How To Best Use the Legendary Units in TFT Set 8

A quick overview of the most powerful tier of champions in TFT’s Set 8.

The 5-cost legendaries tend to make or break any TFT set. If the units are fun or feel powerful when put on players’ boards, that will probably be nice to play. But if the legendary units aren’t good, or even feel worse than the 4-cost carries, then the set is in serious trouble.

Fortunately for TFT Set 8: Monsters Attack, so far, it seems like the 5-cost units are in a good spot. Whether it is Nunu & Willump rolling around the board, Mordekaiser dropping buildings or Fiddlesticks’ new gimmick, the legendary units have been very popular in PBE. And with Set 8 nearly on live servers, players should get to know them more.

Aphelios (Ox-force, Arsenal, Sureshot)

Weapons of the Faithful: Place Aphelios on the board to choose his spell. Binding Eclipse: Aphelios casts forth a lunar spotlight towards the largest group of units, dealing damage and stunning all enemies hit. Duskwave: Aphelios unleashes a wave of energy in a cone in his target's direction, locking onto and dealing damage to all enemies hit. Onslaught: Aphelios enters an onslaught, slinging chakrams and dealing massive damage to nearby enemies.

Premier 5-cost AD champion of TFT Set 8. Aphelios has two of the strongest traits in the set, Ox-force and Sureshot. While he doesn’t necessarily use the invulnerability great, he likes the attack speed, which is all the more valuable with the stacking AD from his other trait. Currently, the best DPS gun you can choose is the Binding Eclipse. Another good thing about Aphelios is that he brings some utility to the table, so you can still play him effectively even when you don’t have AD items. His second gun, Duskwave, has a stun attached to it, which can be a great set-up for Viego to clean up.

Best-in-slot: Giant Slayer, Infinity Edge (Binding Eclipse, Onslaught) – Spear of Shojin (Duskwave)

Fiddlesticks (Corrupted, Threat)

Dark Harvest: Fiddlesticks teleports into the largest cluster of enemies and fears them. For the next seconds, Fiddle drains the life from nearby enemies dealing magic damage per second and healing himself for 20% of the damage dealt.

When reading his ability, it is obvious the dev team imagined players would put Fiddlesticks in their backline and let him stack AP and just one-shot the enemy when he is the last one standing. Unfortunately, Fiddlestick is far too unreliable and he doesn’t do enough damage to play him this way. Unless there are just two or three enemy champions remaining, Fiddlesticks won’t clean up enough during his ultimate.

But this doesn’t mean he is useless. As Fiddlesticks casts his ultimate, he resets aggro, which means he stops taking damage and enemies start targeting your other units. Because of this, and because of his lacking damage, the best way to play Fiddlesticks in his current state is to put him in your frontline. That way, he will tank some damage, drop aggro at half HP and fear enemies with his ultimate. With the absence of big AoE cc abilities, aside from Sejuani, Fiddlesticks creates great value for himself. Not to mention he is very flexible as a Threat unit.

Best-in-slot: Morellonomicon, Jeweled Gauntlet, Hextech Gunblade

Janna (Civilian, Spellslinger, Forecaster)

Twister!: Janna sends a twister toward the largest group of units. Enemy units caught by the twister are knocked up for 0.5 seconds. When the twister stops, it expands and all nearby enemies are knocked up and take damage over 3 seconds.

• Forecaster Effects
  • Sunny Weather: Combat start: Grant a 400/600/4000 Health shield to adjacent allies for 10/10/45 seconds.
  • Windy Weather: Combat start: grant bonus Attack Damage and Ability Power to adjacent allies, increasing by 15/25/150% every 5 seconds.
  • Rainy Weather: At the start of combat, Forecaster champions grant adjacent allies 20 / 40 / 100 mana until they have cast 1/1/100 spells.

Once again, the best splash unit of the set. Every comp in the set can make use of the first two Forecaster effects. Rainy Weather might be situational depending on your comp, but two out of three is not that bad.

