Boards›Gameplay

Tristana needs more changes

The5lacker··4 votes·1,108 views

So the Tristana update looks promising. Explosive Charge is fantastic conceptually, and Trist loses the "Faceroll or die" mentality she used to have in favor of more of a "Ballroom Blitz" approach to combat. Which is fantastic. However, she still has a number of issues.

  1. Tristana is still the safest hyper-carry in the game, and your changes don't really do anything to change that. Yes, Rocket Jump is no longer the best burst spell in the game just by itself, but she still passively out-ranges everyone, she still has one of the best AA steroids in the game, she still has one of the longest jumps in the game, she still has a low cooldown, high CC ult (unheard of on a hypercarry), and she still has plenty of strong base damages to recover even if she gets behind. If you're going to make a change to give her actual weaknesses, give her actual weaknesses. If it's worth claiming you're doing, it's worth actually doing right.

  2. Tristana's Q is still one of the most boring abilities in the history of the game. "Hurr durr bonus AS." And that's it.

  3. Tristana's E still forces her to uncontrollably push the lane from last-hitting. Uncontrollable AoE is a bad idea.

So lets take this opportunity to give Tristana a full update, shuffle some abilities around, and solidify her identity as this "Heavy Assault Specialist."

Passive - Mayhem

  • Killing enemies reduces Tristana's cooldowns by 1 second. Killing enemy champions or destroying enemy towers reduces her cooldowns by 3 seconds.

Q - Gunpowder Blitz

  • Passive - Tristana increases her autoattack range by 25/50/75/100/125 (To 575/600/625/650/675).
  • Active - Tristana employs a special high-explosive gunpowder that increases her Attack Speed by 30/40/50/60/70%. Additionally, her attacks explode on impact, dealing 20/30/40/50/60 (+20% AD) (+20% AP) bonus physical damage to all enemies in a small area, including her primary target.
  • Cost: 60/55/50/45/40 Mana
  • Cooldown: 20/19/18/17/16 Seconds
  • Blast Radius: 225

W - Rocket Jump

  • First Active - Tristana begins charging over 3 seconds, increasing the range of her jump. While charging she's slowed by 20% and can't attack or activate other abilities. She reaches full charge in 1.5 seconds, and after 3 seconds the ability fails, refunding half of its mana cost and cooldown.
  • Second Active - Tristana fires her cannon into the ground and rockets through the air, dealing 60/90/120/150/180 (+50% AP) magic damage to enemies in an area around where she jumps from and where she lands. Enemies hit by both blasts are only dealt 50% damage by the second one. All enemies hit are slowed by 40/50/60/70/80% for 2 seconds, with the slow decaying over its duration. If Tristana lands on an enemy she's placed an Explosive Charge on, her landing deals a bonus 25% damage for each 25% bonus damage Explosive Charge will currently do. This bonus damage is dealt to all targets within the radius, but is reduced by half against enemies already damages as normal.
  • Cost: 80 Mana
  • Cooldown: 20/18/16/14/12 Seconds
  • Range: 350 - 850
  • Damage Radius: 275

E - Explosive Charge

  • Active - Tristana places an explosive onto an enemy or tower that detonates after 4 seconds, dealing 80/120/160/200/240 (+80% bonus AD) (+60% AP) physical damage to enemies in an area around it. Each attack Tristana lands against the target increases the damage dealt by the explosive by 25%, with the fifth attack detonating it immediately.
  • Cost: 60/70/80/90/100 Mana
  • Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12 Seconds
  • Range: 600
  • Blast Radius: 300

Ultimate - Firestorm Barrage

  • Active - Tristana plants her feet and unloads a barrage of fire from her cannon, dealing continuous damage in a cone in front of her. She deals 40/60/80 (+30% bonus AD) (+20% AP) physical damage every 0.25 seconds to enemies within the cone over 2.5 seconds, dealing a maximum of 400/600/800 (+300% bonus AD) (+200% AP) damage over that duration. Though she can't move while channeling her barrage, Tristana can rotate within a 135 degree arc from her initial angle, allowing her to track priority targets.
  • Cost: 100 Mana
  • Cooldown: 120/100/80 Seconds
  • Range: 800

