Teamfight Tactics is the latest new “mode” for League of Legends. Although that description honestly sells it short. Teamfight Tactics is practically an entirely new game, with totally different rules than its source material.
Other Teamfight Tactics Guides:
- Teamfight Tactics: Items Cheat Sheet
- Teamfight Tactics: Origins Cheat Sheet
- Teamfight Tactics: Classes Cheat Sheet
- Teamfight Tactics: Champion Drop Rates
TFT team comp is probably one of the more popular to emerge from the early meta, and it’s a good one to teach you how to play and how to win Teamfight Tactics matches.
Teamfight Tactics: Gunslinger Pirates
Champions:
- Tristana
- Graves
- Gangplank
- Miss Fortune
- Sejuani
- Cho’gath
- Leona
- Braum
This team has the quickest draw in the west and relies on Tristana coming online early. You’ll have the pirate synergy to help fuel your economy and upgrades. Sejuani, Cho’Gath, Leona, and Braum are more than enough protection for your backline of gunslingers to melt almost any composition.
Gameplan:
Don’t spend gold leveling or rerolling and instead focus on getting to 50 gold. Once you get to 50g, hunt down rank 3 Tristana while staying above 50g. You can abuse Pyke in the early to mid game to fulfill the pirate bonus until you find Miss Fortune. Once you hit level 7, look for the final 4 cost units needed for the late game. Lucian can be used as your fourth gunslinger until you get MF.
General tips:
- You will have to use a lot of transition units in this comp as Braum alone doesn’t make sense early, and a lot of the units are 4+ cost.
- Pyke is a great early game unit with a Spear of Shojin and can bring your pirate buff online.
- Lucian is a great gunslinger to tide you over until Miss Fortune.
- On-hit items like Sword Breaker and Hush are very good with the gunslinger passive on Lucian/Miss Fortune.
- Graves is great with Red Buff but feel free to drop him for Lucian in the late game if you don’t want/need the pirate buff.
Ideal items for carries:
- Tristana (carry #1): Guinsoo’s Rageblade, Titanic Hydra, Bloodthirster, Phantom Dancer is good against assassins.
Gunslinger Pirates Alternative Comp
Champions:
- Tristana
- Graves
- Lucian
- Gangplank
- Pyke
- Cho’gath
- Sejuani
This comp has risen in strength over the course of the past few patches with multiple buffs to gunslinger units, and to Pyke. You get your power spike pretty early as long as you have a couple of good items and are able to find a Gangplank (who is essential in giving you the fourth gunslinger and third pirate). This composition will usually struggle a bit in the early game until you hit your upgrades, but will excel in the late game against nearly every composition once Tristana is Tier 3, and you find strong frontline units. The largest concerns I usually have with this composition is losing too much HP early being greedy and trying to farm gold while staying above the 50 gold threshold to maximize income, or losing to a strong Sorc/Elementalist comp later on as they can throw spells past your front line to threaten your backline. In these scenarios where you scout your opponents building strong Sorc/Elementalist comps, I would strongly consider building a Dragon’s Claw for your Tristana as her third item.
Early game you want to be picking up as many Tristana and Graves as possible, with trying to find at least one Lucian, Gangplank, and Pyke. You don’t have to go for Graves 3-star, as he’s a pretty bad unit without items, but I would consider (if you have an extra Giants Belt and a Chain Vest) putting a Red Buff on a Graves in the early game if he’s at least 2-star. You’ll get a solid power spike from this and might even be able to go on a win streak.
Similar to the Void/Assassin comp, your first big power spike is at level 5 when you have the Tristana, Graves, Lucian, Gangplank, and Pyke. You’ll optimally want to find at least one Spear of Shojin for your Pyke as well, and arguably these are more important than items for your Tristana at this point in the game, and through the mid game. The good thing is that there are a few good item options for this composition, Attack Speed items for Tristana, Spear of Shojin for Pyke, and Red Buff for Graves.
After you secure these 5 units, you’ll be pretty strong and want to find your 2-star Pyke and optimally your 3-star Tristana. This is when you can start leveling up to find strong front line units, such as Cho’gath and Sejuani, who are the strongest frontline CC units in the game currently.
Eventually if you’re able to find Miss Fortune in the mid/late game, I would almost always replace either Lucian or Graves with her.
You also do have a bit of freedom after you secure your Gunslingers. If you’re a less experienced player I would recommend to just find those strong frontline units to stand in front of your Gunslingers, as that would be the most consistent. But if you’re feeling experimental, I’ve seen many variations of Gunslingers be viable, even making a 3-star Graves with the Blademaster item, along with a Titanic Hydra and Hush to mass silence and deal tons of damage with all the Gunslinger and Blademaster procs.
In conclusion, these are not the only strong compositions in this game, but these are definitely three of the stronger ones with insight on how-to approach them. This game is still very new and evolving rapidly with frequent patches, so new comps will pop up often! These compositions have been pretty consistently strong throughout the young lifespan of TFT thus far, helping me reach top 500 in the TFT PBE, and still helping me secure wins today.