TFT Ranks Explained – See How Teamfight Tactics Rankings Work
12 minutes
Last Updated: May 29, 2024
Riot Games is one of the most successful companies in the video games industry. It’s best known for League of Legends, which has over 100 million players, and Valorant, which has 20+ million.
Its third game, called Teamfight Tactics, is often neglected by people because it’s much more basic than the other two.
But this game has a massive player base of around 80 million, despite being released just in 2019. In this guide, you will learn more about it and the TFT ranks.
What Is Teamfight Tactics
TFT is a chess-like strategy game that focuses on the champions and the battles between them. The characters are taken directly from League of Legends, so if you’re familiar with LoL, figuring out TFT will not take too much effort.
In Teamfight Tactics, you play against seven other players and the goal is to be the last man standing. You build and equip your team utilizing the amount of gold you have at your disposal and with each successful fight, you grow in power.
The beauty of the game consists of the fact that you can use many different combos. There are lots of champions, items, and abilities, so you can outsmart your opponents in countless ways.
The only problem is that they can do the same thing, so you’ll need to study the game carefully and then plan your strategy well.
How to Get an Edge
Understanding LoL gives you a big advantage because the fighting sessions follow the same principles. However, the process is much quicker and is done for you, just like in Football Manager.
You cannot control the champions yourself. This automation is both fun and annoying at times, because you would like to micromanage everything yourself.
TFT is an excellent choice if you love Turn-Based Strategy games. Knowledge of any video game that resembles chess, such as Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Disciples II, or Divinity Original Sin 2 will come in handy, as this game follows similar principles. The main difference is that the battles are auto-resolved.
The strategy must be considered and reconsidered at every step of the game. Between rounds, you get a brief amount of time to plan your next move. If you use your gold wisely, you will win and then deal damage to your opponent. Otherwise, you’ll probably lose the round.
What’s exciting about this game is that you see the result of your decisions right away. You don’t need to wait for 30 minutes or longer to get some feedback. You’ll know if you won or lost within minutes.
TFT Ranks
If you play LoL, the TFT ranking system is easy to understand. But if you don’t, you’ll learn how it works in the next few sections.
TFT ranks are Riot’s method of keeping track of the players’ competence level. Highly skilled players are asked to compete against other highly skilled players. The same goes for beginners. Your goal, of course, is to climb the ladder and win as many matches as possible.
There are 9 TFT ranks in total, further divided into subranks or divisions for an increased sense of progression. These ranks are presented below:
Iron
Players in the Iron rank are the lowest-ranked competitors in TFT. They can be matched against players from Iron, Bronze, Silver, and even Gold. This makes TFT significantly harder than LoL.
In LoL, you will generally be asked to play against competitors from the same rank. But here, the situation is a bit wild.
However, rest assured that the matchmaking system takes into account the rank of each player and rewards them accordingly.
You lose fewer points when you get defeated by stronger players and you earn more points when you win against them. The same goes for higher-ranked players. The losses are bigger and the gains are smaller.
The Iron rank is not very populated. Only around 3.25% of TFT players compete in it. That is why you are likely to be asked to play against Bronze and Silver players when you’re at this level.
Bronze
Bronze is the immediate rank after Iron and the players who compete here know the basics. They might not know how to think several moves ahead and utilize powerful combos, but they certainly understand what they’re supposed to do during the game.
Roughly 17.07% of players have this rank. You can be matched against Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Gold opponents if you have it.
Silver
This is the most populated of all TFT ranks, containing around 33.89% of the player base. If you’re here and belong to one of the higher subranks, you should know that you are more skilled than half of the game’s entire player base.
Of course, there’s still a long way to go to reach the Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger ranks, but it’s a good start.
When you compete in the Silver rank, you can be matched against Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Gold players.
It’s interesting to note that for the first three ranks, the higher your rank, the higher your chances of winning will be. That’s because the highest rank above you in your games will be Gold. A Silver player will probably face a few Gold players and many Silver, Bronze, and Iron players.
Gold
This is the last of the novice TFT anks. Around 27.54% of players have it. This means that if you raise above it, you are better than around 80% of TFT’s player base.
Gold players can encounter Platinum players in their games, which makes it quite challenging for them to win. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. .
A big advantage when you get to this level is that you gain the opportunity to see how the top 20% think and compete. The difference between a Platinum player and an Iron one is huge.
Platinum
This is already a high-level rank. For a Grandmaster, a Platinum player may not look that highly skilled. But for anyone below Platinum, the difference can be perceived with ease. Only 13% of players compete in this rank and getting here requires a deep understanding of LoL and its champions.
To be a Platinum player, you need to know how to maximize the utility of your gold and how to pay attention not only to your draft but also to that of the other competitors.
Platinum players can only compete against Gold, Platinum, and Diamond players.
Diamond
When you’re a Diamond player, the expectations are high. Because you are now part of the top 5.5% and you can be matched against anyone above the Platinum level, including Challengers!
Around 4.25% of players have this rank, so the air is already rarefied. But this is still nothing compared to the last three ranks.
Master
Less than 1% of players reach the Master level. 0.94% to be precise. Reaching this rank requires thousands of hours of practice and an exceptional understanding of every champion and every item in LoL. It also requires a careful analysis of each situation, complemented by the ability to make the right choice.
The error margin at this level is extremely small and opponents will punish you for the most imperceptible inefficiencies.
When you compete against Masters and Grandmasters, making mistakes is not allowed if you want to win, and even small inefficiencies can cost you the game.
Your decisions need to be optimal and that requires you to be able to perform serious calculations inside your mind. You need to think like a chess player to succeed at this level of TFT ranks.
