I'm Twisted Tea Fate, I'm an emerald TF main with over 1.7 million mastery and I've been maining him since season 9, and in season 13 I peaked Emerald 2 with low diamond MMR. Here I'm going to teach you how to send your foes to the shadow realm with full AP TF.

Between the end of season 12, and the start of season 13, Riot buffed TF's AP ratios on his Q, red card, and blue card. As a result, stacking high AP has become a more viable strategy, and people do this build from iron all the way to masters.

This build isn't new. Building TF as a burst mage is a strategy that has been around since the League of Legends alpha in 2009, and the core build has remained mostly unchanged for the past 5-6 years, but has recently gotten popular again due to the TF buffs.

Strengths

• Snowballs really hard
• Scales really well
• High Burst damage
• Lots of movement speed
• Phenomenal wave-clear
• Incredibly strong in low-mid elo

Weaknesses

• Very squishy
• Inconsistent due to aggressive playstyle
• Reliant on Mejai's for blue cards
• Sacrifices damage for the safety of rapid firecannon
• Unreliable in high-elo

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  First Strike

  
  First Strike isn't an early-game rune, the amount of gold and damage that you get in the early game is negligible, which is okay TF isn't known for his strong laning. This rune comes online once you've completed your first item, and will get the ball rolling on your roams. Then paired with Future's Market you'll be completing items far faster than your opponents on such small leads.
  
  
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  Electrocute

  
  Electrocute is good when you're playing into melee champs where you can land a gold card due to your range advantage. If you pair this with ignite, your roams will be lethal. Taste of Blood improves your trades with some healing, Eyeball Collection and Ghost Poro both are good runes for some extra AP. Ultimate Hunter is my preferred choice so I can roam more often, but Treasure Hunter will help you complete items faster.
  
  
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  Arcane Comet

  
  Arcane Comet is for when you're playing into longer-ranged champions who you can't easily get into gold card range with. You're hoping mostly to clip them with a red card on a caster minion, or a stray Q. The sorcery tree scales better into the late game due to Gathering Storm. But Absolute Focus gives you a bit of extra AP if you can stay above 70% HP, which is pretty easy to do if you're throwing Qs from a distance. Scorch is viable if you want to have a bit more trading power in lane.
  
  
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  Minion Dematerializer

  
  Minion Demats aren't as important as they used to be since you can one-shot caster minions pretty easily now. However they're still useful for shoving cannon waves. If you use all 3 on the caster minions, your Q will one-shot the casters at level 9 if you have at least 99 AP which is very easy to attain with this build. At some point, you'll be able to red card the melees and then clear the entire wave with 1 Q, and this gives TF constant priority and can freely sew chaos across the map. The slower your wave clear is, the smaller window TF will have to impact the map.
  
  
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  Other Runes

  
  Dark Harvest takes about 20 stacks to break even with electrocute's damage. But once you're beyond 20 stacks it really pays off. This is mainly for maximizing your blue card damage, and it's a bit difficult for TF to stack. Absolute Focus and Gathering Storm are two runes that give you a ton of free AP and turn you into a monster, but it's not worth it to give up Minion Dematerializer for it. Time Warp Tonic used to be good on TF a long time ago when he would start Corrupting Potion, but Riot has nerfed this rune a bunch of times and is now completely useless. Don't get baited into taking this rune, it's better to have Cosmic Insight so your summoner spells are up more often.

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  Doran's Ring + 2 pots

  
  This is a standard start for almost every mage in the game. It's main selling points are mana regen when trading with your lane opponent, a bit of HP, and a bit of AP. This is honestly fine if you have a hard time managing your mana.
  
  
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  Dark Seal + Refillable Potion

  
  Take this into easier matchups where you aren't in much danger in lane. Starting Dark Seal will save you gold and get you to your powerspikes sooner.
  
  
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  Boots + 4 pots

  
  This is my favorite start vs difficult lanes where you're going to take a lot of poke, and spacing is important. Boots will help you dodge skillshots, escape ganks, and the 4 pots will keep you alive until you buy more items.
  
