Can we fix Tristana yet?

Magister Ragun·6/10/2015, 6:44:01 PM·11 votes·1,639 views

As someone who has mained Tristana from day 1 on this game, it makes me really sad that the rework put her in a position where I can't even play her anymore. Her win rates are dismal, and while most of her basic abilities survived the rework, her entire power budget has been loaded onto her E. I suppose for AP players the changes were nice, but for those of us who enjoyed her as an ADC, her rework nerfed everything that made her special into the ground and replaced them with a single E-Q combo that isn't realistic when attacking anything but towers. Her range scaling nerf means she won't outrange even a normal ADC until late game, and her attack speed is so low that without her Q, she can't reasonably kite. This leaves her with no fallback patterns when she is losing, and no payoff when you finally make it to end game.

Tristana having attack speed on her kit left her open to build damage early, giving her strong mid-game pressure, and an interesting decision point during team fights. Now her Q is so dramatic in scale that her base attack speed is trash. This means that playing the character feels frustratingly different while Q is down, dropping so low that Tristana can not reasonably kite opponents, even with a slow. Its also easy to cancel her attacks because the attack frame comes so late with the lower attack speed. I understand that her attackspeed needed a nerf, bit these power windows are so dramatic that I can't so much as approach a teamfight, much less pull off interesting plays. Right now the Q window is so harsh that I wish she didn't have a Q at all. At least then she could auto like a normal champion. Potential fix: Narrow the power window a bit so she feels slow rather than crippled while Q is down, and move the attack frame on her attack up so it is less dramatically impacted by changes in attack speed.

Her new E is a interesting a fun looking ability. My problem with it is that it has consumed so much of her power budget that trying to ever use the E is suicidal. While I like that they have tried to maintain her pushing abilities with E, the execution is very flawed. While she used to be a good pusher because of her overall ability interactions, she is now good and pushing because her ability arbitrarily breaks conventions to be use-able on towers. Because that's where all of her power budget is, she went from 'being good at pushing' to 'only capable of pushing' which is not a reasonable niche for an ADC. When you buffed Tristana in the past, you created additional interactions with her E, loading even more power budget onto it. The W interaction is especially problematic, in that in reinforces her problems of only being functional while snowballing. Attempting an E based combo while behind is not a viable strategy, and therefor W is still only functional as an escape tool unless your team mates have already won the teamfight for you. Potential fix: remove the ability to hit towers with E, and the W-E interaction to free up power budget. Additonally, require an additinal autoattack to detonate if more power budget is needed elsewhere. Restore some of tristana's scaling range, and at least a little attack speed to restore her fallback patterns. If you want W to be used aggressively than give it either a defensive component scaling on champions hit, or an % missing HP mechanic for execution resets

Before Tristana was a weak early game champion that scaled into a long range high mobility ball of damage. Right now Tristana is a weak early game champion whos end game fantasy seems to be shooting at buildings. I do understand that a full reversion would not be healthy for the game, but Tristana in her current form is terrible. As a Tristana main, I tried my best to like new Tristana, but I just can't. Shes just not the Yortle I fell in love with.

16 Comments

Mandang06/10/2015, 7:18:36 PM4 votes

Agreed 100%, Riot needs to admit the focus on E's stacks was a failure, and revert Tris back to having a more-flexible play pattern. Being picked because you're good at killing towers is a fantasy (in the Riot usage) that no ADC player has. Why design a champ around it?

Timewinder6/10/2015, 8:26:54 PM3 votes

Have you seen C9 Sneaky play Tristana? Yesterday on his stream he was dealling incredible damage MID-GAME against other challenger players. He finished it before there even was a late game, in which he would be destroying everyone on the other team. If he was ever out of position, he used a quick rocket jump to get to safety, and then he would just keep AAing until their team was destroyed. A Tristana with good positioning and good peel can and will be extremely deadly. He took down towers amazingly fast as well.

Obviously she is not OP by any means. But she is a decent pick.

Remember Tristana at the S4 Summer Split/Worlds? Where she was ridiculously OP and everyone was crying for a nerf? Everyone who wants Trist to be buffed is probably looking at THAT Tristana and wanting their Freelo back.

