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The reason why Trundle wasn't popular during the tank meta, despite being an "anti-tank" champion

YumaS2Astral··40 votes·4,835 views

It is because although he is an anti-tank, he has 3 problems.

First, Trundle is weak to CC. I know, almost every champion in the game that is not named Irelia, Olaf, Mundo, or is a full tank, is weak to CC. But the problem is that some champions are weaker than others. And Trundle is one of them. With a meta where most team have retarded amounts of crowd control, with the top laner having CC, the mid laner having CC, the support having CC, the jungler having CC... Trundle simply couldn't keep up, because he was prone to being CC-locked to death, he doesn't have the mobility or even CC necessary to overcome that. Even though the meta had lots of tanks, those same tanks actually provided the CC necessary to keep Trundle from destroying your team.

Second, Trundle is technically good against tanks; but he generally fares better when there is only one tank on the enemy team. He is a duelist after all, also his ult is single-target. When there is more than one tank on the enemy team, Trundle doesn't tend to fare as well because there will still be one tank unnafected by him. Also, as I explained, Trundle is weak to CC. The more CC on a team, the better, and the more tanks on a team, the most CC they will tend to have.

Third, Trundle is easy to kite. Even with his pillar and his frozen domain, Trundle has a lot of difficulty trying to close the gap against many ADCs, and this is even more difficult when the tanks are here to protect them. This is also one of the reasons why he is poor at teamfights. He is one of the best duelists, but that's simply not what you want to use on this meta. save for a few exceptions, such as Irelia. Even though Irelia doesn't have the same dueling potential and tank-busting potential as Trundle, she is far less concerned about CC due to her passive. She is harder to kite too.

Back when Trundle was popular in season 4, it was because it was the "bruiser" meta - Many champions were tanky, but they didn't had the CC needed to stop Trundle. Such champions were Renekton, Mundo, and Shyvana. Renekton has only a simple stun that requires him to be in melee range, and the others don't even have a hard CC to begin with. Also, this season was far more focused on duelists and 1x1 situations, which is where Trundle excels. But on season 5, teamfighting champions are more popular; Trundle fares poorly on those situations.

I hope that people that ask why Trundle wasn't popular now understand the problem with him.

28 Comments

Ultîma40 votes

I actually believe that one of Trundle's biggest failures as a character is that he has a lot of invisible power, which makes him feel bad to play in spite of the fact that he's an incredibly powerful character.

His passive is easily one of the best passives in the game, where he restores a % of an enemy's maximum health every time a unit dies around him. It is small, but piles up extremely quickly during the laning phase. His Q grants Trundle bonus attack damage for 8 seconds, during which his target also loses attack damage equal to half of Chomp's bonus. His frozen domain, and then his ultimate, are also some of the best steroids in the game, but lack obvious clarity, making them feel lackluster in spite of their power.

Riot keeps saying how steroid ultimates like Singed, Vayne's, and Aatrox' feel bad due to their nature. Trundle's entire kit is basically filled with them. Trundle is no more susceptible to CC than many, many other characters and his invisible power is far more likely a reason for his unpopularity than that.

Lugg1 votes

Great observation.

SpecterVonBaren12 votes

Actually, his passive restores health to him based on his ENEMY'S maximum health, not his own.

Ultîma1 votes

Good catch! My bad - my reading comprehension of the tooltip is obviously failtastic :P

Edited accordingly. Actually this makes his passive a lot less straight forward than I thought. Kind of adding on to the invisible power argument.

junglerboy163 votes

It actually is a huge chunk of his strength and is very much invisible. You only see it if you just killed a 5000 HP mundo or if you finished Baron and it filled you up for 1200 HP (which is SO satisfying it isn't even funny).

During lane phase or in the early jungle, you only notice it because you magically don't need health pots.

Trundle is my all time favorite champ in the game, but he needs a lot more visual clarity in his kit to make it more obvious how his abilities are impacting him.

