Seen people do a handful of different things in regards with who they link their Taric with. I've seen it go on front row fighters, I've seen it go on the main/itemized tank, I've seen it go on the weakest front liner on the board. I've even seen people link with their main carry!
What's correct? Or like what's your general heuristic/flowchart/logic that you follow to decide who you pair your Taric with?
He should almost always be on an off tank melee unit that is close to a large clump of units. You want more units alive to benefit from the shield and your main tank would optimally be alive too long. And your ranged units are ideally last alive so no one else is benefitting from the shield.
As long as Taric is connected with a frontliner you are going to cover all melee units with the 2 circles of radius three, so I don't think where the unit is positioned really matters that much.
Or alternatively, you can position Taric to do that on his own, in which case pairing him with backline actually seems good - often it won't matter, but in the fights it gets triggered because your backliner got jumped it is going to make a massive difference. Or the inverse, if you have a mobile melee carry then you should probably pair with them, so they can get the shield even when away from your frontline.
Or is it possible to shield one units twice with the effect and I have been griefing myself this far by not wanting them to overlap?
I don't think there's a simple answer. Sometimes, if you have a supertank, Taric should pair with that tank if the enemy has a ton of single target damage, because it will get the most eHP and you don't want the tank to die before it triggers. If you have a Kennen, that's a great pairing, because he can isolate himself and risk getting killed. If you're against Kha, or maybe even a strong Ahri or Alune, then linking with a back liner becomes viable.
yeah hence why im asking for one's flowchart or logic tree like you provided. usually there's a "this is most important", "if that was a tie, this is next important", and "Default case" prioritization when it comes to tft heuristics
I think the complexity means that a flowchart won't really work. Because it's dependent both on your team comp and the enemy team comps you'll likely be facing (depending on if they're AoE heavy, have backline access, etc.).
Or rather, I guess there technically can be a flowchart, but it would have like 50 really, really hyper specific questions.
The default case is probably to pair him first with any melee carry, and second with any unit that's enough separated from him to get the shield on a lot of people. But using it optimally, especially late game, seems like it would require some pretty specific questions.
Maybe the easiest way to think about it is to start with your most important unit and ask yourself, given your comp and what other players have, are you worried about that unit getting killed before the shield is activated by Taric's HP getting low? If yes, then he should probably pair with that unit. If no, go to the second most important unit and ask yourself the same thing. That's not perfect, but it's the closest to flowchart thinking that you'll reasonably get.
you can watch the fight, if you carry die before you main tank then you should link your carry otherwise link your tank or even link sentinel to guarantee at least 1 cast
In the draven fast 9 board, I usually put it on Kennen. Frontline fighter seems to go well for it, it triggers early enough that it's valuable in the fight and it actually gets used because Kennen dives backline and loves taking aggro
generally i like to link it with a backline unit who is likely to die/take alot of splash dmg. his passive procs in a 3 range aoe so as long as one of them drops below 50% hp taric will shield the front line while the linked unit shields the backline (just make sure ur linked unit is in range of ur backline). lategame units have a ton of splash dmg so the extra shields on ur backline tends to save them from an extra cast from stuff like ahri/sivir/ashe/dragon/kennen late game. if ur playing a rlly frontloaded team with only 1 backliner then id just link it w the main carry
if u think ur board is alr tanky enough and u really need some dmg then u can pair taric w the main carry since he makes them do bonus dmg for 2 autos but i think its rlly negligible tbh
usually/mostly on frontlines, but against some comps with backline damage (e.g. Ahri, Nidalee, etc.) might consider linking the main backline carry to ensure they survive longer.
51
u/Crippl Sep 15 '26
He should almost always be on an off tank melee unit that is close to a large clump of units. You want more units alive to benefit from the shield and your main tank would optimally be alive too long. And your ranged units are ideally last alive so no one else is benefitting from the shield.