"i forget he exists until hes on the enemy team being a jumping twirling assassin nobody can hit, or until hes on my team and is a jumping twirling idiot that is a bullet magnet that spends more time respawning then he does playing"

- /u/Scrounger_HT

I'm sure you can relate too. Tiberius is a weird champion. I read a similar comment from a thread that said something like "he feels like he can be a flank or an damage champion, but doesn't really excel at either." Not only is this comment true, but I would argue that's the silver lining to Tiberius.

I've found over the past several months that Tiberius is the only champion I can consistently play well as. Most other champions, I am struggling to play above average, and even then I'm still not hitting the mark. Here's my build:

TALENTS

Predatory Instincts

Predatory Instincts is a debated talent. I've seen in some videos that people think it should just be in base kit, and I can't say I'm against a Tiberius buff, but this talent does have a silver lining in that it stacks. If you somehow manage to get 4 kills during combat trance, you will remove the cooldown from Trance entirely. Other than that, this talent is rarely worthwhile. Vicious Assault is just too versatile.

Tigron's Fury

I never pick this talent. It might have use cases, and I've heard that some people pick it just because it makes heavy blade feel cleaner, but similar to Predatory Instincts, it just doesn't outclass Vicious Assault.

Vicious Assault

This talent is in my opinion, the only correct pick for Tiberius. It reduces your damage intake, something I hardly ever notice, but it also gives you two charges to crouching tigron. This allows you to easily jump in, and then easily jump out. This stacks with the build I'm going to cover.

BUILD

Rising Stardom (5)

This card is insane. When you activate crouching tigron, you will generate a 75 health/tier shield, which at level 5 becomes a whopping 375 health shield. You get two charges of a leap that do damage, and reduce your damage intake, and in testing I've been unable to figure out if the 375 shield also gets the damage reduction.

Charisma (5)

Pretty simple. Increases Tiberius' base health by 50 health/tier. There are different builds I've used that are very successful without this card, but typically I need World-Traveler to be at Tier 4 for that to work. I like increasing his base health to pair with Veteran. In most games, I will take Veteran to level 2 and that puts Tiberius at a base ~2750 health, which is really high for a damage champion. Paired with the 375 health shield, his health can break the 3000's. This makes Tiberius much, much more survivable, and if you're playing well, a living Tiberius is a scary Tiberius.

World-Traveler (3)

This is the card that breaks Tiberius. Sometimes I run it at level 4, especially if I'm playing a lower health build. It plays well with Vicious Assault because when this card activates, it restores both charges of crouching tigron. When you have Veteran at level 1, this card activates when Tiberius reaches ~1169 health, and when you run base Tiberius at 2200 health max HP/this card at tier 4, it will activate at 1320 health. You may not think that you need this card at that high of a level, and I wouldn't think so either since you already have the massive shields, and a rather impressive health pool, but even when I'm trying to play as conservatively as possible, every health point counts. Sometimes running away is inefficient, as the opponent will still be attacking you while you're running away & not attacking them. But it's typically better to retreat and continue keeping pressure on the enemy team than to die trying to get a kill that you might not get.

Flying Chakrams (1)

Filler card; 1 extra ammo can be useful.

Bragging Rights (1)

Filler card; healing is never a bad thing, and it's a reasonably consistent way to get a small chunk of health back in addition to life rip where as a lot of his other skills depend on him using an ability, or generate a shield so pitiful it's hardly worth mentioning.

PURCHASES

Life Rip

Cauterize could make this purchase wasteful, but the idea is that Life Rip will generally scale pretty well to opponents. It won't save your life every time, but any self-sustain that you can get mid-fight is useful, and if you're at Life Rip-2 against someone who also has Life Rip-2, you reduce the relative difference in health & damage that is present. For example: Evie runs Life Rip 2 with her 1800 health, and you are sitting with max-charisma, veteran 1 @ approximately 2600 health. 50% cauterize. Evie does 850/shot, @ 40% life rip (340 heal/hit, with cauterize: 170 heal/hit.) So if Evie hits you 3 times, she gains 510 health. This effectively means that she has 2310 health if she hits those shots and you have no life rip. Now if you hit 3 shots with same numbers (675/shot @ 40% life rip & 50% cauterize --> 135 healing/shot, 405 total healing) the final tally is 2310 health (Base Evie 1800+Healed 510) vs. 3005 health (Tiberius 2600+Healed 405.) If Evie is healing but you're not, then it's effectively 2310 vs. 2600.

Life Rip Math Summary if you're lazy:

You don't want your Life Rip to be significantly lower than opponents. The math above for a hypothetical fight has Evie healing 510 health over its duration, meaning that the fight is effectively 2310-HP Evie vs. 2600-HP Tiberius if you have no Life Rip. Buy Life Rip not just because it is still very useful (especially for Tiberius) but because you don't want your opponents to outheal your damage output.

