Tryndamere Changes

junglerboy16··4 votes·868 views

This is on the level of a micro-rework, and changes some of the biggest problems in his kit in order to give him a healthier spot in the game.

First thing I'd like to say is that I am not suggesting these changes based on whether I think Tryndamere is weak or strong. These changes are purely for the betterment of the game experience as and against Tryndamere.

Most of the time whenever I see any sort of complaint about Trynd, it has nothing to do with "He carries too hard!" or "He is SO OP!" or even "He is just awful.", it is usually "He wins based on luck.". That is a problem. I want to suggest a couple possible changes that could take Tryndamere from being a bottom-of-the-barrel, feast or famine crit grubber, into a respectable melee carry/fighter.

Number 1 change: remove crit from his kit. His passive will instead give him bonus on hit physical damage equal to 0.35% of his total AD per point of fury he has, max 35% AD as on hit damage. The reason this is on hit instead of just increasing his AD by that amount is so that it doesn't totally screw up his crit function if/when he ever buys crit. This is a much more consistent way to give him bonus damage from fury, since instead of a constant toss up of "will he crit me twice and send me to base or get nothing and lose lane hard?" it will lead to balanced gameplay of "his fury is up, so I should avoid his all in and poke him down so he has to heal". This play pattern is similar to what it is now, except that a Trynd who is ahead will not be as likely to throw his lead by not getting crits, and he won't be able to simply get lucky and win off of early level cheese crits either.

To compensate for Crit no longer being a component of his kit naturally, his E, Spinning Slash, will have its cool down reduced by 0.5 seconds per auto attack, instead of 1 second per crit. This will be a slight early game buff, and a slight nerf late, since it is equivalent to having 50% crit chance with the old crit mechanism. This is much more consistent both for the Trynd player and the opponent, since Trynd knows that constant auto-ing gets his spin up faster, and his opponent doesn't have to guess how many more crits he will get.

Number 2 change: give him more fighter attributes. Right now, Trynd plays like a glass cannon melee ADC. There is not anything inherently wrong in that, but I wan't to make a couple changes to his kit that would make room for more fighter-ish builds in addition to his normal ADC builds. First: the heal from Bloodlust will have reduced AP Ratios, but also heal for a % of his BONUS health. This allows for flexibility in his build, where he can strengthen his heal if behind by tanking up instead of just having to build Glass cannon and hope for the best. My other change that could make him more fighter like is to make the slow duration on mocking shout scale off of his total resists (A la Randuin's Omen), having a shorter duration than now at its base amount, but scaling up higher the more resistance he builds. This would allow Trynd to gain potentially massive CC if built tanky, but will reduce the oppressiveness of a full carry Trynd since you will actually be able to run away from him. The removal of crit as a central stat in his kit also pushes him towards a slightly more fighter like play style, so these changes would probably need to be tuned around that fact.

Please comment below if you feel that these changes mess him up more than fix him, and help me figure out how to make him better for the game for everyone's experience!

EDIT: As suggested in the comments, his ult is also a huge problem in his kit, and should be addressed. I am fully aware that it is also an issue, I just haven't had a good idea for a replacement other than some minor tweaks.

8 Comments

AtheosisX2 votes

He needs a different ult altogether. The current one is just idiotic. And no this is not me saying he's overpowered because of it. It's just a ridiculous ability to deal with in a fight. "Hey I'm fighting against Tryndamere, I hope he doesn't have his ult. Oh he has his ult, so now I have to try to get away from him for four seconds. Oh he decided to spin away instead? Well there goes my kill." Or "Oh he has his ult, I guess I lost this fight even though I outplayed him because he can slow and spin into me so I'm not getting away with low health." I mean I'd much rather he have some kind of damage nuke ult than that crap.

