How to Climb to Gold
Welcome to our next installment of our How to Climb series. If you haven’t already, check out the previous guide on “How to Climb to Silver.”
In this article, I’ll be going over the next steps you can take to reach that next tier, Gold. Even if you are already Gold, there are probably some aspects in this guide that you can use to improve your gameplay.
Intermediate Fundamentals
In our last article, I cover just about everything in TFT on a basic level. These included things like, positioning, when to level up, when to spend your gold, etc.
In order to reach gold, you basically just need to refine these skills to a higher level. I’ll be splitting up the fundamental skills, and giving you some pointers on how to improve.
But before that, I want to quickly touch on whether or not you should play the same comp, or play flexibly.
One Trick vs Flex
In general, TFT is a game that rewards flexibility. There are a lot of random aspects to the game, and if you take advantage of these things, you will find yourself playing different comps.
However, reaching Gold can still be done by forcing the same comp over and over.
At this point, it really comes down to your preference. Do you want to keep learning one comp and improve it, or do you want to branch out and learn more about different comps. It will be easier to play one comp over and over, but maybe you find that boring. On the other hand, maybe you struggle with different comps, and have an easier time playing something familiar.
Either way, at this point in your ranked journey, both decisions are fine.
Intermediate Positioning
In the last article, we covered basic positioning. This main just referred to the general of how to position your board. To summarize, generic positioning usually refers to:
- Carry in Corner/2nd row if melee
- Frontline strongest outside/close to carry
- Clump in early game (to focus fire)
- Spread in late game (to avoid AoE)
With that out of the way, the next step for positioning is to avoid common threats. Here are some of the common threats you want to avoid.
- Zephyr
- Hooks
- Shroud of Stillness
- Hackers/Assassins
As you rank up in the game, you will also get more familiar with the game. With that familiarity comes extra time. If you spend less time deciding on what units to buy and leveling up, you can now spend that time looking at enemy boards to increase your chances of winning the fight.
At these ranks, you don’t need to perfect positioning, but taking the time to play around major threats will go a long way in your games.
Intermediate Economy
In our How to Climb to Silver article, I went over the absolute basics of leveling strategy. Here’s a quick little recap.
- (For 4-Cost Carry Comps)
- Level up to 4 at 2-1 if you find some upgraded units and want to win streak.
- Level up to 5 at 2-5 to continue this trend.
- Conversely, if you want to lose streak or don’t find upgrades, wait until Krugs (2-7) to level up to 5.
- Level up to 6 at 3-2.
- Level up to 7 at 4-1.
- Level up to 8 at 5-1.
For a more in depth guide on leveling (and also for slow roll or fast 8 strategies), check out our full Leveling Guide.
We’ve covered a basic leveling strategy, and also when to level up. For this guide, I want to explain how to make the most out of Interest and Streak gold.
Interest and Streaking
In a lot of leveling guides, you will find that we say to level up early if you want to win streak. Even if you don’t know what to do, you can still find success leveling up at consistent points in the game. The next step is learning how to identify when to lose streak vs when to win streak.
Round 2-1 (Level 3 or 4)
Here are some identifiers for when you should win streak vs lose streak at Round 2-1:
- You have a couple of upgraded units
- You have one upgraded 2 or even 3-cost unit
- You can build a strong early game item (Sunfire Cape, Statikk Shiv, etc)
- You have a strong trait bonus you can put together
- You have an additional trait on your board if you level up to 4
- You have a combat Augment (as opposed to an economy based Augment)
All of these things are things to consider when leveling up.
I won’t be listing the opposite for lose streaking as it’s basically just the opposite of these identifiers.
Round 2-5 (Level 4 or 5)
If you were able to have a 3 round win streak going into Carousel, you should for the most part level up no matter the situation. You may lose your win streak, but at this point, that’s ok. You should take the risk anyways as having a perfect win streak at Krugs is a huge bonus to your economy.
The bigger question is what should you do if you lose your streak?
If you are at a clean interest level (like 10 or 20 gold), you can opt to stay at level 4 to build up some more economy. If your gold is at 14+, you can look to still level up to 5. While you may not build up another streak, you will save a little bit of HP and have a small chance at finding 4-cost units. This can swing the game in your favor if you find a strong 4-cost early on.
