Why Your Early Game Sucks (And How to Fix It)

Summary

Highlights

• Start scouting as early as Stage 1 to gain strategic insights 🔍
• Avoid holding onto items just for ‘perfect’ combinations; adapt them for early advantage 🔧
• Focus on flexible, high-stat items early to save health and prevent snowballs 🌟
• Be cautious about overcommitting to win streaks without necessary power 🙅‍♂️
• Anticipate your moves for later rounds by thinking ahead and planning strategies 🧐
• Stick to using your two-star units for carrying item slams rather than one-stars 🌈

Key Takeaways

• Not scouting early can leave you blind to competition and strategies ⚔️
• Building the wrong items early means unnecessary health loss 🛡️
• Commit to a win streak only with a legitimately strong board 🚀
• Align strategies with augments to avoid clashing plans 🧩
• Plan item slams and carousel picks to stay adaptable 📊
• Balance your front and back line for optimized performance ⚖️

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Early Game Mistakes In the 'Introduction to Early Game Mistakes', the focus is on identifying the common early game mistakes that prevent players from advancing in a game, even by stage three. The transcript highlights the frustration players feel when they are consistently outperformed due to bad habits rather than bad luck. The chapter promises to outline 10 specific early game mistakes that higher level players avoid, offering strategies to correct these habits. The first mistake discussed is the lack of early scouting during stages one and two. Scouting early is crucial for understanding opponents and capitalizing on key game elements. Overall, the chapter aims to guide players in eliminating detrimental habits to enhance their gameplay in set 14.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Scouting and Its Importance This chapter focuses on the importance of scouting in gaming, especially for making strategic decisions in a competitive environment. It explains that by scouting during certain stages, players can determine which compositions or 'comps' are unavailable based on other players' choices. The chapter emphasizes that while scouting doesn't have to be a constant activity, doing it at least once is crucial to avoid playing blindly. High-level players use scouting to prevent choosing contested comps, monitor other players' item choices, and gauge the competition's strength, all of which are integral to enhancing performance and gaining an advantage.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Itemization in the Early Game The chapter discusses strategies for itemization in the early stages of the game. It emphasizes the importance of scouting the lobby to assess the strength of opponents. If the lobby consists mostly of players trying to lose streak, a mediocre board could secure unexpected win streaks. Therefore, scouting helps in making informed decisions rather than prematurely opting for gold accumulation. The recommendation is to scout at least once during stage one and early stage two to adapt strategies accordingly.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Win Streak Overcommitment In this chapter titled 'Win Streak Overcommitment,' the author discusses strategic aspects of gameplay, focusing on scouting and item management. The main points include the importance of active scouting to understand opponents' strategies, including observing whether players are contested, what items or traits they are prioritizing, and their leveling approach. Additionally, the chapter cautions against waiting too long for perfect items, as it can result in unnecessary health loss. The emphasis is on making informed decisions to maintain a strong game position.
• 04:30 - 06:00: Understanding Synergy In this chapter titled 'Understanding Synergy', the focus is on item prioritization in the context of team composition in a gaming scenario. The chapter discusses how to differentiate between important and less important items depending on the team comp you are playing. As an example, for a marksmen with a Vanguard comp, which is focused on attack damage, certain items such as 'tier' may not be necessary as they do not build into crucial items for champions like Aphilios or Zia. Instead, players can consider alternate builds like protector's vow, redemption, or adaptive helm to better suit the team's strategy. The main takeaway is to recognize the value of different items based on the specific needs and dynamics of your team composition.
• 06:00 - 08:30: Carousel Strategy and Planning Ahead The chapter discusses strategic decision-making in a game setting where players begin with initial items like a sword, a tear, and a chain vest. It highlights the temptation to quickly build specific items like 'Shogun' for a character named Zia. However, it suggests alternative strategies, such as creating a 'Protector's Vow' and reserving the sword for crafting more impactful items like 'Infinity Edge.' The chapter emphasizes the importance of adaptability, recommending that players not fixate on achieving the best item combinations right away. Instead, they should focus on making strong early-game choices, such as using 'Sunfire Cape' to dominate, even if it isn't optimal for the late game. Additionally, the chapter advises on considering different strategies, such as using anti-heal units effectively in the backline for a strategic advantage in the game's later stages.
