How to Climb to Platinum in TFT
Welcome to my third installment of my “How to Climb” series. If you haven’t already, be sure to read up on the previous two articles, as the articles are mostly sequential.
- How to Climb to Silver
- How to Climb to Gold
Even if you are already in Gold, you can probably learn a few things or reinforce some ideas from reading those articles.
The previous two articles covered a lot of fundamental skills, while skipping over some more intermediate concepts. For this article, I’ll be going over more skills you can learn as you progress on your ladder journey.
Intermediate Skills
In our Silver guide, I covered basic fundamentals, and in our Gold guide, I covered more intermediate fundamentals. As you keep climbing, those fundamentals will still be things you can improve upon.
If you keep improving fundamentals, you can definitely climb to Plat. However, for those wanting to learn new skills, I’ll be going over more concepts you can learn to help your game.
For this article, I’ll be covering things like playing flex, how to transition/pivot, and strongest board.
Playing Flex
In our Silver and Gold guides, I mostly recommended that you try to only play one comp. This is a good way to learn the game, learn the units, and learn how to win with one comp.
As you keep climbing, you will encounter games where things don’t line up for your comp. In these situations, it’s nice to play a different comp.
The short answer is to simply play more comps. As you play more and more things, you will learn more about the game, more about works, and what is ideal for your situation.
Eventually, if you have solid fundamentals, you will be able to pick up new comps quicker and quicker.
Learning Comps Quicker
It’s easy for me to say, “just play more comps 5head.” While that is honestly most of it, here are some things to keep in mind when trying to learn new comps.
- What items are most important for my carry and frontline?
- When looking at a team comp guide, you’ll see a lot of items on different champions. Knowing what items to prioritize is important for learning a comp.
- What Augments help my team comp the most?
- Augments are a cornerstone of comps now, and picking the right ones for team comps is also important. For example, if your comp lacks healing, Celestial Blessing can be good. Other times, you may need a specific Augment to make your comp work, like Scoped Weapons.
- What transition units do I use to hold items?
- Most team comp guides provide a general level 8 team comp. Knowing what units to use in the early and mid game will help you get to that point without losing too much health.
- What is the most powerful board I can make late game?
- In some games, you will reach the end game after hitting your complete level 8 board. In these situations, knowing how to extend your board is important for closing out those games. Luckily, in Set 8.5, it’s easy to just throw in an Urgot or Fiddlesticks at level 9.
One Trick Viability
That being said, if you only work on the fundamentals, you can probably even reach Master playing the same comp. Will it be the fastest way to climb? Maybe not. But it’s definitely an option.
Playing flexibly only gives you more options, and for the most part, you will learn more about the game playing more comps.
Transitioning / Pivoting
As you play more comps and learn more comps, you will start being able to transition between comps easier.
Transitioning (or Pivoting) refers to switching your original game plan to play one comp, to another comp. I have a standalone guide on Transitioning that you can check out here.
To summarize, here is the main rundown about transitioning.
- Transitioning is important to play around what the game gives you. A successful transition can be the difference between an 8th, and maybe a 5th or 6th.
- Pivoting comps is a good idea when you see that the units you need are very contested, or you just aren’t finding the right units you need.
- Keep in mind what items and units you have, and what you need to successfully transition to a different comp. If it’s still early, you can still pivot a good amount and have a mostly complete comp.
If it’s your first few times transitioning mid game, don’t be discouraged if you fail and place low. As you keep trying, you’ll learn how to transition better.
Transitioning is definitely a hard skill to practice as it doesn’t happen every game, and you can never truly know if you made the right choice. (unless you get 1st)
Even still, putting the effort to try different things in game will make you a better player. Try to see what went wrong or what went right and keep that in mind for the future.
Strongest Board
The last skill I want to talk about for this article is Strongest Board. Strongest Board is a term that’s been in the community for a while now. The term is exactly what it sounds like, trying to play your strongest board.
For the most part, this term is important when you’re trying to win streak, but it’s very applicable at every point in the game.
You should always be looking for ways to improve your board, while also spending as little gold as possible. Trying to power up your board without rolling, and staying above interest intervals is something you can do throughout the game.
Here are a few ways you can accomplish this:
Buying units to keep on your bench while staying above interest intervals
Buying extra units accomplishes two things.
You can potentially upgrade them and put them into your board. You can also potentially put them into your board if you find other units that make use of their traits.
Having a wide variety of things to pick from is good to stay flexible throughout the game. It’s much more tiring trying to constantly power up your board, but it’s crucial to saving HP throughout the game.
Reposition your Board
In Stage 2, you won’t be able to predict who you will fight as there are too many options.
Once Stage 3 comes and the game goes on, the number of opponents you may face will lower down to 3 or less. During this time, looking at those three boards and repositioning accordingly will help you maintain streaks and save HP.
Once again, doing this takes up a lot of time each round, so it’s not something you always need to do, especially if you need to roll for units, make items, or sell units.
At this rank, doing every little thing will count a lot.
Slamming Items
As you climb higher and higher, other players will become better at playing their own strongest board. Because of this, if you’re not lose streaking, you should look to combine your items faster.
Last article, I gave a basic guideline on slamming items. (Such as not having more than 4 item components on your bench)
These guidelines still apply, but in general, combining items faster is always good.
Another thing to keep in mind is building more early game items if you feel like you’re constantly losing the early game. In this current meta, defensive items like Sunfire Cape, Warmog’s Armor, and more are all solid early game items.
Building early game offensive items can also be good, but if you don’t have a good item holder, it’s not as strong as a simple defensive item that can go on basically any tank.
Conclusion
This wraps up my guide on Climbing to Plat. The earlier guides were more focused on fundamental skills, and those are still important. You should try to improve your fundamentals all the way up to Challenger.
At this point in your TFT journey, learning things like transitioning, playing flex, and strongest board are all things that you can also look to improve upon. These skills are harder to practice and master, but dipping your toes in now is a good idea.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, and be sure to stick around for our next installment, How to Climb to Diamond.
To learn about the latest new TFT Set, head to our all-in-one Teamfight Tactics Set 8.5 reveal page that covers all champions, synergies, and more!
