Replace Tryndamere's mocking shout with a sword block

Nobody wants Tryndamere to be strong enough to team fight as he is because if he is then he will dive your backline and kill them, and assuming he has the aforementioned strength, there isn't anything you can do to stop it.

So he's kept too weak to team fight, but in order to make him viable he's loaded up with stats that don't do much for him in a team fight but do make him a 1v1 god, which he leverages by split pushing.

In other words, Tryndamere's tendency to split push is a consequence of his lack of counterplay, not something that all the best Trynd players just love doing. In fact most of us hate split pushing all day. Its boring. And some of us try to team fight with him anyway, usually without much success.

So how do you improve his counterplay in a team fight, other than keeping him weak in that regard? Quite franky, he can't be allowed to just dive your back line while immune to death with the level of damage he typically brings. His damage is off limits to changes because that is one of the most appealing things about Tryndamere.

So what could change? Perhaps make him less sticky? Then he couldn't really pull off a dive in a team fight-- so he'd be less of a diver, but more of a what? What is Trynd supposed to be again?

A skirmisher. He's supposed to have powerful situational defenses and target agnostic damage, but no reliable way to close in on high priority targets. Of course, Yi is a skirmisher too, and he has a way to close in on targets, so surely that definition isn't right? And what about Fiora and Yasuo?

Thats the definition RIOT gave to skirmishers, and I'd ask you to think for a moment about why bruiser yi was nerfed-- its because normally his small health pool is what prevents him from diving the targets he wants, and without that limiter, he becomes overpowered. If fiora and yasuo build glass, they have the same counterplay, so typically they don't-- and they have the same issues as bruiser yi to some extent. Of the three, yasuo has the easiest time reaching the targets he wants and so his damage is least target agnostic in exchange.

Tryndamere never had the bruiser build problem that other skirmishers had because his steroids are configured in such a way as to prevent it. If his health isn't low, he won't maximize his bloodlust bonus attack damage, so building durability indirectly reduces his damage output. The crit chance tied to his fury requires him to build fury, and in a team fight the only way to do that is to attack or crit fast, and he has no attack speed innate to his kit so he is forced to build both it and crit chance. And he has no innate armor pen or true damage or %health damage or such, so he has to build anti-tank items too.

And all that "stuff" he has to build keeps him from having any room to build tanky. And thats fine. More than fine. Thats perfect. Trynd players don't want a bruiser build Trynd. They want a heavy hitting berserker, and thats what Tryndamere is. But we don't want to go berserk on towers, we want to go berserk on teams.

So how do you reduce Tryndamere's ability to dive whatever he wants, while improving his performance in team fights, in a way that still feels "Tryndamerish"

I suggest we remove his slow and replace it with a sword block. The point is to make it so that he doesn't necessarily have to dive the backline if the backline can't immediately force him to do so.

So lets think about the block. If its gated by a long cooldown, then the enemy team will just wait it out and it won't really serve its purpose. So the cooldown should be tiny. Likewise, if the duration is constant, the enemy team will just time their barrage with it and it won't really be useful as a de-aggro tool.

If it blocks only damage, the enemy team will CC Tryndamere immediately and prevent him from blocking, so it wouldn't serve its purpose there either. But if it makes him immune to both damage and CC, and has a tiny cooldown, then the backline may feel like there isn't anything they can do to Trynd, and that doesn't feel very good.

So forcing Tryndamere to block has to cost him something, something that feels important and valuable. Perhaps it costs him his attacks-- then the backline does feel like they can do something to Trynd-- they can stop him from attacking by throwing damage at him. Even if he uses his ultimate to push through that, they can stop him from attacking by using CC.

But is that enough? I don't think so. A tool that makes Trynd immune to CC and damage cannot have an indefinite duration without a weakness. Perhaps blocking should stop Tryndamere from attacking, moving, or turning, and only blocks damage and cc that originates from in front of Trynd-- that way he still has to pay attention to being flanked, and he will have to stop blocking in order to re-position if that occurs, even if it would mean taking damage or cc.

Lastly, should it block tower damage? If it did, then trynd could potentially tank the tower forever (as long as no enemy champions are nearby to flank him). That would mean that Trynd + one ally could take any tower in the game, even without minions, given enough time. It also gives Trynd a way to siege towers with the assistance of his allies. That seems interesting, but ultimately the point of this change is to make Tryndamere less binary in team fights, not more powerful overall. So I'd suggest that it doesn't block towers or epic monsters.

So what do we have? A tiny cooldown channeled ability with no maximum duration that roots Trynd, prevents him from turning or attacking, and blocks damage and cc from in front of him (except from towers and epic monsters). Obviously the cooldown would being once the channel ends, to keep him from just turning and using it again instantly.

I feel that this befits him more as a champion than mocking shout because it makes his playstyle less binary. Instead of feeling like he has to dive because otherwise he'd be forced to ult from far away anyway by backline damage, he has a way to de-aggro himself from the enemy backline at the cost of being able to move, turn or make attacks.

Instead of having Tryndamere dive your AD carry in team fights or split push nonstop, he does what damage he can do to your frontline in between blocking whatever comes his way. The counterplay is to flank Trynd, which forces him to stop blocking and reposition, during which he can be damaged or crowd controlled. So Tryndamere would be cautious about from what direction he approaches your front line, always making sure that a flank isn't imminent, and trying not to put himself in a place where he'd have to block for so long that flanking would be trivial.

By no means is he immune to the front line cc or damage, who can simply walk from melee range out from in front of Trynd to behind him, where they can knock him up, stun him, damage him, or do whatever they need to do in order to break his block. Working around Tryndamere's block would be like a dance between your front line and back line, and is a lot more interesting than just watching Trynd dive or split push without variance or depth.