Insane TFT Set 8.5 bug is making players lose despite beating their opponent

Liam Ho
Prestige Star Guardian Syndra Splash Art

TFT players have encountered a brand new bug in the latest mid-set patch, causing their units to freeze and lose the round despite actually beating their opponent.

Teamfight Tactics recently had its mid-set update, bringing in new units, traits, augments, and set mechanics to spice up the game. Set 8.5 will tide the player base over whilst Riot works on Set 9. However, it appears that the new update may have brought in some unwanted bugs into the popular auto-battler.

For those unaware, Teamfight Tactics pits 8 players against one another. These players build up an army of units and battle each other in a free for all battle royale. In each round, a player’s army will face off against another one, and the last army standing wins. The winner will then deal damage to the loser, dropping their health. Whenever a player’s health reaches 0, they’re eliminated from the lobby and can no longer compete.

Teamfight Tactics has plenty of moving parts within the game, meaning that it’s not impossible for things to go awry when there’s a bigger update such as the mid-set. It appears that TFT streamer Robinsongz was lucky enough to have an opponent experience it, essentially eliminating them from the game due to the health loss.

Robinsongz was playing against someone using the 5-cost unit Syndra, who is able to drag in units from the bench. Syndra can take a small amount of time to cast her ability, as she needs to grab the unit from the bench and dump it onto the board.

Generally speaking, even if the player wins, there’s a small amount of downtime as the board waits for the Syndra to throw down the unit, stalling out the victory. However, it seems that because the Syndra died whilst trying to throw out the unit, the game attempted to stall things out until the Syndra had finished the cast.

Because of this, the enemy game continuously stalled until Robinsongz and his opponent tied, causing both players to take damage. Since his opponent was very low on health, they ended up being eliminated by a round where they should have won.

This bug, whilst seemingly rather niche, can be absolutely game-breaking, as a single loss can have massive consequences on the rest of the game. Alongside this, it’s uncertain if Riot will be able to fix this bug, as fixes could unintentionally break other parts of the game.

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About The Author

Liam is a writer on the Australian Dexerto team covering all things gaming with an emphasis on MMOs like Destiny and FFXIV along with MOBAs like League. He started writing while at university for a Bachelor’s degree in Media and has experience writing for GGRecon and GameRant. You can contact Liam at liam.ho@dexerto.com or on Twitter at @MusicalityLH.