The Actual #1 Augment Mistake And 3 Reasons Why
Recently I wrote “Top 3 Augment Mistakes” which focused on important details that many players may not think about while choosing their augments intuitively. However, I neglected to address a very large group of players that hardly even think about their augments at all, instead just clicking on whatever the MetaTFT app tells them has the best average placement, or AVP, in the data. Overusing stats is the most common mistake I see players of all skill levels make when selecting augments. So why can we not blindly follow the stats?
1. Stats don’t consider the situation
Let’s talk about What The Forge, which Milala used to win the final game of the Set 10 Remix Rumble World Championship. Many players avoid this augment since it has an AVP of 4.81 over 54,000 games. However, it is important to consider the situation; using your Prismatic to turn 9 craftable items into 9 Artifact items is much more valuable than turning 6 craftable items into 6 Artifact items. If we add in Buried Treasures to the data, you can see the AVP skyrockets to 4.14. For reference, 4.5 is average and the majority of augments range between 4.4 and 4.6 so this is a huge difference.
In Milala’s game, he didn’t have exactly Buried Treasures, but he had extra items from Heartsteel, greatly increasing the value of What The Forge. In fact, the very next round on 4-3 he had a 60 heart cashout into an Artifact item, which normally requires at least a 130 heart cashout! Along with Heartsteel, you should also be strongly considering this augment in portals such as Loaded Carousels.
2. Stats have sampling bias
What The Forge’s data is also dragged down from lowroll bias. Most TFT data scientists know about the data bias on The Golden Egg, which has the best AVP despite being a weak augment since players will only take it if they are highrolling so much that they are confident they can win rounds without a Prismatic. What they haven’t considered is that people with very strong boards who are already likely going to top 4 will rarely risk taking What The Forge, whereas lowrollers may try to gamble that it will save their game. This makes the AVP look worse than it actually is.
3. Stats don’t account for your skill
Milala took 15 seconds to distribute his items arguably perfectly. Many players who take What The Forge will be too dizzy to even place all their items before the round starts, which is especially punishing for Trickster’s Glass, Hullcrusher, and Deathfire Grasp. Even worse, it isn’t at all uncommon for even Masters+ players to start the next combat round on 4-3 with an item on the bench because they still haven’t decided who to place it on! This further makes the AVP appear worse than it actually is, as long as you are confident you can use your Artifact items effectively.
Stats are an extremely powerful tool. But so is your brain. If you play without confidence in your own decision making, that's the biggest disadvantage you can give yourself. But even more importantly than your LP, you’ll have more fun choosing your own augments.
Thanks for reading! Check out the discussion thread in the Discord if you have any comments/questions, or if you want see more discussion on common pitfalls when using data!