How to Pick Augments in TFT Set 13

Senior Game Design Director at Riot Games & Lead Designer of Teamfight Tactics - Mortdog provided an explanation ahead of the TFT Set 13 season regarding the decision not to share Augments data via the social media platform X.com. This article provides a compelling explanation for the decision to remove Augments from match history and stats sites in TFT. The reasoning is centered on promoting creativity, fairness, and overall game health. By discouraging players from relying on rigid meta-data, the change encourages exploration and innovative strategies. Additionally, it addresses competitive integrity by leveling the playing field across regions. The reference to successful results in past experiments, like the Vegas Open, reinforces confidence in this decision. Overall, the move prioritizes a more dynamic and enjoyable gameplay experience for all players.

The creators of TFT have removed augment data from match history, so we can no longer data check augments and have to actually know how to pick augments using intuition and actually play the game.

egardless of what is in the meta, This will give you new ideas on how to approach augments in this new era of tft, and as a special bonus, at the end of the guide I’ll also give you a secret tip on how to get implied data on augments along with when, why, and how to play many of the new augments introduced to the game.

So what is an augment? Augments appear at stage 2-1, 3-2, and 4-2 of every game, and they give your team some type of bonus. Some people consider augments game defining, meaning they drastically affect the outcome of your game, which makes it very important to know what to pick and when.

Typically augments can be categorized into 3 categories, and maybe 5 if you count some of the hybrids, and they are as follows: combat, econ, item are the main 3, and then there are trait and hero augments if you want to separate those.

1. They make your team stronger, either through more stats, a special effect, or anything else.

2. Examples are

• Backup, which gives your team attack speed if 4 allies start in the back 2 rows. This is good for comps that don’t need too many units in the front, such as having a solo or duo tank, often paired with items like Gargoyle’s Stoneplate.
• Piercing Lotus is an example of a gold combat augment where it gives your team 5% crit chance and their abilities can critically strike. You also get a shred and sunder effect after you crit. This is great for teams that are lacking Shred and Sunder effects, which are almost required by every team comp, and critical strike chance is typically good on units that rely more on their ability for damage rather than their auto attacks.
• Calculated Enhancement gives 4 random champions in your last row 35 AD and 40 AP. This is great if you only need 4 damage dealers in the backline and if you are lacking AD and AP. For example, if you built your carry with a lot of attack speed and critical strike chance, the extra AD/AP will help more than getting an augment that gives more attack speed in most cases. This is because it’s better to scale your units in a balanced way than go all in on 1 stat unless it’s a unique circumstance. Anyways, these are 3 examples of combat augments and how you can make the most out of them.

3. Let’s get into why and when you should pick a combat augment.

• Combat augments are great for scaling into late game. While they do provide ‘combat stats’, they are typically not that great to win streak with in the early game. This is because they typically give fewer stats than item augments, which we will cover later
• Combat augments are best used when you have full items on your primary carry and tank because the only way to make your carries even stronger is through giving them a crazy amount of trait bonuses, or giving them a combat augment since they are only allowed to hold 3 items. Obviously, getting a combat augment is easier than adding in crazy traits because we can only add so many units to our team each game.
• Given all this information, combat augments are best taken on Stage 4 and are the worst type of augment on Stage 2. Stage 2 prefers either econning or winstreaking, and econ augments are better at econ, and item augments are better at winstreaking. It’s definitely not the end of the world if you took a combat augment on Stage 2, but just recognize that you might have a rougher time than usual and play around that fact. There are some exceptions as there are scaling combat augments such as Investment Strategy where your champions gain permanent max health per interest you earn. Combat augments that give permanent stacks or stats are obviously better the earlier you take them.
• Typically combat augments create the ‘highest cap’ for most team compositions because if you are able to get your team built without needing extra gold from an econ augment and if you are able to get good items on your carries without the help of an item augment, you will obviously demolish other teams with identical boards but have an econ augment or item augment in the late game because you literally just have extra stats.
• While it isn’t always necessarily the case, I would consider combat augments a 1st or 8th type of augment choice.

1. Econ augments are pretty simple. They are augments that help you save or make gold. This can be in the form of extra rerolls, bonus experience, extra copies of champions, or just straight gold (that’s gold jerry!)

2. An example of

• A silver reroll augment is Reroll Transfer. This allows you to gain 3 free shop rerolls of reverie unused augment reroll, but it does not include the round this augment is selected. This is good when you need to take advantage of rerolls, such as in… a reroll comp (badum tss). Sometimes we make TFT more complicated than it needs to be.
• A gold gold augment is Forward Thinking where you lose all your gold, but after 6 player combats you gain the original amount back and another 70 gold. While this is takeable regardless of your gold amount, it’s best if you actually spent all your gold before you take this augment. This is because you weren’t going to be making interest anyways, and you don’t want to die while you cannot spend gold, so you literally just get 70g in 6 pvp rounds, which is an INCREDIBLE amount for a gold augment. If we compare this to Balanced Budget+, that only gives 40 gold, but happens over 4 rounds.
• A prismatic econ augment is Prismatic Pipeline which grants an additional prismatic orb at the next non player combat round. It also gives gold and prismatic orbs even more loot. This is good when you are already strong or have a lot of health to take a delayed econ augment. It’s also strong on Maps where you have bonus loot, such as Scuttle Puddle (someone actually fact check this please).

