This is a TF build that if used correctly will put you anywhere on the map in a moments notice, and will keep your opponents from either running away or catching you.

*Please read this entire build before using it, and please use it before voting it up or down*

At final build (if you keep your blood thirster's stacked) you will hit for well over 700 damage, 2.1 times a second, with 50% life steal. With a 1.5 second stun every 4 seconds and 30% movement speed boost, it's almost impossible for your opponents to get away, throw 'Destiny' in the mix and there is no getting away.

In writing this build, I assume you already have a general idea of how to play Twisted Fate; I also assume you understand TF is a squishy champ, and should be played as such, don't blame this build for your feed. There are many guides tailored to the novice Twisted Fate on Mobafire, written by much smarter people than I, so I won't waste my time butchering an explanation of the basic abilities, or try catering to a novice without runes. This is a very specific high dmg output build that will allow you to clean up any fleeing units in team battles. Even though you will have survivability in one sense (because you should have 50% lifesteal late build) if you're stunned, disrupted, or ganked by multiple units... You will be reminded how squishy you are, annoyingly.

I origranally saw the light for a dps TF, when I read "DPS fate the way to win" by QQ, the #1 TF build at the moment. I found his build to be incredibly potent, but very expensive at 17180 and hard to finish. This is a essentially the same AD stats plus more speed, more lifesteal and 40% armor pen(for annoying tanks); all for just 14995 (hows that for a sales pitch number).

Updated:

3/5/2011 - Edited the runes/masteries section, continually cleaning up and editing the rest of the build. Working on new sections to get more into game play and get some videos online, but unfortunately I have a new obsession with Poppy.

2/26/2011 - Cleaned up build a bit more, being forced to make this a full fledged build now. *sighs* I have added situational items, added some stuff to the summoner spells... And I plan to honestly re-write most of the sections to make this a real build, I tried to be a lazy doucher, but you all keep calling me out. >.< Why do you have to semi-like it? lol Now I actually have to work on it.

2/13/2011 - Changed final item from 'Last Whisper' to 'Pickaxe.' People were not reading the build and down-voting. I fully stated my intentions to build whatever items I deem necessary for my last 2 Items, and made mention that ideally I would get IE. *sigh* Decided that like others having their personal preference for summoners spells, that mine were more me being a doucher and baiting someone=). Changed it to exhaust for now, figure to the average TF, exhaust is a better standard carry.

2/11/2011 - Cleaned up build, added rollovers.

2/1/2011 - Added my general Game theory and I show my builds for when I am being pushed, and a late game build with IE.

I build my masteries towards damage.


I like to build all crit runes, minus two quints of fortitude. The early crits make TF a really annoying harasser, and they allow me to focus speed items before going for damage. End game, 17% crit is an agility cloak (meh 800 gold) base, and doesn't get washed out through the levels.

I get some heat for the crit runes, but heres my point of view, and no one has made a really good argument to me yet one way or the other. Because I focus so much on crit in my build items (which is generally inconsistent in most builds because they don't put enough emphasis on it), I'm able to get my crit chance up to 90% without my IE, once I add an IE I'm consistently getting crits of 250% of my damage. Without building my runes this way my build loses its potency, my first phantom dancer with my runes gets me up over 40% crit chance, and allows me to not build another damage item because with the 40% crit my base damage doubled still allows me to function (clear creeps) and deal enough damage to enemies to be dangerous.

Core Build:



I like to start with a Vampiric Scepter; the life steal in conjunction with the quints of fortitude give you really good early game survivability, and they allow you to be more brazen with your harassment, while not wasting money on health potions. You generally want to wait to buy until you have enough cash to get your boots, with life steal this is easily accomplished, you should have enough before level 6 to get them.

I build Zeal next, starting with the brawlers gloves; the crits are more useful to me then the extra speed but you can build it however you like. I build this into phantom dancer.

At this point you have some choices:

If you are farming well and not getting pushed -or- your getting kills, then I would continue on and build the second phantom dancer. You will be attacking fast enough that you can farm and regain health quickly, which is really important to me, because I focus on minion and neutral monster domination and map control.



If I am getting pushed hard and I can't do enough damage to run off enemies, I will buy a BF sword and continue on with another phantom. Its not worth it at this point to finish the BF into a blood thirster, because the bonus dmg you will deal from the extra crit chance on the second phantom dancer far outweighs the stacks of the blood thirster.



If I am dealing with an obnoxious tank thats stacking armor, I will build last whisper. This is one of my normal late game items, but if i'm in a situation where someone fed a tank early, it can be a early game must.

I then continue on after my second Phantom with a blood thirster, this is a great item for tf with this build, You can get up to an additional 40 bonus dmg and 10% lifesteal making it a +100 dmg and 25% lifesteal item. The best part about it is it stacks on minions, taking 40 kills to max out, which is two groups of creeps and a quick run through the jungle to max. This means that while you don't want to lose them... You don't think twice when porting in on a low hp enemy champ. You should be porting back and forth dominating the lanes and neutral monsters, this will keep you in the money, leveling, and stacked.

for the skimmers that keep telling me about IE:

(this was always here... just thought I might make it bigger so you would quit missing it)

From here on, its up to you, I like the second blood thirster and either last whisper or infinity edge. Generally you have raped them hard enough by this point that its hard to get the IE, there just isn't enough time in the match, but when you do.... Wow. Either way start with a pick axe, it builds to either item (plus many other good items), and choose depending on what you think you will actually have time to finish.