• 08:30 - 11:00: Balancing Frontline and Backline This chapter discusses the strategy of balancing the selection of items, particularly for tanks, between frontline and backline during gameplay. It emphasizes the typical item set of Wararmmogs, Bramble, and Dragonclaw for tanks, which is widely used by players. However, it suggests an alternative approach for the early game, advocating for the construction of a Sunfire Cape when equipped with a chain vest and a giant spell. This approach can save significant health points, allowing a more aggressive or 'greedy' playstyle in the mid to late game, leading to a stronger overall setup. The chapter notes that although the Sunfire Cape's effectiveness diminishes in the late game (as its healing debuff affects primarily tanks and it leaves the main tank slightly less durable), the early benefits outweigh these drawbacks.
• 11:00 - 12:30: Critical and Non-Critical Units This chapter discusses the strategies used in early game scenarios, including the decision-making process around unit health and star levels. It emphasizes flexibility in item selection, suggesting that adhering rigidly to composition guides for specific items like Bramble, DClaw, and Warmogs might not always be necessary. Additionally, it points out a common error of over-committing to winning streaks in the early game, such as leveling up at certain stages only to lose despite the effort. The chapter encourages strategic adaptability to optimize game outcomes.
• 12:30 - 15:00: Early Game Itemization Mistakes This chapter discusses common mistakes players make with itemization early in the game. It emphasizes the importance of win streaking only when your board is truly strong. High-ranked players only commit to this strategy when they have a strong early game augment, upgrades for both frontline and backline, and appropriate items for their units. If these conditions are not met, it may not be worth pursuing a win streak unless scouting reveals a generally weak lobby. The chapter suggests focusing on strengthening your board with suitable items and strategic scouting rather than relying on hope.
• 15:00 - 16:30: Positioning and Focus Fire The chapter discusses strategies for positioning and focusing fire in early game scenarios. It emphasizes the importance of synergy beyond simple trait combinations, considering broader strategic synergy for better gameplay outcomes. A common mistake highlighted is when players use a lose-streak augment for a fast level eight push, which often leads to suboptimal results. The chapter suggests maintaining a balanced economy and leveraging power spikes effectively rather than focusing solely on early aggression.
• 16:30 - 18:00: Recap and Conclusion The chapter discusses strategies for succeeding in the game mode 'Fast Eight,' emphasizing the importance of win streaking and playing from an advantageous position. It highlights the 'seven squad' composition, which is most effective when key characters like two-star Leona and Zia are obtained in the mid game, and Aurora in the late game. The narrative underscores the necessity of maintaining a lead to afford these characters, suggesting players should aim to be ahead in the game financially to execute these strategies effectively.

Why Your Early Game Sucks (And How to Fix It) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Ever feel like the game is already over by stage three? Everyone else hits their board while you're stuck with one star, no gold, no health, and no It's not bad luck, it's just bad habits. Today, I'm going to break down 10 early game mistakes that high elo players never make and how you can fix them to start winning more games in set 14 and make sure you also do every single one of them because doing one is not enough. Let's get into it. The first one is not scouting early. During stage two, even stage one, it's very important to scout. Sometimes people get a key reroll piece
• 00:30 - 01:00 with good items on stage one. So you know that comp's off limits. In stage two during the augment picking phase if people take a lot of trait related augments or even a hero augment again you know that's off the board now. Essentially if you're not scouting early you don't have to do it often but just doing it at least once. If you're not doing that you're just flying blind. And I don't know why you're even watching a video on how to climb because if you don't put the effort in, how can you expect to get better? But high elo players scout early to avoid contested comps, track item slams, and also assess the strength of the lobby. That way,
• 01:00 - 01:30 they know whether the lobby's going to be strong this time or weak. And then play around that accordingly. For example, if everyone's playing cipher and trying to lose streak, your mediocre board can sometimes go on a five-game win streak in those lobbies because everyone else is lose streaking. You don't know that if you don't scout, and you'll think you'll just have a mediocre board, sell everything, make 10 gold instead, and then end up getting outscaled by all the cipher players. So, how do we fix this? Well, you need to scout at least once. I do once in stage one, once in early stage two in pretty much all my games. Most times though, I
