How to Play Witchcraft — TFT Set 12: Magic N’ Mayhem
Welcome to our trait guide, where we’ll be covering the new Set 12 TFT trait: Witchcraft.
In this guide, we’ll explain how Witchcraft works, cover the different champions, provide notable Augment choices, and cover some potential team comps.
Explore all of the new Set 12 traits here!
How TFT Witchcraft Works
Witchcraft Trait Bonus
Witch abilities apply a curse to enemies for 4 seconds. When a cursed enemy dies, the curse spreads to the nearest enemy. Cursed enemies become:
- (2) smaller, losing 200 of their max health
- (4) AND green, healing the lowest Health Witch for 15% of damage taken
- (6) AND frail, taking 25% bonus true damage from Witches
- (8) AND a frog, stunned for 2 seconds every 8 seconds. All other curse effects are increased by 50%
Witchcraft is a new trait in Set 12 which focuses on debuffing enemies with their abilities. This will provide stronger effects as you go up, effectively buffing up all of your Witchcraft units.
Most notably, Witchcraft (2) applies a simple health debuff, which makes the trait effective to splash into comp. As you go higher, you will want to focus more on a Witchcraft centered team comp.
Witchcraft Synergy
Here are all of the Witchcraft Champions and their other traits:
- Poppy (1G) – Bastion
- Zoe (1G) – Scholar + Portal
- Cassiopeia (2G) – Incantor
- Neeko (3G) – Shapeshifter
- Fiora (4G) – Warrior
- Morgana (5G) – Preserver + Bat Queen (Morgana Exclusive)
Looking at the Witchcraft champions, there is unfortunately no overlap for the Class traits. This makes going for vertical Witchcraft quite difficult unless the trait bonus does some very heavy lifting.
Fiora is a bit out of place when the rest of the champions are AP casters, and the trait only has Neeko as the main source of frontline with Shapeshifter.
Morgana is definitely a powerful unit, but I imagine the trait will be flexed as (2) or maybe (4) in most cases. If you can hit the dream 8 Witchcraft, it will definitely be very strong, but also very difficult to reach.
TFT Witchcraft Champions
Poppy (1G) – Bastion
[See Poppy’s Champion Page]
Poppy is our first Witchcraft unit, and she’s a simple tank. Since there are two 1-cost Witchcrafts, there may be potential for a reroll comp, but that will depend on the meta.
Her ability is straightforward, providing some defense with shielding and dealing a bit of damage.
Zoe (1G) – Scholar + Portal
[See Zoe’s Champion Page]
Zoe is our next 1-cost Witchcrafter, and she also has three traits. This makes her interesting as a reroll carry, since you can buff her up with 3 different traits.
Even still, her ability is single target, which can prove difficult to carry in the late game. Even still, there’s definitely some potential for her either as a trait bot or reroll carry.
Cassiopeia (2G) – Incantor
[See Cassiopeia’s Champion Page]
Cassiopeia is the 2-cost Withcrafter, and her ability is quite interesting, transforming her auto attacks to magic damage instead of AD.
When looking at the trait web, it seems a bit difficult to fit the Incantor trait into Witchcraft comps. My guess is that a reroll Cassiopeia comp will lean more toward the Incantor trait rather than the Witchcraft trait.
Neeko (3G) – Shapeshifter
[See Neeko’s Champion Page]
Neeko is the 3-cost Witchcrafter with the Shapeshifter trait. This helps her be a solid frontline unit for the trait, and her ability also provides healing to allies and CC/damage to enemies.
Fiora (4G) – Warrior
[See Fiora’s Champion Page]
Fiora is the 4-cost Witchcrafter, and she can be used as a traditional 4-cost carry. However, as a melee AD carry, she doesn’t quite gel with the other units in the Witchcraft trait. Even still, going for Witchcraft (4) for the healing effect can be quite potent to buff up Fiora.
