Teamfight Tactics Patches Are Slowing Down, New Item Gets Delayed

Riot Games is planning on giving Teamfight Tactics players a bit longer to focus on the meta before it shifts by slowing down the pace of game mode updates, the studio announced. This means that there won't be a weekly patch next week as players have experienced recently with the main patches and in-between updates like Patch 9.16B. Riot also announced that the rollout of its new Sparring Glove item has been delayed which means that a bunch of new items will take a bit longer to enter the Teamfight Tactics item pool.

Richard "Riot MapleNectar" Henkel, the product lead for Teamfight Tactics, filled players in on Riot's plans for the future of the mode's updates in a tweet on Friday. The Rioter reiterated some comments which have been made before that suggested Riot wanted to give players more time to work with the meta as it develops instead of altering it every week. It's a change that should be appreciated by those who were scrambling to identify and exploit the meta each week only to do it again a few days afterwards.

Hey folks!

It's Friday, so wanted to talk briefly about a few changes for TFT ya'll should be aware of.

1. No Weekly patch next week. We want to start slowing down to let the meta develop, and also feel like there isn't anything too pressing that needs immediate attention. pic.twitter.com/2k74AXvgHm

— Richard Henkel (@RiotMapleNectar) August 30, 2019

Another noteworthy announcement shared in the follow-up tweet to the first said that the Sparring Gloves won't be releasing in Patch 9.18. That new item was the source of many new item recipes which were scheduled to be introduced in that update, but it's now scheduled to be released in Patch 9.19 instead. The Rioter said things are going smoothly with the item, so players shouldn't expect it to be changed too much from the version we've already seen. Some bugs do need to be fixed though before it's released, so look for that component and its upgraded items in Patch 9.19.

2. Sparring glove items are delayed until 9.19 and will NOT be shipping in 9.18. We're really happy with their designs, but want to take more time to resolve some of the gnarly bugs with them. The item drop changes will still be going out in 9.18

— Richard Henkel (@RiotMapleNectar) August 30, 2019

Patch 9.18 is still scheduled to introduce new features like the ability to get champions as item drops and find a new item called "Neeko's Help," so unless something else changes, expect them to be included in the next update.