TFT Damage Guide: How to Itemise a Carry

Every hit your carry lands comes down to three things: how hard it hits, how often it hits, and how much each hit gets multiplied. Items, traits and augments each feed one of those. Once you can see which one your carry is missing, picking its items gets a lot easier.

The three parts of damage

Think of a carry's damage as three numbers multiplied together:

• Base damage: how much one attack or one ability deals. Attack Damage and Ability Power raise it.
• Frequency: how often the carry attacks or casts. Attack speed and mana raise it.
• Multipliers: what happens to each hit on the way in. Crits, damage amp and shredding the target's resistances.

The part that matters is how bonuses stack. Bonuses of the same kind add together; bonuses of different kinds multiply. Say your carry deals 100 damage a second. Two +30% Ability Power bonuses give 100 × 1.6 = 160. One +30% Ability Power and one +30% attack speed give 100 × 1.3 × 1.3 = 169, from bonuses of exactly the same size.

And the gap grows with every item. A carry with three items of one kind looks great on its stat sheet but hits a lot softer than one whose items are spread across all three parts.

How hard: Ability Power and Attack Damage

Ability Power

Every champion's abilities scale from 100 Ability Power. Each 10 Ability Power adds 10% to the ability's damage, so an ability that does 300 damage does 330 with a Needlessly Large Rod (+10 Ability Power). Set 18 traits write it as a percentage: Spellweaver gives your team "10% AP", which means the same thing.

Attack Damage

Attack Damage bonuses are a percentage of the champion's own base Attack Damage. A B.F. Sword gives +10% Attack Damage, and what that's actually worth depends entirely on who's holding it:

One-star values from Riot's Set 18 data. Upgrading a champion raises its base Attack Damage, so the same item adds more on a two- or three-star unit.

That's why Attack Damage items belong on attackers with high base Attack Damage, and why a small change to a physical carry's base Attack Damage in a patch moves it so much. On a caster with 25 base Attack Damage, Attack Damage items do almost nothing.

How often: attack speed and mana

Attack speed

Attack speed works like Attack Damage: a Recurve Bow's +10% is 10% of the champion's base attacks per second. For a carry that does its damage with basic attacks, more attack speed simply means more hits. For a caster it matters for a different reason: every attack gives mana, so faster attacks mean faster casts.

Mana

A champion casts when its mana bar fills. Mana comes from attacking, and from Mana Regen, which fills the bar a little every second (Tear of the Goddess gives +1, and Invoker gives your whole team some). Max mana matters as much as income: a champion with a 30-mana ability casts way more often than one with 100 on the same mana, which is why low-mana carries get so much out of mana items.

Set 18's mana items give mana in different ways, so match the item to how the carry fights:

• Spear of Shojin: 5 bonus mana on every attack. Best on carries that attack a lot between casts.
• Nashor's Tooth: 2 bonus mana per attack, 4 when the attack crits. It only really works once the unit already has crit chance.
• Blue Buff: Mana Regen, plus 10% more Attack Damage and Ability Power from every source. It speeds up casts and multiplies the carry's other damage items at the same time.
• Adaptive Helm: 15% more mana from every source, plus stats that depend on the holder's role.

Tip A carry whose trait already gives plenty of mana, like an Invoker, often doesn't need a mana item at all. Use that slot on damage.

Multipliers: crit, Precision and damage amp

Critical strikes

Every Set 18 champion starts with 25% crit chance, and a crit deals 140% damage. Sparring Gloves add 20% crit chance, and items built from them add more. But on its own, crit only works on basic attacks.

Precision

Precision lets ability damage crit too, and each extra source of Precision adds 10% crit damage. In Set 18 it comes from Infinity Edge, Jeweled Gauntlet, the Executioner trait (with 15% crit chance at 2 Executioners) and the Jeweled Lotus augments. A spell carry needs one source of Precision before crit chance does anything for its ability. After that, every point of crit chance multiplies its spells as well.

Damage amp

Damage amp is the simplest multiplier: it raises all the damage the carry deals by its percentage, wherever that damage comes from. Deathblade and Rabadon's Deathcap add damage amp on top of their Attack Damage or Ability Power. Giant Slayer adds 15% against tanks, Striker's Flail gives 5% per crit (up to 4 stacks), and Titan's Resolve gives 10% at full stacks. Among traits, Hunter adds 10% once a Hunter has stuck to the same target for 3 seconds.

Lowering resistances

Last Whisper cuts the target's Armor by 30% and Void Staff its Magic Resist by 30%. Every hit after that does more damage, so against sturdy boards they work like a multiplier.

Itemise what the carry is missing

Before you build anything, look at what the carry already gets for free from its traits, its ability and your augments. Then spend its item slots on what it's missing. The Set 18 traits that give a lot of one part:

A good carry build usually covers at least two of the three parts. Order still matters: first the item that fixes the carry's biggest weakness (often mana for a caster, attack speed for an attacker), then a multiplier, then whatever keeps it alive or answers your lobby. The item guide covers who should hold what across the whole board.

How our comps itemise their carries

The main carry of each S and A comp on our tier list, with the part of the damage each item feeds:

None of them puts all three items into one part: every build covers at least two.

Common mistakes

• Three items of the same kind. Three Ability Power items on a carry whose trait already gives Ability Power stack up slowly; swap one for Precision or mana.
• Crit on a spell carry with no Precision. Without Precision, crit chance only works on its basic attacks.
• Attack Damage on casters. Attack Damage is a percentage of base Attack Damage, and most casters have very little of it.
• Attack speed on a unit that neither hits hard nor casts often. Lots of fast, weak hits are still weak.
• Doubling up on what the trait gives. Read your traits first; their bonus is free, your item slots aren't.

Numbers are from Riot's Set 18 game data for patch 18.4b. Riot changes items and traits between patches, so if a number looks off, hover the item in game.

Keep reading

• Item guide: components, recipes and who holds what
• Item tier list and comp tier list
• Every Set 18 trait and breakpoint
• All guides