Teamfight Tactics patch 9.19 just dropped, unleashing a tsunami of balance changes. Aside from new champion Kai’Sa and the other changes from the patch preview, Riot is tweaking basically everything. The changes include player damage, minion drops, existing items, and almost all champions and synergies.
Introducing Kai’Sa
The new champion looked pretty strong on paper, but her final form is even more terrifying. Kai’Sa is a Void Ranger Assassin. The combination of her synergies makes her the ultimate attack damage carry. Worse yet, she has one of the highest baseline attack speeds in the game, and her ability briefly increases it further.
What all this means is that, with the right items, she will delete even the tankiest enemy champion in nanoseconds. Unless quickly CC’d, Kai’Sa can overwhelm most enemy compositions by herself. We wouldn’t be surprised if Riot drops a hotfix for her before Teamfight Tactics patch 9.20 is even on the horizon.
Sparring Gloves and item changes
The new ingredient item, Sparring Gloves, is finally in the game. The gloves are a unique item that provides both 10 percent critical chance and 10 percent dodge change. Depending on what composite items you make from them, they can double up on one of the buffs, becoming either strictly offensive or strictly defensive. Using Sparring Gloves and existing ingredients, players can now construct a whole new line of composite items.
Teamfight Tactics patch 9.19 is also adjusting some of the current items. Dragon’s Claw magic resistance buff is down from 83 to 75 percent, while the Frozen Heart’s attack speed slow is up from 30 to 35 percent. On the offensive side, Titanic Hydra’s splash damage is reduced, but the splash pattern is optimized, which is sure to make players happy. The Teamfight Tactics community has been critical of the item’s splash for a while.
Champions and synergy highlights
This Teamfight Tactics patch is directly adjusting roughly a third of the game’s champions. Many other champions will perform differently as a result of 9 of the game’s synergies being adjusted or changed. In general, the synergy adjustments aim to tone down current performance. For example, Glacial stun duration is down from 2 to 1.5 seconds, and the 2-set attack speed buff of Rangers is down from 30 to 25 percent. Some of the changes are fairly impactful, however. Shapeshifters now only gain 100 percent max health from their 6-set synergy, down from 120 percent. Changes like this should help tame the craziness of some of the current dominant compositions.
Among the champion changes in Teamfight Tactics patch 9.19, most aim to redefine the role the champion currently serves. Miss Fortune is one of the best examples of this. Her ability now takes twice as long to activate, but it targets the farthest enemy rather than her current target. More often than now, this will result in better splash damage. The damage is increased by roughly 35 percent, which is helpful and kind of scary as well.
In addition to all that, Riot is also slightly adjusting player damage and minion drops. You can check out the complete list of changes in the official Teamfight Tactics patch 9.19 notes. Or, you could hop in a game right now and test them out for yourself!
Stay tuned to Daily Esports for more Teamfight Tactics news and content!
