Urgh since when is Tryndamere a valid pick again? (Kinda long thread, I try to make a Tl; dr)

SaltyToplaneGoat··9 votes·1,104 views

Seriously, even thinking about that champ gives me headaches. You wanna know why? Becuase the design is so horrificly outdated, unhealty and unbearable that is absolutely clashes with modern League. It's like a shitty crossover in cartoons and you see the different art styles clash and just looking at it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Sure, many of the original 40 are, or have been, downright garbage in design. That's why we are having reworks in the first place. But Trynd is the only one who can win his lane with sheer luck and has the easiest to use kit, and still can snowball so brutally hard it's downright ridiculous - and all that while playing PvE most of the game.

And yeah I just lost a game to one, you can see it in my matchmaking, but this never went past minute 10, as bot started to tilt and intentionally feed and I just got my ass whooped every time I even tried to farm as probably even their Zyra support could 1vs1 me given their level and gold advantage. (So not that anyone suspects I was intentionally feeding here).

But that doesn't change the fact that no matter how you look at this champion, there is literally nothing, NOTHING you could preserve and use as a core for a worthwhile redesign. Sion had still the shield going for him. Poppy had her wall-crush tackle. Even when their entire kits had to get redone, there was still something in there worth preserving. Not so with Trynd. His kit is not interactive, and his ultimate has the same issue Poppy once faced: yes it was iconic, but also horrible design and consumes WAY too much of his power budget.

Also, what irks me the most: even when measured by the standards of the time of his creation he doesn't compete. I know that early Riot was a bunch of enthusiastic noobs banding together who only were at the very beginning of becoming professionals... but holy shit, who greenlighted that design? It's as if someone with absolutely no idea of literally anything just butted in, made a joke character, and everyone had to roll with it for some stupid reason.

And yes, I'd see him as a joke character made by an untalented amateur.

I'd like to imagine it like this is how it happened: the design team is working and suddenly a dude, let's name him "Dave", comes in. Dave totally loves the game and also wants to make a champion, so he keeps bugging the team if he can't just make one single champion. Only one, that can't hurt right? And maybe one on the team owed him one or maybe Dave was a big-guy in the upstarting company, or maybe they were all boozed at that time... whatever was the case, and so he got his wish. And as Dave has absolutely no clue about design he just copies something that he knows already from RPGs: the classical undying berserker archetype, because slaughtering your way through enemies without dying and just spamming the attack button is always fun, right? Maybe he should have thought how the monsters in an RPG feel like when encountering such a character, as this is what other players would come to experience soon.

Meanwhile, the art and vfx guys doesn't object the design either, they are just happy they barely need any particle work or overy complicated artworks done. "Half naked dude with a sword? Yeah that's simple and easy, we can do that."

Then Dave gave his character a "generic tragic backstory" (tm) as a finishing touch and puts it into the game, where it miraculously didn't prove to be absolutely broken despite the design being the most shoddy thing the entire team has ever seen. But as long as it works and if it would keep Dave from bugging them they are ok with it. Also, the current meta was slower, with less damage and mobility creep (these really piled up over the years...), more hard cc and generally a slower game pace, so the shoddy design didn't cause too many problems.

Either it was that or the designer had a really bad day when coming up with the concept and was feeling especially unmotivated and had a random character to do to fill his quota for the week. That's just how uninspired and bad this design appears to me.

Now fast forward to today, LoL is a multi-million player game that has expanded all around the globe, one of the world's most popular Esport that managed to steal that position from Starcraft 2, the company has become a lot more professional as well, they are no longer a bunch of wacky amateurs that they were almost a decade ago. Structures have become more efficient, fixed team structures now work on champions, a lot more testing is done, and the impact of a single designer is reduced, as three brains work better than one mostly, especially when it comes to spotting flaws in one's own work.

And yet, the mistakes of the past still haunt this game. Generally, melee and bruiser design was pretty much an "experiment gone wrong", as the releases of Irelia and Xin Zhao (I still have traumatic flashbacks to that one...) had shown. But before all that, Tryndramere is pretty much the "original sin".

The main problem in here is melee-carry design. How do you make a champion based on melee damage ability/complex mechanic dependant? I think the new Fiora is a good design (minus the true damage, seriously, that's always an issue when balance shifts around), heck, even Riven, Yasuo, and Ekko, with ALL THEIR FLAWS THEY HAVE AND OF WHICH I AM TOTALLY AWARE OF show more promise in terms of delivering a "melee brawler design". Yi, Warwick, Aatrox (he only needs a real ultimate tho), Irelia, Xin, Trynd... all have issues of varying degrees, but a successfull rework can only be done if the issue with melee designs has been tackeled.

