Team Fight Tactics (TFT) | Item Strength Tier List

Team Fight Tactics Item Tier List

Items in Team Fight Tactics are extremely important, and can allow a lower starred unit to beat the same unit at a two star level. In some instances, they're even more important than synergy buffs. As a result, we've put together the item tier list below in order to separate out which items you should be focusing on as well as a tier list for early game carousel items to pick out.

Obviously, if you're planning a specific strategy then focus on those items first. Otherwise, this item tier list provides a good baseline.

Early Game Carousel Item Tier List

• God Tier Items: Recurve Bow, Needlessly Large Rod
• Tier 1 Items: Tear of the Goddess, B.F. Sword, Spatula
• Tier 2 Items: Chain Vest, Giant's Belt, Negatron Cloak

This tier list shows what order to prioritize items in the game. See below for descriptions.

• Recurve Bow is good in almost every scenario due to attack speed being a powerful stat for almost every champion in the game. 
• Needlessly Large Rod is good because it builds into Guinsoo's Rageblade and Locket of the Iron Solari. You can also use it to build into Deathcaps if you decide to do a burst damage route.
• Tear of the Goddess is highly valuable since it builds into Spear of Shojin, but you could also make it into the very underrated Frozen Heart if you don't roll well.
• B.F. Sword is generally made into Spear of Shojin via Tear oof the Goddess or into a Zeke's Herald using a Giant's Belt.
• Spatula is somewhat situational. If you plan on losing the first couple rounds and picking up Spatulas in carousel they can be good, but they provide no stats otherwise. Force of Nature is still crazy good, but it's a bit of a gamble.
• Chain Vest can be built into Frozen Heart or more importantly Locket of the Iron Solari. However, most of the time nobody picks this up until later when they need it.
• Negatron Coak somewhat rare in usage it can be used to make a Bloodthirster or Dragon Claw if you see enemies running heavy magic resist. It can also be used to make Zephyr, which can change the game but only if the enemy isn't constantly shifting their units around.

Full Item Tier List

The items below are listed from strongest to weakest in each category of unit.

General Unit Item Tier List

• Force of Nature [Spatula + Spatula]
• Locket of the Iron Solari [Needlessly Large Rod + Chain Vest]
• Zeke's Herald [B.F. Sword + Giant's Belt]
• Redemption [Giant's Belt + Tear of the Goddess]
• Zephyr [Negatron Cloak + Giant's Belt]

Redemption is surprisingly good on a tank and may actually be better than Zeke's Herald post-nerfs. Meanwhile, Zephyr is a bit of a noob trap since enemies can move their units around to avoid your tornado later on on the game when it actually matters.

Marksmen Items Tier List [Vayne, Tristana]

• Guinsoo's Rageblade [Recurve Bow + Needlessly Large Rod]
• Rapidfire Cannon [Recurve Bow + Recurve Bow]
• Titanic Hydra [Giant's Belt + Recurve Bow]
• Bloodthirster [B.F. Sword + Negatron Cloak]
• Infinity Edge [B.F. Sword + B.F. Sword]
• Runaan's Hurricane [Spatula + Recurve Bow]

Guinsoo's Rageblade should be your #1 priority. The rest are nice, especially Rapidfire Cannon if the enemy team is packing a Phantom Dancer. The rest are nice but not required. Runaan's Hurricane unfortunately doesn't proc on Ashe's glacial passive, making Titanic Hydra a somewhat better buy.

AP Casters Items Tier List  [Aurelion Sol, Karthus]

• Spear of Shojin [Tear of the Goddess + B.F. Sword]
• Guinsoo's Rageblade [Recurve Bow + Needlessly Large Rod]
• Rabadon's Deathcap [Needlesly Large Rod + Needlessly Large Rod]
• Luden's Echo [Tear of the Goddess + Needlessly Large Rod]
• Hextech Gunblade [B.F. Sword + Needlessly Large Rod]

Generally speaking more attacks is better than stronger attacks for Sorcerers. However, there are some champions that Luden works well on (well just one, Akali). Meanwhile, Rabadon is good if you level up your units a bit, but generally speaking it won't be worth it.

Assassins Items Tier List [Kha'Zix, Rengar, Zed]

• Spear of Shojin [Tear of the Goddess + B.F. Sword]
• Infinity Edge [B.F. Sword + B.F. Sword]

These are the main two items you'll want to put on your auto attack based assassins. Anything else is sub-optimal. Some AP assassins may benefit from a blend of items from the AP Casters and the Assassins list.

Tanks Items Tier List [Shen, Garen, Gnar]

• Phantom Dancer [Recurve Bow + Chain Vest]
• Frozen Heart [Tear of the Goddess + Chain Vest]
• Dragon Claw [Negatron Cloak + Negatron Cloak]
• Thornmail [Chain Vest + Chain Vest]

General items like Redemption also works well on your front line tank since they'll be soaking up most of the damage. Other items like Locket and Zeke's won't be good for melee tanks since they won't be able to touch as many units without being locked in place.

Bruisers Items Tier List [Fiora, Graves]

• Red Buff [Chain Vest + Giant's Belt]
• Titanic Hydra [Giant's Belt + Recurve Bow]
• Bloodthirster [Negatron Cloak + B.F. Sword]

Bruisers don't usually get too many items stacked on them since they need to be both tanky and deal damage. Most of the time they end up as a filler to get your synergy bonuses, but if you get an early three star feel free to buff it up.

Support Items Tier List [Lulu]

• Locket of the Iron Solari [Needlessly Large Rod + Chain Vest]
• Zeke's Herald [B.F. Sword + Giant's Belt]
• Spear of Shojin [Tear of the Goddess + B.F. Sword]

Supports  generally want to either buff up their allies and cast more often. If you're running AOE buffs then Spear of Shojin is likely going to be your go-to in order to maximize the utility they can provide.

Spatula Items

• Frozen Mallet [Giant's Belt] - Glacial
• Yuumi [Needlessly Large Rod] - Sorcerer 
• Youmuu's Ghostblade [B.F. Sword] - Assassin
• Darkin [Tear of the Goddess] - Demon

These are all situational and really depends on your team composition. However off the bat Frozen Mallet is good for Ranger comps to synergize with Ashe and the Sorcerer/Assassin one is good for getting the 6 unit bonus. The Demon one isn't all that great.

Bad Items

• Sword of the Divine [Recurve Bow + B.F. Sword]
• Warmog's Armor [Giant's Belt + Giant's Belt]
• Statikk Shiv [Tear of the Goddess + Recurve Bow]
• Ionic Spark [Negatron Cloak + Needlessly Large Rod]
• Sword Breaker [Chain Vest + Negatron Cloak]

Generally speaking there's almost no reason to build these items, in no particuar order. All of these items are used to build much better items, and you should prevent combining units that already have items on them to make these. While crafting them won't lose you the game, there are better uses for these items.

Really Bad Items

• Guardian Angel [Chain Vest + B.F. Sword]
• Cursed Blade [Negatron Cloak + Recurve Bow]
• Hush [Negatron Cloak + Tear of the Goddess]

Don't make these items, they're quite bad right now unless they receive a few buffs and nearly useless outside the base stats they provide.

Have you found any success with these items? Think something should be moved up or down? Comment below!