Introduction:
This is how I currently play Twitch. I try to play offensive support, (i.e.: I will risk suicide anytime if it means getting a tower down and I will go in and risk suicide to slow a gang anytime if it means saving 2 teammates). You may want to keep this in mind, especially when you consider the Item build and lack of HP. I know many people like to play Twitch different, be it a solo-hunting hit and run (Wits’ End/Malady (that’s the new one) +Phage build, or the Tristana like high HP (Frozen Mallet + Atma´s Impaler) build. Both are totally viable, and I can probably think of 2-3 other things that may or may not work as well or better then this one. Feel free to disagree, constructive comments will improve any guide.
On a side note, I will try to add warnings whenever I feel that a particular statement may get you killed under special circumstances. Also: If you dislike solo pushing, sneaky creepskip/backdooring, don’t bother to read on.
I know this is hard on the eyes, but I just want to get this out here first, and its a bit late. It probably isn't the ideal guide anyway, because it does not cover the basics. But there is a guide out there that already does, and so there is no need to be redundand.
( Good basic guide for twitch that covers the skills and what they do. )
What -this- Guide is about:
This Guide shows some things that I noticed Twitch to be best suited for. It's a rat. So play like a rat.
HOW ?
Chapter 1: Runes+Masteries.
Basically survivability is what it comes down to. Twitch is made of glass and paper early game. He can’t even harass without additional HP or HPregen, preferably a little bit of both.
Get offensive, or Utility Masteries, and get any following of the secondary summoner spells “improved” via masteries:
Flash (essential) + ghost/rally/smite/promote
Try to rune for at least 10hp/5 if you’re confident in your ability to avoid damage/have improved rally to heal yourself/have dodge runes. Else, about 15-20hp/5 should suffice if you are not confident or chose to go with smite, ghost or promote.
Why?
You need to be able to recover from harassment quickly, because YOU –need- to be the one harassing, and that means you need to be able to sustain your HP while creeps respond to your harassment attacking you. This usually comes down to 20hp/5 of regeneration, especially when you’re solo.
Chapter 2: Basic moves + early game strategy
Game starts, you stand there, get:
Ruby Crystal
225 Health
475 gold
And choose a Lane. You should now have more HP then most of the other guys, and you need it.
Your first Skill point is going into Debilitating Poison if you’re solo. If not, it’s expunge.
As mentioned, your job is to harass.
(This is going to be difficult against any champion that has superior range or ranged burst damage, so you may want to switch lanes if your up against Ashe, or some harassing Zilean with manaregen. Tristana is fine though, too busy farming, just dodge the exploding creeps and shoot her when she is going to lasthit, then move out of range and you should be OK 
)
)
This is not because your such an asshole, but because you want to keep poison on whoever is sharing lane against you at all time, the “why?” is what leads us to the first basic move:
The other guy(s) run in your direction and close range:
A)Get at least 1 poison stack on him/her and use Debilitating Poison. Then keep retreating to max range while shooting him every time you have enough distance. If he follows, repeat for as long as it takes. If he is low enough, Expunge before he/she is out of range.
(keep in mind: A passive opponent that is suddenly becoming aggressive without any obvious means to even reach you, indicates that he is not alone. If you feel you are not safe enough, move to option B) a.s.a.p.)
B)You are low HP/ they have a ranged stun/ its armordillo a.k.a. sonic the hedgehog with superior movement speed and you can’t dance around creeps to block his stun: >Debilitating Poison ASAP and Flash then Ambush if possible.<, preferably to your tower or behind some obstacle, and stay safe until you either have your HP back up, or your flash is ready again, and by any means, and in any case, stay safe for as long as your Debilitating Poison is on cooldown.
Assuming everything is fine, your basic routine looks something like this:
Keep in range of every hostile creep that is being attacked, and lasthit.
Move around a lot; keep your eyes on the enemy.
If he comes in range, shoot him, move a little to shake creep aggro, and repeat.
Your poison is not much, but a melee or short ranged Champion will soon learn that it is senseless to respond as long as he has poison stacks on him that you can use with Debilitating Poison.
If you feel like you have enough mana, try poisoning 2-3 creeps and lasthit them all with expunge. Else, just use expunge when you have 3 or more stacks of poison on your enemy.
