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Twisted Fate Build Guide by xXkillercrackXx

Middle [10.19] How to play TF like Apdo (Best TF in the world!)

Middle [10.19] How to play TF like Apdo (Best TF in the world!)

Updated on September 26, 2020
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League of Legends Build Guide Author xXkillercrackXx Build Guide By xXkillercrackXx 627 49 1,986,725 Views 28 Comments
627 49 1,986,725 Views 28 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author xXkillercrackXx Twisted Fate Build Guide By xXkillercrackXx Updated on September 26, 2020
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Runes:

Inspiration
Unsealed Spellbook
Perfect Timing
Minion Dematerializer
Time Warp Tonic

Resolve
Demolish
Bone Plating
Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health

Spells:

LoL Summoner Spell: Flash

Flash

LoL Summoner Spell: Teleport

Teleport

Threats & Synergies

Threats Synergies
Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny
Show All
None Low Ok Strong Ideal
Extreme Threats
Ideal Synergies
Synergies
Ideal Strong Ok Low None




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Hey there! I'm Eclipse. I've been a passionate league player since Season 2, racking up over eight thousand games during my time. I've been a "High Elo" player since around season 4, and enjoy sharing my knowledge to help others get better at the game!

Twisted Fate has always been one of my favorite champions, and I've always played TF on a regular basis since i started. Currently I have 150k mastery points on him so you could say I know my way around the champion. I'll be teaching you some of the tips and tricks I've learned from my own play, coupled with watching countless VoDs of the best TF player in the world, Apdo!

Known as one of, if not the best player in the game (Faker himself even agrees that Apdo is better than him!), Apdo's main champion is TF. He has always played TF and has held some incredible winrates for the champion in Challenger (upwards of 65% at some points).

Alright lets jump in and see The Card Master has to offer on patch 10.16!




+ Play-making Ability
As TF you have the ability to greatly influence the game. Twisted Fate forces his opponents to play safe - should they ever make a mistake, they know you'll be right there ready to capitalize on it by landing a gold card (setting up the perfect gank for your jungler). But it's not only your lane opponent that you have this impact on - it's the side lanes as well. If they forget about you and try taking a fight that they think they can win, you'll be able to turn up out of nowhere at the perfect moment and seize a double kill.

+ Incredible roam potential
Speaking of which, that's another great strength of TF's; Destiny allows for incredibly long range roams. The side lanes must fear your ultimate, as if they don't, you can show up to turn the tides of any fight without any retaliation from the opposing mid laner. This can snowball the game in your favour pretty hard.

+ Huge Mid/Late game threat
Due to Destiny having so much range, Twisted fate can make for an effective split pusher. alongside his strong waveclear, and great tower damage, due to building Lich Bane, and the high base damage on Blue card from Pick A Card, You can create a lot of pressure in the side lanes and still threaten to join a teamfight at any moment. TF Also has strong 1v1 potential later on in the game, so sending just 1 person to deal with you might not be enough, if more people are needed to deal with your pressure, your team will have a numbers advantage and can look for a fight.


- A lot of bad lane match-ups
TF has relatively low kill pressure on his own, considering he has a non-combat ultimate. This means that it's hard for you to favourably trade with a large majority of other mid laners, as they'll have a high impact ability over you. Running Resolve secondary helps to negate some of their kill pressure, but its still no cakewalk to play against high kill pressure opponents.

- Immobile without ultimate
Due to having no built in mobility, TF is very prone to ganks and being focused by heavy CC champions. If you have no Flash, Cleanse, or Zhonya's Hourglass up, you're as good as dead if you get CC'd in a teamfight.

- Needs time to scale
Like every Rod of Ages user, TF needs a lot of time to scale. You normally won't be able to purchase RoA until around 12 minutes, meaning you won't have it stacked fully until around 22 minutes. This gets delayed even further if you're in a matchup that requires early upgraded boots.









Spellbooks allows you to run Teleport in order to negate kill threat early on, and for more map pressure mid-late game while having the flexibility of having the best summoner spells for any given situation. Enemy have a fed carry? You can pick up Exhaust and make them deal a lot less damage. About to do dragon but your jungler doesnt have Smite ready? Not a problem!