3. Now that we know what econ augments are, when should we pick them?

3.1 Typically, econ augments are better for top 4s than they are for winning because it pretty much guarantees that you’ll hit your desired team comp, so you’ll be stronger than the people who did not hit, but weaker than those who got lucky and hit but had a combat or item augment. The times where you can get 1st place with an econ augment is usually when you are able to go to a really high level or get multiple 2* legendaries or something crazy like a 3* 4 cost.

3.2 Types of econ augments and when to pick

• Reroll: If something gives rerolls or a higher chance at a certain tier of unit, pick them when you are playing a reroll comp
• Leveling/XP: Pick when you are going for a fast 8 or 9 comp
• Gold: Gold augments are just straight up worse than leveling or reroll augments if you assume the game is balanced. This is because gold is flexible so your value is in not being forced to tunnel vision a line. For example, Explosive Growth and Balanced Budget give XP and gold every turn for the next 4 turns respectively, but Explosive Growth gives 1 more. Does that mean Balanced Budget is strictly worse than Explosive Growth? No, because you can take Balanced budget to play a reroll comp, but Explosive Growth will over level you for your reroll despite giving more ‘value’.
• Champions: Last category is champion augment, not to be confused with hero augments which will be covered shortly. Champion augments give you additional copies of champions or change your shop odds. Rigged Shop for example makes your next shop and every 4 shops all 3 cost champions and is obviously great in 3 cost reroll.
  Last category of econ augments I forgot to mention are health augments such as Titanic Titan which increases your current and max player health by 20. Health augments are essentially Gold augments because they allow you to make interest for a few more turns, but have the added benefit of really saving your tuckus sometimes.

3.3 Pretty simple stuff, if you are doing a certain strategy such as reroll, take a reroll augment. If you don’t know what direction your game is taking you yet, gold augments are nice. There are also econ augments that require you to win such as Kingslayer, and you would take that in a situation where you are already strong.

1. Item augments give you items. Items are great for powering up your carry or tank. They come in a variety of forms:

• Full items which are just items
• Components which can be used to build items
• Radiant items which are empowered versions of full items (often 2-2.5x value)
• Artifact items which are a different tier of item (valued at 1.5)
• Support – actually a form of combat augment and a separate item category (valued at 1.5-2 depending on game state (early vs late)).

2. An example of

• A silver component augment is Eye for an Eye where for every 15 ally champions that die, gain a random component. This is great if you have not committed to a comp yet and can use the extra components later in the game. You can actually lose streak with this item augment to get the component a bit earlier.
• A gold item augment would be Pyromaniac which gives you a Red Buff and your burns deal 50% increased damage. This is great if you are lacking the burn/wound effect or if it is one of the best in slot items for one of your units
• An Prismatic Artifact augment would be Artifactory where at the start of each turn, your benched completed items transform into a random Artifact item. You also gain 1 Artifact Anvil and 2 Removers. You would take this if your units are great at using a random mix of items. This is typically true of multicarry comps with at least 1 AD, 1 AP, 1 tank, and 1 support unit. That way no matter what random artifact items are thrown at you, you can make use of it.

3. When should we pick item augments?

3.1 Item augments are typically best for winstreaking in the early game

• If you get the item right away, you get the most power on your board in the early game. This is because items give more stats to your primary carry than a combat augment. If your primary carry or tank does not have 3 items, then you need to max that out ASAP, and item augments are the easiest way to do that in the early game because we have less loot at this time

3.2 Item augments are also good when you are running a multi carry comp. If we think about how to make powerful TFT comps, we typically have 1 tank and 1 carry. After itemizing both of them, we already discussed how good a combat augment is to power them up even more. However, some comps have multiple carries, and it is very difficult to get items for 2 carries and your tank, as that is 9 items. Item augments help bridge this gap by giving you more items to itemize everyone. What is a multi carry comp? Typically its a comp that 3s a lot of units or plays a lot of 2 4 costs

3.3 Now how do we decide what type of item augment to pick?

• Full items: Great if they are a BIS for your team. Also great for just generic value to win streak with. Good if you have a multi carry comp.
• Components: Good if you have a lot of unbuilt components. To get full value, you’ll want to build items ASAP after taking a component augment. Good for winstreaking if you build items or in multicarry comps.
• Radiant: Great for comps where you literally only care about 1 unit. Often times this is a melee carry because they can act as both a tank and damage dealer through hitting champions and also lifestealing
• Artifact: Similar to Radiant items, but a bit more flexible. This is probably the midpoint between a full item and a radiant item augment where it can be argued both ways–it gives a lot of power to a singular unit if you are doing a solo champ game, or it is good in multicarry comps if you need to itemize many units.
• Support – actually a form of combat augment: These are great for solo unit teams or if you already have 3 items on your primary units.

