Shinin' Gold: a look at Twisted Fate's passive change

It has been a few weeks since Riot’s Twisted Fate changes. A power pick for mid lane in just about every professional region, his global presence makes him one of the strongest play makers in League of Legends. Unfortunately, Riot determined that Twisted Fate was just too strong of a pick and it showed with his pick/ban rate.

One of the most toxic elements of Twisted Fate’s kit was his old passive. Granting a bonus 2 gold per kill to his entire team, Loaded Dice silently generated global gold for TF’s entire team. Breaking even becomes advantageous, leads are artificially extended, and even small setbacks can be overcome just by keeping up farm.

The new passive only provides his benefit to Twisted Fate himself but buffed the personal income he received by providing 1-6 gold per kill with a weighted average that comes out to roughly 4 gold per kill. While this is a respectable reduction in power in professional play in which lane rotations and farming are more coordinated, this is actually good news for Twisted Fate in solo queue.

With the previous incarnation of Loaded Dice, you could expect to get enough extra gold to buy a sight ward after 38 CS. So perfectly farming 6 waves of minions only provides you with enough gold for a ward. While this certainly adds up across an entire team, the individual benefits are less than spectacular. Doubling that income allows you an extra ward even if your lane isn’t going well. Farming just 3 waves nets you a ward in addition to your normal income to protect yourself from ganks while you even out your CS.

200 cs nearly nets you an extra Blasting Wand

As solo queue is significantly less organized than solo play, any advantage you can gain personally with a champion like Twisted Fate can easily be converted into a global advantage with Destiny. Your typical mid champion has to farm up just under 100 CS worth of gold to get a Needlessly Large Rod while Twisted Fate, equipped with his new passive, needs just shy of 75. Grabbing an item like that early creates a huge potential to snowball as the success of ganks becomes all the more likely.

So farm up and gank early. If your jungler isn’t around make sure to take those wraith camps, you’re getting more out of them anyway.