NOTE: Never expunge an enemy champion close range when your Debilitating Poison skill is ready. Never.
Debilitating Poison is strictly a skill to use first. Anything that is near enough, and low enough to die by expunge, is both near and low enough to die by Debilitating Poison + attacking. You don’t want to Expunge anyone to 20 hp and then have him escape because there are no poison stacks left to slow him down. Make sure if you can.
The only exception I can think of is when you know that you will need Debilitating Poison slow after the kill to escape.
Skill points should be distributed for Expunge and Debilitating Poison until lvl6. I don’t bother getting spray and pray that early, but you should get 2 levels of Ambush to go on a hunt or as gang assist.
If you really need to go back earlier because flash is on cooldown and you’re not safe anywhere, you have no rally to heal yourself or you died, buy Boots of Speed and as much of the early midgame items as you can afford.
Chapter 3 late early game / early mid game:
Hopefully you didn’t die, and farmed a little, because this is where the fun begins:
Items that you want important stuff first:
Boots of Speed -> +3 movementspeed boots before Madred's only if you farmed a LOT or if you really need them so early,
The other guy(s) run in your direction and close range:
A)Get at least 1 poison stack on him/her and use Debilitating Poison. Then keep retreating to max range while shooting him every time you have enough distance. If he follows, repeat for as long as it takes. If he is low enough, Expunge before he/she is out of range.
(keep in mind: A passive opponent that is suddenly becoming aggressive without any obvious means to even reach you, indicates that he is not alone. If you feel you are not safe enough, move to option B) a.s.a.p.)
B)You are low HP/ they have a ranged stun/ its armordillo a.k.a. sonic the hedgehog with superior movement speed and you can’t dance around creeps to block his stun: >Debilitating Poison ASAP and Flash then Ambush if possible.<, preferably to your tower or behind some obstacle, and stay safe until you either have your HP back up, or your flash is ready again, and by any means, and in any case, stay safe for as long as your Debilitating Poison is on cooldown.
Assuming everything is fine, your basic routine looks something like this:
Keep in range of every hostile creep that is being attacked, and lasthit.
Move around a lot; keep your eyes on the enemy.
If he comes in range, shoot him, move a little to shake creep aggro, and repeat.
Your poison is not much, but a melee or short ranged Champion will soon learn that it is senseless to respond as long as he has poison stacks on him that you can use with Debilitating Poison.
If you feel like you have enough mana, try poisoning 2-3 creeps and lasthit them all with expunge. Else, just use expunge when you have 3 or more stacks of poison on your enemy.
NOTE: Never expunge an enemy champion close range when your Debilitating Poison skill is ready. Never.
Debilitating Poison is strictly a skill to use first. Anything that is near enough, and low enough to die by expunge, is both near and low enough to die by Debilitating Poison + attacking. You don’t want to Expunge anyone to 20 hp and then have him escape because there are no poison stacks left to slow him down. Make sure if you can.
The only exception I can think of is when you know that you will need Debilitating Poison slow after the kill to escape.
Skill points should be distributed for Expunge and Debilitating Poison until lvl6. I don’t bother getting spray and pray that early, but you should get 2 levels of Ambush to go on a hunt or as gang assist.
If you really need to go back earlier because flash is on cooldown and you’re not safe anywhere, you have no rally to heal yourself or you died, buy Boots of Speed and as much of the early midgame items as you can afford.
Chapter 3 late early game / early mid game:
Hopefully you didn’t die, and farmed a little, because this is where the fun begins:
Items that you want important stuff first:
Boots of Speed -> +3 movementspeed boots before Madred's only if you farmed a LOT or if you really need them so early,
- Madred's Razors (1000 g)
Cloth Armor (300 g) + Long Sword (415 g) + 285 g - 15 DMG
- 25 Armor
- Passive: 15% chance to on attack to deal 500 DMG to a minion.
Phage (1290 g)
Ruby Crystal(475g)(you have that already) + Long sword (415g) + 400 g - +250 health
- 18 DMG
- Passive: 25% chance -15 armor, -40% movement speed, 3 secs
Get the Scepter of Death ( Attack->Lifesteal) for
Malady
- +15% Lifesteal
- +40% Attack Speed
- Passive: 30% chance on hit to proc a debuff that increases the damage received from enemy champion attacks by 8 Magic Damage for 8 seconds
This effect stacks to a maximum of 6.
