Hey guys, My name is Chris (aka Vampirio) and this is my guide to playing as twitch. I'm currently going to school to become an educator so I thought I'd combine my job interest with my hobby. In this guide you have all of my tactics and tricks at your disposal. I've gone through great lengths to make sure I have given detailed, well-reasoned, explanations for my choices and why I believe Twitch should be played this way. Even if you don't agree with my play-style or build, this guide will teach you a few tricks as well as tell you how to correctly play as Twitch. You will also learn when and how to adapt your play style as well as how to not die as much despite twitch's squishyness.

Please try the build and comment before you vote please!

The city-state of Zaun is a twisted realm of science and magic run amok. The air is choked with pollution from the countless factories and magic labs that spew waste into the sky. As polluted as the sky is in Zaun, its subterranean levels are far worse. The waste products of Zaun's many different scientific and magical endeavors have flowed together in its sewers, mixing into a toxic and mysterious concoction. Rising up from this alchemical nightmare is a single plague rat. Unlike his lesser evolved cousins, Twitch (as he calls himself) can talk and read and interact with the world as well as any of the other sentient beings in Valoran. Twitch has come to the League of Legends to represent himself ''the only one of his kind'' on the Fields of Justice.

Twitch Abilities
Deadly Venom(Passive)
Twitch's attacks infect the target with Deadly Venom, which deals damage each second, stacks up to 6 times, and lasts up to 8 seconds.


Ambush(Q ability)
After 1.25 seconds, Twitch becomes stealthed for 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 seconds. If Twitch attacks a unit while Stealthed, he gains 30 / 45 / 60 / 80 / 100% attack speed for up to 10 seconds, depending on how long he was stealthed before attacking.

Cooldown 11 seconds | Cost 60 mana | Range 20


Debilitating Poison(W ability)
Slows nearby enemy champions' move speed by 30%, plus 6% per Deadly Venom they have. 2.5 / 3.25 / 4 / 4.75 / 5.25 second duration.

Cooldown 10 seconds | Cost 80 mana | Range 200


Expunge Expunge(E ability)
Deals 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 (+100% of ability power) magic damage to each nearby poisoned enemy, plus 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 additional damage per stack of Deadly Venom applied to them.

Cooldown 8 seconds | Cost 90 mana | Range 200


Spray and Pray(R ability)
Twitch gains 15 / 25 / 35 attack damage and his attacks become long range line missiles for 12 seconds, dealing 100% damage and poisoning all enemies hit. During this duration, a maximum of 5 / 6 / 7 missiles can be fired.

Cooldown 105 / 90 / 75 seconds | Cost 150 mana | Range 1200

9x 9x 6x 3x 3x


for my runes, I take crit chance marks, seals, and quints. I take CD Reduction blues for the 10% cool-down bonus at level 18. The extra crit chance (19% at lvl 1) goes a long way offensively and defensively. (with vampiric scepter, you will get healed extra for crits)

You could also use health quints and mana glyphs if you expect to take damage and use mana at a higher pace.

My masteries as you can see are 21/1/8. I put most of my points in the offense tree making sure that I hit all the skills that twitch needs the most like the crit chance, magic pen, attack speed, armor pen and Burning Embers because 10 ability power seemed a better option then 1 attack damage. in the defense tree, I took the improved heal because if its up more often, I can survive reckless turret dives more often. from the utility tree, I took what to me was the best option. mana and health regen, a little death reduction since I had neither ghost or tele and awareness because I prefer the xp boost to the dodge bonus on the defense tree.

I take ignite for the true damage it causes. stack it on someone who has had 6 stacks of poison applied and they will crumble. Don't forget to expunge before the poison wears off. Heal may seem noobish at first glance. But think about this, twitch is squishy, Enemies will turret dive the **** out of you if they think they can kill you. I like to let them think they can. Let them dive then pop heal and presto, you got yourself a free kill. its also good for shaking an ignite that may have killed you otherwise.


Other viable alternatives would be flash, and ghost for escaping and chasing and exhaust for better ganking(You can exhaust and ignite without breaking stealth). Cleanse is also good for getting rid of any afflictions such and blind or stun that would cause you to be focused. I would also be ok with a twitch using clairvoyance on my team for some extra map awareness in-case the other team bought oracle's to stop him from scouting later on in the game.

Try and stay away from using clarity, just buy mana pots if your play style leaves you low on mana. also I would try to avoid using teleport because it doesn't help you escape. It may help you gank though so I guess you could rationalize getting it.

When to play as twitch is just as important as how to play twitch. This section will help you determine if you should try twitch this game or wait till next game.