• 01:30 - 02:00 do a lot more than that. And I scout constantly if I have nothing else to do. And you should be doing active scouting. Are you contested? What items did people slam? Because sometimes you don't know what comp someone's going if they're doing a fast eight because they could flex into different comps. But their item slams tell you what they're aiming for. What traits are they running? Are people leveling very aggressively? Are people staying very low level? find out before it's too late. The next mistake you're probably doing is waiting for perfect items because you're going to be bleeding a lot of health for no reason if you do this. What you need to do is
• 02:00 - 02:30 identify which items are important and not important for your specific team comp. For example, if you're playing for marksmen for Vanguard, which is a very attack damage focused comp, and you get a tier, you don't need this item, right? Like it doesn't build any important item for your Aphilios or Zia. Like yeah, I could build Shojan, but Zia can kind of use anything. So, what you can do with this item instead is build something like a protector's vow, a redemption, an adaptive helm. There are a lot of different things you can consider here because again, this item component is not important in this team comp. So, if
• 02:30 - 03:00 you start with like a sword, a tier, and a chain vest, you might be tempted to just build the shogun and drop it under Zia later. But you don't need to do that every time. You could instead build something like a protector's vow and then save the sword for more critical items like Infinity Edge. You also have the option of not needing to wait for best in slot items and just slam strong early game items to win. Now, a great example of that is Sunfire Cape. Most people know that in the late game, you probably want a Mel in your backline for anti-heal because it applies to more units if you put it on an AoE unit. And
• 03:00 - 03:30 then for your tank, you do like Wararmmogs, Bramble, and Dragonclaw. Like that's the typical setup that most people do. But in the early game, if you have a chain vest and a giant spell, building a Sunfire Cape is going to save you like 20 health, which means you could play much more greedily in the mid to late game and then get a much stronger cap out just because you slam that item in the early game. Yeah, it's true that your anti-heal effect in the late game is not going to hit as many units cuz you're just hitting the tanks. And yes, it's also true that your tank's going to be a little squishier because he doesn't have three pure tank items on him, but you get the added bonus of just
• 03:30 - 04:00 having so much more health than everyone else that you can get two star legendaries to cap out instead because of the advantage you gained in the early game. Like you don't have to wait for perfect items if on a composition guide you see some of those bramble, dclaw, warmogs, you don't always have to go for those exact items because some units use very flexible items. Another mistake I see in the early game is overcommitting to a win streak. How many times have you leveled up to level four on 2 1 and lost anyways? Or even do a early level to five on 22 or 2 three? I bet it happens
• 04:00 - 04:30 more often than you think. What's important to know is that high elo players only commit to win streaking when their board is actually strong, not when they're just hoping to win. What does this mean? It means you got a strong early game augment such as like an item augment. It means you have upgrades for both your front line and your backline. And you also have items that make sense for these units. If you don't meet all these requirements, oftentimes it's not worth win streaking, unless of course you use tip one and scouted earlier and figured out the whole lobby was piss weak. The way to fix this though is by only pushing for
• 04:30 - 05:00 streaks in the early game if you have everything that I talked about before. Otherwise, you can most often just chill and save your econ and power spike a little bit later on. Next, I want to talk about synergy, but not in the way that most people think. Normally, when people think about synergy, they think about traits. They think about like frontline, backline balance. But what about macro synergy or like big game plan strategy synergy? A lot of people mess this up because one common mistake I see so much when people do something like a fast eight for example is that they take a lose streak augment and then
• 05:00 - 05:30 try to fast eight when a lot of fast eight comps revolve around win streaking and playing while you're ahead. Think of something like the seven squad comp. What are the key things that make this comp do well? It's going to revolve around hitting two star Leona and two star Zia in the mid game and getting Aurora two star in the late game. And obviously you want to do some sort of standard level or fast eight to hit that comp. But hitting all that stuff is very expensive. So you want to play this from a place where you're ahead, where you're wind streaking, getting a lot of gold from that and also preserving your
• 05:30 - 06:00 health total so you could sacrifice some rounds in stage four to build up your econ even larger and then eventually hit them in your roll downs. A lot of fast eight comps play like this and I think a lot of people they take a lose streak augment they play fast eight because their items match up for it or they get like the trait unit start for it and then they often wonder why they're 30 health in stage 4. Even if you hit your roll down you're going to lose two rounds and just die out that game. So imagine the games where you don't hit your roll down and you're 30 health by that time. Doing pure lose streak starts are completely god awful for fast