These changes help make Tristana more mechanically interesting and offer unique reward patterns. She can keep up the aggression if she keeps a steady kill count, and while still hard to chase, no longer has the world's best knockback on top of the world's best jump. Her ult behaves like a fusion of Vel'Koz's and Miss Fortunes: A massive spray of damage with distinctive blind spots that requires teammate coordination for maximum effectiveness, but offers insane teamfight potential and allows for easy clean up with her cooldown resets and high AoE damage. Hopefully, at least some of these changes will be considered and Tristana will find her place as the go-to AoE AD champ as opposed to a weird...wizard smurf thing.

20 Comments

SmokingPuffin4 votes

Not a fan of your ult change. Really want to play with the new knockback + explosive charge combo, and this seems too similar to MF ult for comfort.

The charging up W thing seems extremely hard to use effectively. Seems like there is no possible way to make jumping on someone anything but a big DPS loss.

The5lacker1 votes

As fun as that combo is, there is no way Tristana should be allowed to have a dash on top of a strong, ranged knockback. That's way too much safety for a hypercarry, or even a regular carry. I can't even think of another one with both a dash and a displacement ability. Maybe Draven, if you count his pitiful MS steroid and ~100 distance knockback on his E?

Tristana cannot be allowed to have both a strong knockback and a strong dash. She gets too much battlefield control all by herself if that's the case. I figured people would be less upset about losing the knockback as opposed to losing the jump.

SmokingPuffin3 votes

As fun as that combo is, there is no way Tristana should be allowed to have a dash on top of a strong, ranged knockback.

I think it is good when champions have unique strong things. You should have to pick and play differently when your opponent has a Tristana, or an Ashe, or a Graves. It's bad for the game when the meta has champions that are similar enough that you don't need to alter your gameplan.

The5lacker1 votes

That doesn't mean every strong, unique thing is a good idea.

You could have a champion with a 10 second suppression. That'd be both strong and unique. And also a bad idea.

SmokingPuffin3 votes

That's true, and certainly a 10 second suppression ability is unhealthy.

That said, you haven't made much of a case for why Tristana W+R is a bad design. We have had many metas where Tristana has been a healthy addition to the game. In fact, she's only been broken a couple times in League history, and both of those cases were times where her itemization was broken.

Concretely:

there is no way Tristana should be allowed to have a dash on top of a strong, ranged knockback. That's way too much safety for a hypercarry, or even a regular carry.

I don't agree. There are plenty of answers to Tristana's safety measures available. She's not dominating competitive picks, or even really seen much. She's neither a high popularity nor a high win rate solo queue carry. Overall, I think she's fun and I'm pretty interested in these changes, but I don't really see much reason to be scared of her ruling the game either before or after them.

The5lacker1 votes

Champ not currently dominating =/= champion design is healthy. Urgot and Poppy aren't currently dominating either. Riot has purposefully undertuned them because then they do dominate, they dominate to an excessive degree.

Right now it's possible for Tristana to blast someone 700 units away from her a further 1000 units away from her, then leap an additional 900 units away from them. She can place a distance of 2200 between herself and a potential threat. I can't think of a single champion in the game who can reliably clear that distance or make an equal amount of distance between themselves and a target outside of semi-global ults like Pantheon, TF, and Nocturne, who pay for it by...not being hypercarries. Tristana is low-risk/high-reward champion. I shouldn't have have to explain to you why that's bad design. You should understand why that's bad design. Why am I even having this conversation? Who doesn't understand healthy risk/reward ratios?