For example, Q's bonus AD makes his club glow. that needs to be brighter, and also have some sort of visual effect on the rebuffed enemy.

His passive needs to show a little visual trail from the enemy he kills (think along the lines of the heal for killing a monster camp)

W needs to show his steroid with beefed up visuals.

E needs to have slightly more visible slowing field visuals (this is probably the least in terms of clarity offenders though).

R needs to show his size increase more clearly, along with another visual indicator, possibly similar to Rengar's indicator that he's armored up after casting battle roar.

Right now, the majority of Trundle's VFX are sort of bluish white and very subtle, and having a better set of visuals would help reduce the invisibility of his power tremendously.

Zair Umbras2 votes

{quoted}

I actually believe that one of Trundle's biggest failures as a character is that he has a lot of invisible power, which makes him feel bad to play in spite of the fact that he's an incredibly powerful character.

His passive is easily one of the best passives in the game, where he restores a % of his maximum health every time a unit dies around him. It is small, but piles up extremely quickly during the laning phase. His Q grants Trundle bonus attack damage for 8 seconds, during which his target also loses attack damage equal to half of Chomp's bonus. His frozen domain, and then his ultimate, are also some of the best steroids in the game, but lack obvious clarity, making them feel lackluster in spite of their power.

Riot keeps saying how steroid ultimates like Singed, Vayne's, and Aatrox' feel bad due to their nature. Trundle's entire kit is basically filled with them. Trundle is no more susceptible to CC than many, many other characters and his invisible power is far more likely a reason for his unpopularity than that.

I agree with most of it, but Trundle suffers more from CC than most Bruisers because he doesn't have a gap closer. It's similar to Udyr. You get slowed, you're screwed. His Frozen Domain gives him a speed boost, but just like Udyr's E, movement speed gains aren't nearly as strong as slows since most slows are about 40-80% (Rare cases of 90+ like Thresh). With slows on everyone, Trundle LITERALLY can't keep up. Most top picks have gap closers and always will have gap closers because gap closers aren't affected by slows. People like to think of slows as crappy forms of CC, but against anything that doesn't have a gap closer and that champ just became near useless.

Theorchero1 votes

{quoted}

I actually believe that one of Trundle's biggest failures as a character is that he has a lot of invisible power, which makes him feel bad to play in spite of the fact that he's an incredibly powerful character.

His passive is easily one of the best passives in the game, where he restores a % of an enemy's maximum health every time a unit dies around him. It is small, but piles up extremely quickly during the laning phase. His Q grants Trundle bonus attack damage for 8 seconds, during which his target also loses attack damage equal to half of Chomp's bonus. His frozen domain, and then his ultimate, are also some of the best steroids in the game, but lack obvious clarity, making them feel lackluster in spite of their power.

Riot keeps saying how steroid ultimates like Singed, Vayne's, and Aatrox' feel bad due to their nature. Trundle's entire kit is basically filled with them. Trundle is no more susceptible to CC than many, many other characters and his invisible power is far more likely a reason for his unpopularity than that.

This.

Trundles steroids are insane.

Hard4Hamsters1 votes

Yeah I think one of the biggest problems facing Trundle is how dull he is to play. I think he is extremely powerful and nearly unkillable when he gets ahead or even if he just goes even, but I think he is extremely boring to play. I hate coming up against a good Trundle player because they do so much damage and are so hard to kill as they move in and out of a teamfight, and Riot keeps buffing him. Against organized players, he suffers a bit, but he is a solo queue stomper and I honestly don't know how to deal with a Trundle who knows what they are doing because it takes teamwork to take him out and that is usually lacking.

With the nerfs to slows in the inability to stack slows, I think Trundle is on the rise in niche situations as he will be less susceptible to kiting, though the meta is shifting away from a tank meta where it was assumed he would thrive, so we'll see what happens. I think he is extremely powerful, but it's hard to notice when he is never in the spotlight. Peace.