• 06:00 - 06:30 aiding. And if you do take some sort of econ augment to fast 8, you need to make sure you use that gold to level up relatively quickly so that you can survive a lot of rounds by having a lot more units than the other players. But again, this whole concept is misalignment between your augment and your strategy. Most of the time people lose streak, they do something like a roll comp. That way they can stabilize in stage three. Cuz if you lose all five rounds in stage two, you're going to be at 70 health. If you lose two more rounds, you're going to be at 50. But if you lose five, you're going to be at like 30 at the end of stage three. In stage four, you start losing 15 health
• 06:30 - 07:00 per round. So, if you do the math on when to roll, when to stabilize, it doesn't really work out for fast eight comps if you're loose streaking the entire time. So, just make sure whatever augment you pick actually lines up with whatever strategy you're using. I'm not saying the combos I talked about can never work. You just have to play them a little differently. Next, I want to talk about the carousel. On stage 21, you have a lot of things to do. So, you need to set up your board. You need to decide whether you want to level up or stay level three. You need to pick your augment, but you also need to slam items and plan for your items ahead. The
• 07:00 - 07:30 example before we used was having a sword, a tier, and a chain vest and doing some sort of attack damage comp. You built the protector's vow, but what are you doing with that sword? Often times, you're going to be building stuff like Infinity Edge. So, you have to think about, oh, I need the glove on carousel. Pretty obvious, right? But what if you don't get the glove? What if you're a later pick or someone snipes it before you get it? You have to think of backup options. So, that could either be going for a specific champion. Maybe you want to stabilize with like a Jinx and have Jinx be your item holder, so you pick up Jinx in the carousel. Maybe you
• 07:30 - 08:00 have to settle for something like a death blade. Or maybe you think about building the second item, which is maybe like a ragelade, a runon's hurricane, or another tank item. It depends when you're picking on the carousel. But you have to think of backup plans to whatever you're going for in the first place. Obviously, you want the glove to build the IE. But everything we plan in life doesn't always work out the way we think it will. So, always plan ahead for the carousel. Don't get caught with your pants down once your little legend gets released. And for bonus points, if you followed step one and scouted, you could even grief a key item from one of your opponents if you're picking at the same
• 08:00 - 08:30 time. Speaking about not thinking ahead, you need to start thinking ahead to stage 32 in the early game. Like if you build your game plan from the start, everything falls into place. If you're doing a rroll comp, you generally want to do a roll down on stage 32 to stabilize, right? But what if you're on something like scuttlepuddle or gold subscription where you get like a ton of gold in the early game and you could actually hit level six on 3-1 instead of 32. In those games, you're going to be doing it on 3-1 instead. These are things you need to think about when the game starts in stage two. Once you kind
• 08:30 - 09:00 of decide what direction you're going, you need to have a plan for every part of the game. Obviously, stage 32 being one of the major decision points. You also should try to create some sort of flowchart in your head. For example, there are going to be games where you hit everything for free and other games where you don't hit anything at all. What are you going to do on stage 32 based on those two scenarios? Well, if you hit everything, maybe you could just greed and save up a lot of econ instead. But if you're not hitting, you need to decide whether you want to roll down to 30 gold, roll down to 10 gold, or roll everything you're holding at that time. It helps to plan this so you don't do anything in a panic because I feel like
• 09:00 - 09:30 panicking is one of the biggest issues that affect people who don't play like 10 games a day. Because as I watch a lot of replays from coaching, I noticed that people do make a lot of panic plays that they know not to do, but they do anyways. The way to avoid that again is just by planning ahead. I'm guilty of this mistake, too. Here's a video of me doing my 3-2 roll down, but I forgot to level up to level six. I ended up hitting nothing, and I was wondering the whole time where my Rengar is, but by the time I realized that, I was at zero gold, and I just FF that game as an eighth. Now, let's talk about more micro
• 09:30 - 10:00 stuff in stage two. And I talk about this all the time in TFT, but it's about balancing your front line and backline. There are a lot of games where you hit a lot of upgrades, but they're all weird units. Units that might not synergize together that well. For example, you might have a Kindred and Cogmall two star, which is great because they're a great backline unit that synergize with each other, but then you also get like a twoar Saraphene. While in theory it sounds great that you have three two star units and you try to play for a win streak, it's not always that easy because you need a tank. If you put