SmokingPuffin2 votes

Champ not currently dominating =/= champion design is healthy. Urgot and Poppy aren't currently dominating either. Riot has purposefully undertuned them because then they do dominate, they dominate to an excessive degree.

Agreed.

This is clearly not true of Tristana though. We have seen many previous metas where Tristana is a healthy addition to the game. Even when Tristana has been at her strongest, the game has still been pretty healthy.

Right now it's possible for Tristana to blast someone 700 units away from her a further 1000 units away from her, then leap an additional 900 units away from them. She can place a distance of 2200 between herself and a potential threat. I can't think of a single champion in the game who can reliably clear that distance or make an equal amount of distance between themselves and a target outside of semi-global ults like Pantheon, TF, and Nocturne, who pay for it by...not being hypercarries.

Unique strengths are good things unless they have a clearly negative effect on the game. I don't see much reason to think that Tristana is having such an effect.

Tristana is low-risk/high-reward champion. I shouldn't have have to explain to you why that's bad design. You should understand why that's bad design. Why am I even having this conversation? Who doesn't understand healthy risk/reward ratios?

A low-risk, high-reward champion is generally bad design. You're not making much of a case for Tristana being in this category though. Yes, she has self peel and long range. So what? What champions is she pushing out of the game? What strategies is she denying the opponent from using?

For example, Urgot is a problem because he bullies all but the strongest ADCs out of the lane.

The5lacker1 votes

"Clearly not true." What are you, the grand arbiter of game health? I've never seen anyone who considered AP Trist particularly healthy, and though AD Trist isn't the most frustrating champ around it's still neither engaging nor easily balanced, which isn't healthy.

If you can't understand why a hypercarry having the ability to remain safe by herself has a clearly negative effect on the game, then I can't have a discussion with you. You don't seem to grasp core game concepts and until you have a sturdy foundation for debate there's nothing I can do.

How am I not making the case for a high-safety hypercarry being high-reward/low-risk? That's the very definition. Hypercarry = high-reward. High-safety = low-risk. I am literally defining the term for you with my example. Tristana has one of the strongest AS steroids in the game (high reward), passively out-ranged every champ in the game (low risk), has the longest range jump of any ADC in the game (low risk), with very high base damages (high reward), a strong knockback in case anyone gets close to her (low risk), and has her jump reset on-kill (A risk reduction that is, in and of itself, a reward.)

Tristana is an ADC who hard-counters assassins and initiators. You know, the champion archetypes specifically designed to deal with ADCs?

SmokingPuffin1 votes

{quoted}

"Clearly not true." What are you, the grand arbiter of game health? I've never seen anyone who considered AP Trist particularly healthy, and though AD Trist isn't the most frustrating champ around it's still neither engaging nor easily balanced, which isn't healthy.

To be clear, the part that is clearly not true of Tristana is "when they dominate, they dominate to an excessive degree." We've had plenty of metagames where Tristana is the best ADC, and the game has generally survived quite well under those conditions.

Even when Tristana is amazing, she doesn't generate anywhere near as much hate as Urgot, or even Lucian.

If you can't understand why a hypercarry having the ability to remain safe by herself has a clearly negative effect on the game, then I can't have a discussion with you. You don't seem to grasp core game concepts and until you have a sturdy foundation for debate there's nothing I can do.

You probably shouldn't have a discussion with me then.

I believe that It is good when champions have strong strengths and weak weaknesses. In fact, I much prefer this sort of design to generalists that are good at most things and great at nothing.

How am I not making the case for a high-safety hypercarry being high-reward/low-risk? That's the very definition. Hypercarry = high-reward. High-safety = low-risk. I am literally defining the term for you with my example.

Hypercarry does not mean high reward. It means high scaling.

Akali is an example of a high reward champion. Get a couple kills on her and you dominate the game. A 2/0/0 Tristana doesn't do that.