1. Trait augments include crest/crown augments which give a trait specific emblem along with trait specific augments which give a boost to a specific trait of units.

2. Some examples are

• There are no trait specific silver augments, but Branching out gives you a random emblem, I would only take this if vertical traits are very strong on the current patch.
• A Gold trait augment would be something like Law Enforcement which gives enforcer champions AD and every 5 wanted enemy deaths give gold. You also get Enforcer champions. Of course there are other examples such as Crests, which give you an emblem and sometimes a champion
• Lastly for prismatics, there are Crowns which typically give an emblem, items, and champions for that trait.

3. When should you take a trait augment?

• I don’t know if this even needs to be said, but if you are going for that trait, take the trait augment. They can be considered a hybrid of combat, item, and econ augment since it makes your team passively stronger through getting the trait bonus, it literally gives you an item, and it also gives you champions sometimes.
• If a trait is very good on the current patch, you still need maybe 1 or 2 units or components to make that trait work before taking the augment for it. Picking a naked trait augment is very risky even if it’s the best augment in the game
• It’s also good to take emblem augments if you have a way to build another copy of the emblem because often times traits have breakpoints that are 2 counts higher than units available. For example, rebel 7 is easily hit, because there are 8 rebel units, but 10 rebels is bonkers, and getting 2 emblems is the only way to activate that.

1. Lastly there are Hero augments, and what Riot is calling “trait augments” although I don’t know why they chose this name because we already calls something else trait augments as seen in the previous example. I get that they add the trait to the lefthand side of the screen, but it creates tons of confusion because for 2-3 years we’ve been using the term “trait augment” to refer to crests/crowns and… trait augments. They could have called them something like Partner, companion, duo, or team augments. Someone either link me a video from a developer that explains why they named them trait augments or ask mortdog in his stream for me please. Duo is probably the best name.

• Hero augments are augments that change the identity of a unit to make them a carry in most cases. They will change the way you approach your game as after picking the augment you will change your attention to that champion and that champion only for most of the game. When picking a hero augment, you also get some copies of the champion
• A duo augment is very similar to a hero augment–it creates a special bond between two champions and they gain some sort of benefit from it. You also get a copy of both champions

2. Some examples

• There are no silver trait augments, but there are hero augments such as Trolling which is gain a trundle, your strongest trundle’s ability no longer heals, but grants him attack speed and permanently gains him attack damage. His max mana is also reduced.
• A gold trait augment is Sisters, which gives jinx bonus attack speed whenever Vi gets a takedown. When jinx gets a takedown, VI gets bonus AD, and you also get copies of these champions
• A prismatic trait augment is Geniuses which is when heimer casts, ekko releases 3 afterimages dealing damage. When ekko casts, heimer fires missiles

3. When to pick?

• You only want to pick hero or duo augments if you can meet 3 requirements: if the augment is currently strong, if you have existing copies of the champions, and if you have items for those champions. I know data is gone, but we will cover a secret but legal way on how to check the augment data anyways to figure out if these augments are good at the end of the video.

• Now that we covered all the types of augments you will encounter, I did want to mention that there are some hybrid or mixed augments, as you may have noticed a pattern already. For example, the critical thinkers of bunnymuffins viewers might have already left a comment saying “you said item augments are good for winstreaking, but how come you said to lose streak with Eye for an Eye” (show image here so we know what it does). Turns out, some fall into multiple categories or break their own rules
• BRB is technically lose streak augments, but instead of giving econ, it gives you items after it resolves. Investment STrategy is technically a combat augment, but it is delayed, so you don’t get full power right away. Spoils of War is technically an econ augment, but you must kill units and ideally win rounds too to get maximum value out of it. Bad Luck Protection is both an item and a combat augment because it gives you a component AND a buff to your team. Many more examples, but some things in TFT wear many hats.

The meta defines what is good. For example, if lose streaking is powerful, then econ and lose streak augments will almost always be good. If vertical traits are good, wandering trainer, crowns/crests, and branching out is good (use faerie crown from last set as an example of why it could sometimes be bad even if it’s good), but you still have to meet the requirements. If multi carry comps are meta, item augments such as buried treasures is good. If single carry comps are strong, then radiant and artifacts are good. If it’s a flexible meta where lots of different verticals are strong, ironically hard commit is good because you get a good comp no matter what.

So they removed augment data from match history, and everything you are about to do is actually legal and not part of a black market stat database. Turns out, a lot of implied data can be generated by getting creative with existing stats.

Go to TFT Academy for your data needs.