How to counter Assassins in Teamfight Tactics (TFT)

Every time assassins are included in Teamfight Tactics (TFT), there is a period where they absolutely dominate the meta. In Set 6, it comes in the form of team-stomping Katarinas, Shacos, and Talons. However, there are also general tips to help you deal with assassins from any season of the game. So, here are some ways to help you and your backlines survive this bursty meta.

Set 6 anti-assassin builds and classes

There are a handful of classes that are built to help survive assassins. They tend to help give the front line (or even the whole team) increased tank stats, like health or shielding. Set 6’s assassin survivors are as follows:

• Enchanters: This trait helps boost shielding, healing, and magic resist for Enchanters
• Scrap: This trait gives team-wide shielding
• Bruisers: This trait gives Bruisers notable health boosts
• Bodyguard: This trait helps boost Bodyguard armor and shielding, as well as taunts enemies
• Enforcer: This trait uniquely locks down the highest health unit on the other team for a certain period of time (and also the highest damage if you have enough Enforcers)

If you’re just looking for key anti-assassin units to add to your team, there are a handful of great disruptors. They either use CC that messes up the assassin gameplay or they are powerful enough to beat down the high-damage units. These include Taric, Jayce, Yuumi, Trundle, Vi, and Braum.

Positioning

The best positioning against assassins is “The Corner” strategy to its most extreme. While the corner normally ends up looking more like a line, an anti-assassin “Corner” is much more squat. Basically, shove your high damage units to the back and surround them with the tanks in a tight-knight square. This will make it harder for an assassin to jump to the back and delete your Jhin, for example.

Items

Items are a vital aspect of TFT. A couple of them might be a great help in beating back assassin efforts. They are often tank items with ways to heal teammates, increase team survivability, or punish assassins for coming close.

• Frozen Heart
• Thornmail
• Guardian’s Angel
• Ionic Spark
• Sunfire Cape
• Redemption

Cheeky tip

If you’re planning on going into a Scrap, Imperial, or Academy-based build, you can steal extra assassins from the assassin-builder along the way. You don’t have to keep them, but you should collect as many Ekkos or Talons as possible for your Scrap/Imperial build, denying an assassin builder the much-needed units.

You can also just hold a Kat or Shaco sometimes when you see them. It takes away the assassin fans’ chances of getting them. Just sell them later. Denying an assassin-builder some gold units is a great way to weaken their position. This might make some players very cranky in chat, though, so if you need to mute them, feel free.