Let's talk about Twisted Fate
Twisted Fate is a champion who i have had a great deal of interest in since I started playing this game roughly a year and a half ago. With a theme that caught my attention right away and interesting game play that could be found with few other champions I often wondered why he didn't see more play in solo queues. He possessed a seemingly flexible kit with a near unrivaled ability to reach out and help his teammates in the other lanes all while maintaining his own lane and status as a carry, I had to play him. I quickly learned that his scarcity in solo queue was seemed largely justified with what has to be one of the largest learning curves in the game, an almost preternatural ability to predict, and an ability to deal with his inability to keep up with meta picks all being mandatory to him I quickly lost confidence and went on to play other champions. Flash forward a little over a year and I began to pick him up again with varying degrees of success I had more game play experience and began to realize some of the short comings were in his as well as mine. I could play him well, not nearly to the level of a pro but I was making headway. flash forward a month and the Bilgewater event comes along. Oh good I though Twisted fate is an important Bilgewater character maybe we will get some interesting discussion and maybe even a few buffs/changes. One skin and a month later the event has sailed by and still no one seems the least bit interested in talking about Twisted Fate. So having after having read every forum on Twisted Fate I could find I'm taking it on myself to Start a discussion about him. I want to talk about him and encourage a debate so I'm going to.
Disclaimer: these are all my opinions, they are all based on numbers and my game play experience with Twisted Fate. I am not a pro player or even a highly ranked one. I am not going to bash Riot for anything and ask that you do the same. And please take everything with a grain of salt.
Ult: I'm going to start with twisted fate's ult because that is what the rest of his game play is designed around. It obviously comes in two part the true vision granted on all enemy champions and the gate that allows twisted fate to teleport up to 5500 units in any direction both with a 6-10 second duration. both of these effects are wonderful assets to bring to a team and are the only reason anyone plays twisted fate anymore. the vision effectively gives your team carte blanche for its duration as all possible threats are immediately revealed. even if you choose not to follow up with teleport into another lane just being able to confirm for another teammate that its safe to engage on a low health enemy or give clear warning to a pushed lane that the enemy is trying to set up a gank makes this ult worth its weight in gold.
the second half of his ult provides a lot of global pressure and has primarily three uses. First to engage on any enemy that has over extended their lane, second to clean up low health enemies that have or are trying to disengage from a fight, third to quickly grab open objectives towers being foremost. given the opportunity Twisted fate can exploit openings that almost no other champion would be able to.
the three complaints I see most often in other forums are that his ult's range of 5500 seem largely arbitrary, that he can't jump directly from the outer turret in mid lane into another lane, and that his teleport is too telegraphed. Of these I don't think any of them are particularly valid complaints. his shorter ult range and the inability to jump from one outer turret to another are necessary. In most normal games the longest range and most frequent jump you are going to want to make with his ult it going to be from one outer turret to another. The 5500 keeps his ult from being as obtrusive as it was in the days when his ult was truly global. by raising the amount of time it takes for a twisted fate to respond to an opening it keep his power out of the realm of abuse-able while still letting attentive and skilled players exploit potential ganks in a safe way. As for his telegraphed ult this is necessary as well as it keeps Twisted fate focused on counter play and exploiting bad positioning and not so much forcing the enemy team to hug their turrets all game.
the two problems that i truly have with this ult is that it will take you out of lane for long periods of time, and that his kit is built around it makes him too team dependent. The longer you stay out of lane the more gold you can expect to lose from cs and your passive. so you really do have to make sure that every teleport out of lane counts in either assists, kills, or objectives. otherwise a champion already prone to out scaling and falling behind will fall even further. Twisted fate also needs to be given a chance to use his ult. If both lanes do too well or too poorly it can leave him with few options as ganking into a pushed lane can be as ineffective as ganking into a fed one. Twisted fate is almost as dependent on his team utilizing his ganking potential as realizing when to use it.
Stats: see the wiki link above if you want all the exact details I wont make this post longer by talking about them all suffice to say they are abysmal. Twisted fate sits among the lowest in every possible stat and while some are justified they are all not and certainly not all of them together. highlights included a ridiculously small mana pool (a remnant from the days of percent mana regen no doubt), a move speed (330) that is just on the faster side of most bruisers, no defense stats to speak of, and my personal favorite an aa range of 525. all together this helps create a champion that deals most of his damage at his short aa range who cant get there, who cant survive being there, cant leave once he is done there, and who cant out trade anyone who might be there.
Base and Scaling: Twisted fate's damage is low. At level 18 twisted fate can expect to do 535 damage base from a whole rotation of his kit on a single target. he scales 1.0 ad, and 1.65 ap across his entire kit compared to the lower standard for a mage being 2.0 ap scaling most doing radically more than that. to put that in some perspective Brand scales at 2.95 ap, Xerath scales at 3.09 ap, Ziggs scales at 2.61 ap across their entire kits. Seen in another light Cho'gath's level 3 ult drops 650 base + 0.75 ap scaling true damage more than Twisted fate. base damage and half is scaling. now I'm not saying that any of the aforementioned champions are broken, or op. I am trying to illustrate the amount of damage that Twisted fate is expected to trade with in a regular game. That this problem exists at all is purely a result of Twisted fates ult, and the need to balance the amount of damage he can suddenly bring to a gank and stop him from being another easily abused champion. unfortunately this effectively cripples him while he is in his own lane.