67chrome9 votes

I wouldn't list Trundle as being weak to CC.

If it takes 1 second to kill a champion, getting stunned for 1 second is really bad. If it takes 10 seconds to kill a champion, getting stunned for 1 second stills gives you 9 seconds to do things.

Also - if you're defensive mechanism is moving out of the way, getting stunned for 1 second is seriously bad news - as that will prevent you from moving out of the way for 1 second. If you're defensive mechanic is raw defensive power, you still have actual defense when you're under the effects of CC.

The only area CC really impacts Trundle is that, as a melee auto-attack reliant champion, a slow or snare can cut his DPS down to 0. Where burst has a cozy ~10 seconds of CD time you'd need to CC them through to really impact their DPS (or OHKO them).

Anyways - Trundle getting hit with CC is like Squirtle getting hit with Tackle. Bad things happen for Trundle, but it's a pretty neutral hit. Weakness implies more of a "Super effective" kind of deal IMO.

I'd focus more on the same thing that most fighters have an issue with - being relevant in team-fights as a predominantly 1v1 champion.

LilxPaprika8 votes

Kiting plays an equally big part against trundle. Cc is good but kiting is the icing that renders him pretty stale. In this increasingly mobile game. I will say however that a well placed pillar depending on matchup can be incredibily strong. But with more and more dashing champions and champion interactions like thresh lanten etc. It can be anti climatic.

The pillar is particularly strong when being ganked too. Trundle is a very safe top owner imo (strong disengage, weak engage).

YumaS2Astral1 votes

{quoted}

Kiting plays an equally big part against trundle. Cc is good but kiting is the icing that renders him pretty stale. In this increasingly mobile game. I will say however that a well placed pillar depending on matchup can be incredibily strong. But with more and more dashing champions and champion interactions like thresh lanten etc. It can be anti climatic.

The pillar is particularly strong when being ranked too. Trundle is a very safe top owner imo.

Well noted, you are completely right too.

Sometimes I like to use Trundle, but he is so easy to kite that I am not using him as much as in the past, he is still a good pick, he is not a great one, however.

YOU BEEN WARNED3 votes

No, as someone who played a ton of Trundle I can tell you that the main downside is kiting and mobility spells. Trundle has a ton of slows, none of them matter if the target can dash out. His passive is snowball natured lategame. People need to die as he lives to maximize benefit, that only happens when he is ahead because Trundle needs at least one damage item item 3153 item 3078 item 3074 which sets back his efficiency as a tank lategame if he's not ahead.

Trundle is not used as a laner because he has a lot of poor matchups as his only trading method is auto attacks, which draw minion aggro. So as a laner he is a late game champion since he can't really force kills on most champions. Yet many, many champions have a better lategame. Even Mundo which Trundle is supposed to hard counter due to his ult and E rendering Mundo useless can not negate Mundo's cleavers which is an insane slow Trundle appears to be standing still on impact.

Same as a jungler, mediocre ganks and mediocre lategame. Even when he snowballs he does not feel great, his split pushing is good yet suboptimal when you have Trynd Jax and Nasus. Trundle has a ton of flaws.

YumaS2Astral1 votes

[{quoted}](name=YOU BEEN WARNED,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Q8lAsGZP,comment-id=000a,timestamp=2015-07-19T15:16:43.729+0000)

No, as someone who played a ton of Trundle I can tell you that the main downside is kiting and mobility spells. Trundle has a ton of slows, none of them matter if the target can dash out. His passive is snowball natured lategame. People need to die as he lives to maximize benefit, that only happens when he is ahead because Trundle needs at least one damage item item 3153 item 3078 item 3153 which sets back his efficiency as a tank lategame if he's not ahead.

Trundle is not used as a laner because he has a lot of poor matchups as his only trading method is auto attacks, which draw minion aggro. So as a laner he is a late game champion since he can't really force kills on most champions. Yet many, many champions have a better lategame. Even Mundo which Trundle is supposed to hard counter due to his ult and E rendering Mundo useless can not negate Mundo's cleavers which is an insane slow Trundle appears to be standing still on impact.

