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Unpopular Opinions: AP Tristana is the most well-designed assassin

EndGamer11·12/7/2014, 3:57:59 PM·6 votes·986 views

As much as people hate her, she is the most well designed. Even though her ult needs a .5 scaling reduction, her kit is the most fitting to an assassin.

-She has long cooldowns. Assassins should always have long cooldowns, but it seems they never do. Akali has a spammable, high damage Q, same with Zed, same with Leblanc. It is fine for assassins to have low-damage spammable abilities to CS with, but if these abilities are both high damage and low CD, this leads to a character being able to kill more champions than should be allowed

-She has no free escape Simply put, either Tristana gets the kill and escapes or she dies. Her escape hinges on a reset, so a well-coordinated team can lock her down and kill her. Bad design is when an assassin has the ability to deal tons of damage, fail to get the kill, and still make it to safety, see Zed ult, Fizz pole and Leblanc W.

-She has no easy way to waveclear Tristana cannot instantly clear waves, unlike several assassins. In order to instantly clear a wave like a Talon Rake or a Zed QE, Tristana must use her 18 second CD jump-her only escape. She can clear waves relatively quickly with her E passive, but does not have the ability to instantly unpush a wave.

-She has a terrible lategame, and relies on her wonderful midgame to win Lategame AP Trist is a nightmare. Everyone gets tanky, carries get BV and GA, and everyone is warding. AP Trist relies on the element of surprise to get the upper hand on her foes, because if you see her coming, you can simply Flay in her direction to cancel the long channel time, slow movespeed jump.

-She cannot kill entire teams AP trist only has one AoE ability, and it is her lowest damage one. Unlike Talon, who can instagib multiple people, and unlike Leblanc and Akali, who can use their low CD abilities to stay relevant throughout the fight, AP Trist can only kill one person, unless the entire enemy team stood next to each other for consecutive Rocket Jumps.

End opinionated rant on how, in my opinion, the only well-designed assassin was shown repeated nerfs while things like Fizz continue to frustrate players to this very day.

16 Comments

Sightless6612/7/2014, 5:06:05 PM8 votes

I don't agree. You are right that assassins should have more weaknesses and that some assassins have a bit too much of everything. However, AP Trist is an entirely different type of terrible design. AP Trist is horrible to play against. Her entire kit is "I'm going to murder one person and you have absolutely no chance in hell of stopping me unless I telegraphed horribly". That's fucking stupid. Just because she's an assassin doesn't mean that she should be able to completely and utterly guarantee one kill with no effort if she's even remotely fed, and it also doesn't mean that she shouldn't have anything else at all in her kit. She does nothing except guarantee that one player on the enemy team isn't in the game anymore. That's terrible design.

AP Trist is the definition of "unstoppable when fed, completely useless when behind". She only does one thing, but does it well enough that the enemy can't respond to it. I've played as it and against it. It fucking sucks for whoever she targets because there is jack shit they can do outside of rushing an ungodly early Banshee's (and then, I just blow up their friends because they are worthless now anyway).

As I see it, assassins should be more defined by their reliance on mobility to stay safe and weave in and out of fights than they should be defined by their ability to just guarantee one person's death in exchange for their own. It's much more interesting to play as and against.

AP Trist is probably the single worst-designed assassin in the game. I honestly think any step away from her design is a good step for the game to take. That said, I agree that she shouldn't have been nerfed repeatedly, but I'm certainly not shedding any tears over it either.

Narasimha12/7/2014, 5:38:47 PM3 votes

If anyone, Talon is the best designed.

Centuros12/7/2014, 4:04:07 PM3 votes

The main problem is if she unloads her three abilities on a champ, and they still aren't dead, she can't really DO anything. I guess she has that attackspeed steroid, but if she hasn't built AD, it doesn't do much (especially if she has already pushed the enemy back with her ult).

SouL1ess12/7/2014, 9:43:15 PM2 votes

Talon's rake can't even clear waves with 80 bonus AD now, unless you use two casts.

Everyone's waveclear got nerfed by the minion health increases (except for Zed and other spamming mids)

ModThe Djinn12/7/2014, 5:49:46 PM1 votes

I'd disagree on that as well, Narasimha: Talon has very little actual counterplay, and is notorious for being able to 100-0 someone near instantly. It's why he lost his Silence: before that, there was NO room for counterplay of any sort.

I think he has POTENTIAL, but his kit needs some revisions. There's no reason he should be able to 100-0 a squishy while also dealing several hundred incidental damage to everyone around them and then escape through stealth.

Squeaky Dreemurr12/7/2014, 9:34:25 PM1 votes

I think AP Trist is cancer. Her burst is higher than Syndra's at 6. With that much kill potential AND mobility, it's difficult not to get a reset. Click on you then you die.

ModThe Djinn12/7/2014, 5:17:28 PM1 votes

Sightless66 basically said everything I was going to say: there's no counterplay to her. She's basically a stat check when built AP -- either someone on your team is now dead and Trist is now basically useless in the fight, or no one is dead and Trist is now useless.

Fizz and Zed, conversely, are some of the BEST designed assassins. There's some disagreement about whether or not they're BALANCED (numbers-wise), but their kits are great for allowing smart opponents to outplay them, and their kits all require a strong sense of timing and an ability to land skillshots. Fizz's Troll Pole might have a little too short a cooldown though...with a longer CD it's more punishing for him if he mistimes it, or an opponent baits it, or if he has to use it for damage instead of for evasion.