How to Play Battle Academia — TFT Set 15: K.O. Coliseum
Battle Academia is one of the many vertical traits in Set 15, but vertical traits have a new catch to them. They now have objectives to them – or prismatic unlocks. By achieving these goals you will upgrade from a gold to a prismatic trait which unlocks, a new flashy bonus!
A complaint in previous sets was how getting 10 trait prismatics was too much of a free win such as Set 14’s Anima Squad. This changes with the new objective system for these vertical traits!
Explore all of the new Set 15 traits here!
How TFT Battle Academia Works
Battle Academia Trait Bonus
Battle Academia champions upgrade their abilities and gain Potential %. Potential improves their abilities.
Prismatic: Have 17 completed items on Battle Academy units
True Potential Unlocked: +11 %:
- (3) 3
- (5) 5
- (7) 7
Battle Academia Synergy
Here are the additional traits of the Battle Academia champions that give the opportunity to create trait webs:
- Ezreal (1G) – Prodigy
- Garen (1G) – Bastion
- Katarina (2G) – Executioner
- Caitlyn (3G) – Sniper
- Jayce (3G) – Heavyweight
- Leona (4G) – Bastion
- Yuumi (4G) – Prodigy
The Battle Academia Trait
Battle Academia’s units have an important overlapping trait – Bastion. Leona and Garen easily form this trait’s front line and allow you to play off of a solid front line even from the early game. Ezreal being a flexible one cost carry will help this early game play itself at times. The big question mark for this trait is the ability to weave in 5 cost champions as most boards require 5 cost units to truly cap their boards at some point in the game.
The champion that I would keep my eye on is Braum who is a Luchador Bastion so the Bastion would tie in with the Garen and Leona. I would also keep my eyes on Varus as a Sniper to potentially pair with Caitlyn.
TFT Battle Academia Champions
Ezreal (1G) – Prodigy
[Link to Champion Page]
Ezreal fires a blast at his current target dealing (AP) magic damge and (AD) physical damage. This mixed damage allows him to carry AP or AD items in the early game – making him flexible and a solid early game carry in openers. There is potential that he will have reroll potential at some point during the set as well. Especially because Garen – another Battle Academia is also a 1 Gold tank that can be rerolled along with Ezreal.
Garen (1G) – Bastion
[Link to Champion Page]
As talked about earlier, Garen is a frontline tank unit in Battle Academia. His ability, Mighty Blade of Justice, allows him to heal (Health & AP) and deal (Health & AD) physical damage to a target.
Katarina (2G) – Executioner
[Link to Champion Page]
Katarina is also an executioner and of course an assassin with her ability which allows her to blink to the enemy with the lowest health within 3 hexes and deal (AP) magic damage to enemies in a 1-hex radius. If you have played previous sets, then you know that at some point reroll Katarina will be broken for a patch, so be ready for that. In the times where she isn’t being 3 way contested reroll, be ready to use her in the early game as a way of killing units to save health in the early game.
Caitlyn (3G) – Sniper
[Link to Champion Page]
Caitlyn is also a Sniper who has the ability Magic Bouncing Bullet where she fires a bullet at the farthest enemy, dealing (AP) magic damage to the current target, increasing a percentage based on the target’s missing health. If the target dies, deal a percent of overkill damage split between the two closest enemies, plus (AP) magic damage per target.
This ability will make her very strong as a reroll unit in the future as the overkill damage means she doesn’t completely waste shots on already low health units. A problem in units like this in the past is that they would use their ability on a unit that was already 100 health and was going to die anyway. Pumping 1000 plus damage into a 100 health unit was a quick way for these type of units to be useless, so overkill damage helps a lot!
Jayce (3G) – Heavyweight
[Link to Champion Page]
Jayce is a different version of past Jayce’s we have seen where often he is used as a backliner. This Jayce is exclusively a front liner who can carry melee carry items. His ability: Thundering Hammerstrike deals (AD & AP) physical damage to enemies in a 1-hex radius centered on the target.
This means that placing Jayce in front of the front line unit you want to kill first is ideal on top of him being near other front liners so his splash 1-hex damage hits additional units.
Leona (4G) – Bastion
[Link to Champion Page]
Leona is a front line with the ability: Aegis of Unbreakable Dawn to give her even more tankiness. This ability shields for (AP) amount for 5 seconds and deals (Armor & MR) magic damage to enemies in a 2-hex radius.
This will mean you will want to place her closer to the middle of the board as she will have a lot of survivability as well as dealing damage to enemies in a 2-hex radius. If she is on the edge of the board, she will miss out on a lot of her damage potential. Her being toward the middle of the board will also force units to focus her before taking out the backline.
Yuumi (4G) – Prodigy
[Link to Champion Page]
Yuumi’s ability Read or Die allows her to launch pages dealing (AP) magic damage each, split between the target and enemies within 2 hexes. Subsequent casts add +5 pages. Yuumi is a ramping caster who does more damage as the fight goes. We have similar champions to this in the past such as Heimerdinger in Set 13 where he would fire additional rockets after each cast. This means that Yuumi is likely to be a Blue Buff user who wants to get as many casts off as possible.
The Battle Academia trait will certainly be a common trait seen in Set 15. How strong it will be may be determined by the ability to hit the prismatic trait as many verticals where it is hard to prismatic version tend to be weaker in the late stages while stable in stage 3 and 4. It will be interesting to see what happens as we learn new information on Battle Academia!
Thanks for reading! If you want to try and come up with your own team comps for Set 15, check out our Team Builder. For a full overview on the new set, check out our TFT Set 15 Reveal Page.
