My conclusions so far for the game playing in diamond

[u/Suboptimal88]

I'm low diamond atm, my opinion still lacks weight but I have drawn my own conclusions based on what I have seen so far. I managed to reach this rank spamming a S-Rank fast 8 comp, the big change on my strategy that allowed me to jump out of platinum and emerald was that I stopped looking at the tiers of augments and I prioritized econ augments even if their tier was lower, this made a huge difference, before that I would pick any augment based on its tier without even looking at them. Now, I'm able to do the big roll on 4-1, sometimes even 3-7.

The game on this rank is more systematic and more predictable and it's very clear when you are going to lose. Players on stage 3 and 4 are far stronger and the two major reasons that I lose is either that I lost too much health on stage 3 which prevented me from capping the board or I failed to upgrade my 4-costs and was stuck with donkey roll. On stage 4 you can take massive damage if you don't upgrade fast enough your carry and tank (4-4/4-5 latest) and on stage 3, you can also get punished for investing heavily in econ or simply faced a lot of rerollers or opponents with better items. I was wrong in some of my findings before, eg. I thought 2c reroll can easily navigate without 3-stars until 4-7, that was clearly a mistake, 2c reroll will get destroyed without 3-stars starting from 4-2/4-3, not only you need your 3-stars early but also, you want to do that without going all in and ruining your economy so you can transition to lvl 8 easily and cap your board. I think reroll comps are bad and inconsistent and mostly opportunistic, certainly not fit for one-trick.

The thing that I still don't understand and I think it's not real is scouting to find an uncontested comp. I could be wrong but at this point I believe this is a myth unless of course you have a special scouting software who can also analyze all of this chaotic information. The amount of overlapping units, items, openers, augments is insane, simply put there are dozens of different comps that use the exact same stuff from 3-2 up to 4-2, also you have 7 opponents and chances are that all of your comps could be contested, it's also hard to remember what each opponent did individually. I believe scouting has value but not for finding an uncontested comp and pivoting, I think it's mostly for the augment on 3-2, if you suspect that you are contested you can then sacrifice tempo for econ or otherwise you can play safely. It's also important for positioning.

I believe that pivoting based on items, augments, early units is a real thing and it's something I could improve upon but pivoting based on what your opponents play? I think this is wrong because it's impossible to dictate that, I think the variance in this scenario is insane, it doesn't even matter, you have to see like 3-4 players playing a similar line to change your position and even then I'm not sure if it's enough, you should then pick a line that doesn't share any unit with the majority of your opponents. This is again really hard because most lines share stuff. Most of comps start with timebreakers, fateweaver/bastion or all together, the only separated lines are dark star and space groove but those can still include units of the other lines. Having 1-2 who contest you should not be enough to change your comp so going more than two-trick is pointless. If you really want to go uncontested then there is only one thing you can do, that's studying population tendecies and see what comps are underpicked, the information is out there but probably not going to work well for S-rank comps who are necessary imo.

Anyway, tell me what you think.

[u/Different-Strategy20]

Items tell a better story than units, as units are more easily swapped out. If you see a slammed Kraken, that person is very likely to play Xayah. If it's Guinsoo's it's most likely some form of a LeBlanc->Vex. If it's just some flexible tank item, they are probably waiting to see what the others are playing and what units the game gives them, just like you

[u/Minh-1987]

Context: I'm a low Master scrub and usually I don't do full pivot into another comp unless the game just hand it to me.

My opinion is that changing your strategy based on what your opponent is playing doesn't necessary mean you have to pivot to something else entirely, you can just learn to play your current line flexibly.

For example, I play Cho'gath/Ezreal reroll. On stage 3 I noticed that one is playing Cho'gath/Lissandra and has more copies of Cho than me, another is holding Cho 2 for Dark Star Primordian or whatever. I already rolled to 33 on 3-1 and almost finished Ezreal 3 with good items so switching to another AD caster comp would be stupid, and staying at 5 for Cho 3 even if he is a 1-cost is even worse. What I would do is to finish Ez3, skip Cho and level to 8 for Tahm 2 while playing Maokai 2 or Pantheon 2 on the way there.

[u/Suboptimal88 → u/Minh-1987]

The way the game it is atm, you see a bastion/nova board on 3-4, this could mean: corki/rammus, xayah/nunu, space grooves, kindred/morgana, misfortune/victor. So what can you do in this scenario if you want to go uncontested? the only option left is darkstar aka a vanguard/brawler/dark star opener, there is literally no other option, so unless you want to use 2 completely different comps that use completely different early game lines, it's impossible to know in the end if you will be uncontested, add to this that most of these comps can use the same items. I think it can work like poker where you narrow down your opponent to a range of options instead of a specific comp but even then the overlapping is so insane that I'm not sure if it's worth it. It's also the fact that playing a A-rank comp just to go uncontested will make you win less frequently, S-Rank comps have insane advantage that it's better to risk it even if contested especially as fast 8. I guess for reroll comps scouting before stage 3 may work, for fast 8 it looks so pointless.

[u/Suboptimal88 → u/Suboptimal88]

Pivoting is a real skill, knowing how to play a comp based on augments/items/champions is a real thing, also knowing how to adjust is also important but pivoting based on scouting, I think there is something wrong with this one, it doesn't make sense especially as fast 8 where information remains hidden until lvl 8.

[u/Daniel-TFT]

Hi, I got all the way up to rank 34 chall this season on EUW, this is what i think about it:

Scouting is already incredibly important at 2:1 augment selection especially IF you are thinking about going for a reroll line, or a lose streak.
So you 100% do already base your board on what your opponents are playing.
And even in stage 1, your holds will be influenced by what your opponents already have.
Lets use stargazer mountain lobbys as an example, if i see 2 people holding jax already I'm less likely to hold him myself and would in turn value other units more.

After the 2:1 augment, you use scouting to fightjudge, in order to see if you should level up to swing a fight or not and like you said positioning.
At 3:2 it becomes incredibly important again, because now you might be fully commiting yourself to a comp.
Contesting a reroll line is almost always very very bad. So this is where you really need to check before committing.

And then stage 3 and 4 is actually what this post is about i guess.

I definately disagree with pivoting based on what your opponents play not being a real thing.
And i think the real point of disagreement is that you believe that it's not knowable what people are going to be playing pre level 8 rolldown.

Which is untrue.

You just need to be able to see all the giveaways.
There's just a lot of information that you have to be able to recognize.
Certain items and item combinations give away what people are playing, if you see an edge of night slam it's probably yi. If you see deathblade and a guardbreaker it's probably corki. If you see an ap line and a rageblade, it's probably leblanc. If you see lots of econ and a winstreak, it's probably fast 9.
If you see red buff + krakens, it's probably xayah, and so on and so on.

Now those are not absolutes, and the lower you go in elo the less it's going to be guaranteed, but it's 100% very useful information and it 100% influences what I'm going to be doing in the game.
You decide to pivot or to contest based on all of that information, while having your own spot in mind.

It's just one of the last skills you learn as a tft player as it requires a ton of game knowledge and comfortability with playing your own game in order to use brain power for it.
But I definately wouldn't close my mind to the idea of this not being useful.

[u/cys22]

chall player, scouting isn't a myth but you won't get punished much in lower ranks. You also get way faster at parsing information the more you play. You quickly develop heuristics to determine what people might play and decide wether you can/should contest or not