Has the magic gone out? We are dusting off the very first Formerly OP post we ever wrote, back in September 2011, for a modern refresh.
Twisted Fate received two very significant nerfs on his way from map-swinging menace to the mid laner we know today, and both of them are still worth remembering.
Formerly OP
Old Twisted Fate
Has the magic gone out? We are dusting off the very first Formerly OP post we ever wrote, back in September 2011, for a modern refresh.
Twisted Fate received two very significant nerfs on his way from map-swinging menace to the mid laner we know today, and both of them are still worth remembering.
As you know, the general discussion community loves complaining about all sorts of things Riot's doing wrong. If you know this, you'll also know that past the ELO hell complaints and the ranked game complaints, the biggest complaint of all is about "OP" overpowered champions. So they often get nerfed. This series is a tribute to the formerly OP champions in the game that have since been nerfed from #1 pick/ban into "y u pick him man" champions.
This post first went up in September 2011, making it the original entry in the Formerly OP series. We have given it a fresh coat of paint below, but the story underneath, and most of the original words telling it, have not changed.
When, And For How Long
Twisted Fate has been a mid lane menace since League's earliest days, and by the time we first published this post in September 2011, deep in Season 1, he had already worn out his welcome twice over. Between his original launch kit and the "second incarnation" described below, he stayed a top ban target for the better part of two seasons before the nerfs below finally caught up to him.
The Old Kit
Twisted Fate received two very significant nerfs. His original skill set had Pick A Card's Gold card do an AOE stun, and Gate wasn't his ulti, just a regular skill. I think you can see how this might be a little OP.
W: Pick a Card, Gold Card
The current version of Gold Card still stuns, but only the one target it hits. Back in the original kit, that stun hit everyone standing near the target, turning a single well timed card flip into a teamfight ending pick. That is the icon shown above, the current single target version, since we do not have the old area of effect art on file anymore.
There was also a trick to it. Cycle back to Gold Card fast enough after landing the first stun and a good TF could chain a second AOE stun onto the same fight before the enemy team recovered, a genuine double stun combo that veteran players still bring up. Just as infamous was throwing Gold Card at a turret instead of a champion. The stun's radius was calculated off the target's hitbox, and a turret's hitbox is enormous, so a Gold Card thrown at a tower produced a stun zone far bigger than anything a card thrown at a champion could manage. It was a bug, not a feature, and it eventually got fixed, but for a while it turned turret aggro into a teamfight winning setup.
E: Gate
Gate was not always part of Destiny. In the game's earliest 2009 beta it lived on the E key as its own regular ability, a channel and blink to a target location that Twisted Fate could use on a much shorter leash than an ultimate cooldown, completely independent of his ult. Riot folded it into Destiny before the game even officially launched that October, and it has not existed as its own button since, so there is no standalone icon left for it, and the icon above is the modern Destiny recast it eventually became.
R: Destiny
The original Destiny gave global vision of every enemy champion on the map, and back then that reveal came bundled with an actual slow on all of them, not just whoever Gate teleported him to. Losing that map wide slow was a real nerf on its own, long before Gate ever got folded in. His second incarnation moved him over to the same skill set we see now, merging Gate into Destiny as a single global ultimate, but still keeping his global gating gave him the ability to snowball a team to victory no matter how badly he was losing in mid lane. In fact, with teleport plus his global, even if he was getting outharassed, his ability to pop in and out of the lane with new items let even noobs stay even with their opponent, until it was time to gank a lane.
Why It Was OP
Just like a single Eve stun could roam a team to victory, a single TF ult would bring any teamfight from 2v2 to 3v2 with vision over all shrooms, traps, and champions.
TF could build any way he wanted, AD, AS, AP, hybrid, pretty much everything worked. You could be a burst ganker, a backdoor master, a Baron stealing champion, and an Eve counter.
The Fall
Now you can barely make it to the first tower using your ultimate, and your stun speed is too slow to stop Brand from hitting you with his pillar. Now you're just like Shen, you can get to where you need to be a little faster than other champions, but once you get there after your initial stun there's not much else to do.
What Actually Changed
Gold Card lost its area of effect entirely. It went from stunning everyone caught nearby to stunning only the primary target and merely slowing whoever was standing around it, which is the change that really ended Twisted Fate's reign as an automatic teamfight win button. Destiny's old slow got cut down hard before it was removed from the ability altogether, and its cooldown climbed several times in the seasons that followed, closing the window where he could ult in, win a fight, and ult right back out before anyone downstairs even noticed he was gone.
Patch V12.3 in early 2012 kept the pressure on well into Season 2, cutting Wild Cards' base damage and trimming the bonus attack speed Stacked Deck handed out, two of the quieter pieces of the kit that had been propping up his lane presence the whole time.
Where He Stands Now
We ended the original post with "Give TF some Lovin' Riot!" Looking back, what we actually got was the opposite, patch after patch of small nerfs instead of a single buff or a full rework. Twisted Fate never did get the kind of ground up VGU that champions like old Evelynn eventually received. He is still running Wild Cards, Pick a Card, Stacked Deck, Destiny, and Loaded Dice today, the same five button kit he launched with in 2009, just worn down through year after year of tuning until a global assassin threat became a rotational mid lane pick that has to earn its power the old fashioned way.
Nominate The Next One
Our original list of future releases was Vladimir, Eve, Jax, Mordekaiser, Twitch, Corki, Ezreal, Nunu, Heimerdinger, Teemo, Shen, and Nidalee. Nidalee followed as the original #2 in this series, and after a very long hiatus we picked it back up in 2026 with old Evelynn as #3. Most of that original list is still fair game, and we would love to hear who else belongs in the Formerly OP hall of fame. Want to see a particular one next up in the series? Comment below!
just tried TF from the free rotation and he wasn't that bad, i mean his global ulti was way too op imo... even his ulti now i think is way better than others, isn't it like a summoner teleport without any restrictions
ReplyDeleteRight now TF's still viable, but his farming utility is just a far cry from where he used to be. Before, you could farm a lane and jump into a teamfight whenever it came up, plus escape any gank using zhonyas.
ReplyDeleteHis laning phase still has a good amount of pressure if you can match up your pick-a-cards with when your lane opponent wants to last hit, but definitely takes a lot more skill to play effectively with less margin for error.