My ideal Final game build:

My general final game build:

In response to the comments about adding a banshee veil and other items I figure I would mention it here. I never assumed that I would have to lay out situational items for everyone especially when they are pretty standard fare. I kinda stated from the begining this was not a 'complete' novice guide, it was more a core... But whatev, here we go:

Banshee's Veil: CC heavy teams, Karthus, Malzhar; every 30 seconds it's a get out of jail free card.



Mercury's Treads: Again on a CC heavy team, sometimes you gotta sacrifice, so you aren't sacrificed.



Madred's Bloodrazor: This is a must on Cho'gath, Amumu, and other heavy health and overly tanky teams. I don't generally build the Bloodrazor because I lose lifesteal, I would substitute this for IE if I really needed it late game.



Guardian Angel: Tired of being focused first, only to have your team mop them up seconds later every time?



Randuin's Omen: Xin? Yi? Be every other dps's bane, and give yourself some massive CC.



Warmog's Armor: Your already farming up your bloodthirsters, substitute this early for one and then build the second and you will have 3000 health and be laying down the bulk of the damage with no effects on your speed or crit.



Youmuu's Ghostblade: You can substitute the ghostblade in for a phantom early on to pick up some early damage, armor penn, CDR on destiny, and all the other good things it brings. I don't generally use it, because while it has a lot of bonus's, its doesn't have very substantial bonus's for the weight it carries on the build (1/6 available spots).

Always focus your 'pick a card'/'W' ability, starting with a stun/slow is great for first blood, and just as good for saving a overzealous teammate from a early feed. I alternate after to stacked deck and just stack those two (except when you're able to level your ult of course) until it forces you to put into your 'Q'. It does good damage, but is pointless when you attack as fast as this build is designed to, in fact in late game using it slows you down because it takes a second to lock a target and start attacking after casting.


Exhaust is pretty self explanatory, it can save you when your running away or get you the kill.

As TF you should be dominating the map, make it your job to watch over and defend your teammates and your towers; if you're attentive and watch your map, you will be rewarded with easy enemy kills and lots of creep gold. With a second teleport your everywhere, now, allowing you to port back in the middle of a enemy push and be back playing defense in less then 20 seconds. I highly recommend the second teleport, if nothing else you can push harder and wait till the last minute to port back to defend your assets.


For CC heavy teams in ranked play you may consider taking flash over exhaust or teleport. If your playing ranked I would hope that you would be paying attention to the other team, And that you adjust the build accordingly. Summoner spells are not set in stone, and this build doesn't really lend its self to ranked play.

I can't stress this enough with any team, any champ, map domination wins the game. Twisted fate just makes this an easier feat, he lays down the damage and with ports and speed, hes every where, starve your enemy and soak up the xp and gold.

Early Game ( 1-6)

Twisted Fate is a great early game harasser, if you pick his 'pick a card' ability which gives him either bonus damage with MR, stun with bonus damage, or a AOE slow with bonus damage. (I've heard the argument that it's not worth using your blue card when you're not building AP; The fact of the matter is it either costs no mana, or eventually returns quite a bit of mana And does bonus damage, why would you not antagonize an enemy every CD?)
I try to spend as much time as I can keeping myself at the front of the line of creeps and I try to use my red/blue card to constantly keep enemies from farming. When I push them too far, I try to eliminate all of the enemy creeps so the enemy turret can kill mine, allowing the creeps back out so opponents are forced out. TF early game is as much about demoralizing his enemies as he is ganking them. Keep your enemies perpetually low on hp instead of waiting just for ganks, this will keep them running, instead of pissed off and scheming. You can get kills, but it really shouldn't be your focus until at earliest, level 6.

By the time you hit 6, you should have enough gold to return and buy berserker grieves and potentially a piece of Zeal. If you're lucky, an opponent in another lane has made the foolish mistake of pushing too far with too low of hp, giving you an easy kill. I always make it a point to try and push a lane around level 6 to free up another team-mate, especially when I am mid, you need the ability to move around.

Mid Game(7-12)

With TF levels 7-12 are generally spent quietly killing creeps and watching what everyone else is doing on the map; situational and map awareness will not only garner easy kills, but will earn you a pat on the back from your team.
Once you have pushed both outside opposing lanes, your team should start moving up to the middle for the big team fights; These are not for you, make sure you are always ready for them, but keep pushing the lanes so that your team can constantly focus on their task at hand of pushing the middle. You want to be watching these fights, and be ready to port in and stun and gank; but most of the time there's 5-10 minutes of back and forth in the middle, make the most of that time by farming and leveling. By level 12 I have my Vamp Scepter, Berserker Grieves, Phantom Dancer, Zeal, and a agility cloak.