Perfect Timing allows you to have a free Stopwatch after 10 minutes. This is great for TF because you can make an aggressive play once this is active and gain a lot of tempo from it, such as a bot lane dive into a dragon secure. Perfect Timing also reduces the cooldown of your Zhonya's Hourglass by 15 percent which comes in clutch more often than you'd think.

This rune allows you to deal bonus damage to each type of minion dematerialized. You'll want to use all three of them on the caster minions in order to be able to one shot them with just one Wild Cards from level nine onwards.

You want to take tonic because you'll be taking Corrupting Potion as your starting item. Tonic instantly grants 50 percent of the heal and mana from your option and grants you five percent movement speed while the potion is ticking. You wont be able to use another charge of your potion until your current one has stopped ticking down. This is good for TF because you just want to survive in lane long enough to get level six and make a play with Destiny. The synergy between Corrupting Potion and Time Warp Tonic allows you to achieve this in even the hardest match ups when played correctly. The movement speed is also very important as it is one of TF's best stats.


When you roam to other lanes, you'll more than likely be able to push up to the tower and, thanks to Demolish, will be able to take a turret plating or two. You'll also be side laning a lot of the time during mid and late game which makes Demolish a great option. You'll be pressuring towers a ton when side laning and will be able to take them easily if left unattended.

Bone Plating allows you to take a lot less damage in short trades and all in's than you would without it. As mentioned before, you just want to survive lane and farm up. Bone Plating lowers the kill threat your opponents have and will often stop you from geting chunked out hard early game.


As for the rune shards, run adaptive force in both Offence and Flex, and change the Defensive option based on match up.







Just like 99.9% of the other champions in league, Flash is our main summoner spell. Be conservative with your usage of Flash, as it's your only means of escape (bar using Destiny).

Teleport should be your go to summoner spell in most lanes. You usually wont have kill threat early game where ignite makes the biggest impact. Teleport is strong at all stages of the game allows you to be anywhere when you're needed. Early game it can also be used to get optimal recall timings without missing CS or XP. It also removes any kill threat your opponent had before you recalled and allows you to gain map pressure over your opponent who is not running teleport.

Start off with Ignite if you can pressure your opponent of if you know your jungler will gank you early and you think you can get an early kill.

Take versus enemies with hard CC, such as Annie or Galio.










Twisted Fate rolls his dice every time he kills an enemy, randomly gaining 1-6 gold. This is great as it allows you to gain some extra gold and gain an advantage in an even matchup. can also help you to hit your power-spikes a little sooner.




Twisted Fate throws three cards outwards in the target direction, dealing 60-240 (+65% AP) magic damage to all enemies they pass through. Your main source of waveclear and poke damage. You can sometimes catch someone off-guard or by accident with one of the side cards. Many times in a team fight I've thrown my Wilds aiming at my stunned target from Pick A Card, only to kill a random kill on a low health target fleeing the fight with one of the side cards.




Being a 2 part ability, Pick a Card can be pretty difficult to get the hang of; But it's quite possibly one of the most important abilities to use correctly. Correct usage of Pick a Card sets aside the Jokers from the true Magicians.

Pick a Card can allow you to dictate the outcome of many fights better than your opponents, making it a very strong play making ability. You can play some mind games by simply flickering through cards, threatening the opponent by stepping towards then as gold card is about to show. Many times, the opponent will be scared of your jungle coming for a gank, or just don't want to take any damage from you, so they'll generally walk back, allowing you to zone them from some CS while securing your own.

It may also be used in this same way to make bait your opponent. Imagine you're fighting a Cassiopeia. She lands her Q W on you, and oh no! You accidentally pulled a blue card! She will know for sure that its a free kill. Thats when your jungler comes in just in time to turn the fight into your favour.

Blue Card deals 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 (+1.0 per AD) (+90% of AP) magic damage and restores 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 / 150 mana to Twisted Fate.