If you can’t think at least a few moves ahead or don’t even pay attention to what your opponents are doing, winning will be difficult.
Grandmaster
At the Grandmaster level, the expectations are off-the-charts. Only one in 2500 players reach this level and they are usually the same players who have mastered LoL.
Without knowing which champions are strong in every situation and what constitutes a vulnerability, it’s hard to make the optimal choice.
To some degree, TFT also depends on luck. Because the battles are auto-resolved and sometimes, the AI doesn’t do what you had hoped it will. With enough experience, you will begin to understand what works and what doesn’t in every scenario.
Sometimes, what would work under normal conditions will work even under auto-resolved conditions. But other times, what should work in theory doesn’t really work in practice.
Challenger
This is the highest of all TFT ranks you can achieve. One player in 5,000 reaches it and at this point, you should consider going pro if you’re not already. Esports teams are always searching for strong TFT players and the game’s esports scene is growing every year.
In 2022, there were two big tournaments. One had a prize pool of $300.000 and the other offered $456.000 in prize money. With a little bit more involvement on Riot’s side, TFT will become a serious esport with half a dozen big events each year.
The TFT Ranking System
Just like in League of Legends, in Teamfight Tactics your rank is a reflection of your Elo and your League Points. These numbers show you how many rank points you have and how many more you need to gain to reach the next level.
Whenever you do well in a match, you gain Elo points based on your placement and the other players’ ranks. When you do poorly, you lose Elo in a similar manner.
The stronger the opposition, the more points you gain when you do well. The weaker the opposition, the fewer points you gain, but the more you stand to lose.
To gain LP, you need to rank 4th or higher. If you rank 5th or lower you will lose LP. Every time you’ve gained 100 LP, you rank up.
For each rank, the lowest division is I and the highest is IV. When you’ve gained 100 LP as a division IV player at a certain rank, you move to division I of the next rank.
In the Master tier and above, if you don’t play for more than 10 days, you automatically get penalized by the system. You can bank up to 10 matches that are utilized to apply to your rank. Every day you lose one of them.
If you don’t have any of them left, you will lose 250 LP and you will rank down.
The bottom is Master Division I. You cannot be demoted lower than that just because you don’t play. But that is rarely an issue. Players who reach the Master rank tend to play regularly, sometimes even 5-10 hours per day.
To be demoted, you need to lose all of your current LP and then lose your next match, in the sense that you finish 5th – 8th instead of 1st – 4th.
Hyper Roll TFT
Hyper Roll TFT is a fast-paced mode in which a match lasts for just 15 minutes. This mode varies significantly from the standard one and it’s well-suited for players in a hurry or who have mastered the game and now want to experience something a bit more challenging.
The amount of time you have to strategize and make decisions is much smaller and the gold-related mechanics work differently, making the experience a lot tougher.
Hyper Roll TFT utilizes MMR (or matchmaking rating) instead of LP to rank players. And there are only five tiers. The variation is a lot smaller because of this. The available ranks are these:
- Hyper (4200 MMR): 5.06%
- Purple (3400 MMR): 9.22%
- Blue (2500 MMR): 16.92%
- Green (1500 MMR): 47.51%
- Grey (0 MMR): 21.28%
When you play Hyper Roll TFT, you are expected to be a decent player and know the basics well. The match-ups are much tougher and the matchmaking system requires players to compete against significantly stronger players. If you don’t like that, it’s better to just play the main game.
The highest-ranked Hyper players have over 10.000 MMR, so even at the highest level, the skill difference between competitors is huge.
How to Get Better at Teamfight Tactics & Improve TFT Ranks
To become a better TFT player you will need to work on several components of your game and follow a few principles:
Develop Your Own Combos
Learn what works through experimentation and then try to stick to the successful strategies you have found. It’s not easy to build your own style but if you succeed, the rewards will be huge.
Players can easily counter a simple tactic, especially if they have seen it before. But it’s quite challenging to counter a play style that’s carefully thought through.
Maximize The Utility of Your Gold
One thing that you should always do is to try to maximize the utility of your gold. How much damage and HP can you get for your resources? And what would work best against the enemy lineup? You are always asked to make decisions and the goal is to find the optimal investment each time.
Analyze Your Replays
If you analyze your games, you will often understand in hindsight what went wrong and you’ll be able to fix it. If you don’t do this, there’s a high chance that you’ll repeat the same mistakes over and over.
Top esports players always watch their own replays and try to figure out what they could have done better. This should always be done immediately after the end of the game.
Try to look at your game through the eyes of your opponents and discover your weaknesses. What were they able to exploit in your strategy? Your champion choices? The items you bought? Or perhaps something completely different.
Watch The Highest TFT Ranks Players Compete
If you follow the best players and the top TFT tournaments, you will immediately start to see patterns and tactics that you haven’t considered before. You will also learn what to avoid in certain situations.
TFT is like a foreign language. If you interact with people who speak it fluently, you’ll soon find yourself speaking it much better too. Try to regularly watch matches between Challengers, Grandmasters, and Masters, and always ask yourself: why did this player make this choice?
At first you won’t be able to figure out the logic behind each action. But the more you watch, the more you’ll start to understand why a particular move made sense in a given situation. And you’ll be able to replicate that way of making decisions in your games.
Develop a Good Attitude
TFT can surprise you. Sometimes it will surprise you in a positive way and sometimes in a negative way. The game’s auto-resolve feature is both a blessing and a curse. You will need to learn to accept what it does if you want to enjoy the game.
The feeling that you don’t have any control over how the fight goes can be unpleasant. But if you have the right attitude, you’ll come to enjoy watching your champion composition compete against the opponents’.