Try to farm a little with those Madred's Razors. Get Lizzard rune buffs. Harass, gank, push towers.
But this Twitch is build for support and solo-pushes. He is not build to resist. His objective is to do whatever he can to make those other guys lose the game. This means that when you see the other team push somewhere, and there is another lane that has a creep push of your own in progress, you do not defend.
It may be hard to believe, but you can actually defend a lane with this build, just by pushing somewhere else. You look delicious, your low on HP, but you pack a punch because you farm a lot and you have a chance to escape almost anything. Wich means that in most games, the other team will need two people to successfully stop you from solo-pushing, and even then, they may fail to stop you, or at least fail to kill you. And while they are hunting you down, the original push you wanted to defend lacks two people, while your team is in the advantage defending.
“But what happens if they just ignore me and push on?”
The answer is simple. You don’t care. If they really do that, and believe me it happens more often than not, you just push until your quite sure the creeps can manage the rest of it, and Bluepill to defend, or even better, push the third lane too. Remember, your team is 4v5, but they are close to their well, and they have towers all over the place.
WARNING:
You don’t do this, if your opponents have:
-Heavy sustained heal, i.e.: Soraka+Alistar, or fed Soraka or fed heavy AP Alistar. If the opponent can regenerate their HP after a Teamfight, they will not lose the next one either, and are thereby bound to win. Obviously you don’t want that to happen.
- Baron Buff. They will tear the place to shreds faster than you can say “all: Hey guys, I’m in yo base, why don’t you just bluepill back and chill a little?”
The only alternative I can think of in such a scenario, is
A) Go back, bait and harass, divide the gang and try everything to take out the healer. This is extremely difficult to do, and you will most likely fail if you cannot outplay their coordination, wich I doubt because if you could, you wouldn’t be in this situation. Spray and Pray. A lot. Expunge. Run for your life.
B) The lucky option: They have exposed Inhibitors, or very low HP Inhibitor Turrets, and you are farmed enough to simply backdoor at least one lane within the next minute. Don’t hesitate. If they bluepill or teleport for you, gtfo and bluepill yourself. If they don’t, push on. Just make them end their 5 man push by any means you can think of.
What you do now, is entirely up to you. I can just write down stuff that will work for you, nothing more. I’m not sure myself what works best, so just experiment with your team.
Items that work well with you are:
Wit's End (2150 g)
Recurve Bow (1050 g) + Null-Magic Mantle (400 g) + 700 g
40% Attackspeed
32 MR
UNIQUE Passive: Physical attacks remove up to 42 mana from the target and deal additional damage
equal to the amount of mana removed.
Last Whisper (2215 g)
Recurve Bow (1050 g) + Long Sword (415 g) + 750 g
20 DMG
40% attackspeed
UNIQUE Passive: Attacks penetrate 40% of defender's armor.
Stark's Fervor (2550 g)
Emblem of Valour (800g) + Recurve Bow (1050 g) + 700 g
20 % Attackspeed
UNIQUE Aura: Gives champions 20% lifesteal, 25% attackspeed, 30 HP/5 secs and reduces enemies'
armor by 25.
The Black Cleaver (3065 g)
B.F. Sword (1850 g) + Long Sword (415 g) + 800 g
75 DMG
Passive: Physical attacks reduce your target's armor by 12 for 5 seconds (stacks: 5).
Any Physical DPS item will work, but anything that involves stacking effects will benefit greatly from your attackspeed.
Some noteworthy combinations are:
You can stack Phage+Frozen Mallet with a lizard buff for some amusing perma-cripple on any melee.
You can stack armor reduction, Last Whisper 40%+Phage -15 armor + Back Cleaver -12 x5(-60) armor+ Stark's Fervor -25 armor aura for an amazing 40%+100 armor debuff.
Beside being able to 1on1 pretty much anything within seconds, it will enable you to solo creepskip turrets the sneaky way.
Just experiment, and don’t get killed. Remember, if anyone tries to get you:
Debilitating Poison + Flash + Ambush -> escape in a direction that is not the most obvious one, and you should be safe.