Blue card has the highest base damage out of all of the cards. It also restores a decent chunk of mana when used, which is very potent for TF as he suffers from high mana costs. You'll want to use blue card mostly when you don't want to AOE the minion wave (While its under tower for example), or it can be used to burst the enemy when coupled with a Stacked Deck proc. This will also be the card to choose when pressuring towers later on in the game. Its higher base damage, and ability to restore mana even when being used on a structure makes it the obvious choice.

Red Card deals 30 / 45 / 60 / 75 / 90 (+1.0 per AD) (+60% of AP) magic damage to units around the target and slows their movement speed by 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50% for 2.5 seconds.

Your main source of AOE. You'll normally be using this to attack big minion waves, coupled with Wild Cards can demolish minion waves and even jungle camps. Red cards decently high base damage (when you consider it will be hitting multiple targets all for the same amount) means that it can be a good choice in a teamfight, provided that no priority targets need CC'd by your Gold card. A cool little trick with red card is to target the caster minions in lane with it, as there is a possibly to tag the opposing mid laner with the AOE, dealing some damage to them and allowing you to push a little harder.

Gold Card deals 15 / 22.5 / 30 / 37.5 / 45 (+1.0 per AD) (+50% of AP) magic damage and stuns the target for 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2 seconds.

Possibly TF's most iconic card. Gold card allows you to point and click stun a target for up to 2 seconds. With no way to dodge this ability, it makes counterplay very hard for your opponent, usually forcing them to build a Banshee's Veil, Quicksilver Sash, or take Cleanse. With a 2 second stun mid/late game being on such a low cooldown, you make it hard for your opponents to safely make any plays around the map as they know you can show up and twist their fate. Gold card can heavily effect the outcome of every fight, as landing a gold card on a high priority target can be the crucial difference between winning and losing a fight, and even the game.



Stacked Deck gives you a decent amount of attack speed which makes your auto attack smoother and more fluid while also allowing you to easily set up minion health for farming under tower. The extra attack speed also makes it very easy for you to activate its second passive. Your auto attacks generate stacks of Stacked Deck. Every fourth attack will deal bonus magic damage. Stacked deck is so good as this attack can be consumed by your Pick A Card, allowing you to deal a ton of burst damage if your opponent doesn't respect it. Generally you'll try to have stacked deck fully stacked before using Destiny to join in a fight as the extra burst damage could be the difference maker.



TF's ultimate and most iconic ability, Destiny. Destiny is another Two part ability. On first cast, you reveal all enemy champions for up to 10 seconds. You can use Destiny for simply scouting out objectives or if the enemy team is missing while you split push, but you'll generally want to use it in tandem with its second cast, Gate.

Gate allows you to teleport anywhere within 5500 range of your character, allowing you to travel about half the map almost instantaneously. One of the best tips i can give would be that you can use Pick A Card and lock in your choice BEFORE teleporting with gate. This will allow you to port and get an instant stun onto a priority target, such as the enemy ADC.







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You'll want to max out Wild Cards as its your main form of waveclear and gains a ton of damage when maxed. It's a no-brainer on this one.

Next, spend your ability points on Pick A Card. Maxing out Pick a Card by mid game when you'll have some CDR will allow your cards to deal some hefty damage in combination with Wild Cards. Maxing this ability also increases the Mana restore from blue card, the slow from red card, and the stun duration on gold card.

Finally, Spend your points on stacked deck. Being mostly Ability Power based, Attack speed isn't all that necessary on Twisted Fate. Also the bonus damage from a Stacked deck proc doesn't scale as well as your other abilities, and is too inconsistent to consider maxing this ability earlier.








Corrupting allows you to survive laning phase easily and becomes increasingly efficent with every recall. Not having to spend any gold on Health Potion's to sustain, along with the synergy provided from Time Warp Tonic makes this an easy choice.



Catalyst helps your laning phase as it provides some more health and mana along with having a synergistic passive with Twisted fate. Once you purchase catalyst, you shouldn't be able to die outright anymore.