• 10:00 - 10:30 three damage units out there and a one-star tank, your team's not going to do very well. So, it might sound a little weird, but you might want to wait before you hit the level up button because you're not going to win a lot of rounds like that. So, how do you fix this issue? Well, let's say that you are in that same exact scenario we described before. You might want to focus on slamming a tank item, maybe like a crown guard or a warmog, something that works really well without needing to scale with the unit. Something like a dragonclaw wouldn't do that well because dragon claw is really good on someone who's already very tanky by making them even more tanky. You want to focus
• 10:30 - 11:00 instead on items that give you a lot more base stats rather than scaling stats. Another thing you could do is maybe pick an augment that gives you more front line, maybe something that gives you more health, or maybe get the golem that has all three tank items. There are a lot of options you could do to kind of salvage this and create some sort of like makeshift front line. But of course, you could always forgo the win streak plan and go for a lose streak instead. But pretty much, you should always aim between striking a balance between front line and backline cuz if not, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. The next micro mistake I want to point out is holding non-critical
• 11:00 - 11:30 three cost units. I see this happen literally all the time. If you're playing squad, for example, and you hit a early Yumi, you might think like, great, I have a Yumi. Yumi belongs inma squad and she's a pretty key unit cuz she has a lot of different traits. A lot of times you actually don't want to hold on to the Yumi because she costs so much gold and doesn't help you win in a lot of games because who are your item holders in Anima Squad? It's going to be some sort of attack damage item holder cuz you're more focused on Zia rather than Aurora because Zia is something you hit earlier. So you want to stabilize
• 11:30 - 12:00 around that. So if you build like IE Last Whisper things like that, like what's Yumi going to do to help you with that? Like absolutely nothing, right? So, Yumi ends up being like a huge waste of gold, unless you end up using her to hit five squad, but you typically don't hit level five until stage 25. So, if you hold her in the early game, you're going to be missing out on a lot of gold, and that gold really adds up and anti- snowballs your economy. On the flip side, sometimes there are units that are three costs that are very critical to your game plan. For example, in exotech, Morichiser is a great tank
• 12:00 - 12:30 for both stage two and stage three, and he could actually just hold all your tank items and do really, really well for any exotech comp. So, obviously, you want to buy him and play him. But something like a Yumi, not that important cuz when you do play for fast 8, you need a ton of econ. So, you need all the money you can get. Next, I want to talk about two similar mistakes that people make all the time in the early game, which is itemizing one-star units and building the wrong early game items. One classic scenario I see all the time is building a gunblade, putting it on your Saraphene because gunblade's good
• 12:30 - 13:00 on Vanguard that you want to reroll later on, and then you watch the fight and your onear saraphene is not doing anything at all with the gunlade and you ended up wasting that item slam. This happens all the time and the reason why gunlade is bad is because it's a scaling item. It works really well if you already do a lot of damage because it's based off of the percent damage that you deal. So in the early game, you're not dealing that much damage. So something like a gunblade is completely god awful. Something that's really good in the early game is something like a static shiv if you want to try to win streak because it deals a lot of flat damage
• 13:00 - 13:30 and gives pretty good stats to your units. And even though it's not like a mainstay item that you see in a lot of team comps, you're going to be able to blow through a lot of people in the early game if you build that. Obviously, it depends on the meta you're in. But other examples of bad item slams might be something like jeweled gauntlet, giant slayer, and things like that. What are some good items to slam early? Well, it's going to be stuff that gives a lot of raw stats. Stuff like archangel staff and ragelade are both really good because they scale during the long early game fights. Generic tank items are pretty good because they fit in every team comp. So stuff like wararmmogs,
• 13:30 - 14:00 sunfire cape are going to work out really well. Items that are flexible such as adaptive helm are really good and thieves glove. And then lastly, items that are like decent throughout the game because that's just how they work. Like not everything's super strong in the early game and weak in the late game and vice versa. Um would be something like a spear of shojen. like you need the item eventually because pretty much your main carry uses it and spear shogun is pretty much like the same power level throughout the whole game. So obviously that makes it a good early game item because you need it on your late game carries eventually. But those are examples of some good items.
