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Tristana 5.7 First reactions.

Nilok··7 votes·1,599 views

So I've played a couple games with Tristana in her current state and a here are some things that jump out at me.

  • First thing is Tristana's inability to stack her Explosive Charge unless you are being engaged.

I don't know if she need more range or movement speed, but Tristana can't seem to put enough stacks on her target before they leave her range. With the number of dashes and mobility boosts in League of Legends, this is a major problem. I can understand the "all in" concept of Tristana with her Rocket Jump, but that leads me into the next issue.

  • Explosive Charge does not deal enough damage.

Unless you max out the stacks on Explosive Charge, it is not an effective spell. In fact, because of how long it takes to get stacked up early and mid game, it will most likely just deal some extra damage after they run away or you die not adding anything meaningful. It should reach reasonable damage at 2-3 stacks and 4-5 should be above the normal damage compared to other champions. Currently it is just too weak. Late game you are lucky to get it on a primary target without getting gibbed, or you get it on a tank for the AoE, who laughs at your attempt to deal any damage whatsoever and moves away from his team toward you.

  • Mana problems.

With the addition of a cooldown reduction in Rapid Fire for Explosive Charge, you will have Explosive Charge up more often, however, this leads to a design problem of you being encouraged to throw your Explosive Charge and Rapid Fire all the time to get it back, only to find you are out of mana after about 3-4 charges, let alone her Rocket Jump. This wouldn't be much of a problem for Explosive Charge except for point two, where each of those Explosive Charges are overcost and underpowered.

  • Bug: Using Rapid Fire will sometimes cause you to stop shooting.

I'm not sure why, but many times during my games early on, when I would hit Rapid Fire, I would sometimes simply stop shooting like I hit the 'S' key. In order to fire again, I would have to issue another attack command. This cost me several kills.

  • Explosive Charge travel time and range.

This feels more like a personal play problem, I just figured I would put it here anyways. Currently, it feels very dangerous to even try throwing your Explosive Charge onto someone, since how close you currently need to get to apply it. With the number of dashes and CC, the act of trying to get in range to toss the Explosive Charge always feels like a risk, let alone trying to get any stacks on it. Maybe if it had some more range it wouldn't feel so nerve racking, but that may just be me.

How have other people's game with Tristana been on 5.7, have you had better luck than me?

12 Comments

Krevik5 votes
  • First thing is Tristana's inability to stack her Explosive Charge unless you are being engaged.

I don't know if she need more range or movement speed, but Tristana can't seem to put enough stacks on her target before they leave her range.

Her movement speed is the lowest in the game, and increasing that would definitely help, but the bigger problem is her excessively long AA animation. If the enemy moves away from you while you are trying to stack E from max range, you'll be out of range by the end of the AA, and with only 325 MS, good luck catching up.

  • Explosive Charge does not deal enough damage.

I agree 100%. Given the difficulties in stacking it up on a champion, the damage should feel really rewarding. As it is, Explosive Charge with no stacks does roughly one AA's worth of damage. Fully stacked, it only does two AA's worth of damage (or the equivalent of one crit). That's a lot of effort for only one extra auto attack. I think that if Explosive Charge is placed on an enemy champion, each stack should increases its damage by 50% instead of 25%.

  • Mana problems.

Tristana's has the smallest mana pool of any adc in the game. (247 + 32/level -- For comparison, the average adc mana is 280 + 39/level.) Only Ashe, Vayne, Kalista, and Jinx have less mana than Tristana at level 1, but by level 6, even they outscale her. Pre-rework, this tiny mana pool made sense because all Tristana really cared about was auto attacking. Now however, she's been reworked to heavily rely on Explosive Charge, which she can't do effectively with her tiny mana pool. I really hope Riot realizes their mistake soon and gives Tristana the mana she needs to justify her new playstyle.

  • Explosive Charge travel time and range.

Currently, it feels very dangerous to even try throwing your Explosive Charge onto someone, since how close you currently need to get to apply it.

I thought this at first too ... until I realized that if it had any longer range, you wouldn't be able to stack it after putting in on someone. So I can see why it has the same range as her AA.

The real problem I see here is that her rework was intended to "cement her role as a daredevil reset carry who gets bonuses from (rocket) jumping into fights." But Tristana's kit just isn't equipped to do this. Her maximum burst is achieved by E -> 4 AAs -> W, which she'll never be able to do to an enemy squishy who isn't terribly out of position, and because her only reset is her W, if she uses this combo to finish off a frontline tank, she'll only have auto attacks once she jumps onto someone in the backline.

In summary, it seems that although Riot says they want to make Tristana a "daredevil reset carry," they're still trying to preserve a weaker version of her old late-game hypercarry self. The result isn't really good at either (as Tristana's winrate shows). Which is really a shame, because I absolutely love the new Explosive Charge minigame! I'm really hoping she gets balanced properly soon so I can have fun _and _ win with Tristana. :-)

Nilok2 votes

That is a really good detailed review of Tristana's current state.

We need a red to see this and send it to the balance team.

Crett3 votes

Remove the cast time on Explosive Charge

Nilok1 votes

Would you mind elaborating?

Crett1 votes

{quoted}

Would you mind elaborating?

no cast time like hecarim's Q doesn't interrupt her actions

RIP Tahm Kench1 votes

Maybe turn it into an empowered attack kind of deal with an auto attack reset?

Crett1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Mr MM No Chat,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bx4b6lJg,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2015-04-13T05:30:57.128+0000)

Maybe turn it into an empowered attack kind of deal with an auto attack reset?

merhaps

Nilok1 votes

That might work, but after reviewing the math of Explosive Charge, at best, it will be slightly better than two auto attacks worth of damage and worse than a single IE crit. The numbers, base or scaling, need a buff.

Tengrichan1 votes

So i am not the only one who saw these problems on her. Here are my thoughts about her: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/rTfcPAzo-meddler-tristanas-kit-and-the-changes-on-pbe Unfortunately nobody bothered to reply.

Nilok1 votes

A big problem is people loathed Tristana for having a powerful late game because she was built around it and wanted her nerfed into the ground, which Riot foolishly did instead of balancing her properly and I feel people want Tristana to stay nerfed as some sort of cathartic vengeance.

My gut is telling me that the reason Riot is doing "small changes" for balancing right is because of LCS and we won't see any meaningful changes until May.

djjomon1 votes

OP, you definitely seem to have explained Trist's weaknesses quite well. Though, I personally think these are what are gating her from being OP. A lot of what you posted keeps her laning somewhat weaker, which is best for a hyper carry. And as for not being able to land her E on priority targets, well she's an ADC. They can't always focus squishies without being out of position anyway.

I'm in no way saying you're wrong about any of this. But correcting these weaknesses may turn Trist back into an OP monster. "Cancer" as people call it

Nilok1 votes

I can understand the ideas behind the changes, but the execution is the problem.

A main selling point of the remake was to improve Tristana's mid game while pulling slightly back on late game so she wasn't OP, but still a powerhouse. What we have instead is a worse mid game than early game or late game, and a trash late game with only two other ADC in ranked plat+ having a worse late game win rate. Tristana also suffers from the worst ADC damage in the game.

Explosive Charge for instance, is woefully underpowered. At maxed stacks, it does just barely more than two auto attacks and less than a single crit. While it does deal damage in an AoE, the investment in time, mana, and cooldown makes the ability near worthless except for pushing towers. If explosive charge dealt damage upfront instead of having to invest more time into make it worthwhile or it was more powerful, maybe scaled off total AD instead of bonus, it would be worth something.

I have a feeling that the balance team is balancing Tristana based on how powerful she was in the past instead of her current performance.

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