Isn't this something you can get mechanic-obsessed people like CertainlyT on? Seriously, put 5 designers together, give them a Kasten of beer and infinite amounts of coffee and make them come up with as many "modern melee" kits as possible. Especially when you want to update the "Diver" class you will need that, so you might as well start now with a massive rework-offensive that gets most if not all of the old shoddy design out of the game.

And until then I will keep banning Trynd from my ranked games wether he is OP or not, for I cannot stand seeing such shoddy backwards design in such a great game. It would be nice if he would be gutted just like Yorick, who pretty much had the same thing called "design too horrible for our game" going, but I think this would be too much to ask for.


And as I said in the title, here the attempt of a conclusion:

Tl, dr: Tryndramere a design failure from all possible perspectives, however, he is only the worst offender in an entire group of champions. So to fix his issue, we gotta fix all the champs also affected as the problem runs deeper. Until then, I recommend gutting the champion entirely, not even for game health, but simply because of how embarassingly shoddy and inaesthetic his design is, and this brings dishonor to the game, the developer, the dev's clan, AND their cow. And that's not something anyone could want, right?

25 Comments

oSEXYPLATYPUSo5 votes

all champs are viable if you know how to play them and pick them into the right match up/team comp

[zombie-brand-mindblown]

SaltyToplaneGoat4 votes

Usually yes, but not all. Old Yorick and other champs who once got intentionally gutted by Riot would want to have a word with you.

Did you even read my post or just the title?

Arakadia1 votes

I played Yorick before his rework. I remember one GP said Yorick was garbo. And literally 2 minutes later I 1v4'd there team and lived.

SaltyToplaneGoat2 votes

Yeah, the question was more: on what skill level and how many kills did they feed to you? Even a totally gutted champ suddenly becomes broken with several levels and items ahead, and/or if you are on a level where you might as well play AP Leona and carry games.

MatthewRT22 votes

yorick till the day he was reworked could out bully anyone in lane behind or not, he was only deemed unhealthy for the game and then nerfed and forgotten because he was the definition of anti-fun, just point click and you win

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Mostly his range abuse against other melee toplaners. However, back in the day I just picked Cho'Gath and auto-won...

TeemoXNidalee4 votes

Yeah there's almost no mechanics associated with Trynda, but to splitpush effectively you need pretty good game awareness.

If you think his ult is toxic, look at Kayle: Trynd ult that can be cast on allies

SaltyToplaneGoat2 votes

Well, there is a reason Kayle is up for a VGU in the near future.

However, the ultimates are not exactly the same, as Kayle's does not even have the half duration of Tryndra's. 2 second invulnerability or 5 make a massive difference after all. But yes, it has caused quite some issues regardless. The difference is that kayle is effectivly gutted in the common perception and no one plays her, so the issue is not so big.

JhomasTefferson1 votes

Kayle also doesn't have the mobility

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Well she has her speed boost that is quite high when she's getting some ap, but of course no comparision to a wall-crossing dash free of any resource

StealWolverine1 votes

Tryndameres ult only prevents him from dying. Kayles stops all dmg. Kayles ult also goes up to 3 seconds. Kayle also has an almost 50% higher playrate than tryndamere. (per champion.gg across all roles)

Uzi Maki Moto2 votes

There is a skill gap to Tryndamere of knowing when to heal or when to save fury for crit chance. While he does take lower skill than average you cant't just say that he is all luck and no skill

SaltyToplaneGoat2 votes

When the lane is literally decided by "do I get a crit when walking on him?" that's pretty much luck. And then it becomes a gamble if you get lucky and gain 2 crits in a row.

Also, that results into the fact that playing against Tryndramere requires a lot more effort than actually playing him. Not exactly good design I'd say.

AlienPrimate1 votes

This goes the other way too. Tryn's kit relies on crits and he can have a string of bad luck not getting any crits for an extended period. Singling out Tryn is kind of dumb when any champion who builds any amount of crit has the same luck factor. If you want the "luck" part of Tryn removed then you should be asking for the removal of crit entirely for everyone and not just a single champ.

Another thing I don't understand is that people have been complaining about melee vs ranged constantly for the past few weeks and others complain about how broken and unfun Tryn is to play against when he is one of the melee champions who can beat ranged champions. If you remove champions like Tryn then you have to gut ranged then you have to gut gap closing then you have essentially gutted your whole game. No matter what Riot does there are going to be champions who people complain about. Tryndamere is much easier to deal with than a lot of other champions. If you know you are going to have problems with him based on who you are playing then just start warden's mail and the problem is solved. Ask anyone who plays tryn. If the enemy top laner builds warden's mail first item it is basically gg for top lane.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Indeed, a removal of crit is the best what could happen to the game in my experience and the only reliable way to reduce the every growing damage creep and bring ADCs, the root of all balance issues, back in line.

The problem is not that Trynd just "beats" ranged champions. The problem is in how he does it and that it just feels absolutely unfair, as he just sits on you and murders you with 3-4 hits while being unable to die anyways.