Fiora and Morgana are both strong units that can pair together, but going up to (4) Witchcraft will require using lower-cost units. You can still fill out useful traits, but the meta may trend in a different direction.
Morgana (5G) – Preserver + Bat Queen (Morgana Exclusive)
[See Morgana’s Champion Page]
Morgana is the 5-cost unit for the Witchcraft trait, and her Bat Queen trait can grant loot if her bats kill enemies. This can help you snowball quite hard if you find Morgana early.
Her ability also hits multiple enemies, applying the Witchcraft curse to more than one enemy.
Her Preserver trait is also a flexible one, providing a team wide buff rather than a personal buff.
Best TFT Witchcraft Augments
Witchcraft Crest/Crown
Gain a Witchcraft Emblem and a Cassiopeia.
In order to reach Witchcraft (8), you will need two Witchcraft Emblems. While you can build one with a Spatula + Negatron Cloak, getting two Emblems without an Augment is usually quite difficult.
Even if you don’t go vertical, having an Emblem makes going for 6 Witchcraft much easier. Since the units don’t have much overlap in Classes, having an Emblem frees up a slot for another trait bonus/higher-cost unit.
Witchy Wallops
Gain a 2-star Poppy. Your strongest Poppy’s Ability no longer shields but strikes 3 times, dealing 80% of the original damage.
This Augment is the Hero Augment for Poppy, turning her into a melee carry rather than a frontline tank. While she loses the shielding, her ability will deal a lot more damage.
The Witchcraft (4) trait can also heal her if she’s the lowest health Witchcraft on the board. This opens up a reroll Witchcraft comp with Poppy as your main carry and other units like Zoe for more backline damage.
Potions 201
Witchcraft curses last forever. Witchcraft Abilities also curse the nearest uncursed champion. If all units are cursed, Witches gain 20% Attack Damage and Ability Power. Gain a Poppy and a Cassiopeia.
This is the Witchcraft specific Augment, and it’s quite impressive. It can be difficult to curse enemy backline units that aren’t hit by abilities, but this Augment allows your curses to effectively spread.
Even if you hit the same target over and over, you’ll eventually curse the entire enemy board.
Furthermore, once you curse the entire board, all Witches will gain some bonus stats. This buff will be better the more Witchcraft units you have.
TFT Witchcraft Team Comps
As of writing this article, the PBE has yet to even release yet. While I was fortunate enough to participate in the playtest for Set 12, we definitely need more time to test/theorycraft team comps.
Be sure to check back as I’ll be updating this section with potential Witchcraft team comps. We also will be updating our TFT Team Comps page as our team plays the PBE.
Witchcraft Poppy Reroll Team Comp
[Link to Builder]
This first comp is an example reroll comp with Poppy as the main carry. For this comp, you definitely want to have the Hero Augment for Poppy.
We have Poppy, Lillia, and Zoe as the main reroll targets, with Lillia being the lowest priority. After that, we simply buff Poppy up with more Witchcraft/Bastion units.
Bard and Taric are both great additions as they provide Bastion/Portal/Preserver. At level 9, you can add Norra for Portal (3) and Yuumi to further buff up Poppy.
Witchcraft Fiora Team Comp
[Link to Builder]
This second comp uses a lot of the same units, except we have Fiora as the main carry. We can drop down to 2 Bastion to instead fit Gwen for Sugarcraft/Warrior and Norra at level 8. This looks to be a solid starting point for Fiora as the main 4-cost carry. You have plenty of units to itemize in this comp with Morgana, Taric, Gwen, Norra, and Bard.
While there are plenty of traits active, Zoe and Poppy definitely fall off very hard in the late game as 1-cost units.
It’s very possible that using higher cost units and dropping down to 2 Witchcraft is more effective.
Thanks for Reading! If you want to try and come up with your own team comps for Set 12, check out our Team Builder. For a full overview on the new set, check out our TFT Set 12 Reveal Page.