You NEVER want to play twitch if there is a teemo or evelynn on your team already. they WILL buy oracles and make learning twitch a pain. Shaco is ok because he doesn't seem to depend on stealth enough for people to buy oracles.

Try to take into account your whole teams composition when picking a character. twitch is the best choice if your team has 2 tanks like Nunu and Garen , a caster like Ryze , and either a jungler like Warwick or another dps like akali . Your attack damage and stealth would complement a team like this greatly.

Your go-to ability while you are fighting in the middle lane will be . Ambush helps you evade early game harassers as well as makes the squishies like think twice before trying to get close to their experience so try to stay stealthed for the full duration as much as possible.

This Video below highlights some of the main tactics that I want to show you as you play Twitch. As this player's build is slightly different then mine, The Idea behind combining , life-steal, and crits will be illustrated very clearly to you. He also does a good job of Psyching out and scoring another kill.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suVBQDzKZrc]

Amumu-

Amumu maybe twitch's best friend in the league of legends. Not only does his stun the enemy allowing you more time to stack your poison to expunge, his holds them still so they cannot dodge your ult as it cripples them. use debilitating poison after you ult and by the time the slow wears off, you will have aced the team. If you have a buddy who plays Amumu, try it out!

Garen-

Garens are good at not giving a **** and running headlong into your opponents and spinning on them causing decent damage to both. He also has insane health regen. This puts you in a good spot. While he's spinning on them and wearing them down, pop out, use debilitating poison, and focus one down until your expunge will kill them. Your expunge will also combo with garen's ult if his ult fails to kill a low hp opponent.

Sion and xin-

Sion and Xin have very good stuns,slows, and high damage output. Laning with either of these guys will make ganking easy for you as long as you don't pop out too soon. Timing is key!

Taric-

Taric is any dps characters best friend. Especially the squishy ones like twitch and teemo. a stun to hold them in place for you and the ability to save your butt with heals are priceless when it comes to friendship!

Long story short, Laning with any of these guys will give you a good game. So long as you both know your limitations!

As twitch, your gonna come across champions who are very hard to deal with and you will need to switch up your play style accordingly. It's only fair for me to tell you about some of the problems I face all the time. Heres a list of champs that you need to be very careful against.




Twisted Fate/Pantheon-


Twisted fate's ult will counter your stealth temporarily. make sure to play cautiously so he never catches you with low health.

Pantheon's ult- By the time you see the ring, it may be too late. when twitch stealths, he needs to not be hit for 1.25 secs. if pantheon crashes down on you, the counter will reset and you will need another 1.25 secs till your stealth kicks on. He will have used and will follow that up with by then, You will be severly wounded if not dead. to counter this, don't get too far from your teammates and don't go into the lanes alone unstealthed unless he's already used his ult.

Rammus/Shen

when you pop out for a team battle, try to be on the opposite side of the battle of Rammus or Shen, their taunts will interrupt your ability to shred the dps champions and will make you the focus of all the enemy champions. just remember that being taunted=dead.

Teemo/Nidalee/Shaco/Caitlyn

All of these champions have items they leave across the map. hitting one of these items not only causes you damage, it announces your presence to the enemy team. be careful to watch for and dodge Nidalee and caitlyn drops and think about grabbing oracles for teemo and shaco drops. As a general rule, If you are playing against any of these champs, don't go into bushes when you don't need to. Your oracles cannot see mushrooms in the brush and if teemo is good, he will take advantage of this. If he sees you bought oracle, all his shrooms will be in the brush so you cant see them until you are on top of them. So please. don't go into the brush.

Evelynn/twitch

Try not to pop out during teamfights before the other stealthed toon the second you pop out, they will jump you and the rest of their team will turn and focus you. You want to turn them into a feeder by focusing them the second they jump out and cause the rest of your team to focus them. notice that they are both squishy and will feed you if you stay stealthed longer then them.

Tryndamere

As a rule i wouldn't go 1 v 1 trynd after level 6. no matter how much damage you do, his gives him more than enough time to kill you and get away. if your forced to, try to expunge kill him before he uses his ult. if he slows you with , slow him with debilitating poison and start running towards your nearest turret or ally.

So if you see that your up against any of these guys, Know that your gonna have a tough time. Just know to play smart and use your stealth to your advantage!

Level 1

Twitch starts the game with 434 hit points and 215 mana. Make sure to put your first ability point into ambush so that you can check bushes for your teammate(s). You will only be able to stay stealthed for about 10 seconds so try to get in and get out to safety before it runs out. Just hang back and bide your time while you last hit minions until you reach level 2.


