Buzz
For Riot Mortdog, Zeri and Azir are not the worst products of Season 9 currently.
After the official launch of Season 9, many team compositions and playstyles have shown overwhelming strength and dominance in Teamfight Tactics. In patch 13.12, the common occurrence of Aphelios and Zeri is notable, as these two champions were exceptionally strong at that time. By patch 13.13, Azir, Lux, and the Ionia faction emerged with formidable power.
Due to the overly powerful team compositions and playstyles mentioned above, Teamfight Tactics Season 9 often fell into an imbalance. Many players even directly asked the Project Director of Teamfight Tactics - Riot Mortdog, whether he regrets creating Azir, Zeri, or not. Despite that, Riot Mortdog's answer about his biggest regret in Season 9 was surprisingly unexpected for players.
'What do I regret the most in Season 9? It's the poorly designed Yordle synergy. You know, Yordle is only really worth playing when you have three 3-star champions in your composition. Before that, Yordle was a very weak and not worth investing in at all,' Riot Mortdog shared in a live stream.
In reality, Yordle is not the first race Riot Games applied the 4-star upgrade mechanism to. Specifically, the Moonlight race in Season 4 also had a similar mechanism, allowing a 4-star carry to carry the team. However, this playstyle proved to be quite imbalanced when Moonlight champions could be extremely underwhelming without upgrades. As a result, this race was removed in the mid-Season 4 update.
Therefore, a similar scenario could unfold for Yordles in Season 9 if Riot Games deems it unfit. Hopefully, in upcoming patches, Riot will implement reasonable adjustments to help Yordles achieve a better balance.