junglerboy161 votes

I think that part of what makes it so bad to play against is that it gives fury, which currently gives a ton of crit and access to a powerful heal. Instead, it should either give him no fury at all, or give him fury generation per second instead (like how Renekton's ult does), and only give say 45/60/75 fury over the total duration. Fury is supposed to be a slowly generating advantage, and Tryndamere's ult breaks that rule, which is why generating it over the next few seconds instead of all at once is more balanced for his gameplay (notice it also wouldn't ever give him full fury without attacking either, unlike his live ult which gives 100 fury at max rank). I agree that it needs a shorter duration (like 3 seconds), so that he doesn't have the ability to just spin away from getting caught out. On that note, I also think that they should shorten his Spin's range so that it isn't a get out of jail free card with his ult. Additionally, if his W only slowed in a cone like suggested below, then he wouldn't be able to just slow you and dash away either, because he would actually have to aim at you first.

Kingsgrave1 votes
  1. Remove crit on Trynd passive
  2. Move AD from Q to passive and make his heal scale not only with rage but with missing health
  3. Make W a cone and remove the AD reduction but increase the slow amount
junglerboy161 votes

Remove crit on his passive: Check

Move AD from Q to Passive: Why? I feel that keeping the AD function on his Q is a really important thing, since the spell is a well tied together "play aggressive and get a reward, but if you are too aggressive you have to heal and lose that reward" ability. To me, his Q provides the single most meaningful counter play pattern in his kit. If he gets his fury up, he is rewarded by having a strong heal as well as the ability to go aggressive and take advantage of the bonus AD for missing health. This is the part I would change last, and I would probably only reduce the base heal and maybe reduce the base bonus AD, while increasing the bonus AD for every % missing health, to better reward him for managing his aggression.

I totally back the idea of making his W only slow in a cone, however, if he actually hits you he should still get the AD reduction (though probably a smaller amount). If they changed his slow to work like Randuin's and start at only 1 second, then that would make it a lot less oppressive already. Making it a cone would be another nerf, so removing the AD reduction entirely is a bit much.

Kingsgrave1 votes

{quoted}

Remove crit on his passive: Check

Move AD from Q to Passive: Why? I feel that keeping the AD function on his Q is a really important thing, since the spell is a well tied together "play aggressive and get a reward, but if you are too aggressive you have to heal and lose that reward" ability. To me, his Q provides the single most meaningful counter play pattern in his kit. If he gets his fury up, he is rewarded by having a strong heal as well as the ability to go aggressive and take advantage of the bonus AD for missing health. This is the part I would change last, and I would probably only reduce the base heal and maybe reduce the base bonus AD, while increasing the bonus AD for every % missing health, to better reward him for managing his aggression.

I totally back the idea of making his W only slow in a cone, however, if he actually hits you he should still get the AD reduction (though probably a smaller amount). If they changed his slow to work like Randuin's and start at only 1 second, then that would make it a lot less oppressive already. Making it a cone would be another nerf, so removing the AD reduction entirely is a bit much.

Your AD being tied to your rage is still effectively the same as what his Q does on live currently except you have to auto and manage your fury for it instead of just getting lower health to increase your AD. Losing AD for a stronger heal is a lot more to manage than just losing 35% crit chance.

the AD reduction is way too much hidden power and needs to go.

Fadedpf1 votes

HE IS BROKEN. His ult is the problem 100%, his shout, spin, heal only add to it. THERE IS NO counterplay to trynd when he hits 6, if you fight him he will just ult and kill you. If you dont fight him, he will still kill you. And even if you are some how able to kill him after his ult. He probably has ghost/flash/ his spin to run away. He is broken. A glass cannon that is stronger than an adc and goes invulnerable? This is just broken. not to mention he will be in your top side jungle, taking buffs and camps and waiting to kill anyone that shows up alone. and even if you dont show up alone, he will kill one of you, or two of you then spin over a wall.

junglerboy161 votes

I agree that Tryndamere's ult is problematic, but at this point I haven't really thought of a complete replacement that embodies his identity as a "raging barbarian warrior who becomes invincible." For now, please just consider the changes I suggested for the rest of his kit, since I haven't figured out how to alter his ult well. I will make a note in the OP that says I haven't thought of how to fix his ult entirely yet.

