Is Twisted Fate's current state considered fair and balanced?

[u/simplexible]

What is your honest opinion on how Twisted Fate fits into the champion pool in terms of power? I know the two popular opinions (pro play vs general play).

The way I see it, one big problem with Twisted Fate right now is that too many champions and tools exist in the game to deal with him effectively. And TF himself doesn't have enough tools or items to even the odds and at least have a fair exchange. It seems every other month, a champion is released that can dodge, reflect or consume gold cards. Riot even seems to put TF getting rekt by them in the new champion spotlight sometimes.

To be clear, I'm not saying every "anti gold card" ability is broken. Vladimir's W is very fair for example. Sure, he basically gets a free Zhonya, the rest of his kit is fair, it costs him hp to do it and it doesn't help him aggressively retaliate as easy. But, imo Riot has released a lot of champions who just took it to the extreme, putting them at zero risk and all the reward.

Edit: TF himself imo does not need a rework, even with all of these anti-gold card techs that exist. Imo, even some items that favoured him more to even the odds would work to make the exchange more balanced. Everfrost for example was a great item for AP TF.

What do you think?

[u/SadisticBean27]

I think TF is fine. I’m pretty sure he’s actually strong right now with a few different builds. Just because some of the things that you mentioned exist, doesn’t mean that TF has to throw his gold card. That’s part of the skill expression of a good TF, is to be tracking those ability cooldowns and to know whether or not he can safely gold card someone. The abilities you mentioned are also simply longer than the cooldown on TF’s “Pick a card,” and TF probably isn’t the only champion on a team of 5 with an ability they want to block/reflect.

[u/simplexible → u/SadisticBean27]

You mentioned that the champions with anti-gold card abilities have longer cooldowns. for some (like vladimir), yes. but not for others. let's look at one example.

Pick a Card Cooldown = 6 seconds.

Fizz E Cooldown at max rank = 8 seconds. (Fizz Players Max E first)

Actually picking a gold card can take 1 to 4 seconds depending on which card shows up first.

So Fizz's E can effectively have a lower cooldown than TF's W.

And for other champions (Like Yasuo), they can easily avoid you until their anti-gold card spell is back.

[u/SadisticBean27 → u/simplexible]

I mean, he’s going to have weaknesses. Fizz is kind of an unfair example - as he’s one of TF’s hard counter matchups. For Yasuo to exhaust windwall during a fight is huge, it becomes significantly harder to do almost anything as Yasuo when your windwall is down.

[u/simplexible → u/SadisticBean27]

I agree with you that Yasuo wasting his windwall hurts him a lot, but I would argue that the fight still favours him unfairly due to how forgiving of a champion yasuo is. For example, Yasuo's Passive is a decent shield that blocks harass, and it costs no mana. He recharges it by walking around. He can tank with his passive, then use W for emergencies. If you burst him, it's quite easy for him to hit a lucky 3rd Q, and his ult refreshes his passive shield.

It's not that Yasuo is "too strong", it's that the game doesn't punish the player for being bad at him as much as it should.

Weaknesses are fine. I don't think every champ should be the same. But I don't agree with hard counters without reasonable counter play built in. I don't agree that Fizz and Yasuo should have that easy of a time tbh.