A discussion on Twitch (the rat not stream)

Disclaimer: Very sorry about the wall of text, I thought I'd write something quick and simple but it turned out I needed a lot more to say.

If you do read everything, I would love your opinions.

I want to talk about Twitch. After the nerfs he received in patch 4.10 he has stayed in the bottom 3 worst ADC's for well over a year. Recently, he got a mana buff on his Q and a slight AD increase on his ult to just 'round up the numbers'. A week later has shown almost no change in his position. I didn't expect it to change but there we go anyway.

I love the concept and play style of Twitch and I'm not asking for him to get his attack damage back or something. I'm asking for possible quality of life changes. Riot handicapped him on almost everything in his early game so his laning phase is awful and let's be honest, his passive DoT is almost nonexistent in how much it seems to actually do.

Playing Twitch just isn't fun for the first 30 minutes. Your auto attack animation are slow and agonising so much so that you feel completely rooted for half a second after an attack. To be able to damage effectively in the early game you need to stack your passive which often involves putting yourself at risk. And even then the passive at max stack deals almost insignificant damage. Your Expunge with max stacks only seems to deal the same damage that single, quick fire abilities of other champions deal in a split second. You go through all the effort to get 6 stacks and ever since patch 4.10 he can barley harm them despite putting himself at such risk. He has enormous trouble trying to escape enemies now as well. He can't fight them because his damage early/mid is so low and takes time to build that every champion would out dual him. Running is often his only option and even then, he hasn't got a dash like Lucian or Vayne, he can't lay down traps CC the enemy (I know his W but I have a lot of issues with that, read later) He can only disappear but if they even touch him it takes far too long. He's a dead rat in almost every situation. You play safe and you deal even less damage than you would putting yourself at risk, which we've already established is sub par anyway.

He just, isn't fun to play. Riot considers him viable at professional level because often Pro teams will build compositions around solely protecting him. Dedicated players to keep champions off his back so he can deal his damage. But they are overlooking something. Solo queue players and even higher tier players don't play like this. They may co-ordinate a little but you keep twitch at this low level because of how super organised international teams play, not normal players. This has made him almost inaccessible to normal players.

Building a champion that can only survive if others protect him just isn't fun. There's no point in ever ambushing someone when often you would likely lose anyway or put yourself at risk.

I'm not asking for you guys to just 'up his numbers'. That isn't what you would do and it doesn't solve his issue.

Here's what I propose.

Q - Ambush: Ideally, I would love if the 6 second damage condition was reduced to 4 or 5 but I realise the importance of this handicap as he was almost impossible to pin down when it was 3. BUT I know this is out of the question so here's what I suggest.

Keep the 6 seconds, but give him a kind of misfortune treatment. Give him his extra movement speed the moment he activates his Ambush rather than only when the stealth is activated. It's only 20% increase and it can help give him some small survivability he sorely needs.

Also, when Twitch activates his Q, there is no channel and the icon is quite small. When everything is going to heck it's hard to see how long you've got before you stealth and even more confusing when you've received damage. If you added a channel bar, that shows how close you are to stealth then it was help greatly. The bar would slow down when damaged but you would still have some sort of indication to when your stealth will happen.

W - Venom Cask: This skill, and I'm sure other twitch players agree with me, feels a little useless. It is ALWAYS maxed last, so for the vast majority of the game, you only get a 25% slow. When every melee champion is already that much faster than you + their gap closers, its pointless to use.

What makes it worse is the delay on twitch himself. The cast time interrupts his movement too much, he has to stand still for what feels like longer than it should. After using the cask and chasing down a champion or running from them, the time he wastes stopping, turning and throwing is not worth it. Twitch is so slow that often even with the cask effect on others, he's STILL SLOWER.

Maxing this skill first might give Twitch a better slow but then he has absolutely no damage to back up his fight. So that's out of the question.

I suggest that the cast time is removed. It would mean he can run while hurling his glass vials of stink which not only seems fitting to a sketchy rat with a crossbow, but would allow him to be able to move a bit better during fights. No cast time would also mean throwing it behind him at pursing enemies wouldn't be riskier than it's worth.

E - Expunge: Let's face it. You spend a good deal of precious time in a fight getting maximum stacks on an enemy. You've maxed this skill first so it's already at 100% capability. You press E and it feels like you did nothing. Other ADC's deal more damage in quick fire abilities that are far less risky.

A player shouldn't feel like adding all those stacks was so useless considering the risk. And after you use it, the cool down is so long that twitch's one damaging ability is not even relevant.

Then there is the Kalista issue. Her E is almost identical. Yet not only does it deal a much higher percentage of her AD, it also refunds BOTH mana and the entire cooldown if 1 enemy is killed. AND!! It slows the enemy THE SAME AMOUNT as Twitches ENTIRE W skill. AND it can stack infinitely as opposed to a maximum of 6.

Her E is superior in every single way which seems incredibly unfair. The only thing Twitch has got going is that his stacks aren't consumed. But even at level 16, this means only a total of 216 damage over 6 seconds. Time for people to heal/shield/escape whatever.

I had a cool idea for this skill. Nothing to do with scaling the damage. Rather, Expunge would not have a typical cooldown like a normal ability. When Twitch has stacked some passive shots on a target, he can expunge and all existing stacks in range are applied to the damage. After that, the stack symbol inverts color, which represents that this unit has been expunged recently and cannot be expunged again. BUT, expunge has not gone on cooldown, Twitch is then capable of stacking a different target and using his E again.

He hasn't done any more damage to individual targets but at least now he can put his ability to better use.

R - Rat-Ta-Tat-Tat: His Ultimate is fine.

The final possible change and this is perhaps the most annoying thing about playing Twitch. His auto attacks are atrocious. There is a huge windup and windown animation for 1 auto attack. He feels extremley sluggish even with high amounts of attack speed. It is so sluggish that often when im trying to both attack the melee champion coming for my blood and run away, the auto attacks do not even fire because i did not wait that extra time to fire when most often ADC's would have fired long ago and been on their merry way. Jinx, lucian, graves, caitlyn, corki, vayne and more, they all have quick responsive auto attacks that let the player manoeuvre in between attacks.

If you only changed one thing, please god let it be this. Make his animation quicker or more responsive. After the projectile has been fired, allow him to actually move rather than finish his pointless little recoil animation as it does nothing but 'look cool' and put him in danger.

Everything I have suggested is like a said, a quality of life change for Twitch. Nothing drastic. No great increase in his AD, no massive change to his numbers. Just simple things.

Twitch is a champion currently designed around professional teams making protective compositions and defending him above all else. In the real world of league, Twitch players do not have that kind of support and you are left with A WEAK CHAMPION that is un fun and un rewarding.

Thank any of you guys who managed to read my rant. I would love your opinions.

TL:DR Twitch is only good when professional teams make comps to defend him. So for us mortals he is a weak, underpowered risk and un fun to play.

Edit: Yes I know, his E is called Contaminate now, I still forget. Expunge sounds better.