Bilgewater TF or Graves Flex
Primary
Tier
Required
Fast 8
1-Cost Reroll
2-Cost Reroll
3-Cost Reroll
Fast 8
Fast 9
1 & 2-Cost Reroll
1 & 3-Cost Reroll
2 & 3-Cost Reroll
9
129
Main
▾
Traits
1
Dragonborn
1
1
Eternal
1
1
Glutton
1
1
Harvester
1
1
Soulbound
1
4
Bilgewater
3 > 5 > 7 > 10
2
Bruiser
2 > 4 > 6
2
Gunslinger
2 > 4
2
Juggernaut
2 > 4 > 6
2
Quickstriker
2 > 3 > 4 > 5
1
Freljord
3 > 5 > 7
1
Vanquisher
2 > 3 > 4 > 5
1
Warden
2 > 3 > 4 > 5
1
1
1
1
1
4
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
Tips & Tricks
- Play from Bilgewater opener. Make sure to put two items on Twisted Fate as early as possible so you can unlock Graves. This is NOT a reroll line. Play for either Twisted Fate 3 or Graves 3 from Bilgewater shop. In Patch 16.2, TF looks better than Graves. Pick ONLY one to 3 star.
- Use your Bilgewater shop to make you stronger each round. Don’t sit on too many serpents. Prioritize purchasing stat upgrades and units that make your board IMMEDIATELY stronger OR IMMEDIATELY move you from 3 to 5 Bilgewater. Buy TF / Graves / Duplicators if no shop slots make you stronger.
- First carousel priority is finishing an uncompleted item for tempo or Nautilus / GP if it provides 5 Bilgewater. TF wants Brew + Antiheal or Void + Attack Speed. Graves wants QSS + GS or QSS + Crit build. Keep in mind you can typically only play for one of the two of these units.
- If you are 3 Bilgewater and have a 3-cost in your Bilgewater shop, wait before buying it. In an ideal world, you don’t ever buy any unit from your Bilgewater shop unless it immediately makes an impact on your board such as moving from 3 to 5 Bilgewater, 2-starring a tank, or helping 3 star.
- On 5 Bilgewater, try to buy Captain’s Brew. On 7 Bilgewater, try to buy at least one item (costs 100 Serpents). Outside of these two item purchases, always reroll your Bilgewater shops on 3 Bilgewater which has the highest probability of 2-costs and duplicators.
- This means you want to play 7 Bilgewater during combat, but toggle down to 3 (put the units on bench) when buying from your Bilgewater shop. After you hit 3-star 2-cost, Captain’s Brew, and one 7 Bilgewater item, buy stat upgrades from each trait breakpoint (see the 2nd to last tip for more info).
- Once you get Tahm Kench, try to always feed every turn. Before Level 9 and your core upgrades, feed him “cheap food” like 1-cost tanks and AP units. Once you 2 star him or you are level 9 with a fairly upgraded board, you can feed him higher cost units.
- Play 7 Bilgewater as long as you can. Drop to 5 late game once you are low HP or if you have 2 star legendaries to play instead. Flex units to consider include Kindred, Braum, Ornn, Swain, Shyvana, Volibear, Taric, Fiddle, and Skarner.
- Buy stats at all breakpoints. There are 3 stats: AD/AP, AS, and HP. Each stat has its own tier at 3, 5, and 7 Bilgewater respectively. Whenever you buy a stat at a specific tier, it becomes more expensive the next time you see it. Your goal is to buy each unique stat at each unique trait breakpoint.
- Bilgewater is a TEMPO comp. The opener is typically up many upgrades on other boards in Stage 2 and 3. Your 2-1 augment should help you win rounds, because winning rounds farms more serpents which snowballs harder. Do not play Bard, as he makes your board weaker. You should not be weak Stage 3.
Strong Conditions
+2 Tier Conditions C → A
Lich Bane
Going Long
Jeweled Lotus I
Jeweled Lotus II
Stars Are Born
Win Streak+1 Tier Conditions C → B
Death’s Defiance
Mittens
Quickstriker Emblem
Rapid Firecannon
Statikk Shiv
Wit’s End
Cooking Pot
Epoch
Hustler
Indiscriminate Killer
Item Grab Bag
Pyromaniac
Solo Plate
Speedy Double Kill
Spirit of Redemption
Spreading RootsSpreading Roots+
Sweet Treats
The Trait TreeThe Trait Tree+
Thorn-Plated ArmorOpeners
Bilgewater
Illaoi
Jhin
Shen
Graves Twisted Fate3
2
2
Bilgewater
IllaoiGraves Twisted Fate
Gangplank
Nautilus
5
Twisted Fate
Bilgewater
Quickstriker
Twisted Fate
2
2
Current
Best-in-Slot
Alt Build 1
Alt Build 2
Alt Build 3
Alt Build 4
Stacked Deck
)
Devour
Health
The Relentless Storm
Economy Strategy
- Level to 4 if you have upgrades and a good item to place on one of those upgrades.
- Level to 5, unless on 3 loss streak.
