Talk:Twisted Fate/@comment-25532677-20150920182117/@comment-26203093-20150924072501

You've got to understand his powercurve and where his strengths lie; his mid game is strong, because of the cc and burst from his ganks, but later he's effectively a support (which isn't an offhanded way to call him useless). His AP ratio's are not good enough to justify trying to make him a burst mage later, even though that's the style you play in the mid game. Later it becomes about peeling and poking, making cdr way more valuable, though most people are hellbent on trying to stay bursty. In later teamfights your ult can often become more important for simply granting vision instead of actually teleporting anywhere. Besides, you have a 10 second window to use gate after the initial activation - so there's a huge chance somebody will get into a bad position you can capitalize on during that.

Basically, without cdr - yes, he's going to seem pretty useless in a teamfight. Even with it, he's not that impactful, but he can still whittle people down very effectively before the fight starts, so you try to delay the teamfights if you play with him.