Tristana has one of the strongest AS steroids in the game (high reward), passively out-ranged every champ in the game (low risk), has the longest range jump of any ADC in the game (low risk), with very high base damages (high reward), a strong knockback in case anyone gets close to her (low risk), and has her jump reset on-kill (A risk reduction that is, in and of itself, a reward.)

You can make any champion sound OP if you just list their kit with maximum bias.

Tristana is an ADC who hard-counters assassins and initiators. You know, the champion archetypes specifically designed to deal with ADCs?

She doesn't hard counter assassins. Not even close. LeBlanc, Talon, Zed, Rengar, etc can reliably kill her before R finishes casting.

I also don't see how Tristana hard counters initiation. Her W is quite long ranged, but it's also quite slow, making it ineffective at avoiding things like Amumu or Blitzcrank Q, while Graves easily solves the problem. She similarly has no play against Syndra QE or Fiddlesticks RQ.

Nubeel2 votes

Also if she's jumping away or knocking someone away from her she isn't contributing to a fight anymore/at all.

The5lacker2 votes

You're absolutely, 100% right. We should have champs who all have totally excessive strengths and obvious weaknesses. Definitely. We need a champ with a 10 second suppression and nothing else. Why? Because it's unique! So very unique! Never been done before, obvious strenghts, obvious weakness, top tier design.

AnomalousChimera2 votes

{quoted}I can't even think of another one with both a dash and a displacement ability.

Vayne.

Meep Man2 votes

I don't know, many of the people that play Tristana that I know of right now like her current kit but don't like her E because it doesn't give much to her besides Grievous Wounds when building AD. I think they will like her new E and will enjoy the changes they made to her kit overall.

  1. Well, they did nerf her passive attack speed again. With how Tristana is, she will always be the safest hyper carry. In fact, she is possibly even only a hyper carry because she is as safe as she is.
  2. Well, sometimes the most basic abilities to me feel the best. Gaining 110% attack speed feels really awesome to me.
  3. I kind of agree with this, but I don't see a way around it without also nerfing her since her E passive damage is also reliable harass for AP Trist and in-lane AD Trist.
The5lacker1 votes

People like playing Tristana because she's effective, not because she's engaging. AD Trist right clicks the enemy and plays keep away with her jump and knockback, and AP Trist buys DFG then facerolls. Neither are particularly healthy nor engaging play patterns.

And Grievous Wounds allows Trist to win most duels with other ADCs as Lifesteal is so crucial to survival, which is another problem in and of itself.

Sire Hippington1 votes

There are several changes but for the time being, here is her new E

sounds for me like there are more changes comming than just E....

The5lacker1 votes

I'm curious where exactly you quoted that from. I said that they're currently ONLY changing her E and I'd like a more complete kit readjustment.

Sire Hippington1 votes

http://www.surrenderat20.net/2015/01/113-pbe-update.html#more, pbe notes

The5lacker1 votes

Gotcha. Yeah I figured there would be, but no reason not to get my thoughts into the ring.

Meep Man1 votes

I can't even think of another one with both a dash and a displacement ability.

Good she has some unique strengths about her.

The5lacker1 votes

Unique =/= well designed.

Morgana's 3 second snare is very unique. People bitch about it all day. Yasuo's a very unique champion. Almost universally hated for months. Urgot is a very unique champion. He's never used. You should use him more. He has very unique strengths and you should appreciate him, because obviously the most important aspect of a champion isn't balance, design, or health: It's uniqueness, like some special little flower.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by The5lacker

Caitlyn doesn't fulfill the Sniper power fantasy
Champions & Skins148 comments
64
votes
Guys! They figured out how to make blue trinket worth buying!
Gameplay35 comments
37
votes
Bard needs some jogging pants
Gameplay19 comments
27
votes
...Really? REALLY?
Boards Feedback42 comments
25
votes
Essence Reaver: Too little, too late.
Gameplay113 comments
20
votes
Your team is your enemy
Tips & Tricks15 comments
11
votes