- Level to 6 if on 4+ win streak (scout to see if necessary in high elo) or can stay above 40g.
- Level to 6, unless you would go below 30g. If you have to stay level 5 due to low gold (rare), then level to 6 on 3-5.
- Level to 7 if you can stay above 30g, otherwise stay level 6.
- Level to 7.
- Level to 8. Roll for desired comp until stable. “Stable” changes depending on rank, items, augments, composition, and patch. Melee carries and tanks get the biggest spike for 2-stars. Usually stable involves 2-star tank or carry and some other supporting 2-stars. Try not to roll below 10g.
- If you are weak (e.g., have no 2-star 4-costs), consider rolling again to 10g here. If you are stable, save gold to go 9.
- If you are low HP and haven’t 2-starred your carry and tank, roll to 0g. If you have medium to high HP with an upgraded + itemized 4-cost unit and some other upgrades, save gold to go 9.
- If high HP, consider waiting until 5-5 to go level 9. If medium HP, consider going level 9 if you can roll 20g or wait until 5-5. If low HP and can afford to go 9, do so even if you have almost no gold to roll on 9. If you can’t afford to go 9 this game, roll every turn for upgrades.
- Level to 9 if possible. From this point onward, look to level to 9. Acknowledge games where level 9 is not possible and roll every turn on 8 to preserve placements.
- For max cap games, you can either roll on 9 or level to 10. If you are itemizing a 5-cost carry and it is 1-starred, roll on 9. If you have all your main itemized units upgraded, level to 10.
I think this comp without artifact, emblem or going long, its a meme comp (looking at you stars are born), the aguments shouldnt be S tier here, its perfect for standard Bilge, but here feels like a bait
I think gilded steel would go pretty hard here no?
Shyvana kindred senna fiddle all kinda work
No flame but on a couple of comp pages you have an s+ condition (like quickstriker emblem here) but don’t explain how to use it, some of us are not that smart xd
its in the graves version
Either this is very hard to play , or i have skill issue
Consistent 8th place comp uncontested. I am not sure what happened to this comp, but I would not play this again.
Idk tried this twice and it has been a fast 8 (in placements) both times even tho following the guide to a tee
Can confirm this comp gets stomped by most meta comps, have a good night.
This comp is dogshit, the units are so fucking bad you can never get any tempo going from the start and after that you just go 8th
One less Bilgewater player! The community thanks you for your service.
found the bronze player KEKW
your power comes from buying stats, bilge items, and TF 3. after the TF 3 only go for tahm item and stats.
should I itemize Tahm 1 over Naut 2?
Imo the Graves version can only be played from absolute super tempo in silver/gold augement games. If you run that version in pristamtic games/high econ games you will get insanely outcapped late game.
Idk, maybe I was just unlucky early cause I was stuck on 7 graves all of stage 4 (I hit at 4-6) but I had jewled 2, death defiance and mittens on graves 3 and I was losing to triple contested zaun and sona 3 (rr)
who is the best holder for the quickstriker embelm?
senna
if you get quickstriker emblem early just go for graves version and put it on him
the tips and tricks are HUGE help this comp is insanity lmao
Why morello + brew
Brew doesn’t Wound/Antiheal, only Burrns
How the comp goes from A to S after the nerfs?
this sht is ass
Are you sure those items are BiS on Graves? The stats suggest to me that IE isn’t actually that good and you’d rather have a gunblade or gs but I’m not the best at accounting for all the intricacies of reading the data correctly.
On a different note: From my understanding it’s also viable in certain spots to play around TF 3 instead of Graves 3 depending on items and what copies you naturally find. It’s rarer and slightly worse but the correct play in a noteworthy amount of games – what is your opinion on that?
IE is only good with Striker’s. GS builds are good too. Gunblade is good. Just slam whatever as long as it’s QSS + Damage + Gunblade or Damage. The actual items are not important, you are NEVER meant to greed items with Bilgewater. Can even slam LW early game if that’s what you have. Just don’t sit on components and lose rounds because of it. I don’t know the actual legitimate BiS Graves — all the builds look very, very similar in the stats. The GS + Gunblade build both looks good in the stats and feels good, but I don’t know if it’s true BiS. All I know is that QSS is important and the rest you slam whatever you got.
As for TF over Graves, yeah — it will happen in rare games. It is worse, a lot worse. But anything works if you are ahead of tempo. That’s the main idea of the line. Just win early.
Awesome, thanks for the reply and everything you do with this website!
I do not understand the thing with buying the stat upgrades. Do I just buy all that I see ?
Just went 3rd with Baron 2 and the first and second place were graves 3 lol …
I sincerely hope you see this Mr. GM BOSS BLUE – for the first time I feel like a lot of your expalnations/analyses have higher value than all cookie cutter advice from other TFT websites (tfacademy for example). You are injecting your own logic such as swapping from 7 bilge to 3 for graves etc. in addition to other strategies. I am sure I am not the only one who feels like this website has actually become BETTER than all the other ones because of their lack of effort on doing additional analyses + strategies. Keep up the great work, also hope to see you make a comeback someday if possible 😀