In short a twisted fate can not be expected to out trade, or burst down anything but a radically low health enemy and does not have a reasonable set of tools for creating such an opportunity for himself
Passive: I will be frank on this one Twisted Fate might as well have no passive for all the good it does him. giving Twisted Fate a variable amount of gold on top of each kill seems like a good idea. I believe the intention is to allow him to quickly build an item or two to maximize the impact when he ganks into other lane. In theory a nice idea, but in practice poorly executed. It gives Twisted Fate a variable amount of gold per a kill between 1-6 with the odds slanted towards 4 so after 100 cs you could have 100 - 600. while both of those are extreme cases nothing about this is enticing. the highest possible gold won't buy you a blasting wand and that is assuming that everything goes perfectly meaning that you roll all 6's and that you can get 100 cs in the first ten minutes. given twisted fates inability to remain in lane for long periods of time you will be unlikely to see 100 cs in the first 10 minutes let alone before you hit level 6 and start roaming with your ult. finally add to negligible gains all gold generation passives obviously fall off late game when you have a full build and no longer need gold leaving twisted fate in effect with no passive.
Q: Wild Cards provides Twisted Fate with his only damage beyond his 525 aa range,does the highest damage (60 - 260 base and 0.65) of any of his abilities and passes through targets. At 1450 units Wild Card will form the majority of Twisted Fate's ability to trade in lane as well of all of his poke. Although a Twisted Fate will learn to depend on this ability a great deal it creates as many problems as it solves. It doesn't deal enough damage in one or even two hits you need to repeatedly land several Q's and hope the enemy has no form of sustain. which brings us to the fact that it is hard to land Wild Cards even though it passes through creeps it is just too slow, its hit boxes are too small and it has too many gaps to reliably repeatedly hit any enemy champion that is paying attention. If he does manage to poke down an enemy enough to consider a kill he is faced with the realization that Wild Cards' paradoxically long range can create nearly 1000 units of space between him and his ability to do anymore damage to an enemy. With no way to close that gap an enemy can just walk away when they get low.
A special note is warranted on team fights where Wild Cards become a great deal more effective because of its range, ability to damage multiple enemies, and general target rich environment.
W: this is it this is why I play Twisted Fate; Pick a Card. This has to be in my opinion one of the most interesting abilities in the entire game. This ability gives Twisted Fate the ability to adapt and smoothly transition between multiple styles of game play on the fly. If you want fast wave clear or aoe damage drop a red card and a Wild card and clean up a whole wave, sustained single target damage blue card, picks and ganks gold card, need threat activate the first half of the ability and don't pick a card. This ability has nearly everything you could want while still not being abuse-able. It challenges you to know what it is you are going to need and when you will need it. It has reasonable windows of power and punishes the wrong choice of cards. That having been said this ability still has problems. foremost being when paired with Twisted Fate's miserably short aa range using it offensively becomes a lot harder. because of it's set up time you vulnerable to getting caught out before you can pick your cc. And like everything else in Twisted Fate's kit it just does not deal enough damage. Pick a Card is a great ability limited by the kit it finds itself in.
E: This Ability, or lack thereof is in today's league poor. Containing no active element this ability is made up of two passives a modest attack speed boost 10% - 30% and up to 155 base damage and 0.5 ap scaling on every third attack. Nothing about this works with Twisted Fate. Twisted Fate wants to hit and run, or gank low health. what he does not want to do is get into a protracted fight he can't survive. first of all the only aa's Twisted Fate wants to drop are his Pick a Card and maybe a normal aa to clean up a solo enemy. second realistically you will only every get one proc of the damage off in any given fight before you either back off or find yourself dead. Twisted Fate can not stay at his 525 aa range for 5 aas and expect to not get bursted down. What is more is that these are the types of passive other champions have attached to their kit's as an after thought. Things like Ziggs' passive, Kennen's e, Gangplank's q all have active components on top of such passive.
Items, Runes, and Masteries: I won't go long into the myriad number of item, runes, and masteries as I am writing a discussion of Twisted Fate not a guide for him. however I do feel a quick address of these things are in order. In various forums and guides I've seen several suggestions of things players can bring or buy to fix Twisted fate. From the obvious thing like lich bane to taking move speed quints. while these things work to varying degrees my opinion of using these things to fix a champion is always the same. You shouldn't have to. These things are here to provide us with different avenues of play and help champions that do their jobs well do so more effective. Not to provide a band aid solution to champions who kits are no longer viable (whether Twisted Fate's kit is, is what is up for discussion). As well you will find any gains made by items or runes can be made by any other champion leaving Twisted Fate in more or less the same position he started in.
Overall I believe that Twisted Fate is a champion who was conceived in an early iteration of the league and has not transitioned well into what the game has become over the years. A kit that was once effective now leaves a great deal to be desired in a game where gap closers, assassins, and hard cc are playing a greater and greater roll. I do not want to argue that Twisted Fate needs to be made op, that his ultimate needs to be made global again, or even that he needs a major rework. I only wish to argue that Twisted Fate needs to be acclimated to this League of Legends to remain a healthy and fun part of this game, and to encourage a healthy, informed discussion among the community about a champion who i feel is worth of it and who has gone too long with any notable interest.
