re thinking of three starring. I believe every unit can situationally be three starred, but you need to factor in the cost. An easy checklist you should run through is something like this:
- Do you need it to win?
- Will it cost less than four gold in interest?
- Is the unit a core part of the comp?
- Does it get you to level eight/ nine more safely?
- Would you rather have this unit than a random legendary?
If you answered no to any of these questions, then I’d highly consider not rolling down for that three star you’re holding units for. Remember: most three stars are nice to have, but you’d generally rather have a random two-star legendary.
Trick – You Don’t Need To Roll At Five
Listen, if the game gives you Chosen Vayne and another three Vaynes at stage two, by all means, roll down at five. But, for pretty much every one cost, and most two and three costs, you should generally just hold a few of those units and try to hit them at level seven or eight.
For example, if I’m going Cultist and have a bunch of Elises, I’m never going to intentionally roll just for her, but I will hold Elises. If I natural like seven Elises, then there’s a decent chance that when I roll for Jhin, I can randomly also find two Elises. If not, it’s not a big deal.
Both the tip and trick of the week should boil down to this: three stars are nice to have, but not not necessary.
Even with something like Chosen Aphelios. If you have insane items but only hit like four or five Apheliae, that’s plural for Aphelios, then just running him as a two star and leveling aggressively is perfectly fine.
Tech – Solari, Thief’s Gloves & Resistances
The title is pretty self explanatory; if you get a random three-star champion, putting either Solari, Thief’s Gloves or random armor/ Cloak items on them is a great idea.
For Solari, the shielding it grants scales with level. This also applies to Zz’Rot Portal.
For Thief’s Gloves, pretty much every three star can use Thief’s Gloves effectively in the same way random legendaries can.
And finally, since three stars have a ton of health, especially if they’re Chosen, throwing some resistances on them isn’t that bad of an idea. Having something like a Chosen Tahm Kench with Bramble Vest can really create an unkillable demon king.
As a side note: if you see your opponents running a bunch of random three stars, Giant Slayer helps a ton.
About Coaching
Coaching isn’t just a method to improve, to figure out what we’re doing wrong, to look at mistakes, but an experience. Sometimes you also don’t know everything you’re doing right, so my coaching experience involves hyping up correct decisions along with shoring up weaknesses. If you aren’t hype about the session, TFT and haven’t learned/ changed your perspective on something, then I haven’t done my job properly.
For each hour, we can fit in two live-coached games, one live-coached game with a profile review beforehand and a VOD review after, or one VOD review of a recorded game. That’s pretty good!
Be sure to click the banner for $10 off three hours or $20 off five; that’s only $8 a game!