Pre Leveling
Lastly, let’s cover pre leveling. This is a strategy of leveling up to where you are exactly 2 XP behind the next level. At the start of the next round, the game will give you 2 XP, leveling you up, and also giving you a shop with higher odds of higher cost units. Pre leveling can also refer to leveling up early in order to keep a win streak.
Let’s cover the 3 main examples where this takes place.
- Round 2-4
Level up to 8/10 XP at level 4. This will let you level up right after carousel, and give you better odds of 3-cost units to strengthen your board.
This is mainly done when you leveled up early to try and win streak. If you didn’t level, simply keep your economy building naturally. - Round 2-1
This one is less common. If you already have upgraded units at 1-4, you can pre level before 2-1.
This will let you hit level 4 at round start and give you higher odds of 2 and 3-cost units. - Round 3-1
If you have a perfect win streak, you should consider leveling to 6 at 3-1 instead of 3-2.
Most players will still be level 5, and doing this can help you keep your streak. However, if you level up early and lose the round, you lose out on a lot of interest you would have gained otherwise. You can also roll a bit to ensure you keep your streak going.
Intermediate Itemization
Next up, we have itemization. We only briefly covered itemization in the last guide, and for this guide, I propose to focus on one main thing.
Understanding Itemization
If you’ve climbed to Silver already, you should know the bare minimum about completing items. You probably also follow some team guides and build the right items for your comps.
The next step, is understanding why you build these items. If you can understand why certain items are strong on certain units, you will be able to build better items overall.
You won’t be able to find the best items every game for your carries, so building the next best thing is just as important.
Scaling
The first part about items is understanding scaling. Scaling refers to how something benefits a unit. A basic example is: A unit’s Ability scales with Ability Power.
Simple enough. Let’s take a look at Miss Fortune. She is a unit that deals mainly magic damage, so you may think to simply build a lot of Ability Power. Well, that’s not quite the case.
Miss Fortune has the Anima Squad trait, which gives her a lot of Ability Power. This means that items such as Jeweled Gauntlet or Giant Slayer (which provide different types of scaling), will benefit her more. This is because more AP will be additive, while Crit or a Damage Bonus (from Giant Slayer) will be multiplicative.
This concept spreads to just about every unit in the game. If you’re playing a vertical Duelist comp, you usually don’t build Rageblade as that’s just too much Attack Speed. You’re better off building other items that scale the damage better, like Last Whisper, or Giant Slayer.
Balancing Frontline and Backline
Another thing I want to touch on about items is balancing your items. You always want to balance your frontline and your backline. If your frontline is too weak, and you only focus on your backline damage items, your team will die before they get the damage off.
Conversely, if your frontline is super strong, but you have no damage items, you’ll only slowly lose the fight.
When prioritizing items, you generally want a balance of frontline and backline items.
Prioritize Instant Reward
In the early to mid game, around Stages 2 and 3, you have two important carousel picks to strengthen your board.
In general, you want to always take an item component that you can use right away. If you have a Belt on your bench, you should look to get another defensive item to pair with it. This will power up your board immediately.
Don’t be baited into taking a component that you want to save. While you may make a comeback with perfect items, consistently climbing is about making the most out of what you get.
(If you’re playing Underground or purposefully lose streaking, this doesn’t always apply).
Overall, you shouldn’t ever have 4 components or more on your bench. You should always be looking to make items, and leaving them on your bench is a waste of resources.
Transitioning
Once again, I won’t really be covering transitioning in this guide. For climbing to Gold, transitioning shouldn’t be too big of an issue or priority. In our next installment, I’ll be going these concepts like transitioning, pivoting, and strongest board.
Conclusion
This wraps up my guide on how to climb to Gold in TFT.
These topics covered the next step in improving your fundamental skills.
As you play more and more, things will start to become natural. Don’t fret if you don’t gain LP in one day. As the days go by, if you are making a concentrated effort, you will start to see improvement.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, and be sure to stick around for our next installment, How to Climb to Platinum.
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