Wednesday means patch day for Teamfight Tactics, and in the early patches of the new TFT Dragonlands expansion, some things eventually go over the balance team heads. Although the team does the best they can do, the player base is always quick to find outliers and abuse them. Due to the dominance of the emerging Mage composition, lead designer for TFT Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer issued a statement on Twitter that he is aware and will be launching a TFT 12.13 B-patch or hotfix tomorrow July 14.
Patch 12.13 Update – This patch is a great example of how one bad change and an unintended bug can ruin things pretty quick.
The Vlad (20 mana) bug in conjunction with this Nami buff have put the meta in a not great spot. pic.twitter.com/Wp0FUg9X4K
— Riot Mort (@Mortdog) July 13, 2022
The culprits lie in the Astral Mage duo of Vladimir and Nami. Vladimir’s 20 mana bug has allowed the champion to generate double the mana than he should be on auto attacks, making him cast twice as often as he should be; which, thanks to buffs to Mages, makes him a little too good. The other partner in crime, Nami, received a significant mana buff in the TFT 12.13 Patch that made her maximum mana come down from 90 to 75. Those changes in combination have made Mages way more sticky on a board than they should, opening up carry options from Ryze and Zoe. These changes plus the nerfs to the powerful attack damage carries have led to a dramatic shift in the meta.
According to Metatft.com, despite having an above 1.0 pick rate, meaning that on average more than one person in any lobby, the Mage composition is the second-best performer so far with an average placement of 4.04.
Mortdog said this is a lesson learned and stated “This patch is a great example of how one bad change and an unintended bug can ruin things pretty quick. The Vlad bug in conjunction with this Nami buff have put the meta in a not great spot.”
He also said that the reason why the B-Patch isn’t coming out Wednesday is that the balance team wants to see if any other problems arise so they don’t jump the gun. Nami and Vladimir are the current targets, but Mortdog said Ryze might also be a nerf target.