• 14:00 - 14:30 And then lastly, you want to slam them on twostar units. Like one-star units with items are completely useless most of the time unless they're like a three cost in the early game. So even if you're building like a lot of trades around one unit, if they're one star, like they're not going to carry your team in most cases. So only try to win streak with the item slam if you have the two star and an item that actually works for them. I'm not saying never itemize one-star units. Like sometimes you do put it on them because you want to kill one or two units as you lose streak and limit your HP loss. But in a lot of cases I see a lot of people making the mistake of trying to win
• 14:30 - 15:00 streak and managing their items completely wrong. Speaking of chipping away at a couple of units, what you want to do is focus fire. Like I see a lot of people not doing a focus fire. Like for example, a standard setup you might see is like maybe you have bastions with like the rapid fires and you kind of spread out your units a little bit and you end up not killing too much and things live with one HP. A popular positioning setup that a lot of high rated people are using is grouping their units up like this. Like you typically never do this in the late game. Like you
• 15:00 - 15:30 could look at any team comp. For example, on bunny muffins. Like Dynamo Misfortune, we have people pretty spread out. Syndicate reroll, people are pretty spread out. Like pretty much every comp, you'll see like one person on the left, one person on the right, and units scattered in between them. But in the early game, you don't want to do this. You want to group your units together so that they focus onto the same unit. And the good news is that it's pretty easy to do. You just put your two carries next to each other. Uh the tank positioning isn't as important, but you do want to keep them together as well. But sometimes you want to split their focus so that two people hit Poppy, two people hit jacks. And sometimes if you
• 15:30 - 16:00 do this, like sometimes all four of them hit the jacks. But pretty much always, always, always put your carries together so that they focus onto the same unit so that you guarantee one kill and if you get one kill, it's easier to get the rest. Pretty simple stuff. Everyone should be doing this. Like too often I see people position like that. And I'm just like, what are you doing? You know, there's a time and place for that with like some weird exceptions, but in most cases, just put everyone together and it'll simplify like 99% of all your TFT games. Just remember to move them later on in the game once you do face a lot of area of effect damage. I know everything
• 16:00 - 16:30 we've said is a lot of information. For a lot of people, it's a lot of new information. So, let's just recap really quickly. So, again, the biggest mistakes I see is not scouting, waiting for perfect items, overcommitting to win streaks, bad augment fit, no 3-2 plan, or even planning ahead, holding units that don't actually help your board, not balancing front line and backline, building the wrong early game items and having bad item holders for them, mispositioning, and bad carousel planning. Those are the biggest mistakes I see people make all the time through hours and hours of coaching and just by
• 16:30 - 17:00 looking at other people play TFT. And the most important thing to know is that TFT isn't always just about high rolling. It's usually about minimizing your mistakes. If I could choose one superpower for TFT, it'd be consistency. Cuz all the time I make a mistake and it's so obvious that it was a mistake and I know not to do it, but I do it anyways because maybe I was watching something stupid on my second monitor. Maybe I was not even thinking about the game in general. Maybe I was texting on my phone. It happens all the time. So, I wish I could just be more consistent as my TFT superpower. But minimizing all
• 17:00 - 17:30 these mistakes will build you a stable early game, which sets the groundwork for everything else in life. Well, not life, but just that TFT game. So, if you can avoid all these bad habits, you'll stop bleeding HP, you'll scale better, and you'll hit top fours and even win games more consistently. So, let me know which one of these tips helped you out the most. Maybe you have some other tips that could help other people in the comment section or on Discord. If you want coaching, check out the coaching link in the description. It's free. You just have to get lucky and get picked. And check out the website while you're there as well. But that's going to be it for me today. Hopefully I see you all next time.