Best-in-slot: Morellonomicon, Zeke’s Herald, Chalice of Power

Leona (Mecha: PRIME, Aegis, Renegade)

Deus Ex Machina: Leona locks onto and calls an orbital laser strike onto her target. After a short delay a laser fires on the locked-on target dealing true damage per second to the target and dealing magic damage to nearby enemies.

Leona has been one of the mainstay champions in most TFT sets, but for the first time ever she is not a tank. Her ability is not only a damage ability, it does true damage that can scale to infinity. This means whether you are playing any of Leona’s traits or not, you can play her in most comps when you are having trouble killing your enemies’ tanks. It is somewhat funny that the biggest counter to Mechas is the 5-cost Mecha. Plus, with the amount of magic damage in this set, Aegis is a very in-demand trait.

Best-in-slot: Warmog’s Armor, Bloodthirster, Jeweled Gauntlet

Mordekaiser (LaserCorps, Ace)

Skylines: Mordekaiser transports the board into his realm shredding the Magic Resist of all enemies before summoning a building behind him and slamming it onto the board, dealing magic damage to all enemies hit.

Mordekaiser is a good AP carry. With Ace being either one or four-piece, you can reliably play him by himself or you can go four Aces for a big execute threshold. LaserCorps isn’t the best trait at the moment, but luckily Morde isn’t very reliant on it to do his job. Another good idea is to tech-in Mordekaiser when your composition relies on magic damage, such as in Star Guardians or with Spellslingers. With the in-built magic shred means Mordekaiser is the perfect splash unit for AP comps, even when unitemized.

Best-in-slot: Warmog’s Armor, Jeweled Gauntlet

Nunu & Willump (Gadgeteen, Mascot)

Biggest Roboball Ever!: Passive: Nunu and Willump slowly roll a ball around the board, dealing magic damage to all enemies it passes through and gaining mana per second. Nunu and Willump grow the ball, increasing their speed and radius of the ball and its damage dealt by 10%.

Nunu & Willump is not only one of the most fun units in TFT Set 8, but also a very strong carry. Unlike the much similar Singed from Set 2, Nunu isn’t as flexible as he can be very squishy if he draws aggro early and dies very easily. If you can play two or more mascots, or have some spare tank items, Nunu can be very powerful.

Best-in-slot: Warmog’s Armor, Ionic Spark, Titan’s Resolve

Syndra (Star Guardian, Hearth)

Force of Will: Syndra enshrouds a random unit on your bench in an orb, granting them a health shield and flinging them onto the board towards the closest enemy, knocking up and dealing magic damage to any enemies hit. Traits are unaffected except Corrupted.

At first glance, Syndra looks like the perfect splash unit to round off your comp. But unlike Thresh from Set 3, Syndra isn’t as flexible of a unit. First of all, her max mana is 140 (Thresh’s was 85), which means she won’t cast as fast as Thresh did, and neither will she cast as many times. Plus, unlike Thresh, Syndra doesn’t give the units she throws in bonus mana so the incoming units don’t cast much and end up as meatshields, which isn’t exciting. So, is Syndra bad?

The answer is no, she isn’t bad. But she really needs her tags, more than most 5-costs needed in any set. With a newly buffed Shojin, and 6 Star Guardians active, Syndra will throw her first champion in twice as fast as without these conditions. Star Guardians already have a lot of frontline with Rell, Nilah and Ekko all are great units, even without synergies. This means you can delay the fights enough that your Syndra will be able to bring three or more champions from your bench every round.

Best-in-slot: Spear of Shojin

Urgot (Threat)

Undertow: Passive: Urgot's claw fires 5 attacks per second, each dealing physical damage. Active: Urgot summons a gigantic wave behind his enemies that deals % of their maximum Health as magic damage. The wave knocks enemies forward 1 hex, Stuns them, and has a chance to dredge up treasure (gold and loot).

There are many ways to play Urgot in this set. Many players at the moment prefer to use him as a caster and take advantage of his crowd control and the treasure from the wave. This is great when you don’t have spare items to put on him and just want to splash him in your comp as he doesn’t need any traits with Threat. But if you ever hit an early Urgot and have AD items laying around, he is a very underrated carry champion as well.

Best-in-slot: Spear of Shojin (just for cast) – Last Whisper, Deathblade (carry)

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