Late Game

Once I have built my first Blood Thirster, it's on;
I usually get to a point where I am at least a level ahead of everyone, because I am constantly farming, and I have almost no reason to return to the spawn with life steal. At this point I will start targeting anyone stupid enough to venture out on their own. Instead of using Destiny to port in and stun, I like to just run up on them and save it, with the 30% speed boost its good to save your destiny for after the kill. What?? People are looking for you (you should be a thorn in their side by now), and now you just announced where you are, unless I can see the other team on my map I pop destiny and see where people are at. Generally when you kill a member of the opposing team, they start moving towards you looking for vengeance. I like to port to the poor bastard that's so far away he didn't bother to come running. And rape him.

By level 16 (collectively) everyone is grouping up and your teleports stop becoming so much about ganks, as mobility for farming, and pushing towers. You should be laying down serious damage and have reasonable survivability, but again if you're doing this all right, you should be the main target of your oppositions wrath. Stay back and let your team reap the benefit of your adversaries blind rage, bait and lure, by again harassing and throwing pointless stuns and anything you can do to piss them off. Eventually one will decide that he's going to chase you and show you what's for, wait for that point of no return (where they are far enough away from safety that, they can't get away from you) and turn on them.
Once you play the build, you will realize that it's pointless talking strategy late game for TF when he's built this way. You will be laying down so much damage, and sucking so much life, that's its pretty much game over.

Please help me fill in this list, as this is my opinion and we all play differently.

Pros:

Extreme mobility
High Damage Output
1 v 1 survivability is almost 100% because of massive life steal.
Reasonable easy build to work through, individual pieces are cheap.
Dominating stuns and slows

Cons:

Venerable to stuns and disruptions
Weak when focused by multiple units
Generally first on the list to be targeted

I wanted to post a section on champions to be careful of, but its really hard to say when you move as fast as the build is designed to.

Snares: If you can't move out of the way of a snare with ghost on, you probably should avoid squishy's all together.

Stuns: Unless its a stun that locks (sion, taric, TF) its really hard to get caught, and the best defense is if you know that your opposition is stun happy... stun them first. Or wait them out, throw a red card in let your team rock them, and watch them throw whatever stun they had for you in desperation before you mop them up

Malzahar is really the only person that can rock me as TF, (not that I don't get my *** handed to me all the time) but most of my losses can be attributed to a bad team build or early feed, not generally a single champion . A good Malzahar though, is squishy doom, his stun and life steal ability will damn near one-shot kill you every time. The only defense against someone whose really rocking the AP on Malz is to stun him on the way in and have someone with you, if he gets ahold of you its over. I'm not saying you shouldn't gank a Malzahar every chance you get, but I have had many a **** Malz catch me with it, be weary.

I figured that I would go ahead and show where my head is when calculating the dmg output on this build. At the end of the day nothing in life is set in stone, you get the general gist of what I am trying to accomplish... No two matches are the same, but this seems too work well 90% of the time cheaply.

Theoretical damage output (over 5 seconds)

The best dps fate build I have found (IMO - everyone has one, calm down) is QQ's "DPS fate the way to win" which I have referenced a few times. I specifically sought out a better (for me, at least) build that held true to his general battle theory.



This is QQ's "DPS fate the way to win" builds stats:
Attacks: 11.06
Total Life Stolen: 3136.951
Total Criticals: 7.579
Total Bonus Critical Damage: 2357.069
Total DPS: 1394.2
Total Damage inclusive: 6971.002
Total Cost: 17445




My General builds stats will be:
Attacks: 10.285
Total Life Stolen: 3174.882
Total Criticals: 8.077
Total Bonus Critical Damage: 2794.642
Total DPS: 1269.953
Total Damage inclusive: 6349.763
Total Cost: 15200




Substituting Infinity for last whisper (which I do if I can get that far):
Attacks: 10.285
Total Life Stolen: 4852.662
Total Criticals: 10.134
Total Bonus Critical Damage: 3861.054
Total DPS: 1941.065
Total Damage inclusive: 9705.323
Total Cost: 17190




Substituting Infinity for a bloodthirster (I don't recommend because you lose survivability but for comparisons sake):
Attacks: 10.285
Total Life Stolen: 2044.041
Total Criticals: 10.134
Total Bonus Critical Damage: 3253.014
Total DPS: 1635.233
Total Damage inclusive: 8176.163
Total Cost: 16080

So your probably thinking, wow this guy must be high, he just proved his build does the least damage... Well I am, but... While theres a million great builds on this site, generally you never get to finish any of the ones with the best stats, so for the record...

YES I WOULD LOVE TO INCLUDE AN INFINITY EDGE IN MY BUILD

But, the fact of the matter is, this isn't a perfect world and theres no perfect match... TF would rape with every high ticket item in the game, the question isn't who wouldn't buy them, but who can afford them all? The quest for the perfect build is really about building effective items quickly, that produce the same end result the for least ammount of money.

I specifically exclude the IE from the build, but definitely recommend it, because I don't believe that 17500 is a realistic ammount of gold you can achieve in the average match.