For Teamfight Tactics gamers, the changes of equipment are just as important as updating about clans – systems or champions. Even tweaking to increase or decrease the power of equipment also makes the meta change and significantly affects the strength of the squads. Therefore, balancing the power of items is also very important for Riot Games.
The equipment of the Teamfight Tactics has always played an important role in shaping the meta
However, in reality, things are not so simple and there are times when Riot will buff even items that are considered strong or do not need to be edited. Riot Mortdog himself recently admitted this when he talked about the case of Blue buff’s edits at patch 11.24. According to the design team leader of the Teamfight Tactics, there are too few people using Blue Charm, so they are forced to buff this item even though it is not weak.
Riot Mortdog recently revealed the story of why they buffed the Blue buff
Riot Mortdog: “Honestly, sometimes I feel quite tired when balancing items. Take the case of Blue buff as an example, there are a lot of champions that we thought would use this item but didn’t. No one uses it. So we had to ignore the balance factor to buff Blue buff and help players pay attention and use it more.”
In fact, before being buffed in version 11.24, the Blue buff was originally a strong item and helped the champion possess abundant energy stats. This item is especially strong when used on some champions with not too high maximum energy such as Lux, Malzahar, Ziggs… when they can launch attacks continuously.
Lux is a unit that frequently uses Blue Charm
However, apart from the above magic damage units, there are almost no other pieces that use this equipment. Simply because energy is not a priority issue in non-Mage squads. It wasn’t until Riot buffed the energy supply of the Blue buff to 50 that other champions like Twitch, Viktor, Orianna, and sometimes even Samira started using this item.
Twitch has gradually switched to using Blue buff after this item was buffed
As a result, formations like Twitch, Samira holding a Blue buff and skill “spam” were born and proved not to be weak at all. Fortunately, the above formations did not prove to be too strong or unbalanced, so Riot’s decision to buff Blue buff is acceptable. However, if they do so with another damage-oriented item, such as the Statikk Electric Knife, then it will potentially cause a much more imbalance.
Although Riot Games also has its own reasons for making such edits, as a result, they make the Teamfight Tactics sometimes extremely unbalanced. Hopefully they will consider more carefully in the adjustment decisions in the coming versions.