Pick up your boots of speed to help excel your roams, allowing you to return to midlane and pick up your minion wave a lot faster.



You'll usually want to grab these versus heavy magic damage or heavy CC champions. If you're in a really bad lane matchup, you can rush these after getting Catalyst of Aeons.

Boots of Swiftness are very strong on TF, movement speed allows you to kite a lot better, and also chase down low health opponents. Get these if you don't need much Magic Resist or Armor but the enemy team have strong kiting champions.

Ionian's are the most aggressive boots option. They further lower the cooldown reduction of your Summoner spells, and provide you with 10 CDR to help us reach the CDR cap. Only get these if you are 100% sure you won't need the other, more defensive options.

Tabi's should be purchased against AD damage and auto attack heavy teams. Ninja Tabi's will block 10% of the enemy auto attack damage, making them very potent vs heavy auto attackers, such as Jinx.

These are the most aggressive purchase. Take these if do not need the defensive options and want an extra early power spike. Sorc's are especially good when the opponents aren't purchasing any magic resist as you'll be negating a ton of their base MR.



Rod helps TF with his relatively low health and mana pools while also providing some AP aswell. Building Rod of Ages first also allows you to build an early Catalyst of Aeons which can help the you through hard laning phase. The only drawback with rod of ages is the time it takes to scale up to its full strength, but once it is fully stacked, it is an amazingly gold efficient item, giving you all the stats you want and need.

Lich bane is a strong item on TF as its passive, Spellblade, adds a big chunk of damage to your auto attacks after using an ability. Whats better is that you can proc lich banes Spellblade with your W. That in tandem with a Stacked Deck proc can outright 1 shot squishy champions late game. Lich bane also gives some mana, movement speed, CDR, and ability power. All of which scale amazingly well on TF.

Zhonya's will allow you to play a lot more aggressively, one example of an aggressive play would be using Destiny to porting into the enemy teams back line to gold card and Wild Cards the opposing adc and then instantly popping your zhonya's while your teams catches up. Another play would be the "Misaya Bait" popularized by the player "Misaya". This is where you intentionally teleport into the enemy and instantly zhonya's just before you arrive, or right as you arrive. The opponents will think you're a free kill and will plan on using many of their key spells and maybe ultimate on your teleport location. By using Zhonya's you make their attempt useless and the opponents will be missing a lot of their cooldowns for the impending fight. Zhonya's is a great pick up even into less AD heavy teams as it can be used for a lot of playmaking.



Void staff is purchased if and when the enemy team build any sort of Magic resist. Void staff's passive ignores 35% of all magic resistance on your target, allowing you to still do massive damage to anyone without 2 or 3 MR items.

Rabadon's will round out your build, providing you with a huge spike in ability power. The item itself will provide you with 120 ability power, but that's not the main reason we build it. We're after Deathcap's passive which increases your ability power by 40%. This means that we can get an absurd amount of damage just because we already build a lot of AP items. There is no replacement for deathcap as the power it provides is just too good to pass up.



You might think an attack speed crit item looks out of place in a mage build, but hear me out. Rapid firecannon, when charged, increases your auto attack range by up to 150 for one attack. This means that you can get an extra 150 range on your Pick A Cards. The extra 150 range can really catch some players off guard since most people at higher Elos know Tfs normal range. You can get a sneaky gold card onto a priority target and kill them before they even realise what happened. The extra damage on the energized attack is also very noticeable alongside Stacked Deck and Lich Bane.

Banshee's can be a good pick up against very heavy magic damage based team comps, or versus heavy CC teams. Banshee's passive provides you with a spellshield, which blocks the next ability that hits you. This can be a life saver against champions such as Zoe or Veigar.

Morellonomicon can be a great choice for TF, as it provides the ability to apply Grievous Wounds with your spells, along with providing 15 magic penetration. It also provides some more Health and ability power, which are always good on Tf. You'll maybe want this against Champions with a lot of life steal or healing ability, such as Vladimir or Soraka.

Twin shadows can be useful to slow down opponents, allowing you to run away, or catch out of position targets a lot easier. The stats provided are all great for TF, but you'll be sacrificing an inventory space, so make sure you have room for your other core items!