Teridax686/10/2015, 8:28:42 PM3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Magister Ragun,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=VymyxMna,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-06-10T18:44:01.518+0000)

I suppose for AP players the changes were nice, but for those of us who enjoyed her as an ADC, her rework nerfed everything that made her special into the ground and replaced them with a single E-Q combo that isn't realistic when attacking anything but towers.

Tristana 's rework hurt her AP playstyle far more than it did even her AD playstyle, I think. AP Tristana is really healthy now, which a good thing, especially since pre-rework AP Trist was gimmicky, super-binary and low on interaction, but her lack of base attack speed means she'll almost invariably be dealing sub-par damage, even if she does level up her Q early (which also sets her back on her burst). I also feel she could do with better ratios, since her combo now incurs a lot more risk.

I think her rework did her a lot of good overall, and I think her tower-busting niche is fine, but I take issue with how so much power is placed around the synergy between Q and E. It's obvious that both abilities work really well with each other, but then there's this whole additional layer of cooldown reduction that occurs when you use both abilities together, and I think that reduces options on Trist more than it helps her. I like the idea of Tristana as a toolbox carry, one with really powerful abilities on really high cooldowns, but I think that also implies her being able to use her abilities somewhat independently, even if using them all in one big combo should carry a lot of power, followed by a significant downtime. Rocket Jump deals more damage based on her E, for example, but also works fine on its own as a gapcloser. By contrast, Explosive Charge is almost impossible to use properly without Rapid Fire, and I think that's the wrong way to encourage a combo between the two. As much as Riot was afraid of giving Trist "soul-crushing" attack speed, I think she deserves much better base AS, especially since her boost's been trimmed to be much shorter, and I think it might even be a better idea to scrap the cooldown reduction on Rapid Fire completely in exchange for a boost to her attack speed. She'd still be weak when her abilities are on cooldown, and she'd have much more downtime on her actives, but at least she'd get to feel really powerful when using any single ability, not just everything at once, and she'd be able to use her E better without having to always rely on her Q.

Ulquiorra9956/11/2015, 9:42:12 AM3 votes

They were just so obsessed with giving her "windows of power" that she feels completely terrible when any of two abilities that make said window are down. And considering that most ADCs have no such windows, well... It happens a lot that you outfarm and/or kill them - but hey, too bad, say Jinx or Ashe aren't reliant on gimmicky 1-2 combo for their damage and as such they can and will overpower you if one of your abilities happens to be unavailable. Tone down Q and E, give her buffs in other areas. And for God's sake, revert her range nerfs.

shteeeb6/10/2015, 11:32:53 PM2 votes

You are high. I've been playing TONS of Tristana lately, and she is strong. Her level 2 is huge because of the E-W interaction. Her W resets are like a better version of Jinx's passive. She is the best ADC in terms of self-peeling, next to Vayne. IE+PD she is plenty strong, and I even can assassinate anyone who is squishy.

Tristana is perfectly fine right now, and in my opinion, plenty strong. Just because you can't use her right doesn't mean she should get unnecessary buffs so that later on she can get gutted.

Remlap12236/10/2015, 9:43:29 PM2 votes

All Tristana needs is to have her AS numbers reverted back pre Q nerfs, and to lower the AS on her Q as a compensation nerf. Tristana still hits like a truck, the issue is that she is 100% item reliant mid game and 100% ability reliant late game, and her build doesn't help her in either regard. Building CDR gives her abilities more usage, but she won't have any useful penetration. Building penetration will make her abilities have a huge cooldown. Building Shiv makes her mana hungry and guts her ultimate's damage. Building Triforce nukes her AOE damage and DPS.

Her problem is similar to Cait's. Her kit is fantastic, but her build is absolutely terrible. It can be fixed with rebalancing her numbers or adding more options to build. Also, MAKE AP TRISTANA A THING AGAIN!

Sukishoo6/10/2015, 9:44:31 PM1 votes

Her rework is great, especially the fact that it KILLED and REMOVED AP Trist as a possibility.

Sohleks6/11/2015, 8:46:18 AM1 votes

To be completely honest I think Tristana is very strong right now, and we will be seeing more Tristana fairly soon.