Level 2
Expungeor

(Defensive)
If a failed gank has left you and/or your partner turret hugging, and on the defensive, get debilitating poison but try not to use it unless they are at the base of the turret trying to gank you. pop heal and slow them and you have yourself a kill. Debilitating poison costs almost half your mana so don't go throwing it around if it won't score you a kill.

(Offensive)
If both or one of your enemies barely survived your gank, put your second point into expunge and don't get careless. keep an eye out for incoming ganks and just keep last-hitting. When it comes to using expunge, never use it on minions 90 mana out of your 250 mana spent to get 20-40 gold is a bad investment. Save it for when you really need it.

Level 3

I usually get a second point into ambush so that I have more time to get positioned for ganks and more time to hide myself if I'm about dead.(they cant target what they can't see) Just be careful of skillshots. They dont need to be able to see you to hit you with skillshots. Your mana will recover too for the most part if you stay stealthed for the full duration.

Level 4
Expungeor
Level 4 is another offense or defense situation. If you want the offensive power of expunge, go right ahead. If you want the slow to ensure a gank goes well or that the turret kills them when they dive you, put a point in your debilitating poison. Once I hit level 5, I usually go back for and .

As the game progresses, You are going to want to Max your Ambush or before your expungeExpunge because of both its offensive and defensive uses. Then max expunge and debilitating poison last. Make sure to up your ult at the 6, 11, and 16 marks and then finish off the last 2 levels of your debilitating poison . (this Skill Sequence is the same as the player who you saw in the video above.)

with either a or a


is a must at the start. engage the enemies at a slow pace exchanging a few blows at a time(unless you can gank) and then recover by hitting some minions. since twitch has so little heath at the beginning(about 500) your health will recover very quickly. go back and buy and , then when you've saved up like 900 gold go back and build an and .

is a must because it seems to have been made for twitch. It boosts your poison by about 30 damage, makes you crit heal more often and recover more health per hit. and its active helps you take down characters like yi and mundo who have a crazy ability to self-heal. It also gives you the edge on any another dps champ that is building life-steal. The rest of the build is just put together as I see fit. If the opposing team has 2 or more tanks i'll get , , , then . however, if they're team is fairly squishy, I will get the , , , then .

has everything twitch needs to start shredding squishies. 50% attack speed plus the 30% critical chance means you will have about a 75% crit chance from only having 3 items(Beserker's Greaves, Executioner's Calling,PD) and when you pop out of stealth, your attack speed will be over 2 attacks per second. The 15% movement speed bonus also makes your start to look like .

is the first item I get to improve my damage. Its 200 gold more than a but only gives you +40 dmg, but the payoff here is you will be ignoring 40% of all the armor the tanks spent soo much gold on trying to stack up. Be careful against though.(See the section, Items that scare twitch)

is the next item I get when I need to shred tanks. The reason for using it is it's wonderful passive, 4% of the targets maximum hp is dealt to them as magic damage! Not only are you dealing a ****-ton of damage to the tanks that stacked hp and armor, since its magic damage it completely ignores their armor! Madred's BloodRazor also provides twitch with more attack speed, as well as a bit of armor that helps keep you alive. It also provides some attack damage which will make your crits grow even higher.

Is the last item I get against tanks, fourth item I get against all squishies. Your crit chance just grew to 95%, and they now deal around 400-700 damage. buying and after this is just overkill.

The synergy is what I like about these items. it has worked so well that I prefer over and over any day. As twitch, I have never 1 time built a frozen mallet. the idea of slowing their whole team on hit is nice and all but debilitating poison does that just fine.

Your ability to shred tanks again, comes from the 40% armor penetration percentage that comes from the and extra magic damage that comes from . Since the Armor penetration is a percentage, the more armor they have, the more armor you penetrate. The 4% is relative as well so when you stack these abilities ontop of crits, the results are devastating.

Is another Viable Option that has been addressed in the comments. The extra Hp and Mana along with the spell block will definitely make your life easier. Playing twitch my way does make you very vulnerable to magic so I completely understand why people prefer to by a . It will protect you from a spell whether it is Nunu's or twisted fate's , you will be safer running around with it on for sure. If I had to take out an item for , it would be the . Just keep in mind that just because you have a Banshee's Veil, that doesn't mean there is anything stopping that pantheon from breaking it with his a second before Nunu's goes off and obliterates you. Just remember its all about what you like and feel comfortable with. :)

can replace your once you have nothing left to build. The armor debuff will(at max) reduce all the opposing champions' armor by 45 causing them to take more damage from your allies. You can purchase instead of if you want because again, it's all about preference.