Generally you'll want to just try and passively farm until level 6. This is where you'll begin roaming to other lanes with Destiny to start snowballing the game. You can often times get an early kill on the opposing mid laner if they aren't using Cleanse and your jungler can gank for you.

Most of the time though, this wont be the case, and you'll have to play pretty passively against a lot of the current meta mid laners, as most of them can beat you 1v1. You don't choose TF to dominate in laning phase, so play passively and farm up until 6!

Some champions may give you a really hard time in lane and deny you CS quite hard. Against these champions you can ask your jungler for a gank or two to allow you some breathing room. Once you pick up Catalyst of Aeons these lanes will get a little better, and you can hopefully look to start roaming to get you back in the game.




This is what we choose to play TF for. Your roam potential is amazing. As mentioned in the abilities section, Destiny allows you to teleport half way across the map almost instantly. This means you are a ganking god. Your normal mindset post level 6 should be to Push the lane hard and look to ult to a sidelane any time you can.

The opposing midlaner most likely won't be able to follow you fast, so they'll usually just choose to try and push in the wave and make you miss CS. This basically means you should have a numbers advantage in almost every fight you take, making it pretty easy to win.

You'll generally look to use Pick A Card's gold card to stun the highest priority target, which will allow your team some time to wail on them while they cant move or attack back. After a roam, you'll want to start heading back mid to pick up the minion wave that will most likely be about to hit your tower. Rinse and repeat this and you'll start to rack up some kills.




By mid game, you should have your Rod of Ages fully stacked, and a Lich Bane Completed. Here you'll begin to go to a side lane and pressure the standing towers while making sure not to overextend too hard, and looking for an opportunity to join a fight with Destiny. The enemy team will need to send at least one person to deal with your split push, which can allow an opportunity for a favorable fight, or a free objective for your team.

If a fight breaks out, you can turn up with Destiny while those who went to deal with your split push probably won't be able to join the fight. You'll usually want to be in a lane next to your team, as that's about Destiny's range. Usually you'll be bot or top lane with your team grouping mid. For clearing waves, a Red card from Pick A Card and a Wild Cards should be able to almost instantly clear all waves with just Two items. Once you reach a tower, you'll use your blue card to hit the tower as it has the highest base damage and will restore some mana as well. Use wild cards when Lich Bane's passive is off cooldown (1.5 second cooldown). This will maximize your damage to towers and allow you to destroy them in one or two waves.

Late game when you'll be doing the same thing, but your damage to towers will only get better as the game goes on, applying increasing pressure onto the enemy team. By this point they may need to send wwo people to deal with you, at which point you either back off, or use Destiny to join your team and force a 5v3 fight.



In a teamfight, you'll be trying to either land your Gold card on a high priority target, Pell for your ADC with Gold card, or, if there is no priority target, using Red card for mass AOE. It's very rare that you'll be using red card, but it can happen.

When trying to Gold Card a priority target, be careful not to get focused and CC'd. Waiting for the perfect moment is something you'll have to learn how to do. Having the ability to do this will separate the Best from the Worst.

Your normal combo is fairly simple. You'll want to gold card your target, and then Wild Cards then while they are stunned. If you have a Stacked Deck Proc, autoing them is a good idea as the extra damage could end up killing them if Gold card and Wild Cards didn't. there aren't really any variations as there isn't much you can change about the order of Two skills.







Hopefully I've taught you how to carry with TF! Leave an upvote if you've enjoyed the guide! Leave any questions or feedback int he comments and i'll be sure to read it and reply. I'll keep i up to date as best i can (:

Special thanks to to @ Jovy for the Graphics and coding. The guide wouldn't exist without her help! ♥




  • 13.1.2020. Fully revamped the runes section for season 10.
    • 30.11.2018. Updated for Season 9
      • 3.6.2018. Remade runes cuz rip spellbook.
        • 6.4.2018. Added Zoe match up.
          • 26.2.2018. Guide Released!
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