Veteran

I like to take Veteran to level 2, but it's the most expendable purchase. This just makes Tiberius survive better, and allows World-traveler to activate at a higher base health. It stacks with Charisma, so your health will come out to approximately: 2600, 2750, and 2900 depending on what level you have for Veteran.

Unbound

I typically get this if your enemies have high CC, and especially if your enemies have noteworthy stuns. Stuns can mess with the build since Tiberius can't generate shields on command. (But that's true for any stunning opponents I guess.)

Wrecker

Prioritize this over Veteran if the opposing team seems like it's going to be awful with shields, or potentially as well if there's a double tank. I would almost always recommend Wrecker if your enemies have 2 shields. If there are two shield-tanks on an enemy team, you probably won't be playing as aggressively anyways.

Guardian

Generally not worth buying, but sometimes isn't an awful option for level 1 if you're not sure what to buy (e.g. a last round where you can't buy level 3 of other talents), since it turns a 375-health shield into a 430-health shield. That can sum up to ~220 additional shielding with crouching tigrons, but also can just be nice cushion health to ensure you escape more reliably.

Armor Plating/Haven

Not a bad investment if your enemies are heavy on weapon shots.

Other

Arcane Warding, Sentinel, Bulldozer, and Master Riding are the only other picks I see circumstantial reasons to pick. I never pick anything outside of these, and if I do it's because I'm not playing optimally.

SUMMARY & ABILITIES

Bringing it Together

I think Tiberius is a sleeper-agent monster. The ability to generate all these shields pretty much on demand makes up for any hole in his kit you can imagine. He can easily give himself a pretty meaty cushion for diving in, or give himself a pretty sizeable chunk of health to help him escape. His blades are easy to aim with, and are reasonably wide (making it easier to hit enemies compared to champions with smaller projectiles.) I try to play his kit as aggressively as I can while trying to die as little as possible.

Ultimate isn't life-changing, but can be a good way to pick off some enemies, or to just cause some chaos. I've seen a good Tib use it to cause chaos in the backline, keeping people off point, which is not a terrible idea, but it's very team-dependent.

Heavy blade is a weak talent. I typically only get good mileage out of it when thrown into a crowd of enemies. I almost always immediately call it back.

Combat Trance is bugged right now, but the rest of his kit makes up for that.

GAMEPLAY

How I Play + Some Highlighted Roles

I typically sit in the back and throw into the center. I look for folks to pick off, jump in, jump out. Sometimes I will jump in to put pressure on enemies, but jump out within a second or two since I'll be the target if I stay in too long (and Tib is very vulnerable to CC of all kinds.)

Sometimes, depending on the map, team, etc. I will use ultimate to run past enemies and stall enemies off their horses.

Combat Trance can be used to break shields, mow down tanks, or pick off squishies, but I never really depend on getting multiple kills out of one combat trance.

If an enemy is giving us a hard time, I use ult or fall back on the disgusting amount of self-sustain Tib has to win duels (basically, I'll dive on them specifically). This is where anyone can make good use of Tiberius - you don't need to be mechanically great at the game to use him well, if you're comfortable with Tib's kit, then you can probably make really effective use of him because of his abilities.

Dueling

Can generate 375-health shields on demand, 4 times in a short window (2 base uses from Crouching Tigron, 2 with resets from World-traveler) --- effectively gives him 1500 extra health, mostly on demand

Really high health pool (2200-2750 is normal)

Can leap 4 times, all leaps do damage, increase health, and reduce damage while mid-air

Absolute terror in small spaces because enemies might not have anywhere to run, with bouncing projectiles and a jumping tiger

In general, his kit has so much baked in forgiveness.

Tanking

Tiberius is not a tank, but he can stand in for one pretty well. Tiberius can easily reach about 3000 health, making him much less squishier than his counterparts.

Very fast escaping, which other tanks lack.

Ultimate allows him to be damage immune while mid-air, which can sometimes be a decent way to hold a point.

As discussed above, very good at escaping, which allows him to regroup and come back into the fight.

Realistically

Very hard to kill with the ability to generate lots of shields (unaffected by cauterize) + his high health

No damage fall off, so he can hit enemies from anywhere and do solid damage

Bouncing blades often can surprise you and hit enemies you didn't plan to hit

Combat trance can mow down tanks really quickly if they don't have a shield

Combat trance can help win duels

Combat trance can help pick off healers

You can quickly dive in with crouching tigron, and then dip back out after picking off a squishy

You draw a lot of attention as Tiberius, which often gives your team some momentary relief if you jump in. (Sometimes I jump in knowing I'll be jumping out in 3 seconds anyways, but do it to put pressure on enemies.

Does an excellent job putting on pressure with how quickly he can advance without getting insta-killed.