Qarekeo1 votes

As a long-time Tryndamere player (he was my first champion I bought and I still play him as my main to this day) I can see why people are arguing about changing him.

Although I don't think he's over/underpowered, I think two parts of his balance make him anti-fun because.

  1. His only viable build is crit-based DPS, making him unengaging to plan builds for and giving him little counterplay, which is compensated for by his sheer power.

  2. He has little influence over the game with his lack of utilities in early-game; at least until endgame when he takes up nearly all of both teams' focus by being able to literally Pentakill teams nearly on his own. This makes him a bit less fun to play for most of the game.

This is almost completely because of him being a melee-based DPS carry with an extreme but short-lived ultimate.

Many people argue about his balance and him being luck-based because almost any fight with him goes only two ways:

  1. His ult lasts 5 seconds, so the enemy team simply keeps him down for the full time and he dies. This isn't fun, especially for the Tryndamere who couldn't contribute anything useful, but also for the enemy team because they have few other options if any, and if they don't do this...

  2. The Tryndamere simply kills the majority of the team in 5 seconds before the enemy can react/counterplay and he wins the game single-handedly for his team. It's very grand for the Tryndamere, but really frustrating for the victim(s) to instantly die.

I would first blame his ultimate and passive scalings for his frustrating "make-or-break" gameplay, since they're deliberately designed to make this situation happen.

Why this hasn't been changed much is probably because of his very specific identity as:

  1. An excellent chaser

  2. A high-damage, risk-based fighter made to intimidate his foes

  3. THE fighter who lasts longer than he has any right to.

I don't think his basic feel or major mechanics need to be removed for him to be balanced, but a kit rework would definitely make him more even.

  1. His ultimate could become an automatic on "death" passive to replace his innate crit chance scalings. I imagine it that it should give him 5 seconds (or whatever time would be appropriate) on taking fatal damage to get a kill, assist, or monster kill (Dragon/Baron) to revive himself or die trying if the timer goes up. This effect should have a cooldown period similar to his ultimate so he can't constantly do this. Fury generation could remain here, if just as a tooltip to explain his fury mechanics.

  2. His passive AD scaling on Bloodlust could be replaced with powerful passive damage resistances (Armor and Magic Resist) as his health goes down. This would bring his damage down to more reasonable levels and give him leeway with alternate builds (like building extra health or AP) and keep his incentive to stay in a fight. (I don't know if this would lead to "why won't he die?" situations and be anti-fun itself, but he already has elements of that)

  3. His Mocking Shout could go from a directional slow and AD debuff to a small Fiddlesticks-like fear effect. This isn't really to counter his current issues, but it's a change I'd like to see to be simpler and fit better with his intimidation aspect.

  4. His Spinning Slash could remain mostly the same conceptually (dash that lets one attack enemies to reduce its cooldown) but could be adjusted stat-wise to be simpler. Its cooldown could be much longer, but reducible by regular attacks. Reduction could be doubled by critical strikes to allow, but not force crit builds. Finally, its damage could be reduced to just being the exact same as an auto-attack instead of scaling with AP and AD.

  5. His new ultimate spell could be an area-of-effect debuff aura that reduces nearby enemies' defenses to make him still be scary to the enemy and encourage attacking him, but feel better to play and counterplay. His ultimate should be cancelled if Tryndamere's new passive is activated to give the enemy team motivation to "kill" him.

If necessary, Tryndamere's innate critical chance could be tied to his ultimate, but in somewhat weaker form (maybe %10/%15/%20). I'm not sure of this though, since this is a different Tryndamere we're talking about.

Although this keeps most of Tryndamere's kit and stats (except for possibly innate critical chance), this replaces his crazy stats with an extra ability and allows him more versatility at the cost of straight damage.

If you have any feedback, feel free to reply but please keep it constructive.

More from Gameplay

More by junglerboy16