League of Legends TFT Patch 12.4b

 New patch (12.4b) for Team Fight Tactics came out this Wednesday (2.23.22) and came with a spew of nerfs. This is probably due to a lot of champions and traits being over tuned for the current format of TFT.

Augments

• Golden Gifts I (Gold) number of gray orbs: 1 ⇒ 2
• Golden Gifts II (Prismatic) number of gray orbs: 2 ⇒ 3

Traits

• Hextech Shield: 140/180/400/600 ⇒ 100/150/300/600
• Hextech on-hit Magic Damage: 20/50/100/170 ⇒ 15/30/60/120
• Innovator, Mechanical Bear Power Surge Self Bonus Attack Damage: 100% ⇒ 70%

Units

• Rek’Sai Health: 800 ⇒ 750
• Rek’Sai Attack Damage: 70 ⇒ 60
• Rek’Sai Furious Bite Armor and Magic Resist steal percent: 30/35/40% ⇒ 10%
• Sejuani Health: 800 ⇒ 750
• Sejuani Attack Damage: 65 ⇒ 55
• Sejuani Fury of the North bonus Armor and Magic Resist: 75/100/150 ⇒ 50/75/125
• Ekko Parallel Convergence Attack Speed slow: 35/35/50% ⇒ 25/25/35%
• Vex Mana buff: 50/100 ⇒ 40/80
• Zac Yoink! Damage Reduction: 75% ⇒ 50%
• Irelia Bladesurge Damage: 90/135/600 ⇒ 75/100/600
• Irelia Attack Speed: 0.85 ⇒ 0.8
• Renata Toxic Wave Damage: 55/85/255 ⇒ 45/70/240
• Sivir Attack Damage: 80 ⇒ 70
• Sivir Attack Speed: 0.75 ⇒ 0.7
• Silco Unstable Concoction buff duration: 8 ⇒ 6 seconds
• Silco Unstable Concoction bonus Attack Speed: 80/175/666% ⇒ 50/125/666%
• Silco Unstable Concoction Mastermind bonus Mana: 40 ⇒ 30

I'm going to go over all of the changes starting with the augments:

To keep it short and simple, The Golden Gifts trait was underwhelming and you would only want to take it if it was the only option left. An example of this would be getting two trait augments that are useless to your current composition so you're stuck taking the Golden Gifts. The buff of an additional orb is nice, however, I don't see people taking this over most augments. All it does it make a worst case scenario better.

Moving on to the traits there's not a lot going on here either:

Hextech trait had never felt good early due to the poor units that you had to take, that being Nocturne and Jarvan. Once you had picked up the two cost units, Swain and Sejuani, you would be able to stabilize a little better than your level 3 board. However, due to the poor synergies between your Hextech units you may not win streak from sets 2 - 3. The nerf to the damage and shielding for the first two synergy levels of Hextech will make it harder to run early game, similar to Debonair, and potentially make it a pivot composition if you hit the units later on in the game. Lastly, the Innovator change should not be that impactful, most people either fit Innovators at 3 or 7. I have not seen a lot of success with 5 Innovators because there are just better units and traits to run in the current format.

Finally the units, there's a lot of nerfs for the more commonly used units:

Rek'Sai has been nerfed overall and I feel it's justified, having a two cost unit with 3 traits already makes the unit super flexible and having high stats made it borderline broken to play. This is the same scenario for Sejuani, two cost unit that has 3 traits, but she differs slightly from Rek'Sai. Sejuani did not have high damage early like Rek'Sai, but had too much crowd control for a 2 cost unit that has 3 traits. This made it super easy to hold onto a 2 star Sejuani and just throw her into a majority of compositions with two of her traits active. Moving onto Ekko, his attack speed slow felt as volatile as having a Frozen Heart active on the field most of the time. This change was probably warranted with how easy it is to get Ekko early and be extremely volatile towards attack based compositions. Zac needed a nerf towards his damage, he did way too much damage for a tank so this change along with the Rek'Sai and Sejuani nerfs will hopefully bring down the popularity of Bruiser compositions. Irelia's attack speed and damage was lowered, which is understandable because she would be a splash unit that you throw into a few compositions and she would top the charts for damage done. I don't know if her damage needed to be nerfed by 15/35 for her first two levels, if she goes down in popularity substantially then I could see her getting rebuffed in the future. Renata needed to be nerfed, she's supposed to act as a support unit with her attack speed slow and a slight poison, however, she would sometimes top damage charts with 1 or 0 items. Sivir didn't like she needed a massive nerf, but she did feel strong and would probably be stronger with other units being hard nerfed. Silco NEEDED a nerf in the current format, he's extremely volatile and could be put on any time if they had an extra slot open. I still think the buff duration should go down towards 4 - 5 seconds and the attack speed hit makes him more manageable when facing someone who has Silco in their composition. The starting mana nerf from his Mastermind trait is nice, but I don't think this is going to make or break his usage. His personal trait is more a quality of life trait for a few units while his injection is what really makes him frustrating to play against.