  
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  Corrupting Potion

  
  This is a favorite among high-elo TF mains. It's a bit more versatile than Boots start, since it gives damage on auto attacks, and restores both HP and mana. People in high-elo often take this into harder matchups rather than Boots.
  
  

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  Luden's Companion OR Hextech Rocketbelt

  
  This is the most important item for this build, it gives you burst damage on your first spell, wave-clear, ability haste, and movement speed to be able to kite or reposition in a fight. Hextech Rocketbelt doesn't have the same poke capability but helps you get into gold card range, and is cheap, which accelerates your Lich Bane. Make sure to take Manaflow Band since you won't have much early mana.
  
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  Sorcs or Luciditys

  
  You should always rush tier 2 boots on TF because your movement speed curve will be ahead of everyone else's and give you more opportunities to land gold cards early on. Movement speed is also more valuable on immobile champions like TF. Take Ionian Boots of Lucidity if the enemy comp is very tanky, so you get more spell rotations on them.
  
  
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  Lich Bane

  
  This is the second item that you need (You can even rush this as a first item, I do this very frequently). TF has the best synergy in the game with lich bane because his W shuffle activates the spell blade, and the card itself triggers it upon landing, making every W deal more damage. Lich bane also gives movement speed and ability haste which are very useful for TF.
  
  
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  Rapid Firecannon or Rabadon's Deathcap

  
  Rapid Firecannon increases the range of your gold cards, adds a bit of damage, and allows you to play more safely. However since it has no AP, you're slowing down some of your scaling for safety. Rabadon's Deathcap is great if you don't need more range, and would prefer a huge spike in burst.
  
  
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  Void Staff and Mejai's Soulstealer

  
  These are the last damage items you absolutely need. Void staff will be lethal against anyone who stacks magic resistance, and mejai's soulstealer will allow you to one-shot squishes with blue card. Be cautious, your hubris may cause you to lose all your stacks, so play carefully.
  
  
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  Other Items

  
  Nashor's Tooth is a fine late game item for when your opponents are squishy, it adds a bit of oomph to your blue cards because of its 20% AP ratio on auto attacks. Horizon Focus Doesn't do anything for your blue cards but will make your combo after gold card deal a bit more. This item is mostly useful for revealing stealth champs for your team, but the 100 AP is nice. Shadowflame gives some more magic pen on low HP champs, or anyone who uses shields, but it's pretty useless against tanky champions. Seraph's Embrace gives a ton of AP and a lifeline shield so you can argue some cases where that would be ideal. But I haven't played with it too much recently.

1.) Stack up your E before going for a roam or flank, this way you're deal your damage as quickly and efficiently as possible. THIS IS VITAL for getting those blue card oneshots. Count your autos as you clear the wave, if you mess up, walk over to a jungle camp or scuttle crab to stack your E properly.

2.) When ulting, lock in your gold card before teleporting so you can get your stun as soon as you arrive.

3.) You can apply a lot of pressure by simply walking out of vision in between minion waves. It can psyche the enemy into thinking you're roaming, and posture defensively.

4.) When ulting to a fleeing opponent, instead of ulting directly on top of them, ult to cut off their exit or wherever they're running to.

5.) Use the "Target Champions Only" hotkey and enable "Treat Target Champions Only as a toggle", this way you will never accidentally gold card a minion or tower.

6.) If you have Zhonya's, you can ult directly into the enemy team and instantly stopwatch on arrival to bait out a lot of important abilities, you can also lock in your W while you're in stasis. This is called The Misaya Bait, if you wanna see an example click the link below.

Original Misaya Play

7.) You can make the enemy miss CS or even a cannon minion by simply shuffling your cards and walking towards them. You don't have to lock in a card, just let it shuffle, it will make them think twice about last-hitting. People are absolutely terrified of gold card in mid-high elo.

8.) This is similar to tip #8 but is executed differently. You can actually cancel your ult teleport by using Zhonyas before the channel can finish. This is called the Reverse Misaya. Its use is similar to a normal Misaya but less risky since you're not actually placing yourself in danger. This does come at the cost of putting your Zhonyas on cooldown before a team fight though. I'll link an example of this below.

Reverse Misaya Example