The main reason ranged is so strong is because the garbage meelee design we have now IS NOT ALLOWED TO BE ANY STRONGER OR IT WOULD BREAK THE GAME. Anyone remembers leage of bruisers/black cleaver? That were some weird times I tell ya...

Arakadia1 votes

The fury system (Not the RNG part) and the Q is cool. W could be implemented better. Rest isn't necessary in a rework.

SaltyToplaneGoat2 votes

Well but it barely does anything apart from giving RNG right now... and the Q is for one a stat gimmic, for the other free lane sustain... I am not sure in what design this could prove healthy.

JhomasTefferson1 votes

I think he would be ok if they changed his ult to a large amount of damage in some way or a aa buff, or literally anything else besides "you don't die"

MEMEME6701 votes

Also, what irks me the most: even when measured by the standards of the time of his creation he doesn't compete. I know that early Riot was a bunch of enthusiastic noobs banding together who only were at the very beginning of becoming professionals... but holy shit, who greenlighted that design? It's as if someone with absolutely no idea of literally anything just butted in, made a joke character, and everyone had to roll with it for some stupid reason.

And yes, I'd see him as a joke character made by an untalented amateur.

You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? The standards of his time? You do realize a majority of champs could win or lose lane based off of rng at this time, right? (Dodge seals were standard) Oh, and you've heard of release TF, right? Where the only limiter to a red-card sized 2 second stun was being able to actually hit the gold card? (which anyone could do with a minimal amount of practice.) Not to mention gate as a basic ability...

OH, and the best thing for a support player to do was to NOT BUY ITEMS. You just bought gp/10 and wards, and MAYBE in late game eventually got an aegis. (this, along with being underlevelled due to exp catchup mechanics being less, meant you would often randomly die because you got hit by 2 or 3 random aoe spells from the enemy team, or the enemy adc autoattacked you 3 times.)

And you think TRYNDAMERE was bad design for his time? Why should I take you seriously at all?

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

You are throwing item desing, system design, and champion design together. Why should I take YOU seriously at all? That'd be a more legitimate question I'd say.

However, as there have been many flaws in the original designs, many have been removed in a relatively quick time. Dodge got kicked out quite early, support's as a ward-mule stopped being a thing literally years ago. However, Trynd is still the same and he's still atrocious to look at. I'd say that even AP Yi had more legitimation of existence than Trynd had, that's how deep my hartred for his design goes.

MEMEME6701 votes

You are throwing item desing, system design, and champion design together. Why should I take YOU seriously at all? That'd be a more legitimate question I'd say.

To show you that all design was bad back then, and this wasn't just some weird isolated incident.

However, Trynd is still the same and he's still atrocious to look at. I'd say that even AP Yi had more legitimation of existence than Trynd had, that's how deep my hartred for his design goes.

Why do you hate his design so much? Trynd has meaningful decisions both in lane phase and throughout the mid-late game, and his opponents can do things against him, just damage isn't always one of those things (much like Kayle or Taric, and similar to Olaf, but instead of damage sometimes CC isn't one of the options.)

Sure, sometimes he can get extremely unlucky or lucky and win or lose a fight that he definitely shouldn't in lane. But these situations are astronomically unlikely. The innate crit chance does more often decide fights that're very close, but that also happens with ADCs, and while annoying it is possible to prepare for and play against, so I don't see it as all that bad.

AlienPrimate1 votes

Any argument you make against Tryn isn't very convincing when you go 1/8/0 on Vlad against him and build item 3001 when you took 17k physical damage and 3k magic damage.

That's the same as the middle laner who says "Annie blows me up with one click of R" and proceeds to build item 3075

Ahristocats1 votes

tryndamere original design was a high damage melee carry with no utility. His only utilty is -80 AD which is invisible power and is here just for dueling since it has a long cd and isn't reduced by CDR cause trynd doesn't build cdr.

he was good in pre-season 1, season 1 at doing his job. Afterward ranged adc came up in the meta, and trynd disappeared, only to come back with AP trynd in season 3/4, and split push trynd in season 3/4.

Sasogwa1 votes

I don't understand why people ever complain about low mobility low utility champion. Yeah, Tryndamere's a kinda good duellist/splitpusher ; but he has only that going for him, hence why he's garbage in competitive and average at best in soloQ. You gotta be one hell of a trynda one trick to climb with him. Oh yeah his ult prevents him to die. Well I find that less unhealthy than the champions that have either insane mobility, or spammable ridiculous crowd control (may it be even someone with item 3116). Trynd has a bit of RNG in his kit. Well for some reason everyone that has something against tryn uses that argument.

  1. So what?
  2. it's not even real random, it's a random changed to be overall more consistent (aka very low chance to get multiple crits in a row, lower chance to not get crits at all)
  3. It's not that crazy of a power budget tbh. And it's not more offensive than ADC's in any way.

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