Oracle's elixir allows any players who have it to see you through stealth. It costs 400 gold but is lost upon death so try and make it a priority to gank anyone who has it before a big teamfight.



Vision wards, or "pink" wards as they are also referred to last for 3 minutes and causes any stealthed units around it to be revealed. Keep a close eye out for any placement of these on any of the lanes. Make sure you tell your teammates to call out the placement of a ward so you don't get ganked trying to set up for a gank. Buying an oracle's elixer allows you to see and destroy the enemy team's wards but should not be bought solely for this purpose unless you know they have 3 or more wards.



Thornmail is a pain in the butt when you are playing twitch, 30% of all the damage you are doing suddenly comes right back at you! This is bad news. The only way I have found to counter it is to never focus the wearer without my buddies. I usually try to mow down all the dps characters like akali, teemo, and trist. this allows the casters to come in and help focus down the wearer. Remember there's no I in team!



Never over exert yourself trying to kill someone with guardian armor. you may end up being ganked. Remember that Zilean's Ult acts as an improved Guardian armor bringing the target back to life at full health. only focus down someone wearing this if you caught them in a 1v3-5.

Any Ability Power Items such as and

The way I play twitch leaves me very vulnerable to magic damage. To counter this, I try to wait until the casters have fired off all their scary spells before I pop out and make them regret using all their spells. will also help you to survive through spells like by negating all the damage.

when it comes to twitch's , use it like this. say your with a partner on the top lane. use stealth as you walk towards the middle lane and let them see you do it. As soon as you are stealthed, walk right back behind the squishiest enemy in the top lane and wait for your partner to engage. They will tell mid you are coming down then you can gank an unsuspecting top with your partner. This is one reason I max my ambush so quickly. so that my teammates and I have more time to set up ganks. as twitch, I don't gank the other lanes very much in the beginning levels. I just make my laning opponents think that I am. This has 2 benefits for me. It gets me fed and it relaxes the other two lanes and causes them to forget about me. then I gank them. :)

Twitch is one of the few characters who can safely attack a turret from out of it's range of fire. With active, you can deliver 5-7 shots to the enemy turret while hurting any champions and/or minions in between you and the turret. Just make sure to tell twitch to move away from the turret after the last shot so he doesn't walk up to the turret to auto attack it. If you hit any champions while you were ulting, they will be taking poison damage so if twitch walks into the turret range, the turret WILL automatically focus you.

Since the cooldown on his ult is so long(~60secs), using his ult to just hurt a tower is kinda a waste. now if jax is hanging out with 200hp in front of a turret that has 2 hits left, by all means feel free to stealth to just out of the turret range and get a kill while you knock down a turret.

can be used as a farming tool at later levels when your cool-down reduction brings its cool-down down to 40-50 secs. I only use it when I need to gain hp quickly or need to kill approaching minions quickly to prevent enemies from attacking my turret. Having life-steal as twitch really shines when you use your ult. In the Video above,(Mid Lane With Twitch) You saw how to use your ult to take on and out-heal other dps champs. Here's another illustration of 's healing powers, say 15 caster minions line up and are all hitting your turret. just line yourself up with their ranks so you can hit all 15 minions. if your attack damage is 100 and you ult, you will do 100 dmg to each minion. you will then gain 20 hp per minion hit because of your . the math looks like this.

20hp x 15 =300 health gained in 1 hit. if u crit on your ult, the crit hits every target in the path gaining you 40hp x 15 =600hp. you will also get about 300-500 gold for killing all those minions. As you can see, twitch is a very formidable farmer.
and don't forget! Last hit, Last hit, Last hit!

Pros

life steal helps you lane for a really long time at start
good offensive power at low levels
stealth helps you rack in kills by scouting and ganking
can escape fairly easily
enemies will be waay more reckless towards you because you are so squishy
95% crits + 20% life-steal + 40% armor penetration + 4% max hp as magic dmg = win
Build cost is a little over 15000 gold
Expunge makes it easy to steal kills(try not to ks too much please)

Cons

oracles will cause you trouble
watch out for enemy wards(have teammates announce the placement of wards in their lanes)
as life-steal helps you recover hp, it does not make you less squishy
you will be focused in a team fight out of stealth
Magic hurts a lot

This is how I build Twitch. as this is my first guide, I'm sure I'll be adding a little more to it everyday so keep checking back to see if there has been any updates. please comment and vote for my guide if it has helped you. Feel free to ask me any questions or give me advice on how I could improve my guide. If you would like to see me make a guide for another character, leave your specific requests in the comment box below. Thank you for reading and I hope this turns you into a penta-killing machine(just don't penta-kill my team please) ;)