Same as a jungler, mediocre ganks and mediocre lategame. Even when he snowballs he does not feel great, his split pushing is good yet suboptimal when you have Trynd Jax and Nasus. Trundle has a ton of flaws.

I use Trundle as a counterpick to AD Fizz

Trundle is one of the few champions who can actually trade auto-attacks with an AD Fizz, mainly thanks to his Chomp and his attack speed steroid

Also, Trundle can steal Fizz' resistances, not only making him squishier; but also making Trundle more resistant to AD Fizz' damage, as Fizz is completely reliant on % damage on-hit effects, but those are innefective against a champion with a lot of resistances (but not a lot of HP). And since Fizz does not buy penetration items, he simply can't outduel Trundle.

YOU BEEN WARNED1 votes

You can't force trades against Fizz with Trundle, Fizz gets to force trades against you. That means early on you do not get to bully him, and then you reach your mediocre late-game. So why pick Trundle? Pick someone more useful like Jax.

Sooko1 votes

I actually learned something here, +1

FatesDefiler1 votes

they buffed tiamat too much, trundle lost his niche.

Lugg1 votes

You are completely right about the 1 tank team. He will destroy them.

Great post.

TotalJerk1 votes

I had an idea to help Trundle out. What if they increased the knockback distance on his pillar up to 350 from 225? Then, a well-placed pillar would help him knock enemies closer. It would drastically raise his skill ceiling while having few negative impacts.

Onimus Terlain1 votes

It's a shame because, before his rework, Trundle had CC reduction on his W. But they stripped it and added additional healing for a reason that no one could really explain other than "CC good"

If they just reverted that change, he'd probably be a lot more playable.

But even then, he probably wouldn't crack the jungle.

In today's meta, you don't really see junglers without gap closers. They're way too important for early ganks. I mean, other than Udyr. But that's just because Udyr does such insane damage, it's worth the lack of a gap closer.

Silents4291 votes

I really wish they didn't buff him as heavily as he did, the bug fix on his ult sure, and maybe a tweak here. But he has become a monster to deal with once the onslaught of tanks starts winding down.

The Bíg Ticket1 votes

He is still a great counterpick in soloQ. I have a 100 percent winrate with him in Platinum.

Ale non è male1 votes

This is a good reminder of the fact that I haven't play Trundle in a while I need to bring some positive trolling to the rift whenever I can

PotatoReker1 votes

Trundle is op and all but the problem about him which stops players from liking him is that, he is extremely boring to play, he doesn't have any cool tricks or can make any flashy plays. His kit is straight forward and he is easily kited by the likes of Kalista Vayne

YOU BEEN WARNED1 votes

He is no where near OP. In fact, he is one of the top candidates for the "underpowered champion" award.

galdamesh1 votes

Trundle top lane is amazing against most of the popular tops at the moment.

he basically removes one tank from team fights, even if he is just peeling.

but his strongest power is how fast he can take towers.

SouL1ess1 votes

Trundle simply couldn't keep up, because he was prone to being CC-locked to death, he doesn't have the mobility or even CC necessary to overcome that

It's okay, Riot removed Tenacity from Contamination just for that reason. :^)

inb4 post-freijord people asking what is contamination

Elkington1 votes

I disagree that Trundle fares better when there is only one tank. You need carry-level damage to kill him late game, and if there are 2 or more tanky champions on the opposing team, no one is going to be able to dent his sustain. He wins all late game matchups against other tanks and bruisers that pretend to be tanks.

In contrast, a team full of mobile, squishier champions is what Trundle has the hardest time with since he's prone to being kited and his ult isn't that useful against champions that prioritize damage. Mages and supports with CC are Trundle's bane, not tanks.

General Murica1 votes

Eh no, he's boring af+what ulti said

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