TFT Leveling Guide Set 17 – When to Level & Roll

Leveling Guide

Leveling and Tempo are fundamental concepts to understand in TFT because they dictate the pace of your game. Leveling too early can cause you to have too little gold to roll with while leveling too late will cost you HP.

There are a few decision points when choosing to level.

• How much money will we have left over?
• Do we have to level and roll on the same turn?
• What shop odds are we trying to optimize?
• Can we preserve a win streak if we level?

General Tips:

• Save gold if you need to
  • Roll at a specific level and you have NOT reached that level yet
  • You are healthy (high health compared to everyone else)
  • You have a strong board (you have key units, big synergies, unit upgrades compared to others)
• Roll if you need to
  • Preserve your Health
  • Complete a lot of pairs (your bench is full of 2 copies of units and you need 1 more to upgrade a few of them)
  • Need units at a specific cost and you are at the optimal level to roll for them
• Level up if you need to
  • Add an extra unit to activate a key trait (you may need to level up no matter what the cost)
  • Roll to obtain units at a specific cost (you will need to have enough gold to roll after spending gold on leveling up)
  • Have too much extra gold and you might as well buy XP

Standard Leveling (for Fast 8 or 9)

Win Streak (8+ Streak)

If we are winning, we want to push levels and access higher-tier units and continue our win streak. If we have a lot of pairs on 3-1, we are allowed to roll a few times to complete pairs. Same applies on 3-5. On 4-2 we are likely going to roll a little to stabilize and save some HP on the way to level 9. We aren’t allowed to take 20 damage a fight stage 4, so you for sure roll a bit on level 8. Ideally, we hit a few 4 cost 1 stars, maybe a 5 cost or 2, and go 9 on 5-2. Sometimes we have to roll deeper and delay our 9 till 5-5. We want to leverage our HP from this spot and try to hit level 9 before other players. If you are streaking with an econ augment, you can even consider 4-5 level 9. Obviously win streaking is the best outcome because it gives you high health and so much gold, but we can’t always have this happen, which means the games you do, you need to make the most of them.

Lose Streak (6+ Streak)

When we are lose streaking, we have to win out most of Stage 4, this means rolling a turn before tempo (4-1 on level 8) and doing our best to not lose a single fight this stage. Usually, off a loss streak, you are low health, playing at around a ~50-60 health deficit, so that means we will lose a life every time we lose a fight in stage 4. If you have a broken econ augment, you should structure your curve around leveling to 9 on 4-5, as in set 15, the 5 costs are insanely strong and what will lead you to a first place comp.

Normal/Mixed Streak

Mixed streak is the hardest of all to play, as there will be a lot of nuance in minmaxing small amounts of gold from 2 streaks. The worst thing that can happen is LWLWL, but sometimes that is unavoidable. The hardest decision points will be leveling to 4 or 5 on stage 2. You need to be very efficient with your money, as you do not have the extra income from streaking. If you are mixed streak, most of the time playing a vertical trait is the most efficient thing you can do as the boards tend to be cheap, and this way you can eventually make it to level 9. Vertical boards also tend to do well in Stage 4, and that allows you to play for HP and top 4 by HP lead. If you highroll 1 star 5 cost, they can also be great. HP preservation is extremely important when playing mixed streak, as it is the only resource you have over the loss streak players. They are likely to outcap you, but you should have more lives than they do, and that can lead to them dying to other high-cap players while you coast to a 4th. You somewhat live or die by your 4-2 rolldown and hitting reasonable upgrades to save lives on Stage 4.

1 Cost Reroll

Do not press the level button at all until you 3 star your 1 cost. 

Level 4 odds on 3-1 are very important as you are rolling at least a bit to stabilize and find extra copies. Depending on your econ, I like rolling to at least 32 gold because 32g > 40g > 50g, and you can choose to slowroll from there or dig deeper depending on your spot.

I personally like to aggressively roll on 3-5 because winning 3-5 and 3-6 is likely to give you an extra life, and 1 cost reroll does not cap as high as 4 cost and 5 cost boards. Most of the time, this spike in tempo ends up giving you +1 placement. 1 cost reroll is inherently more aggressive than a reroll of 2 or 3 cost, as it is cheaper to hold units, and you do not have to invest in leveling until you hit your desired units.

2 Cost Reroll

Lose Streak

Other

Level to 4 on 2-1 if you are strong/have a copy of the unit you are rerolling + a slammable item

Level to 5 on 2-5 if you are strong, if not make econ (20)

Level to 6 on 3-2 and roll to stabilize. You just slowroll from here. 

Level 7 by 4-5 if possible

Level 8 5-2 if possible

3 Cost Reroll

Lose Streak

Other

Level to 4 on 2-1 if you are strong/have a copy of the unit you are rerolling + a slammable item

Level to 5 on 2-5 if you are strong, if not make econ (20)

Level to 6 on 3-2

Level to 7 3-5 If you have an econ Augment 

Level to 7 4-1 and hit your carry 2-star to stabilize.

Strength of the Lobby

Knowing what people are playing is incredibly important, as it allows us to understand when they spike. 

1 cost rerolls tend to spike at 3-1, 3-5, and 4-1.

2 cost rerolls tend to spike at 3-2, 4-1, and 4-5.

3 cost rerolls tend to spike 3-2, 3-5, 4-1, and 5-1.

Fast 8 players all spike at 4-2.

Fast 9 Players spike with fast 8ers on 4-2 and spike again on 5-2 when they hit 9. 

This is incredibly valuable information because if the reroll players are in our pool, we would not want to expend resources to preserve a streak, as they will likely be stronger than us.

Say we are on an 8 streak on 3-5 with 50 gold. It costs 28 gold to go level 7 at the moment. Our pool is a 1 cost reroller a 2 cost reroller, and a crystal gambit player.

If we take the information above into account, we should not level to 7 and instead make max interest as we are likely to lose to the 1 and 2 cost players and beat the crystal gambit player regardless of what we do. A lot of people tend to force a level to be the strongest they can be to preserve win streaks, but it’s not correct if you can reasonably deduce you will lose. In this scenario, you will lose 66% of the time unless you invest gold into rolling as well.

Knowing who is in your pool and when they are likely to spike is incredibly important to making the most out of our streaks.