Twitch Discussion

Hello everyone! I wanted to make this post to share some of my thoughts and ideas for my main champ Twitch while hearing your feedback on his current state. I'm curious about what you have to say. So here we go!

Season 6 brought about a ton of amazing and interesting changes to ADC's and their items that pushed many of them to occupy several unique niche. Twitch os the assassin ADC who in my opinion is one of the most underrated marksman who still brings a lot of options to the table and has great potential to solo carry games. Sadly, Twitch has been overshadowed by many of the more popular picks recently falling to a dismal 4% play rate. But there's a reason for this; there are several champions who bring very specific things to a team comp whether its heavy damage like Jhin or Kog'Maw, or hard engage like Sivir or Kalista, and so on. While stealth is a cool ability, it's not very helpful to your team and it's hard to justify picking Twitch when your team could use somebody better. And if you took his stealth away, there would be nothing unique about him. His passive is useless, his damage is so-so, his ult has been nerfed to 5 seconds so you have less time to capitalize on it. What's more a lot of the itemization changes in S6 have been awkward on Twitch, like the price changes on several items and the stat changes like the ones on Youmuus, which used to provide a lot of different stats for him early game but now gives flat AD. It seems that Twitch was completely forgotten at the start of this season. Riot did give him a reset on his Q which I believe was a great step in the right direction, but I think he needs a little more tweaking before he's on par with a lot of the recent reworks/champions that have been released this year.

So you're probably asking "Why would you want to take one of the more balanced champions in League and buff him to make him OP"? Well don't worry, because I'm not suggesting that. But here are a few goals that I would like Riot to consider if they ever wanted to update Twitch's kit:

• Make his poison "feel" like actual poison.

• Solidify Twitch as the Assassin/AoE Teamfighter he is known to be.

• Make his kit more cohesive and in-line with his play-style.

• Give players and teams a solid reason to pick him in certain situations over someone else.

So here are my ideas:

Passive- Deadly Venom

Twitch's basic attacks apply stacks of Deadly Venom which apply a .25% health reduction each second for 6 seconds. This can stack up to 6 times. Max -15% health reduction.

So if this change were ever to go live, I feel like this by itself could make Twitch feel good in a player's hands without being broken. First off, this passive is not lethal and deals no damage; if you had 1 hp at the end of a fight, it won't kill you. Secondly, it can take greater than 15 seconds to reach that 15% mark, so it's not like you can ambush and benefit from it. You will most likely fight in a teamfight and use ambush to pick off stragglers, something that Twitch already excels at. Finally, it's not to help kill squishies. It would only be effective against tanks and in long fights.

A cool result of this change would be the fact that Deadly Venom would also help your team burst their targets, so I believe that bursty comps would benefit from having a Twitch. It would also do well in the upcoming tank meta and might be useful for farming. I also believe this one change can fulfill many of the stated goals above as it would be completely unique and never seen before on the Rift.

Q- Ambush

No changes necessary since the reset has made a lot of Twitch's risky choices a whole lot safer. Riot discussed this change at the end of the preseason and had considered making the stealth instant after a reset, but I believe this is too strong and safe, especially in the early game. If one wanted to, I believe they could make the stealth instant, but only at max rank so it's fair. Imagine chaining kills with stealth resets in the late game. That could be cool!

W- Venom Cask

No changes here. This is already a great initiation/trading/kiting tool that works well in his kit. The new passive would work well with it though to keep the timer ticking.

E- Contaminate

(This ones a little more out there. We're keeping the damage the same, only making it over 6 seconds like a DoT.)

Activating Contaminate resets the timer on Deadly Venom.

The reason we are making it a DoT is because I feel like the AoE damage is too strong to be instantaneous. I know by playing as and against Twitch who can instantly get a triple by pressing E can sometimes leave people feeling cheated. This change will make it into a poison-like ability that synergizes with the new passive. The timers on both abilities are independent, but activating it synchs them together for the potential flashy poison kills we've been wanting out of his current passive. It also helps to reach that 15% health reduction mark. And if it sounds OP, remember that items, ultimates, and Cleanse all can remove the debuff. I think this would also work with his pick-off-the-stragglers pattern that he is good at. Ult to stack poison on the enemy team. Use E to let the poison lower their health and make them squishy. Then ambush them and get the resets. Profit.

R- Rat-tat-tat-tat

Quality of Life Buff - Cooldown and duration only begin with first attack.

I feel like this small change can make a huge difference. Riot made similar changes to Karma and Heimerdinger stating that every second counts when you're trying to trade and you get heavily CC'ed. Well the same can be said of Twitch, who can lose 2 autos in 1 second. That can make or break a teamfight.

Of course, the numbers might need some tweaking, but what do you think? Does Twitch need a change? Probably not, but he's definitely not as flashy or as refined as his counterparts. Would you suggest something different or do these changes sound interesting to you? Thanks again for reading.